The challenges that young people are mobilizing against oppressive societies all over the globe are being met with a state-sponsored violence that is about more than police brutality. This is especially clear in the United States, given its transformation from a social state to a warfare state, from a state that once embraced a semblance of the social contract to one that no longer has a language for justice, community and solidarity - a state in which the bonds of fear and commodification have replaced the bonds of civic responsibility and democratic vision.
Henry GirouxThe domestic war against "terrorists" [code for young protesters] provides new opportunities for major defense contractors and corporations who are becoming more a part of our domestic lives.
Henry GirouxI am certainly influenced by certain post-structuralist traditions but also a number of other theoretical archives as well - including the brilliant work of Paulo Freire, Zygmunt Bauman, Loic Wacquant, Nancy Fraser, Tony Judt, and others.
Henry GirouxI think that's where we can both seize upon the contradictions and push them to limits that these people would not consider, while at the same time in some way you're taking advantage of what these people are saying within a discourse that has some legitimacy.
Henry GirouxThe rise of casino capitalism and the punishing state with their vast apparatuses of real and symbolic violence must be also addressed as part of a broader historical and political attack on public values, civic literacy and economic justice. Crucial here is the need to engage how such an attack is aided and abetted by the emergence of a poisonous neoliberal public pedagogy that depoliticizes as much as it entertains and corrupts.
Henry GirouxThe issue is not about raising taxes. The issue is, how do we allocate the wealth that we have? We spend trillions of dollars on a military industrial complex. The United States accounts for 38% of all the military armaments produced in the world. 38%. This is a huge amount of money. People want and need services. They want roads, they want healthcare.
Henry Giroux