I went to the building of the Flemish parliament to attend the event called the State of the European Union… Pièce de résistance of the programme was keynote speaker Geert Mak, the Dutch best seller author of 'In Europa,' who spoke about the future of Europe… we seem to have come to a turning point in Europe’s history. Europe’s strength is its soft power to deal with conflicts, its tolerance, its civilization and respect for human rights. Europe has achieved so much, there is so much to lose, Geert Mak said. Let’s not throw away what we have achieved.
'Europa heeft zoveel bereikt, er is zoveel te verliezen,' dus 'Laten we niet weggooien wat we bereikt hebben,' aldus Geert Mak in 2011. 'Europa als economische eenheid, zo stelde Geert Mak zeven jaar eerder, in zijn boek In Europa 'is een eind op weg.' Om te kunnen beoordelen of de journalist Mak's positieve beoordelingen terecht zijn, zal men de feiten moeten weten zoals die uit wetenschappelijk onderzoek naar voren zijn gekomen:
Neoliberalism in the European Union…
the constitution of markets depends on the impact of social forces and the balance of power in any given society. Yet if it is social forces rather than abstract markets that shape our societies, the question is why changes look the same everywhere in the developed and less developed world despite the variety and differences of national actors? We believe this is due to the rise of an international political project that emerged as response to the crisis of postwar capitalism. Neoliberalism has replaced Keynesianism and the belief in a socially regulated form of capitalism as dominant international ideology. This ideology has inspired various political actors in different parts of the world, including the European Union and its member states. As such, the neoliberal ideology became a material force that has changed the postwar societies, regardless of the individual parties in power. For an analysis of the dynamics of employment models it is therefore indispensable to understand the nature of neoliberalism and its impact on the European Union and the main European policies…
CONCLUSION
Corporate governance/varieties of capitalism: Free trade and free capital mobility together with the expansion and transformation of the financial sector, have opened new possibilities for firms to finance corporate depth. At the same time, the increasing dependence on financial markets has also led to a shift from stakeholder to shareholder value orientations. Free capital mobility, moreover, has facilitated the emergence of large multinational corporations that are able to negotiate the terms of investment with smaller countries. With respect to the 'varieties of capitalism' approach, the adoption of neoliberal policies across the globe makes the 'varieties of capitalism' increasingly look like the 'varieties of neoliberalism.'
Production regime/work organization: Free trade and internationalization increase the pressure on local production sites to improve profitability. Where profitability cannot be sustained by advanced technology, this increases the pressure on workforces to reduce costs. The imperative of cost-reduction often takes the form of outsourcing and relocation of work and production as well as the deterioration of employment and labour standards and an intensification of work. This 'race to the bottom' is amplified by the weakening of product standards and the erosion of health, safety and environmental provisions.
- Employment protection: The flexibilization of labour markets implies a reduction of employment protection, as labour market regulations are seen as obstacles to market efficiency and hence as barriers to economic growth.
- Welfare regime: Neoliberal budgetary austerity and the unwillingness or inability to tax wealthier citizens in the wake of free capital mobility undermine the traditional postwar welfare regimes. The resulting restructuring can be described as shift from welfare to 'workfarist' social policies. The privatization of pension systems plays a particularly important role. From the current point of view, it is rather unclear what the establishment of private pension funds means for income security and standards of living of future pensioners.
- Industrial relations: The rise of neoliberalism was often accompanied by a weakening if not elimination of militant trade union organizations and in many countries by an erosion of bargaining institutions. In the view of neoliberals, trade unions and collective agreements are an obstacle to the free expansion of market forces and their influence must therefore be contained.
- Training and education system/skill system: As one result of continuous budgetary constraints, national training and education systems have been privatized in recent years. This has often been accompanied by a rise in fees, which makes it increasingly difficult for low-income earners to obtain a sufficient education that would critically improve their labour market positions and income situations.
- Full employment/unemployment… the level of employment or the share of unemployment has an important effect on national employment models as the power and resources of workers and trade unions to negotiate the terms of employment critically depend on the balance of supply and demand of labour power. Neoliberal monetary policies give a clear priority to price stability at the possible expense of higher economic growth rates and lower unemployment figures. Several commentators agree that the establishment of full employment would need a radical reform…
- http://www.iaq.uni-due.de/aktuell/veroeff/2005/dynamo05.pdf
- Kortom, 'in antwoord op de crisis van het naoorlogse kapitalisme,' midden jaren zeventig, moest de tot dan toe dominante economische leer wijken voor de ideologie van het neoliberalisme, die 'ongeacht welke politieke partij dan ook regeerde' overal ter wereld, inclusief de 'Europese Unie,' de 'belangrijkste macht' werd.
- Het heeft tot grondige positieve gevolgen geleid voor rijke aandeelhouders en even ingrijpende negatieve gevolgen voor de werkgelegenheid en het inkomen van de burgers in loondienst. Met als gevolg dat de kloof tussen de 1 procent rijken en rest van de bevolking almaar toeneemt, waardoor nu ook de positie van de middenklasse wezenlijk wordt aangetast. Deze omslag heeft zich voltrokken tijdens de periode waarin de nationale autonomie stukje bij beetje werd overgedragen aan 'Brussel.' Dus wat betreft de belangrijkste activiteit in het leven van de doorsnee burger, namelijk zijn of haar werk, is de overgrote meerderheid erop achteruit gegaan. Dit feit wordt door Geert Mak als positief gekwalificeerd met de woorden: 'Europa heeft zoveel bereikt, er is zoveel te verliezen,' dus 'Laten we niet weggooien wat we bereikt hebben.' Vanuit Mak's positie als miljonair klopt deze constatering. De belastingvoordelen voor de rijken zijn, ook volgens hemzelf, almaar toegenomen. Bovendien heeft zijn EU-propaganda veel geld opgeleverd, zowel door de verkoop van zijn boek als door het maken van de televisieserie In Europa. Maar vanuit de positie van de overgrote meerderheid bezien, klopt Mak's bewering dat 'Europa zoveel [heeft] bereikt,' geenszins en bedriegt de opiniemaker zijn publiek. Dat is verwerpelijk, te meer omdat de domineeszoon ook nog eens de Almachtige erbij haalt om te beweren dat hij zichzelf moreel verplicht acht God's 'genade' over te brengen op zijn 'medemensen,' en wel omdat 'je deel uitmaakt van een gemeenschap die de hele wereld omvat, dat er lijnen lopen tussen andere mensen en jou en tussen jou en God.' Nog stuitender wordt Mak's houding wanneer hij publiekelijk claimt dat zijn band met God hem 'soms een gevoel van verantwoording,' geeft, die zijn 'handel en wandel' bepalen. Het feit dat zijn hypocrisie voor hem lucratief uitwerkt en hem in de mainstream media een vorstelijk aanzien geeft, maakt zijn houding totaal weerzinwekkend. Dat iemand zichzelf verraadt is tot daar aan toe, maar dat een journalist ook nog eens zijn publiek verraadt is misselijkmakend. Soit. Laten we de neoliberale ideologie nader bekijken aan de hand van de historische ontwikkeling ervan sinds de opkomst van de tekst-vaste, voormalige filmster, Ronald Reagan. In zijn boek The Story of American Freedom (1998) schrijft de Amerikaanse hoogleraar Geschiedenis aan Columbia University, Eric Foner:
In his 1964 nominating speech for Barry Goldwater (extreem rechtse Republikeinse presidentskandidaat. svh), Reagan had declared freedom the central value of American life and identified two threats to its survival: communism abroad and big government at home. As president, he conducted a rhetorical Cold War against both. The 'free market' took its place alongside the free world as the essence of freedom. Reagan's administration marked the end of the New Deal as a politically dominant set of public policies, ideas, and political alliances. Like Roosevelt and Johnson before him, Reagan spoke of 'economic freedom' and proposed an 'economic Bill of Rights.' But in contrast to his predecessors — who used these phrases to support creating jobs, combatting poverty, and enhancing social security — economic freedom for Reagan meant dismantling economic regulations and reducing the power of unions, all to ensure the individual's right to 'contrast freely for goods and services.' The key to 'economic freedom,' however, was a radical reduction in taxes. High taxes, said Reagan, produced 'servitude' to government, while 'the right to earn your own keep and keep what you earn' was 'what it means to be free.' The cuts not only reduced the level of taxation, they all but eliminated the principle of progressively, one of the ways twentieth-century capitalist societies have tried to redress the unequal distribution of incomes produced by a market system. The result was a massive shift of wealth from poorer to wealthier Americans. By the mid-1990s, the richest 1 percent of Americans owned 40 percent of the nation's wealth, twice their share twenty years earlier.
Zoals algemeen bekend is beperkte de neoliberale ontwikkeling zich niet tot de VS, maar werd al snel door de globalisering een wereldwijd fenomeen. Dit proces ontging kennelijk de commerciële pers in Nederland aangezien de Volkskrant-redactie zich pas op 12 april 2014 onder de kop 'Rijken worden rijker' afvroeg:
Qua inkomen is Nederland egalitair, maar de verschillen in vermogen worden steeds groter, blijkt uit nieuwe cijfers. De rijkste 1 procent bezit inmiddels 23 procent van het totale vermogen. Hoe kan dat?
Vier decennia nadat de Nederlandse politici waren begonnen met het neoliberale beleid van dereguleren, privatiseren en het creëren van een belastingparadijs voor grote concerns, voelde de Volkskrant zich gedwongen zich publiekelijk af te vragen hoe het komt dat
tijdens de crisis de ongelijkheid groter [is] geworden. De rijkste 1 procent bezit bijna een kwart van het totale vermogen, waarmee de verdeling tussen arm en rijk internationaal tot de scheefste behoort. Voor de crisis hadden de allerrijksten nog ruim eenvijfde van het vermogen.
Dit blijkt uit cijfers die het Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek (CBS) voor het eerst heeft opgesteld.
Als het CBS geen onderzoek had verricht had de 'kwaliteitskrant' zichzelf niet hoeven af te vragen hoe dit allemaal mogelijk was geweest in een 'volwassen democratie.' Een deugdelijk antwoord gaf de Volkskrant nog steeds niet, want dan zou deze spreekbuis van de economische en politieke elite hebben moeten uiteenzetten dat de neoliberale ideologie de rijken nog rijker maakt ten koste van de rest van de bevolking, op wie de rijken en de politici almaar bezuinigen. Per slot van rekening moet iemand de rekening betalen voor een roofbouw-cultuur. De taak van de 'vrije pers' is op haar beurt het rechtvaardigen van het onrechtvaardige. Eric Foner geeft een illustrerend voorbeeld uit 1986 toen
by far the year's most significant event, so far as the language of freedom was concerned, was Liberty Weekend, marking the centennial of the Statue of Liberty. With its parade of tall ships and impressive fireworks display, the event, designed by Hollywood producer David Wolper, was an extravagant pageant dedicated to freedom. It was also an orgy of commercialism, replete with corporate sponsorships and the sale of broadcast rights to a single television network. This celebration of the 'American spirit of freedom' left 'no cliché unturned,' as Time magazine noted. Time itself, however, was hardly innocent; its special issue in the commemoration abounded in hackneyed (banale. svh), sometimes incomprehensible prose. 'Freedom is a powerful animal that fights the barriers,' its editors declared. But inadvertently, the magazine offered a graphic example of how Reagan had transformed public discourse. The special issue rewrote history to erase non-conservative meanings of freedom, insisting that from the beginning, Americans had been concerned only with 'freedom from, specifically from the evils of repressive government,' and never with 'freedom to.' […]
Reagan's version of the past appeared to eliminate from the 'imagined community' African-Americans, whose ancestors came in slave ships and whose labor for centuries supported families other than their own. Indeed, among many black Americans, a certain skepticism prevailed on Liberty Weekend. 'For us, the Statue of Liberty is a bitter joke,' wrote James Baldwin.
Hoe 'bitter' wordt nog eens benadrukt door de tekst op een plaquette op het Vrijheidsbeeld met zinnen als:
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome…
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
Eric Foner over het begrip 'vrijheid' dat zo centraal staat in de neoliberale zogenaamde 'vrije markt' ideologie:
Reagan's presidency revealed the contradictions at the heart of modern conservative thought. Rhetorically, he sought to address the concerns of the religious Right, strongly opposing abortion and advocating a 'return to spiritual values' as a way to strengthen traditional families and local communities. Freedom, he insisted carried with it responsibility: 'We're not set free so that we can become slaves to sin.' Like most conservatives, however, he exempted the economy from his abhorrence of self-interested behavior and his demand for moral action, making the unremitting pursuit of profit the sole arbiter of right and wrong. In the end, the Reagan Revolution undermined the very values and social institutions conservatives professed to hold dear.
En precies, maar dan ook precies hetzelfde zien we terug in de ambivalente houding van Nederlandse mainstream-opiniemakers als Henk Hofland, die zich stoort aan de consumentistische 'hufterigheid' van 'de massa,' terwijl hij de even 'hufterige' propaganda in wat hij noemt 'de Vrije Wereld' van hemzelf en zijn zelfbenoemde 'politiek-literaire elite' volstrekt negeert. Een illustrerend voorbeeld van die tweeslachtigheid gaf Geert Mak op 5 mei 2014 nadat hij als gast in het tv-programma Eén op Eén was aangekondigd als 'De Chroniqueur van Europa,' die 'zich zorgen maakt over u en mij, over onze vrijheid en verworvenheden, over onze toekomst en over onze afkeer van Europa, waaraan wij die vrijheid en die verworvenheden grotendeels hebben te danken.'
Al meteen in het begin van de uitzending liet Mak weten 'geen propagandist' te zijn, maar 'uiteindelijk een waarnemer' te zijn, om vervolgens in dezelfde minuut nog toe te geven daast hij wel degelijk een 'propagandist' te zijn, omdat de EU 'de enige manier [is] waarop we een beetje fatsoenlijk de 21 ste eeuw kunnen overleven.' Om het allemaal nog verwarrender te maken sloot Mak dit opstapje naar zijn propaganda voor het neoliberale 'Brussel' af met de opmerking een 'journalist en een criticus' te zijn. Desondanks beweerde hij daarop dat 'het begin van de Europese Unie' als 'een vredesproces' bedoeld was, hetgeen apert onjuist is aangezien de Europese Unie voortkwam uit de Europese Gemeenschap Kolen en Staal, een '6 Europese landen tellende organisatie die bedoeld was om een ononderbroken voorziening van staal en kolen te garanderen voor de heropbouw van Europa na de Tweede Wereldoorlog. De EGKS geldt als een prille aanzet tot de Europese Unie en werd in 2002 opgeheven na 50 jaar.' De Europese economische elite, geconfronteerd met de eigen verwoesting en de hegemonie van de Amerikaanse economische politieke hegemonie, zag zich gedwongen samen te werken of ten onder te gaan. Vrede was niet het doel, maar overleven. Omdat ook Mak zelf besefte dat zijn propaganda flinterdun is geworden, en de beweringen in zijn boeken over Europa en de VS nu al achterhaald zijn, gebruikte Mak gaandeweg de uitzending gebruik van een oude en beproefde tactiek. Als het neoliberale 'Brussel' er niet in slaagt de interne cohesie te bevorderen dan moet een buitenlandse bedreiging worden gecreëerd, en dus zei Mak zonder duidelijke aanleiding ineens 'Kijk maar eens naar Hongarije, een klein Poetin-staatje is daar met een noodgang aan het ontstaan.' Wat de Russische president nu met het extreem rechtse, zelfs door fascisten gesteunde regime in Hongarije te maken heeft, maakte Mak niet duidelijk. Dat was ook niet belangrijk, het ging hem niet om argumenten, maar om ressentimenten. De naam Poetin als grote bedreiging van 'de Vrije Wereld' was genoemd, en alleen dat telde, want neem nu, jawel, 'Oekraïne,' merkte Mak vervolgens op, in deze door het Westen uitgelokte kwestie is 'de stem van Europa zwak, waardoor ook mensen niet gestimuleerd worden' om het neoliberale 'Brussel' te steunen. Waarom is de steun onder de bevolking voor de EU dan zo minimaal dat 'De Chroniqueur van Europa' zich genoodzaakt ziet zich publiekelijk 'zorgen' te maken 'over u en over mij' en 'over onze vrijheid en verworvenheden'? Mak's antwoord was verbijsterend eenvoudig:
Ik heb een gevoel dat de Europese politiek voor een groot deel nog altijd is gekaapt door de nationale politici, en die hebben er niet al te veel belang bij om dat Europese theater werkelijk kracht en dynamiek te geven.
Zeker, ook 'Brussel' was schuldig, want, let op, de bureaucratie daar bepaalde hoe krom 'onze bananen,' mogen zijn en 'ik denk dan ook dat men in Brussel zich niet realiseert hoeveel verlies aan steun dit soort onzin maatregelen heeft gekost,' aldus Mak, wiens betoog steeds lachwekkender werd. 'Vrijheid'? 'Bananen'? Het leek alsof het hier om een vormkwestie ging, en niet over de 'vrijheid' en 'verworvenheden,' waarover volgens de mainstream-pers 'Europa' dankzij de EU vandaag de dag zou beschikken. Omdat het Mak aan steekhoudende argumenten ontbreekt, creëert hij schijn tegenstellingen door bijvoorbeeld te beweren dat
politici en wij als kiezers veel meer moeten zien dat we wel degelijk moeten globaliseren. We hebben met gigantische wereldproblemen te maken, waar Europa een rol in kan spelen, maar waar je als klein nationaal land echt niets aan kunt doen.
Als eerste voorbeeld noemt Mak het 'klimaatvraagstuk.' Maar juist daarmee geeft hij een absurde voorstelling van zaken. Allereerst omdat, in tegenstelling tot de VS, een land waar Mak een 'geheime liefde' voor zegt te koesteren, er in Europa geen invloedrijke politici zijn die het 'klimaatvraagstuk' ontkennen. Maar ook in een ander opzicht bedrijft Mak propaganda, want juist door het neoliberale beleid van 'Brussel' wordt het milieu en het klimaat in toenemende mate ernstig bedreigd. Twee voorbeelden: zaterdag 15 maart 2014 concludeerden Paul de Clerck van Friends of the Earth Europe en Geert Ritsema, campagneleider energie en grondstoffen bij Milieudefensie:
Nieuw handelsverdrag EU-VS schaadt burger en milieu.
Er staat veel op het spel. Maar we mogen er maar heel weinig over weten… er zijn goede redenen om heel wantrouwig te zijn over dit handelsverdrag. Het zal vooral de happy few in het internationale bedrijfsleven bevoordelen, niet de gewone burger. Die heeft vooral veel te verliezen.
Er staat veel op het spel. Maar we mogen er maar heel weinig over weten.
Vrijdag was de voorlopig laatste dag in een reeks van onderhandelingen over een nieuw handelsakkoord tussen de EU en de VS, het Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, kortweg TTIP. De Europese Commissie wil graag het beeld oproepen dat dit verdrag alleen maar winnaars oplevert. Maar dat is wel een erg eenzijdig verhaal, gebaseerd op een grove overschatting van de economische impact en onderschatting van de negatieve gevolgen voor mens en milieu.
Euro Commissaris voor Handel, Karel de Gucht, verkondigt onvermoeibaar dat het TTIP hét recept is om Europa uit de crisis te halen, maar de werkelijkheid is anders. Uit in opdracht van de EU uitgevoerd onderzoek van denktank CEPR blijkt namelijk dat de economische groei als gevolg van TTIP minimaal is : een schamele 0,05 % per jaar. En dat is het meest optimistische scenario, waarbij een groot deel van de regelgeving op het gebied van milieu, consumentenbescherming, gezondheid en veiligheid wordt 'geharmoniseerd,' wat in dit geval een eufemisme is voor 'het verlagen van standaarden.' […]
De Europese Commissie heeft twee zéér ondemocratische trucs bedacht om zowel bestaande als toekomstige standaarden te beïnvloeden. Wat die bestaande standaarden betreft, het klopt dat die niet direct afgeschaft zullen worden. Het toverwoord is namelijk 'mutual recognition.' Als een product in de VS aan de standaarden voldoet, dan krijgt het ook direct toegang tot de Europese markt. Dan hoef je Europese regels niet af te schaffen, je zet ze gewoon opzij…
Kortom, er zijn goede redenen om heel wantrouwig te zijn over dit handelsverdrag. Het zal vooral de happy few in het internationale bedrijfsleven bevoordelen, niet de gewone burger. Die heeft vooral veel te verliezen.
http://www.joop.nl/opinies/detail/artikel/25961_nieuw_handelsverdrag_eu_vs_schaadt_burger_en_milieu/
Maar dit alles verzwegen Mak en Kockelmann, want het paste niet in de opzet van het programma: het maken van propaganda voor de EU, en de economische macht die dit neoliberale bolwerk behartigt en beschermt. De houding van Mak is misdadig, gezien het feit dat, zoals op dinsdag 13 mei 2014 de International New York Times op de voorpagina berichtte:
Sea levels poised to rise as Antarctica melts faster.
The collapse of large parts pf the ice sheet in West Antarctica appears to have begun and is almost certainly unstoppable, with global warming accelerating the pace of the disintegration, two groups off scientists reported Monday.
The finding, which had been feared by some scientists for decades, means that an increase in global sea levels of at least 10 feet may now be inevitable.
Op dezelfde dag berichtte de Amerikaanse onderzoeksjournalist Dahr Jamail op de website Truthout:
'Devastating' Impacts of Climate Change Increasing
A massive collapse of an ice sheet in Western Antarctica has begun and, according to scientists, is most likely an unstoppable event that will cause an inevitable rise in global sea levels of at least 10 feet.
The rise will be relatively slow at first, but by 2100 will ramp up sharply. This could happen sooner, warn the scientists, as the impacts of anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD/climate change) continue to intensify.
'This is really happening,' Thomas P. Wagner, who runs NASA's programs on polar ice and helped oversee some of the research, said. 'There's nothing to stop it now.'
On April 13, the world's leading scientific body for the assessment of ACD warned of a 'devastating rise of 4-5C if we carry on as we are.'
According to Mike Childs, the head of science, policy and research at Friends of the Earth, an increase to 4C warming would mean a 'devastating' impact on agriculture and human civilization. Childs added that we would face even more extreme weather events and lose approximately 20-30 percent of the wildlife on the planet. This assessment may even be overly hopeful, given that humans have never lived on a planet at 3.5C or higher.
A report released in April by a joint Australian/US research team states that escalating CO2 emissions now threaten the entire marine food chain, given that more than 90 percent of the excess CO2 in the atmosphere is absorbed by the oceans.
Feit twee dat Mak bewust verzwijgt, en zijn interviewer bewust niet er sprake bracht, is dat 18 januari 2014 bekend werd dat:
Europa doet forse stap terug in klimaatbeleid
De Europese Commissie kiest voor een minder ambitieus klimaatbeleid in de toekomst. De CO2-uitstoot van de EU-landen moet in 2030 met 35 tot 40 procent zijn afgenomen, dwingende nationale doelen voor duurzame energie en energiebesparing blijven uit. Milieugroeperingen en groene partijen zijn ontgoocheld door plannen.
Dat percentage halen we dit jaar al. Om dan tot 2030 slechts 15 tot 20 procent daarbovenop te doen, getuigt van een totaal gebrek aan ambitie.
In de voorstellen die de Commissie woensdag presenteert, krijgen de lidstaten meer vrijheid om te voldoen aan de klimaatdoelen. Volgens Commissievoorzitter Barroso gaat dat niet ten koste van het ambitieniveau. GroenLinks-europarlementariër Eickhout noemt dat bedrog. 'Dit is zwaar teleurstellend.' Greenpeace vindt dat de Commissie 'de burgers en hun kinderen berooft van een schoon milieu'.
Met andere woorden, vanuit het oogpunt van de klimaatverandering zou de burger juist niet de Europese Unie van 'Geen Jorwert zonder Brussel' moeten steunen, want de neoliberale macht die wereldwijd de regie in handen heeft, dwingt de Europese Unie allereerst de belangen van de economische elite te dienen. Geen woord daarover in de uitzending Eén op Eén met Mak, waarin 'Kockelmann Mak naar de mond [praatte] en in alle opzichten heel erg eens' leek te zijn met diens 'vurige pleidooi voor ''Europa.'''
http://www.dagelijksestandaard.nl/2014/05/geert-mak-heeft-het-makkelijk-met-kockelmann
Zo 'vurig' dat Mak ineens de VS als voorbeeld stelde voor de 'vitaliteit' van de westerse 'democratie.' De bestseller-auteur die niet snel een leugen schuwt, prees het 'Amerikaanse model' van een Huis van Afgevaardigden en een Senaat als oplossing aan, want pas 'dan discussieer je werkelijk op Europees niveau. Dan zeg je tegen elkaar: 'Dit moeten we echt gezamenlijk doen. Dat hebben we nodig.'
Kockelmann, van wie gezegd wordt dat hij 'normaal gesproken een kritisch vragensteller is' wist wat een mainstream-journalist vooral niet kan vragen wil hij zijn glanzende loopbaan voortzetten, en verzuimde dus op te merken dat meer dan de helft van de Amerikaanse senatoren miljonair is, én dat al sinds een halve eeuw bijna de helft van de Amerikaanse kiesgerechtigden niet meer stemt voor het Congres, omdat zij weet dat de plutocratie bepaalt welke koers gevaren wordt. Een feit dat zelfs het hoofd van de Federal Reserve, de centrale bank van de Verenigde Staten, Janet Yellen, niet meer onmiddellijk in twijfel trekt. Op 9 mei 2014 berichtte The Huffington Post:
Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen said Wednesday that she doesn't know whether the U.S. political system is a democracy or an oligarchy, as a recent study concluded, but that growing inequality is an issue lawmakers should address.
Maar deze feiten zijn in de polder niet meer dan te verwaarlozen details. En dus krijgt Mak in de polder alle ruimte om onweersproken te beweren dat 'Europa zoveel [heeft] bereikt, er is zoveel te verliezen,' zonder te vermelden dat een buitengewoon kleine elite ook het EU-beleid uitstippelt. Net als in de VS de managers van de 'corporate state' in Washington en op Wallstreet de macht in handen hebben, zo bepaalt ook in Europa de economische macht, in samenwerking met hoge ambtenaren, welk politiek en economisch beleid er wordt gevoerd. Dit alles gesanctioneerd door een deels corrupte deels zwakke volksvertegenwoordiging en publiekelijk gelegitimeerd door de gecorrumpeerde mainstream-media, grotendeels in bezit van dezelfde economische macht die zich steeds meer verrijkt ten koste van de bevolking. Een kongsi van managers en groot-aandeelhouders van internationaal opererende concerns samen met hoge ambtenaren koken de zaak voor en de rest is slechts een formaliteit. De uitzending met Geert Mak was een schoolvoorbeeld van de wijze waarop de corruptie van het poldermodel werkt, juist tijdens -- voor de gevestigde orde -- kritieke momenten. Volgende keer meer.
Henry A. Giroux | Noam Chomsky and the Public Intellectual in Turbulent Times
Monday, 12 May 2014 09:35By Henry A. Giroux, Truthout | Op-Ed
Noam Chomsky at the University of Toronto. (Photo: Andrew Rusk)
Noam Chomsky is a world renowned academic best known not only for his pioneering work in linguistics but also for his ongoing work as a public intellectual in which he has addressed a number of important social issues that include and often connect oppressive foreign and domestic policies - a fact well illustrated in his numerous path breaking books.(1) In fact, Chomsky’s oeuvre includes too many exceptionally important books to single out any one of them from his extraordinary and voluminous archive of work. Moreover, as political interventions, his many books often reflect both a decisive contribution and an engagement with a number of issues that have and continue to dominate a series of specific historical moments over the course of 50 years. His political interventions have been historically specific while continually building on the power relations he has engaged critically. For instance, his initial ideas about the responsibility of intellectuals cannot be separated from his early criticisms of the Vietnam War and the complicity of intellectuals in brokering and legitimating that horrendous act of military intervention.(2) Hence, it becomes difficult to compare his 1988 book, Manufacturing Consent, coauthored with Edward S. Herman, with his 2002 bestseller, 9/11. Yet, what all of these texts share is a luminous theoretical, political, and forensic analysis of the functioning of the current global power structure, new and old modes of oppressive authority, and the ways in which neoliberal economic and social policies have produced more savage forms of global domination and corporate sovereignty.
His many recent books, articles, and interviews have addressed how the new reign of neoliberal capital is normalized not only through military and economic relations but also through the production of new forms of subjectivity organized around the enslavement of debt, the security-surveillance state, the corporatization of higher education, the rise of finance capital, and the powerful corporate-controlled cultural apparatuses that give new power and force to the simultaneously educative and repressive nature of politics. Chomsky does not subscribe to a one-dimensional notion of power that one often finds among many on the left who view power as driven exclusively by economic forces. He keenly understands that power is multifaceted, operating through a number of material and symbolic registers, and he is particularly astute in pointing out that power also has a pedagogical function and must include an historical understanding of the public relations industry, existing and emerging cultural apparatuses, and that central to matters of power, agency, and the radical imagination, are modes of persuasion, the shaping of identities, and the molding of desire.
Rooted in the fundamentals of anarcho-syndicalism and democratic socialism, he has incessantly exposed the gap between the reality and the promise of a radical democracy, particularly in the United States, though he has provided detailed analysis of how the deformation of democracy works in a number of countries that hide their diverse modes of oppression behind the false claims of democratization. Chomsky has attempted to refigure both the promise of democracy and develop new ways to theorize agency and the social imagination outside of the neoliberal focus on individualization, privatization, and the assumption that the only value that matters is exchange value. Unlike many intellectuals who are trapped in the discourse of academic silos and a sclerotic professionalism, he writes and speaks from the perspective of what might be called contingent totalities. In so doing, he connects a wide variety of issues as part of a larger understanding of the diverse and specific economic, social and political forces that shape people’s lives in particular historical conjunctures. He is one of the few North American theorists who embrace modes of solidarity and collective struggle less as an afterthought than as central to what it means to connect the civic, social and ethical as the foundation for global resistance movements. Implicit to his role as a public intellectual is the question of what a real democracy should look like, how are its ideals and practices are subverted, and what are the forces necessary to bring it into being?
Chomsky does not subscribe to a one-dimensional notion of power that one often finds among many on the left who view power as driven exclusively by economic forces.
As someone who has been writing about youth, neoliberalism, disposability, the rise of the punishing state, the centrality of education to politics, and the notion that politics is about not only the struggle over power and economics but also the struggle over particular modes of culture, subjectivity and agency, his work has been invaluable to me and many others. While it is often pointed out that he is one of the most influential left critics of American foreign policy, what is unique about his ongoing analyses is that his work is layered, complex, often connecting issues far removed from more narrow analyses of foreign policy. For Chomsky, crises are viewed as overlapping, merging into each other in ways that often go unrecognized. Accordingly, in this paradigm, the war on education cannot be understood if removed from the war on the social state, just as the rise of the punishing state cannot be removed from a harsh and punitive survival-of-the-fittest ethic that now characterizes a mode of savage neoliberalism in the United States in which the ruling classes no longer believe in political concessions because their power is global while politics is local and colonized by neoliberal geopolitical power relations. In fact, Chomsky often brings together in his work issues such as terrorism, corporate power, United States exceptionalism, and other major concerns so as to provide maps that enable his readers to refigure the landscape of political, cultural and social life in ways that offer up new connections and the possibility for fresh modes of theorizing potential resistance.
He has also written about the possibility of political and economic alternatives, offering a fresh language for a collective sense of agency and resistance, a new understanding of the commons, and a rewriting of the relations between the political and the up-to-date institutions of culture, finance and capital. And, yet, he does not provide recipes but speaks to emerging modes of imaginative resistance always set within the boundaries of specific historical conjunctures. His work is especially important in understanding the necessity of public intellectuals in a time of utter tyranny, cruelty, financial savagery and a mode of soft authoritarianism. His work should be required reading for all academics, students and the wider public. Given that he is one of the most cited intellectuals in the world suggest strongly that his audience is general, diverse and widespread, inhabiting many different sites, public spheres and locations.
Chomsky is fiercely critical of fashionable conservative and liberal attempts to divorce intellectual activities from politics and is quite frank in his notion that education both in and out of institutional schooling should be involved in the practice of freedom and not just the pursuit of truth. He has strongly argued that educators, artists, journalists and other intellectuals have a responsibility to provide students and the wider public with the knowledge and skills they need to be able to learn how to think rigorously, be self-reflective, and to develop the capacity to govern rather than be governed. But for Chomsky it is not enough to learn how to think critically. Engaged intellectuals must also develop an ethical imagination and sense of social responsibility necessary to make power accountable and to deepen the possibilities for everyone to live a life infused with freedom, liberty, decency, dignity and justice. On higher education, Chomsky has been arguing since the '60s that in a healthy society, universities must press the claims for economic and social justice and that any education that matters must not merely be critical but also subversive. Chomsky has been unflinching in his belief that education should disturb the peace and engage in the production of knowledge that is critical of the status quo, particularly in a time of legitimized violence. He has also been clear, as were his political counterparts, the late Pierre Bourdieu and Edward Said, in asserting that intellectuals had to make their voices accessible to a wider public and be heard in all of those spheres of public life in which there is an ongoing struggle over knowledge, values, power, identity, agency, and the social imagination.
Capitalism may have found an honored place for many of its anti-public intellectuals, but it certainly has no room for the likes of Chomsky. Conservatives and liberals, along with an army of unyielding neoliberal advocates, have virtually refused to include him in the many discussions and publications on social issues that work their way into the various registers of the dominant media. In many ways, Chomsky’s role as an intellectual and activist is a prototype of what may be called an American radical tradition and yet appears out of place. Chomsky appears to be an exile in his own country by virtue of his political interventions, the shock of his acts of translation, and his displays of fierce courage. This is not to suggest that he would make a claim to be in exile in the sense claimed by many intellectuals, though he might agree with the late Edward Said, who was interested in what he called "traveling theory" in the sense of "being errant, provisional, intellectually on the hoof, [as one of] several ways in which he remained true to the exiled people to whom he lent his voice." (3) Exile in this sense suggest that as a "traveler," Chomsky is not interested staking out academic territory and consequently has no disciplinary sphere to protect. The latter, of course, being the hallmark of many academics today who are caught in the cult of specialization and forms of disciplinary terror - forever excoriating those intellectuals who attempt to breach the steadfast rules of the discipline.
Terry Eagleton offers a definition of how academics are different from public intellectuals that I think is useful in understanding Chomsky’s work. He writes:
Intellectuals are not only different from academics, but almost the opposite of them. Academics usually plough through a narrow disciplinary patch, whereas intellectuals …roam ambitiously from one discipline to another. Academics are interested in ideas, whereas intellectuals seek to bring ideas to an entire culture....Anger and academia do not usually go together, except perhaps when it comes to low pay, whereas anger and intellectuals do. Above all, academics are conscious of the difficult, untidy, nuanced nature of things, while intellectuals take sides. … in all the most pressing political conflicts which confront us, someone is going to have to win and someone to lose. It is this, not a duff ear for nuance and subtlety, which marks them out from the liberal. (4)
While this description does not perfectly fit Chomsky, I think it is fair to say that his main role as a public intellectual is to lift ideas into the public realm in the hopes of exposing how power relations work for and against justice, how they are legitimated, and what can be done to challenge them. Many have commented on his staid delivery when he gives talks, but what they fail to recognize is the sense of political and moral outrage that animates his diverse roles as a public intellectual. At the same time, Chomsky is certainly an academic in terms of his rigorous intellectual work, but the point is that he is more than that. In the end, Chomsky’s dialectical move between theory and practice, rigor and accessibility, critique and action offers up less a reason to praise him than to offer a noble vision of what we should all strive for.
For Chomsky, ignorance is a political weapon that benefits the powerful, not a general condition rooted in some inexplicable human condition.
As an engaged academic, Chomsky publicly argues against regimes of domination organized for the production of violence, and social and civil death. His ghostly presence offers up the possibility of dangerous memories, alternative ways of imagining society and the future, and the necessity of public criticism as one important element of individual and collective resistance. And, yet, Chomsky’s role as a public intellectual, given the huge audiences that he attracts when he lectures as well as his large reading public, suggests that there is no politics that matters without a sense of connecting meaningfully with others. Politics becomes emancipatory when it takes seriously that, as Stuart Hall has noted, "People have to invest something of themselves, something that they recognize is of them or speaks to their condition, and without that moment of recognition . . . politics will go on, but you won’t have a political movement without that moment of identification." (5) Chomsky has clearly connected with a need among the public for those intellectuals willing to make power visible, to offer an alternative understanding of the world, and to point to the hopes of a future that does not imitate the scurrilous present.
Chomsky has been relentless in reminding his audience that power takes many forms and that the production of ignorance is not merely about the crisis of test scores or a natural state of affairs - an idiotic argument if there ever was one - but about how ignorance is often produced in the service of power. According to Chomsky, ignorance is a pedagogical formation that is used to stifle thinking and promotes a form of anti-politics, which undermines matters of judgment and thoughtfulness central to politics. At the same time, it is a crucial player in not just producing consent but also in squelching dissent. For Chomsky, ignorance is a political weapon that benefits the powerful, not a general condition rooted in some inexplicable human condition. One of his most insistent themes focuses on how state power functions in various forms as a mode of terrorism reigning violence, misery and hardship, often as a function of class warfare and American global imperialism, and how people are often complicitous with such acts of barbarism.
At the same time, Chomsky is an ardent defender of the poor, those populations considered disposable, the excluded, and those marginalized by class, race, gender and other ideologies and structural relations considered dangerous to tyrants both at home and abroad. There is no privileged, singularly oppressed group in Chomsky’s work. He is capacious in making visible and interrogating oppression in its multiple forms, regardless of where it exists. Yet, while Chomsky has his critics, ranging from notables such as Sheldon Wolin and Martha Nussbaum to a host of less-informed interlocutors, he rarely shies away from a reasoned debate, often elevating such exchanges to a new level of understanding, and in some cases, embarrassment for his opponents. (6) Some of his more illustrious and infamous debaters have included Michel Foucault, William Buckley, Jr., John Silber, Christopher Hitchens and Alan Dershowitz. At the same time, he has refused, in spite of the occasional and most hateful and insipid of attacks, to mimic such tactics in responding to his less civil denigrators. (7) Some of Chomsky’s detractors have accused him of being too strident, not theoretical enough, or more recently, not understanding the true nature of ideology. These criticisms seem empty and baseless to me and appear irrelevant considering the impact Chomsky’s work has had on a younger generation, including many in the Occupy Movement, in calling into question the reckless mechanizations and dynamics of politics, power and policies of the United States government and other authoritarian regimes.
It is important to note that I am not suggesting that Chomsky is somehow an iconic figure who inhabits an intellectual version of celebrity culture. On the contrary, he deplores such a role and is an enormously humble and self-effacing human being. What I am suggesting is that, in an age when the models for political leadership and civic responsibility are put forth in American society for young people and others to learn from, they are largely drawn from the ranks of a criminal, if not egregiously anti-democratic, class of elite financers and the rich. Chomsky offers a crucial, though often unacknowledged, standard for how to be engaged with the world in ways in which issues of commitment and courage are tied to considerations of justice and struggle and not merely to the accumulation of capital, regardless of the social costs. His decisive influence on a range of fields, extending from linguistic theory to theories of the state and education, have not only opened up new modes of inquiry but also give gravitas to the political impulse that underscores such contributions. The point here is neither to idolize nor demonize Chomsky - the two modalities that often mark reactions to his work. Rather, the issue is to articulate the ways in which Chomsky as a public intellectual gives meaning to the disposition and characteristics that need to be in place for such critical work: a historical consciousness, civic courage, sacrifice, incisiveness, thoughtfulness, rigor, compassion, political interventions, the willingness to be a moral witness and the ability to listen to others.
"[U]niversities face a constant struggle to maintain their integrity, and their fundamental social role in a healthy society, in the face of external pressures."
As a public intellectual, Chomsky offers academics a way to be both scholars and critical citizens, and calls upon them to use their talents and resources to promote public values, defend the common good and connect education to social change. He strongly rejects the notion that academics are merely servants of the state and that students are nothing more than enterprising consumers. The role of academics as public intellectuals has a long history in Chomsky’s work and is inextricably connected to defending the university as a public good and democratic public sphere. Chomsky made this clear in a talk he gave at the Modern Language Association in 2000 when he insisted that:
[U]niversities face a constant struggle to maintain their integrity, and their fundamental social role in a healthy society, in the face of external pressures. The problems are heightened with the expansion of private power in every domain, in the course of the state-corporate social engineering projects of the past several decades . . . To defend their integrity and proper commitments is an honorable and difficult task in itself, but our sights should be set higher than that. Particularly in the societies that are more privileged, many choices are available, including fundamental institutional change, if that is the right way to proceed, and surely including scholarship that contributes to, and draws from, the never-ending popular struggles for freedom and justice. (8)
Higher education is under attack not because it is failing, but because it is a potentially democratic public sphere. As such, conservatives and neoliberals often see it as a dangerous institution that reminds them of the rebellious legacy of the '60s, when universities were the center of struggles over free speech, anti-racist and feminist pedagogies, and the anti-war movement. Higher education has become a target for right-wing ideologues and the corporate elite because it is capable of teaching students how to think critically, and it offers the promise of new modes of solidarity to students outside of the exchange value proffered by neoliberal instrumentalism and the reduction of education to forms of training. Chomsky extends the democratic legacy of higher education by insisting that universities and faculty should press the claims for economic and social justice. He also argues more specifically that while higher education should be revered for its commitment to disinterested truth and reason, it also has a crucial role to play in its opposition to the permanent warfare state, the war on the poor, the squelching of dissent by the surveillance state, the increasing violence waged against students, and the rise of an authoritarian state engaged in targeted assassination, drone warfare and the destruction of the environment. Part of that role is to create an informed and reflective democratic citizenry engaged in the struggle for social justice and equality. Standing for truth is only one role the university can assume, and it is not enough. It must also fulfill its role of being attentive to the needs of young people by safeguarding their interests while educating them to exercise their capacities to fulfill their social, political, economic and ethical responsibilities to others, to broader publics, and the wider global social order. As Chomsky reminds us, caring about other people is a dangerous idea in America today and signals the transformation of the United States from a struggling democracy to a full-fledged authoritarian state. (9)
Given the intensive attack that is currently being waged against higher education, Chomsky’s defense of the latter as a democratic public sphere and his insistence on the responsibility of intellectuals - be they academics, students, artists, educators, or cultural workers, to name only a few - takes on a new urgency. Public intellectuals can play a crucial political role in not only translating private issues into public concerns, but also offering up a discourse of interrogation and possibility, one that understands the new historical configuration in which we find ourselves when power is separated from politics, demanding not only a new consideration of the relationship between politics and power but also what it means to think otherwise in order to act otherwise. Chomsky is an important public intellectual because he has become a model for what it means to put a premium on social and economic justice, display a willingness to raise disquieting questions, make power accountable, defend democratic values, take political risks and exhibit the moral courage necessary to address important social issues as part of an ongoing public conversation.
As Chomsky reminds us, caring about other people is a dangerous idea in America today and signals the transformation of the United States from a struggling democracy to a full-fledged authoritarian state.
This is not an easy task at a time when many academics have removed themselves from engaging larger social issues and are all too willing to accommodate those in power, functioning as either entertainers or stenographers. Too many academics have become either uncritical servants of corporate interests, rendered invisible, if not irrelevant, behind a firewall of professional jargon, or have been reduced to a subaltern class of adjunct and part-time labor, with little time to think critically or address larger social issues. Consequently, they either no longer feel the need to communicate with a broader public, address important social problems, or they are deprived of the conditions that enable them to write, think and function as public and engaged intellectuals. This is particularly troubling in an aspiring democracy where intellectuals above all should take seriously the notion that if democracy is to mean anything, it "requires its citizens to risk something, to test the limits of the acceptable."(10) This is particularly egregious when, for many academics, their working conditions no longer support their role as scholars and public intellectuals.
Noam Chomsky not only represents the antithesis of intellectual accommodation, he actually exemplifies a new kind of intellectual, one reminiscent of rigorous theorists such as Antonio Gramsci and Michel Foucault, on the one hand, and C. Wright Mills, on the other, all of whom refused, as Mills put it, the role of "a sociological book-keeper, " preferring instead to be "mutinous and utopian" rather than "go the way of the literary faddist and the technician of cultural chic." (11) Like C. Wright Mills, Chomsky addresses pressing social issues and painstakingly looks at how they are lived through the experiences of people who are often deeply affected, yet disappeared from such narratives. His work on political economy, regimes of authoritarianism, cultural domination, and global youth resistance is in my mind a pioneering work that examines the mechanisms of politics, and collective struggles globally, within a larger matrix of economics, power, history and culture.
Chomsky is not content to focus on the perpetrators of global crime and the new forms of authoritarianism they are spreading in different ways across the globe, he also focuses on those who are now considered disposable, those who have been written out of the discourse of what he considers a tortured democracy, as a force for collective resistance capable of employing new modes of agency and struggle. Whether he is talking about war, education, militarization or the media, there is always a sense of commitment, civic courage and a call for resistance in his work that is breathtaking and always moving. His interventions are always political, and yet he manages to avoid the easy mantle of dogmatism or a kind of humiliating clownish performance we see among some alleged leftist intellectuals. Like C. Wright Mills, he has revived the sociological imagination, connecting the totality and the historically specific, a broader passion for the promise of democracy, and a complex rendering of the historical narratives of those who are often marginalized and excluded. There is also a refusal to shield the powerful from moral and political critique. Chomsky has become a signpost for an emerging generation of intellectuals who are not only willing to defend the institutions, public spheres and formative cultures that make democracy possible, but also address those anti-democratic forces working diligently to dismantle the conditions that make an aspiring democracy meaningful.
We live at a time when the growing catastrophes that face Americans and the rest of the globe are increasingly matched by the accumulation of power by the rich and financial elite. Their fear of democracy is now strengthened by the financial, political, and corporate elite’s intensive efforts to normalize their own power and silence those who hold them accountable. For many, we live in a time of utter despair. But resistance is not only possible, it may be more necessary now than at any other time in America’s past, given the current dismantling of civil rights, democratic institutions, the war on women, labor unions, and the poor - all accompanied by the rise of a neoliberal regime that views democracy as an excess, if not dangerous, and an obstacle to implementing its ideological and political goals. What Noam Chomsky has been telling us for over 50 years is that resistance demands a combination of hope, vision, courage, and a willingness to make power accountable, all the while connecting with the desires, aspirations, and dreams of those who suffer under the apparatuses of regimes of violence, misery, fear and terror. He has also reminded us again and again through numerous historical examples that public memory contains the flashpoints for remembering that such struggles are always collective and not merely a matter of individual resistance. There are always gaps in the work we do as intellectuals, and in Chomsky’s case, there is more to be said as Archon Fung points out regarding the role that public intellectuals can play in shaping "the democratic character of public policy," work with "popular movements and organizations in their efforts to advance justice and democracy," and while refusing to succumb to reformist practices, "join citizens - and sometimes governments - to construct a world that is more just and democratic." (12)
He may be one of the few public intellectuals left of an older generation who offers a rare glimpse into what it means to widen the scope of the meaning of political and intellectual inquiry - an intellectual who rethinks in a critical fashion the educative nature of politics within the changed and totalizing conditions of a neoliberal global assault on all vestiges of democracy. He not only trades in ideas that defy scholastic disciplines and intellectual boundaries, he also makes clear that it is crucial to hold ideas accountable for the practices they legitimate and produce, while at the same time refusing to limit critical ideas to simply modes of critique. In this instance, ideas not only challenge the normalizing discourses and representations of commonsense and the power inequities they legitimate, but also open up the possibilities inherent in a discourse that moves beyond the given and points to new ways of thinking and acting about freedom, civic courage, social responsibility, and justice from the standpoint of radical democratic ideals.
2. See, for example, Noam Chomsky, "The Responsibility of Intellectuals," New York Review of Books (February 13, 1967). See also an updated version of this essay in Noam Chomsky, "The Responsibility of Intellectuals, Redux: Using Privilege toChallenge the State," The Boston Review (September 1, 2011). Online:
3. Terry Eagleton, "The Last Jewish Intellectual," New Statesman, March 29, 2004; Edward Said’s notion of traveling theory can be found in Edward W. Said, "Traveling Theory," in The Edward Said Reader, edited by Moustafa Bayoumi and Andrew Rubin (New York: Vintage, 2007), pp. 195-217.
4. Ibid., Eagleton.
5. Stuart Hall and Les Back, "In Conversation: At Home and Not at Home," Cultural Studies,Vol. 23, No. 4, (July 2009), pp. 680-681.
7. Over the course of his career, a number of false claims have been attributed to Chomsky, including the absurd notion published in The New York Times' Higher Education Supplement that he was an apologist for the Pol Pot regime, and on another occasion, the damaging charge that he was anti-Semitic, given his defense of freedom of speech, including that of the French historian Robert Faurisson, an alleged Holocaust denier. Chomsky’s long-standing critique of totalitarianism in all of its forms seems to have been forgotten in these cases. More recently a well-known left critic, capitalizing on his own need for indulging the performative, challenged Chomsky to a boxing match partly as a result of Chomsky’s criticism of him. Granted this may be more ironic than literal, but in the end it reveals the collapse of serious dialogue into the dustbin of the heightened spectacle and a fatuous aesthetics. At issue in this instance is not an attempt at serious dialogue but a form of self-sabotage and a withdrawal from the serious engagement, if not politics itself. Chomsky has never stooped to this level of self-immolation or over-inflated grandiosity.
8. Noam Chomsky, "Paths Taken, Tasks Ahead," Profession (2000), p. 38.
9. See, for instance, Noam Chomsky, "America Hates Its Poor," Occupy: Reflections on Class War, Rebellion and Solidarity (Westfield, NJ: Zuccotti Park Press; Second Edition, 2013).
10. Mark Slouka, "Dehumanized: When Math and Science Rule the School," Harper’s Magazine (September 2009), p. 38.
11. C. Wright Mills, "Culture and Politics: The Fourth Epoch," The Politics of Truth: Selected Writings of C. Wright Mills, (Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 199.
12. Archon Fung, "The Constructive Responsibility of Intellectuals," Boston Review, (September 9, 2011).
Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.
HENRY A. GIROUX
Henry A. Giroux currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department and is a Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Ryerson University. His most recent books include: On Critical Pedagogy (Continuum, 2011), Twilight of the Social: Resurgent Publics in the Age of Disposability (Paradigm 2012), Disposable Youth: Racialized Memories and the Culture of Cruelty (Routledge 2012), Youth in Revolt: Reclaiming a Democratic Future (Paradigm 2013), America's Educational Deficit and the War on Youth (Monthly Review Press, 2013), Neoliberalism's War on Higher Education (Haymarket 2014) and The Violence of Organized Forgetting (which will be published by City Lights in 2014). Giroux is also a member of Truthout's Board of Directors. His website is www.henryagiroux.com.
RELATED STORIES
By Amy Goodman, Democracy NOW! | Video Interview
By Daniel Falcone, Truthout | Interview
By CJ Polychroniou and Anastasia Giamali, Truthout | Interview
4 opmerkingen:
20 Mei komt Glenn Greenwald naar Amsterdam: http://www.john-adams.nl/tickets/index.html
Hij schrijft boeken...
Ik weet het en de moderator is Juurd Eijsvoogel. Wie hij is kun je op mijn blog lezen.
Precies wat er aan ontbreekt in deze wereld, moderators! Voorkauwers...Selectieve verontwaardiging van het establishment. Ik had het kunnen weten. :(
Zal ik als je intendant optreden? Ik ben helemaal niemand :razz:
Een reactie posten