Critical education in an age of authoritarianism |
Statue of Aristotle at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. Photo by salut_rai/Wikimedia Commons
The Trump regime moves through the Western Hemisphere as a reckless force of destruction. Its swagger, rooted in bluster and brutality, resembles that of an inebriated thug let loose to destroy anyone in its path. On January 7, Minneapolis mother Renée Nicole Good tried to drive away from federal ICE agents who had come to arrest and harass fellow residents of her city. She was promptly shot in the head and killed. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem then declared, without a shred of proof, that Ms. Good was a domestic terrorist.
International rules no longer apply. This regime bombs civilian vessels with impunity in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean because it claims, always without evidence, that they are carrying drugs. It kidnaps Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, on fabricated drug charges. Venezuela now faces the prospect of being handed over to American oil interests in a payback scheme that Donald Trump says will be financed by Venezuelan oil itself. Newly appointed Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has celebrated the “flawless execution” of a joint military raid involving more than 150 aircraft to seize Maduro and Flores. At least 100 people were killed. His message is unmistakable and grotesque: Maduro “effed around and he found out.” Who comes next? Follow the ideology. Follow the resources—Iran, Cuba, Colombia, Mexico, Panama, Greenland. Canada?
Hegseth’s fascist co-conspirators act the same way, developing a snitch line for Americans to report “domestic terrorism” like “opposition to immigration enforcement” or “radical gender ideology.” Trump, just under a year into a job he got by lying about so-called criminal immigrants, strokes his misogynistic impulses by insulting female reporters who dare to ask him questions, calling them, among other things, “piggy” and “ugly.” His personal Gestapo rounds up and disappears both legal and undocumented immigrants from courthouses, schools, Home Depots, and the like. Ever the proud racist, he attacks Somali immigrants, calling them “garbage” from a country that “stinks” and says he wants to strip away their citizenship. Joseph Goebbels’ intellectual offspring, Karoline Leavitt, calls this an “epic moment.” America has become a fascist state, unmoored from any concept of truth, its laws perverted to the purposes of its elite.
Things are better in Canada, but the tracks in the snow lead in a similar direction. We’ve recently elected a conservative prime minister in the guise of Liberal Mark Carney, who is pressing ahead with Bill 5, the One Canadian Economy Act—legislation designed to weaken environmental protections, Indigenous rights, and local democracy by allowing the federal government to bypass rules that obstruct major profit-making projects. In recent years, provinces have increasingly chosen to avoid court challenges when breaking strikes or overriding the rights of transgender people and Québécois who wish to observe religious rites in public. To do so, governments are turning to the infamous “notwithstanding clause” to suspend fundamental civil rights guaranteed by Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
In Ontario, the Greenbelt scandal and Skills Development Fund debacle underscore the central role of cronyism in the Doug Ford government. It has shown little hesitation in curtailing local democracy—stripping elected representatives of their powers or suspending them altogether, as it did with six school boards in the past year. Meaningful accountability is unlikely: despite winning less than half of the popular vote cast, and in an election with turnout below 50 percent, the government now wields 100 percent of the power through a majority in the legislature.
This is a sample of what is increasingly becoming normal for governments and those with the power, influence and money to lie, misdirect, break or ignore laws. Naked authoritarianism is dressed up as order. Indeed, fascism relies on culture and pedagogy being pressed into service to erase or distort memory. In this process, it becomes extremely difficult to discern what is true, what actually happened, and what is even meaningful. This is inevitable in a political culture that applauds blatant lying and obfuscation.
But what about young people who are left to flounder in this morass? How can they begin to make sense of the swirling mess of venomous absurdity that vies for their attention in a stream of social media that is detached from civic duty? What responsibility do educators have toward their students?
One of the most urgent challenges confronting educators, students, and cultural workers today is not merely how to teach, but what role education must assume at a historical moment when democracy is slipping into the dark night of fascism. How, in light of this challenge, does education do the pedagogical work of both enabling and defending........