The latest world war

The spreading front of U.S. wars--from Afghanistan to Africa to Latin America--represents a third world war in all but name, waged for capitalism.

"Fascism" is not right, for it invokes lazy historical precedents, conjuring yet again the iconography of German and Italian repression. On the other hand, American authoritarianism, as the cultural critic Henry Giroux pointed out recently, is "more nuance, less theatrical, more cunning, less concerned with repressive modes of control than with manipulative modes of consent."