Henry Giroux: The Fascist Culture of Neoliberal Violence and the Way Forward
I. A Politics and Culture of Cruelty
Cruelty has always occupied a distinct position within fascist politics. It does not merely manifest as a discourse of hatred, prejudice, and censorship; it also triggers cruel practices of power. For instance, in nations such as Germany under Hitler’s rule and Italy under Mussolini, the legacy of fascism blended the language of fear, trepidation, and contempt with widespread acts of repression and the state's repressive apparatus to eliminate all political concepts related to justice.
Under fascist regimes, cruelty and its transformation into extreme violence occupy the core of daily life. As a form of extreme violence, cruelty is structured within relations of domination and traded within fear, insecurity, corruption, forced precariousness, and what the French philosopher Étienne Balibar calls "zones of death." In this context, politics and violence permeate one another, the result of which is the transformation of a "security-guaranteed society" into a "punitive society." Fascist politics opposes not only democracy but also the social contract, public goods, and all social bonds rooted in "emancipatory movements aimed at transforming structures of domination."
Fascist regimes do not merely divest politics of any substantive meaning; they push it toward self-destruction, reducing it to a form of barbarism.
Fascist regimes place a culture of coldness and cruelty at the heart of their politics. This politics threatens every aspect of society, functioning as a "disenchantment machine" that destroys civic culture, inclusive citizenship, and critical thinking. Finding pleasure in the misfortune and suffering of others is normalized, creating the necessary conditions for the legalization of ignorance, irrationality, and the so-called "politics of disposability." The fusion of violence and politics not only tests the limits of democracy and social justice but also breaches the limits of the unthinkable and unimaginable. As public tolerance and the threshold for social justice vanish, a totalitarian form of terror emerges. In this form, certain groups are viewed as objects of terminal exclusion, social abandonment, or even worse, extermination. One consequence of fascist regimes embracing a culture of cruelty is what Balibar calls "production for the sake of elimination." His perspective is worth sharing here:
Faced with the cumulative effects of different forms of extreme violence or cruelty—what I call the human "zones of death"—we are forced to recognize that current modes of production and reproduction have become an "eliminatory" mode of production. It is unlikely that population reproduction will be utilized for productive use or exploitation; therefore, the population is always relatively surplus and can only be eliminated through "political" or "natural" means—some Latin American sociologists provocatively refer to these populations as "human trash" (población chatarra) who should be "thrown out" of global cities. If this is the case, the question arises again: what is the rationality behind this? Or are we facing the absolute triumph of irrationality?
The culture of cruelty has a long history in the United States. Adam Serwer’s article in The Atlantic reminds us of the atrocities displayed in the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Serwer mentions several dehumanizing exhibits, including slave shackles worn by children, the remains of Black men killed by lynching, and photographs of grinning white people standing nearby, individuals who took pleasure in torturing the bodies of those belonging to races deemed worthless and contemptible. The United States has a traceable record of cruelty in its handling of immigrants and people of color. The most recent instance of unbridled cruelty in the U.S. comes from certain Republican governors who are launching attacks on transgender children, using immigrants as political pawns, and restoring an overt culture of white supremacy, taking pride in doing so.
The U.S. government has also formulated a series of policies that base pleasure on the pain of others, reflected in the cutting of the safety net and expenditures for the following programs: humanitarian housing projects, aid for the homeless, "Meals on Wheels" programs, energy assistance for the poor, legal aid, and other anti-poverty initiatives. These policies drive the United States' descent into barbarism. Today, violence is deeply rooted in American culture and appears to have been normalized. Since 2020, more than 600 mass shootings have occurred annually in the United States. Today, mass shootings happen every day and pass almost unnoticed; even when attention is paid, it is merely an inquiry into the perpetrators' and victims' personal lives, while no one analyzes the systemic causes behind the violence. Violence has become so arbitrary and reckless that there no longer seems to be a need for sober reflection on its causes or consequences. This is especially true of the Republican Party, which is heavily tinged with racism and authoritarianism, regarding the symbolic and material acts of violence it launches in the name of white supremacy. As Jonathan Schell once pointed out: "As people increasingly believe that force can solve almost any problem, whether at home or abroad, incidents of violence are steadily rising. The passion for killing is a vivid manifestation of cruelty."
Currently, this degradation into a culture of cruelty is rarely linked to the legacy of fascism, or what I call "neoliberal fascism." What is new in the current situation is the visibility and normalization of extreme violence and acts of cruelty—a visibility generated by social media, news reports, and various aspects of the entertainment industry. Violence has become part of stage performances and modes of political theater, reminiscent of how fascism integrated aesthetics into mesmerizing scenes of violence, intense atmospheres, and displays of cruelty. Violence has caused the world to take on an apocalyptic appearance. The staging of cruelty and violence serves to consolidate power, break bonds of solidarity, and create a culture of white supremacy and Christian extremism.
II. The Specter of Fascism Returns
With the re-emergence of fascism, democracy has become as dark as a specter. Americans face the threat of a hate-filled political plague, accompanied by a lethal and expanding politics of disposability—a politics in which certain individuals and groups are viewed as sub-human, surplus human waste, rendered as hidden, redundant symbols of fear, disease, moral incorrigibility, and unworthiness of human rights and dignity. When the attributes of fascism are isolated and removed from history, people fail to analyze the broader systemic power relations, nor do they understand how the emerging fascist politics has become a new political formation permeating every aspect of the social order. At present, there is no holistic mode of inquiry—that is to say, there is no foundational analysis capable of moving beyond a focus on specialized issues, isolated problems, and individual events, nor is there a comprehensive analysis linking this violence to an indictment of "gangster capitalism." Currently, all we have are isolated and incoherent expressions of oppression, unrelated social movements, and narrow analytical models trapped in paralyzed and restrictive modes of inquiry. This disconnected, fragmented approach typically ignores the place of the current historical moment within the long river of history. Therefore, we need a broader systemic politics and must propose the necessary theoretical and political tools to resist and destroy the fascist threat. The reason current disasters are increasingly normalized lies in the refusal of intellectuals, experts, scholars, and various media platforms to provide any comprehensive explanation that could form a critical analysis—one that understands how major social problems are interrelated, how they relate to other forms of oppression, how they intersect and reinforce one another, and what this totalizing form of terror means for the present and the future respectively.
III. Neoliberalism as a Stage of Gangster Capitalism
Currently, the United States has entered an apocalyptic, dystopian historical period. This is a period marked by a new stage of economic barbarism—since the 1970s, people have accepted an ideology stating that all social life should be shaped by market forces, and that any political, social, or economic institution that restricts corporate and private interests, unregulated markets, the accumulation of private wealth, or unrestrained rights regarding individuals and property is an enemy of freedom. Under this economic tyranny, social needs, social responsibility, the welfare state, the public interest, and society itself are all treated with contempt. This was echoed in Margaret Thatcher’s policy assertion that "there is no such thing as society. There are only individuals and their families." It is precisely this regressive concept of the individual self, along with its unconstrained personal interests, power, and freedom, that defines neoliberalism. Now, social problems, instability, alienation, despair, pain, and suffering "are individualized and viewed as normal and inevitable." Furthermore, in the neoliberal conception, the collapse of morality is total; that is, any concern for social costs is considered an enemy of the market.
Language has been hollowed out, transformed into advertising propaganda targeted at consumers, combined with the spectacle of game shows, rendered mute by celebrity culture, and even weaponized as part of the war on social responsibility, censored in schools by right-wing propagandists who use violence as a means to achieve political goals. Political language is written in the language of capital—rather than ethics, justice, and compassion—making it easier for people to link violence with the most lethal operations of power. Now, violence is fueled by manufactured ignorance, and the degradation of language has accelerated the development of violence. In an era of shrinking attention spans, language is subordinated to a culture of mediatic immediacy, Twitter, and a degrading commercial culture that restricts imagination, politics, civic life, and democracy itself. In an era of fascism in a new guise, political culture is no longer a critical culture; its role is to destroy those civic critical institutions and spaces capable of developing anti-capitalist consciousness.
Under emerging fascist politics, violence is no longer hidden in the background but is worn like a badge of honor by far-right extremists in the Republican Party and their supporters. In the United States, learned helplessness has evolved into learned cruelty, detached from compassion, care, and truthful discourse. In a neoliberal world of reduced connectivity, atomized subjects, fragmented communities, suppressed historical memory, and the disintegration of civil society, social bonds have vanished. The right wing’s continuous attack on historical memory and the increasing disappearance of these memories lead people to face the various problems arising in their lives in isolation. Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah wrote in her passionate critique, The Mystics of Mar-a-Lago:
We were forced to face a pandemic alone, with the most vulnerable left to their own devices. We are becoming a nation that remains unmoved even when hearing someone say, "I fear for my life." Conflict with one another demands that we do not stop to ask "Why are you afraid?" but instead exercise our right to be cold-blooded and move on. Mr. Trump gave people something to unite around to collectively express contempt, but it serves no substantive meaning.
Since the global economic crisis, neoliberalism has fallen victim to a crisis of legitimacy. However, American society is undergoing more than just a crisis; it has entered what Stuart Hall termed a new historical "conjuncture." [8] That is to say, various social, political, economic, and ideological forces have converged in society to give it a specific and unique shape. In order to resist neoliberal fascism, naming and analyzing this new conjuncture is of particular importance. As a rebranded political form, neoliberalism not only allows finance capital to exercise free rein on a global scale but also unleashes elements common to old fascism, including racial cleansing, virulent misogyny, mass violence, and the politics of population disposal. This new historical moment or conjuncture represents the end of one period and the rise of another, which I call neoliberal fascism. This new conceptual identity, carrying brutal ideological and economic baggage, represents a new and ruthless departure from democracy. It marks an era where the social welfare state, the social contract, and the emphasis on constitutional rights that characterized the old period are no longer the political features of American society. In fact, the current goal of white supremacist struggle is to eliminate these "ancient" influences of the liberal period from American history and politics. The Trumpist slogan "Make America Great Again" aptly captures this new historical moment.
Neoliberalism no longer utilizes private wealth creation and trickle-down economics to justify economic inequality or signs of social mobility. It is unable to address problems such as mass poverty, the underfunding of basic public goods like schools, the crisis in social services, the deteriorating situation in the public health sector, out-of-control drug prices, or the alarming levels of inequality in wealth and power. Whatever economic growth is achieved, it is the financial elite who benefit. The conversion of economic strength into political power further erodes the foundations of the democratic state and governance.
Turning a blind eye to poverty and inequality, neoliberalism no longer defends its lethal ideology. As Pankaj Mishra has noted, neoliberalism is incapable of "improving material conditions and achieving a degree of social and economic equality." Powerless and unwilling to justify the suffering it imposes on the American populace, it now resorts to overt racism and ultra-nationalism, claiming that liberal democracy should be held responsible for the ongoing economic and political crises—crises that amount to a "failing social abyss." Neoliberal fascism brands itself as a type of illiberal democracy. Immersed in "power pornography," mass-manufactured misery, and false fantasies of irresponsibility, neoliberalism unashamedly allies itself with anti-democratic forces across the globe. Dehumanization, racial cleansing, and repression are the new tools of legitimation for this new form of neoliberal fascism. Paul Mason, noting this alliance between neoliberalism and fascism, wrote:
The collapse of neoliberalism has deprived the current model of capitalism of all meaning and justification... This vacuum is being filled by an ideology hostile to human rights, universalism, and gender and racial equality. This ideology worships power, views democracy as a sham, and hopes for a catastrophic reset of the global order. Worse still, the American right's primary weapon is its so-called "18th-century philosophy," which [supposedly] protects Americans from totalitarian rule.
American freedom has become ugly. Michael Tomasky has observed how "freedom" in right-wing rhetoric has been detached from a sense of social responsibility. He illustrates this by suggesting that one measure of freedom's separation from social responsibility might be the shameful argument of right-wing conservatives at the heart of the pandemic: that "freedom includes the right to cough on strangers in the grocery store."
It is worth noting some of the early ideological concepts of freedom in neoliberalism and how they have been exploited by Republican extremists. For example, as early as the 1960s, Friedrich Hayek, an economist and one of the representative figures of neoliberal theory, argued that individual freedom could only be equated with market freedom. Freedom in this sense reproduces the notion that social justice and morality are irrelevant, if not a threat to market freedom. Freedom is removed from concepts of social responsibility or solidarity. Collective freedom either disappears or is considered pathological or dangerous. These early neoliberal concepts of freedom were reduced to the interests of radical individualism and financial elites, waging war against any collective notion of political and social institutions and the very agencies that make them possible. Related to this is the steadfast neoliberal view that no activity should consider social and economic costs. As Milton Friedman, one of the advocates of American neoliberalism, once unapologetically noted, calling for social responsibility was tantamount to "preaching pure and unadulterated socialism, [and] using the cloak of social responsibility." The influential and prestigious businessmen talking nonsense in the name of social responsibility was clearly "harming the foundations of a free society." In this context, the crisis of social responsibility is closely linked to the crisis of agency and the political crisis.
In the neoliberal vision, what matters most is human capital combined with unrestrained corporate interests. As Caleb Crain has pointed out, drawing on Karl Polanyi, neoliberalism has evolved into a form of fascism that "strips democratic politics from human society to the point where 'only economic life remains,' becoming a skeleton without flesh and blood." With the crisis of capitalism and the rise of fascist politics in the United States, moral, social, and ethical considerations have become objects of intense contempt among Republican leaders; a culture of cruelty and violence has been elevated to unimaginable heights as a political tool and organizing principle.
At the heart of the violence sweeping the United States is a contempt for human rights, equality, and justice. In this logic, empathy for others disappears, the bonds that tie humanity together are scorned, and the institutions that maintain a just society are phased out. Now, identity and desire are defined through a market logic that favors self-interest, survival of the fittest, and unconstrained individualism. In the neoliberal worldview, the consumption of life and endless competition are the core concepts defining human relations, if not freedom itself. In a society composed of winners and losers, behavior ranging from the vituperation of others to the infliction of violence upon them is easily normalized. This type of neoliberalism is not only deeply rooted in fascist forms or irrationality but also contains totalitarian impulses that are legitimized and produce acts of mass violence.
In an era of increasingly rampant neoliberal fascism, violence seems to have no limits, appearing not only in high-profile, cruel mass shootings but also invading every aspect of daily life. This generates not only immense fear, insecurity, and aggression but also—due to its ubiquitous and often spectacular appearance—diverts people's attention away from the conditions that produce it. Aligned with a culture of permanent war, neoliberal fascism currently combines entertainment with the political stage, thereby broadening the traditional political sphere and further extending the boundaries of its white supremacist and ultra-nationalist ideologies, as well as its hatred of democracy. Now, selfishness and greed merge with patterns of militarized violence, in which the suffering and death of those deemed redundant or disposable become a source of entertainment and pleasure—a putrid source of entertainment that masks a policy of naked contempt. In the neoliberal fascist vision, the aestheticization of politics is complete.
This mass production of an image-based politics of hate provides the conditions for the right-wing extremists' accelerated turn toward militarized violence. A notable feature of neoliberal fascist violence is the use of both old and new media as a form of theater to manipulate feelings, emotions, fears, and anxieties. Right-wing media has become a stage that fuels the increasing political violence, mass shootings, and militarization of American society, making them appear normalized. As the social sphere fragments, American politics undergoes its own destruction, accompanied by the rise of extremist groups, while the public is drawn in by racist and xenophobic words and deeds. In this situation, violence is increasingly linked to a politics of cultural and racial cleansing. Because of the disconnect between violence and critical thinking, moral sentiments are neutralized; this makes it easier for right-wing extremists to resort to moral nihilism, lawlessness, and the so-called "thrill" and "sense of experience" provided by the abyss of power operations in the service of mass aggression.
IV. The Militarization of American Society
The militarization of American society is nearly complete, representing what William J. Astore calls a unique form of collective insanity. Rather than causing alarm, this has become a source of pride, as military force has become the primary source of American influence abroad and has been normalized as the organizing principle of American society. There is no longer any distinction between domestic and foreign militarization; a culture of weapons has replaced a culture of shared democratic values. Security is closely linked to personal safety, the surveillance industry, and unrestrained gun rights. Now, prisons and their lockdown procedures provide the model for public schools, social services, airports, and increasingly, malls, churches, and supermarkets. Right-wing Republicans express contempt for the Social Security Administration and its programs while simultaneously extolling nativist borders and homeland security.
America has left no protective space for its people. The foreign terrorists that America once fought abroad have now come home. As the Anti-Defamation League has noted, "In the past 10 years... political extremists have committed approximately 450 murders in the United States. Of these killings, right-wing extremists committed about 75% of the crimes, while Islamic extremists committed about 20%... nearly half of the murders were linked to white supremacists." Currently, domestic extremists are the greatest violent threat to the American populace. An American with militaristic and violent tendencies portrays themselves as a pure white supremacist, a radical Christian nationalist, and a paranoid.
A culture of permanent war has collapsed the boundary between domestic terrorism in the United States and the atrocities committed abroad in the name of the War on Terror. Currently, America's military weapons are in the hands of the police, because the greatest threat of violence in America comes from domestic rather than foreign terrorists. The threat of world war and nuclear war is inseparable from a permanent war mentality that currently influences America's domestic and foreign policies. War fever dominates the public imagination and makes it fearless. This is reflected not only in the discourse of right-wing ultra-nationalism but also in the authoritarian nationalism embraced by far-right neo-Nazis, the Republican leadership, white supremacists, and white Christian fundamentalists.
V. Conclusion
Neoliberalism has expanded the war machine and reinforced the consciousness that supports it. In an escalated fascist politics, new types of nuclear stealth bombers are being developed, such as the B-21 "Raider," which threatens human security and costs nearly $750 million per aircraft. The 2023 U.S. military budget, passed at the end of 2022 and totaling $858 billion, is both a symbol of political madness and a symbol of psychological addiction to the machinery of death. The latter is an element of the war machine that ignores shocking levels of poverty, homelessness, a crumbling healthcare system, and collapsing ecosystems. The reality goes far beyond this: neoliberalism also poisons daily life by banning abortion, restricting books, undermining social security and social services, expanding hyper-militarized police forces, and increasing the number of prisons while cutting funding for public schools. Under the influence of neoliberal policies, women's rights, environmental protection, union rights, and civil rights are similarly in peril.
The moment to overthrow fascism has arrived. Beyond the ballot box, we can bring this lethal politics and the gangster capitalism that supports it to a halt through mass collective struggle and uprisings. In an era where socialist ideals are being distorted, this call for a full-scale offensive against fascist politics is particularly vital. Calls for universal basic income, defunding the police, universal healthcare, and a renewed understanding of structural racism, state violence, and staggering levels of inequality—all of these indicate a burgeoning socialist consciousness in the United States. Capitalism is the laboratory of fascism; any viable model of resistance must begin with a call for its abolition rather than its reform. However, as Barbara Epstein has noted, for any viable resistance movement to achieve this, it is crucial to move beyond a "fragmented left, united by a vague commitment to a more just, egalitarian, and sustainable world... but lacking a common point of concern or foundation." The starting point for struggling against neo-fascism lies in reconstructing a critical mass consciousness and a progressive multi-racial movement, so as to dismantle the oppressive ideologies and structural systems of neoliberal fascism.
As David Harvey has emphasized, current fundamental problems of capitalism "are so deep that we will not be able to make any progress without a very powerful anti-capitalist movement." Now is the time to eliminate neoliberal fascism, not to attempt to dilute its policies. This contradicts the concept of compassionate capitalism promoted by Robert B. Reich. The time has come to launch a powerful anti-capitalist movement capable of reimagining how society should be organized according to socialist democratic principles, and what this means for ourselves and future generations. The United States needs to launch a massive, sustained uprising driven by strategies of mass collective resistance and direct action to achieve fundamental social change. It requires a radical vision and what C. Wright Mills called "Big Ideas" in order to form a unified revolutionary movement. It also needs to draw a new militant spirit from past struggles to forge the appropriate weapons needed to fight the scourge of neo-fascism.
As civic culture and the political imagination wither, fascism is rising globally. Without radical political education and political movements to combat it, the lethal fascist virus will triumph. At that point, democracy—even the most lukewarm [9] version of it—will cease to exist. A source of hope comes from a sentence written by James Baldwin during another period of crisis: "Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced." Faced with the imminent threat of fascism, the urgency of the times demands that we remove our blindfolds early. The pressing question of "what kind of world do we want to live in" is no longer rhetorical; it is an urgent call for action. Collective resistance is imminent.