Wednesday afternoon Donald Trump held a campaign rally at the Tampa Fairgrounds, his forth in Tampa since the start of his campaign. Although Donald Trump’s three previous rallies in Tampa have been peaceful — at least one was marked by a shouting match between his supporters and his opponents. At other Trump rallies across the country there have been several incidents of violence. Trump himself has suggested several times that violence is a way to deal with protestors or others with whom he and his supporters disagree. On Radioactivity Wednesday, our guest Henry A. Giroux, McMaster University Professor for Scholarship in the Public Interest, says that Trump’s call to respond to dissent with violence is encouraging an atmosphere of “neo-fascism.”
Giroux is The Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy. He also is a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Ryerson University. His most recent books include The Violence of Organized Forgetting, Dangerous Thinking in the Age of the New Authoritarianism, and coauthored with Brad Evans, Disposable Futures: The Seduction of Violence in the Age of Spectacle. Giroux is also a member of Truthout’s Board of Directors. He has a new book out called is America at War with Itself?
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
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