For too long, liberals have failed to recognize education for what it truly is: not merely a service or a tool for economic adaptation, but the very foundation of democratic life.

Hyper-capitalism is the death knell of democracy. It reduces everything to a commodity, monetizing and pathologizing every aspect of life. The blind faith in markets and unfettered individualism has dismantled the social state, ravaged the environment, and fueled staggering inequality. By divorcing economic activity from its social costs, liberals have obliterated civic culture, creating a vacuum filled by despair and alienation. Into that vacuum emerged a band of white supremacists, neo-Nazis, radical Christian nationalists, and a cruel band of misogynists and neoliberal fascists.

Let’s be clear: liberals have never escaped the shadow of Reagan, whose anti-government rhetoric and racist spectacles reshaped the political landscape, nor that of Milton Friedman, whose dogmatic worship of capitalism and contempt for social responsibility set the stage for decades of exploitation. Liberals have not only failed to dismantle these legacies—they’ve deepened them. They accelerated the war on Black women, expanded the carceral state, gutted the working class with NAFTA, and under Obama, cozied up to bankers while millions of Americans lost their homes and livelihoods in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

Instead, liberals clung to the isolating ethos of individualism and a myopic fixation on electoral wins at all costs, turning a blind eye to the loneliness and despair consuming millions of working-class people yearning for community and solidarity. In their neglect, they left an open wound, one that Trump exploited with his grotesque theater of hate. His fraudulent promises of “making America great again” cloaked a cynical swindle in the language of bigotry, lies, and the comforting rituals of spectacle, offering a hollow illusion of unity while solidifying a totalitarian nightmare rooted in the very structures of domination liberals refused to confront.

Liberals bear significant responsibility for the rise of Trump and the MAGA movement. Their complicity lies in more than their failure to challenge the “manufactured ignorance” churned out by today’s totalitarian digital disimagination machines. It is also rooted in their refusal to engage with how youth, people of color, and the displaced experience their suffering and name their realities.

For too long, liberals have failed to recognize education for what it truly is: not merely a service or a tool for economic adaptation, but the very foundation of democratic life. By reducing education to a set of instrumental skills needed to “compete in the global economy” and privileging standardized tests over critical thinking, they have stripped away the radical potential of learning while sabotaging any viable notion of critical pedagogy. Education is not simply about preparing individuals for work; it is about preparing them for the struggle to shape the world. When we turn education into a factory for producing compliant workers rather than active, informed citizens, we sabotage the very principles of democracy.

In their haste to placate the demands of neoliberalism, liberals abandoned the transformative power of education as a vehicle for collective consciousness. They relinquished any serious commitment to the idea that education could—and should—be a force that fosters social awareness, critical inquiry, and solidarity. Instead, they celebrated the hollow rhetoric of “school-to-work” and embraced policies that treated students as nothing more than cogs in a corporate machine.

Too many liberals remained silent as the media—a crucial pillar of democratic society—was surrendered to a far-right agenda and a corrupt corporate elite. In the process, the media has become a tool of misinformation, distorting reality to serve the interests of the powerful. Right-wing media has not just fostered ignorance; it has crafted a society incapable of distinguishing fact from fiction, truth from lies, democracy from authoritarianism.

This is the legacy of liberalism’s failure to defend education as a critical practice for political engagement. By abandoning the radical potential of the classroom and turning a blind eye to the growing monopoly over information, they have paved the way for the erosion of democratic values and social relations. In an age marked by the resurgence of fascism, especially with the election of Trump, Americans find themselves in a world where ignorance is weaponized and truth is under siege. Lost in the veil of spectacularized stupidity and lies promoted by the likes of Fox News, Newsmax, One America News Network, and Elon Musk’s X, it is almost impossible to image education as both a defense and enabler of democracy.

Meanwhile young people act not only as cultural critics but also as cultural producers across a variety of platforms—from social media and podcasts to online documentaries, blogs, and art installations—creating new pedagogical spaces to educate and mobilize the public. These spaces are crucial in both raising awareness of the growing threat of fascism and advocating for the dismantling of entrenched systems—such as the influence of money, the Electoral College, gerrymandering, and other elements of a corrosive capitalism—that distort the promise of a radical democracy.

What is unforgivable is the liberal retreat into the mythic fantasy of an America that never existed. Historical amnesia has become a mass pedagogical weapon of depoliticization. This denial left the path wide open for a regime that embodies the darkest truths about the nation’s past and present. Now, we are left with a pedagogy of terror and ignorance—a cultural framework that normalizes violence and enshrines cruelty, allows the planet to destruct, accelerates the war on people of color and women’s reproductive rights. This is the “Third Reich of Dreams” Charlotte Beradt warned about, where the nightmare is both lived and embraced.

Trump’s fascist dreamscape is on full display in his administration’s appalling plan to deport between 15 and 20 million undocumented immigrants from the United States. This policy is not just about immigration—it is an act of racial and class warfare, targeting people of color, the poor, and millions fleeing poverty and violence in Latin America. At its core is the criminalization of vulnerable populations, carried out by a state machinery designed to dehumanize and eradicate those deemed unworthy of citizenship. This a form of domestic terrorism writ large as a white nationalist fantasy of exclusion and elimination.

Leading this heinous project are Tom Homan, Stephen Miller, and Kristi Noem—hard-right ideologues determined to weaponize the power of the state against entire communities. Stephen Miller, in particular, embodies the ideological extremism driving this policy. His declaration that “America is for Americans” chillingly echoes Adolf Hitler’s assertion that “Germany is for Germans.” This is not immigration reform—it is racial cleansing. It is a deliberate strategy of disposability, rooted in white supremacy, and executed through the machinery of the carceral state and the criminalization of everything considered other and disposable.

This policy envisions a dystopian reality: families torn apart, children ripped from their parents, and communities shattered. Immigrants are reduced to mere bodies—loaded into boxcars, shipped to prisons, or expelled from the country altogether. The parallels to Nazi Germany’s genocidal regime are undeniable. The projected image of trains deporting people to prisons and detention camps is a harrowing reminder of where such dehumanization and racial politics inevitably lead. This is not hyperbole; it is history repeating itself.

Trump’s immigration policy is the embodiment of anti-democratic values, a dystopian fascist nightmare that weaponizes fear, hatred, and dehumanization. It strips away any facade of justice or humanity, laying bare the raw brutality of racial exclusion and state violence. This is not policy—it is vigilante terror—crafted to solidify a fascist vision of America built on the ruins of dignity, compassion, and freedom.

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