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On Monday, WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North interviewed Chris Hedges, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author, lecturer and former New York Times correspondent. Among Hedges’ best-known books are War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, The Death of the Liberal Class, Empire of Illusion: the End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, which he co-wrote with the cartoonist Joe Sacco, and Wages of Rebellion: the Moral Imperative of Revolt.
In an article published in Truthdig September 17 , titled “The Silencing of Dissent,” Hedges referenced the WSWS coverage of Google’s censorship of left-wing sites and warned about the growth of “blacklisting, censorship and slandering dissidents as foreign agents for Russia and purveyors of ‘fake news.’”
Hedges wrote that “the Department of Justice called on RT America and its ‘associates’—which may mean people like me—to register under the Foreign Agent Registration Act. No doubt, the corporate state knows that most of us will not register as foreign agents, meaning we will be banished from the airwaves. This, I expect, is the intent.”
North’s interview with Hedges began with a discussion of the significance of the anti-Russia campaign in the media.
David North: How do you interpret the fixation on Russia and the entire interpretation of the election within the framework of Putin’s manipulation?
Chris Hedges: It’s as ridiculous as Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. It is an absolutely unproven allegation that is used to perpetuate a very frightening accusation—critics of corporate capitalism and imperialism are foreign agents for Russia.
I have no doubt that the Russians invested time, energy and money into attempting to influence events in the United States in ways that would serve their interests, in the same way that we have done and do in Russia and all sorts of other countries throughout the world. So I’m not saying there was no influence, or an attempt to influence events.
But the whole idea that the Russians swung the election to Trump is absurd. It’s really premised on the unproven claim that Russia gave the Podesta emails to WikiLeaks, and the release of these emails turned tens, or hundreds of thousands, of Clinton supporters towards Trump. This doesn’t make any sense. Either that, or, according to the director of national intelligence, RT America, where I have a show, got everyone to vote for the Green Party.
This obsession with Russia is a tactic used by the ruling elite, and in particular the Democratic Party, to avoid facing a very unpleasant reality: that their unpopularity is the outcome of their policies of deindustrialization and the assault against working men and women and poor people of color. It is the result of disastrous trade agreements like NAFTA that abolished good-paying union jobs and shipped them to places like Mexico, where workers without benefits are paid $3.00 an hour. It is the result of the explosion of a system of mass incarceration, begun by Bill Clinton with the 1994 omnibus crime bill, and the tripling and quadrupling of prison sentences. It is the result of the slashing of basic government services, including, of course, welfare, that Clinton gutted; deregulation, a decaying infrastructure, including public schools, and the de facto tax boycott by corporations. It is the result of the transformation of the country into an oligarchy. The nativist revolt on the right, and the aborted insurgency within the Democratic Party, makes sense when you see what they have done to the country.
Police forces have been turned into quasi-military entities that terrorize marginal communities, where people have been stripped of all of their rights and can be shot with impunity; in fact over three are killed a day. The state shoots and locks up poor people of color as a form of social control. They are quite willing to employ the same form of social control on any other segment of the population that becomes restive.
The Democratic Party, in particular, is driving this whole Russia witch-hunt. It cannot face its complicity in the destruction of our civil liberties—and remember, Barack Obama’s assault on civil liberties was worse than those carried out by George W. Bush—and the destruction of our economy and our democratic institutions.
Politicians like the Clintons, Pelosi and Schumer are creations of Wall Street. That is why they are so virulent about pushing back against the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party. Without Wall Street money, they would not hold political power. The Democratic Party doesn’t actually function as a political party. It’s about perpetual mass mobilization and a hyperventilating public relations arm, all paid for by corporate donors. The base of the party has no real say in the leadership or the policies of the party, as Bernie Sanders and his followers found out. They are props in the sterile political theater.
These party elites, consumed by greed, myopia and a deep cynicism, have a death grip on the political process. They’re not going to let it go, even if it all implodes.
DN: Chris, you worked for the New York Times. When was that, exactly?
CH: From 1990 to 2005.
DN: Since you have some experience with that institution, what changes do you see? We’ve stressed that it has cultivated a constituency among the affluent upper-middle class.
CH: The New York Times consciously targets 30 million upper-middle class and affluent Americans. It is a national newspaper; only about 11 percent of its readership is in New York. It is very easy to see who the Times seeks to reach by looking at its special sections on Home, Style, Business or Travel. Here, articles explain the difficulty of maintaining, for example, a second house in the Hamptons. It can do good investigative work, although not often. It covers foreign affairs. But it reflects the thinking of the elites. I read the Times every day, maybe to balance it out with your web site.
DN: Well, I hope more than balance it.
CH: Yes, more than balance it. The Times was always an elitist publication, but it wholly embraced the ideology of neo-conservatism and neoliberalism at a time of financial distress, when Abe Rosenthal was editor. He was the one who instituted the special sections that catered to the elite. And he imposed a de facto censorship to shut out critics of unfettered capitalism and imperialism, such as Noam Chomsky or Howard Zinn. He hounded out reporters like Sydney Schanberg, who challenged the real estate developers in New York, or Raymond Bonner, who reported the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador.
He had lunch every week, along with his publisher, with William F. Buckley. This pivot into the arms of the most retrograde forces of corporate capitalism and proponents of American imperialism, for a time, made the paper very profitable. Eventually, of course, the rise of the internet, the loss of classified ads, which accounted for about 40 percent of all newspaper revenue, crippled the Times as it has crippled all newspapers. Newsprint has lost the monopoly that once connected sellers with buyers. Newspapers are trapped in an old system of information they call “objectivity” and “balance,” formulae designed to cater to the powerful and the wealthy and obscure the truth. But like all Byzantine courts, the Times will go down clinging to its holy grail.
The intellectual gravitas of the paper—in particular the Book Review and the Week in Review—was obliterated by Bill Keller, himself a neocon, who, as a columnist, had been a cheerleader for the war in Iraq. He brought in figures like Sam Tanenhaus. At that point the paper embraced, without any dissent, the utopian ideology of neoliberalism and the primacy of corporate power as an inevitable form of human progress. The Times, along with business schools, economics departments at universities, and the pundits promoted by the corporate state, propagated the absurd idea that we would all be better off if we prostrated every sector of society before the dictates of the marketplace. It takes a unique kind of stupidity to believe this. You had students at Harvard Business School doing case studies of Enron and its brilliant business model, that is, until Enron collapsed and was exposed as a gigantic scam. This was never, really, in the end, about ideas. It was about unadulterated greed. It was pushed by the supposedly best educated among us, like Larry Summers, which exposes the lie that somehow our decline is due to deficient levels of education. It was due to a bankrupt and amoral elite, and the criminal financial institutions that make them rich.
Critical thinking on the op-ed page, the Week in Review or the Book Review, never very strong to begin with, evaporated under Keller. Globalization was beyond questioning. Since the Times, like all elite institutions, is a hermetically sealed echo chamber, they do not realize how irrelevant they are becoming, or how ridiculous they look. Thomas Friedman and David Brooks might as well write for the Onion.
I worked overseas. I wasn’t in the newsroom very much, but the paper is a very anxiety-ridden place. The rules aren’t written on the walls, but everyone knows, even if they do not articulate it, the paper’s unofficial motto: Do not significantly alienate those upon whom we depend for money and access! You can push against them some of the time. But if you are a serious reporter, like Charlie Leduff, or Sydney Schanberg, who wants to give a voice to people who don’t have a voice, to address issues of race, class, capitalist exploitation or the crimes of empire, you very swiftly become a management problem and get pushed out. Those who rise in the organization and hold power are consummate careerists. Their loyalty is to their advancement and the stature and profitability of the institution, which is why the hierarchy of the paper is filled with such mediocrities. Careerism is the paper’s biggest Achilles heel. It does not lack for talent. But it does lack for intellectual independence and moral courage. It reminds me of Harvard.
DN: Let’s come back to this question of the Russian hacking news story. You raised the ability to generate a story, which has absolutely no factual foundation, nothing but assertions by various intelligence agencies, presented as an assessment that is beyond question. What is your evaluation of this?
CH: The commercial broadcast networks, and that includes CNN and MSNBC, are not in the business of journalism. They hardly do any. Their celebrity correspondents are courtiers to the elite. They speculate about and amplify court gossip, which is all the accusations about Russia, and they repeat what they are told to repeat. They sacrifice journalism and truth for ratings and profit. These cable news shows are one of many revenue streams in a corporate structure. They compete against other revenue streams. The head of CNN, Jeff Zucker, who helped create the fictional persona of Donald Trump on “Celebrity Apprentice,” has turned politics on CNN into a 24-hour reality show. All nuance, ambiguity, meaning and depth, along with verifiable fact, are sacrificed for salacious entertainment. Lying, racism, bigotry and conspiracy theories are given platforms and considered newsworthy, often espoused by people whose sole quality is that they are unhinged. It is news as burlesque.
I was on the investigative team at the New York Times during the lead-up to the Iraq War. I was based in Paris and covered Al Qaeda in Europe and the Middle East. Lewis Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney, Richard Perle and maybe somebody in an intelligence agency, would confirm whatever story the administration was attempting to pitch. Journalistic rules at the Times say you can’t go with a one-source story. But if you have three or four supposedly independent sources confirming the same narrative, then you can go with it, which is how they did it. The paper did not break any rules taught at Columbia journalism school, but everything they wrote was a lie.
The whole exercise was farcical. The White House would leak some bogus story to Judy Miller or Michael Gordon, and then go on the talk shows to say, ‘as the Times reported….’ It gave these lies the veneer of independence and reputable journalism. This was a massive institutional failing, and one the paper has never faced.
DN: The CIA pitches the story, and then the Times gets the verification from those who pitch it to them.
CH: It’s not always pitched. And not much of this came from the CIA. The CIA wasn’t buying the “weapons of mass destruction” hysteria.
DN: It goes the other way too?
CH: Sure. Because if you’re trying to have access to a senior official, you’ll constantly be putting in requests, and those officials will decide when they want to see you. And when they want to see you, it’s usually because they have something to sell you.
DN: The media’s anti-Russia narrative has been embraced by large portions of what presents itself as the “left.”
CH: Well, don’t get me started on the American left. First of all, there is no American left—not a left that has any kind of seriousness, that understands political or revolutionary theories, that’s steeped in economic study, that understands how systems of power work, especially corporate and imperial power. The left is caught up in the same kind of cults of personality that plague the rest of society. It focuses on Trump, as if Trump is the central problem. Trump is a product, a symptom of a failed system and dysfunctional democracy, not the disease.
If you attempt to debate most of those on the supposedly left, they reduce discussion to this cartoonish vision of politics.
The serious left in this country was decimated. It started with the suppression of radical movements under Woodrow Wilson, then the “Red Scares” in the 1920s, when they virtually destroyed our labor movement and our radical press, and then all of the purges in the 1950s. For good measure, they purged the liberal class—look at what they did to Henry Wallace—so that Cold War “liberals” equated capitalism with democracy, and imperialism with freedom and liberty. I lived in Switzerland and France. There are still residues of a militant left in Europe, which gives Europeans something to build upon. But here we almost have to begin from scratch.
I’ve battled continuously with Antifa and the Black Bloc. I think they’re kind of poster children for what I would consider phenomenal political immaturity. Resistance is not a form of personal catharsis. We are not fighting the rise of fascism in the 1930s. The corporate elites we have to overthrow already hold power. And unless we build a broad, popular resistance movement, which takes a lot of patient organizing among working men and women, we are going to be steadily ground down.
So Trump’s not the problem. But just that sentence alone is going to kill most discussions with people who consider themselves part of the left.
The corporate state has made it very hard to make a living if you hold fast to this radical critique. You will never get tenure. You probably won’t get academic appointments. You won’t win prizes. You won’t get grants. The New York Times, if they review your book, will turn it over to a dutiful mandarin like George Packer to trash it—as he did with my last book. The elite schools, and I have taught as a visiting professor at a few of them, such as Princeton and Columbia, replicate the structure and goals of corporations. If you want to even get through a doctoral committee, much less a tenure committee, you must play it really, really safe. You must not challenge the corporate-friendly stance that permeates the institution and is imposed through corporate donations and the dictates of wealthy alumni. Half of the members of most of these trustee boards should be in prison!
Speculation in the 17th century in Britain was a crime. Speculators were hanged. And today they run the economy and the country. They have used the capturing of wealth to destroy the intellectual, cultural and artistic life in the country and snuff out our democracy. There is a word for these people: traitors.
DN: What about the impact that you’ve seen of identity politics in America?
CH: Well, identity politics defines the immaturity of the left. The corporate state embraced identity politics. We saw where identity politics got us with Barack Obama, which is worse than nowhere. He was, as Cornel West said, a black mascot for Wall Street, and now he is going around to collect his fees for selling us out.
My favorite kind of anecdotal story about identity politics: Cornel West and I, along with others, led a march of homeless people on the Democratic National Convention session in Philadelphia. There was an event that night. It was packed with hundreds of people, mostly angry Bernie Sanders supporters. I had been asked to come speak. And in the back room, there was a group of younger activists, one who said, “We’re not letting the white guy go first.” Then he got up and gave a speech about how everybody now had to vote for Hillary Clinton. That’s kind of where identity politics gets you. There is a big difference between shills for corporate capitalism and imperialism, like Corey Booker and Van Jones, and true radicals like Glen Ford and Ajamu Baraka. The corporate state carefully selects and promotes women, or people of color, to be masks for its cruelty and exploitation.
It is extremely important, obviously, that those voices are heard, but not those voices that have sold out to the power elite. The feminist movement is a perfect example of this. The old feminism, which I admire, the Andrea Dworkin kind of feminism, was about empowering oppressed women. This form of feminism did not try to justify prostitution as sex work. It knew that it is just as wrong to abuse a woman in a sweatshop as it is in the sex trade. The new form of feminism is an example of the poison of neoliberalism. It is about having a woman CEO or woman president, who will, like Hillary Clinton, serve the systems of oppression. It posits that prostitution is about choice. What woman, given a stable income and security, would choose to be raped for a living? Identity politics is anti-politics.
DN: I believe you spoke at a Socialist Convergence conference where you criticized Obama and Sanders, and you were shouted down.
CH: Yes, I don’t even remember. I’ve been shouted down criticizing Obama in many places, including Berkeley. I have had to endure this for a long time as a supporter and speech writer for Ralph Nader. People don’t want the illusion of their manufactured personalities, their political saviors, shattered; personalities created by public relations industries. They don’t want to do the hard work of truly understanding how power works and organizing to bring it down.
DN: You mentioned that you have been reading the World Socialist Web Site for some time. You know we are quite outside of that framework.
CH: I’m not a Marxist. I’m not a Trotskyist. But I like the site. You report on important issues seriously and in a way a lot of other sites don’t. You care about things that are important to me—mass incarceration, the rights and struggles of the working class and the crimes of empire. I have read the site for a long time.
DN: Much of what claims to be left—that is, the pseudo-left—reflects the interests of the affluent middle class.
CH: Precisely. When everybody was, you know, pushing for multiculturalism in lead institutions, it really meant filtering a few people of color or women into university departments or newsrooms, while carrying out this savage economic assault against the working poor and, in particular, poor people of color in deindustrialized pockets of the United States. Very few of these multiculturalists even noticed. I am all for diversity, but not when it is devoid of economic justice. Cornel West has been one of the great champions, not only of the black prophetic tradition, the most important intellectual tradition in our history, but the clarion call for justice in all its forms. There is no racial justice without economic justice. And while these elite institutions sprinkled a few token faces into their hierarchy, they savaged the working class and the poor, especially poor people of color.
Much of the left was fooled by the identity politics trick. It was a boutique activism. It kept the corporate system, the one we must destroy, intact. It gave it a friendly face.
DN: The World Socialist Web Site has made the issue of inequality a central focus of its coverage.
CH: That’s why I read it and like it.
DN: Returning to the Russia issue, where do you see this going? How seriously do you see this assault on democratic rights? We call this the new McCarthyism. Is that, in your view, a legitimate analogy?
CH: Yes, of course it’s the new McCarthyism. But let’s acknowledge how almost irrelevant our voices are.
DN: I don’t agree with you on that.
CH: Well, irrelevant in the sense that we’re not heard within the mainstream. When I go to Canada I am on the CBC on prime time. The same is true in France. That never happens here. PBS and NPR are never going to do that. Nor are they going to do that for any other serious critic of capitalism or imperialism.
If there is a debate about attacking Syria, for example, it comes down to bombing Syria or bombing Syria and sending in troops, as if these are the only two options. Same with health care. Do we have Obamacare, a creation of the Heritage Foundation and the pharmaceutical and insurance industries, or no care? Universal health care for all is not discussed. So we are on the margins. But that does not mean we are not dangerous. Neoliberalism and globalization are zombie ideologies. They have no credibility left. The scam has been found out. The global oligarchs are hated and reviled. The elite has no counterargument to our critique. So they can’t afford to have us around. As the power elite becomes more frightened, they’re going to use harsher forms of control, including the blunt instrument of censorship and violence.
DN: I think it can be a big mistake to be focused on the sense of isolation or marginalization. I’ll make a prediction. You will have, probably sooner than you think, more requests for interviews and television time. We are in a period of colossal political breakdown. We are going to see, more and more, the emergence of the working class as a powerful political force.
CH: That’s why we are a target. With the bankruptcy of the ruling ideology, and the bankruptcy of the American liberal class and the American left, those who hold fast to intellectual depth and an examination of systems of power, including economics, culture and politics, have to be silenced.
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Great interview!
Perfectly put.
– https://www.unz.com/forum/memories-of-an-anti-semitic-state-department/#comment-2022016
TEDxBerlin 11/15/10 – Janine Wedel – Shadow Elites
Video Link
He fails upwards. – Janine R. Wedel referring to Lawrence Henry “Larry” Summers.
We Are Breeding Ourselves to Extinction
– https://www.truthdig.com/articles/we-are-breeding-ourselves-to-extinction/
This is what the identity politics/hippie/yuppie Left is all about:
Rebuttal to Chris Hedges: Stop the Tired Overpopulation Hysteria
by Betsy Hartmann
http://www.alternet.org/story/131400/rebuttal_to_chris_hedges%3A_stop_the_tired_overpopulation_hysteria
TEDxHampshireCollege – Betsy Hartmann – Beyond Apocalypse and Back to Earth
Video Link
– https://www.unz.com/jpetras/how-billionaires-become-billionaires/#comment-2035553
– https://www.unz.com/jpetras/how-billionaires-become-billionaires/#comment-2031818
Great Minds P1: Karen Shragg – The Ticking Time Bomb – Population
Video Link
Great Minds P2: Karen Shragg – Is Overpopulation Our Biggest Threat?
Video Link
This is amazing. I was not aware of this:
– http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/15/nyregion/15rosenthal.html
https://www.unz.com/article/the-little-cucks-national-review-kevin-d-williamson-and-the-pointless-persuasion/#comment-1990640
I’m a moderate admirer of Chris Hedges, but he is really cooking in this interview. Too much to praise here, but his thinking that corporations, the mainstream media, and the academy can and do successfully “game” dissent by suppression, divide and conquer, co-optation, and so on, is spot on.
Good but not great interview with Chris Hodges: he manages to talk about an amorphous elite without identifying any of them and not a word about Israel. So pseudo-good roally
I think this was an excellent discussion, and I would like to thank you both for having it, and sharing it.
Among the crises effecting the United States, the one effecting us most profoundly is the absence of any accountability for the crimes committed by our oligarchic class.
Addressing this issue is ground zero for any meaningful change.
If there is no accountability for their crimes , there will be no change.
Certainly the greatest among these crimes was(is) defrauding the nation into ” a war of aggression”. which, being the supreme international crime, should be met with harsh prison sentences for all who promoted it.
It is important for everyone to recognize just how much damage these policies have done to the country, not just in terms of our collective morale or our constitutional mandates,not just in terms of our international standing on universal principles of legality and justice, but our long term economic solvency as a nation.
The “exceptionalism” of our “war of aggression” elites has completely devastated our nation’s balance sheet.
Since 9-11, our national debt has grown by a mind numbing “fourteen and a half trillion dollars”.. nearly quadrupling since 1999.
This unconscionable level of “overspending” is unprecedented in human history.
Not one lawmaker, not one primetime pundit, nor one editorialist (of any major newspaper), has a CLUE how to deal with it.
Aside from the root atrocity in visiting mass murder on millions of innocents who never attacked us (and never intended to) which is a horrible crime in and of itself,……
There is the profound crisis , in situ , of potentially demanding that 320 million Americans PAY FOR THE WARS OUR ELITES LIED US INTO .
This is where the rubber meets the road for our “war of aggression-ists “, gentlemen.
This is the “unanimous space” of our entire country’s population on the issue of “no taxation without representation”.
WHOSE assets should be made forfeit to pay for these wars….The DECEIVERS or the DECEIVED ?
Ask “The People” …..and you will find your answer….very fast.
No wonder our “elites” are terrified to discuss this .
Absolutely terrified.
This individual , CH, represents the epitome of leftist lunacy and ignorance, his assertion of ” Cornel West has been one of the great champions”, is simply unbearable.
Such utter bullshit is painful to confront. Fact is C W is a grifter and rip-off artist of the ugliest sort. He, CW, has perfected the penetration and exploitation of the “System” to the Nth degree, despite having no insight or knowledge whatsoever of the issues he, CW, is harping upon.
And the actual crux of the “Russian” hoax, and the fixation by the US “progressive” clique’ upon Russia, he, CH, completely omits, namely the FACT that the US left, which most certainly does exist, the US left is violently pissed-off at Russia and VP, because they have rejected communism, and they do not cater to gays.
This is the basis for the US left’s manic obcession with Russia, nothing else, period.
CH is confused upon so many levels that it is simply too exausting to even go into detail, too exausting to elaborate upon his verbose malarky.
Authenticjazzman “Mensa” qualified since 1973, airborne trained U S Army vet, and pro Jazz artist.
I am still blown away by the close relationship these two had, but I really shouldn’t be since I have been writing about these elitist elites and have been researching them for quite a while.
– https://www.unz.com/ldinh/the-trump-ploy/#comment-1653850
– https://www.unz.com/article/the-killing-of-history/#comment-2019265
– https://www.unz.com/isteve/npr-information-is-racist/#comment-1604028
Andrew Rosenthal seems to be a product of this power dynamic and alliance between these two powerful factions of the elitist elite. Abe Rosenthal’s first Irish Catholic wife might also be the explanation why he and Buckley had such a close relationship?
– https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Rosenthal#Early_life
– http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics-july-dec00-alsmith_10-20/
George W Bush’s Al Smith dinner speech 2000 .FUNNY!
Video Link
Nothing could be more laughable than to suggest sixty years of deck-stacking against middle and working class whites was a design that favored them over minorities. Hedges clearly hates those elites, but appears to share the majority of their biases.
[It’s much better to provide original commentary rather than simply quote your own previous comments, or external sources too much, especially when the material is only very slightly connected to the article you’re supposedly discussing.]
To the moderators: I saw your warning to me:
– https://www.unz.com/article/the-ever-more-orwellian-definition-of-terrorism/#comment-2037511
Is the amount of linking/number (two, excluding the two links in this message to you) of links in this comment back to previous posts of mine appropriate or still too much? I would highly appreciate your feedback on this matter, so I can improve my commenting behavior/style. One of my initial motivations to link back to previous Unz Review comments of mine or to comments or posts by other Unz Review commenters and commentators was to keep traffic internally within the Unz Review instead of sending it to external sources outside of the website. As I communicated to you previously https://www.unz.com/article/congressional-hate-resolution-opened-door-to-cultural-marxist-police-state-only-trump-resisted/#comment-2024125 please, don’t hesitate to be frank with me. This is your website and you call the shots. I am merely a guest here and I don’t take your hospitality for granted. Thank you very much.
————–
One explanation Rosenthal and Buckley got along so swimmingly might be that they shared similar grievances:
– p.4 Gray Lady Down: What the Decline and Fall of the New York Times Means for America by William McGowan
– https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_F._Buckley_Jr.#Religious_views
They sound like Siskel & Ebert in this video:
Siskel & Ebert & the Protestants
Video Link
https://www.unz.com/isteve/the-curley-effect-versus-the-kennedy-effect/#comment-1619098
“Yes, changes were made out of necessity,” a distinguished old-guard Wasp told me. “The people controlling the clubs were not the people controlling the world anymore.” – https://www.unz.com/isteve/sat-scandal/#comment-1547220
Bill Keller, who is Catholic, was hired by the Times during Abe Rosenthal’s tenure as executive editor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Keller#The_New_York_Times and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Keller#Catholic_Church_sex_abuse_crisis
The conservative Catholic League was not pleased when he became executive editor, so he must have been doing something right 😉
NEW YORK TIMES MAKES “COLLAPSED CATHOLIC” ITS TOP EDITOR
http://www.catholicleague.org/new-york-times-makes-collapsed-catholic-its-top-editor/
I agree with the general tenor of this article and would further state that in addition to the Iraq thing which was a war crime and eliminated any shreds of legitimacy retained by the yankee regime that the Libya overthrow and destruction, a war crime of historic proportions, and the use of that overthrow to provide major support to the barbaric element in Syria expose the yankee regime as an enemy of civilization with all that entails, including questions of whether, absent any legitimacy, the regime’s continued existence itself does not constitute a major threat.
The elements in the article discussing and exposing the New York Times and its role as an integral part of the power structure should be read and remembered by all.
Thank you very much for your feedback!
I am going to try to fulfill these requests as good as I am able to, but please keep keeping me on my toes, if I should veer off the proper path, again.
Thank you very much, again.
They’re not terrified–they know full well that they don’t have to discuss it. Control of the flow of information eliminates any such necessity.
We’re right now in the consolidation phase, during which the last few remaining pockets of dissent are thoroughly vilified, rooted out, made illegal and worse: unthinkable.
The idiotic grievance warriors whom–to his credit–Mr Hedges identifies as such, are the verbal equivalent of the violent criminal shock troops with which the elites afflict us. The ‘identity politics’ they champion are an extremely useful cudgel in the endless divide-and-conquer strategy.
For these people, it’s always 1954 or some other similarly remote date. For similar reasons they can criticize the ‘elites’ while taking care not to notice any inconvenient patterns among them.
With all due respect for Chris Hedges, who is doubtless a courageous journalist and an intelligent commentator, I would suggest that what is also and most ridiculous is the thought that it is only agents of Israel that have suborned the neocon faction within USA’s government and ‘Deep State’ (controllers of MSM). Or is this OT? I don’t think so, because if we are to discuss the anti-Russia campaign realistically, as baseless in fact, and as contrived for an effect and to further/protect some particular interests, we can hardly avoid the question: Who or what interest is served by the anti-Russia campaign?
Who or what interest is served by anti-Russia propaganda other than, or in addition to, just the usual MIC suspects, profiteering corporations who want to keep a supposed need for nuclear weapons front and center in the minds of Congress? Cui bono?
To be clear: I suggest that neocon office-holders within USA’s government or within the Deep State (controllers of MSM) are foreign agents for at least three nations: the People’s Republic of China,the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the State of Israel.
(I would compare USA now with Imperial China in its declining years when it was being sold piecemeal to all the great powers of Europe.)
Who benefits from this situation and how do they benefit? All three of these countries are deeply involved in suborning members of Congress and others within the government of the USA, yet none of the three is mentioned in such a connection by the MSM or by officials of the Executive. Thus, it is beneficial to them to have suspicion thrown onto Russia and thus investigative attention deflected from themselves. A few public figures (e.g., Philip Giraldi) have made such allegations respecting Israel, more public figures have made such suggestions respecting Saudi Arabia, but very few have made the allegations in the case of the PRC.
Let’s think about this in the context of history, beginning with the Vietnam War. When USA got involved in Vietnam — which involvement began during the days of Eisenhower/Dulles — probably the primary interest groups that swayed USA global/foreign policy were the Vatican and the China Lobby. The interests of these two lobbies converged in Vietnam. From the RC side, consider an historical event that is unknown practically to any Americans under the age of 60 or 70, namely, Operation Passage to Freedom, 1954-55.
From the side of the China Lobby – avoiding the matter of JFK’s planning to dump USA involvement in Vietnam after the 1964 election – what we saw in the early years of USA’s involvement, 1965-1969, was a period in which the China Lobby could push an agenda that included widening the Vietnam campaign into southern China, particularly to include the tungsten mining operations supposedly owned by K.C. Wu. Tungsten at that time was considered as having tremendous strategic value, centering on, but not limited to, its essential use in the filaments of incandescent light-bulbs. It became clear after the Tet Offensive that the entire strategy of reopening the Chinese civil war, capturing the tungsten, etc, could make sense only if Chang Kai Shek’s KMT would commit its troops in huge numbers, virtually all of its troops, on the ground in Vietnam (which would have brought in huge numbers of PRC troops on the other side) — it became, to borrow one of Nixon’s favorite phrases, “perfectly clear” that expansion into southern China and capture of the tungsten operations there were not in the cards. When Kissinger talked up his ‘realpolitik’, what he really meant was the politics of surrendering to Beijing. So, Nixon in July 1969, recognizing that there was nothing to be gained by the loss of life and expenditure of every form of capital, ordered first of many troop withdrawals from Vietnam. It was all a done deal as of Kissinger taking over as National Security Adviser, January 1969 — everything but the tears.
Now, patience, dear reader, this is all leading up to a certain crucial event that took place in 1971 — namely, Kissinger’s secret trip to Beijing in July (1971) to arrange for everything regarding what amounted to a surrender to the PRC, except the end of the Vietnam War. The documents are still unavailable as classified Top Secret or whatever, but clearly, China had no interest in seeing an end to the Vietnam War, because both parties – Vietnam and USA – were adversaries of China. (Let them knock each other out!) Most likely, Zhou talked Henry into doing what he could to prolong USA’s involvement in the Vietnam War, not to shorten it. See, including between the lines, National Security Archives:
http://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB66/
As noted, this stuff is mostly unavailable to us, the public, but it is clear that USA’s ‘leaders’ (Nixon and Kissinger) wanted to make kissy-kissy with Zhou Enlai, and it was all arranged including George H. W. Bush’s appointment as USA’s first ‘Ambassador’ (in all but name) to Beijing, and including giving China’s permanent seat on the UNSC to Beijing and otherwise selling out the old China Lobby. I call it the ‘old China Lobby’ because part of what was arranged was that the old China Lobby would be taken over by the New China lobby, complete with all the payola channels into Congress and the Deep State.
Now, I think, we arrive at today, 2017, and the failure of Trump to act on his campaign promises to oppose China in any way. Maybe he thought about it for a minute, but he was surrounded by neocons, who were already on the payroll of the PRC — if not taking direct orders from the Standing Committee of the CCP, then at least promised to avoid offending the interests of the PRC — on pain of losing regular paychecks from Beijing into their secret Grand Cayman accounts.
What I would like to say to Hedges. and others like him, is just this:
THEY say that you are foreign agents for Russia? Time to use a little judo on them: time for YOU to speak truth that THEY are foreign agents for the People’s Republic of China.
And don’t forget this potent phrase: YET NONE DARE CALL IT TREASON!
The interviewer’s and Mr. Rosenthal’s Jewish identity and their concern for Israel feature prominently in this insightful interview:
A.M. Rosenthal | Charney Report
Video Link
Leon Charney
Published on Jan 3, 2013
Abraham Michael “A.M.” Rosenthal was a New York Times executive editor and columnist. Rosenthal won a Pulitzer Prize in 1960 for international reporting.
In this episode of the Leon Charney report, A.M. Rosenthal talks about his experience being a Jewish Journalist, and discusses the issues in the middle east, religion, human rights.
Rerun: September 8, 2013 & December 23, 2012
Original Broadcast Date: August 10, 1997
I just wanted to add that I agree with some of the criticism by commenters in this thread of Chris Hedges. It is true that he has many blind spots, out-dated ideas and generally strikes me as a naive, pathologically altruistic individual. Nevertheless he makes some extremely cogent points and devastatingly accurate observations in this interview, that I had not heard from him with this kind of clarity and conviction before. This statement alone sets him strongly apart from the regular mainstream, corporate “lap dog” Left.
Michael Moore, for example, who is the main propagator of Trump Derangement Syndrome on the identity politics/hippie/yuppie Left is constantly on the corporate mainstream media, Chris Hedges not so much:
Michael Moore talks about Catholicism
Video Link
– https://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/god-and-country/2009/09/24/michael-moore-almost-became-a-catholic-priest
Chris Hedges is the prototypical “Ivy League WASP” — he is the son of “ Rev. Thomas Havard Hedges, a Presbyterian minister” — so it is probably not surprising that he was hired (1990–2005) to the Times staff after Mr. Rosenthal’s tenure as executive editor (1977-1986): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hedges
He was hired when Max Frankel was executive editor (1986-1994). Mr. Frankel is Jewish too, but he is of German-Jewish descent, whereas Mr. Rosenthal was of Eastern-European Jewish descent, I believe; read about the important and big difference this can make here:
Eastern European Jews and the Case of the Marginalized Elite
https://www.unz.com/pgottfried/eastern-european-jews-and-the-case-of-the-marginalized-elite/
Thank you for this most excellent comment!
I very much share your concerns about China. The person I have been most concerned about in this regard, and who I suspect of being closely connected to the Chinese Communist Party oligarch elites, is Wendi Deng Murdoch. Maybe she is not exactly an “agent” of the Chinese Communist Party, but her unaccountable, “flexian” nature https://psmag.com/social-justice/meet-flexians-government-business-media-money-power-wall-street-65029 potentially makes her an even more dangerous player and more effective influencer than if she actually were a foreign agent.
Her close relationship with Jared and Ivanka Kushner concerns me greatly:
Will Wonders Never Cease? Trump Gets NYT to Editorialize Against Immigration
The president’s in-laws promise Chinese investors green cards. The real scandal is that it’s legal.
https://www.unz.com/isteve/will-wonders-never-cease-trump-gets-nyt-to-editorialize-against-immigration/#comment-1865417
Well said, Albertde.
Where free speech on the impossible ‘holocaust’ is illegal, violators go to prison for Thought Crimes:
https://forum.codoh.com/download/file.php?id=1858
This is definitely a good interview for Hedges, but even better is the latest from Diana Johnstone:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/09/antifa-in-theory-and-in-practice/
1/ ‘…Hedges referenced the WSWS coverage of Google’s censorship of left-wing sites…’
Waydaminit I thought Google is censoring right-wing sites.
Oh well, as long as it’s not censoring Unz.com whatever wing that is. Maybe it’s its some sort of dorsal fin.
2/ ‘…Speculation in the 17th century in Britain was a crime. Speculators were hanged…’
Huh? the LSE was founded in 1571, the century before.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Stock_Exchange
You almost have to feel sorry for the old school commies that didn’t get the memo about racial redistributionism in partnership with jew globalism
Precisely! What makes it even worse, they will be pushing this new pretexts for control sloppy (as in Vegas) and in a hurry. Which will make them look even more ridiculous and due to the lack of time will force to act even more stupid, resulting in an exponential curve of censorship, oppression and insanity. And that’s there the maniacal dreams of certain forces to start a really big war in the Middle East (with or without attacking North Korea first) may come true.
I am struck by the incredible number of Jews in Hedge’s discussion of the Times. It would be the same if he discussed CNN, and others – many others. Jews are also very over-represented in Russia-bashing, as they were in ginning up the Iraq war.
It’s not about ‘the Jews’ but about the wild over-representation of Jews, and only Jews, in the overlapping matrices of corporate, financial, political and media power.
Odd this has no relevance or import for his analysis of corporate capitalism and its merger with corporate media.
“avoiding the matter of JFK’s planning to dump USA involvement in Vietnam after the 1964 election – ”
Now that’s a lie. This part is a lie. Or it is carefully crafted ex post hoc mythology a la Camelot, the Kennedy Mystique.
FACT: JFK was a Cold War Hawk and during his administration increased nuclear arms higher than Ike and until Reagan.
JFK during his administration increased the number of “advisers” to a higher number than Ike.
William F. Buckley pointedly asked Senator Robert Kennedy in the mid. ’60’s “So, was there any thought of the White House pulling out [of Vietnam]?
RFK: No. There never was.
If anything, had he lived to see a second term, most likely US involvement in Vietnam would have escalated as much as under LBJ, perhaps with the same disastrous results, perhaps not. But JFK was no peacenik dove.
Mr. Hedges comes across as a total whackjob, and makes Bill Moyers appear to be a gentle moderate in comparison. That he thinks so highly of race man BLM supporter Cornell West speaks volumes of naivety to the nth degree. A total cuck without even knowing it, nay, totally appreciative of being a cuck and it appears to be his hope that one day his cardinal sin of being white will be purged by peoples of color, who are his true moral and intellectual betters in every step of the way.
I agree that the Russia fixation is garbage, but explaining the populist revolt without touching on the major issue of forced demographic and cultural change through legal and illegal immigration is dishonest. Almost everyone who isn’t an immigrant or the descendant or relative of a post-65 immigrant is pissed off beyond words about this! How did you miss the popular response to Trump’s promises to “deport them all,” end birthright citizenship and chain migration, build a wall etc.? Without those promises, he wouldn’t have made it to the debates.
I’m also not sure how welfare has been stripped. What programs aren’t available?
I’m not sure how to lower black incarceration rates. Having taught in inner-city schools and worked in the same environment in other jobs, I know that crime and dysfunction are through the roof. I can only imagine what those communities would be like if the predators and crooks that are incarcerated were allowed to roam free.
Is this the same Chris Hedges that wrote those articles in November 2001 that Saddam and al Qaeda were in cahoots, which led to the illegal 2003 invasion?
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/newswar/part1/wmd.html
Tell me Chris, did you know about the CIA pollution then or just find out lately? And correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t you also write NYT articles in the Fall of 2002 saying that Saddam had WMD’s?
Again, getting your tips from the CIA? Ever hear of ‘Operation Mockingbird?”
The overview of the wide swath of damage wreaked by those in the Democratic party and by the Clintons in particular is a good summary of the reality of those people rather than their fictional image. Yet somehow there’s all these people who cling to a false image of what they’re about. Minorities in particular came out for Clinton as though she were their greatest champion, a neat trick of inducing mass delusion into the very people getting shafted. It’s amazing how they can keep fooling large parts of the population. Sad, really sad.
That’s cringe-worthy.
Transformation into an oligarchy? Transformation??? I like Hedges’ work, but such fundamental errors really taint what he sez.
The country was never transformed into an oligarchy; it began as one.
In fact, it was organized and functioned as a pluto-oligarchy right out of the box. In case anyone has the dimness to argue with me about it, all that shows is that you don’t know JS about how the cornstitution was foisted on the rest of us by the plutoligarchs.
Guess what, boys and girls… Why did they have any to begin with?
Where do people get their faith? WakeTF up, already!! (Yes, I’m losing it. Because even a duumbshit goy like myself can see it. Where are all you bright bulb know-it-alls with all the flippin answers???)
It’s amazing that here we are, self-anointed geniuses and dumbos alike, puttering around in the 21st century, and someone feels the necessity to point that out. And he’s right; it needs to be pointed out. Drummed into our skulls in fact.
Arrrgggghhhh!!! Jefferson again.:
More deja vu all over again and again. Note the date.:
“The serious left in this country was decimated. It started with the suppression of radical movements under Woodrow Wilson, then the “Red Scares” in the 1920s, when they virtually destroyed our labor movement and our radical press, and then all of the purges in the 1950s. For good measure, they purged the liberal class—look at what they did to Henry Wallace.”
Look what they did to Henry Wallace — Are you kidding me? Wallace was a Stalinist stooge, too treasonous even for his boss, FDR, although the bird brain Eleanor loved him. The guy was so out of touch with reality that after the Potemkin tour of the Gulag that Stalin gave him during WWII he came back raving about how swell it was for the lunch-bucket gang in Siberia. He also encouraged FDR to sell out the Poles to Stalin
I find it most fascinating that none of what Hedges says is news, but even UR readers probably think it is. Here’s an antidote to that idea.
The following quote is from Eugene Kelly who’s excoriating government press releases but the criticism applies as well to the resulting press reports. I found the whole article striking.:
Any boob can deduce, a priori, what type of “news” is contained in this rubbish.
-Eugene A. Kelly, Distorting the News, The American Mercury, March 1935, pp. 307-318
http://www.unz.org/Pub/AmMercury/
I’d like good evidence that the situation has improved since then. Good luck.
The elites are SATANISTS and World Government advocates ie NWO SATANISTS and are therefore a force of death and destruction on the earth.
not only of the black prophetic tradition, the most important intellectual tradition in our history,
Think about that. The most important intellectual tradition in our history.
And people say that you can’t make up stuff anymore.
People spouting nonsense like this tells you why there is no left in the US.
Hedges doesn’t seem to understand that the “Resistance” is openly and obviously working FOR Deepstate. They do not resist wars and globalism and monopolistic corporations. They resist everyone who questions the war. They resist nationalism and localism.
Nothing mysterious or hidden about this, no ulterior motive or bankshot. It’s explicitly stated in every poster and shout and beating.
Michael Moore’s “schlockumentaries” are anything but honest and are based on half-truths and outright lies.
In “Roger and Me” he claimed that GM CEO Roger Smith refused to meet with him and dodged every attempt to meet with him. In fact, Roger Smith offered Michael Moore an interview, but was promptly rebuffed. This meeting would have destroyed the whole premise of the movie.
In “Bowling for Columbine”, Moore’s flawed premise was that the free, unrestricted commerce in lawful firearms was responsible for that deadly event. He brings up one bank’s successful marketing of its services by insisting that firearms were being given out to depositors in an indiscriminate fashion. Once again, Moore failed to note that every firearms transfer was done in a lawful manner, with federally-mandated “background checks” being performed in every case.
In “Sicko”, his “schlockumentary” on the American health-care system, he used Cuba as a prime example of a good health care system. What he failed to mention was that the average Cuban citizen has little access to high-tech health care, but is relegated to a lower tier of service. The high tech health care services are available only to foreigners and communist party officials–not the average Cuban citizen.
All of Michael Moore’s “schlockumentaries” are “full of holes”, lies and fabrications and are in the same realm of Al Gore’s pronouncements on “globull warming”.
Michael Moore (and by inference) Al Gore are not to be trusted.
I’m not American and I don’t see it as any of my business what the US does about RT and Sputnik. I would be grateful for Americans to accord the same courtesy to my country but, as Mr Hedges points out, they don’t! Both RT and Sputnik are very obviously propaganda mouthpieces for Vladimir Putin and the oligarchs/gangster bosses he fronts for but precisely because that is so obvious, they can’t possibly be fooling anybody. I thus don’t see how “critics of corporate capitalism and imperialism” could possibly be agents of the gangster-run Russian Federation, probably the most vicious practitioner of “corporate capitalism and imperialism” in the world today, nor can I imagine that such critics would have anything to do with RT or Sputnik. The problem may be precisely that: persons who present themselves on RT and Sputnik as “critics of corporate capitalism and imperialism” appear, by very definition, to be false flaggers and that, in its turn, suggests that they might be agents of the present Russian government or the dark forces behind it. I have a version of RT on my cable but I have never seen anybody claim to be a critic of corporate capitalism and imperialism. Nor have I ever seen Mr Hedges. What I get is just boring American nonentities talking to boring American nonentities about domestic American political issues. The whole thing is just a total bore, so I don’t see how it could be a threat to anyone.
Who thinks they had any to begin with? The quote, below, is almost 2000 years old
Good call. Hedges is a willing participant. He sounds like a rebel but writes to disable not to empower. This is key to understanding the typical elite use of propaganda.
Antifa (by the way) didn’t so much as exist in this country 6 months ago. There’s no indication it is more real than the blame the Russians program. There is plenty of evidence that Antifa is just another quite convincing sound bite to wrap elaborate stories around. Hedges began to create Antifa along with the usual so-called non-left employees.
Framing RT as some kind of US critic is a laughable fraud. When’s the last time you saw former US ex-military or intelligence on RT? (Probably an hour ago)
Hedges looks like he spent a lot of nights with a scotch bottle, but like Nader his job is to protect the status quo. Like politicians , the more time you invest in some kind of involvement in what authors and critics do – from hate to adulation, the more you are disabled. Keep posting!
To quote from the legend of Pecos Bill, “I was, but you BE.”
[raucous laughter] We are so screwed.
What they couldn’t purge they perverted or purchased (as in bought off) and what we have left of the Liberalism of the early proponents of the idea is nothing less than a monstrosity not even worthy of the name.
Yup. A statsit to the core. He doesn’t question the concept a bit and assumes the concept’s legitimacy, at least here.
I have never seen anybody claim to be a critic of corporate capitalism and imperialism. […] What I get is just boring American nonentities talking to boring American nonentities about domestic American political issues. The whole thing is just a total bore, so I don’t see how it could be a threat to anyone.
Very good assessment. A total bore.
Awesome call, Sir! I followed the link you provided, then came to Hedges’ article in the NYT, which is a masterpiece of propaganda, except that it’s way too obvious.
The story is a hoot, complete with the standard diabolical fiend, a “lanky German” biological weapons specialist working in the shadows.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/08/world/a-nation-challenged-the-school-defectors-cite-iraqi-training-for-terrorism.html
No sane person could make that sort of thing up.
Shame on Mr Hedges and his handlers.
re: working class whites
Brilliant documentary by Louis Theroux, first aired last Sunday on BBC2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ1tszdWoTs
Video Link
It shows the effects of opioids and heroin in Huntington, W.Va
What do all these folks, the vast majority of those mentioned in the article:
Abe Rosenthal, Sydney Schanberg, Raymond Bonner, Bill Keller, Sam Tanenhaus, Larry Summers, Noam Chomsky, Thomas Friedman, David Brooks, Charlie Leduff, Sydney Schanberg, Jeff Zucker, Judy Miller, Michael Gordon, George Packer, Corey Booker, Andrea Dworkin
have in common?
Yes! I couldn’t believe he lets C West off the hook when he speaks in other places of POC “sell-outs” like Obama and Van Jones. West is right in line with those two. CH says that if you are really independent you won’t get tenure, prizes, academic appointments, etc. Well West is a recipient of all that. A nice 6-figure income at an elite university, semi-celebrity status… West’s status as a pseudo-intellectual sell-out is known even by some on the left who lament that he let himself get sidetracked into appearing on rap albums, etc. I suspect what is at issue here is that West became a personal friend to Hedges at some point so CH has decided to cut him a lot of slack.
I still can’t figure out what Hedges’ politics/economics really are. He says clearly he isn’t a Marxist, but he spends so much time out-lefting the left, what is he then? I do appreciate that he isn’t a shill for the status-quo Democratic party and he’s good at dishing the dirt on the NY Times and mainstream networks.
It is anathema to report any story in a fact and sequence oriented way. The ”news” is a business of creating reality, reporting what is offered up as the days events is ancillary to that purpose. Reporters are fact finders, but the story is a creative enterprise at all times. It seems if anybody tries to keep to the facts and truth of a piece, in the writing of it (reporting) they’re going against the grain!
Check it out: anything you have ever been a part of or witness to, is never ever written up in a local paper with out some stupid changed facts, that’s what they do! So, the aspiring apprentice news person, must learn to… ”Make it His”, by at the very least, adding and subtracting important parts and pieces, because the real work will require a well developed second nature to go creative and whole cloth, that’s the point.
Larger noses?
“The present Russian government or the dark forces behind it”
Look friend obviously you are a communist and a manic opponent of the “Present Russian government”, and your hatred for VP and current Russia is more than apparent, but you can’t fool everybody with your brainless boring bullshit, so why don’t you just go fuck yourself.
Authenticjazzman “Mensa” qualified since 1973, airborne trained U S army Vet, and pro jazz artist.
” He says clearly he isn’t a Marxist”
Zillions of Marxists have denied their Marxist worldview if it appeared necessary to their current situation to do so.
CH is most certainly a dyed in the wool Marxist lunatic, and his support for CW set off the flares revealing his hypocritical, contradictory and illogical mindset.
He is pissed of at the Democrats simply because as he sees it, they are not far enough to the left to conform to his standpoint.
Authenticjazzman “Mensa” qualified since 1973, airborne trained U S Army Vet, and pro jazz artist.
Yes Wallace was a pro-Stalinist idiot.
But he got sensible in old age.
“In 1950 during the McCarthy era, when North Korea invaded South Korea, Wallace broke with the Progressives and backed the U.S.-led effort in the Korean War.[23] Despite this, according to Wallace’s diary, after his 1951 Senate Internal Security Subcommittee testimony, opinion polls showed that he was only beaten by gangster Lucky Luciano as the “least approved man in America”. Previously, after hearing from Gulag survivor and friend Vladimir Petrov about the true nature of the 1944 Vice Presidential visit to Magadan, Wallace had publicly apologized for having allowed himself to be fooled by the Soviets.[48] In 1952 Wallace published Where I Was Wrong, in which he explained that his seemingly-trusting stance toward the Soviet Union and Joseph Stalin stemmed from inadequate information about Stalin’s crimes, and that he now considered himself an anti-Communist.
“He wrote various letters to “people who he thought had traduced [maligned] him” and advocated the re-election of President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956.[23] In 1961, President-elect John F. Kennedy invited Wallace to his inauguration ceremony, even though he had supported Kennedy’s opponent Richard Nixon. (Like Wallace, Nixon had been Vice President before becoming a presidential candidate). A touched Wallace wrote to Kennedy: “At no time in our history have so many tens of millions of people been so completely enthusiastic about an Inaugural Address as about yours.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_A._Wallace
Divide and rule is the gameplan, weaken society to such an extent that no one questions the gov anymore. The end result will be a 21st century feudal system where the 1% live like kings, the rest of us useful surfs
Minor detour:What happens if Trump nukes North Korea this week?
How do the kleptocrats stay in power? Let’s listen to one of their ‘gofers!’
Chrissie, take you faux rage elsewhere, readers of UNZ aren’t buying what you’re trying to sell, besides, its too smelly.
How do you interpret the fixation on Russia and the entire interpretation of the election within the framework of Putin’s manipulation?
Please please please – Chris Hedges knows the truth – but will not say it.
The reason is that Russia is involved in Syria and Israel does not like that.
Of course, if Hedges says that, he will be blackballed by the Jew owned media.
The mendacity of America’s elite is overwhelming – it is sad – it is debilitating – it is total.
Think Peace — Art
Yes the entire genre has no credibility left . The bastards are purveyor of lies , dogma,falsehood,and betrayal.
At home and abroad.
“Qaddafi was made to understand that such an outcome would require two big concessions on his part. First, he had to come clean about Libya’s role in the downing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.
Second, Libya was told that if it wanted to rid itself of the more onerous U.S. sanctions and have normalized relations with the United States and the West, meaning acceptance in the community of nations, it would have to give up its efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear arms. As Flynt L. Leverett, a well-placed State Department official at the time, wrote in early 2004, “Libya was willing to deal because of credible diplomatic representations by the United States over the years, which convinced the Libyans that doing so was critical to achieving their strategic and domestic goals.” Qaddafi gave up his weapons program,
Indeed, New York Times reporter David E. Sanger wrote a piece in March 2011 extolling America’s Libyan deal as having paved the way for the United States to destroy the Qaddafi regime. He quoted a senior administration official named Robert Joseph, who” http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/trump-is-pulling-a-libya-on-iran/
confirmed the logic and the rationale
these elites can wear all kinds of mask including of the pure evil hate to jive with certain type of organic hatred of another psychopath
“The hidden scandal of the Iraq War — the manipulation of intelligence to support a predetermined outcome,” he said, “is now an overt political strategy to undermine a multilateral nonproliferation agreement.”
He is right. A small group of neoconservative groups in Washington have stroked Trump’s ego and fanned his obsessive hatred of former President Obama to convince him that he could and must tear down Obama’s signature foreign policy” https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/11/trumps-horrifying-iran-deal-gambit/
That’s my feeling on Hedges as well, he’s politically homeless. The left has abandoned anti-imperialism and economic equality for a variety of reasons. But Hedges is too ideologically committed to ever be right wing or pro-White. Hedges seems doomed to be publishing delusional, repetitive rants about a multi-racial revolt against the corporate state every Monday at Truthdig.
A much better old school leftist is the Jewish expat Morris Berman. He concluded America is doomed, wrote three books about it, and moved to Mexico.
“(The elites)… They’re not terrified–they know full well that they don’t have to discuss it. Control of the flow of information eliminates any such necessity.
We’re right now in the consolidation phase, during which the last few remaining pockets of dissent are thoroughly vilified, rooted out, made illegal and worse: unthinkable.”
A very astute summing up, great insight! Control of the media is SO perfect that very few even notice the control, which is all pervasive and systemic. And that makes dissent not only just vilified or criminalized but unthinkable. The elites must be so happy: the dangerous ones have had their dangerous thoughts washed out. What a perfect operation, a perfect mass-lobotomy, carried out remotely and insidiously, relying but only on the airwaves. Gulags are primitive and brainwashing is so yester-year; ours are times of full spectrum mind control, perception engineering, and thought alteration.
Indeed. A bit more digging and I found this
“Karl Marx was Right” by Chris Hedges
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/karl-marx-was-right-2/
Thinking about it some more, I note in the interview he carefully says he’s not a Marxist or Trotskyite; perhaps he calls himself a “Gramscian” or something like that. He invokes Gramsci at the close of the piece I linked. Clever way to make it sound like you are distancing yourself from Communism when in fact you are just splitting hairs over a particular faction you belong to.
thanks to televangelist hedges for declaring that the elites have no credibility left.
until today i though they had credibility.
sad!
hedges is why jews think gentiles are stupid.
The claim,”inadequate information about Stalin’s crimes…” is that of a liar unless he was living on Ur-anus at the time, as I ‘m sure you already know. My comments are for those who don’t.
Bolshevik crimes were common knowledge in the US and were partly responsible, in fact, for the various Red scares during the 1917 -1920 period as well as the later ones.
The US did not recognize the Soviet Union because of the official antipathy for Communism til the pinko, FDR, wasted no time in offering recognition to the Soviets after he was elected.
Gareth Jones and Eugene Lyons (previously a Commie sympathizer til he saw first hand what was going on in the USSR…even interviews Stalin.) were two prominent journalists among many who detailed Soviet crimes pre-WW2, so there is no way anyone could claim ignorance with a straight face or a clear conscience, if any.
This is typical of a lot of the commenting going on in the US during the ’30s.:
As Patton said, we destroyed the wrong pig. We also failed to deal with both FDR and Churchill properly, but at least the Brits had sense enough to dump Winnie the Pig after the hostilities were over.
IOW, you wanted Hillary to win. LOL
Reactions to Trump Victory, hilarious !!
and:
In that article, Hedges seems to merely point out that Marx was on the money with several of his claims and he shows why. For instance, Hedges writes,
While I’m far from being a Marist, and frankly loathe the dude, and while I’m not making excuses for him, I think that the points Hedges makes are pretty durn good in that article. Hard to argue with most of them, for instance his point in the quote above. It’s easy to see that even if a person never read a word of Marx. Herbert Spencer, (no Marxist himself!!) would have probably agreed with the claim.
In fact, the anti-federalists anticipated Marx warning that the money grubbing crowd would not only seize the mechanisms of the state to increase their power, they actually formed the state for that purpose!!!
Nock, not a Marxian by any means said it well.:
I would like to introduce Mr. Hedges to the word, “legitimacy.” You see, an elite that “has no legitimacy left” is illegitimate; this is the thought process that should be occurring in the mind of the White American public.
Dear AJM:
One does not have to be a Marxist to agree that he was right now and then. While I frankly loathe the cat partly because he wrote a lot of total mumbo-jumbo, and expressed pride in that, partly for his advocacy of permanent violent revolution and for several other reasons, even I can admit that he was right sometimes. That doesn’t make me a Marxist any more than saying Christians are sometimes right makes me a Christian.
Anyway, I don’t understand all the hagiography as applied to Marx despite the fact that he made more than a few correct claims in his life. In my opinion, he said very little that was truly original as his groupies are fond of continuously claiming.
One thing I found fascinating was his argument that there can be no such thing as a Christian or Jewish state. Its another point on which he was correct.
Here’s another point that’s hard to argue against. Give it a try!
He makes some good points but throws in a lot of nonsense as well.
The leftist jargon is annoying and I always grow suspicious of anyone making excuses for black criminality.
The state is not putting poor black people in jail for the hell of it.
But unethical oligarchs robbing us blind and controlling the political process with their money makes perfect sense to me.
Jaques, a lot of Marxist observation makes perfect sense. I delved into a few Wikipedia articles recently, and found their descriptions useful and accurate (“false consciousness,” for example).
It’s their conclusions that are all scheisse.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/08/world/a-nation-challenged-the-school-defectors-cite-iraqi-training-for-terrorism.html
Wow!! That was him !
I guess he can rearrange the letters and apply easily to America now. At least the article won’t be total fraud or waste .
What part of “not American” don’t you understand?
If we did what was necessary the power structure, with the media, the money, and the military, would be no problem. We must stretch every fiber of social organization and bear all possible costs to humanly de-industrialize. Its all got to go. This is a vastly complicated problem that requires the cooperation of everyone on the planet. It must be put into the hands of someone who knows what he is doing. Ween yourselves from democracy, fools! We need a man with a plan. And this is not something that can be done tomorrow. It’s got to be done today. Does it sound crazy and impossible? Then so is human life. Fascist? So be it. The power structure only has power over everything that must disappear. The human race is finally tasked with something worthy of its ultimate effort. Are we up to it?
They all should be lamp shades?
I’ve always enjoyed Hedges’ opinions, because he separates liberals (who believe healthcare and clean water and honest wages for honest work should be rights – like I do) and the Liberal Class (LC –
capitalized), which consists of Upper West Side denizens, editors and publishers of expensive mouthpieces for the LC and DC insiders, and now of course literally millions of deranged sjw who the LC have made to believe they’re supporting.
Hedges is probably part of what could be called the Religious Left, who don’t own radio stations or megachurches and view the world in terms of living people and issues instead of party affiliation and fetuses. Though I think his verbiage is too preachy at times, he seems to me to have a great moral core that doesn’t waver.
“And he imposed a de facto censorship to shut out critics of unfettered capitalism and imperialism, such as Noam Chomsky or Howard Zinn.”
Pretty much stopped taking him seriously after that.
Class consciousness is a very powerful concept in the right hands, certainly libertarians like Rothbard and Hoppe appreciated it.
You talking about bores falls under the category of pot and kettle.
As you are no doubt aware, AJM is cuckoo for cocoapops. Totally nuts. Not unusual, either — lots of Mensa mensches are freakishly nuts. Mensa has faded quite a bit in the last 20 years or so, but most of the ones I met back in the 90’s were in-fucking-sane from the git-go, also providing my first set of clues that “intelligence” testing does not select for intelligence. And, jesus christ, the sexual perversion in that bunch! Cripes!
Be that as it may, please to remember that Marx is not a revolutionary. Marx assumed human civilization would evolve into communism naturally, with minimal violence. Trotsky was the ideological leader of the breakaway “permanent revolution” contingent. Marx did okay with the economic analysis ref. capitalist despoiling of labor, and that was pretty much all Karl got right.
Yes. It seems pretty obvious that Hedges is controlled opposition. (Appropriate name, I suppose.) He’s a curiosity piece because in the American context almost all fake opposition is on the right, there being really no legitimate left in America in need of subverting. I guess the oligarchy leaves no stone unturned.
LOL
Good interview. I agree with much but not all. Specifically I do not agree with him on this:
I think being tough on crime and cutting welfare were two of the best things Clinton ever did.
” I still can’t figure out what Hedges’ politics/economics really are. He says clearly he isn’t a Marxist, ”
But he is a Marxist…he subscribes to the marxist ‘path’…..revolution thru Marxism, evolving to communism evolving to socialism,….you would think the ‘path’ would be exactly backwards but it isn’t in the kind of Marxist revolution Hedges calls for.
Those consumed with their Moral cores often comes to think of themselves as ‘moral oracles’……go whacko, become fanatics and throw out lightening bolts to their followers.
He not wrong but I have no use for his style of writing and trying to whip people into a frenzy to ‘over turn’ the gov instead of ‘fixing it.
The idea that the Left has been conned by identity grievance politics is a joke. The Left is identity grievance politics, and identity grievance politics is the Left.
“Dictatorship of the proletariat”.
Well if Hedges has retained some of his Christian faith (I know he went to seminary, but not sure if he lapsed) then he would likely reject the materialism that underlies strict Marxism.
Perhaps he’s something like a Chomsky-style left-anarchist.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/anis-shivani/pessimism-porn-chris-hedges_b_788504.html
This is a somewhat interesting take on Hedges from a few years ago. The author is the same guy who wrote a recent piece decrying identity politics on the left for Salon(!)
Unfortunately the guy goes on tangents trying to show that he has already read every author Hedges has read and understands them all far better. Also he seems to come from a neoliberal stance himself, being comfortable with globalism. But he does zero in accurately I think on Hedges’ scatterbrained approach–the same thing that comes out in this interview. Hedges is at least surprising rather than predictable, and I do think he has a sincere moral compass, but it’s so hard to find out what he is *for* besides tearing down capitalism.
I think I’ll go watch a movie …..
“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”
Howard Beale rant
The World is Business Mr. Beale
from the movie “Network” in 1976.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_(film)
…and from the above excellent article, it appears that I’ve lived long enough to see this come true after seeing this movie while I was in high school. What a long strange trip its been.
I’m not sure they resist localism do they? the mantra of the green movement (which seems to be where liberalism morphed into communism, or Protestantism into protestism) was/is, ‘think global, act local’. Minorities generally are only minority nationally; locally, minorities have their own majority communities and globally, the real minority are Europeans.
descriptions are useful and accurate because PC is communist. And media commentators use ‘guilt by association’ and ‘false consciousness’ to steer Europeans away from collective thought. Trump is the best most recent example. A certain broadcaster literally reduced a girl to tears by agreeing that it was OK for her friends to ostracise her for supporting trump. The House Speaker banned Trump from Parliament and there was such an outcry over trump in the country that he cannot have a state visit even though various mass murdering presidents have previously had one – and probably over half the population would welcome him. Trump was declared a misogynist by every single journalist but Weinstein has not been so labelled. Guilt lies with proud white people and all those who associate with them and their false ideas.
Right. If you subscribe to one identity flavor, that keeps you from subscribing to any other flavor. Divide et impera, divide and rule.
They have lost their credibility. All they have left is wealth and power.
Isn’t that the essence of it? I remember, during the era of the Luce proprietorship, when Time magazine published an article strongly critical of Israeli policy towards the Arabs under Menachem Begin – words to the effect that Begin’s sole interest was in the promotion of Jewish Israel and that “neighbors” (thinking then of Anwar Sadat who had made his historic visit with, then, no reciprocal gesture forthcoming ) no longer saw any point to “come calling”.
This piece was greeted with outrage and Newsweek’s subscription revenue boomed at the expense of Time’s.
” One does not have to be a Marxist to agree that he was right now and then”
Dear J S , right, simply because every nut-case and idiot is ” right now and then”.
What most “scholars” do not comprehend about Marx is that his worldview, his observations were all emmanating from a “Jewish” standpoint, and he had, as there existed at that time, a huge division/wall between Jews and Goys, he had as did every Jew at that point in time, no knowledge of the Goy viewpoint outside of annectdotal dubiousness, faulty observation, misinformation.
He had no genuine inside view of the “Goy” viewpoint/ mindset, and therefore, such as in every other field of philosophy, and science : when one begins one’s research, or bases one’s conclusions, on false premises and observations, the end results will always be distortion and dishonesty.
Authenticjazzman “Mensa” qualified since 1973, ariborne trained Us army vet, and pro jazz artist.
As soon as Hedges trotted out how the cops are terrorizing marginalized communities he lost all credibility.
Anyone who can blame the Chicago, Philly, Atlanata, etc., bloodbaths on cops (ignoring that 99.5% of the deaths & maimings are black gangsters shooting other gangsters & bystanders) is too ideologically blind to navigate a Walmart.
The cops have always done this in the hood, moreover they have frequenty held a role in sustaining syndicates. No matter how much evidence there is that the cops are acting like the criminals themselves, the insular white bread (himself a slave) will glorify the authoritarian out of fear of poverty or hope that they’ll be able to dispense justice when it’s “their turn.” Survival requires no ideology, just mindless obedience.
The Department of Justice appears to have a revolving door of money and power between elite felons. Is it possible for YOU to hunt and gather (cognitively speaking) and draw any connection between competition in the ghetto and authority that both profits and enforces?
Chris Hedges is an elite. An elite can very best be defined as anyone who has anything to lose and is afraid to criticize the Jews out of fear of personal harm for speaking the truth.
” Black gangsters shooting other gangsters”
You are missing the main point, and that being : according to the leftist/SJW nut-cases the reason why the blacks are shooting each other is due to the “oppression” wraught upon them by the white cops and the capitalist honchos.
In other words they are not to blame for their own abberant behavior, rather the “Man” is the actual culprit, and if we were to install socialism/communism, all of this black on black violence would suddenly end, as “socialism” is always the answer.
Authenticjazzman “Mensa” qualified since 1973, airborne trained US Army Vet, and pro Jazz musician.
Well, one of the best known Mensans in the British Isles was a television personality and major contributor to charities by the name of Jimmy Savile. His ability to avoid, during his lifetime, imprisonment or even serious investigation for rape, paedophilia and necrophilia practised over many decades does argue a certain intelligence on his part.
” AJM is cookoo for cocoapops. totally nuts”
Yeah sure take the easy way out and declare your adversary to be “Nuts” because you are not endowed with the intelligence to understand his perspective.
This is typical SOP for leftist dirtbags world-wide : If you have no valid point to make than simply attack your opponent with absurd personal slander.
Authenticjazzman “Mensa” qualified since 1973, airborne trained U s Army vet, and pro jazz artist.
Clinton was responding to the drug wars between rival gangs. In fact, the black leadership originally supported it. I suppose they thought that all the drugs were being brought in by the Mafia and Latin American cartels and when those people went to jail, the black communities would be deprived of drugs and settle down.
However by then the Mafia had offloaded even mid level distribution to the gangs. In addition, many of those gang leaders were making their own connections to the Colombian cartels so the Mafia was slowly getting aced out. The end result was that about as high as you could go in a big drug operation was the top of the black gangs. Once the vast majority of those going to prison were the friends and relatives of the black leadership, they had a change of heart.
And when they try to alleviate the problem by recruiting more minorities into the police department what do we see – an explosion of police corruption in those areas.
moreover they have frequenty held a role in sustaining syndicates.
They did the same thing with the Mafia. As long as the Mafia was in charge a lot of nuisance crime in the neighborhood didn’t happen. Cops have limited resources. If the gangs are selling drugs but keeping the drive-by shootings down, the cops let the gangs have their turf.
You’re right.
Morons think blacks shooting blacks is because….racism. (head desk)
Dude, I got a 95th percentile on the GRE verbal, but I can’t make out what the (—) you mean.
80 IQ people with a low threshold for violence behave the same way everywhere on Earth. Hand them guns, they shoot each other, knives they cut each other, skittles and iced tea and they try to beat on people who “offend” them.
OTOH, I do agree with you that Ivy League law grads get jobs at the DoJ so they can play nice with Wall Street, insuring a 7-figure salary and a corner office when they quit the Gov’t job and go to work for the people whose knobs they polished while “regulating” them. Have you a solution to this that doesn’t involve either doubling down on “more regulations” or belief in fairy tales?
I thought not.
Moore is a leftist idiot. Your comment about him following the catholic line gives reason for his support of Weinstein the rapist, as catholicism is a patriarchy and women are second class participants..
Nailed it. Look at any nation of blacks run by blacks and you will find the same ehavior. It is why whites are fleeing S. Africa. Just ask Ilana Mercer.
Why not? I think his father “converted” to some “Christian” sect, and he himself gave that up and became an atheist. If he was a “Jew,” he was a “self loather” since he wrote some pretty colorful stuff about them.
Point being that since he rejected it he became a goy himself, I think.
Paradoxically, in my opinion, in order to put the “identity politics” genie back in the bottle the majority group — which in the case of the U.S. are ethnically European Americans, who are still mostly religiously Protestant — with the greatest legitimacy to the ownership of the country and longest legacy and experience in leading the country, namely WASPs, need to embrace “identity politics” and assert themselves and stand up for their rights and heritage. This is what Trumpism and the North American Alt Right, led by Richard B. Spencer, are all about: https://altright.com/2017/10/01/the-passion-of-ben-sasse/
They also need to be supported, encouraged and protected by influential members of powerful ethnic minorities, who have the best interest of the country at heart.
Amy Wax and Joseph Epstein, both of whom are Jewish, have penned defenses of WASPs and WASP values in recent years, for example. This is a very good thing and I welcome this development and appreciate their courage to stand up for the historic American nation.
This is a reply from ”Irish Central” to Joseph Epstein:
Shedding no tears for the decline of the bigoted, elitist WASP colony
https://www.irishcentral.com/opinion/others/shedding-no-tears-for-the-decline-of-the-bigoted-elitist-wasp-colony-239562821-239672311
Donald Trump is the most powerful and visible manifestation of this rediscovered assertiveness of this majority group, which had until recently been silent and silenced, mostly. How Trump put it, “the silent majority is back, and we’re going to take our country back.“: https://www.unz.com/article/what-can-msmclinton-say-about-alt-right-that-theyve-not-already-said-about-trumpgop/#comment-1561897
In my personal opinion, panem et circenses, “bread and circuses” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses , has been a bigger problem for America and Americans than divide and rule. That is why Trump taking on the professional sports leagues, in particular the NFL and to a certain extent the NBA, is so significant. Americans are now no longer distracted by meaningless, corporate, tax-exempt sport spectacles, and can actually focus on taking their country back.
Sadly, Chris Hedges will likely not embrace and advocate for his WASP heritage and people any time soon or ever, but at least he is not an overpopulation denier and shill for Israel like, innumerate or disingenuous(??), Catholic convert Kevin D. Williamson:
The Dumb Vote
– http://www.nationalreview.com/article/332375/dumb-vote-kevin-d-williamson
Williamson is correct that the global population growth rate peaked between 1965-1970 at 2.06%, but “Total annual births were highest in the late 1980s at about 139 million, and are now expected to remain essentially constant at their 2011 level of 135 million, while deaths number 56 million per year and are expected to increase to 80 million per year by 2040.”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population
Commenter “Charles Pewitt” shared a great analysis of how Trump won the election. German Americans are still majority Protestant according to Wikipedia, 26% are Catholic and 16% are “other”, I assume irreligious or agnostic, and 1% are Jewish. He just partly gets the composition of the current American ruling class wrong, in my opinion. He blames a “WASP / Jew ruling class” for all the misdeeds and shortcomings of the American Empire, when, in my opinion, the American Empire is currently and for a while has been ruled by an (northeastern New York/Boston Irish/Italian, but increasingly southwestern Houston/Los Angeles/Bay Area Latino) Catholic / Jewish minority ruling class/coalition. Jeb Bush’s children, for example, are all half-Latino Catholics, I believe:
– https://www.unz.com/isteve/dennis-ross-memories-of-an-anti-semitic-state-department/#comment-2022826
Source: https://www.unz.com/isteve/dennis-ross-memories-of-an-anti-semitic-state-department/#comment-2023463
What makes that creature credible?
the right could have used this underlying philosophy to their advantage but I’ve yet to hear a rightist call out the leftists on their evident superiority complex.
It’s not obvious unless you’re taking the long view, but identity politics was used to successfully co-opt the Left about 50 years ago. Leftists who adopted it were rewarded with power and influence, while leftists who rejected it were vilified and marginalized. Identity politics provided career paths that labor-Left politics did not. At that point the Left became anti-working class, as identity politics sought influence in aligning itself with the ruling class and the working class bore the brunt of the excesses of identity politics. The tendency inherited by David North and the World Socialist Web Site, to their credit, denounced the co-optation of the Left by petty-bourgeois identity politics. But essentially nobody listened.
Hedges’ positions on the Left are a tangle of contradictions. He states correctly that the Left is an impotent and meaningless entity in the US, co-opted by the ruling elite, and showing its immaturity in its embrace of identity politics. But then he embraces some of the most regressive positions of the Left, praising Andrea Dworkin(!) feminism, Cornell West, BLM, and race-based criminal justice “reform.” David North must have been biting his tongue to not confront him over that rubbish. He knows better. It would have been a better interview had North confronted those issues instead of turning it into a mutual back-scratching session.
This is slightly off-topic, but hopefully interesting.
A few months ago I claimed that Emmanuel Macron has/holds an ““Alt Right” worldview” due to him having had interactions with an influential member of the French Protestant Huguenot minority in France: https://www.unz.com/article/collateral-damage/#comment-1955020
Der Spiegel in Germany interviewed him recently and this is a highly curious excerpt from that interview:
– http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/interview-with-french-president-emmanuel-macron-a-1172745.html
Possible, if everyone goes surfing or serfing it’s going to be equally useless. Need to commit to something else.
[Stick to a single Handle, or use Anonymous/Anon]
I knew Hedges leaned left, but I didn’t realize it was that far. I can agree with a LOT of what he says, but in all that railing, he never once mentions the banksters? Seriously? If you do not understand that political power has almost always come from the power to create money (currency) – then you really don’t understand politics. Hedges rants against “capitalism” (which we haven’t seen in the US since the mid 1800’s) – but not against the corrosively-parasitic Jewish-controlled banking system that condemns all but the most fortunate into debt slavery?
Additionally, he keeps talking about “inequality” combined with the evil of “deregulation” which is always a pretext to “We need more government to right these supposed wrongs – using the threat of force and violence to do it” – which is crap. Governments ALWAYS make problems worse – because if they’re created to “fight” that problem, they have no interest in seeing it go away because it means they would no longer be needed.
The only way that I see to “fix” inequality is to put control of schools back to the local level and incentivize good teachers. Stop teaching Marxist doctrine and get back to teaching people *how* to think instead of *what* to think. We also need to destroy identity politics and stop making excuses for people because of their skin color. ALL people need to take responsibility for their own plight. Yes, there are situations that are hard – but they can be conquered if there is a will to do so. I’ve been homeless – I know it’s hard – but it’s also possible to get past it.
Read: “The Content of Our Character” by Shelby Steele
Diversity is only a good thing when it’s *voluntary* diversity. The right of “free association” (or even avoiding association) is a joke if it’s not universal. Divisiveness among the people only benefits the PTB – and it’s always been that way. Forced “diversity” is a nation-killer – and the PTB know this (it’s part of the Kalergi/Cloudhoven plan).
Additionally, the idea that *some* people can have exclusive schools or organizations based on their race and gender (black-only, women-only) is only ethical if it extends across ALL races and genders – i.e. white-only should be acceptable as well as male-only.
I think it’s important to separate the ZOG (Zionist Occupied Government) of the United States from the People of the United States. Most thinking people in the US were pretty much against the wars of Zionist aggression that the US ended up footing the bill for – both in currency and blood. If you noticed, this resistance manifested itself in the 2013 rejection of the people for the US to invade Syria – and the Zionst’s subsequent shift to a proxy army (ISIS). The Zionists believe that this makes them “superior” to all other people on the planet – the fact that they can “trick” someone else into fighting their wars …. when it really just proves them the most despicable. They are *a* (if not *the*) – true cancer on the world.
The American people are very much asleep – but that IS changing. We are fighting a war of information – of awareness. The people are slowly starting to realize that their lives, their hopes, their dreams, their families mean absolutely nothing to the PTB … and that the PTB isn’t run by “their countrymen” but a psychopathic, subversive tribe. The power of a serial-killer is that his identity is unknown – but when his/her identity *is* known, all his perceived power is gone. The Zionists and their minions are no different: they’re only effective as long as people remain ignorant of who they are, what they do, and how they do it. It’s our job to shed light on these facts.
I have seen a change in the past few years which is very encouraging – people are starting to *see* beyond the curtain of propaganda that is force-fed to them – and it gives me a *little* hope for the future.
I’d see the causation as going the other way. When the (white) working class failed to join their revolution in the 1960s, the Left turned against the (white) working class, doubled down on the black insurrection (already in progress) and added women and homsexuals as they began to organize them.
Google is censoring right and left wing sites that don’t agree with the Establishment narrative. Likewise, in many cases, Youtube sites have also been demonetized on the left as well.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the Unz review was also lowered in the Google rankings in a bid to lower traffic here.
There have been other actions. For example, gun modifications are now banned from Youtube.
Google IMO is way too powerful and should be broken up with anti-trust laws. That won’t happen with the elites so corrupt.
Bravo. Reading this I begin to realize that I am sane and that there are people out there who are sane too and have the courage to describe reality exactly as it it.
Credibility only matters during the beginning stages of a power struggle/change. After power has shifted just enough, credibility becomes irrelevant.