The new illiteracy is about more than not knowing how to read the book or the word; it is about not knowing how to read the world.

Within neoliberal narratives, the message is clear: Buy/ sell/ or be punished.

I don't think the media is a reflection of anything. The media is an active political and pedagogical force that shapes reality. If the media were a reflection of anything, then we'd have to raise the question of why it's in the hands of basically six corporations. The media is about power.

The new illiteracy is about more than not knowing how to read the book or the word; it is about not knowing how to read the world.

I think the other side of this is in this balance between the social state and the punishing state, remember, the social state has been decimated. And the question becomes, how is finance capital, how does the 1 percent now resort to governing? And they govern basically through a form of lawlessness and what I call the punishing state, in which we've had a punishment creep, and now it moves from the prison to almost every institution in society, from airports to schools to social services.

The media is almost entirely about defining the subject, defining the citizen, as one of three things: a consumer, a threat in this new age of surveillance, or as utterly disposable. Excess.

Neoliberalism is going to fail by being replaced. The system is entirely broken. Whenever you have a system that equates a market economy with a market society and claims that capitalism is democracy, you've not only got a massive lie being imposed on the people, but you've got the foundation for a form of authoritarianism and a much more intensive form of class warfare.