[Editor's note: This article by Henry Giroux first appeared in Truthout.]
Critical education must become a key organizing principle to defeat the emerging authoritarianism in the US.
For decades, neoliberalism
has systematically attacked the welfare state, undermined public
institutions and weakened the foundations of collective well-being.
Shrouded in the alluring language of liberty, it transforms market
principles into a dominant creed, insisting that every facet of life
conform to the imperatives of profit and economic efficiency.
But in reality, neoliberalism consolidates wealth in the hands of a
financial elite, celebrates ruthless individualism, promotes staggering levels of inequality,
perpetuates systemic injustices like racism and militarism, and
commodifies everything, leaving nothing sacred or untouchable.
Neoliberalism operates as a relentless engine of capitalist
accumulation, driven by an insatiable pursuit of unchecked growth and
the ruthless concentration of wealth and power within the hands of a
ruling elite. At its core, it’s a pedagogy of repression: crushing
justice, solidarity and care while deriding critical education and
destroying the very tools that empower citizens to resist domination and
reclaim the promise of democracy.
As neoliberalism collapses into authoritarianism, its machinery of
repression intensifies. Dissent is silenced, social life militarized and
hate normalized. This fuels a fascistic politics which is
systematically dismantling democratic accountability, with higher
education among its primary targets. For years, the far right has sought
to undermine education, recognizing it as a powerful site of
resistance. This has only accelerated, as MAGA movement adherents seek
to eliminate the public education threat to their authoritarian goals.
Vice President-elect J.D. Vance openly declared “the professors are the enemy.”
President-elect Donald Trump has stated that “pink-haired communists
[are] teaching our kids.” In response to the Black Lives Matter protests
following George Floyd’s killing, MAGA politicians like Sen. Tom Cotton
openly called for deploying military force against demonstrators.
The authoritarian spirit driving this party is crystallized in the words of right-wing activist Jack Posobiec,
who, at the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference, said: “We
are here to overthrow democracy completely. We didn’t get all the way
there on January 6, but we will. After we burn that swamp to the ground,
we will establish the new American republic on its ashes.” This is more
than anti-democratic, authoritarian rhetoric. It also shapes poisonous
policies in which education is transformed into an animating space of
repression and violence, and becomes weaponized as a tool of censorship,
conformity and discrimination.
As authoritarianism surges globally, democracy is being dismantled.
What does this rise in illiberal regimes mean for higher education?
What is the role of universities in defending democratic ideals when the
very notion of democracy is under siege? In Trump’s United States,
silence is complicity, and inaction a moral failing. Higher education
must reassert itself as a crucial democratic public sphere that fosters
critical thought, resists tyranny and nurtures the kind of informed
citizens necessary to a just society.
Trump’s return to the presidency marks the endpoint of a deeply
corrupt system, one that thrives on anti-intellectualism, scorn for
science and contempt for reason. In this political climate, corruption,
racism and hatred have transformed into a spectacle of fear, division
and relentless disinformation, supplanting any notion of shared
responsibility or collective purpose. In such a degraded environment,
democracy becomes a hollowed-out version of itself, stripped of its
legitimacy, ideals and promises. When democracy loses its moral and
aspirational appeal, it opens the door for autocrats like Trump to
dismantle the very institutions vital to preserving democratic life.
The failure of civic culture, education and literacy is starkly
evident in the Trump administration’s success at emptying language of
meaning — a flight from historical memory, ethics, justice and social
responsibility. Communication has devolved into exaggerated political
rhetoric and shallow public relations, replacing reason and evidence
with spectacle and demagoguery. Thinking is scorned as dangerous, and
news often serves as an amplifier for power rather than a check on it.
Corporate media outlets, driven by profits and ratings, align
themselves with Trump’s dis-imagination machine, perpetuating a culture
of celebrity worship and reality-TV sensationalism. In this climate, the
institutions essential to a vibrant civil society are eroding, leaving
us to ask: What kind of democracy can survive when the foundations of
the social fabric are collapsing? Among these institutions, the
mainstream media — a cornerstone of the fourth estate — have been
particularly compromised. As Heather McGhee notes, the right-wing media has, over three decades, orchestrated “a radical takeover of our information ecosystem.”
Universities’ Neoliberal Audit Culture
As public-sector support fades, many institutions of higher education
have been forced to mirror the private sector, turning knowledge into a
commodity and eliminating departments and courses that don’t align with
the market’s bottom line. Faculty are increasingly treated like
low-wage workers, with labor relations designed to minimize costs and
maximize servility. In this climate, power is concentrated in the hands
of a managerial class that views education through a market-driven lens,
reducing both governance and teaching to mere instruments of economic
need. Democratic and creative visions, along with ethical imagination,
give way to calls for efficiency, financial gain and conformity.
This neoliberal model not only undermines faculty autonomy but also
views students as mere consumers, while saddling them with exorbitant
tuition fees and a precarious future shaped by economic instability and
ecological crisis. In abandoning its democratic mission, higher
education fixates on narrow notions of job-readiness and
cost-efficiency, forsaking its broader social and moral
responsibilities. Stripped of any values beyond self-interest,
institutions retreat from fostering critical citizenship and collective
well-being.
Pedagogy, in turn, is drained of its critical content and
transformative potential. This shift embodies what Cris Shore and Susan
Wright term an “audit culture”
— a corporate-driven ethos that depoliticizes knowledge, faculty and
students by prioritizing performance metrics, measurable outputs and
rigid individual accountability over genuine intellectual and social
engagement.
In this process, higher education relinquishes its role as a
democratic public sphere, shifting its mission from cultivating engaged
citizens to molding passive consumers. This transformation fosters a
generation of self-serving individuals, disconnected from the values of
solidarity and justice, and indifferent to the creeping rise of
authoritarianism.
The suppression of student dissent on campuses this year, particularly
among those advocating for Palestinian rights and freedom, highlights
this alarming trend. Universities increasingly prioritize conformity and
corporate interests, punishing critical thinking and democratic
engagement in the process. These developments lay the groundwork for a
future shaped not by collective action and social equity, but by
privatization, apathy and the encroachment of fascist politics.
Education, once the bedrock of civic engagement, has become a
casualty in the age of Trump, where civic illiteracy is celebrated as
both virtue and spectacle. In a culture dominated by information
overload, celebrity worship and a cutthroat survival ethic,
anti-intellectualism thrives as a political weapon, eroding language,
meaning and critical thought. Ignorance is no longer passive — it is
weaponized, fostering a false solidarity among those who reject
democracy and scorn reason. This is not innocent ignorance but a
calculated refusal to think critically, a deliberate rejection of
language’s role in the pursuit of justice. For the ruling elite and the
modern Republican Party, critical thinking is vilified as a threat to
power, while willful ignorance is elevated to a badge of honor.
If we are to defeat the emerging authoritarianism in the U.S.,
critical education must become a key organizing principle of politics.
In part, this can be done by exposing and unraveling lies, systems of
oppression, and corrupt relations of power while making clear that an
alternative future is possible. The language of critical pedagogy can
powerfully condemn untruths and injustices.
History’s Emancipating Potential
A central goal of critical pedagogy is to cultivate historical
awareness, equipping students to use history as a vital lens for
understanding the present. Through the critical act of remembrance, the
history of fascism can be illuminated not as a relic of the past but as a
persistent threat, its dormant traces capable of reawakening even in
the most robust democracies. In this sense, history must retain its
subversive function — drawing on archives, historical sources, and
suppressed narratives to challenge conventional wisdom and dominant
ideologies.
The subversive power of history lies in its ability to challenge
dominant narratives and expose uncomfortable truths — precisely why it
has become a prime target for right-wing forces determined to rewrite or
erase it. From banning books and whitewashing historic injustices like slavery
to punishing educators who address pressing social issues, the assault
on history is a calculated effort to suppress critical thinking and
maintain control. Such assaults on historical memory represent a broader
attempt to silence history’s emancipatory potential, rendering critical
pedagogy an even more urgent and essential practice in resisting
authoritarian forces. These assaults represent both a cleansing of
history and what historian Timothy Snyder calls “anticipatory obedience,” which he labels as behavior individuals adopt in the service of emerging authoritarian regimes.
he fight against a growing fascist politics around the world is more
than a struggle over power, it is also a struggle to reclaim historical
memory. Any fight for a radical democratic socialist future is doomed if
we fail to draw transformative lessons from the darkest chapters of our
history, using them to forge meaningful resolutions and pathways toward
a post-capitalist society. This is especially true at a time when the
idea of who should be a citizen has become less inclusive, fueled by
toxic religious and white supremacist ideology.
Consciousness-Shifting Pedagogy
One of the challenges facing today’s educators, students and others
is the need to address the question of what education should accomplish
in a historical moment when it is slipping into authoritarianism. In a
world in which there is an increasing abandonment of egalitarian and
democratic impulses, what will it take to educate young people and the
broader polity to hold power accountable?
In part, this suggests developing educational policies and practices
that not only inspire and motivate people but are also capable of
challenging the growing number of anti-democratic tendencies under the
global tyranny of capitalism. Such a vision of education can move the
field beyond its obsession with accountability schemes, market values,
and unreflective immersion in the crude empiricism of a data-obsessed,
market-driven society. It can also confront the growing assault on
education, where right-wing forces seek to turn universities into tools
of ideological tyranny — arenas of pedagogical violence and white
Christian indoctrination.
Any meaningful vision of critical pedagogy must have the power to
provoke a radical shift in consciousness — a shift that helps us see the
world through a lens that confronts the savage realities of genocidal
violence, mass poverty, the destruction of the planet and the threat of
nuclear war, among other issues. A true shift in consciousness is not
possible without pedagogical interventions that speak directly to people
in ways that resonate with their lives, struggles and experiences.
Education must help individuals recognize themselves in the issues at
hand, understanding how their personal suffering is not an isolated
event, but part of a systemic crisis. In addition, activism, debate and
engagement should be central to a student’s education.
n other words, there can be no authentic politics without a pedagogy
of identification — an education that connects people to the broader
forces shaping their lives, an education that helps them imagine and
fight for a world where they are active agents of change.
The poet Jorie Graham
emphasizes the importance of engaging people through experiences that
resonate deeply with their everyday lives. She states that “it takes a
visceral connection to experience itself to permit us to even undergo an
experience.” Without this approach, pedagogy risks reinforcing a
broader culture engrossed in screens and oversimplifications. In such a
context, teaching can quickly transform into inaccessible jargon that
alienates rather than educates.
Resisting Educational “Neutrality”
In the current historical moment, education cannot surrender to the
call of academics who now claim in the age of Trump that there is no
room for politics in the classroom, or the increasing claim by
administrators that universities have a responsibility to remain
neutral. This position is not only deeply flawed but also complicit in
its silence over the current far right politicization of education.
The call for neutrality in many North American universities is a
retreat from social and moral responsibility, masking the reality that
these institutions are deeply embedded in power relations. As Heidi Matthews, Fatima Ahdash and Priya Gupta
aptly argue, neutrality “serves to flatten politics and silence
scholarly debate,” obscuring the inherently political nature of
university life. From decisions about enrollment and research funding to
event policies and poster placements, every administrative choice
reflects a political stance. Far from apolitical, neutrality is a tool
that silences dissent and shields power from accountability.
It is worth repeating that the most powerful forms of education today
extend far beyond public and higher education. With the rise of new
technologies, power structures and social media, culture itself has
become a tool of propaganda. Right-wing media, conservative foundations,
and a culture dominated by violence and reality TV created the fertile
ground for the rise of Trump and his continued legitimacy. Propaganda
machines like Fox News have fostered an anti-intellectual
climate, normalizing Trump’s bigotry, lies, racism and history of abuse.
This is not just a political failure — it is an educational crisis.
In the age of new media, platforms like Elon Musk’s X and tech giants
like Facebook, Netflix and Google have become powerful teaching
machines, actively serving the far right and promoting the values of gangster capitalism.
These companies are reshaping education, turning it into a training
ground for workers who align with their entrepreneurial vision or, even
more dangerously, perpetuating a theocratic, ultra-nationalist agenda
that views people of color and marginalized groups as threats. This
vision of education must be rejected in the strongest terms, for it
erodes both democracy and the very purpose of education itself.
Education as Mass Mobilization
Education, in its truest sense, must be about more than training
students to be workers or indoctrinating them into a white Christian
nationalist view of who does and doesn’t count as American. Education
should foster intellectual rigor and critical thinking, empowering
students to interrogate their experiences and aspirations while
equipping them with the agency to act with informed judgment. It must be
a bold and supportive space where student voices are valued and engaged
with pressing social and political issues, cultivating a commitment to
justice, equality and freedom. In too many classrooms in the U.S., there
are efforts to make students voiceless, which amounts to making them
powerless. This must be challenged and avoided at all times.
Critical pedagogy must expose the false equivalence of capitalism and
democracy, emphasizing that resisting fascism requires challenging
capitalism. To be transformative, it should embrace anti-capitalist
principles, champion radical democracy and envision political
alternatives beyond conventional ideologies.
In the face of growing attacks on higher education, educators must
reclaim their role in shaping futures, advancing a vision of education
as integral to the struggle for democracy. This vision rejects the
neoliberal framing of education as a private investment and instead
embraces a critical pedagogy as a practice of freedom that disrupts
complacency, fosters critical engagement, and empowers students to
confront the forces shaping their lives.
In an age of resurgent fascism, education must do more than defend
reason and critical judgment — it must also mobilize widespread,
organized collective resistance. A number of youth movements, from Black
Lives Matter and the Sunrise Movement to Fridays for Future and March
for Our Lives, are mobilizing in this direction. The challenge here is
to bring these movements together into one multiracial, working-class
organization.
The struggle for a radical democracy must be anchored in the
complexities of our time — not as a fleeting sentiment but as an active,
transformative project. Democracy is not simply voting, nor is it the
sum of capitalist values and market relations. It is an ideal and
promise — a vision of a future that does not imitate the present; it is
the lifeblood of resistance, struggle, and the ongoing merging of
justice, ethics and freedom.
In a society where democracy is under siege, educators must recognize
that alternative futures are not only possible but that acting on this
belief is essential to achieving social change.
The global rise of fascism casts a long shadow, marked by state
violence, silenced dissent and the assault on critical thought. Yet
history is not a closed book — it is a call to action, a space for
possibility. Now, more than ever, we must dare to think boldly, act
courageously, and forge the democratic futures that justice demands and
humanity deserves.
