Henry A. Giroux | The War on Terrorism Targets Democracy Itself

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http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/30086-the-war-on-terrorism-targets-democracy-itself

Tuesday, 14 April 2015 00:00
By Henry A. Giroux, Truthout | News Analysis

George Orwell's nightmarish vision of a totalitarian society casts a dark shadow over the United States. The consequences can be seen clearly in the ongoing and ruthless assault on the social state, workers, unions, higher education, students, poor people of color and any vestige of the social contract. Free market policies, values and practices with their emphasis on the privatization of public wealth, the elimination of social protections and the deregulation of economic activity now shape practically every commanding political and economic institution in the United States.

Public spheres that once offered at least the glimmer of progressive ideas, enlightened social policies, non-commodified values, and critical dialogue and exchange have been increasingly militarized - or replaced by private spaces and corporate settings, which maintain ultimate fidelity to increasing profit margins. Citizenship is now subsumed by the national security state and a cult of secrecy, organized and reinforced by the constant mobilization of fear and insecurity designed to produce a form of ethical tranquilization and a paralyzing level of social infantilism.

Chris Hedges crystalizes this premise in arguing that Americans now live in a society in which "violence is the habitual response by the state to every dilemma," legitimizing war as a permanent feature of society and violence as the organizing principle of politics. (1) Under such circumstances, malevolent modes of rationality now impose the values of a militarized neoliberal regime on everyone, shattering viable modes of agency, solidarity and hope. Amid the bleakness and despair, the discourses of militarism, danger and war now fuel a war on terrorism "that represents the negation of politics - since all interaction is reduced to a test of military strength war brings death and destruction, not only to the adversary but also to one's side, and without distinguishing between guilty and innocent." (2) Human barbarity is no longer invisible, hidden under the bureaucratic language of Orwellian doublespeak. Its conspicuousness, if not celebration, emerged in the new editions of American exceptionalism ushered in by the post 9/11 exacerbation of the war on terror.

Democracy cannot serve, as it has, as a pretext for abandoning civil liberties, democratic values and any semblance of justice.

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