Henry Giroux on State Terrorism and the Ideological Weapons of Neoliberalism
Henry A. Giroux - the founder-animator of Truthout's Public Intellectual Project, a member of Truthout's board of directors and a frequent contributor - currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department and the Paulo Freire Chair in Critical Pedagogy at the McMaster Institute for Innovation and Excellence in Teaching and Learning. He is also a distinguished visiting professor at Ryerson University. The Toronto Star named Giroux one of 12 Canadians changing the way we think. Giroux's most recent books include Disposable Futures: The Seduction of Violence in the Age of Spectacle, co-authored with Brad Evans (City Lights Books, 2015), Dangerous Thinking in the Age of the New Authoritarianism (Routledge, 2015) and the just-issued America's Addiction to Terrorism (Monthly Review Press, 2016). Giroux agreed to speak with retired Truthout editor Leslie Thatcher about terrorism, utopia and crisis in the United States.
Leslie Thatcher: Henry, thank you so much for taking the time to talk about America's Addiction to Terrorism. Could you start our discussion by defining what you mean by "terrorism," "addiction" and "America?"
Henry A. Giroux: When I wrote this book, one of the things I was very concerned about was the way the United States since 9/11 was appropriating the notion of terrorism in a very limited and self-serving, if not dangerous, way. Terrorists were officially defined as people who target and attack Western societies. In this case, a terrorist is an outsider, generally imagined as a Muslim, who poses a threat or commits an act of violence associated with a foreign enemy. What was lost in this definition, one largely reproduced and legitimated in the media, was how the American government used terrorism to extend the power of the state, principally what I call the punishing-surveillance state. As the "war on terror" developed, the very character of American life changed.
"The 'war on terrorism' feeds off a kind of addiction to fear and violence."
The "war on terror" morphed into a war on democracy and civil liberties - functioning largely as an act of domestic terrorism. Under such circumstances, not only has the notion of the future been canceled out, but the very idea of democracy has been fractured. At the same time, the "war on terror" has been used to mobilize a culture of fear in order to accelerate both the militarization of everyday life and further concentrate economic and political power in the hands of the financial elite. As the "war on terror" began to mimic the terroristic practices it claimed it was fighting against, the shadow of an authoritarian state emerged as evidenced in the celebration of spectacles of violence and a hyper-masculinity, the militarization of policing, the attack on the social state, the rise of the surveillance state, unapologetic justifications for state torture, a state-supported assassination list, drone warfare, the war on immigrants, the expansion of the incarceration state and the war on whistleblowers. All this barely touches the growing illegalities that emerged under the banner of the "war on terror." These are some of the overt ways the West manipulates terrorism to extend its power over every aspect of American life. Discourses of terrorism are also used to justify the creation of new markets: the defense industries, the arms industries, private security companies and a range of commanding economic spheres that profit enormously from the "war on terrorism."
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