I think we are in the middle of a slow civil war. It has been gathering force for years, but with January 6th, the mass killings, Dobbs, and, well you know the list, this war is reaching a new level of intensity, open warfare. The Republicans are openly, proudly, trying to create a christofascist White Supremacy, heterosexual male-dominant America in which MAGAts rule. And to assure their continuity of power they want to turn our education system into an indoctrination system because they fear youth and want to reprogram them because now they tend to vote Democratic. They are very serious about this, and willing to do whatever it takes. The only thing that is going to stop this is if the other two-thirds of us vote Democratic and give the Democrats a strong majority in the House and Senate, and a second term for Biden. This may sound partisan but when you look at it from the perspective of fostering wellbeing it is not.
Great Oak High School students leave campus in protest of the district’s ban on “critical race theory” curriculum at Patricia H. Birdsall Sports Park in Temecula, California, on December 16, 2022. Credit: Watchara Phomicinda / The Press-Enterprise / Getty
In the present political and ideological climate, far right political leaders, such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) have declared a war on institutions of public and higher education, which they’ve identified as centers of “unpatriotic education.” Most far right Republicans fear higher education as a bulwark against their authoritarianism and hence see students as a threat to their propaganda machines and fascist politics. As a result, the right wing has kicked into overdrive in an attempt to target educational institutions as a site for policing dissent, eliminating unions, indoctrinating faculty and students, and for normalizing white Christian nationalism, white supremacy and pedagogies of repression.
