The public imagination and the dictatorship of ignorance

Authoritarianism is no longer imposed largely through military repression; it now takes place by undermining the public imagination and using culture and its various apparatuses to weaken civic literacy and the public institutions fundamental to civic culture. This article argues that in the 21st century democracy has become fragile. Under the onslaught of what I call disimagination machines, education in its most repressive educational and cultural forms has shaped a mass consciousness that is susceptible to lies, conspiracy theories, and the anti-democratic values and social relations endemic to right-wing populist movements and emerging demagogues. The article argues that the United States is undergoing an unprecedented crisis of political culture and form of depoliticization that are more dangerous than the damaging public policies that emerged in the United States since the rise of neoliberal capitalism in the 1970s. Equally alarming is the fact that the crisis of neoliberal capitalism has not been matched by a crisis of ideas, even as the United States has increasingly been organized on fascist principles for the last few decades. The article concludes by arguing that culture follows politics and that we live in an age when education has to become central to any strategy for engaging politics in the age of emerging authoritarianism.