Chris Hedges

@ChrisLynnHedges

My thoughts on Biden dropping out:

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

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

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

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

@JoeBiden

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

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

@ChrisLynnHedges

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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