The Terror of the Unforeseen. Henry Giroux

      Chapter 1

      The Ghost of Fascism in the Age of Trump

      The murdered are [now] cheated out of the single remaining thing that our powerlessness can offer them: remembrance.

      ― Theodor Adorno

      In the age of Trump, history neither informs the present nor haunts it with repressed memories of the past. It simply disappears. This is especially troubling when the “toxic passions”1 of the fascist past seem to re-emerge in an unceasing stream of racism, demonizing insults, lies, and militarized rhetoric, serving as emotional appeals that are endlessly circulated and reproduced at the highest levels of government and the media. Power, culture, politics, finance, and everyday life have merged in unprecedented ways and pose a threat to democracies all over the world. In the current historical moment, the new mix of old media and new digitally driven systems of production and consumption produce, shape, and sustain desires and modes of agency with extraordinary power and influence. Take, for instance, robot-generated lies and misrepresentations, the endless charges of fake news aimed at traditional media sources critical of the White House, the growing debasement of evidence and facts in a post-truth world, the power of the digital media in spreading “viral” hoaxes, toxic partisan politics, and misinformation, and the utilization of all of these via Facebook “to erode the informational underpinnings of democracy.”2

      The informal educational apparatuses — particularly the corporate controlled media — increasingly reinforce what might be called “The Trump Show,” wittingly and unwittingly, in spite of their growing criticism of Trump’s lies and reckless policies. Obsessed with Trump’s daily barrage of tweets, insults, and spectacularized diversions, the mainstream media have become complicit in giving Trump unprecedented power to shape the daily working of the established media.3 Mike Allen writes in Axios that “Trump and the media, for all of his attacks and despite the cultural chasm between them, just can’t quit each other … Cable news is setting records, books are hot again, newspapers are racking up the digital subscriptions and an op-ed is a hot gossip topic — all because of the national obsession with … Trump fever.”4 Tom Engelhardt extends this argument and calls Trump “a perpetual motion machine of breaking headlines.” He writes:

      As a start, it’s indisputable that no one has ever gotten the day-after-day media coverage he has. Not another president, general, politician, movie star, not even O.J. after the car chase. He’s Da Man! Since that escalator ride, he’s been in the news (and in all our faces)in a way once unimaginable. Cable news talking heads and talk-show hosts can’t stop gabbling about him. It’s the sort of 24/7 attention that normally accompanies terrorist attacks in the United States or Europe, presidential assassinations, or major hurricanes. But with him, we’re talking about more or less every hour of every day for almost two-and-a-half years without a break. It’s been no different on newspaper front pages. No one’s ever stormed the headlines more regularly … There, he has, if anything, an even more obsessional audience of tens of millions for his daily tweets, which instantly become “The News” and then, of course, the fodder for those yakking cableheads and talk-show hosts.5

      Such media coverage is particularly dire in light of the growing pedagogical importance of the new media and the power they now have on the political imagination of countless Americans. And it is particularly true of the conservative media empire of Rupert Murdoch, along with Clear Channel, which dominates the radio airwaves with its ownership of over 1250 stations, and Sinclair Media Group, which owns the largest number of TV stations in America, and which all trade in outrage, hate, scorn, humiliation, and bullying.6 Right-wing hosts such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity have audiences in the millions, shaping much of what America learns, and, it would appear, the entirety of what Trump watches and hears. Moreover, for media giants such as Fox News, the line between its conservative opinion makers and its news operation has collapsed. Referring to Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s interview on the channel, James Poniewozik, the chief television critic for The New York Times, remarked that Fox’s “news operation is no less part of the White House messaging structure than Judge Jeanine.”7 These outlets have played a dangerous role channeling populist anger, and David Bell is right that the educational force of this media machine poses a threat to the United States.8 The first casualty of this re-education of America has been truth, the second moral responsibility, and the third the last vestiges of justice. The result is a massive increase in human misery and suffering worldwide.

      More than a dystopian dismissal of the truth, this is a normalization of deceit, a challenge to thinking itself, and a repudiation of the educational conditions that make an informed citizenry possible. Truth is confused with opinions, and lies have become normalized at the highest level of government. Trump’s mendacity, bolstered by Fox News and other media, is used not only to discredit scientific reason and traditional sources of truth, it also blurs the relationship between fact and fiction, making it difficult for the public to make informed judgments. Presidential tweets now flood the public realm, which make outlandish allegations about voter fraud, slanderous assertions regarding immigrants and crime, and even such whoppers as claiming “unsung success” for the disastrous government response to Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, in which 3,000 people died, and where rebuilding was barely addressed.9 Trump’s penchant for cruelty is particularly evident in his refusal to provide Puerto Rico with much needed aid. As of 2019, he has “threatened to kill any bill that includes substantial new assistance to Puerto Rico that Democrats are demanding.”10 Under the Trump administration, moral responsibility morphs into legal irresponsibility as undocumented workers come under attack, thousands of Vietnamese who have lived in the U.S. are threatened with deportation, and policies are implemented that overturn financial regulations designed to prevent another economic recession. In Trump’s worldview, justice is measured by one’s loyalty to the administration rather than to the rule of law. How else to explain Trump’s firing of James Comey, his criticisms of the intelligence agencies, his critique of his own Attorney General for recusing himself from the Russian investigation, and his administration’s endless attacks on the Mueller investigation? Not only has Trump violated the rule that Presidents refrain from involvement in individual criminal investigations, he has threatened to shut down a Justice Department investigation by top law enforcement agencies that involve him, his family, and a number of his closest advisors.11

      Trump insists that the Department of Justice be used as a political tool to punish his enemies and reward his friends. For example, he put pressure on the former Attorney General Jeff Sessions to wage a criminal investigation against The New York Times for running an anonymous op-ed that called into question Trump’s ability to govern, if not his sanity. In the op-ed, an alleged senior official in the administration stated that Trump was amoral and erratic in his decision-making, using “misguided principles,” and was simply unfit to be president.12 Trump condemned the article “as an act of treason.” Trump’s unapologetic embrace of lawlessness and his blind spot for constitutional principles border on the pathological. He has argued that protesters should be thrown in jail, immigrants seeking asylum should be denied due process, and people who burn the flag should lose their citizenship. Emulating the rhetoric of gang bosses, he has stated that individuals who cooperate with federal prosecutors in criminal investigations are disloyal and that such cooperation or “flipping … almost ought to be outlawed.”13

      Trump shamelessly relativizes the meaning and implementation of “law and order” depending on whether the perpetrator of the alleged crime is a friend or an enemy. “Illegals” or anyone in his target audience of “criminals” he insists should be roughed up by the police, but friends such as Rob Porter, a former White House senior aide charged with abuse by both of his ex-wives, should have criminal charges