Bonfire: American Sociocide, Broken Relations, & the Quest for Democracy w/ Charles Derber

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On this episode of Parallax Views, J. G. Michael speaks with sociologist and public intellectual Charles Derber about his urgent new book BONFIRE, a sweeping analysis of whether the United States is now committing sociocide, which Derber defines as a self-inflicted destruction of the social bonds that make collective life and democracy possible.

Derber argues that the U.S. has crossed a historic tipping point. According to him, America has shifted from a merely sociopathic society marked by hyper-individualism and neoliberal competition into a sociocidal society where the foundational social bones of community, solidarity, and shared democratic norms are being burned away. From the breakdown of workplace and family ties to the isolating architecture of Big Tech, climate crisis, political violence, and the rise of Trumpist authoritarianism, Derber contends that America is waging a kind of war on itself. This descent threatens to culminate in what he calls policide, or the death of democratic politics altogether.

Is America burning down its own social foundations? And if sociocide is societal suicide, what would it mean for the United States to choose life? This conversation confronts both the peril and the possibilities at one of the most dangerous junctures in American history.