Tag Archives: capitalism

Henry Giroux -The Terror of the Unforeseen

“Power is never so overwhelming that there’s no room for resistance.” Henry Giroux

In this interview with Professor Henry Giroux, we discuss his latest book, THE TERROR OF THE UNFORESEEN, published by LARB Provocations, from The Los Angeles Review of Books. Just the latest of over 65 books he has written.

Henry Giroux is the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest & The Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada. The Toronto Star has named him one of the 12 Canadians Changing the Way We Think. He has also been named in Routledge’s Key Guides as one of the top fifty educational thinkers of the modern period. He is on the editorial and advisory boards of numerous national and international scholarly journals. He is on the Board of Directors for Truthout.

Henry Giroux is a regular contributor to a number of online journals including Truthout, Truthdig, and CounterPunch. He has published in journals including Social Text, Third Text, Cultural Studies, Harvard Educational Review, Theory, Culture, & Society, and Monthly Review.

His primary research areas are: cultural studies, youth studies, critical pedagogy, popular culture, media studies, social theory, and the politics of higher and public education. He is particularly interested in what he calls the war on youth, the corporatization of higher education, the politics of neoliberalism, the assault on civic literacy and the collapse of public memory, public pedagogy, the educative nature of politics, and the rise of various youth movements across the globe.

Articles cited in this interview:

History Holds the Antidote to Trump’s Fascist Politics https://www.truthdig.com/articles/history-holds-the-antidote-to-trumps-fascist-politics/

As Ilhan Omar Said, Trump Is a Fascist — and His Rallies Prove It https://truthout.org/articles/as-ilhan-omar-said-trump-is-a-fascist-and-his-rallies-prove-it/

Trump’s race-baiting rallies echo a dark past https://www.thespec.com/opinion-story/9548102-trump-s-race-baiting-rallies-echo-a-dark-past/?fbclid=iwar2ddin-vvf0layxzxiowidbsrkpj0oqk8l7zxgomemfvwnp-uaht5xvyzc

How ignorance lost its innocence https://www.thespec.com/opinion-story/9505301-how-ignorance-lost-its-innocence/

Against the dictatorship of ignorance in the age of Donald Trump: Parts 1 & 2

https://www.salon.com/2019/05/18/against-the-dictatorship-of-ignorance-in-the-age-of-donald-trump-part-1-of-2/ https://www.salon.com/2019/05/19/against-the-dictatorship-of-ignorance-in-the-age-of-trump-part-2-we-can-still-fight-back/

If Classrooms Are “Free of Politics,” the Right Wing Will Grow https://truthout.org/articles/if-classrooms-are-free-of-politics-the-right-wing-will-grow/

Pedagogical Terrorism and Hope in the age of Fascist Politics https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/05/10/pedagogical-terrorism-and-hope-in-the-age-of-fascist-politics/

Rethinking the Normalization of Fascism in the Post-Truth Era https://www.tikkun.org/rethinking-the-normalization-of-fascism-in-the-post-truth-era

The Ghost of Fascism in the Post-Truth Era https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/03/22/the-ghost-of-fascism-in-the-post-truth-era/

Insisting on Resistance in an Age of Ignorance https://www.truthdig.com/articles/insisting-on-resistance-in-an-age-of-ignorance/

SF Board of Supervisors declare National Rifle Association a domestic terrorist organization https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/SF-Board-of-Supervisors-NRA-domestic-terrorists-14411936.php

The media has become gossip, clickbait and punditry. This threatens democracy https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/27/bernie-sanders-media-democracy

Twitter Wits Go Bonkers Over ‘Trump Gibberish’ That ‘Media Is Destroying The Free Press’ https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-gibberish-twitter-reacts-media-destroying-free-press_n_5d620682e4b0b59d2575c3c7

These Fascists Inadvertently Raised Over $35,000 For A Cause They Hate https://www.huffpost.com/entry/portland-fascists-donations-latino-immigrants_n_5d624b7fe4b0dfcbd48eae54

The myth of the free speech crisis https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/03/the-myth-of-the-free-speech-crisis

Political correctness: how the right invented a phantom enemy https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/30/political-correctness-how-the-right-invented-phantom-enemy-donald-trump

Violence in the name of Trump Dozens of supporters of Donald Trump have carried out or threatened acts of violence. Here, the Guardian lists them all https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2019/aug/28/in-the-name-of-trump-supporters-attacks-database

US teacher strikes generated victories. So why are they ready to strike again? https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/aug/29/us-teacher-strikes-generated-victories-so-why-are-they-ready-to-strike-again

Billionaires v teachers: the Koch brothers’ plan to starve public education https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/07/arizona-fight-koch-brothers-school-vouchers

A teachable moment: educators must join students in demanding climate justice https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/30/climate-strike-teachers-students-greta-thunberg

To rescue democracy, we must revive the reforms of the Progressive Era https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/30/democracy-capitalism-progressive-era-gilded-age

Dean Baker

Dean Baker co-founded The Center for Economic and Policy Research in 1999. His areas of expertise include housing and macroeconomics, intellectual property, Social Security, Medicare and European labor markets. Before that, he worked as a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, and was an assistant professor at Bucknell University. He has also worked as a consultant for the World Bank, the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress, and the OECD’s Trade Union Advisory Council. He is frequently cited in economics reporting in major media outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, CNBC, and NPR. He writes a weekly column for the Guardian Unlimited (UK), the Huffington Post, TruthOut, and his blog, Beat the Press, features commentary on economic reporting.

He is the author of several books, including Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer; Getting Back to Full Employment: A Better Bargain for Working People; The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive; and The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer. He was last our guest on Nov. 15, 2017.

Publications mentioned in this edition of Forthright Radio include:

Frontline: The Warning https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/warning/

U.S. consumers to be hurt by tariffs by Doug Palmer https://www.politico.com/story/2018/09/18/consumers-tariffs-trump-china-795159

Lehman anniversary: The five most surprising consequences by Kim Gittleson https://www.bbc.com/news/business-45478670

Ten years on from the financial crash, we need to get ready for another one by Robert Skidelsky https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/12/crash-2008-financial-crisis-austerity-inequality

Ten Years After The Financial Crisis, The Contagion Has Spread To Democracy Itself by Zach Carter https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/financial-crisis-10-years-later-ben-bernanke-hank-paulson-timothy-geithner_us_5b9d7dc8e4b04d32ebf92396

Four Reasons Why Los Angeles’s Upcoming Public Banking Ballot Initiative is a Huge Deal by Pheonix Goodman https://truthout.org/articles/why-los-angeles-upcoming-public-banking-ballot-initiative-is-a-huge-deal/

To Stop the Next Financial Crisis, We Need Public Ownership of Banks—Now by Thomas Hanna https://truthout.org/articles/to-stop-the-next-financial-crisis-we-need-public-ownership-of-banks-now/

Donald Trump’s currency confusion continues by Jeffrey Frankel https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/sep/21/donald-trump-currency-confusion-continues

Matthew Wolf-Meyer- The Slumbering Masses: Sleep, Medicine & Modern American Life

This edition of Forthright Radio from November 11, 2012 came up in conversation (12-11-17), so we thought it might be of interest to our web listeners, as well.

As the nights grow longer, and the season approaches of long winter naps, it seems like a good time to discuss one of the inevitable aspects of life – sleep. And this seemingly simple topic is not so simple for more and more people in the modern world. And it really is quite mysterious. Neither doctors nor scientists can even tell us what sleep IS, much less what natural sleep might be. And then, there are the effects of capitalism on sleep.

To discuss these things and more, we have with us Matthew Wolf-Meyer, who was (then) a Professor of Anthropology, at UC Santa Cruz. Matthew Wolf-Meyer received his Ph.D. from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota, specializing in medical anthropology, and the social study of science and technology. He holds previous degrees in Literature, Science Fiction Studies, and American Cultural Studies.

In January, 2016, he joined the faculty of the Anthropology Dept. at SUNY Binghamton. His work focuses on medicine, science and media in the United States to make sense of major modern-era shifts in the expert practices of science and medicine and popular representations of health. His book The Slumbering Masses: Sleep, Medicine and Modern American Life, published by The University of Minnesota Press, was the first book-length social scientific study of sleep in the United States and won the New Millennium book prize in 2013. It offers insights into the complex lived realities of disorderly sleepers, the long history of sleep science, and the global impacts of the exportation of American sleep.