“When you can’t translate private troubles into larger public issues, you have no way of understanding the forces of oppression in which you find yourself. One of the great successes of neoliberalism has been to eliminate all questions of the structural, the social — and how they work against people in ways that suggest that they should not be involved in collective action. It represents a form of organized powerlessness at the heart of neoliberalism.”

Cultural critic Henry Giroux explains how a new strain of authoritarianism has seized American politics and culture, injecting and celebrating violence and militarism into our media and economy, creating disposable scapegoats of the marginalized, and ultimately devaluing the cornerstones of democratic thought — reason, solidarity and equality.

Henry’s new book is America at War with Itself from City Lights Books.