Table Of ContentAgAinst the terror of neoliberAlism
Cultural Politics & the Promise of Democracy
A Series from Paradigm Publishers
Edited by Henry A. Giroux
Empire and Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11 (2004),
Paul Street
Caught in the Crossfire: Kids, Politics, and America’s Future
(2005), Lawrence Grossberg
Reading and Writing for Civic Literacy: The Critical Citizen’s
Guide to Argumentative Rhetoric (2005), Donald Lazere
Why Are We Reading Ovid’s Handbook on Rape? Teaching and
Learning at a Women’s College (2005), Madeleine Kahn
Schooling and the Struggle for Public Life, Updated Edition
(2005), Henry A. Giroux
Listening Beyond the Echoes: Media, Ethics, and Agency in an
Uncertain World (2006), Nick Couldry
Michel Foucault: Materialism and Education, Updated Edition
(2006), Mark Olssen
Pedagogies of the Global: Knowledge in the Human Interest
(2006), Arif Dirlik
Not Only the Master’s Tools: African American Studies in Theory
and Practice (2006), edited by Lewis R. Gordon and Jane Anna
Gordon
The Giroux Reader (2006), Henry A. Giroux, edited and intro-
duced by Christopher G. Robbins
Patriotic Correctness: Academic Freedom and Its Enemies (2008),
John K. Wilson
Against the Terror of Neoliberalism (2008), Henry A. Giroux
Thinking Queerly: Posthumanist Essays on Ethics and Identity
(2008), David Ross Fryer
A g A i n s t t h e t e r r o r
o f n e o l i b e r A l i s m
P o l i t i c s b e y o n d
t h e A g e o f g r e e d
Henry A. Giroux
Paradigm Publishers
Boulder • London
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be transmitted or reproduced
in any media or form, including electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or
informational storage and retrieval systems, without the express written consent
of the publisher.
Copyright © 2008 Paradigm Publishers
Published in the United States by Paradigm Publishers, 3360 Mitchell Lane Suite E,
Boulder, CO 80301 USA.
Paradigm Publishers is the trade name of Birkenkamp & Company, LLC,
Dean Birkenkamp, President and Publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataGiroux, Henry A.
Against the terror of neoliberalism : politics beyond the age of greed / Henry A.
Giroux.
p. cm. — (Cultural politics and the promise of democracy)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-61205-357-8 (Ebook)
1. Neoliberalism—United States. 2. Authoritarianism—United States. 3. Youth—United
States—Social conditions. 4. Racism—United States. 5. United States—Politics and
government—1989– I. Title.
JC574.2.U6G57 2008
320.51—dc22
2007050082
Printed and bound in the United States of America on acid-free paper that meets the
standards of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed
Library Materials.
Designed and typeset by Straight Creek Bookmakers.
12 11 10 09 08 1 2 3 4 5
For Susan,
for Brett, Chris, and Jack
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Slouching Toward Bethlehem 1
CHAPTER 1
The Emerging Authoritarianism in the United States:
Political Culture Under the Bush/Cheney Administration 15
CHAPTER 2
Spectacles of Race and Pedagogies of Denial 60
CHAPTER 3
Disabling the Future: Youth in the Age of Market Fundamentalism 84
CHAPTER 4
Neoliberalism as Public Pedagogy 112
CHAPTER 5
The Politics of Hope in Dangerous Times 130
CHAPTER 6
Against Neoliberal Common Sense:
Rethinking Cultural Politics and Public Pedagogy in Dark Times 147
Notes 181
Index 218
About the Author 226
Acknowledgments
This book was written at a very dire time in American history. Motivated by
a sense a outrage and hope, it attempts to identify neoliberalism as a threat
to democracy at home and abroad as well as to offer a productive series of
analyses of how to stop its poisonous effects on all aspects of public and
private life. As one of the most powerful ideologies of the twenty-first cen-
tury, neoliberalism has become a breeding ground for militarism, rapacious
profiteering, dissident profiling, and a new political and religious fundamen-
talism that undermines the presupposition that democracy is about sharing
power and resources. In fact, democracy at the present time looks less like
a reachable ideal than a forgotten ideology of the past. The Bush administra-
tion had done more to disable American democracy than any other American
presidency. The rich receive huge tax breaks while millions of people live in
dire poverty. Billions are added to the national debt, revealing a disdain for
the security of future generations. Instead of promoting a surge in democracy,
the United States promotes a surge in terrorism, fear at home, and death and
destruction abroad. Total terror and permanent war reinforced by the ongoing
militarization of society suggest an anti-politics in which thinking, debating,
and critical human beings either are rendered superficial, punished, or, in
more extreme cases, literally disappear. Democracy withers as civil liberties
such as the rights to association, privacy, and due process are either viewed
as useless or violated. As terror and certainty become all-encompassing and
totalizing, the punishing state replaces the social state, making a mockery of
those democratic values, ideals, and relations upon which American society
was founded. Instead of furthering democratic ideals, the U.S. government
has created a Gulag of secret prisons run by the CIA, imprisoned people in
Guantanamo Bay while denying them any access to legal recourse, tortured
