“...At
every level of domestic and foreign policy, the ghosts of fascism are
evident, offering a glimpse of what horrors await us as the twenty-first
century unfolds. At the level of foreign policy, blood gushes from the
bombs, artillery, and tanks of rogue states in Gaza and Ukraine. Biden
tells us that bringing diplomatic solutions to the dreadful warfare in
Ukraine and the Middle East are less important than the profits and jobs
created by death machines that constitute the defense industries
feeding both wars. War culture and the language of hate fill the
airwaves legitimating violence as a form of political opportunism. The
cruel language and practices of human degradation and destructiveness
now feed a growing fascist politics in the U.S. Fascist demagogues now
boast about their racial fantasies, unchecked adoration of violence, and
their aggressive lawlessness. What Ingmar Bergman once called “The
Serpent’s Egg,” a metaphor for the birth of fascism is about to hatch.
In
a world shaped increasingly by emerging authoritarianism, it has become
increasingly difficult to remember what a purposeful and substantive
democracy looks like, or for that matter, what the idea of democracy
might suggest. Democracy as an ideal, promise, and working practice is
under assault, just as a number of far-right educational, market,
military, and religious fundamentalisms are gaining ascendancy in
American society. Increasingly, it becomes more challenging to inhabit
those public spheres where politics thrives—where thinking, speaking,
and acting subjects engage and critically address the major forces and
problems bearing down on their lives. In this new moment in history,
which too often resembles the nightmares of a fascist past with its
banning of books, erasing of history, attack on trans people, and
support of white nationalism and supremacy, the question of how society
should imagine itself or what its future might hold has become more
demanding given the eradication of social formations that place an
emphasis on truth, social justice, freedom, equality, and compassion.
Historical
and social amnesia have become the organizing principles of U.S.
society. Lies morph into the celebration of violence and language become
part of the machinery of social death, relegated to the sphere of
consumer culture, and devoid of an ethical grammar that is banished to
zones of political and social abandonment.
Subjectivity,
identity formation, and the longing for community have become powerful
elements of a politics of aggression. An ocular—image-based culture
celebrates human misery, turns monsters into political celebrities who
preach a language that accelerates the death of the unwanted, powerless,
and what Judith Butler calls the ungrievable. The mainstream media
normalizes alleged leaders in the fields of politics, entertainment, and
education who thrive on the energies of the dead, weak, and disposable.
Yet, what is often missed is the spread of fascist ideology, fear,
rhetoric, symbols, and demonstrations that circulate in lesser political
circles and at the level of everyday life in the United States. All of
which speaks to how deeply embedded authoritarianism, violence, and the
mobilizing passions of fascism are in American society and culture.
Three recent examples speak to the dark current of fascist politics in
the United States…As Bergman noted in a previous era, the abyss of
fascism “looms menacingly.” Bergman’s words resonate with a fascist
politics that now draws on the culture of everyday life and in doing so
spreads its ideologies, values, social relations, and culture of cruelty
in institutions, practices, policies, and experiences of domination
that take on the hue of being commonplace, wrapped in the discourse of
freedom, victimhood, gated mentalities and gated borders.
For
the playwright and poet, Bertolt Brecht, “the serpent’s egg” suggests
that beneath seemingly democratic societies lie dark, dangerous and
volatile forces waiting to be unleashed by the dynamics of capitalism.
For Brecht, no one can tell the truth about fascism without speaking out
against the horrors of capitalism. The horrors of fascism lurk in the
shadows of everyday life, and as Brecht observes “If anyone wishes to
describe Fascism and war, great disasters which are not natural
catastrophes, he must do so in terms of a practical truth. He must…
write the truth about evil conditions, one must write it so that its
avertible causes can be identified. If the preventable causes can be
identified, the evil conditions can be fought.”[8]
Writing
about the truth must begin by recognizing how the snake of fascism lays
its eggs—the serpent’s eggs, which are often hatched in the limelight
of the spectacularized image of ocular politics where their impending
danger is overlooked. The challenge is to acknowledge how the seeds of
fascism emerge in the shadows of everyday speech, practices, and social
relations. The microaggressions of fascism are too often treated as if
they reside solely in the theatricality of the overly dramatic, the
exaggerated spectacle, or in the realm of self-serving
attention-gripping mass hysteria. What is overlooked is the power of
everyday practices in their overly stylized and calculating shock value,
which slowly become normalized and accelerated, legitimized and
expanded making the efficacy of the unspeakable a core element of
everyday life. What is often dismissed as a minor public spectacle
morphs into the horror of absolute evil in a world led by barbarians. In
the current historical period, the eggs of the serpent are about to
hatch keeping alive both its threat to end democracy, renew the legacy
of colonialism, and once again let loose the politics of disposability,
elimination, and death. Susan Sontag was right in her insistence on the
need “to detect fascist longings in our midst.” Fascism now mobilizes
people’s feelings in order to win them over either to the arena of hate
and bigotry or to depoliticize them. Once we lose sight of how the
dynamics of power hide in the language of the everyday. Fascism will
arrive not with a thunderous bang but with the waving of the flag and
the stench of death. The serpent’s egg will have hatched, and the lights
will go out.”
—Henry A. Giroux, “Everyday Fascism: Brecht’s Warning About the Serpent’s Egg”, Counterpunch, March 13, 2024
HENRY A. GIROUX (b. September 18, 1943)
BERTOLT BRECHT (1898-1956)
Photograph Source: Abhisek Sarda – CC BY 2.0
And therefore think him as a serpent’s egg
Which hatch’d, would as his kind grow mischievous;
And kill him in the shell”
– Brutus in Shakespeare’s 'Julius Caesar'
The
brilliant scholar, Paul Gilroy, once stated that we live at a time when
the “horrors of the past are much closer to us than we like to
imagine.” [1] Gilroy’s words are more resonant today than they were when
first written. At every level of domestic and foreign policy, the
ghosts of fascism are evident, offering a glimpse of what horrors await
us as the twenty-first century unfolds. At the level of foreign policy,
blood gushes from the bombs, artillery, and tanks of rogue states in
Gaza and Ukraine. Biden tells us that bringing diplomatic solutions to
the dreadful warfare in Ukraine and the Middle East are less important
than the profits and jobs created by death machines that constitute the
defense industries feeding both wars. War culture and the language of
hate fill the airwaves legitimating violence as a form of political
opportunism. The cruel language and practices of human degradation and
destructiveness now feed a growing fascist politics in the U.S. Fascist
demagogues now boast about their racial fantasies, unchecked adoration
of violence, and their aggressive lawlessness. What Ingmar Bergman once
called “The Serpent’s Egg,” a metaphor for the birth of fascism is
about to hatch.
In a world shaped increasingly by emerging
authoritarianism, it has become increasingly difficult to remember what a
purposeful and substantive democracy looks like, or for that matter,
what the idea of democracy might suggest. Democracy as an ideal,
promise, and working practice is under assault, just as a number of
far-right educational, market, military, and religious fundamentalisms
are gaining ascendancy in American society. Increasingly, it becomes
more challenging to inhabit those public spheres where politics
thrives—where thinking, speaking, and acting subjects engage and
critically address the major forces and problems bearing down on their
lives. In this new moment in history, which too often resembles the
nightmares of a fascist past with its banning of books, erasing of
history, attack on trans people, and support of white nationalism and
supremacy, the question of how society should imagine itself or what its
future might hold has become more demanding given the eradication of
social formations that place an emphasis on truth, social justice,
freedom, equality, and compassion.
Historical and social amnesia
have become the organizing principles of U.S. society. Lies morph into
the celebration of violence and language become part of the machinery of
social death, relegated to the sphere of consumer culture, and devoid
of an ethical grammar that is banished to zones of political and social
abandonment.
Subjectivity, identity formation, and the longing
for community have become powerful elements of a politics of aggression.
An ocular—image-based culture celebrates human misery, turns monsters
into political celebrities who preach a language that accelerates the
death of the unwanted, powerless, and what Judith Butler calls the
ungrievable. The mainstream media normalizes alleged leaders in the
fields of politics, entertainment, and education who thrive on the
energies of the dead, weak, and disposable. Yet, what is often missed is
the spread of fascist ideology, fear, rhetoric, symbols, and
demonstrations that circulate in lesser political circles and at the
level of everyday life in the United States. All of which speaks to how
deeply embedded authoritarianism, violence, and the mobilizing passions
of fascism are in American society and culture. Three recent examples
speak to the dark current of fascist politics in the United States.
First,
I want to highlight the words of right-wing activist Jack Posobiec who
in “his welcome speech at this year’s conference of the Conservative
Political Action Conference (CPAC,) stated: “Welcome to the end of
democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely. We didn’t get all the
way there on January 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it and
replace it with this right here.” He then held up a cross necklace and
continued: “After we burn that swamp to the ground, we will establish
the new American republic on its ashes, and our first order of business
will be righteous retribution for those who betrayed America.”[2] This
is fascism on steroids and yet it got little media coverage and when it
did it was dismissed as a kind of rogue extremism. In actuality, it
simply echoes a central ideology of MAGA Republicans.
Another
example of how the embers of fascist politics have turned into a
firestorm of authoritarian rhetoric and is downplayed or ignored in the
mainstream media is visible in the ongoing rhetoric of the ignorant
buffoon Mark Robinson who is running for the governorship of North
Carolina. In the mainstream media, despite his extremist rhetoric, he is
treated as a normal candidate even though he has referred to
transgender and homosexual people as maggots and filth, stating that
they “are equivalent to what the cows leave behind”[3] After a mass
shooter in 2016 murdered 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando,
Florida, Robinson posted on Facebook “I would pray for the souls of all
those killed…However, homosexuality is STILL an abominable sin and I
WILL NOT join in celebrating gay pride.” He has stated that he wished
for the days when women could not vote and called mass shootings “karma”
for abortion. He has said that Christians must take control of public
schools because children are being abused by teachers who are telling
children “about transgenderism, homosexuality, and any of that
filth.”[4] Robinson’s remarks make clear that willful ignorance is a
precondition for fascist politics, and that a culture of cruelty and
hate has become a normalized tool of political opportunism.
The
third example draws upon the current authoritarian assault on higher
education which is far worse than anything that could have been imagined
with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. In light of this assault,
how could the media largely ignore New College in Florida hiring Bruce
Gilley, who has authored a book called The Case for Colonialism. Beyond
the racist affirmation in book form supporting the genocidal legacy of
colonialism, he has also stated publicly that “the transgender flag [is]
a symbol of narcissistic sexual reductionism and the mutilation of
children,” and that “virtually every indigenous leader in Canada is an
identity fraud.” [5] Without any critical understanding of history, he
has endorsed a video by the Blackwater mercenary company founder Erik
Prince calling for putting “the imperial hat back on” to govern “pretty
much all of Africa.”[6] There is more at work here than the hiring of a
far-right colonialist parading as a professor, there is a clarion call
alerting to how higher education is being transformed into
indoctrination centers and rabid disimagination machines. James Baldwin
was certainly right in issuing the stern warning in No Name in the
Street that “Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.”[7]
These
events closely resemble Bergman’s notion of “The Serpent’s Egg,” an
instructive metaphor for illuminating the conditions that gave rise to
fascism. As Bergman noted in a previous era, the abyss of fascism “looms
menacingly.” Bergman’s words resonate with a fascist politics that now
draws on the culture of everyday life and in doing so spreads its
ideologies, values, social relations, and culture of cruelty in
institutions, practices, policies, and experiences of domination that
take on the hue of being commonplace, wrapped in the discourse of
freedom, victimhood, gated mentalities and gated borders.
For the
playwright and poet, Bertolt Brecht, “the serpent’s egg” suggests that
beneath seemingly democratic societies lie dark, dangerous and volatile
forces waiting to be unleashed by the dynamics of capitalism. For
Brecht, no one can tell the truth about fascism without speaking out
against the horrors of capitalism. The horrors of fascism lurk in the
shadows of everyday life, and as Brecht observes “If anyone wishes to
describe Fascism and war, great disasters which are not natural
catastrophes, he must do so in terms of a practical truth. He must…
write the truth about evil conditions, one must write it so that its
avertible causes can be identified. If the preventable causes can be
identified, the evil conditions can be fought.”[8]
Writing about
the truth must begin by recognizing how the snake of fascism lays its
eggs—the serpent’s eggs, which are often hatched in the limelight of the
spectacularized image of ocular politics where their impending danger
is overlooked. The challenge is to acknowledge how the seeds of fascism
emerge in the shadows of everyday speech, practices, and social
relations. The microaggressions of fascism are too often treated as if
they reside solely in the theatricality of the overly dramatic, the
exaggerated spectacle, or in the realm of self-serving
attention-gripping mass hysteria. What is overlooked is the power of
everyday practices in their overly stylized and calculating shock value,
which slowly become normalized and accelerated, legitimized and
expanded making the efficacy of the unspeakable a core element of
everyday life. What is often dismissed as a minor public spectacle
morphs into the horror of absolute evil in a world led by barbarians. In
the current historical period, the eggs of the serpent are about to
hatch keeping alive both its threat to end democracy, renew the legacy
of colonialism, and once again let loose the politics of disposability,
elimination, and death. Susan Sontag was right in her insistence on the
need “to detect fascist longings in our midst.” Fascism now mobilizes
people’s feelings in order to win them over either to the arena of hate
and bigotry or to depoliticize them. Once we lose sight of how the
dynamics of power hide in the language of the everyday. Fascism will
arrive not with a thunderous bang but with the waving of the flag and
the stench of death. The serpent’s egg will have hatched, and the lights
will go out.
Notes:
[1]
Paul Gilroy, “The 2019 Holberg Lecture, by Laureate Paul Gilroy: Never
Again: refusing race and salvaging the human,” Holbergprisen, [November
11, 2019]. Online: https://holbergprisen.no/en/news/holberg-prize/2019-holberg-lecture-laureate-paul-gilroy
[2] Ben Goggin, “Calls to ‘fight’ and echoes of Jan. 6 embraced by CPAC attendees,” NBC News (February 23, 2024). Online: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/jack-posobiec-jan-6-2024-cpac-rcna140225
[3]
Kira Lerner, “Hitler-quoting candidate wins North Carolina Republican
gubernatorial primary,” The Guardian(March 6, 2024). Online:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/05/mark-robinson-north-carolina
[4] See: Pic.twitter.com/aXjCPFKTs0
[5] Ryan Quinn, “New College of Florida Hires Professor Who Champions Colonialism,” Inside Higher Education(March 8, 2024).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Henry
A. Giroux currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship
in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department
in Hamilton, Ontario Canada and is the Paulo Freire Distinguished
Scholar in Critical Pedagogy. His most recent books include: The Terror
of the Unforeseen (Los Angeles Review of books, 2019), On Critical
Pedagogy, 2nd edition (Bloomsbury, 2020); Race, Politics, and Pandemic
Pedagogy: Education in a Time of Crisis (Bloomsbury 2021); Pedagogy of
Resistance: Against Manufactured Ignorance (Bloomsbury 2022) and
Insurrections: Education in the Age of Counter-Revolutionary Politics
(Bloomsbury, 2023), and coauthored with Anthony DiMaggio, Fascism on
Trial: Education and the Possibility of Democracy (Bloomsbury, 2025).
Giroux is also a member of Truthout’s board of directors.
