Education against neo-fascism 2.0: Rethinking Pedagogy in an Age of new fascisms

Abstract

A spectre is haunting Spanish classrooms: neo-fascism. Young students declare themselves, without any complex, to be akin to neo-fascist ideology. This article analyses the penetration of the new neo-fascism, different from traditional fascism and linked to capitalist neo-liberalism, into the educational system. Through two fundamental mechanisms: the imposition of its profoundly reactionary agenda on educational policies and the defence of a radical authoritarian neoliberalism, centred on the impulse of meritocratic egoism. The second part of the text is devoted to developing strategies to combat the ideology and rise of neo-fascism through education (both at school and in society and the media), as well as to prevent its progressive "normalisation" by part of society. This work through education is more urgent than ever before this plague spreads even further, as Camus (2004) would say, this disease that has the capacity to destroy democracy in the name of democracy itself.