Books, banks and bullets: controlling our minds – the global project of imperialistic and militaristic neo-liberalism and its effect on education policy

This article focuses on global trends in education policy during the current epoch of imperializing, militaristic, neo-liberal global capital. It is based on an analysis that global capital, in the form of dominant US multinational capital, together with its client governments, uses the repressive and ideological apparatuses of the state to advance its interests, and to marginalize, terrorize, weaken, or kill those who stand in its way. What we are seeing is class war from above – war by national and global capitalist classes against national and global working classes. The author identifies global and national characteristics of the ideological and repressive state apparatuses that impose (broadly neo-liberal) educational and wider social, cultural, economic, and fiscal policy as part of the hegemonic activity of US-led global neo-liberal capital. In particular, he examines the repression of critical thought and oppositional activity within the sites of teacher education, schooling, and university/higher education – the compression and repression of critical space in education toda