Thursday host Allen Ruff speaks with irrepressible social critic Henry Giroux on violence, memory, and our country’s bent toward neoliberal fascism. Donald Trump is but a symptom, a reflection and result of larger forces at play, a longer ongoing trend that, sans intervention, results in the “punishing state.”

Henry Giroux holds the University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest at McMaster University and is a founding theorist of critical pedagogy. He’s a cultural critic and contributor to many publications, including Truthout, Truthdig, Boston Review, The Conversation, and CounterPunch. His most recent books are The Public in Peril: Trump and the Menace of Authoritarianism and American Nightmare: Facing the Challenge of Fascism.