An Open Letter from the GCAS Community Concerning the Violent Assault on Democracy: January 6, 2021
Dear Friends,
Yesterday (Jan 6, 2021), a record number of people died in the USA from COVID: 3,964. At the same time, we witnessed a direct assault on U.S. democracy, as the President's brownshirt shock-troops, as undisciplined as they were, stormed the Capitol and made a mockery of themselves during which a woman was shot dead and others injured. In the end, it was an attempted but failed coup d'etat, as weak and pathological as its leader. The damage is almost entirely symbolic, which reflects the ingrained systemic injustices aggressively prevalent in the USA and elsewhere for several decades since Nixon’s malfeasance.
There are many factors that explain how this violent assault was created, nurtured, and mobilized, including sexism, racism, xenophobia, ignorance, egocentrism, increased poverty, economic inequality, and a growing embrace of authoritarianism. The defamation of the left broadly, and anti-fascists and anarchists specially, has reached heights not seen since the Red Scare of a century prior. These events show us how right-centrist economic liberalism is a petri-dish for fascism. Images of red-hatted individuals carrying ‘blue lives matter’ flags while assaulting police and sieging a federal building should give us all pause.
These are dangerous times. Trump's extremism ended up eroding the institutional political order as a whole. But, ultimately, all this is due to a context in which it is the economic system that produces so many people who are unhappy or feel excluded. Where there is need and resentment, all extremists flourish. That's the detritus they feed on, like worms in a corpse. In that regard, there is a substantial corpus of peer-reviewed research on how neoliberalism breeds forms of neo-fascism that threaten democracy.
Watch out for the combination of neo-fascism, libertarianism, conservatism and religious fanaticism. It is terrible and it is getting closer to power. Look at the proliferation of armed groups, militias, and extremist manifestations of all caliber, not only in the US but throughout the world. And that’s why it is evident and urgent to transform the world in the most powerful way: education.
A humanitarian education in particular is the very antidote that fascists vigorously and violently resist and which consequently needs protecting. It is precisely there that we are able to explore and analyse our human condition, giving us reason to hope for liberation. To ignore this scene of possibility is to intentionally destruct and destroy not only social institutions, but the self in its community. It is no accident that Trump and his followers disregard the rising Covid fatalities; it fits perfectly with their murderous and suicidal intent.
In our heart of hearts, we believe that a different education model is needed, a model like the one GCAS has created with a conservative fiscal operation in tandem with a cooperative, progressive, debt-free, co-ownership delivery of rigorous education in a moral community. GCAS isn't by far the "silver bullet" that will magically solve the world's problems, but no model and no amount of earthly power ever is. Yet, our model, and our academic community, exists and is growing! Insofar as we do exist, we are participants in something good (in the Aristotelian sense), wholesome, and ecologically friendly that we share and is changing our conditions even modestly.
There’s no major revolution or strongest resistance against extremism and neo-fascism than a critical-empathetic perspective (developing the political potency and possibilities of it), which are at the core of GCAS’ vision of education and a possible world.
Our path is not easy, but together we can do--and we are doing--something for the world. Our students' lives are changing for the better through what you are providing and that, our dear friends, makes it entirely worth the journey.
Love and Peace,
Alberto Pacheco Benites
Kevin Boileau
Creston Davis
Ken Fields
Rocky Gangle
Francisco Gonzalez Castro
Thomas Hampton
Azfar Hussain
Andrew P. Keltner
Michael Loadenthal
Stephen Lowy
Firoze Manji
Thilini Prasadika
Anna White
Photo Credit to Despina Galani