Chris Hedges

@ChrisLynnHedges

Our political class does not govern. It entertains. It plays its assigned role in our fictitious democracy, howling with outrage to constituents and selling them out. Only a few will call them out, such as comedian @jimmy_dore.

Watch my full interview with Jimmy now:

https://youtu.be/s2JUR9WVIq4

[Video link below]

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Source: https://x.com/ChrisLynnHedges/status/1834686409883762974

Alt. link: https://invidious.privacyredirect.com/watch?v=s2JUR9WVIq4

In his 2010 book, Death of the Liberal Class, Chris Hedges wrote “The fate of the liberal class is tragic. It has been annihilated by the corporate state it supported, while it willingly silenced radical thinkers and iconoclasts who could have rescued it.”

There has been no time in American politics where this phenomenon has been more clear than today. In this episode of The Chris Hedges Report, host Chris Hedges talks to comedian Jimmy Dore about his reporting at the 2024 Democratic National Convention. The pair find the event illustrative of the past few decades of liberalism in American society, namely that its entire concept is not “reality based.”

The values the liberal class arguably once cherished have been completely abandoned by today’s neoliberal Democratic Party, and its contradictions ring loud and clear in everything involving Kamala Harris’s campaign to the media’s coverage of it. While on the one hand, the Democratic Party rhetorically clings to its past as the party of progressivism and inclusion, Kamala Harris boasted at the DNC about wanting to make the US military the “most lethal fighting force in the world.”

Not many people capture the hypocrisy and demise of the liberal class as well as comedian and host of The Jimmy Dore Show, Jimmy Dore. While Dore felt the 2016 DNC was an event filled with hope and revolutionary energy after the emergence of Bernie Sanders, he described this year in more unfortunate terms: “I was just surrounded by zombie, brain-dead, brainwashed delegates who didn't care. They treated going to the convention like they were going to prom.

And it was, honestly, it was downright depressing.”Once a believer in the “Bernie or Bust” movement, Dore has become more radicalized since the fall of the progressive movement within the Democratic Party. While he’s not sure any solution is possible, he believes revolution is the only answer:

“And so it's going to take a real revolution and it's going to have to look something like what happened up in Canada during COVID with the truckers and something that Christian Smalls did on Staten Island. [He] was a black guy who organized a bunch of Trump voters against the establishment [and] Amazon. And so it's going to have to come from the ground up like that. We're going to have to shut down capitalism to…have even a chance to take over our government and bring it back to the people.”

@ChrisLynnHedges

Kamala’s policy record is abysmal. Mainstream media is meant to divert your attention away from her record — a major reason why so many are falling for her vapid campaign.

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Source: https://x.com/ChrisLynnHedges/status/1828129883333238908

Three months into Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, the atrocities the IDF has committed against Palestinians are too numerous to name. Israel is staging a prolonged assault on the Palestinian people’s very means of existence—destroying homes, hospitals, sanitation infrastructure, food and water sources, schools, and more. To understand the genocidal campaign unfolding before our eyes, we must examine the roots of Israeli society. Israel is a settler colonial state whose existence depends on the elimination of Palestinians. Accordingly, Israel is a deeply militarized society whose citizens are raised in an environment of historical revisionism and indoctrination that whitewashes Israel’s crimes while cultivating a deep-seated racism against Palestinians. Miko Peled, former IDF Special Forces and author of The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine, joins The Chris Hedges Report for a frank conversation on the distortions of history and reality at the foundations of Israeli identity.

Edit: screenshot was fixed

@ChrisLynnHedges

National strikes are the most effective weapon at bringing down any government.

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Source: https://x.com/ChrisLynnHedges/status/1822358018769699035

In this first episode of the new and independent iteration of The Chris Hedges Report, Palestinian novelist Atef Abu Saif and Hedges explore Saif's experiences under siege by the Israelis in Gaza, and the meaning behind them, in a substantive and powerful conversation. Through it, the texture of the genocide and the damage it inflicts on its victims is captured, as Saif’s eloquence and vulnerability reveals the weight of the tragedy in a way only facts and data simply cannot.

Timestamps:

1. (0:00) Intro
2. (2:55) History of war in Palestine
3. (5:22) Growing up in the midst of war
4. (9:39) Arrested by Israelis and mother’s visits
5. (14:54) 2014 war in Gaza
6. (21:44) The poet Refaat Alareer
7. (34:14) Excerpt from “A Diary of Genocide”
8. (47:43) Why Atef stays in Palestine
9. (55:32) Nightmare of living in Gaza

David Hearst joins host Chris Hedges on the second episode of The Chris Hedges Report to offer a clear and direct explanation of the complexities surrounding the conflict, providing essential context on what to anticipate moving forward.

Palestinian novelist Atef Abu Saif recounts the horrors he experienced in Israel's bombardment of Gaza since Oct. 7.

Today on Real Talk, we speak to Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist and author, about the race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump in the US elections.

We delve into why he believes we are “at the end of empire”, whether Trump or Harris would have different Gaza policies, the rise of Christian nationalism in the US, and his thoughts on Joe Biden’s presidential legacy.

Real Talk is a Middle East Eye interview show hosted by Mohamed Hashem that delves into the stories and experiences of a diverse range of guests.

Timestamps:

1. 00:00 Intro
2. 00:57 This moment in American history
3. 06:50 Biden dropping out
4. 08:29 Kamala unpopular vice president?
5. 12:33 Media coverage of US elections
6. 18:00 Netanyahu’s Congress speech
7. 28:08 What is Biden’s legacy?
8. 38:17 Influence of third-party candidates?
9. 40:50 Hoping for a revolution?
10. 47:53 Trump & Christian nationalism
11. 56:11 America’s future

@brokenmirror33

Doubtful

Direct video link: https://video.twimg.com/amplify_video/1821072665601355776/vid/avc1/1062x662/PDjG_LZHE5OB_rAF.mp4

Source: https://x.com/brokenmirror33/status/1821072763785806163

@ChrisLynnHedges

Kamala Harris’s rhetorical shift on Gaza compared to Biden is nothing more than a mask to continue arming Israel’s genocide. If you want to be fooled by that, then that’s your business.

[Video, link below]

Direct video link: https://video.twimg.com/amplify_video/1820514126726053888/vid/avc1/720x1280/d-OS_vIkdnC9wptd.mp4

Source: https://x.com/ChrisLynnHedges/status/1820580741002260907

@ChrisLynnHedges

Why I’m not a Marxist.

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Source: https://x.com/ChrisLynnHedges/status/1819133471731876242

@ChrisLynnHedges

Please sign this petition demanding the immediate end to the imprisonment of the brave, nonviolent political prisoners, Cressie, Daniel, Lou, Lucia and @RogerHallamCS21, who were jailed for telling the truth and acting in resistance to continued extraction and burning of oil, gas and coal.

I call on the @attorneygeneral to recognize the petition.

https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/no-prison-for-protest/

Source: https://x.com/ChrisLynnHedges/status/1816580627409621494

@ChrisLynnHedges

Collective amnesia allows societies to wash their hands of their complicity, and rehabilitate those who most egregiously lied for the state.

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Source: https://x.com/ChrisLynnHedges/status/1815802718486945955

"Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered. But never before have I watched as soldiers enticed children like mice into a trap and murdered them for sport."

• Christopher Hedges American journalist on assignment in Gaza

@ChrisLynnHedges

My thoughts on Biden dropping out:

Joe Biden was discarded by the same billionaire class he assiduously served throughout his political career. Barely able to stumble his way through the words on a Teleprompter and not always cognizant of what is happening around him, his billionaire supporters pulled the plug. He was their creature – he has been in federal office for 47 years - from start to finish. He was used as a foil to defeat Bernie Sanders in the 2020 primaries and was anointed as the candidate in 2024 in a Soviet-style primary campaign. The billionaire class will now anoint someone else. Democratic Party voters are stage props in this political farce. Donald Trump, unlike Kamala Harris or any other apparatchik the billionaire class selects as a presidential candidate, has a genuine and committed base, however fascistic.

In Hitler and the Germans, the political philosopher Eric Vogelin dismisses the idea that Hitler — gifted in oratory and political opportunism but poorly educated and vulgar — mesmerized and seduced the German people. The Germans, he writes, supported Hitler and the “grotesque, marginal figures” surrounding him because he embodied the pathologies of a diseased society, one beset by economic collapse and hopelessness. Voegelin defines stupidity as a “loss of reality.” The loss of reality means a “stupid” person cannot “rightly orient his action in the world, in which he lives.” The demagogue, who is always an idiote, is not a freak or social mutation. The demagogue expresses the society’s zeitgeist.

Biden and the Democratic Party are responsible for this zeitgeist. They orchestrated the deindustrialization of the United States, ensuring that 30 million workers lost their jobs in mass layoffs. As I write in America, The Farewell Tour, this assault on the working class created a crisis that forced the ruling elites to devise a new political paradigm. Trumpeted by a compliant media, this paradigm shifted its focus from the common good to race, crime and law and order. Biden was at the epicenter of this paradigm shift. Those undergoing profound economic and political change were told that their suffering stemmed not from rampant militarism and corporate greed but from a threat to national integrity. The old consensus that buttressed New Deal programs and the welfare state was attacked as enabling criminal Black youth, “welfare queens” and other alleged social parasites. This opened the door to a faux populism, begun by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, which supposedly championed family values, traditional morality, individual autonomy, law and order, the Christian faith and the return to a mythical past, at least for white Americans. The Democratic Party, especially under Bill Clinton and Biden, became largely indistinguishable from the establishment Republican Party to which it is now allied.

The Democratic Party refuses to accept its responsibility for the capture of democratic institutions by a rapacious oligarchy, the grotesque social inequality, the cruelty of predatory corporations and an unchecked militarism. The Democrats will anoint another amoral politician, probably Harris, to use as a mask for outsized corporate greed, the folly of endless war, the facilitation of genocide and the assault on our most basic civil liberties. The Democrats, tools of Wall Street, gave us Trump, and the 74 million people who voted for him in 2020. They look set to give us Trump again. God help us.

@JoeBiden

My fellow Democrats, I have decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on my duties as President for the remainder of my term. My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President. And it’s been the best decision I’ve made. Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year. Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this.

Source: https://x.com/ChrisLynnHedges/status/1815425971643986009

@ChrisLynnHedges

The real difference between Biden’s inverted totalitarianism and Trump’s neofascism.

Direct video link: https://video.twimg.com/amplify_video/1814794675200663556/vid/avc1/720x1280/Kk3RZFcFcDerlbyt.mp4

Source: https://x.com/ChrisLynnHedges/status/1814794806008422522

Covering US foreign policy, economic realities, and civil liberties in American society.

Chris Hedges and Roger Waters discuss the absurdity, detriment and perhaps apocalyptic consequences of the Ukraine war.

How do yesterday's victims become today's victimizers? Does trauma influence the genocidal nature of Israel, indoctrination or both? Chris Hedges answers these questions.

We are thrilled to have as our guest antiwar journalist Chris Hedges.

Many who are watching will already know Chris Hedges. Chris covered the first Persian Gulf War in the 1990s for The New York Times, where he refused to participate in the military pool system that restricted the movement of and reporting by journalists.

In 2003, Chris gave a commencement speech at the graduation ceremony for Rockford College in which he criticized the then ongoing American imperialist invasion of Iraq. His microphone was shut off three minutes after he began speaking. Crhis had to end the commencement speech short because of the disruptions, which included an additional microphone cut, foghorns, and chants of "God Bless America."

Clearly, we are in a completely different period - student antiwar protest movement. In fact, when Chris was speaking on the megaphone at the campus antiwar protest at Princeton University last month, when the campus police and administration prevented Chris from speaking, the students chanted “ let him speak, let him speak!”

Chris has long spoken out against the two warmongering parties in the United States, the Democrats and Republicans, and called for a new party for working people. In the 2008 United States presidential campaign, Chris was a speechwriter for Green Party candidate Ralph Nader. Chris also supported Green Party candidate Jill Stein against the Democrat’s and Wall Street’s candidate, Hillary Clinton, in the 2016 election.

We need to continue building the momentum of the campus anti-war movement with a nationally coordinated mass protest at the DNC in Chicago in August, and by sharing lessons from campus unions that have passed resolutions and strike authorizations in solidarity with the student protests and against police repression. We also need the rank and file of the labor movement to put forward resolutions to rescind their union’s endorsements of Biden. Campus unions should provide a lead to the antiwar movement by calling for a one-day nation-wide strike and walk-out against the war. This is what it will take to end the war- shutting down the profits of the capitalists.

#ChrisHedges #Antiwar #OnStrike #KshamaSawant #uncommitted #abandonbiden #newpart #gaza #labormovement #union #strike #encampment #studentprotest #workersstrikeback #dnc #democraticnationalconvention Transcript

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/16927426

The IDF is known as the ‘Diaper Army’ (no explanation needed). It would be suicidal for them if, as seems likely, they invade Lebanon

Follow MOATS on YouTube #ChrisHedges #IDF #Lebanon #Hezbollah

When I accepted the Tafik Diab Prize for my writing on the genocide in Gaza in Cairo on June 10 I explained why the cartoonist Joe Sacco and I are planning to do our next book together on Gaza.

A talk given by Chris Hedges, the former Middle East Bureau Chief for The New York Times, at The Islamic Society of Central New Jersey.

Richard Medhurst is an independent journalist and political commentator born in Damascus, Syria. British citizen, fluent in English, Arabic, French and German. Medhurst hosts regular live broadcasts discussing history, US politics, international relations and the Middle East, rooted in an anti-imperialist viewpoint.

Richard Medhurst and Chris Hedges make the case for Palestine in support of Craig Murray's candidacy for Parliament in Blackburn. Filmed at Saint Pauls Methodist Church on June 13, 2024.