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Variantnumber 29 Summer 2007 Free cross currents in culture number 29 Summer 2007 variriantfree VARIANT 29 | SUMMER 2007 | 3 Variant, number 29 Summer 2007 ISSN 0954-8815 Variant is a magazine with the independence to be critical that addresses cultural issues in a social and political context. Variant is a charitable organisation and functions Contents with the assistance of subscriptions and advertising. Who Are You to tell me 4 We welcome contributions in the form of news, to Question Authority? reviews, articles, interviews, polemical pieces and artists’ pages. Guidelines for writers are available Radical education in a ‘proto-fascist’ era on request and at the Variant website. Opinions expressed in Variant are those of the Benjamin Franks writers and not necessarily those of the editors or Variant. All material is copyright (unless stated otherwise) the authors or Variant. Closed Circuit Tunnel Vision 7 Variant 1/2, 189b Maryhill Road, Glasgow, G20 7XJ Tom Jennings t +44 (0)141 333 9522 email [email protected] www.variant.org.uk Comic & Zine Reviews 9 Guest co-editor: Owen Logan Mark Pawson Co-editors: Daniel Jewesbury, Leigh French Advertising & Distribution Contact: Luke Collins : Kevin Hobbs Design ‘Reframing the Poverty Debate’ 11 We would like to thank everyone involved in all aspects of supporting Variant, especially: the New Labour Way Alice Hodge, Dan Monks, Luke Collins, Bob Hamilton, Andrew Murray, Alastair Frazer, Peter Gerry Mooney McCluskey, Factotum Distribution Services, Alison Stirling, Tom Jennings, Anna McClaughlin, Ann McCluskey, Mute, Chik Collins... The Agreed Truth & The Real Truth: 14 Printers: Spectator Newspapers, Bangor, BT20 4AF Co. Down, N. Ireland The New Northern Ireland Liam O’Ruairc Multiple Agendas, Impossible Dialogues: 18 Where Irish Studies and History of Art Meet Lucy Cotter Loving Art 20 Tim Stott All articles from Variant are archived and available free at: www.variant.org.uk Variant is published 3 times a year. The most Art School and the Old Grey Cardigan Test 22 current issue is posted on the Variant website two months after publication of the newsprint edition. Mick Wilson To receive an e-mail informing you of these posts and to join the on-line forum send a blank e-mail to: [email protected] The Critique of Everyday Life 24 Subscribe and Cultural Democracy Receive a three issue (one year) subscription to Variant magazine for: Alex Law Institutions: UK & EC £15, Elsewhere £20.00 Individuals: UK £7.50, EC £9.50, Elsewhere £15.00 Subscribe online at: Killing Culture (Softly) 27 www.variant.org.uk/subs.html Libraries can also receive a complete set of back Stephen Dawber issues of Variant vol.2. Rates are available on request. Donate: we need your support O Rose, thou art sick! 30 ‘VARIANT’ account details: Lloyds TSB Scotland plc Adult Educators, Adult Education 32 St. Vincent Street, Glasgow Scotland, UK and Progressive Social Movements Sort code: 87-37-99 Account Number: 81142360 Gordon Asher interviews Stephen Brookfield IBAN: GB06TSBS 873799 81142360 BIC Code: TSBS GB21210 Front cover: Jonathan Owen and Neil Grassie 4 | VARIANT 29 | SUMMER 2007 Who Are You to tell me to Question Authority? Radical education in a ‘proto-fascist’ era Benjamin Franks Against the New Authoritarianism: Politics after Abu suggesting that the United States is literally in late-modernity as an unchallenged military Ghraib akin to previous historical examples of fascist power, means that the old checklist characteristics Henry Giroux regimes. The new authoritarianism is not arriving of fascism, such as that employed by Zbiginiew in swastika emblazoned brown shirts; instead, Brzezinski (former policy hawk to the Carter Arbeiter Ring Publishing it uses the discourse of democracy, even when administration) no longer apply. Originally, the Winnipeg, Canada it undermines it. Thus in the acknowledged characteristics of fascism included an official 2005, pp. 198 footsteps of novelist-activist Arundhati Roy, ideology; a single mass party – typically led by political theorist Sheldon Wolin and American a single person; a system of terror, organised ISBN: 1894037235 former Middle Eastern journalist Chris Hedges, through a political party; monopoly control of Henry Giroux is a highly prolific radical Giroux sees the new fascism as embodied within communications; sole control of weapons and educationalist who has authored over 40 books. democratic institutions, rather than burning them central control of the economy. These seem absent, Many of his works apply the analytical insights down. So too the new fascist state has a different or at least underdeveloped, in the US. Giroux of Critical Theory (a synonym for the Frankfurt relationship to the economy: instead of the state acknowledges this, and persuasively argues that School of unorthodox Marxists such as Theodor incorporating private business (Mussolini), or instead proto-fascism is formed by a different set Adorno, Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse) subordinating industries to the will of the party- of conditions, but shares at least one core element to highlight the impact of the cultural industries state (Hitler), private institutions have taken over of traditional fascism – a concentration in the on children’s learning. In Against the New the democratic apparatus of government (pp. 17- hands of the dominant class and away from the Authoritarianism, Giroux returns to one of the 21). broad mass of people (pp. 34-37). central concerns of the Frankfurt School: the rise The economic developments within the United Giroux draws out eight central elements of the of fascism within liberal democratic societies. States since the initial rise of fascism in the early new authoritarianism: first, reactionary modernism, The book has two main hypotheses, which twentieth century, and its now unique position in which an alliance of free-marketeers, extremist are interrelated. The first is that under the evangelical Christians and neo-conservatives Presidency of George W. Bush, the United States build a sustained social order based upon, is approaching a proto-fascist state; the second and perpetuating, class, gender and ethnic that a critical education is a vital strategy for The pictures hierarchies (pp. 37-38). The second feature is resisting such developments. The first thesis is by the corporatization of civil society, in which the far the most controversial, for the classification were framed like democratic social spaces where people create of states into particular categories has had far- their own social relationships are instead placed reaching policy implications. The academic pornography – that into service for the business sector and the Jeanne Kirkpatrick, a policy advisor to Ronald administrative arm of the state. Without these Reagan, divided non-democracies into two spaces, “it becomes more difficult for individuals types, those acceptable ‘authoritarian’ states individualised, to imagine themselves as political agents or who the US should support and unacceptable to understand the necessity for developing a ‘evil’ / ‘totalitarian’ states who must be actively commodified discourse capable of defending civic institutions” undermined.1 Underneath the rhetoric, the only (p. 39). As a result of this enclosure of communal difference between the two was that ‘totalitarian’ fora, there are fewer avenues for constructing states had an official policy of ‘communism’ or version of sex – and alternative values and social practices to those laid ‘socialism’ and a more redistributive economy, down by the dominant class (pp. 37-40). whilst the merely ‘authoritarian’, whilst having as such the images The third feature of proto-fascism is the no better human rights records (and in many developing discourse of patriotism and nationalism cases worse), were favourably disposed towards from Abu Ghraib and the culture of fear that supports it. A continual US investment. However, this division between battery of jingoism on the news media, which acceptable ‘authoritarian’ and unacceptable includes the fluttering flags of the media idents, ‘totalitarian’ regimes not only sought to justify the provide Giroux the label badges of the TV newsreaders, and the military and diplomatic manoeuvres of the US in marginalisation or silencing of governmental the 1980s, but also helped to shape them. A similar with a significant critics as ‘unpatriotic’, are indicative of the strong if more simplistic division shapes Bush’s foreign current of nationalism used to bolster domestic policy, with similarly calamitous consequences. set of proto-fascist and foreign policy (pp. 40-42). This incessant So when Giroux uses the terms ‘proto-fascist’ promotion of a militarised, chauvinistic discourse and ‘fascism’, he is not merely employing them goes alongside a fourth characteristic: that of in the lazy rhetorical way to stand for something texts for discussing control of mass media through a combination of merely ‘objectionable’. Giroux is well aware of oligarchical corporate ownership and significant the political ramifications of these descriptors the wider social state regulation. Giroux accuses G. W. Bush’s for the current US regime, and defends their executive of going further than any previous application against likely critics from the right processes that government in intertwining his administration and soft-left. In order to pre-empt these replies, with the mass media and manipulating the Fourth Giroux clarifies that in using the term he is not produced them. VARIANT 29 | SUMMER 2007 | 5 Estate.2 The current leadership
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