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Chris Hedges

Chris Hedges Report: How ‘Paradise Lost’ Revolutionized The World

There are few pieces of literature that remain as prescient and relevant throughout history as John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Thomas Jefferson, Malcolm X, Virginia Woolf, Thomas Paine and dozens more drew inspiration from and studied Milton’s grand work and the revolutionary themes within it. Professor Orlando Reade, in his book, What in Me Is Dark: The Revolutionary Afterlife of Paradise Lost, examines the epic poem’s influence in the four centuries since its publication and joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to discuss this history.

Chris Hedges Report: Shared Mythological History Of Israel And US

The narratives surrounding Israel and their genocidal campaign against the Palestinians took decades to create and embed into the West’s psyche. The Holocaust, decades after its end, became a central part of the Jewish and Israeli identity. Enemies of the Israeli state were conflated with Nazis. The physical location of Israel became essential to Christian evangelicals who believe the second coming of Jesus Christ was to take place there. The late Amy Kaplan, in her book, Our American Israel: The Story of an Entangled Alliance, explored how these narratives developed through popular culture and the media’s reporting on the Israeli government’s actions throughout the 20th century, particularly in the United States.

Chris Hedges: Trump’s Useful Idiots

The media, universities, the Democratic Party and liberals, by embracing the fiction of “rampant antisemitism,” laid the groundwork for their own demise. Columbia and Princeton, where I have taught, and Harvard, which I attended, are not incubators of hatred towards Jews. The New York Times, where I worked for fifteen years and which Trump calls “an enemy of the people,” is slavishly subservient to the Zionist narrative. What these institutions have in common is not antisemitism, but liberalism. And liberalism, with its creed of pluralism and inclusiveness, is slated by our authoritarian regime for obliteration. 

Chris Hedges Report: The West Serves As Israel’s Police

Richard Barnard, Sarah Wilkinson, Asa Winstanley and Richard Medhurst. These are some of the canaries in the coal mine for what is to come in the West as the region’s elite quickly becomes Israel’s international police. Medhurst joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to talk about his own experiences in the United Kingdom and Austria, where federal agents and police arrested him and searched his home under draconian counterterrorism laws. “I was just trying to tell the truth as best as I could with the facts that we had at that time and that’s it. And I think they’re trying to make an example out of me, definitely,” Medhurst tells Hedges.

The Chris Hedges Report: Emptying Gaza

Israel, both materially and rhetorically, has made their intent to destroy the Palestinian people clear. One of the most renowned and courageous Middle East scholars, Norman Finkelstein, has assiduously documented the Palestinian plight for decades and he joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report. Finkelstein and Hedges assess the current state of the genocide in Palestine as well as how the media and the universities have all but abandonded their principles in servitude to the Zionist agenda. Finkelstein makes clear the gravity of Israel’s unprecedented actions: “If you take any metric—number of UN workers killed, number of medics killed, number of journalists killed, proportion of civilians to combatants killed, proportion of children killed, proportion of women and children killed—if you take any metric, Israel for the 21st century is in a class all its own.”

Chris Hedges: American Concentration Camps

Our offshore concentration camps, for now, are in El Salvador and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. But don’t expect them to remain there. Once they are normalized, not only for U.S.-deported immigrants and residents, but U.S. citizens, they will migrate to the homeland. It is a very short leap from our prisons, already rife with abuse and mistreatment, to concentration camps, where those held are cut off from the outside world — “disappeared” — denied legal representation and crammed into fetid, overcrowded cells. Prisoners in the camps in El Salvador are forced to sleep on the floor or in solitary confinement in the dark. Many suffer from tuberculosis, fungal infections, scabies, severe malnutrition and chronic digestive illnesses.

Chris Hedges Report: How The Media Walked Us Into Autocracy

The American corporate coup d’état is almost complete as the first weeks of the Trump administration exemplify. If there has been one person who saw this coming, and has taken courageous action over the years to prevent it, it would be Ralph Nader. The former presidential candidate, consumer advocate and corporate critic joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to chronicle his life’s work battling the corporate takeover of the country and how Americans can still fight back today despite the growing repression from the White House.

The Empire Self-Destructs

The billionaires, Christian fascists, grifters, psychopaths, imbeciles, narcissists and deviants who have seized control of Congress, the White House and the courts, are cannibalizing the machinery of state. These self-inflicted wounds, characteristic of all late empires, will cripple and destroy the tentacles of power. And then, like a house of cards, the empire will collapse. Blinded by hubris, unable to fathom the empire’s diminishing power, the mandarins in the Trump administration have retreated into a fantasy world where hard and unpleasant facts no longer intrude. They sputter incoherent absurdities while they usurp the Constitution and replace diplomacy, multilateralism and politics with threats and loyalty oaths.

Don’t Deify Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter, out of office, had the courage to call out the “abominable oppression and persecution” and “strict segregation” of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza in his 2006 book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.” He dedicated himself to monitoring elections, including his controversial defense of the 2006 election of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, and championed human rights around the globe. He lambasted the American political process as an “oligarchy” in which “unlimited political bribery” created “a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors.”

How Fascism Came

President-elect Donald Trump does not herald the advent of fascism. He heralds the collapse of the veneer that masked the corruption within the ruling class and their pretense of democracy. He is the symptom, not the disease. The loss of basic democratic norms began long before Trump, which paved the road to an American totalitarianism. Deindustrialization, deregulation, austerity, unchecked predatory corporations, including the health-care industry, wholesale surveillance of every American, social inequality, an electoral system that is plagued by legalized bribery, endless and futile wars, the largest prison population in the world, but most of all feelings of betrayal, stagnation and despair, are a toxic brew that culminate in an inchoate hatred of the ruling class and the institutions they have deformed to exclusively serve the rich and the powerful.

Chris Hedges Report: Enduring The Trauma Of Genocide

While the trauma that Palestinians continue to face in Gaza is sustained, brutal and seemingly never-ending, the universal susceptibility to trauma unites humanity as much as it divides the self. Dr. Gabor Maté, renowned physician and expert in trauma and childhood development, illustrates this point articulately on the latest episode of The Chris Hedges Report through attempting to make sense of the psychology, trauma and reason behind the actions of Palestinians, IDF soldiers, WWII survivors, Nazis and even himself.

Chris Hedges Report: The Middle East’s Roots Lie In The Fall Of The Ottomans

Modern borders represent mere lines in the sand when understanding the deep history behind the forces that drew them. In the contemporary Middle East, nations such as Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, and most notably Palestine, cannot be fully understood without delving into the region’s intricate past—especially the pivotal role of the Ottoman Empire’s influence. Eugene Rogan, the Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at the University of Oxford, joins host Chris Hedges to discuss his book, “The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East,” and explain how the modern geopolitical makeup of the region came to be.

Harris Vs Trump: The End Of American Dominance?

Today on Real Talk, we speak to Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist and author, about the race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump in the US elections. We delve into why he believes we are “at the end of empire”, whether Trump or Harris would have different Gaza policies, the rise of Christian nationalism in the US, and his thoughts on Joe Biden’s presidential legacy. Real Talk is a Middle East Eye interview show hosted by Mohamed Hashem that delves into the stories and experiences of a diverse range of guests.

Nero’s Guests

Israel has been poisoned by the psychosis of permanent war. It has been morally bankrupted by the sanctification of victimhood, which it uses to justify an occupation that is even more savage than that of apartheid South Africa. Its ‘democracy’ — which was always exclusively for Jews — has been hijacked by extremists who are pushing the country towards fascism. Human rights campaigners, intellectuals and journalists — Israeli and Palestinian — are subject to constant state surveillance, arbitrary arrests and government-run smear campaigns. Its educational system, starting in primary school, is an indoctrination machine for the military.

Chris Hedges: Thank You For Support Following Cancellation Of My Show

I have received hundreds of messages of support, including over 400 on Substack alone, since my show was canceled by The Real News. More than 100 of you became paid subscribers. I cannot answer you all individually, but each message, each new subscription, means I can go on. I write and broadcast for you. I see myself in you. I refuse to dumb down anything to reach a wider audience. I do not try to be entertaining. I assume, like me, you love books and the world of ideas, the nuances and complexities that make up the human condition. I assume you care about the truth.

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Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! 

Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

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