The difference between neoliberalism and fascism or Nazism or other forms of totalitarianism is that it takes questions of ideology seriously. It takes the educational sphere seriously, and it tells people there's no alternative; that market freedom is really freedom in general; that a rabid kind of individualism is all that matters; that as Ayn Rand used to say, "self interest is the ultimate virtue" - and people believe this stuff. Because they have no other discourse.

Any dominant ideology operates off the assumption that what it has to say is unaccountable and unquestionable.

Young black men are considered dangerous, expendable, threatening and part of a culture of criminality.

I think we're in a very distinctively different historical moment. I mean, I think that you had two things that were operating in the 1930s that seem to be, in many ways, to have been weakened or disappeared. And of course the beginning of the 21st century, I mean, you have - at one level you had massive social movements.

Everyone is now a customer or client, and every relationship is ultimately judged in bottom-line, cost-effective terms. Freedom is no longer about equality, social justice, or the public welfare, but about the trade in goods, financial capital, and commodities.

As the welfare state is hollowed out, a culture of compassion is replaced by a culture of violence, cruelty and disposability.

The present generation has been born into a throwaway society of consumers in which both goods and young people are increasingly objectified and disposable.