Neoliberalism doesn't make people fascist. It makes them indifferent to the forces that bear down on their lives, it atomizes them, it alienates them. It makes them feel powerless. People are more susceptible to simplistic answers, more susceptible to the idea that one person can save them, that that one person can fight the corporate elite - when that person is a member of the corporate elite. What neoliberalism does in a profound way is it produces an incredible form of individual and collective vulnerability.

Cultural critic Henry Giroux surveys a political horizon of hate, brutality and populist authoritarianism - as capitalism empties the civic institutions at the base of democratic society, the neoliberal logic of isolation and fear lays the groundwork for rising nationalism, racism and trial runs for fascist rule of what's left of society.

Henry is author of The Terror of the Unforeseen from Los Angeles Review of Books.