The Chris Hedges Report Podcast

This article is read by Eunice Wong. You can find her work at www.eunicewong.actor.Text originally published May 8, 2026.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Full Text:Civilizations, as the historian Arnold J. Toynbee famously argued, “die from suicide, not by murder.” They collapse from within. They fall prey to moral, social and spiritual decay. They are seized by a parasitic ruling class. Democratic institutions seize up. The citizenry is immiserated, wealth is funneled upwards to the ruling class and coercion is the principle form of control.Our suicidal march began long before Donald Trump and his bizarre court of buffoons, sycophants, grifters and Christian fascists took power. It began when the ruling class, especially under the Reagan and Clinton administrations, set out to harvest the country and empire for personal profit.There is a word for these people. Traitors.These traitors, ensconced in the leadership of the two ruling parties, stripped us of assets and power slowly. They used subterfuge, lies and legalized bribery. They pretended to honor electoral politics, checks and balances, a free press and the rule of law while subverting all of these democratic pillars. That old system, however flawed, was hollowed out. It was turned over to the amoral and the idiotic — look at the Supreme Court or Congress — those willing to do the bidding of the billionaire class.Armed with billions by the mortal enemy of the demos — the oligarchs and corporations — the political elites, Republicans and Democrats, destroyed the careers of those politicians who resisted. They crushed labor unions. They blacklisted honest journalists and consolidated the press into the hands of a handful of corporations and oligarchs. They slashed regulations that constrained unfettered greed and protected the population from predatory corporations and environmental toxins. They passed legislation that created a de facto tax boycott for the rich — Trump famously paid no federal income taxes in 10 of the 15 years prior to his presidency — while stripping the country of its industry and throwing some 30 million people out of work. Wealth is no longer created by producing or manufacturing. It is created by manipulating the prices of stocks and commodities and imposing a crippling debt peonage on the public.These parasites cut or abolished social programs, militarized the police, built the largest prison system in the world and pumped funds into a bloated and out-of-control war industry. German socialist and politician Karl Liebknecht, on the eve of the suicidal folly of World War I, called German imperialists “the enemy at home.” Our rulers, our enemies at home, mounted a series of futile wars that degraded the empire’s global hegemony and poured trillions of dollars of taxpayer money into their bank accounts. Iran is the most recent example.Trump is not an outlier. He is the naked, stripped-down expression of this suicidal pact. He does not pretend the system he inherited works. He lies with less finesse. He crassly enriches himself and his family. He speaks in crude vulgarities. He dismantles any government agency dedicated to the common good, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Education and the U.S. Postal Service. But he embodies what came before him, albeit without the liberal façade.“Trump is not an anomaly,” I wrote in “America: The Farewell Tour”He is the grotesque visage of a collapsed democracy. Trump and his coterie of billionaires, generals, half-wits, Christian fascists, criminals, racists, and moral deviants play the role of the Snopes clan in some of William Faulkner’s novels. The Snopeses filled the power vacuum of the decayed South and ruthlessly seized control from the degenerated, former slaveholding aristocratic elites. Flem Snopes and his extended family — which includes a killer, a pedophile, a bigamist, an arsonist, a mentally disabled man who copulates with a cow, and a relative who sells tickets to witness the bestiality — are fictional representations of the scum now elevated to the highest level of the federal government. They embody the moral rot unleashed by unfettered capitalism.The Epstein files, a window into the degeneracy of our ruling class, included not only Trump, but former U.S. president Bill Clinton — who allegedly took a trip to Thailand with Epstein — Prince Andrew, Microsoft founder and billionaire Bill Gates, hedge fund billionaire Glenn Dubin, the former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, former secretary of the treasury and former president of Harvard University Larry Summers, cognitive psychologist and author Stephen Pinker, Epstein’s lawyer and arch Zionist Alan Dershowitz, billionaire and Victoria’s Secret CEO Leslie Wexner, the former Barclays banker Jes Staley, former Israel prime minister Ehud Barak, magician David Copperfield, actor Kevin Spacey, former CIA director William Burns, real estate mogul Mort Zuckerman, former Maine senator George Mitchell and disgraced Hollywood producer and convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein. They all orbited Epstein’s perpetual Bacchanalia.Anand Giridharadas, who wrote “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World,” notes that the circle of powerful men, and a handful of women who surrounded Epstein, are emblematic of a privileged caste that lack empathy in the suffering and abuse of others, whether that is sexual abuse, including that of children, financial meltdowns they orchestrate, wars they back, addictions and overdose they enable, the monopolies they defend, the inequality they turbocharge, the housing crisis they milk and the intrusive technologies they refuse to protect people against:People are right to sense that as the emails lay bare, there is a highly private merito-aristocracy at the intersection of government and business, lobbying, philanthropy, start-ups, academia, science, high finance and media, that all too often takes care of its own more than the common good. They are right to resent that there are infinite second chances for members of this group even as so many Americans are deprived of first chances. They are right that their pleas often go unheard, whether they are being evicted, gouged, foreclosed on, A.I.-obsolesced — or, yes, raped.“The Epstein emails, in my view,” Giridharadas writes, “together sketch a devastating epistolary portrait of how our social order functions, and for whom. Saying that isn’t extreme. The way this elite operates is.”“If this neoliberal-era power elite remains poorly understood,” he continues, “it may be because it is not just a financial elite or an educated elite, a noblesse-oblige elite, a political elite or a narrative-making elite; it straddles all of these, lucratively and persuaded of its own good intentions.”“These people are,” Giridharadas reminds us, “on the same team. On air, they might clash. They promote opposite policies. Some in the network profess anguish over what others in the network are doing. But the emails depict a group whose highest commitment is to their own permanence in the class that decides things. When principles conflict with staying in the network, the network wins.”You can see my interview with Giridharadas here.The entire system is rotten. It will not reform itself.The Democratic Party has hit on the novel campaign issue of reducing taxes to win this year’s midterm elections. It will, no doubt, anoint another vapid, issue-less and genocide-supporting presidential nominee. Democratic donors pumped a staggering $1.5 billion into Kamala Harris’s abridged 15-week celebrity-fueled presidential campaign. She became the first Democratic presidential candidate to lose the national popular vote in two decades and be defeated in every battleground state.The Democratic Party is not a functioning political party. It is a corporate mirage. Its members can, at best, select preapproved candidates and act as props in choreographed conventions and rallies. Party members have zero influence on party politics.The more the diminishing power of the empire becomes apparent, evidenced in Trump’s debacle with Iran, the more a confused population retreats into a fantasy world, a world where hard and unpleasant facts do not intrude.In the final days of a civilization, a population wallows in self-delusional hubris and trumpets false virtues. It looks for scapegoats to explain its failures — Muslims, undocumented workers, Mexicans, African-Americans, feminists, intellectuals, artists and dissidents.Magical thinking and the myth of American exceptionalism dominate public discourse and are taught in schools. Art and culture are degraded to nationalist kitsch. Science is dismissed, even in the midst of the environmental crisis. Cultural and intellectual disciplines that allow us to see the world from the perspective of the other, that foster empathy, understanding and compassion, are replaced by a grotesque and cruel hypermasculinity and hypermilitarism.Trump is perfectly tailored for these death throes. He is not a freak or an anomaly. He is the naked visage of our pathological sickness.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Thanks for reading The Chris Hedges Report! This post is public so feel free to share it.Photos:US-POLITICS-TRUMPUS President Donald Trump speaks flanked by US Vice President JD Vance, FBI Director Kash Patel, US Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio during a press briefing in the Brady Briefing Room at the White House in Washington, DC, shortly after a shooting incident at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on April 25, 2026.(Photo by Kent NISHIMURA / AFP via Getty Images)US President-elect Bill Clinton (r) breaks into aLOS ANGELES, CA - NOVEMBER 27: US President-elect Bill Clinton (r) breaks into a big laugh in Los Angeles 27 November 1992, as former U.S. President Ronald Reagan presents him with a jar of red, white and blue jelly beans that, Reagan said, kept him from going to cigarettes. Clinton said he wanted to talk with Reagan about his transition. 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(Photo by Alex Brandon-Pool/Getty Images) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

This article is read by Eunice Wong. You can find her work at www.eunicewong.actor.Text originally published April 20, 2026.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Full Text:During the two years I spent writing “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America,” I encountered numerous mini-Trumps. These self-proclaimed pastors — very few had any formal religious training — preyed on the despair of their congregants. They were surrounded by sycophants and could not be questioned. They merged fact with fiction, peddled magical thinking and enriched themselves at the expense of their followers. They claimed their wealth and ostentatious lifestyle, including mansions and private jets, was a sign of being blessed. They insisted they were divinely inspired and anointed by God. They were, within their hermetic circles of their megachurches, omnipotent.These cult pastors promised to use their omnipotence to crush the demonic forces that had created misery in the lives of their followers — unemployment and underemployment, evictions, bankruptcies, poverty, addiction, sexual and domestic abuse, and crippling despair. The more power the cult leaders possess — according to their followers — the more certain is a promised paradise. Cult leaders stand above the law. Those who desperately place their faith in them want them to be above the law.Cult leaders are narcissists. They demand obsequious adulation and total obedience. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s claim that Donald Trump is able to draw a “perfect map” of the Middle East, or White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s statement that Trump is always the “most well-read person in the room,” are two of innumerable examples of the abject fawning required by those in a cult leader’s inner circle. Blind loyalty matters more than competence.Cult leaders are immune from rational and fact-based critiques amongst those who invest hope in them. This is why Trump’s hardcore followers have not abandoned him and will not abandon him. All the chatter about fissures in the MAGA universe misreads Trump cultists.All cults are personality cults. They are extensions of the prejudices, worldview, personal style and ideas of the cult leader. Trump, with his faux “Trump crest,” revels in Louis XIV-inspired tasteless kitsch awash in gold Rococo and glittering chandeliers. The women in Trump’s court have “Mar-a-Lago Faces” – overinflated lips, taut, wrinkle-free skin, silicone gel-filled breast implants and chiseled cheekbones, capped off by gobs of make-up. They wear stiletto heels and garish outfits that Trump finds appealing. Trump’s men, who in his eyes must be telegenic and from “Central casting,” dress like 1950s advertising executives. They sport Trump-gifted Florsheim black shoes, specifically $145 Lexington Cap Toe Oxfords.Cults impose dress codes that mirror the style and taste of the cult leader.The followers of the Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, also known as Osho, dressed in red and orange robes, often combined with a turtleneck and beads. Heaven’s Gate members wore Nike Decade trainers and black jogging bottoms. Men in the Unification Church, known as Moonies, wore crisp white shirts and pressed slacks. Women wore dresses. They looked as if they were on their way to Sunday School.Like Jim Jones, who convinced or forced over 900 of his followers — including 304 children aged 17 and younger — to die by ingesting a cyanide-laced drink, Trump is aggressively courting our collective suicide.Trump dismisses the climate crisis as a hoax. He unilaterally withdraws from nuclear arms agreements and treaties. He antagonizes nuclear powers, such as Russia and China. He impetuously launches wars. He alienates and insults U.S. allies. He dreams of annexing Greenland and Cuba. He embraces holy crusade against Muslims. He attacks his political opponents as enemies and traitors, belittling them with crude insults. He slashes social programs designed to sustain the vulnerable. He expands an internal security apparatus — masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) goons — to terrorize the public. Cults do not nurture and protect. They subjugate, annihilate and destroy.Trump employs the U.S. military without oversight or constraint. He presides, for this reason, over what the psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton called a “world-destroying cult.” Lifton lists eight characteristics of “world-destroying cults” that implant what he calls “totalistic environments.”These eight characteristics are:1. Milieu control. The total control of communication within the group.2. Loading the language. Using “groupspeak” to censor, edit and shut down criticism or opposing ideas. Followers must mouth the mindless Trump-approved clichés and cult jargon.3. Demand for purity. An us-versus-them view of the world. Those who oppose the group are wrong, unenlightened and evil. They are irredeemable. They are contaminants. They must be eradicated. Any action is justified to protect this purity. The goal of all cult leaders is to widen and make irreconcilable social divisions.4. Confession: The public confession of past wrongs. In the case of Trump supporters, this includes the disavowal, as U.S. Vice President JD Vance and others have done, of past criticism of Trump, with public admission of their former wrong-thinking.5. Mystical manipulation. The belief that those in the group are specially chosen with a higher purpose. Those in Trump’s orbit act as though they are divinely elected. They convince themselves that they are not coerced to embrace Trump’s lies and vulgarities — or repeat cult jargon — but do so voluntarily.6. Doctrine over person. The rewriting and fabrication of personal history to conform to Trump’s interpretation of reality.7. Sacred Science. Trump’s absurdities — global temperatures are declining rather than rising, the noise from wind turbines cause cancer and ingesting disinfectants such as Lysol is an effective treatment for the coronavirus — are presented as grounded in science. This scientific patina means Trump’s ideas apply to everyone. Those who disagree are unscientific.8. Dispensing of existence. Nonmembers are “lesser or unworthy beings.” Meaningful existence means being part of the Trump cult. Those outside the cult are worthless. They do not deserve moral consideration.Trump is no different from past cult leaders, including Marshall Herff Applewhite and Bonnie Lu Nettles — the founders of the Heaven’s Gate cult — the Rev. Sun Myung Moon — who led the Unification Church — Credonia Mwerinde — who led the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God in Uganda — Li Hongzhi — the founder of Falun Gong, and David Koresh, who led the Branch Davidian cult in Waco, Texas.Cult leaders are deeply insecure, which is why they lash out with fury at the slightest criticism. They mask this insecurity with cruelty, hypermasculinity and bombastic grandiosity. They are paranoid, amoral, emotionally crippled and physically abusive. Those around them, including children, are objects to be manipulated for their enrichment, enjoyment and often sadistic entertainment.Cults are characterized by pedophilia and sexual abuse. Those, including Trump, who were frequently in the orbit of pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, replicated the abuse endemic in cults.“People’s Temple children were frequently sexually abused,” writes Margaret Singer in “Cults In Our Midst: The Continuing Fight Against Their Hidden Menace.” “While the group was still in California, teenage girls as young as fifteen had to provide sex for influential people courted by Jones. A supervisor of children at Jonestown had a history of child sexual abuse, and Jones himself assaulted some of the children. If husbands and wives were caught talking privately during a meeting, their daughters were forced to masturbate publicly or to have sex with someone the family didn’t like before the entire Jonestown population, children as well as adults.”Cults, Singer writes, are “a mirror of what is inside the cult leader.”“He has no restraints on him,” she writes of the cult leader:He can make his fantasies and desires come alive in the world he creates around him. He can lead people to do his bidding. He can make the surrounding world really his world. What most cult leaders achieve is akin to the fantasies of a child at play, creating a world with toys and utensils. In that play world, the child feels omnipotent and creates a realm of his own for a few minutes or a few hours. He moves the toy dolls about. They do his bidding. They speak his words back to him. He punishes them any way he wants. He is all-powerful and makes his fantasy come alive. When I see the sand tables and the collections of toys some child therapists have in their offices, I think that a cult leader must look about and place people in his created world much as the child creates on the sand table a world that reflects his or her desires and fantasies. The difference is that the cult leader has actual humans doing his bidding as he makes a world around him that springs from inside his own head.The language of the cult leader is rooted in verbal confusion. Lies, conspiracy theories, outlandish ideas and contradictory statements, often made in the same statement or only minutes apart, paralyzing those attempting to read the cult leader rationally. Absurdism is the point. The cult leader does not take his or her statements seriously. They often deny ever making them, although they are documented. Lies and truth are irrelevant. The cult leader is not seeking to impart information or truth. The cult leader is seeking to appeal to the emotional needs of cult members.“Hitler kept his enemies in a state of constant confusion and diplomatic upheaval,” Joost A.M. Meerloo wrote in “The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control and Menticide.” “They never knew what this unpredictable madman was going to do next. Hitler was never logical, because he knew that that was what he was expected to be. Logic can be met with logic, while illogic cannot – it confuses those who think straight. The Big Lie and monotonously repeated nonsense have more emotional appeal in a cold war than logic and reason. While the enemy is still searching for a reasonable counterargument to the first lie, the totalitarians can assault him with another.”It does not matter how many lies uttered by Trump are meticulously documented. It does not matter that Trump has used the presidency to enrich himself by an estimated $1.4 billion over the last year, according to Forbes. It does not matter that he is inept, lazy and ignorant. It does not matter that he stumbles from one disaster to the next, from tariffs, to the war on Iran.The traditional establishment, whose credibility has been destroyed because of its betrayal of the working class and subservience to the billionaire class and corporations, has little power over Trump’s supporters. Their vitriol only increases his popularity. Political cults are the b*****d children of a failed liberalism. Trump’s approval rating may be at around 40 percent, as of April 20 — according to an average of multiple polls collated by The New York Times — but his base remains unmovable.The Democratic Party, rather than pivot to address the social inequality and abandonment of the working class — which it helped orchestrate — has hit upon tax cuts as a road to regaining power. It will, once again, reduce our social, economic and political crisis to the personality of Trump. It will offer no reforms to rectify our failed democracy. This is a gift to Trump and his followers. By refusing to acknowledge responsibility for inequality and proposing programs to ameliorate the suffering it has caused, Democrats engage in the same kind of magical thinking as Trump cultists.There is no way out of this political dysfunction unless popular movements rise to cripple the machinery of government and commerce on behalf of a betrayed public. But time is running out. Trump and his goons are serious about invalidating or cancelling the midterm elections if they perceive defeat. If that happens, the cult of Trump will be unassailable.Thanks for reading The Chris Hedges Report! This post is public so feel free to share it.PhotosMegaFest 2013 - Day 2DALLAS, TX - AUGUST 30: Pastors Victoria Osteen and Joel Osteen speak during MegaFest at the American Airlines Center on August 30, 2013 in Dallas, Texas. (Photo by Cooper Neill/Getty Images)Pastor John Hagee speaking at Harvest Rock Church, Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena, Tuesday morniPastor John Hagee speaking at Harvest Rock Church, Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena, Tuesday morning, before local pastors to support Israel during the apocalypse. June 13, 2006. (Photo by Ken Hively/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)Donald Trump Campaigns For President In Georgia Ahead Of November ElectionDULUTH, GEORGIA - OCTOBER 23: Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump welcomes Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to the stage at a Turning Point Action campaign rally at the Gas South Arena on October 23, 2024 in Duluth, Georgia. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt Holds Press BriefingWASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 30:White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt speaks during a news briefing at the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House on March 30, 2026 in Washington, DC. Leavitt discussed a wide range of topics, including the conflict in Iran and funding for the Department of Homeland Security. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)President Trump Spends Weekend At Mar-A-Lago Estate In Palm BeachPALM BEACH, FLORIDA - OCTOBER 31: The Trump coat of arms in seen inlaid into the marble of the entrance to the Grand Ballroom at US President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate on October 31, 2025 at Palm Beach, Florida. Trump is spending the weekend at his Mar-A-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. (Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images)President Trump Participates In Southern Boulevard Dedication Ceremony In Palm Beach, FloridaPALM BEACH, FLORIDA - JANUARY 16: Right-wing political activist Laura Loomer attends a Road Dedication Ceremony at Mar-a-Lago on January 16, 2026 in Palm Beach, Florida. Florida State lawmakers approved the name change of a portion of Southern Boulevard to “President Donald J. Trump Boulevard.” (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)Peter Thiel Visits “FOX & Friends”NEW YORK, NEW YORK - AUGUST 09: Fox anchor Pete Hegseth interviews entrepreneur and venture capitalist Peter Thiel during “FOX & Friends” at Fox News Channel Studios on August 09, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by John Lamparski/Getty Images)U.S. President Trump Attends World Economic Forum In DavosDAVOS, SWITZERLAND - JANUARY 21: U.S. President Donald Trump (L) attends a bilateral meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte (not pictured) alongside (L-R) U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting on January 21, 2026 in Davos, Switzerland. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)Portrait of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh Being Taken into Custody(Original Caption) USA: Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, Indian guru arrested for immigration violations.TO GO WITH AFP STORY BY KAREN LOWE Artists and desLOS ANGELES, UNITED STATES: TO GO WITH AFP STORY BY KAREN LOWE Artists and designers from the Art and Commerce Gallery finish the settings for the show “Applesauce and Pudding” in downtown Los Angeles 19 April. (Photo credit should read HECTOR MATA/AFP via Getty Images)Reverend Moon Marrying CouplesUnification Church leader Reverend Sun Myung Moon and his wife marry 2,075 pairs of his followers at Madison Square Garden on New Years Day, 19Portrait Of Jim JonesPortrait of American cult leader and founder of the People’s Temple (formally known as the Peoples Temple of the Disciples of Christ) Jim Jones (1931 - 1978) as he poses in his office, San Francisco, California, July 3, 1976. (Photo by Janet Fries/Getty Images)US-IMMIGRATION-ICE-SHOOTINGUS Border Patrol agents stand guard at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on January 8, 2026. A US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent shot and killed an American woman on the streets of Minneapolis January 7, leading to huge protests and outrage from local leaders who rejected White House claims she was a domestic terrorist. The woman, identified in local media as 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, was hit at point blank range as she apparently tried to drive away from agents who were crowding around her car, which they said was blocking their way. (Photo by CHARLY TRIBALLEAU / AFP via Getty Images)Marshall Herff Applewhite and Bonnie Lu NettlesMarshall Herff Applewhite and Bonnie Lu Trusdale Nettles are arrested by local police on August 28, 1974. Applewhite is charged with auto theft and Nettles is charged with the fraudulent use of credit cards. Rev. Sun Myung Moon Speaks387929 01: Reverend Sun Myung Moon, left, Founder of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, and his wife Hak Ja Han Moon wave during a meeting with 2,500 clergy April 16, 2001 in Washington, DC. Rev. Moon is on a national unity tour. (Photo by Alex Wong/Newsmakers)Trump, Knauss, Epstein, & Maxwell At Mar-A-LagoFrom left, American real estate developer Donald Trump and his girlfriend (and future wife), former model Melania Knauss, financier (and future convicted sex offender) Jeffrey Epstein, and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell pose together at the Mar-a-Lago club, Palm Beach, Florida, February 12, 2000. (Photo by Davidoff Studios/Getty Images)Rep. Cori Bush Sleeps Outside Capitol Building In Push To Extend Federal Eviction MoratoriumWASHINGTON, DC - AUGUST 03: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) outside the House of Representatives while speaking to members of the press on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Aug. 3, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)Columbia University Issues Deadline For Gaza Encampment To Vacate CampusNEW YORK, NEW YORK - APRIL 30: Demonstrators supporting Palestinians in Gaza barricade themselves inside Hamilton Hall, an academic building which has been occupied in past student movements, on April 30, 2024 in New York City.(Photo by Alex Kent/Getty Images) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

This article is read by Eunice Wong. You can find her work at www.eunicewong.actor.Text originally published January 19, 2026.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Full TextNEW YORK: “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” like all great pieces of art, takes a straightforward story — the battle to save the life of a 6-year-old girl, Hind Rajab, trapped in a car in Gaza surrounded by murdered family members — and elevates it to an archetype. This story is as old as time. It lies at the heart of all religious and moral literature. It pits the cruelty and heartlessness of power against the empathy and compassion of the powerless. It asks us what kind of a life we want to live. Is it a life defined by hubris, domination and violence? Or is it a life defined by compassion, justice and self-sacrifice? These are moral, not political questions.To nurture, preserve and protect the lives of those demonized in war is to be branded a traitor — a subversive, the enemy. It is to risk death. War, and especially genocide, is the quintessential expression of what Sigmund Freud called Thanatos, the death instinct that drives humans towards the destructions of others and themselves. Those who fight for Eros, for life, are eliminated. This schism is at the core of the film. It is the struggle between good and evil, light and dark. And, as so often happens in war, Thanatos prevails. This almost certain defeat gives unquestioned nobility to those who defy the forces of death.Israel and its supporters do not want the outside world to see the bureaucratic machinery that perpetuates its mass slaughter, but I suspect, even more, it does not want the world to see the humanity of the Palestinians who resist.It was hard to find a screening. I traveled for over an hour to see it at the Film Forum in New York City, which had just one showing at 4:45 in the afternoon. I understood why. Despite critical acclaim, an Oscar-nominated director and industry heavyweights like Brad Pitt and Joaquin Phoenix behind it, the film — directed by Tunisian filmmaker, Kaouther Ben Hania — faced major difficulties in getting an American distributor — reportedly out of “fear” and disagreement “with the film’s politics,” according to a report by Deadline.It is not only devastating, not only a cinematic masterpiece, but it rips back all the layers of rhetoric and propaganda to expose the fundamental struggle between the Israeli occupier and the occupied. The struggle is, yes, a conflict about the theft of Palestinian land. It is, as well, a conflict about a violent and lethal occupation, one that has become full-blown genocide in Gaza. But it is also the ancient struggle between the forces of life and death.Anyone who follows Israel’s murderous rampage in Gaza knows the story of Hind Rajab. On Jan. 29, 2024, the Israeli army ordered the evacuation of the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood in Gaza. Six members of the Hamadeh family, along with their 6-year-old niece, Hind, crammed themselves into a black Kia and attempted to flee. They did not get far. An Israeli tank fired on the car, killing everyone except Hind and her 15-year-old cousin, Layan. Layan was able to contact the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) on her dead father’s phone.“They are shooting at us. The tank is next to me,” Layan tells the PRCS dispatcher, Omar Alqam, an emergency medical worker based in Ramallah.“Are you hiding?” asks Omar, played by Palestinian actor Motaz Malhees.“Yes, in the car, we’re in the car, the tank is right next to us,” Layan says.“You are inside the car?” Omar asks.There is the sound of gunfire — 62 shots in six seconds — as Layan screams.The line goes dead.“Hello? Hello?” Omar says.There is no answer.The PRCS immediately calls back.Hind picks up the phone. She tells Omar that Layan has been shot and everyone in the car is asleep. Hind is trapped in the vehicle surrounded by her dead relatives, who are covered in blood.It is raining.For the next three hours, frantic emergency workers seek permission from Israeli authorities to approve a route for an ambulance — which is eight minutes away — to rescue the girl. The film focuses on the frustrations, desperation and hopes of the rescue workers who try to move a boulder up the Sisyphean hill of Israeli occupation.Rather than recreating the horror of a small, terrified girl trapped in a car with the blood-soaked bodies of her dead relatives, the film uses the recording of Hind’s voice — shown on the screen as a spectrogram — to tell the story.The focus is on the Red Crescent workers who try to reassure and comfort Hind. They plead desperately with the Red Cross and later the Palestinian Ministry of Health, who act as intermediaries with a unit from the Israeli Defense Ministry known as Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), for a safe passage for the ambulance into an area designated a restricted zone. The phone line with Hind repeatedly cuts. Red Crescent workers are frantic, fearing the worst.The frustration and trauma of the powerless rescue workers, living under the humiliating and oppressive boot of Israeli occupation, is overwhelming.The emergency workers release audio from the calls and photographs of Hind on social media, with English subtitles, in hopes of eliciting international outrage. But, as is true for the genocide, Western governments are indifferent to the slaughter of Palestinians, including Palestinian children.While Hind is on the line, we hear bursts of gunfire.Rana al-Faqih, another dispatcher — played by Palestinian-Canadian actor Saja Kilani — assures Hind she will be rescued. She helps her recite verses from the Quran in an attempt to comfort the girl.“I’m so scared,” Hind says. “Please come, come take me.”The car where Hind is sheltering is near Fares petrol station. The sun sets. Gaza City is shrouded in darkness.“I’m scared of the dark,” Hind tells Rana.“Is there gunfire around you?” Rana asks.“Yes,” Hind says. “Come get me, please.”After three hours, the IDF gives paramedics permission to rescue Hind, with a map of a route the ambulance must take.“Hind!” Omar announces on the phone. “In one minute, the car will reach you. It’s just moving slowly.”The ambulance’s paramedics, Ahmed al-Madhoun and Yusuf Zeino, approach the area. They get within 162 feet of the vehicle.“Can you see the car?” a dispatcher asks.“I can’t see a thing here,” one paramedic responds.“Do you have your siren and flashing lights on?” the dispatcher asks.“Just the lights, not the siren…oh there it is — ”There is the sudden sound of gunfire and explosions.The paramedics can no longer be reached.Omar asks Hind if she heard an explosion. She responds that she has.“I’m so scared, please come,” Hind repeatedly pleads.There is a long period of silence.“Why aren’t you speaking?” Rana asks Hind.“I’m not speaking because my mouth is bleeding,” Hind says.“Wipe it with your hand and then tell me if you’re still bleeding,” Rana says.“I don’t want to get my shirt dirty, so I don’t trouble my mom,” Hind replies.“It’s okay, wipe your mouth and I’ll wash it, my sweetheart,” Rana tells her.“Okay,” Hind says.Her voice fades away for the final time.Wissam, Hind’s mother, waits anxiously at the hospital. She desperately searches every incoming ambulance for her daughter.The Israelis seal off Tel al-Hawa. Palestinians are unable to reach the car until 12 days later. When they finally enter the area, they find the burned-out shell of the ambulance that was sent to rescue Hind.By that time, Israel has destroyed 80 ambulances, usually killing their crews.Further up the street from the ambulance, they find Hind’s decomposed body in the back of the car with her relatives.There are 335 bullet holes in the car and the windows are blown out.What were Hind’s final thoughts? Did she see the flashing lights of the ambulance? Did she believe she would be rescued? Did she watch the tank shells rip apart the ambulance and see the paramedics die? Did she see the Israeli machine guns before they opened fire on her? Did she cry out in pain? Did she linger, bloodied and wounded, like her cousin Layan? Did she realize she would not be saved? Did she utter any final words, alone, in the darkness and horror?“The Voice of Hind Rajab” reminds us that indifference is complicity. It mocks the rhetoric used to dehumanize Palestinians. It unmasks the petty and deadly tyranny of military occupation. It illustrates the powerlessness, indignity and savage violence of occupation. It exposes the fundamental nature of war and genocide. It is a testament to what is good and what is evil.It asks us to make a choice.Thanks for reading The Chris Hedges Report! This post is public so feel free to share it.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.PhotosIsrael Continues Gaza City Offensive As UN Confirms FamineGAZA BORDER, ISRAEL - AUGUST 22: IDF soldiers prepare tanks on August 22, 2025 in Gaza border, Israel. Today, the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) declared Phase 5 food insecurity — its highest and most severe level — in parts of Gaza including Gaza City. Earlier this week, Israel launched a new ground offensive in an effort to capture and occupy all of Gaza City. (Photo by Elke Scholiers/Getty Images)TOPSHOT-PALESTINIAN-GAZA-DAILY LIFETOPSHOT - A Palestinian boy plays with a donkey in the sea at sunset in Gaza City on July 3, 2017. (Photo by MAHMUD HAMS / AFP) (Photo by MAHMUD HAMS/AFP via Getty Images)West Bank BarrierPalestinian youth play football next to a section of Israel’s separation barrier, in the west bank village of Abu Dis, in the outskirts of Jerusalem Monday June 12, 2006. From June 9 to July 9, the 32-nation World Cup tournament will be held in 12 German cities. (Photo by Lior Mizrahi/Getty Images)Film Forumhttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Film_Forum_(48072659326).jpgPEOPLE’s Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards GalaLOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - JANUARY 19: Joaquin Phoenix (L) and Brad Pitt attend PEOPLE’s Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards Gala at The Shrine Auditorium on January 19, 2020 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by John Shearer/Getty Images for PEOPLE)2025 Winners Photocall - The 82nd Venice International Film FestivalVENICE, ITALY - SEPTEMBER 06: Kaouther Ben Hania poses with the Grand Jury Prize for “The Voice of Hind Rajab” during the winners photocall at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival on September 06, 2025 in Venice, Italy. (Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)The flour shortage is causing long queues in front of bakeries in Gaza CityGAZA CITY, PALESTINE - APRIL 08: Palestinians, including children, wait in line in front of a bakery to buy bread in the Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City, Palestine on April 08, 2026. Palestinians are forced to wait in long queues every day to buy bread due to severe shortages of fuel, gas, and flour caused by imposed restrictions, as well as limitations on the entry of humanitarian aid. (Photo by Saeed M. M. T. Jaras/Anadolu via Getty Images)Canadian soldiers practice night-time shKandahar, AFGHANISTAN: Canadian soldiers practice night-time shooting with Night Vision Goggles at Canada’s Provincial Reconstruction Team base in Kandahar, 26 April 2006. AFP PHOTO / JOHN D MCHUGH (Photo credit should read JOHN D MCHUGH/AFP via Getty Images)98th Oscars - ArrivalsHOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA - MARCH 15: Saja Kilani attends the 98th Oscars at Dolby Theatre on March 15, 2026 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Mike Coppola/Getty Images)Cold weather conditions negatively affect Palestinians in GazaGAZA CITY, GAZA - FEBRUARY 13: A general view of heavily damaged and partially collapsed buildings as Palestinians, who continue to life among the collapsed buildings after the ceasefire, try to warm themselves by the fires they lit and protect themselves from the cold in Sheikh Ridvan neighborhood of Gaza City, Gaza on February 13, 2025. The cold weather and harsh conditions in the region negatively affect the Palestinian residents of the area. (Photo by Anas Zeyad Fteha/Anadolu via Getty Images)TOPSHOT-PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICTTOPSHOT - An ambulance drives down a road in the Al-Saftawi neighborhood, west of Jabalia city in the northern Gaza Strip on December 10, 2025. (Photo by BASHAR TALEB / AFP via Getty Images)6-year-old Gazan child found dead after days of uncertaintyGAZA CITY, GAZA - FEBRUARY 10: Palestinians look at the damaged car in which 6-year-old Hind Rajab and five members of her family died, whom Israeli forces targeted 12 days ago in Tel al-Hawa neighborhood of Gaza City, Gaza on February 10, 2024. (Photo by Dawoud Abo Alkas/Anadolu via Getty Images)Daily struggle of Gazans with power outagesGAZA CITY, GAZA - OCTOBER 13: Palestinians struggle with power outages due to Israeli attacks that destroyed the infrastructure in Gaza City, Gaza on October 13, 2024. (Photo by Hassan Jedi/Anadolu via Getty Images) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

This article is read by Eunice Wong. You can find her work at www.eunicewong.actor.Text originally published January 19, 2026.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Full TextThe war on Iran and the obliteration of Gaza is the beginning. Welcome to the new world order. The age of technologically-advanced barbarism. There are no rules for the strong, only for the weak. Oppose the strong, refuse to bow to its capricious demands and you are showered with missiles and bombs.Hospitals, elementary schools, universities and apartment complexes are reduced to rubble. Doctors, students, journalists, poets, writers, scientists, artists and political leaders — including the heads of negotiating teams — are murdered in the tens of thousands by missiles and killer drones.Resources – as the Venezuelans know – are openly stolen. Food, water and medicine, as in Palestine, are weaponized.Let them eat dirt.International bodies such as the United Nations are pantomime, useless appendages of another age. The sanctity of individual rights, open borders and international law have vanished. The most depraved leaders of human history, those who reduced cities to ashes, herded captive populations to execution sites and littered lands they occupied with mass graves and corpses, have returned with a vengeance.They spew the same hypermasculine tropes. They spew the same vile, racist cant. They spew the same Manichaean vision of good and evil, black and white. They spew the same infantile language of total dominance and unrestrained violence.Killer clowns. Buffoons. Idiots. They have seized the levers of power to carry out their demented and cartoonish visions as they pillage the state for their own enrichment.“After witnessing savage mass murder over several months, with the knowledge that it was conceived, executed and endorsed by people much like themselves, who presented it as a collective necessity, legitimate and even humane, millions now feel less at home in the world,” writes Pankaj Mishra in “The World After Gaza.” “The shock of this renewed exposure to a peculiarly modern evil – the evil done in the pre-modern era only by psychopathic individuals and unleashed in the last century by rulers and citizens of rich and supposedly civilized societies – cannot be overstated. Nor can the moral abyss we confront.”The subjugated are property, commodities to exploit for profit or pleasure. The Epstein Files expose the sickness and heartlessness of the ruling class. Liberals. Conservatives. University presidents. Academics. Philanthropists. Wall Street titans. Celebrities. Democrats. Republicans.They wallow in unbridled hedonism. They go to private schools and have private health care. They are cocooned in self-referential bubbles by sycophants, publicists, financial advisers, lawyers, servants, chauffeurs, self-help gurus, plastic surgeons and personal trainers. They reside in heavily guarded estates and vacation on private islands. They travel on private jets and gargantuan yachts. They exist in another reality, what the Wall Street Journal reporter Robert Frank dubs the world of “Richistan,” a world of private Xanadus where they hold Nero-like bacchanalias, make their perfidious deals, amass their billions and cast aside those they use, including children, as if they are refuse. No one in this magic circle is accountable. No sin too depraved. They are human parasites. They disembowel the state for personal profit. They terrorize the “lesser breeds of the earth.” They shut down the last, anemic vestiges of our open society.“There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life,” as George Orwell writes in “1984.” “All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always— do not forget this, Winston— always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless.If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever.”The law, despite a few valiant efforts by a handful of judges — who will soon be purged — is an instrument of repression. The judiciary exists to stage show trials. I spent a lot of time in the London courts covering the Dickensian farce during the persecution of Julian Assange. A Lubyanka-on-the-Thames. Our courts are no better. Our Department of Justice is a vengeance machine.Masked, armed goons flood the streets of the United States and murder civilians, including citizens. The ruling mandarins are spending billions to convert warehouses into detention centers and concentration camps. They insist they will only house the undocumented, the criminals, but our global ruling class lies like it breathes. In their eyes, we are vermin, either blindly and unquestionably obedient or criminals. There is nothing in between.These concentration camps, where there is no due process and people are disappeared, are designed for us. And by us, I mean the citizens of this dead republic. Yet we watch, stupefied, disbelieving, passively waiting for our own enslavement.It won’t be long.The savagery in Iran, Lebanon and Gaza is the same savagery we face at home. Those carrying out the genocide, mass slaughter and unprovoked war on Iran are the same people dismantling our democratic institutions.The social anthropologist Arjun Appadurai calls what is happening “a vast worldwide Malthusian correction” that is “geared to preparing the world for the winners of globalization, minus the inconvenient noise of its losers.”Oh, the critics say, don’t be so bleak. Don’t be so negative. Where is the hope? Really, it’s not that bad.If you believe this you are part of the problem, an unwitting cog in the machinery of our rapidly consolidating fascist state.Reality will eventually implode these “hopeful” fantasies, but by then it will be too late.True despair is not a result of accurately reading reality. True despair comes from surrendering, either through fantasy or apathy, to malignant power. True despair is powerlessness. And resistance, meaningful resistance, even if it is almost certainly doomed, is empowerment. It confers self-worth. It confers dignity. It confers agency. It is the only action that allows us to use the word hope.The Iranians, Lebanese and Palestinians know there is no appeasing these monsters. The global elites believe nothing. They feel nothing. They cannot be trusted. They exhibit the core traits of all psychopaths — superficial charm, grandiosity and self-importance, a need for constant stimulation, a penchant for lying, deception, manipulation and the inability to feel remorse or guilt. They disdain as weakness the virtues of empathy, honesty, compassion and self-sacrifice. They live by the creed of Me. Me. Me.“The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane,” Erich Fromm writes in “The Sane Society.”We have witnessed evil for nearly three years in Gaza. We watch it now in Lebanon and Iran. We see this evil excused or masked by political leaders and the media.The New York Times, in a page out of Orwell, sent an internal memo telling reporters and editors to eschew the terms “refugee camps, “occupied territory,” “ethnic cleansing” and, of course, “genocide” when writing about Gaza. Those who name and denounce this evil are smeared, blacklisted and purged from university campuses and the public sphere. They are arrested and deported. A deadening silence is descending upon us, the silence of all authoritarian states. Fail to do your duty, fail to cheerlead the war on Iran, and see your broadcasting license revoked, as the Chair of the F.C.C. Brendan Carr has proposed.We have enemies. They are not in Palestine. They are not in Lebanon. They are not in Iran. They are here. Among us. They dictate our lives. They are traitors to our ideals. They are traitors to our country. They envision a world of slaves and masters. Gaza is only the start. There are no internal mechanisms for reform. We can obstruct or surrender.Those are the only choices left.Photos WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange Leaves Court In Saipan As A Free ManSAIPAN, NORTHERN MARIANA ISLANDS - JUNE 26: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange leaves the United States Courthouse on June 26, 2024 in Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands. Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, appeared before the U.S. District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands in Saipan on Wednesday for a change of plea hearing. (Photo by Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)Federal Agents Descend On Minneapolis For Immigration Enforcement OperationsMINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA - JANUARY 28: ICE agents leave a residence after knocking on the door on January 28, 2026 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security continues its immigration enforcement operations after two high-profile killings by federal agents in recent weeks. (Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)Detainees At Krome Detention CenterMIAMI, FLORIDA - JULY 4: In an aerial view from a helicopter, detainees are seen at Krome Detention Center run by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement on July 4, 2025 in Miami, Florida. U.S. President Donald Trump was present at the opening of the nearby “Alligator Alcatraz”, a 5,000-bed facility, located at an abandoned airfield in the Everglades wetlands, part of his expansion of undocumented migrant deportations. (Photo by Alon Skuy/Getty Images)President Trump Departs Washington For Weekend In FloridaWASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 20: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters as he and Secretary of State Marco Rubio (L) depart the White House on their way to Florida on March 20, 2026 in Washington, DC. Trump is spending the weekend at his private Mar-a-Lago Club. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)TOPSHOT-PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-GAZA-CONFLICTTOPSHOT - Palestinians walk along Al-Rashid road toward Gaza City from Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip on October 10, 2025. (Photo by Bashar TALEB / AFP via Getty Images)FCC Officials Testify Before House Energy And Commerce CommitteeWASHINGTON, DC - DECEMBER 05: Federal Communication Commission Commissioner Brendan Carr testifies before the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Communications and Technology Subcommittee in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill December 05, 2019 in Washington, DC. All five of the FCC commissioners testified before the subcommittee, which is tasked with oversight of the commission. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)Columbia University Issues Deadline For Gaza Encampment To Vacate CampusNEW YORK, NEW YORK - APRIL 29: Demonstrators from the pro-Palestine encampment on Columbia’s Campus show a banner as they barricade themselves inside Hamilton Hall, they barricade themselves inside Hamilton Hall, an academic building which has been occupied in past student movements,, and name it after a Palestinian child allegedly killed by the Israeli military on Tuesday, April 30, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Alex Kent/Getty Images) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

This article is read by Eunice Wong. You can find her work at www.eunicewong.actor.Text originally published January 19, 2026.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Full Text:Donald Trump’s threat to cancel the midterm elections is not a feign. He attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 election and said he would not accept the outcome of the 2024 election if he lost. He ruminates about defying the Constitution to serve a third term. He is determined to retain absolute control — buttressed by an obsequious Republican majority — in Congress. He fears, if he loses control of Congress, impeachment. He fears impediments to the rapid reconfiguration of America as an authoritarian state. He fears losing the monuments he is building to himself — his name emblazoned on federal buildings, including the Kennedy Center, his scrapping of free entry to National Parks on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and replacing it with his own birthday, his seizure of Greenland and who knows, maybe Canada, his ability to put cities, such as Minneapolis, under siege and snatch legal residents off the streets.Dictators love elections as long as they are fixed. The dictatorships I covered in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans staged highly choreographed election spectacles. These spectacles were a cynical prop whose outcome was preordained. They were used to legitimize iron control over a captive population, mask the enrichment of the dictator, his family and his inner circle, criminalize all dissent and ban opposition political parties in the name of “the will of the people.”When Saddam Hussein held a presidential referendum in Oct. 1995, the only question on the ballot was “Do you approve of President Saddam Hussein being the President of the Republic?” Voters marked “yes” or “no.” The official results saw Hussein win 99.96 percent of some 8.4 million votes cast. Turnout was reported at 99.47 percent. His counterpart in Egypt, the former general Hosni Mubarak, in 2005 was re-elected for a fifth consecutive six-year term with a more modest mandate of 88.6 percent of the vote. My less than reverential coverage of the elections held in Syria in 1991, where there was only one candidate on the ballot, President Hafez al-Assad, who reportedly got 99.9 percent of the vote, saw me banned from the country.These spectacles are the model, I expect, for what comes next, unless Trump gets his deepest wish, which is to emulate Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia — whose security detail assassinated my colleague and friend Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul — and hold no elections at all.Wannabe president-for-life Trump floats the idea of canceling the 2026 midterm elections, telling Reuters that, “when you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election.” When President Volodymyr Zelensky informed Trump elections were not held in Ukraine because of the war, Trump gushed, “So you mean if we happen to be in a war with somebody, no more elections? Oh, that’s good.”Trump told The New York Times he regrets not directing the National Guard to seize voting machines after the 2020 election. He wants to abolish mail-in voting, along with voting machines and tabulators, which allow boards of elections to post results on election night. Better to slow the process down and like the Chicago political machine under Mayor Richard J. Daley, stuff boxes with ballots after the polls close to ensure victory.Trump’s administration is prohibiting voter registration drives at naturalization centers. It is imposing nation-wide restrictive voter ID laws. It is reducing the hours that federal employees have to leave work and vote. In Texas, the new redistricting map blatantly disenfranchises Black and Latino voters, a move upheld by the Supreme Court. It is expected to eradicate five Congressional Democratic seats.Our money-drenched elections, coupled with aggressive gerrymandering, mean few races for Congress are competitive. Recent redistricting has, so far, all but guaranteed the Republicans another nine seats in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, and Ohio and six for the Democrats, five in California and one in Utah. Republicans intend to carry out more redistricting in Florida and Democrats plan a redistricting ballot initiative in Virginia. If the Supreme Court continues to gut the Voting Rights Act, then Republican redistricting will explode, possibly cementing into place a Republican victory whether the majority of voters want it or not. No one can call redistricting democratic.The Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United took from us any real input into elections. Citizens United permitted unlimited money from corporations and wealthy individuals to rig the election process in the name of protected speech under the First Amendment. It ruled that heavily financed and organized lobbying by large corporations is an application of the people’s right to petition their government.Our most basic rights, including the freedom from wholesale government surveillance, have been steadily revoked by judicial and legislative fiat.The “consent of the governed” is a cruel joke.There are few substantial differences between the Democrats and Republicans. They exist to provide the illusion of representative democracy. The Democrats and their liberal apologists adopt tolerant positions on issues regarding race, religion, immigration, women’s rights and sexual identity, and pretend this is politics. The right wing uses those on the margins of society — especially immigrants and the phantom “radical left” — as scapegoats. But on all the major issues — war, trade deals, austerity, militarized police, the vast carceral state and deindustrialization — they are in lockstep.“One cannot point to any national institution[s] that can accurately be described as democratic,” the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin noted in his book “Democracy Incorporated,” “surely not in the highly managed, money-saturated elections, the lobby-infested Congress, the imperial presidency, the class-biased judicial and penal system, or, least of all, the media.”Wolin called our system of governance “inverted totalitarianism.” It paid outward fealty to the façade of electoral politics, the Constitution, civil liberties, freedom of the press, the independence of the judiciary, and the iconography, traditions and language of American patriotism, while it allowed corporations and oligarchs to effectively seize all of the mechanisms of power to render the citizen impotent.The emptiness of the political landscape under “inverted totalitarianism” saw politics merge with entertainment. It fostered a ceaseless political burlesque, a politics without politics. The subject of empire, along with unregulated corporate power, endless war, poverty and social inequality, became taboo.These political spectacles create manufactured political personalities, Trump’s fictitious persona, a product of “The Apprentice.” They thrive on empty rhetoric, sophisticated public relations, slick advertising, propaganda and the constant use of focus groups and opinion polls to loop back to voters what they want to hear. The vapid, issueless and celebrity-driven presidential campaign of Kamala Harris was a sterling example of this political performance art.The assault on democracy, carried out by the two ruling parties, set the stage for Trump. They emasculated our democratic institutions, stripped us of our most basic rights and cemented into place the machinery of authoritarian control, including the imperial presidency. All Trump had to do was flick the switch.The indiscriminate police violence familiar in poor urban communities, where militarized police serve as judge, jury and executioner, long ago handed the state the power to “legally” harass and kill citizens with impunity. It spawned the largest prison population in the world. This evisceration of civil liberties and due process has now been turned on the rest of us. Trump did not initiate it. He expanded it. Terror is the point.Trump, like all dictators, is intoxicated by militarism. He is calling for the Pentagon’s budget to be raised from $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion. Congress, in passing Trump’s One Big Beautiful Act, has allocated more than $170 billion for border and interior enforcement, including $75 billion for ICE over the next four years. That is more than the yearly budget for all local and state law enforcement agencies combined.“When a constitutionally limited government utilizes weapons of horrendous destructive power, subsidizes their development, and becomes the world’s largest arms dealer,” Wolin writes, “the Constitution is conscripted to serve as power’s apprentice rather than its conscience.”He goes on:That the patriotic citizen unswervingly supports the military and its huge budget means that conservatives have succeeded in persuading the public that the military is distinct from government. Thus, the most substantial element of state power is removed from public debate. Similarly, in his/her new status as imperial citizen the believer remains contemptuous of bureaucracy yet does not hesitate to obey the directives issued by the Department of Homeland Security, the largest and most intrusive governmental department in the history of the nation. Identification with militarism and patriotism, along with the images of American might projected by the media, serves to make the individual citizen feel stronger, thereby compensating for the feelings of weakness visited by the economy upon an overworked, exhausted, and insecure labor force.The Democrats in the next election — if there is one — will offer up least-worst alternatives while doing little or nothing to thwart the march toward authoritarianism. They will remain hostage to the demands of corporate lobbyists and oligarchs. The party, which stands for nothing and fights for nothing, could well hand Trump a victory in the midterms. But Trump does not want to take that chance.Trump and his minions are energetically closing the last exit built into the system that prevents absolute dictatorship. They intend to orchestrate the sham elections familiar in all dictatorships, or abolish them. They are not joking. This will be the death blow to the American experiment. There will be no going back. We will become a police state. Our freedoms, already under heavy assault, will be extinguished. At that point, only mass mobilizations and strikes will thwart the solidification of the dictatorship. And such actions, as we see in Minneapolis, will be greeted with lethal state repression.The subverting of the next elections will offer two stark choices to Trump’s most vocal opponents. Exile or arrest and imprisonment at the hands of ICE thugs.Resistance to the beast, as in all dictatorships, will come at a very high cost.Thanks for reading The Chris Hedges Report! This post is public so feel free to share it.PhotosUS-POLITICS-ELECTION-TRUMPTrump supporters clash with police and security forces as people try to storm the US Capitol Building in Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021. Demonstrators breeched security and entered the Capitol as Congress debated the a 2020 presidential election Electoral Vote Certification. (Photo by Joseph Prezioso / AFP) (Photo by JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images)US-POLITICS-CULTUREA person and a dog walk in front of the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC on January 10, 2026. The Washington National Opera announced on January 9 that it would move its performances from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts which has been its home since 1971. Artists have cancelled performances at Washington’s premier performing arts center to protest its renaming to include US President Donald Trump. (Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP via Getty Images)ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents and protesters, Minneapolis, January 2026MINNEAPOLIS, MN. - JANUARY 2026: A protester was pinned to the ground by federal agents and a chemical irritant was sprayed directly into his face, Wednesday, January 21, 2026, in south Minneapolis, Minn. Protesters gathered in the area after federal agents detained two individuals, according to witnesses. (Photo by Richard Tsong-Taatarii/The Minnesota Star Tribune via Getty Images)Arab League Summit in Amman, Jordan on November 11, 1987.JORDAN - NOVEMBER 11: Saddam Hussein in Amman, Jordan on November 11, 1987. (Photo by Chip HIRES/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)President Mubarak At The White HouseView of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in the White House’s Oval Office, Washington DC, September 29, 1995. (Photo by Mark Reinstein/Corbis via Getty Images)SYRIA-EGYPTSyrian President Hafez al-Assad (R) welcomes Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak at Damascus airport 22 January 2000. Mubarak is visiting the Syrian capital for talks after the indefinite postponement of high-level peace negotiations between Syria and Israel. (Photo by SANA / AFP) (Photo by -/SANA/AFP via Getty Images)US-SAUDI ARABIA-DIPLOMACY-DEFENSE-ECONOMYUS President Donald Trump greets Crown Prince and Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman on the South Lawn at the White House in Washington, DC on November 18, 2025. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)TOPSHOT-BAHRAIN-MEDIA-ALARAB-TVTOPSHOT - A general manager of Alarab TV, Jamal Khashoggi, looks on during a press conference in the Bahraini capital Manama, on December 15, 2014. The pan-Arab satellite news broadcaster owned by billionaire Saudi businessman Alwaleed bin Talal will go on air February 1, promising to “break the mould” in a crowded field.AFP PHOTO/ MOHAMMED AL-SHAIKH (Photo by MOHAMMED AL-SHAIKH / AFP) (Photo by MOHAMMED AL-SHAIKH/AFP via Getty Images)President Trump Hosts Ukrainian President Zelenskyy At The White HouseWASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 28: (L-R) U.S. President Donald Trump greets Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as he arrives at the White House on February 28, 2025 in Washington, DC. Trump and Zelensky are meeting today to sign a preliminary agreement on sharing Ukraine’s mineral resources that Trump says will allow America to recoup aid provided to Kyiv while supporting Ukraine’s economy. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)Chicago Mayor Richard Daley Speaking(Original Caption) Chicago’s Democratic Mayor appears glum as he makes a point during news conference 11/6 after Richard Nixon won the race for President. Illinois, the state where Nixon lost his first presidential bid, gave him the victory margin this time. Daley, however retained his power base as Democrats swept to victory in all Cook County races.President Biden Holds Campaign Rally In PhiladelphiaPHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA - MAY 29: U.S. President Joe Biden and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris wave to members of the audience after speaking at a campaign rally at Girard College on May 29, 2024 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Biden and Harris are using today’s rally to launch a nationwide campaign to court black voters, a group that has traditionally come out in favor of Biden, but their support is projected lower than it was in 2020. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)VP Vance And Defense Secretary Hegseth Visit Federal Law Enforcement Officers Patrolling At D.C.’s Union StationWASHINGTON, DC - AUGUST 20: White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speak with members of the National Guard during a visit to Union Station on August 20, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Al Drago-Pool/Getty Images)TOPSHOT-US-POLITICS-CARTERTOPSHOT - Former US President Barack Obama speaks with President-elect Donald Trump before the State Funeral Service for former US President Jimmy Carter at the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, DC, on January 9, 2025. (Photo by ROBERTO SCHMIDT / AFP) (Photo by ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP via Getty Images)Megan Thee Stallion Attends Kamala Harris Campaign Rally In AtlantaATLANTA, GEORGIA - JULY 30: Megan Thee Stallion performs onstage at a campaign rally for Democratic presidential candidate, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris at the Georgia State Convocation Center on July 30, 2024 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Julia Beverly/Getty Images)U.S. Forces Move Through Southern IraqSAFWAN, IRAQ - MARCH 21: (NEWSWEEK AND U.S. NEWS OUT UNTIL 4/7/03) U.S. Marine Major Bull Gurfein pulls down a poster of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein March 21, 2003 in Safwan, Iraq. Chaos reigned in southern Iraq as coalition troops continued their offensive to remove Iraq’s leader from power. (Photo by Chris Hondros/Getty Images)Donald Trump Interviews Candidates for NBC’s “The Apprentice” Season FiveDonald Trump during Donald Trump Interviews Candidates for NBC’s “The Apprentice” Season Five at Trump Tower in New York City, New York, United States. (Photo by Daniel J. Barry/WireImage)Kamala Harris Holds Rally In Houston, Texas Highlighting Support For Reproductive RightsHOUSTON, TEXAS - OCTOBER 25: Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris embraces singer Beyoncé at a campaign rally on October 25, 2024 in Houston, Texas. Harris is campaigning in Texas holding a rally supporting reproductive rights with recording artists Beyoncé and Willie Nelson. (Photo by Jordan Vonderhaar/Getty Images)SWAT Officer Killed During Violent Standoff In Los Angeles SuburbLOS ANGELES - FEBRUARY 7: LAPD officers wait along Vanowen Street a block from a suspect’s home on Welby Street east of Oakdale Avenue on February 7, 2008 in the Winnetka neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Al Seib-Pool/Getty Images)Bald Prison Inmates Marching in YardA group of prison inmates start boot camp by marching in line at the Sumter County Correctional Institution. | Location: Bushnell, Florida, USA.Protestors Rally Outside ICE Detention Facility In Newark, NJNEWARK, NEW JERSEY - JUNE 13: A Federal agent threatens to Taser protestors during a protest over federal immigration enforcement raids and detainees transfer at Delaney Hall Detention Facility on June 13, 2025 in Newark, New Jersey. Protests have continued outside the facility where four detainees escaped after allegedly breaking through a wall. (Photo by Andres Kudacki/Getty Images)TOPSHOT-US-ANNIVERSARY-ATTACK-9/11-TRUMPTOPSHOT - Former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump (L) and US Senator from Ohio and Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance attend a remembrance ceremony on the 23rd anniversary of the September 11 terror attack on the World Trade Center at Ground Zero, in New York City on September 11, 2024. (Photo by Adam GRAY / AFP) (Photo by ADAM GRAY/AFP via Getty Images)NYC National Anti-ICE ProtestDemonstrators march down Canal Street in New York City, United States, on January 30, 2026. Many protests across the country take place as part of the National Day of Action. Many participants stand in solidarity with those in Minneapolis and other cities, striking against recent actions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They call for a National Shutdown with the slogan ‘’No work, no school, no shopping.’‘ Many labor unions and students are part of this strike, calling to ‘’shut down the economy,’‘ sources say. (Photo by Matthew Hoen/NurPhoto via Getty Images)Federal Agents Descend On Minneapolis For Immigration Enforcement OperationsMINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA - JANUARY 13: ICE agents pull a woman from a car before detaining her on January 13, 2026 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Trump administration has deployed over 2,400 Department of Homeland Security agents to the state of Minnesota in a push to apprehend undocumented immigrants. (Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

This article is read by Eunice Wong. You can find her work at www.eunicewong.actor. Text originally published February 8, 2026.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Full Text:I don’t expect much from politicians, corporate tycoons, the presidents of prestigious universities, billionaire philanthropists, celebrities, royalty or oligarchs. They live in narcissistic and hedonistic bubbles that cater to their self-worship and moral depravity. But I do expect a lot from intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky. The explanation by his wife Valéria - Noam suffered a severe stroke in June 2023 and is incapacitated - of their relationship with Jeffrey Epstein is filled with the fatuous excuses used by all those who have been outed in the Epstein emails and documents. According to Valéria, she and Noam were “overly trusting.” This led to “poor judgment.” She writes that she and Noam were ensnared by dinners with luminaries at Epstein’s mansion, flights on his private jet nicknamed the Lolita Express, a literary reference to the sexual exploitation of girls Noam would have recognized, financial assistance, trips to Epstein’s ranch and the use of one of Epstein’s apartments in New York. Like everyone else outed in the Epstein files she and Noam “never witnessed any inappropriate behavior from Epstein or others.”Noam’s advice to Epstein on how to handle press inquiries into his crimes, like Noam’s letter of recommendation for Epstein, was, she insists, the result of Epstein’s taking “advantage of Noam’s public criticism towards what came to be known as ‘cancel culture’ to present himself as a victim of it.” After Epstein’s second arrest in 2019, she and Noam “were careless in not thoroughly researching his background.” She ends by expressing “unrestricted solidarity with the victims.” Her letter regurgitates the formula of everyone outed in the Epstein files. I know and have long admired Noam. He is, arguably, our greatest and most principled intellectual. I can assure you he is not as passive or gullible as his wife claims. He knew about Epstein’s abuse of children. They all knew. And like others in the Epstein orbit, he did not care. From the email correspondence between Epstein and Valéria it appears she particularly enjoyed the privileges that came with being in Epstein’s circle, but this does not absolve Noam’s acquiescence. Noam, of all people, knows the predatory nature of the ruling class and the cruelty of capitalists, where the vulnerable, especially girls and women, are commodified as objects to be used and exploited. He was not fooled by Epstein. He was seduced. His association with Epstein is a terrible and, to many, unforgivable stain. It irreparably tarnishes his legacy. If there is a lesson here, it is this. The ruling class offers nothing without expecting something in return. The closer you get to these vampires the more you become enslaved. Our role is not to socialize with them. It is to destroy them.Thanks for reading The Chris Hedges Report! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible’s list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actorText originally published January 8, 2026.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Full Text:All empires, when they are dying, worship the idol of war. War will save the empire. War will resurrect past glory. War will teach an unruly world to obey. But those who bow down before the idol of war, blinded by hypermasculinity and hubris, are unaware that while idols begin by calling for the sacrifice of others, they end by demanding self-sacrifice. Ekpyrosis, the inevitable conflagration that destroys the world according to the ancient Stoics, is part of the cyclical nature of time. There is no escape. Fortuna. There is a time for individual death. There is a time for collective death. In the end, with weary citizens yearning for extinction, empires light their own funeral pyre.Our high priests of war, Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, Stephen Miller and the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan “Razin” Caine, are no different from the fools and charlatans who snuffed out empires of the past — the haughty leaders of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the militarists in imperial Germany and the hapless court of Tsarist Russia in World War I. They were followed by the fascists in Italy under Benito Mussolini, Germany under Adolf Hitler and the military rulers of imperial Japan in World War II.These political entities committed collective suicide.They drank the same fatal elixir Miller and those in the Trump White House imbibe. They too tried to use industrial violence to reshape the universe. They too considered themselves to be omnipotent. They too saw themselves in the face of the idol of war. They too demanded to be obeyed and worshiped.Destruction to them is creation. Dissent is sedition. The world is one-dimensional. The strong versus the weak. Only our nation is great. Other nations, even allies, are dismissed with contempt.These architects of imperial folly are buffoons and killer clowns. They are ridiculed and hated by those rooted in a reality-based world. They are followed slavishly by the desperate and the disenfranchised. The simplicity of the message is its appeal. A magic incantation will bring back the lost world, the golden age, however mythic. Reality is viewed exclusively through the lens of ultranationalism. The flip side of ultranationalism is racism.“The nationalist is by definition an ignoramus,” wrote Yugoslav-Serbian novelist Danilo Kiš. “Nationalism is the line of least resistance, the easy way. The nationalist is untroubled, he knows or thinks he knows what his values are, his, that’s to say national, that’s to say the values of the nation he belongs to, ethical and political; he is not interested in others, they are no concern of his, hell — it’s other people (other nations, other tribes). They don’t even need investigating. The nationalist sees other people in his own image — as nationalists.”These stunted human beings are unable to read others. They threaten. They terrorize. They kill. The art of power politics between nations or individuals is far beyond their tiny imaginations. They lack the intelligence — emotional and intellectual — to cope with the complex, ever-shifting sands of old and new alliances. They cannot see themselves as the world sees them.Diplomacy is often a dark and deceptive art. It is by its nature manipulative. But it requires an understanding of other cultures and traditions. It requires getting inside the heads of adversaries and allies. For Trump and his minions, this is an impossibility.Skillful diplomats, such as Prince Klemens von Metternich, the Austrian Empire’s foreign minister who dominated European politics after the defeat of Napoleon, do so by crafting agreements and treaties such as the Concert of Europe and the Congress of Vienna. Metternich, no friend of liberalism, adroitly kept Europe stable until the revolutions of 1848.I reported on Richard Holbrooke, the assistant secretary of state, as he negotiated an end to the war in Bosnia. He was bombastic and enthralled with his own celebrity. But he played the Balkan warlords off each other in the former Yugoslavia until they acquiesced to stop the fighting — with some help from NATO warplanes that pounded Serb positions on the hills around Sarajevo — and signed the Dayton Peace Accords.Holbrooke had little regard for the diplomats who diddled in conference halls in Geneva while 100,000 people died or disappeared in Bosnia, an estimated 900,000 became refugees and 1.3 million were internally displaced. He had a loathing for military commanders who refused to take risks. He detested the Croatian, Serbian and Muslim leaders he had to corral into signing the peace accord.Holbrooke, whose blustering style and volcanic eruptions were legendary, left bruised egos and slighted, embittered colleagues in his wake. But he knew how to cajole and mold his adversaries to his will. He was likened, in a not very flattering comparison, to Jules Cardinal Mazarin, the crafty 17th-century prelate and statesman who solidified France’s supremacy among the European powers. “He flatters, he lies, he humiliates: he is a sort of brutal and schizophrenic Mazarin,” a French diplomat told Le Figaro, of Holbrooke, during the Dayton talks.True.But Holbrooke, however mercurial, understood the interplay between force and diplomacy. This understanding is essential. It is why nations have diplomats. It is why great diplomats are as important as great generals.Gangster states have no need of diplomacy. Trump and Rubio, for this reason, have gutted the State Department, along with other forms of “soft” power that achieve influence without resorting to force, including the U.S. role in the United Nations, the U.S. Agency of International Development, the U.S. Institute for Peace — renamed Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace after most of the board and staff were fired — and Voice of America.Diplomats in gangster states are reduced to the role of errand boys. Hitler’s Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, whose primary experience in foreign affairs before 1933 was selling fake German champagne in Britain, appointed party hacks from the SA or Brownshirts — the paramilitary wing of the party — to diplomatic posts abroad. Benito Mussolini’s Foreign Minister was his son-in-law, Galeazzo Ciano. Mussolini — who believed that “war is to man what maternity is to woman” — later executed Ciano for disloyalty. Trump’s Special Envoy to the Middle East, Steven Charles Witkoff, is a real estate developer, often accompanied on diplomatic missions by Trump’s feckless son-in-law Jared Kushner.The Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce quipped that fascism had created a fourth form of government, “onagrocracy,” a government by braying asses, to add to Aristotle’s traditional triumvirate of tyranny, oligarchy and democracy.Our ruling class, Democrats and Republicans, piece by piece, dismantled democracy. In Germany and Italy, the constitutional state, as well, collapsed long before the arrival of fascism. Trump, who is the symptom, not the disease, inherited the corpse. He is making good use of it.“I believe that to maintain our empire abroad requires resources and commitments that will inevitably undercut our domestic democracy and in the end produce a military dictatorship or its civilian equivalent,” Chalmers Johnson wrote two decades ago in his book, “Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic.”He warned:The founders of our nation understood this well and tried to create a form of government — a republic — that would prevent this from occurring. But the combination of huge standing armies, almost continuous wars, military Keynesianism, and ruinous military expenses have destroyed our republican structure in favor of an imperial presidency. We are on the cusp of losing our democracy for the sake of keeping our empire. Once a nation is started down that path, the dynamics that apply to all empires come into play — isolation, overstretch, the uniting of forces opposed to imperialism, and bankruptcy. Nemesis stalks our life as a free nation.The American Empire, defeated in Iraq and Afghanistan — as it was at the Bay of Pigs and in Vietnam — learns nothing. It leaps into each new military fiasco as if the previous military fiascos did not happen. It believes it needs no allies. It will rule the world.If occupying Greenland blows up NATO, so what? If funding and arming Israel to carry out genocide and bombing Iran and Yemen alienates huge swaths of the Global South and enrages the Muslim world, who cares? If invading and kidnapping the president of Venezuela stinks of Yankee imperialism, tough! No one else matters.Nations that stomp around the globe like King Kong infect themselves with a fatal virus.Johnson warned that if we continue to cling to our empire, as the Roman Republic did, we will “lose our democracy and grimly await the eventual blowback that imperialism generates.”Blowback is next and with it the collapse of the crumbling edifice of the American Empire. It is an old story. Although to us, and the cabal of misfits ensconced in our version of Ubu Roi’s court, it will come as a terrible shock.Photos: Woman Placing Food Into Refrigerator(Original Caption) View of a modern kitchen. A young housewife places a container of carrots into the refigerator. Photograph circa 1950’s.President Trump Attends Pentagon Ceremony On 24th Anniversary Of 9/11ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA - SEPTEMBER 11: U.S. President Donald Trump shakes hands with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth during a September 11th observance event in the courtyard of the Pentagon September 11, 2025 in Arlington, Virginia. Today marks the 24th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks that claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 people. 9/11 terror attacks that claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 people. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)Prince Klemens Wenzel von Metternich -Prince Klemens Wenzel von Metternich - engraving by Samuel Cousins after painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence. SL, English engraver: 9 May 1801 - 7 May 1887. TL, English painter: 13 April 1769 - 7 January 1830. Fürst von Metternich, German - Austrian diplomat and statesman: 15 May 1773 - 11 June 1859. (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)U.S. Envoy Richard Holbrooke DiesWASHINGTON - NOVEMBER 23: U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke chats with members of the media after a briefing at the State Department November 23, 2009 in Washington, DC. Holbrooke briefed the media on State Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton’s recent trip to Afghanistan. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)President Clinton Meets With Foreign Policy AdvisorsAmerican politicians US Vice President Al Gore (second left, in dark suit) and US President Bill Clinton (third left, in lighter-colored suit) meet with principal foreign policy advisors, both in the White House’s Situation Room and via a television hook-up, Washington DC, September 25, 1995. (Photo by Sharon Farmer/White House/Consolidated News Pictures/Getty Images)Holbrooke Annouces Bosnia AgreementAssistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke announces agreement on a unified Bosnia at the United Nations. (Photo by Najlah Feanny/Corbis via Getty Images)President Trump Presides Over Cabinet MeetingWASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 10: U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks alongside U.S. President Donald Trump during a Cabinet meeting at the White House on April 10, 2025 in Washington, DC. President Trump convened a Cabinet meeting a day after announcing a 90-day pause on ‘reciprocal’ tariffs, with the exception of China. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)Joachim von Ribbentrop(Original Caption) Shown in his office as Nazi Foreign Minister.Hitler And CianoGerman Chancellor Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945) in the new Reich Chancellery in Berlin, Germany, with Count Galeazzo Ciano (1903 - 1944, left), the Italian Foreign Minister, after signing the Italo-German military pact, 22nd May 1939. (Photo by Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu Meets With Trump At The White HouseWASHINGTON, DC - SEPTEMBER 29: U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff (R) and Jared Kushner, san-in-law and advisor to President Donald Trump, arrive for a joint news conference between U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the State Dining Room at the White House on September 29, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)Senator Benedetto Croce(Original Caption) This is one of a series of three intimate pictures of Senator Benedetto Croce at his villa in Capri. Highly regarded as a philosopher in Italy and considered its greatest, Croce is revered by all antifascists throughout Italy, from the Communists to the most conservative. TOPSHOT-ISRAEL-PALESTINIAN-CONFLICTTOPSHOT - This picture taken from Israel’s southern border with the Gaza Strip shows Israeli army battle tank at a position along the border with the Palestinian territory on March 19, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the militant group Hamas. (Photo by JACK GUEZ / AFP) (Photo by JACK GUEZ/AFP via Getty Images)Nicolas Maduro Transported To Court HearingNEW YORK, NY - JANUARY 5: Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, are seen in handcuffs after landing at a Manhattan helipad, escorted by heavily armed Federal agents as they make their way into an armored car en route to a Federal courthouse in Manhattan on January 5, 2026 in New York City. (Photo by XNY/Star Max/GC Images) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible’s list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actorText originally published January 3, 2026. The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Full TextThe kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and his wife solidifies America’s role as a gangster state. Violence does not generate peace. It generates violence. The immolation of international and humanitarian law, as the U.S. and Israel have done in Gaza, and as took place in Caracas, generates a world without laws, a world of failed states, warlords, rogue imperial powers and perpetual violence and chaos. If there is one lesson we should have learned in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya, it is that regime change spawns Frankensteinian monsters of our own creation. The Venezuelan military and security forces will no more accept the kidnapping of their president and U.S. domination – done as in Iraq to seize vast oil reserves -- than the Iraqi security forces and military or the Taliban. This will not go well for anyone, including the U.S.Thanks for reading The Chris Hedges Report! This post is public so feel free to share it.PhotosTOPSHOT-ISRAEL-PALESTINIAN-CONFLICT-GAZATOPSHOT - This picture taken from a position on the Israeli border with the Gaza Strip, shows the sun setting behind destroyed buildings in the Palestinian territory, on July 1, 2025. (Photo by Jack GUEZ / AFP via Getty Images)U.S. Forces In Afghanistan On Anti-Taliban Operation Mountain ThrustDEH AFGHAN, AFGHANISTAN - JUNE 22: American soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division deploy to fight Taliban fighters as part of Operation Mountain Thrust to a U.S. base near the village of Deh Afghan on June 22, 2006 in the Zabul province of Afghanistan. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)TOPSHOT-IRAQ-CONFLICT-DIYALATOPSHOT - Iraqi government forces celebrate while holding an Islamis Sate (IS) group flag after they claimed they have gained complete control of the Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, on January 26, 2015 near the town of Muqdadiyah. (Photo by YOUNIS AL-BAYATI / AFP) (Photo by YOUNIS AL-BAYATI/AFP via Getty Images)TOPSHOT-VENEZUELA-ARMY-PARADE-REHEARSALTOPSHOT - Soldiers of the Venezuelan Army march during a rehearsal parade within the framework of the Independence Day celebrations at the Fort Tiuna in Caracas on July 3, 2023. (Photo by Federico PARRA / AFP) (Photo by FEDERICO PARRA/AFP via Getty Images)IRAQ-ARMY DAYIraqi soldiers march in a military parade marking the 79th anniversary of the foundation of the Iraqi army in Baghdad 6 January 2000. Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein said in his Army Day speech, his first in five months, that the nine year UN embargo against his country was crumbling in the face of “resistance” as his officials launched a fresh diplomatic offensive across the world to win support for Baghdad’s defiance. (Photo by KARIM SAHIB / AFP) (Photo by KARIM SAHIB/AFP via Getty Images)Civilians Flee BasraBASRA, IRAQ - MARCH 29: As oil fires burn in the distance, a man covers his face near the entrance to the besieged city of Basra March 29, 2003 in Iraq. Baath Party loyalists have taken up positions in Basra, Iraq’s second largest city, making it a target of the U.S.-led war on Iraq. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible’s list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actorText originally published December 15, 2025.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Full Text:First, it was Israel’s right to defend itself. Then it was a war, even though, by Israel’s own military intelligence database, 83 percent of the casualties were civilians. The 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, living under an Israeli air, land and sea blockade, have no army, air force, no mechanized units, no tanks, no navy, no missiles, no heavy artillery, no fleets of killer drones, no sophisticated tracking systems to map all movements, or an ally like the United States, which has given Israel at least $21.7 billion in military aid since Oct. 7, 2023.Now, it is a “ceasefire.” Except of course, as usual, Israel only abided by the first of the 20 stipulations. It freed around 2,000 Palestinian captives held in Israeli prisons — 1700 of whom were detained after Oct. 7 — as well as around 300 bodies of Palestinians, in exchange for the return of the 20 remaining Israeli captives.Israel has violated every other condition. It has tossed the agreement — brokered by the Trump administration without Palestinian participation — into the bonfire with all the other agreements and peace accords concerning Palestinians. Israel’s extensive and blatant flouting of international agreements and international law — Israel and its allies refuse to abide by three sets of legally binding orders by the International Cout of Justice (ICJ) and two ICJ advisory opinions, as well as the Genocide Convention and international humanitarian law — presage a world where the law is whatever the most militarily advanced countries say it is.The sham peace plan — “President Donald J. Trump’s Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict” — in an act of stunning betrayal of the Palestinian people, was endorsed by most of the U.N. Security Council in November, with China and Russia abstaining. Member states washed their hands of Gaza and turned their backs on the genocide.The adoption of resolution 2803 (2025), as the Middle East scholar Norman Finkelstein writes, “was simultaneously a revelation of moral insolvency and a declaration of war against Gaza. By proclaiming international law null and void, the Security Council proclaimed itself null and void. Vis-à-vis Gaza, the Council transmuted into a criminal conspiracy.”The next phase is supposed to see Hamas surrender its weapons and Israel withdraw from Gaza. But these two steps will never happen. Hamas — along with other Palestinian factions — reject the Security Council resolution. They say they will disarm only when the occupation ends and a Palestinian state is created. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed that if Hamas does not disarm, it will be done “the hard way.”The “Board of Peace,” headed by Trump, will ostensibly govern Gaza along with armed mercenaries from the Israel-allied International Stabilization Force, although no country seems anxious to commit their troops. Trump promises a Gaza Riviera that will function as a “special economic zone” — a territory operating outside of state law governed entirely by private investors, such as the Peter Thiel-backed charter city in Honduras. This will be achieved through the “voluntary” relocation of Palestinians — with those fortunate enough to own land offered digital tokens in exchange. Trump declares that the U.S. “will take over the Gaza Strip” and “own it.” It is a return to the rule of viceroys — though apparently not the odious Tony Blair. Palestinians, in one of the most laughable points in the plan, will be “deradicalized” by their new colonial masters.But these fantasies will never come to fruition. Israel knows what it wants to do in Gaza and it knows no nation will intercede. Palestinians will struggle to survive in primitive and dehumanizing conditions. They will, as they have so many times in the past, be betrayed.Israel has committed 738 violations of the ceasefire agreement between Oct. 10 and Dec. 12, including 358 land and air bombardments, the killing of at least 383 Palestinians and the injuring of 1,002 others, according to the Government Media Office in Gaza and the Palestinian Health Ministry. That’s an average of six Palestinians killed daily in Gaza — down from an average of 250 a day before the “ceasefire.” Israel said it killed a senior Hamas commander, Raed Saad, on Saturday, in a missile strike on a car on Gaza’s coastal road. Three others were also apparently killed in the strike.December saw an average of 140 aid trucks allowed into Gaza each day — instead of the promised 600 — to keep Palestinians on the edge of famine and ensure widespread malnutrition. In October, some 9,300 children in Gaza under five were diagnosed with severe acute malnutrition, according to UNICEF. Israel has opened the border crossing into Egypt at Rafah, but only for Palestinians leaving Gaza. It is not open for those who want to return to Gaza, as stipulated in the agreement. Israel has seized some 58 percent of Gaza and is steadily moving its demarcation line — known as “the yellow line” — to expand its occupation. Palestinians who cross this arbitrary line — which constantly shifts and is poorly marked when it is marked at all — are shot dead or blown up — even if they are children.Palestinians are being crammed into a shrinking, fetid, overcrowded concentration camp until they can be deported. Ninety-two percent of Gaza’s residential buildings have been damaged or destroyed and around 81 percent of all structures are damaged, according to UN estimates. The Strip, only 25 miles long and seven-and-a-half miles wide, has been reduced to 61 million tons of rubble, including nine million tons of hazardous waste that includes asbestos, industrial waste, and heavy metals, in addition to unexploded ordnance and an estimated 10,000 decaying corpses. There is almost no clean water, electricity or sewage treatment. Israel blocks shipments of construction supplies, including cement and steel, shelter materials, water infrastructure and fuel, so nothing can be rebuilt.Eighty-two percent of Israeli Jews support the ethnic cleansing of the entire population of Gaza and 47 percent support killing all civilians in cities captured by the Israeli military. Fifty-nine percent support doing the same to Palestinian citizens of Israel. Seventy-nine percent of Israeli Jews say they are “not so troubled” or “not troubled at all” by reports of famine and suffering among the population in Gaza, according to a survey conducted in July. The words “Erase Gaza” appeared more than 18,000 times in Hebrew-language Facebook posts in 2024 alone, according to a new report on hate speech and incitement against Palestinians.The newest form of genocidal celebration in Israel — where social media and news channels routinely chortle over the suffering of Palestinians — is the sprouting of golden nooses on the lapels of members of the far-right political party Otzma Yehudit, Israel’s version of the Ku Klux Klan, including one worn by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.They are pushing a bill through the Knesset which seeks to mandate the death penalty for Palestinians who “intentionally or indifferently causes the death of an Israeli citizen,” if they are said to be motivated by “racism or hostility toward a public,” and with the purpose of harming the Israeli state or “the rebirth of the Jewish people in its land,” the Israeli human rights group Adalah explains. More than 100 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli jails since Oct. 7. If the new bill becomes law — it has been cleared through its first reading — it will join the wave of more than 30 anti-Palestinian laws enacted since October 7.The message the genocide sends to the rest of the world, more than a billion of whom live on less than a dollar a day, is unequivocable: We have everything and if you try and take it away from us, we will kill you.This is the new world order. It will look like Gaza. Concentration camps. Starvation. Obliteration of infrastructure and civil society. Mass killing. Wholesale surveillance. Executions. Torture, including the beatings, electrocutions, waterboarding, rape, public humiliation, deprivation of food and denial of medical care routinely used on Palestinians in Israeli prisons. Epidemics. Disease. Mass graves where corpses are bulldozed into unmarked pits and where bodies, as in Gaza, are dug up and torn apart by packs of ravenous wild dogs.We are not destined for the Shangri-La sold to a gullible public by fatuous academics such as Stephen Pinker. We are destined for extinction. Not only individual extinction — which our consumer society furiously attempts to hide by peddling the fantasy of eternal youth — but wholesale extinction as temperatures rise to make the globe uninhabitable. If you think the human species will respond rationally to the ecocide, you are woefully out of touch with human nature. You need to study Gaza. And history.If you live in the Global North, you will get to peer out at the horror, but slowly this horror, as the climate breaks down, will migrate home, turning most of us into Palestinians. Given our complicity in the genocide, it is what we deserve.Empires, when they feel threatened, always embrace the instrument of genocide. Ask the victims of the Spanish conquistadors. Ask Native Americans. Ask the Herero and Nama. Ask the Armenians. Ask the survivors of Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Ask the Indians who survived the Bengal famine or the Kikuyu who rose against their British colonizers in Kenya. Climate refugees will get their turn.This is not the end of the nightmare. It is the beginning.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Thanks for reading The Chris Hedges Report! This post is public so feel free to share it.PhotosTOPSHOT-IASRAEL-PALESTINIAN-CONFLICT-HOSTAGESTOPSHOT - US special envoy Steve Witkoff (C) speaks as US businessman Jared Kushner (L) and his wife Ivanka Trump look on during a gathering at Hostages Square in Tel Aviv on October 11, 2025. (Photo by Jack GUEZ / AFP) (Photo by JACK GUEZ/AFP via Getty Images)United Nations Security Council Meets To Consider Trump’s Gaza Peace PlanNEW YORK, NEW YORK - NOVEMBER 17: Members of the UN Security Council raise their hands to vote in favor of a draft resolution to authorize an International Stabilization Force in Gaza, on November 17, 2025 at UN headquarters in New York City. The United Nations Security Council is voting on a draft resolution authored by the US that welcomes the establishment of a Board of Peace (BoP) as a “transitional governance administration” in Gaza and authorizes the BoP to establish a temporary International Stabilization Force (ISF) in the region. (Photo by Adam Gray/Getty Images)TOPSHOT-ISRAEL-POLITICS-CORRUPTION-TRIAL-NETANYAHUTOPSHOT - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a hearing in his trial on corruption charges at the district court in Tel Aviv on December 10, 2024. Netanyahu, the first sitting prime minister of Israel to face a criminal trial, testified for the first time when his corruption case resumed on December 10 on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of public trust in three separate cases. (Photo by Menahem Kahana / POOL / AFP) (Photo by MENAHEM KAHANA/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)“On Leadership” Reception With Tony BlairWASHINGTON, DC - OCTOBER 24: The Right Honourable Tony Blair speaks onstage during the book launch for “On Leadership” and celebration of the work of The Tony Blair Institute For Global Change at St. Regis Hotel on October 24, 2024 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Washington Speakers Bureau)Daily life in the shadow of destruction in Jabalia neighborhood of GazaJABALIA, GAZA - DECEMBER 17: Children try to warm themselves around the burning fires as Palestinians living in the Jabalia neighborhood in northern Gaza continue to carry on their daily lives under harsh conditions among the rubble left by Israeli attacks, as the sun sets over the area on December 17, 2025. Families deprived of basic necessities struggle to survive in makeshift tents set up near their destroyed homes or by sheltering inside damaged buildings, while also coping with cold weather conditions. (Photo by Khames Alrefi/Anadolu via Getty Images)Funeral-for-Palestinians-Killed-in-Gaza-Airstrike(EDITOR’S NOTE: Image depicts death) Mourners gather around the body of Raid Saad, a commander of the Al-Qassam Brigades, during his funeral in the Al-Shati refugee camp in Gaza City, Gaza on December 14, 2025. Saad was killed in an Israeli airstrike that targeted a car west of Gaza City, according to Hamas. The strike occurred amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. (Photo by Abood Abusalama / Middle East Images / AFP via Getty Images)TOPSHOT-PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICTTOPSHOT - Palestinians watch smoke billowing following an Israeli airstrike in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on June 6, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. (Photo by Bashar TALEB / AFP) (Photo by BASHAR TALEB/AFP via Getty Images)PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICT-WEATHERA Palestinian child sits in a tent as rain water runs past, at a makeshift camp housing displaced Palestinians in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip on November 25, 2025, amid the continuing war between Israel and the militant Hamas group. After a long dry summer season, rain has finally reached the Levant coastline. (Photo by Bashar Taleb / AFP via Getty Images)Palestinians flee after Israel’s violation of the cease-fireGAZA CITY, GAZA - NOVEMBER 21: Palestinian families set out for areas they consider safer taking with them whatever belongings they could carry after the Israeli army expanded the so-called ‘Yellow Line’, where its forces are stationed, by placing new concrete blocks and carrying out attacks in the area in violation of the cease-fire in Gaza Strip on November 21, 2025. (Photo by Saeed M. M. T. Jaras/Anadolu via Getty Images)TOPSHOT-ISRAEL-PALESTINIAN-CONFLICT-GAZATOPSHOT - This picture taken from a position on the Israeli border with the Gaza Strip, shows the sun setting behind destroyed buildings in the Palestinian territory, on July 1, 2025. (Photo by Jack GUEZ / AFP via Getty Images)TOPSHOT-PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICT-DAILY LIFETOPSHOT - Tents belonging to Palestinians are seen amid the rubble of destroyed buildings in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip on February 18, 2025, as people return to northern parts of Gaza during a current ceasefire deal in the war between Israel and Hamas. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP) (Photo by OMAR AL-QATTAA/AFP via Getty Images)Food distributed to Palestinians struggling with hunger in GazaGAZA CITY, GAZA - AUGUST 10: Starving Palestinians including women and children holding pots wait to receive food distributed by a charity organization as Israel continue to block humanitarian aid from reaching the Gaza Strip on August 10, 2025. (Photo by Khames Alrefi/Anadolu via Getty Images)TOPSHOT-PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICTTOPSHOT - Palestinian children line up to receive a hot meal at a food distribution point in Nuseirat on June 30, 2025. After more than 20 months of devastating conflict between Israel and the Hamas Islamist militant movement, rights groups say Gaza’s population of more than two million face famine-like conditions. (Photo by Eyad BABA / AFP) (Photo by EYAD BABA/AFP via Getty Images)Portrait of Cambridge Professor Stephen PinkerCambridge Massachusetts Professor Stephen Pinker photographed at MIT. (Photo by Rick Friedman/Corbis via Getty Images)TOPSHOT-US-WEATHER-FIRETOPSHOT - Flames from the wind-driven Eaton Fire engulf a house in Altadena, California, January 8, 2025. (Photo by Robyn BECK / AFP) (Photo by ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible’s list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actorText originally published November 10, 2025.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Full Text: BROOKLYN, N.Y — Lola Mozes’ childhood came to an end in the fall of 1939 at a small bridge in Poland. She was 9 — seated in a horse-drawn wagon, her back propped against her family’s silver Sabbath candelabra, which was wrapped in a blanket — when she saw the aftermath of a German bomb attack. The sight of human bodies, along with eviscerated horses gasping in pain and struggling to rise despite their gaping wounds, reduced her to tears and panic. Her mother, Helena Rewitz, born Schwimer, who would hover over her daughter like a guardian angel later in a Jewish ghetto and the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, took the terrified child into her arms.I sat with Lola Mozes at her dining room table in Brooklyn on Friday. Short and petite, with curly black hair and white gold hoop earrings, she had a soft, infectious laugh, an impish sense of humor and fine facial lines that she inherited from her father and mother. Her charm and warmth were girlish and slightly coquettish.“I am the great pretender,” she said, smiling. “It is always there, what I went through. I am tormented by it. It keeps repeating and repeating itself in my head.”Lola grew up living next to her family’s small grocery in Katowice, a city in southwestern Poland. The language at home was German. She learned Polish in school. Her parents, especially when they wanted to talk privately, spoke Yiddish. Her parents and older brother celebrated the Sabbath and went to synagogue on religious holidays but lived as secular Jews. Her father, Emil, who sang arias as he bathed in the mornings, dressed in imported German suits and spats when he left the house. They lived in a working-class section of the city. Catholic children in the neighborhood taunted her as a “Christ killer” and once pushed her brother Oskar off a tram and beat him. But nothing prepared the family for what was to come. A dark future was only hinted at when the parents, their faces knotted in consternation, listened to Adolf Hitler on the radio.The bloody scene at the bridge would foreshadow a crucible of mass murder and extreme deprivation lasting six years. For Lola, playing with her favorite doll, skating, swimming and picking out candy from her father’s grocery was replaced by a bitter struggle to survive. Ogres — including a drunken SS officer in the ghetto who used to hold her on his lap and complain about his boots being soiled by the blood of his victims, including the infants he dashed against walls — rose up like monsters in medieval fairy tales. Concentric circles of death and life would radiate around her. Her parents’ fierce love seemed, often, no match for the murderous intent of the armed and the powerful who held the family in their grip.Lola’s family was herded with other Jews in 1941 into the ghetto in Bochnia, along the river Raba in southern Poland. The ghetto was surrounded by a high wooden fence. It was divided in two parts — Ghetto A and Ghetto B. Ghetto A housed the 2,000 Jews who worked in German factories and workshops where they made shoes, underwear, uniforms, gloves, socks and other items for the German army. The Jews in Ghetto B had no jobs. Many were elderly and sick. They lived in extreme poverty and were malnourished. Many Jews pooled what little they had and formed communal kitchens. The Germans segregated the men, including the husbands and fathers, from women at night. Lola and her family lived with her aunt, who had been well off before the war, in a large wooden house that had been incorporated into the ghetto.“At one point they told us to stay in our houses,” she said. “I don’t remember when. I peeked through the window and saw strong young men who used to work in the salt mines marching. Every 10th or fifth man was being shot. In the morning there was a strange odor. It was nauseating. We peeked through the curtains. There were wagons with dead bodies. They were stripped. There were puddles of blood in the gutters. We went back to work the following day. We worked 12-hour shifts. For the morning shift we left when it was dark. I remember [when we went back to work again] it was raining. I was walking with my friend. I was carrying my bread. It fell on the ground. My friend said, ‘It fell in the blood.’ We thought this was very funny. We started laughing. I picked it up and brought it home after work and we ate it. It was too precious to throw away.”Lola had a friendship with a gentle boy who lived with his family in the B section of the ghetto. He cut up newspapers and made a little book he lent to her. It was about a seventh-century rabbi named Sabbatai Zevi who claimed to be the Jewish Messiah and walked from town to town promising to save the people. “He took me to where he lived,” she said. “It looked like a hovel. There were rags on the floor. It was dirty. There were a lot of people, especially old people. The stench was terrible. He was the nicest boy. I said, ‘How can people live like that?’ He was so embarrassed. I will never forget how embarrassed he was. He had been in my aunt’s house where each family had a room. My aunt’s house was clean. We had a stove. There was some heat. I don’t know what happened to him. Those in Ghetto B were the first to go in the transports [to the death camps].”Her father constructed a small, underground bunker in a wooden shed that was filled with sawdust. When the deportations began in 1942 the family would hide in the bunker. There was barely enough room to huddle together. They would wait breathlessly as the Germans with their dogs prowled around the shed. Lola’s father sneaked out at night to scavenge for food.Jews could leave the ghetto only under guard. They were marched out of the ghetto in rows of five to work in German factories. Hans Frank, the governor-general of the territories in occupied Poland, ordered that any other Jews found outside ghetto walls be executed. Nearly 2,000 Jews from the ghetto were shot. Most of the others died from disease or in the death camps. Only 90 of the 15,000 people originally in the Bochnia ghetto survived the war.Lola’s father and brother worked cleaning German offices. She and her mother knitted socks for German soldiers in a large red brick building on Floris Street.“They sent us socks from the Russian front,” she said. “By the time the socks came to the factory they had been washed. The bottom parts had been cut off. Only the top part was left. We started knitting downwards to make a new sock. We sometimes found blood, toes and parts of flesh in the socks. That is how we knew the Germans were struggling someplace where they were freezing.”One day the Jewish foreman at the knitting factory asked her to knit a pair of men’s gloves. He gave her gray wool. A few weeks later a high-ranking group of Nazis visited the factory. Among them was Frank, whom the foreman introduced to Lola.“He was wearing the gloves,” she remembered. “He shook my hand. He smiled. He told me the gloves were keeping him very warm. He said they fit well. He thanked me. That evening my father came home from work. He was full of smiles. He told me everyone had been shaking his hand. They were congratulating him. Everyone said to him that because Frank shook your daughter’s hand it would save the Jews. We thought if they were pleased with our work they would let us live.”A year ago she happened upon a picture of Frank. She learned, for the first time, that after the war he had been condemned and hanged by the Allies at Nuremberg. He was one of the very few Nazis at Nuremberg who, before being executed, expressed remorse for his crimes.The photograph and news of Frank’s execution were devastating. “I cried hysterically,” she told me. “I don’t know why. I could not connect him smiling at me like a father, shaking my hand and thanking me and then think of him hanging dead.”In the ghetto her parents arranged for her brother Oskar, who was two and a half years older, to study with a rabbi.“My brother became, because of this rabbi, very orthodox,” she said. “He was about 14. He would be charitable to everyone because the Bible said to be charitable. My mother would get some potatoes and peel them. She would say that when she came home from work she would cook us potatoes. But sometimes the potatoes were gone when she got home. My brother would have taken them to a poor family and we would have nothing to eat. One day he came home in wooden shoes. We asked, ‘Where are your shoes?’ He had given them to someone who was barefoot. He became like that. He was like a monk.”Once, hiding under the sawdust pile during one of the mass deportations, Lola crawled over to her brother. “We talked,” she said. “It was the first time we really talked. He had a piece of bread. He said, ‘I am not hungry.’ ”Her voice broke. She began to weep.“That is hard,” she said haltingly. “And he did give me that piece of bread. It was like a rind. We were not like sheep. We lived. When we finally left the bunker I saw him dressing. His belly was distended from hunger.”The factories and workshops were closed in 1943. Large sections of the ghetto were emptied. Most of the ghetto residents had been executed or taken to death camps. When Lola’s father sneaked out of the bunker at night he would wander through empty streets and forage in abandoned apartments. It resembled a ghost town. The fence around the ghetto was being rebuilt and pushed inward to open the emptied sections of the ghetto to the non-Jews in the city.Lola’s father decided to move the family, along with her aunt’s family of four and two cousins, to a basement in an abandoned part of the ghetto. He said that when it got dark he would take five of them at a time to the basement. He took Lola, her mother, Lola’s aunt and a young cousin to the basement and went back to get his son and nieces and nephews.“He never returned,” Lola said. “He was captured by a Jewish policeman. It was Succoth. My mother and aunt lit candles in the basement. We found a deeper basement. There was an Orthodox man hidden in the attic of that house. He visited us. He told us stories about the Messiah. He told us when we died we would go to heaven. I felt better, even with that gripping fear. My cousin and I went out at night to a vegetable field to dig up something to eat. There was a well, but it made noise when you cranked it up. That was dangerous. We could hear dogs barking.”One morning we heard a sound like someone scraping a stick along a fence,” she said. “My mother stiffened. She knew. They were shooting people. We could see the man in the attic make a sign with his arms like shooting. Then we heard singing. It was Shema Yisrael.”She began to sing Shema Yisrael, the central prayer in the Jewish prayer book, softly in Hebrew.Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord. And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart.“There were 200 people singing Shema Yisrael, including my father and brother, going to death,” she said. “I did not at the time connect the shooting with my father and brother and cousins. The shots became steady and constant. My mother held me tight.”Lola read from a letter she wrote in 1981 to her four children:Here is the essence of my story. To help my children grow, flourish and multiply without guilt or remorse, without a feeling that they are descended of people who went to slaughter like sheep. No song like Eli Eli or Ave Maria will surpass the chant of my father, my brother, my cousins and hundreds of others as they were led to be shot. It was the most powerful, courageous and victorious hymn. Their voices did not bleat like sheep. Their voices told of victory overcoming evil by dying like men without somebody’s blood on their hands. Their voices sang in unison a praise to the Lord. There was a might in them as if they were already one with their master. And it said Shema Yisreal, Hear Oh Israel, I will take you from your suffering and you will flourish. This was the message I received. That song was sung for me by my father. I flourished as I wish and hope my children will. My children, my dear sweet children. Your daily problems, which you try to solve with so much determination, are insignificant in the view of the awesome past of your ancestors. So you are told, but this is not true. Life is made out of difficulties and joys, of sorrows and utter happiness, but as long as your souls are not soiled with meanness which hurts others be proud of your life. Your life is the extension of the ones which are gone. And now they are immortal. Don’t pity them. They went peacefully because they had hope for the future, your present. My father’s mighty chant was meant as well for you and yours. With all my love, your Mom.German soldiers discovered Lola, her mother, her aunt and her cousin in the basement. They were detained and, because hiding was a capital offense, waited to be shot. Her mother, holding her, told Lola they were going to the Garden of Eden to meet those in the family who had died. But they were spared and assigned to the last detail of 100 Jews used to clean up the remnants of the ghetto. The mother, working in a laundry, found her son Oskar’s shirt, apparently cut from his lifeless body. Josef Müller, the commander of the ghetto, had by then a Jewish mistress, a practice common among ghetto commanders and camp guards. The remaining Jews in the ghetto nicknamed her Mata Hari.“She was quite beautiful, very tall,” Lola said. “She was dressed elegantly and wore makeup. She had a husband and a daughter my age. She ordered me around. I had to clean her room.”Lola and her mother were then sent to the labor camp in Plaszów, a southern suburb of Kraków. Plaszów was commanded by Amon Göth, a brutal SS officer who routinely shot prisoners for sport and was portrayed in the 1993 film “Schindler’s List.” Göth was hanged after the war.Lola and her mother were put to work with other prisoners digging up a Jewish cemetery. The headstones were used for paving roads and constructing latrines. After spending two months in Plaszów they were sent to work in a munitions factory hidden in a forest near Pionki. It was there Lola was forced to watch the hanging of four or five Jews who had tried to escape. She took her mother’s place in the front of the formation of prisoners to spare her the sight of the hangings.“They were calm and collected,” Lola said of the condemned. “They had their hands tied behind their backs. They said something before they died, but I don’t remember what. We were ordered to look at the hanging. We could not turn away our heads. As I watched, I saw what a horrific death it is — you can actually see life being squeezed out of the body. The face purple, red, almost swelling, as the hanging body twitches in last rebellion. The wife of one of the men, belly swollen with child, stood by the gallows the whole week as the Germans kept the spectacle on display.”Lola was eventually transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. The journey by train took three days. When she stumbled off the train with her mother, aunt and her cousin, she ran toward a ditch to get a drink of water. She visited Auschwitz-Birkenau years later and searched out the ditch. She said the death camp stripped of the emaciated bodies, stench, fear, shootings, barking dogs, beatings, smoke from the crematoriums, shouts of the guards, overcrowded barracks and foul, overflowing latrines failed to convey its reality. “They should plow it under and plant a field,” she said.“I did not recognize my mother when we got off the train,” she remembered of her arrival at the camp. “She scared me. It was like seeing a ghost. She was drawn. She had big, round eyes.”They were quarantined in Camp C after being shaved, sprayed with DDT and tattooed. She remembers seeing a group of dwarfs in the camp. “They were so beautiful,” she said. “I wanted to play with them. They were like dolls. On the second or third night they all disappeared.”She and her mother spent about eight months working in Birkenau. At one point they were stripped and forced into a gas chamber with a large group of women before the execution was abruptly canceled. Lola had begged her mother before entering the gas chamber for their last piece of bread. “I said, ‘I don’t want to die hungry,’ ” she remembered. “My mother, said, ‘When we come out you will tell me you are hungry.’ I said, ‘I don’t care.’ And she gave me the bread. When we got out of the gas chamber my mother said, ‘I told you so.’ ”The women were later put to work twisting strips of oilcloth into braids to be used, she believed, to make plane doors airtight.“Two guards would pull on the ends of the braid, and if it broke the workers would be beaten, often to death,” she said.In January 1945, with Soviet forces advancing on occupied Poland, the Nazi guards began to plan the destruction of the crematoriums. They told the prisoners the Birkenau camp would be dynamited and ordered some 60,000 prisoners from Birkenau and the satellite camps to begin a 35-mile march through the snow to a freight yard. Fifteen thousand prisoners died on the march. Lola’s aunt and cousin, who survived the war, hid under a pile of corpses. Lola and her mother, shortly before joining the march, found turnips in a barracks and gorged themselves. The turnips gave her mother diarrhea.“My mother ripped a piece of her dress and asked me very shyly the next morning if I could wash her off, and that is when I felt what love is,” she said. “She told me they would dynamite the camp and we should leave, that I could withstand the march. We walked through the night. We passed our town, Katowice. We saw the lights. The next day my mother wasn’t feeling good. She was dizzy. She asked me for a little sugar. We were not allowed to bend down for snow. If you bent down they would shoot you. There were bodies on the sides of the road. But my mother asked me for some snow. I bent down quickly to get her some snow. The women around us helped my mother for a little while. They walked with her. Then my mother couldn’t walk. There was a tree. She lay down. She told me, ‘Run quickly and maybe you will save myself.’ Then a German materialized. I fought with him. I told him, ‘You have a mother. You know what it means to have a mother. Let her rest a minute and she will be able to get up.’ He smiled. I will always remember that strange smile. Something amused him. By that time his pistol was drawn. The soldiers began to hit me and push me away. He shot her. I was on the road again. At one point my little sack fell down. I picked it up. I thought to myself, you picked up the sack but you did not pick up your mother. Years later, as I replayed the scene of my mother’s death, her laying, reclining under that tree with her arms a bit outstretched, I thought of her as being crucified.”Lola made it to the freight yard and was loaded onto open cars. She was transported to Ravensbrück, a women’s concentration camp in northern Germany. She was then put on a train to the Malhof camp. As Allied soldiers neared Malhof, the Germans closed the camp. Lola was soon marching again. Then the guards began to disappear. She remembers the bloated and blackened bodies of soldiers in the fields. One morning she and the other prisoners saw the camp commander in civilian clothes riding away on a bicycle. The war was over.There is, somewhere in the vastness of the universe, amid galaxies and stars that light emanating from our planet takes decades to reach, the airy image of a girl playing with a doll in the Polish town of Katowice, the image of a girl terrified and clutched by her mother near a bombed bridge, the image of a girl hiding with her brother under a pile of sawdust and accepting a small piece of bread, the image of a girl shaking the hand of the Nazi governor of Poland and the image of a girl in her mother’s arms in a basement listening to men and women about to die singing Shema Yisrael. There is, too, the image of a girl telling a German soldier with a drawn pistol, “You have a mother.”“I believe in God and heaven,” Lola said. “I speak to my husband, who I lost three years ago, and my parents. My belief saves me from talking to walls and air.”I did not write this story to say that Germans are bad and Jews are good. The line between good and evil runs through all hearts. It is, sadly, as easy to become an executioner as a victim. This is the most sobering lesson of war. And it is something the greatest writers on the Holocaust, such as Primo Levi, who was also in Auschwitz, understood. There were, after all, Jüdische Ghetto-Polizei, Jewish Kapos, Judenräte, Sonderkommandos and Blockälteste whose contributions to the organization of the ghettos and the death camps kept the crematoriums functioning. The prisoners who lowered themselves to the moral squalor of the SS were soon lost.I did not write this piece to say that virtue or goodness triumphed after the Holocaust. The Nazi extermination of 12 million people, including 6 million Jews, was a colossal, tragic and absurd waste of human life. I wrote this piece to say that the fierce and protective love of a mother and a father is stronger than hate. It can overcome evil. After the war Lola met a young German man in Spain. “He could have been a soldier,” she said. He asked Lola about her wartime experience. She told him. She kissed him on the cheek in saying goodbye.Where time and light bend and twist in space, perhaps defying the known laws of physics, a mother and a father, fighting to protect their daughter and son from death, still exist in faint particles of light, making visible an iron bond of fidelity. They gave up life to save it. Scarred emotionally and physically — she rolled up her sleeve as we talked to show me her tattooed concentration camp number, A-14989 — Lola would nevertheless marry a survivor to raise, love and nurture four children of her own. Emil Rewitz and Helena Rewitz, at least in this small house in Brooklyn, won the war.You can see the three-part interview I did with Lola at the links here: (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible’s list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actorText originally published November 10, 2025.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Full Text:El Presidente Trump is cast in the mold of all tinpot Latin American despots who terrorize their populations, surround themselves with sycophants, goons and crooks, and enrich themselves — Trump and his family have amassed more than $1.8 billion in cash and gifts from leveraging the presidency — while erecting tawdry monuments to themselves.“Trujillo on Earth, God in Heaven” — Trujillo en la tierra, Dios en el cielo — was posted by state order in churches during the 31-year reign of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. His supporters, like Trump’s, nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize. Trump’s con artist pastor, Paula White-Cain, offered an updated version of Trujillo’s self-deification when she warned, “To say no to President Trump would be saying no to God.”Trump is the gringo version of Anastasio “Tachito” Somoza in Nicaragua or Haiti’s François “Papa Doc” Duvalier, who amended the constitution to have himself anointed “President for Life.” One of the most celebrated images of the Haitian dictator’s long rule shows Jesus Christ with a hand on the shoulder of a seated Papa Doc, with the caption, “I have chosen him.”ICE thugs are the incubus of Papa Doc’s dreaded 15,000-strong Tonton Macoute, his secret police who indiscriminately detained, beat, tortured, jailed or killed 30,000 to 60,000 of Duvalier’s opponents and which, along with the Presidential Guard, consumed half the state budget.El Presidente Trump is Venezuela’s Juan Vicente Gómez, who looted the nation to make himself the wealthiest man in the country and disdained public education to — in the words of the scholar Paloma Griffero Pedemonte — “keep the people ignorant and docile.”El Presidente — in every dictatorship — follows the same playbook. It is a grotesque opera buffa. No encomium is too outrageous. No bribe too small. No violation of civil liberties too extreme. No stupidity too absurd. All dissent, no matter how tepid, is treason.Executive orders, budget cuts, gerrymandering, the seizure of polling stations and voting machines, the abolition of mail-in balloting, the overseeing of the vote count and the purging of voter rolls ensure fixed election results.Institutions, from the press to the universities, kneel down before the idiocy of El Presidente. Legislatures are obsequious echo chambers for El Presidente’s whims and self-delusions. It is a world of magical realism, where fantasy replaces reality, mythology replaces history, the immoral is moral, tyranny is democracy and lies are true.It is not only violence and intimidation that keep El Presidente in power. It is the stupefying inversion of reality, the daily denial of what we perceive and its replacement by disorienting fictions that keep us off balance. This, combined with state-induced fear, turns countries into open-air prisons. Human consciousness is bombarded until it is broken and becomes a well-oiled cog in the vast carceral machine.The warped psychology of El Presidente Trump is captured by Miguel Ángel Asturias in his novel “El Señor Presidente,” inspired by the dictatorship of Manuel Estrada Cabrera who ruled Guatemala for 22 years; Gabriel García Márquez’s “The Autumn of the Patriarch,” Julia Alvarez’s “In the Time of the Butterflies” and Mario Vargas Llosa’s “The Feast of the Goat” and “Conversation in the Cathedral.” These novels offer better insight into where we are headed than most tomes on U.S. politics.“Everything is for sale here,” writes Julia Alvarez in her novel, “everything but your freedom.”Dictators — hermetically sealed in the cloying adulation of court life — swiftly lose touch with reality. Conspiracy theories, quack science, bizarre beliefs and superstitions take the place of evidence and facts. Sociopathic, incapable of empathy or remorse and given to describing the world in vulgarities and childish sentimentality, dictators cannot distinguish between good and evil. They wield power solely for how it makes them feel. If they feel good, it is good. If they feel bad, it is bad. L’état, c’est moi.“The chief qualification of a mass leader has become unending infallibility,” Hannah Arendt writes in “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” “he can never admit an error. Mass leaders in power have one concern which overrules all utilitarian considerations: to make their predictions come true.”The dictator of El Salvador in the 1930s, Gen. Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, who passed a series of laws that restricted Asian, Arab, and Black immigration and who ordered the massacre of an estimated 30,000 peasants in the wake of an abortive uprising in January 1932, was convinced sunlight cast through colored bottles cured illnesses. In the midst of a smallpox epidemic, he ordered colored lights to be hung throughout the capital, San Salvador. When his youngest son had appendicitis, he brushed aside doctors to try his colored-lights cure, which resulted in his son’s death. He turned down a donation of rubber sandals for the country’s schoolchildren, announcing: “It is good for children to go barefoot. That way they better receive the beneficial effluvia of the planet, the vibrations of the Earth. Plants and animals do not wear shoes.”El Presidente Trump is cut from this vein. He does not exercise because he insists the human body resembles a battery with a finite amount of energy. He urged the public — during the COVID-19 crisis — to inject disinfectant into themselves and irradiate with ultraviolet light. He warned pregnant women not to take Tylenol during a press conference where he babbled incoherently, suggesting it causes autism. He dismissed the climate crisis, tweeting, “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive,” only to later say he was joking while claiming that “it’ll change back again.” The noise of wind turbines, he suggested, causes cancer. Former Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, he mused, may be the secret son of Fidel Castro.Dictators wallow in kitsch. Kitsch requires zero intellectual investment. It glorifies the state and the cult leader. It celebrates a fantasy world of virtuous rulers, a happy, adoring population and idealized portraits of the citizens. In the case of Trump, this means white citizens. It glitters and sparkles, like the garish gold trophies and vases lined up on the mantelpiece in the Oval Office that have been matched by equally tasteless gold coasters with Trump’s name on them. It snuffs out culture. The National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center now opens all its performances with the national anthem. Trump, who appointed himself the new chairman of the center, posted, “NO MORE DRAG SHOWS, OR OTHER ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA.”This year’s season at the Kennedy Center, where the name Donald J. Trump has been etched into the marble of the Hall of States, opened with “The Sound of Music.” The Trump-appointed interim president of the Kennedy Center, Richard Grenell, hopes to make the center’s programming more “like Paula Abdul.”Milan Kundera described kitsch as an aesthetic, “in which s**t is denied, and everyone acts as though it does not exist,” adding that it is “a folding screen set up to curtain off death.”Trujillo raped the wives of his associates, ministers and generals, along with courtesans and young girls. Trump, who was a close friend of pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, has been accused of rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment by at least two dozen women.Julie Brown, in her book “Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story,” writes that an anonymous woman, using the pseudonym “Kate Johnson,” filed a civil complaint in federal court in California in 2016, alleging she was raped by Trump and Epstein — when she was 13 — over a four-month period from June to September 1994.“I loudly pleaded with Defendant Trump to stop,” she said in the lawsuit. “Trump responded to my pleas by violently striking me in the face with his open hand and screaming that he could do whatever he wanted.”Johnson said she met Trump at one of Epstein’s “underage sex parties” at his New York mansion. She says she was forced to have sex with Trump several times, including once with another girl — 12 years old — whom she labeled “Marie Doe.”Trump demanded oral sex and afterward “pushed both minors away while angrily berating them for the ‘poor’ quality of their sexual performance,” according to the lawsuit, filed in April 26, 2016, in the U.S. District Court in the Central District of California.When Epstein learned Trump had taken Johnson’s virginity, he allegedly “attempted to strike her about the head with his closed fists,” furious that he had lost the opportunity.Trump, she said, did not take part in Epstein’s orgies. He liked to watch while 13-year-old “Kate Johnson” gave him a hand job.Johnson said Epstein and Trump threatened to harm her and her family if she spoke of their encounters.The lawsuit was dropped, most probably by way of a lucrative settlement. She has since disappeared.Dictators are not content with silencing their critics and opponents. They take sadistic delight in humiliating, ridiculing and destroying them.“For my friends everything, for my enemies the law,” Óscar R. Benavides, the authoritarian president of Peru said, summing up the credo of all dictators. The law is weaponized as an instrument of revenge. Innocence and guilt are irrelevant.The Justice Department’s indictment of former Trump adviser John Bolton, New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI director James Comey, and the subpoenas served to former CIA director John Brennan, former FBI special agent Peter Strzok and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, send the core message of all dictatorships — collaborate or be persecuted.This culture of vengeance calcifies civic and political life.Dictators vainly seek what they cannot achieve: immortality. They flood their countries with images of themselves to ward off death. Trujillo had the capital Santo Domingo, renamed Ciudad Trujillo and the island’s highest mountain — Pico Duarte — renamed Pico Trujillo.Trump wants the proposed Washington Commanders $3.7 billion stadium to be named after himself. The Treasury Department has released draft designs for a commemorative one dollar coin — featuring Trump’s face on both sides — to celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary. There are plans to name the Kennedy Center’s opera house after the first lady. The $40 million that Amazon paid for the rights to film a documentary about Melania Trump, will no doubt replicate the fawning coverage given to Elena Ceaușescu — known as “the Mother of the Nation” — on Romanian state television during the reign of her husband, Nicolae Ceaușescu.Huge, expensive banners with El Presidente Trump’s face adorn the exterior of federal buildings in the capital. This, along with the various Trump Towers throughout the world, is just the beginning. Flood the world with Trump portraits, emblazon his name on buildings and public squares, pay ceaseless homage to his divinity and genius, and death is held at bay.Mario Vargas Llosa writes in “The Feast of the Goat” how dictatorships turn everyone into accomplices:The rich too, if they wanted to go on being rich, had to ally themselves with the Chief, sell him part of their businesses or buy part of his, and contribute in this way to his greatness and power. With half-closed eyes, lulled by the gentle sound of the sea, he thought of what a perverse system Trujillo created, one in which all Dominicans sooner or later took part as accomplices, a system which only exiles (not always) and the dead could escape. In this country, in one way or another, everyone had been, was, or would be part of the regime. “The worst thing that can happen to a Dominican is to be intelligent or competent,” he had once heard Agustín Cabral say (“A very intelligent and competent Dominican,” he told himself) and the words had been etched in his mind: “Because sooner or later Trujillo will call upon him to serve the regime, or his person, and when he calls, one is not permitted to say no.” He was proof of this truth. It never occurred to him to put up the slightest resistance to his appointments. As Estrella Sadhalá always said, the Goat had taken from people the sacred attribute given to them by God: their free will.PhotosPresident Rafael L. M. Trujillo Sitting at Desk(Original Caption) Rafael L. M. Trujillo, the President of the Dominican Republic is shown in this photo.President Trump Participates In White House Faith Office LuncheonWASHINGTON, DC - JULY 14: U.S. President Donald Trump listens as Pastor Paula White-Cain, the head of the White House Faith Office, delivers remarks during a White House Faith Office luncheon in the State Dining Room at the White House on July 14, 2025 in Washington, DC. White-Cain hosted the luncheon with members of government and faith-based and community organizations. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)Portrait of Anastasio Somoza(Original Caption) General Anastasio Somoza (left), President-elect of Nicaragua, talks to newsmen at Kennedy International Airport after his arrival to start a three-week goodwill visit to the United States. Somoza is a 1946 graduate of West Point Academy.Francoise Duvalier Seated in Chair(Original Caption) 3/18/1962-Port-Au-Prince, Haiti- In an exclusive UPI interview, President Francoise Duvalier (shown in 1959 file photo), of small, crowded Haiti, was asked how his image as a devoted country doctor had changed into a picture of him heading a repressive government which drove his opponents into exile, asylum or prison- in a word, dictatorship. He is shown seated, with his hand raised in a gesture.Justin TrudeauWaist up portrait of Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, at the United Nations headquarters in New York City, New York, September 21, 2017. (Photo by EuropaNewswire/Gado/Getty Images)Cuban Dictator Fidel CastroFidel Castro and his revolutionary army recently overthrew the government led by President Fulgencio Batista. (Photo by © Lester Cole/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)US-TURKEY-DIPLOMACY-TRUMP-ERDOGANGold colored ornaments and decor are seen as US President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC on September 25, 2025. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)TOPSHOT-US-IRELAND-POLITICS-DIPLOMACY-TAOISEACHTOPSHOT - A gold coaster reading “TRUMP” sits on the table in front of US President Donald Trump as he meets with Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on March 12, 2025. (Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP) (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)2024 Republican National Convention: Day 3MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN - JULY 17: Former Acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell speaks on stage on the third day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum on July 17, 2024 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)Milan Kundera, Czech WriterPARIS, FRANCE - AUGUST 2: Czech Writer Milan Kundera poses during a portrait session on August 2,1984 in Paris,France. (Photo by Francois LOCHON/GAMMA/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)Rafael Trujillocirca 1955: Rafael Leonidas Trujillo (1891 - 1961), Dictator of the Dominican Republic from 1930 until his death. (Photo by Archive Photos/Getty Images)Donald Trump And Jeffrey Epstein Attend Victoria’s Secret EventBusinessman Donald Trump and financier Jeffrey Epstein attend a Victoria’s Secret Angels event sponsored by Rogers & Cowan at the club Duvet on 21st Street in New York City, New York on April 9, 1997. (Photo by Thomas Concordia/Getty Images)John Bolton Joins NCRI-US Conference Examining Iran’s Nuclear AgendaWASHINGTON, DC - AUGUST 17: Former National Security Adviser John Bolton speaks at a panel hosted by the National Council of Resistance of Iran – U.S. Representative Office (NCRI-US) at the Willard InterContinental Hotel on August 17, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)NY Attorney Gen. James Holds News Conference Before Hearing On Case To Protect Citizens From Musk’s DOGE Accessing Private DataNEW YORK, NEW YORK - FEBRUARY 14: NY Attorney General Letitia James speaks during a press conference on the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) at Manhattan Federal Courthouse on February 14, 2025 in New York City. James was joined by Connecticut Attorney General William Tong for a press conference ahead of a scheduled court hearing as they discussed their ongoing lawsuit with 17 other state attorneys general to stop Elon Musk’s DOGE from accessing personal data housed in the Treasury Department. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)Former FBI Director James Comey Testifies Before House Judiciary CommitteeWASHINGTON, DC - DECEMBER 07: Former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey speaks to members of the media at the Rayburn House Office Building after testifying to the House Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform committees on Capitol Hill December 07, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)House Intelligence Cmte Holds Hearing On Russian Interference In U.S. ElectionWASHINGTON, DC - MAY 23: Former Director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) John Brennan testifies before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on Capitol Hill, May 23, 2017 in Washington, DC. Brennan is discussing the extent of Russia’s meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and possible ties to the campaign of President Donald Trump. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)Former FBI Counterintelligence Division Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok Testifies At House Hearing On 2016 ElectionWASHINGTON, DC - JULY 12: Deputy Assistant FBI Director Peter Strzok testifies before a joint committee hearing of the House Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform committees in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill July 12, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)US-POLITICS-INVESTIGATION-FBI-PAGELisa Page, former legal counsel to former FBI Director Andrew Mc Cabe, arrives on Capitol Hill July 13, 2018 to provide closed-door testimony about the texts critical of Donald Trump that she exchanged with her FBI agent lover during the 2016 presidential campaign. (Photo credit should read ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)US-POLITICS-TRUMP-BANNER-AGRICULTUREA banner showing an image of US President Donald Trump hangs on the side of a US Department of Agriculture building in Washington, DC, on May 16, 2025. The banner was put up to mark the the 163rd anniversary of the Department of Agriculture which was founded on May 15, 1862 by Abraham Lincoln. (Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP) (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible’s list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actorText originally published October 3, 2025.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.I was scheduled to give a talk at the National Press Club of Australia on October 20 called “The Betrayal of Palestinian Journalists.” It was to focus on the amplification of Israeli lies in the press, which most reporters know are lies, betraying Palestinian colleagues who are slandered, targeted and killed by Israel. But, perhaps inadvertently proving my point, the chief executive of the press club, Maurice Reilly, cancelled the event. The announcement of my talk disappeared from the web site. Reilly said “that in the interest of balancing out our program we will withdraw our offer.”The Israeli Ambassador, retired Lt. Colonel Amir Maimon, who spent 14 years in the Israeli military, is reportedly being considered to speak.It is true that I know only one side of the picture from the seven years I spent covering Gaza. I was on the receiving end of Israeli attacks, including being bombed by its air force and fired upon by its snipers, one of whom killed a young man a few feet away from me at the Netzarim Junction. We lifted him up, each person taking hold of an arm or a leg, and lumbered up the road as his body swayed like a heavy sack. I saw small boys baited and shot by Israeli soldiers in the Gaza refugee camp of Khan Younis. The soldiers swore at the boys in Arabic over the loudspeakers of their armored jeep. The boys, about 10 years old, then threw stones at an Israeli vehicle and the soldiers opened fire, killing some, wounding others.I was present more than once as Israeli troops shot Palestinian children. Such incidents, in the Israeli lexicon, become children caught in crossfire. I was in Gaza when F-16 attack jets bombed overcrowded hovels in Gaza City. I saw the corpses of the victims, including children. This became a surgical strike on a bomb-making factory. I have watched Israel demolish homes and entire apartment blocks to create wide buffer zones between the Palestinians and the Israeli troops that ring Gaza. I have interviewed the destitute and homeless families, some camped out in crude shelters erected in the rubble. The destruction becomes the demolition of the homes of terrorists. I have stood in the gutted remains of schools as well as medical clinics and mosques and counted the bodies. I have heard Israel claim that errant rockets or mortar fire from the Palestinians caused these and other deaths, or that the buildings were being used as arms depots or launching sites.I, along with every other reporter I know who has worked in Gaza, including the over 278 Palestinians journalists and media workers who have been killed by Israel since the start of the genocide, many in targeted assassinations, have reported a reality in Gaza that bears no resemblance to how it is portrayed by Israeli politicians, its military and many media outlets that serve as Israel’s echo chamber.Lt. Colonel Maimon can obviously, if he chooses, enlighten us about the artificial intelligence-based program known as “Lavender” and how it selects people, along with their families, in Gaza for assassination. He can explain how Israel determines the quotas of civilian dead, how soldiers are permitted to kill as many as 20 civilians in order to target a Palestinian fighter and hundreds for a Hamas commander. He can let us know why Israel continues the mass slaughter when an internal Israeli intelligence database indicates that at least 83 percent of Palestinians killed are civilians. He can tell us how Palestinian civilians are abducted, dressed in Israeli army uniforms, have their hands tied, and are then forced to walk as human shields in front of Israeli troops into buildings and underground tunnels that are potentially booby-trapped. He can explain how the special unit called the “Legitimization Cell” carries out propaganda campaigns to portray Palestinian journalists as Hamas operatives to justify their assassinations. He can detail the targeting, bombing and controlled demolitions that have damaged or destroyed 97 percent of Gaza’s educational system, including every university and nearly all its hospitals. He can explain how, after Israel blocked all humanitarian aid on March 2 to starve the Palestinians in Gaza, Israeli officials set up the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to lure emaciated and malnourished Palestinians to four aid hubs in the south — aid hubs with little food and which Human Rights Watch calls “death traps” and Doctors Without Borders calls “orchestrated killing.” These hubs, open only an hour, usually at 2:00 am, ensure a chaotic scramble for scraps of food. Israeli soldiers, along with U.S. mercenaries, who include members of the Infidels Motorcycle Club, a self-professed anti-“radical jihadist” biker group that counts members with Crusader tattoos among its ranks, fire live rounds into the crowds killing over 1,400 Palestinians and injuring thousands more in and around the hubs since May. He can lay out the plans for the concentration camps in southern Gaza and the efforts to ultimately expel the Palestinians from Gaza and repopulate it with Jewish colonists. He can explain why Israel abandoned its own hostages, why it fired on vehicles headed into the Gaza strip on October 7 carrying Israeli captives and why it used Hellfire missiles to obliterate the Erez Crossing installation when it was seized by Palestinian fighters knowing that dozens of Israeli soldiers were inside.If Lt. Colonel Maimon spoke with this honesty and candor we could call this balance. It would fill in a side of the equation I glimpse from the outside. It would complete the circle. It would match truth with truth.But Lt. Colonel Maimon, I see from his past statements, will spew out the mendacious narratives used by Israel to justify genocide — Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields, it operates command centers in hospitals, it sexually assaulted Israeli women on October 7 and beheaded babies. He will make the spurious claim that Israel “has the right to defend itself,” ignoring the fact that Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups, which lack an air force, mechanized units, artillery, a navy, fleets of militarized drones and missiles, pose no existential threat to Israel. More important, he will not address Israel’s flagrant violation of international law by occupying and settling colonists on Palestinian land and carrying out a livestreamed genocide.This is not balance, unless we accept a world where truth is balanced by lies. It is an abandonment of the fundamental mission of journalists — to hold power accountable. But most egregiously, it is a terrible betrayal of our colleagues in Gaza who have been killed for chronicling the daily savagery in Gaza, for doing their job.No doubt, the corporate sponsors and wealthy donors of the press club are pleased. No doubt, the club is able to slither away from its journalistic integrity. No doubt, it is spared the attacks that would come from allowing me to speak.But please, have the decency to remove the word press from your club.PhotosAustralia’s 48th Parliament Sits For The First TimeCANBERRA, AUSTRALIA - JULY 22: Ambassador for Israel Amir Maimon (L) and Shadow Minister for Small Business of Australia Tim Wilson (R) at the ecumenical service at Wesley Churc on July 22, 2025 in Canberra, Australia. Parliament reopened on Tuesday following Labor’s decisive election win. (Photo by Hilary Wardhaugh/Getty Images)Israeli attacks over Gaza continueISRAEL - OCTOBER 07: Smoke rises after Israeli airstrikes targeted residential areas in the Gaza Strip, as seen from Israel near the border, on October 07, 2025. (Photo by Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu via Getty Images)Palestinians Clash With Israeli Soldiers Near Neve DekalimKHAN YOUNIS REFUGEE CAMP - GAZA STRIP - SEPTEMBER 01: Palestinian boys run away from an Israeli tank as it opens fire during clashes near the vacant Jewish settlement of Neve Dekalim on September 1, 2005 in the southern Gaza Strip. (Photo by Abid Katib/Getty Images)Israeli military mobility on the northern border of GazaGAZA CITY, GAZA - MAY 29: Military mobility of tanks, armored personnel carriers, trucks and military jeeps belonging to the Israeli army continues on the northern border of Gaza on May 29, 2024. (Photo by Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu via Getty Images)TOPSHOT-MIDEAST-GAZA-PULLOUT-YOUTHTOPSHOT - Palestinian kids throwing stones run towards an Israeli tank near the fence separating the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Yunes and the Israeli settlement of Ganei Tal 06 September 2005. AFP PHOTO/ROBERTO SCHMIDT (Photo by ROBERTO SCHMIDT / AFP) (Photo by ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP via Getty Images)IDF And Greek Air Force Joint Military ExerciseEILAT, ISRAEL - DECEMBER 09: An Israeli F-16 jet takes off on December 9, 2014 at the Ovda airbase in the Negev Desert near Eilat, southern Israel. (Photo by Lior Mizrahi/Getty Images)Israel’s Military Leaders At Odds With Netanyahu Over Gaza PlanSOUTHERN ISRAEL, ISRAEL - JULY 3: Smoke rise over the Gaza Strip after an Israeli bombardment as seen from a position on the Israeli side of the border on July 3, 2024 in Southern Israel, Israel. Recent press reports have suggested Israel’s military leadership wants a ceasefire in the war with Hamas, which has raged since the Oct. 7 attacks. (Photo by Amir Levy/Getty Images)TOPSHOT-PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICTTOPSHOT - This picture shows people walking amid tents set up next to the rubble of destroyed buildings at the Jabalia camp for displaced Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip on April 8, 2025. Israel resumed major strikes on the Gaza Strip on March 18, ending a two-month ceasefire with Hamas. (Photo by Bashar TALEB / AFP) (Photo by BASHAR TALEB/AFP via Getty Images)TOPSHOT-PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICT-GAZA-MEDIATOPSHOT - Demonstrators gather in solidarity with journalists killed by Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip, during a protest organised by the Gaza Journalists Syndicate, in Gaza City, on August 26, 2025. Gaza’s civil defence agency said five journalists were among at least 20 people killed on August 25 when Israeli strikes hit a hospital in the south, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressing regret over the “tragic mishap”. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP) (Photo by OMAR AL-QATTAA/AFP via Getty Images)TOPSHOT-PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICTTOPSHOT - Palestinian women and children hold out their empty pots in front of a charity kitchen in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on August 21, 2025. Rights group Amnesty International earlier this week accused Israel of enacting a “deliberate policy” of starvation in Gaza. Israel heavily restricts aid coming into Gaza but has repeatedly rejected claims of deliberate starvation. (Photo by AFP) (Photo by -/AFP via Getty Images)TOPSHOT-PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICT-GAZATOPSHOT - A ball of fire erupts from the Jala Tower as it is destroyed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City, controlled by the Palestinian Hamas movement, on May 15, 2021. (Photo by MOHAMMED ABED / AFP) (Photo by MOHAMMED ABED/AFP via Getty Images)TOPSHOT-PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICT-US-GAZA-AIDTOPSHOT - People carry relief supplies from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a private US-backed aid group that has bypassed the longstanding UN-led system in the territory, as displaced Palestinians return from an aid distribution centre in the central Gaza Strip on June 8, 2025. (Photo by Eyad BABA / AFP) (Photo by EYAD BABA/AFP via Getty Images)PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICTA female journalist comforts a distressed woman as injured and killed Palestinians are brought to the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, following the Israeli bombardment of a residential apartment in Deir al-Balah and an area of al-Maghazi, on June 8, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. (Photo by Bashar TALEB / AFP) (Photo by BASHAR TALEB/AFP via Getty Images) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible’s list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actorText originally published September 18, 2025.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Full Text: Trump’s designation of the amorphous group antifa, which has no formal organization or structure, as a terrorist organization permits the state to charge us all as terrorists. The point is not to go after members of antifa, short for anti-fascist. It is to go after the last vestiges of dissent. When Barack Obama oversaw the coordinated national campaign to shut down the Occupy encampments, antifa -- so named because they dress in black, obscure their faces, move as a unified mass and seek physical confrontations with police – was the excuse.“I am pleased to inform our many U.S.A. Patriots that I am designating ANTIFA, A SICK, DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER, AS A MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANIZATION,” the president wrote in a Truth Social post. “I will also be strongly recommending that those funding ANTIFA be thoroughly investigated in accordance with the highest legal standards and practices. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”I have no love for antifa. The feeling is mutual. I was a fierce opponent of the Black Bloc anarchists who identified with antifa. They embedded themselves in Occupy encampments and refused to take part in the collective decision making. They carried out property destruction and initiated clashes with the police. Occupy activists were antifa’s human shields. I wrote that antifa was “a gift from heaven to the security and surveillance state.”David Graeber, whose work I respect, wrote an open letter criticizing my position.I was doxed. My lectures and events, which received phone threats forcing venues to hire private security, including bodyguards, were picketed by men dressed in black, their faces were covered by black bandanas. They all carried the same sign, no matter which city I was in, that read: “F**k You Chris Hedges.” During a debate with an anarchist supporter of antifa in New York City, several dozen black-clad men in the audience jeered and interrupted me, often yelling out sarcastically “amen.”The state effectively used antifa -- I am certain antifa was heavily infiltrated with agents provocateurs -- to shut all of us down. The corporate state feared the broad appeal of the Occupy movement, including to those within the systems of power. The movement was targeted because it articulated a truth about our economic and political system that cut across political and cultural lines.Antifa, let me be clear, is not a terrorist organization. It may confuse acts of petty vandalism and a repellent cynicism with revolution, but its designation as a terrorist organization has no legal justification.Antifa sees any group that seeks to rebuild social structures, especially through nonviolent acts of civil disobedience, as the enemy. They oppose all organized movements, which only ensures their own powerlessness. They are not only obstructionist, but obstructionist to those of us who are also trying to resist. They dismiss anyone who lacks their ideological purity. It does not matter if individuals are part of union organizing, workers’ and populist movements or radical intellectuals and environmental activists. These anarchists are an example of what Theodore Roszak in “The Making of a Counter Culture” called the “progressive adolescentization” of the American left.John Zerzan, one of the principal ideologues of the Black Bloc movement in the United States, defended “Industrial Society and Its Future,” the rambling manifesto by Theodore Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, although he did not endorse Kaczynski’s bombings. Zerzan dismisses a long list of supposed “sellouts” starting with Noam Chomsky and including myself.Black Bloc activists in cities such as Oakland smashed the windows of stores and looted them. It was not a strategic, moral or tactical act. It was done for the sake of destruction. Random acts of violence, looting and vandalism are justified, in the jargon of the movement, as components of “feral” or “spontaneous insurrection.” These acts, the movement argues, can never be organized. Organization, in the thinking of the movement, implies hierarchy, which must always be opposed. There can be no restraints on “feral” or “spontaneous” acts of insurrection. Whoever gets hurt gets hurt. Whatever gets destroyed gets destroyed.“The Black Bloc movement is infected with a deeply disturbing hypermasculinity,” I wrote. “This hypermasculinity, I expect, is its primary appeal. It taps into the lust that lurks within us to destroy, not only things but human beings. It offers the godlike power that comes with mob violence. Marching as a uniformed mass, all dressed in black to become part of an anonymous bloc, faces covered, temporarily overcomes alienation, feelings of inadequacy, powerlessness and loneliness. It imparts to those in the mob a sense of comradeship. It permits an inchoate rage to be unleashed on any target. Pity, compassion and tenderness are banished for the intoxication of power. It is the same sickness that fuels the swarms of police who pepper-spray and beat peaceful demonstrators. It is the sickness of soldiers in war. It turns human beings into beasts.”But while I oppose antifa, I do not blame them for the state’s response. If it was not antifa it would be some other group. Our rapidly consolidating police state will use any mechanism to silence us. It actually welcomes violence. Confrontational tactics and destruction of property justify draconian forms of control and frighten the wider population, driving them away from any resistance movement. It needs antifa or a group like it. Once a resistance movement is successfully smeared as a flag-burning, rock-throwing, angry mob — which those in the Trump administration are working hard to do — we are finished. If we become isolated, we can be crushed.“Nonviolent movements, on some level, embrace police brutality,” I wrote. “The continuing attempt by the state to crush peaceful protesters who call for simple acts of justice delegitimizes the power elite. It prompts a passive population to respond. It brings some within the structures of power to our side and creates internal divisions that will lead to paralysis within the network of authority. Martin Luther King kept holding marches in Birmingham because he knew Public Safety Commissioner ‘Bull’ Connor was a thug who would overreact.”“The explosive rise of the Occupy Wall Street movement came when a few women, trapped behind orange mesh netting, were pepper-sprayed by NYPD Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna,” I went on. “The violence and cruelty of the state were exposed. And the Occupy movement, through its steadfast refusal to respond to police provocation, resonated across the country. Losing this moral authority, this ability to show through nonviolent protest the corruption and decadence of the corporate state, would be crippling to the movement. It would reduce us to the moral degradation of our oppressors. And that is what our oppressors want.”I saw how antifa was weaponized to break the Occupy movement. Now it is being weaponized to throttle any resistance, no matter how tepid and benign.This justification for widespread repression is absurdist theater, characterized by fictions, including the supposed “Red-Green” alliance of Islamists and the “radical left.” Stephen Miller, Trump’s top policy adviser, insists there was an “organized campaign” behind the assassination of Charlie Kirk, whose martyrdom has turbocharged state repression. Any Trump opponent, including billionaire financier George Soros and his Open Society Foundations, will soon be caught in the net.We are all antifa now.Photos Occupy Wall Street Holds Major Day Of Action In New York CityNEW YORK, NY - NOVEMBER 17: Occupy Wall Street protesters clash with police in Zuccotti Park on November 17, 2011 in New York City. Protesters attempted to shut down the New York Stock Exchange today, blocking roads and tying up traffic in Lower Manhattan. (Photo by Allison Joyce/Getty Images)Protesters Gather At State Capitols On Presidential Inauguration DayDENVER, CO - JANUARY 20: Members of the Communist Party USA and other anti-fascist groups burn an American flag on the steps of the Colorado State Capitol on January 20, 2021 in Denver, Colorado. Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th President of the United States with Vice President Kamala Harris at an inauguration ceremony in Washington DC earlier in the day. (Photo by Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images)May Day Protesters In ParisPARIS, FRANCE - MAY 01: Masked demonstrators wave flares during the Labor Day demonstration on May 1, 2018 in Paris, France. According to the police around 1200 Black Bloc demonstrators took to the streets. (Photo by Aurelien Meunier/Getty Images)No Future For YouThe Baffler presents “No Future for You: David Graeber versus Peter Thiel” at General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen on Friday night, September 19, 2014.This image:The anthropologist David Graeber in a debate.(Photo by Hiroyuki Ito/Getty Images)TOPSHOT-US-ECONOMY-PROTESTS-STRATEGYTOPSHOT - “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrators occupy a park near Wall Street in New York, October 3, 2011. The protestors, speaking out against corporate greed and other issues carried on their occupation of Zuccotti Park, near the New York Stock Exchange, despite mass arests over the weekend. AFP PHOTO/Emmanuel Dunand (Photo by Emmanuel DUNAND / AFP) (Photo by EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP via Getty Images)TOPSHOT-US-PROTEST-FINANCE-OCCUPY WALL STREETTOPSHOT - Members of Occupy Wall Street are arrested as they struggle with police during a celebration march after learning that they can stay on at Zuccotti Park in New York, October 14, 2011. (Photo by EMMANUEL DUNAND / AFP) (Photo by EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP via Getty Images)John ZerzanJohn Zerzan discusses The Coming Insurrection during a lecture at the 2010 San Francisco Anarchist BookfairAuthorities Escorting Unabomber Theodore KaczynskiPolice officers bring Theodore Kaczynski, aka the Unabomber, to court for arraignment, April 4, 1996. Kaczynski later pled guilty to the mail bomb attacks that killed three people and injured 23. (Photo by © Ralf-Finn Hestoft/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)Protestors In Seattle Rally Against Police Brutality In Death Of George FloydSEATTLE, WA - MAY 30: Protesters riot in the streets following a peaceful rally expressing outrage over the death of George Floyd on May 30, 2020 in Seattle, Washington. Protests have erupted nationwide after Floyd died while in the custody of police in Minneapolis. (Photo by Karen Ducey/Getty Images)May Day DemonstrationsBERLIN - MAY 01: Demonstrators clash with riot police during May Day clashes in Kreuzberg on May 1, 2009 in Berlin, Germany. Berlin police arrested 57 people in protests that turned violent. A police spokesman said 48 police officers were injured during the clashes. (Photo by Carsten Koall/Getty Images)Protesters Demonstrate In D.C. Against Death Of George Floyd By Police Officer In MinneapolisWASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 01: A demonstrator is doused with water and milk after being hit with pepper spray from law enforcement during a protest on June 1, 2020 in downtown Washington, DC. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)Martin Luther King With Civil Rights MarchersDr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (center) with John Lewis,(2d from left) of SNCC, King’s aide, Rev. Ralph Abernathy (3d from l), Dr. Ralph Bunche (5th from l), Mrs. King (next to King), and Rev. Hosea Williams (carrying little girl, r) arrive in Montgomery, Alabama. King leads an estimated 10,000 or more civil rights marchers out on last leg of their Selma-to-Montgomery march.Protesters Being Hosed by Fireman(Original Caption) Firemen bear in on a group of African Americans who sought shelter in a doorway as hoses and dogs were used in routing anti-segregation demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama, 3rd May 1963.US-POLITICS-SHOOTING-KIRKWhite House Deputy Chief of State Stephen Miller speaks during the public memorial service for right-wing activist Charlie Kirk at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, on September 21, 2025. (Photo by Patrick T. Fallon / AFP) (Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images)Memorial Service Held For Slain Conservative Activist Charlie Kirk At State Farm StadiumGLENDALE, ARIZONA - SEPTEMBER 21: White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller speaks during the memorial service for political activist Charlie Kirk at State Farm Stadium on September 21, 2025 in Glendale, Arizona. Kirk, the CEO and co-founder of Turning Point USA, was shot and killed on September 10th while speaking at an event during his “American Comeback Tour” at Utah Valley University. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)Milliardär George SorosMilliardär George Soros, Deutschland, Berlin, Eröffnung des Europäischen Roma Instituts für Kunst und Kultur (ERIAC) durch StM/AA Roth, 08.06.2017 (Photo by Popow/ullstein bild via Getty Images) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible's list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actorText originally published September 10, 2025.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Full Text: Nearly all Holocaust scholars, who see in any criticism of Israel a betrayal of the Holocaust, have refused to condemn the genocide in Gaza. Not one of the institutions dedicated to researching and commemorating the Holocaust have drawn the obvious historical parallels or decried the mass slaughter of Palestinians.Holocaust scholars, with a handful of exceptions, have exposed their true purpose, which is not to examine the dark side of human nature, the frightening propensity we all have to commit evil, but to sanctify Jews as eternal victims and absolve the ethnonationalist state of Israel of the crimes of settler colonialism, apartheid and genocide.The hijacking of the Holocaust, the failure to defend Palestinian victims because they are Palestinian, has imploded the moral authority of Holocaust studies and Holocaust memorials. They have been exposed as vehicles not to prevent genocide but to perpetrate it, not to explore the past, but manipulate the present.Any tepid recognition that the Holocaust may not be the exclusive property of Israel and its Zionist supporters is swiftly shut down. The Holocaust Museum LA deleted an Instagram post that read: “NEVER AGAIN” CAN’T ONLY MEAN NEVER AGAIN FOR JEWS” after a backlash. In the hands of Zionists, “never again” means precisely that, never again only for Jews.Aimé Césaire, in “Discourse on Colonialism,” writes that Hitler seemed exceptionally cruel only because he presided over “the humiliation of the white man,” applying to Europe the “colonialist procedures which until then had been reserved exclusively for the Arabs of Algeria, the coolies of India and the nègres d’Afrique.”It was this distortion of the Holocaust as unique that troubled Primo Levi, who was imprisoned in Auschwitz from 1944 to 1945 and wrote “Survival in Auschwitz.” He was a fierce critic of the apartheid state of Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians. He saw the Shoah as “an inexhaustible source of evil” that “is perpetuated as hatred in the survivors, and springs up in a thousand ways, against the very will of all, as a thirst for revenge, as moral breakdown, as negation, as weariness, as resignation.”He deplored “Manichaeanism,” those who “shun nuance and complexity” and who “reduce the river of human events to conflicts, and conflicts to duals, us and them.” He warned that the “network of human relationships inside the concentration camps was not simple: It could not be reduced to two blocs, victims and persecutors.” The enemy, he knew, “was outside but also inside.”Levi writes about Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, a Jewish collaborator who ruled the Lodz ghetto. Rumkowski, known as “King Chaim,” turned the ghetto into a slave labor camp which enriched the Nazis and himself. He deported opponents to death camps. He raped and molested girls and women. He demanded unquestioned obedience and embodied the evil of his oppressors. For Levi, he was an example of what many of us, under similar circumstances, are capable of becoming.“We are all mirrored in Rumkowski, his ambiguity is ours, it is our second nature, we hybrids molded from clay and spirit,” Levi wrote in “The Drowned and the Saved.” “[H]is fever is ours, the fever of our Western civilization that ‘descends into hell with trumpets and drums,’ and its miserable adornments are the distorting image of our symbols of social prestige.”“Like Rumkowski, we too are so dazzled by power and prestige as to forget our essential fragility,” Levi adds. “[W]illingly or not, we come to terms with power, forgetting that we are all in the ghetto, that the ghetto is walled in, that outside the ghetto reign the lords of death and that close by the train is waiting.”These bitter lessons of the Holocaust, which warn that the line between the victim and victimizer is razor thin, that we can all become willing executioners, that there is nothing intrinsically moral about being Jewish or a survivor of the Holocaust, are what Zionists seek to deny. Levi, for this reason, was persona non grata in Israel.Holocaust studies, which exploded in the 1970s and were epitomized by the deification of the Holocaust survivor and fervent Zionist Elie Wiesel — literary critic Alfred Kazin called him a “Jesus of the Holocaust” — have now surrendered any claim to championing universal truths. These Holocaust scholars use a benchmark evil, as Norman Finkelstein points out, “not as a moral compass but rather as an ideological club.” The mantra “Do not compare,” Finkelstein writes, “is the mantra of moral blackmailers.”Zionists find in the Holocaust and the Jewish state a sense of purpose and meaning, as well as a cloying moral superiority. After the 1967 war, when Israel seized Gaza and the West Bank, Israel, as Nathan Glazer approvingly observed, became “the religion of the American Jews.”Holocaust studies are based on the fallacy that unique suffering confers unique entitlement. This was always the purpose of what Finkelstein calls “The Holocaust Industry.”“Jewish suffering is depicted as ineffable, uncommunicable, and yet always to be proclaimed,” writes the European historian Charles Maier in “The Unmasterable Past: History, Holocaust, and German National Identity.” “It is intensely private, not to be diluted, but simultaneously public so that gentile society will confirm the crimes. A very peculiar suffering must be enshrined in public sites: Holocaust museums, memory gardens, deportation sites, dedicated not as Jewish but civic memorials. But what is the role of a museum in a country, such as the United States, far from the site of the Holocaust? … Under what circumstances can a private sorrow serve simultaneously as public grief? And if genocide is certified as a public sorrow, then must we not accept the credentials of other particular sorrows too? Do Armenians and Cambodians also have a right to publicly funded holocaust museums? And do we need memorials to Seventh Day Adventists and homosexuals for their persecution at the hands of the Third Reich?”Any crime Israel carries out in the name of its survival — its “right to exist” — is justified in the name of this uniqueness. There are no limits. The world is black and white, a never-ending battle against Nazism, which is protean depending on who Israel targets. To challenge this bloodlust is to be an anti-Semite facilitating another genocide of Jews.This simplistic formula not only serves the interests of Israel, but also the interests of colonial powers that carried out their own genocides, ones they seek to obscure. What was the annihilation of Native Americans by European settlers, the Armenians by Turks, the Indians in the Bengal famine by the British or the Soviet-orchestrated famine in the Ukraine? What was the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Is Manifest Destiny any different from the Nazis’ embrace of the concept of Lebensraum? These too were holocausts, fueled by the same dehumanization and bloodlusts.The sacralization of the Nazi Holocaust offers a bizarre quid pro quo. Arming and funding the state of Israel, preventing U.N. resolutions and sanctions from being adopted to condemn its crimes, and demonizing Palestinians and their supporters, is proof of atonement and support for Jews. Israel, in return, absolves the West of its indifference to the plight of Jews during the Holocaust, and Germany for perpetrating it.Germany uses this unholy alliance to separate Nazism from the rest of German history, including the genocide German colonists carried out against the Nama and Herero in German South-West Africa, now Namibia.“[S]uch magic,” Israeli historian and genocide scholar Raz Segal writes, “legitimizes racism against Palestinians at the very moment that Israel perpetrates genocide against them. The idea of Holocaust uniqueness thus reproduces rather than challenges the exclusionary nationalism and settler colonialism that led to the Holocaust.”Segal, the director of the program in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Stockton University in New Jersey, wrote an article on Gaza on Oct. 13, 2023 — six days after the incursion by Hamas and other Palestinian fighters into Israel — titled: “A Textbook Case of Genocide.” This denunciation from an Israeli Holocaust scholar, whose family members perished in the Holocaust, was a very lonely stance.Segal saw in the Israeli government’s immediate demand that Palestinians evacuate the north of Gaza, and the blood-curdling demonization of the Palestinians by Israeli officials — the defense minister said Israel was “fighting human animals” — the stench of genocide.“The whole idea about prevention and ‘never again’ is that — as we teach our students — there are red flags that once we notice them, we're supposed to work in order to stop the process that could escalate to genocide,” Segal said when I interviewed him, “even if it's not genocidal yet.”You can watch my interview with Segal here.“Holocaust studies as a field might be dead, which is not necessarily a bad thing,” he continued. “If indeed Holocaust studies is intertwined from the beginning with the ideology of global Holocaust memory, maybe it's good that we won't have Holocaust studies anymore. And maybe it will open the door for even more interesting and important research on the Holocaust as history, as real history.”Segal paid for his courage and his honesty. The offer to lead the University of Minnesota’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies — which has issued no condemnation of the genocide — was revoked.Nearly two years into the genocide, the International Association of Genocide Scholars finally issued a statement saying that Israel’s conduct meets the legal definition set out in the U.N. Convention on Genocide.But the vast majority of Holocaust scholars remain mute, endlessly condemning the atrocities committed by Hamas while ignoring those committed by Israel. They were mute when South Africa argued before the International Court of Justice that Israel was committing genocide. They were mute when Amnesty International published a report in December 2024 accusing Israel of genocide.“How many Palestinian students apply to graduate programmes in Holocaust and Genocide Studies around the world? Usually none. How many Palestinian scholars identify themselves as scholars in this field? They, too, can be counted on one hand,” Segal writes in a co-authored article in the Journal of Genocide Research.Genocide is coded in the DNA of Western imperialism. Palestine has made this clear. The genocide is the next stage in what the anthropologist Arjun Appadurai calls “a vast worldwide Malthusian correction” that is “geared to preparing the world for the winners of globalization, minus the inconvenient noise of its losers.”The funding and arming of Israel by the United States and European nations as it carries out genocide has imploded the post-World War II international legal order. It no longer has credibility. The West cannot lecture anyone now about democracy, human rights or the supposed virtues of Western civilization.“At the same time that Gaza induces vertigo, a feeling of chaos and emptiness, it becomes for countless powerless people the essential condition of political and ethical consciousness in the twenty-first century — just as the First World War was for a generation in the West,” Pankaj Mishra writes in “The World After Gaza.”The ability to peddle the fiction that the Nazi Holocaust is unique, or that Jews are uniquely entitled, has ended. The genocide presages a new world order, one where Europe and the United States, along with their proxy Israel, are pariahs. Gaza has illuminated a dark truth — barbarism and Western civilization are inseparable.Photos Israeli Soldier Apprehending CivilianPalestinians and Israelis clash on the streets of Hebron on the day of the signing of an accord granting the city self-rule. One of the oldest cities in the world and a center of Islam, Hebron has been a frequent source of controversy in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (Photo by Peter Turnley/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images)Portrait Of Primo Levi By Larry RiversNEW YORK - FEBRUARY 10: Portrait of Primo Levi by Larry Rivers on February 10, 1988 in New York, New York. (Photo by Santi Visalli/Getty Images)Primo LeviItalian writer Primo Levi, circa 1980. (Photo by Marcello Mencarini/Getty Images)Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, head of the Council of Elders meets with German officials on a street of the ghetto.Ghetto Lodz, Litzmannstadt, Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, head of the Council of Elders meets with German officials on a street of the ghetto, Poland 1940, World War II. (Photo by: Dukas/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)Elie Wiesel1986: A portrait of Romanian-born author and concentration camp survivor Elie Wiesel sitting at a desk in front of bookshelves, leaning his head on one hand. (Photo by Nancy R. Schiff/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)US academic Norman Finkelstein arrested in protest against Israeli assaults on GazaNEW YORK, UNITED STATES - JULY 29: Police officers intervene protesters during a rally against the Israeli strikes on Gaza strip, organized by Jewish and a prominent pro-Palestinian activist Norman Finkelstein, in New York outside the UN office, on July 29, 2014. (Photo by Lewaa Khalek/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)Nathan GlazerHead-shot portrait of American sociologist Nathan Glazer, seated in a library, wearing a dark suit, with a pencil poking out of his jacket packet, wearing thick, dark glasses, with a serious facial expression, 1969. (Photo by JHU Sheridan Libraries/Gado/Getty Images).South Africa's genocide case against Israel begins at International Court of JusticeTHE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS - JANUARY 11: Public hearings in South Africa's genocide case against Israel began on Thursday at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, Netherlands on January 11, 2024. (Photo by Dursun Aydemir/Anadolu via Getty ImagArjun Appaduraihttps://trafo.hypotheses.org/3951/030_0180Israeli forces increase measures near the Gaza borderISRAEL - OCTOBER 12: Israeli tanks move near Gaza border as Israeli army deploys military vehicles around the Gaza Strip, Israel on October 12, 2023. (Photo by Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu via Getty Images) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible's list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actorText originally published September 11, 2025.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Full Text: The assassination of Charlie Kirk presages a new, deadly stage in the disintegration of a fractious and highly polarized United States. While toxic rhetoric and threats are lobbed across cultural divides like hand grenades, sometimes spilling over into actual violence — including the murder of Minnesota House of Representatives Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband and the two assassination attempts against Donald Trump — Kirk’s killing is a harbinger of full-scale social disintegration.His murder has given the movement he represented — grounded in Christian nationalism — a martyr. Martyrs are the lifeblood of violent movements. Any flinching over the use of violence, any talk of compassion or understanding, any effort to mediate or discuss, is a betrayal of the martyr and the cause the martyr died defending.Martyrs sacralize violence. They are used to turn the moral order upside down. Depravity becomes morality. Atrocities become heroism. Crime becomes justice. Hate becomes virtue. Greed and nepotism become civic virtues. Murder becomes good. War is the final aesthetic. This is what is coming.“We have to have steely resolve,” said conservative political strategist Steve Bannon on his show “War Room,” adding, “Charlie Kirk is a casualty of war. We are at war in this country. We are.”“If they won’t leave us in peace, then our choice is to fight or die,” wrote Elon Musk on X.“The entire Right has to band together. Enough of this in-fighting b******t. We are up against demonic forces from the pit of Hell,” wrote commentator and author Matt Walsh on X. “Put the personal squabbles aside. Now’s not the time. This is existential. A fight for our own existence and the existence of our country.”Republican Congressman Clay Higgins wrote that he will use, "Congressional authority and every influence with big tech platforms to mandate immediate ban for life of every post or commenter that belittled the assassination of Charlie Kirk..." He further states "I’m also going after their business licenses and permitting, their businesses will be blacklisted aggressively, they should be kicked from every school, and their drivers licenses should be revoked. I’m basically going to cancel with extreme prejudice these evil, sick animals who celebrated Charlie Kirk’s assassination."Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale capitalized on Kirk’s death to advocate for a takedown of the “red-green alliance” of “Communists and Islamists” who he claims have united to destroy Western civilization. He proposes an app where citizens can upload pictures of crime and homelessness in exchange for “property-tax rebates.”Far-right comedian Sam Hyde, who has nearly half a million followers on X, wrote in response to Trump’s announcement of Kirk's death that it is, "Time to do your f*****g job and seize power… if you want to be more than a footnote in the ‘American Collapse’ section of future history books, it's now or never.” In his tweet, he tags members of the administration and private military contractors.Conservative actor James Woods warned, “Dear leftists: we can have a conversation or a civil war. One more shot from your side and you will not get this choice again.” His tweet was reposted by almost 20,000 people, received 4.9 million views and over 96,000 likes.These are a sample of the slew of vitriolic sentiments shared and cheered on by tens of millions of Americans.The dispossession of the working class, 30 million who have been laid off because of deindustrialization, has engendered rage, despair, dislocation, alienation and fostered magical thinking. It has fed conspiracy theories, a lust for vengeance and a celebration of violence as a purgative for social and cultural decay.Christian fascists — like Kirk and Trump — have astutely preyed on this despair. They stoked the embers. Kirk’s killing will set it alight.Dissidents, artists, gays, intellectuals, the poor, the vulnerable, people of color, those who are undocumented or who do not mindlessly repeat the cant of a perverted Christian nationalism, will be condemned as human contaminants to be excised from the body politic. They will become, as in all diseased societies, sacrificial victims in the vain attempt to achieve moral renewal and recapture a lost glory and prosperity.The cannibalization of society, a futile attempt to recreate a mythical America, will accelerate the disintegration. The intoxication of violence — many of those reacting to Kirk’s killing seemed giddy about a looming bloodbath — will feed on itself like a firestorm.The martyr is vital to the crusade, in this case ridding America of those Trump calls the “radical left.”Martyrs are memorialized in ceremonies and acts of remembrance to remind followers of the righteousness of the cause and the perfidy of those who are blamed for the martyr’s death. This is what Trump did when he called Kirk “a martyr for truth and freedom” in a video message on September 10, awarded Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom and ordered flags to be flown at half-staff until Sunday. It is why Kirk's casket will be flown back to Phoenix, Arizona on Air Force Two.Kirk was a poster child for our emergent Christian Fascism. He peddled the Great Replacement Theory, which claims liberals or “globalists” allow immigrants of color into the country in order to replace whites, distorting immigration trends into conspiracy. He was Islamophobic, tweeting “Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America,” and that it is “not compatible with western civilization.”When children’s YouTuber Ms. Rachel said “Jesus says to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself,” Kirk retorted that “Satan has quoted scripture plenty” and added “by the way Ms. Rachel, you might wanna crack open that Bible of yours, in a lesser referenced part of the same part of scripture is in Leviticus 18, is that thou shall Lay with another man and be stoned to death.”He demanded we roll back the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and disparaged civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King. He was demeaning towards Black people, “If I’m dealing with somebody in customer service who’s a moronic Black woman...is she there because of affirmative action?” He said “prowling Blacks” are targeting white people “for fun.” He blamed Black Lives Matter for “destroying the fabric of our society."Kirk insisted the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. He founded Professor Watchlist and School Board Watchlist to purge professors and teachers with what he called “radical leftist” agendas. He advocated televised public executions which he insisted should be mandatory viewing for children.The idea that he championed free speech and liberty is absurd. He was an enemy of both.Kirk, who was a cheerleader for the cult of Trump, embodied the hypermasculinity that is at the core of fascist movements. This was perhaps his primary attraction to youth, especially white men. He claimed there is “a war on men,” fetishized guns and sold Trump to his followers as a man’s man.“There’s a lot you can call Donald Trump,” he wrote. “No one has ever called him feminine. Trump is a giant middle finger to all the screeching hall monitors that attacked young men for just existing. He’s a giant F YOU to the feminist establishment that was never challenged before he came down the golden escalator. Most of the media missed this. Young men did not.”History has shown what comes next. It won’t be pleasant. Kirk, elevated to martyrdom, gives those seeking to extinguish our democracy the license to kill, just as Kirk was killed. It lifts what few constraints still exist to protect us from state abuse and vigilante violence. Kirk’s name and visage will be employed to accelerate the road to tyranny, which is as he would have wanted it.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Thanks for reading The Chris Hedges Report! This post is public so feel free to share it.PhotosTOPSHOT-SAFRICA-US-HOMOCIDE-MEDIA-POLITICS-CRIMETOPSHOT - A general view of a wreath laid by mourners outside the US Embassy in Pretoria on September 11, 2025 following the fatal shooting of US youth activist and influencer Charlie Kirk while speaking during an event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, United States. US youth activist and influencer Charlie Kirk, a major ally of President Donald Trump, was shot on September 10, 2025 at a US university. (Photo by Phill Magakoe / AFP) (Photo by PHILL MAGAKOE/AFP via Getty Images)Conservatives Gather For Annual CPAC Conference In Washington DCOXON HILL, MARYLAND - FEBRUARY 20: Steve Bannon, media personality and political strategist, speaks during the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort Hotel And Convention Center on February 20, 2025 in Oxon Hill, Maryland. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 - Day 3NEW YORK, NY - MAY 01: Joe Lonsdale of Formation 8 speaks onstage with Alexia Tsotsis at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 at The Manhattan Center on May 1, 2013 in New York City. (Photo by Brian Ach/Getty Images for TechCrunch)FILES-US-POLITICS-SHOOTING-KIRKUS right-wing activist Charlie Kirk (R) speaks on stage with President Donald Trump at America Fest 2024 in Phoenix, Arizona, on December 22, 2024. Right-wing youth activist and influencer Charlie Kirk, a major ally of President Donald Trump, was shot dead on September 10, 2025 in a murder that sparked fears of more political violence in an increasingly febrile United States. Trump confirmed on social media that Kirk, 31, had died from his injuries. (Photo by JOSH EDELSON / AFP) (Photo by JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images)US-POLITICS-HOMICIDE-MASS-MEDIA-CRIMEA photo of youth activist and influencer Charlie Kirk is seen at his makeshift memorial at Orem City Center Park in Orem, Utah, a day after he was shot during a public event at Utah Valley University on September 11, 2025. (Photo by Melissa MAJCHRZAK / AFP) (Photo by MELISSA MAJCHRZAK/AFP via Getty Images)VP Vance Transports Charlie Kirk's Body Back To Phoenix Via Air Force TwoPHOENIX, ARIZONA - SEPTEMBER 11: The casket containing the body of Charlie Kirk is removed from Air Force Two at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport on September 11, 2025 in Phoenix, Arizona. Kirk, the CEO and co-founder of Turning Point USA, was shot and killed on Wednesday in Utah. (Photo by Eric Thayer/Getty Images)Room To Grow's 25th Anniversary Gala - ArrivalsAron Accurso and Ms. Rachel a.k.a. Rachel Griffin-Accurso at Room To Grow's 25th Anniversary Gala held at the Ziegfeld Ballroom on October 25, 2023 in New York City. (Photo by John Nacion/Variety via Getty Images)Politicon 2018 - Day 1LOS ANGELES, CA - OCTOBER 20: Charlie Kirk speaks onstage during Politicon 2018 at Los Angeles Convention Center on October 20, 2018 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Phillip Faraone/Getty Images for Politicon)US-POLITICSUS conservative political activist and YouTuber, Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, speaks at University of Nevada in Reno during his "You're Being Brainwashed" tour, October 8, 2024. (Photo by Andri Tambunan / AFP) (Photo by ANDRI TAMBUNAN/AFP via Getty Images) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible's list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actorText originally published July 28, 2025.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Full Text: I testified at the New Jersey state capital in Trenton last week against Bill A3558, which would adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which conflates anti-Zionism with antisemitism.“This is a dangerous assault on free speech by seeking to criminalize legitimate criticism of Israeli policies,” I said. “The Trump administration’s campaign to ostensibly root out antisemitism on college campuses is clearly a trope to shut down free speech and deport non-citizens, even if they are here legally. This bill falsely conflates ethnicity with a political state. And let’s be clear, the brunt of repression on college campuses is directed against students and faculty who oppose the genocide in Gaza, 3,000 of whom were arrested and hundreds of whom were censored, suspended or expelled. Many of these students are Jewish. What about their rights? What about their constitutional protections?”“I have had numerous relationships with Israeli journalists and political leaders,” I went on. “I knew, for example, former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin who negotiated the Oslo peace agreement. Rabin was assassinated in 1995 by an Israeli ultranationalist who opposed the peace accord. Rabin stated bluntly on numerous occasions that the occupation was harmful to Israel. Israeli colleagues frequently criticize Israeli policies in the Israeli press in language that would be defined as antisemitic by this bill.”“For example,” I continued, “the Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, who served in the Israeli army and writes for the newspaper Haaretz, has called for sanctions to be imposed on Israel to stop the slaughter in Gaza, saying ‘Do to Israel what you did to South Africa.’”“Omer Bartov, who served as an Israeli company commander in the 1973 war, is Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University,” I said. “He stated in an article on July 15 in The New York Times that his ‘inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people.’”“These kinds of statements, and many more I can quote from Israeli colleagues and friends, would see them under this bill criminalized as antisemites,” I added.Committee chairman Robert Karabinchak, a Democrat, muted my microphone, banged his hammer for me to stop and allowed gaggles of Zionists, who openly harassed and insulted Muslims in the room, to jeer and shout me down.There I was arguing that this bill would curtail my free speech, at the same time I was being denied free speech.You can see my full testimony here.This cognitive dissonance defines the United States and Israel.The committee chairman also muted Raz Segal, the Israeli historian and genocide scholar and, in an especially callous move, chastised Mehdi Rabee, whose 14-year-old brother Amer was killed by Israeli soldiers in April 2025.“My 14-year-old brother who was from Saddlebrook, New Jersey, was murdered by the IDF,” Mehdi, his voice shaking with emotion, told the committee. “All he was doing was picking olives from an olive tree with his friends, which we have been doing as Palestinians for thousands of years. My brother, whom I will never see again, my brother who my parents will never watch graduate from high school or college. Assemblywoman Swain, my father and the Palestinian-American Community Center tried reaching out to you over and over. And all that we were met with was nothing but silence. Given your silence, you should not have the right to even consider voting for this bill until you meet with my family, who are under your district.”“I am going to ask you to stick to the bill,” Karabinchak interrupted.“This bill puts at risk my First Amendment right to criticize Israel for what they have done to my brother,” he went on. “I have a right to call Israel whatever I want to call it. When their policies mirror that of the Nazis, I have a right to call it as it is. I call on you to vote no in remembrance of my brother.”You can see Mehdi’s statement here.Karabinchak, angered that supporters gave Rabee a standing ovation, reduced all testimonies critical of the bill from three minutes to one minute.“Time is down to one minute,” he told the crowd of about 400 in the committee and four overflow rooms. “I’m going to ask everybody now to speak, who wants to speak, is going to say ‘I oppose the bill’ or ‘I support the bill.’”He paused.“Let’s have some more claps,” he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Let’s be happy now, right? I didn’t throw you out like I said I was going to. So now you just stifled the other people who have a right to speak. That’s what you just did! Understand what you did! Okay? One minute. One minute. That’s it. And I’m not going to be nice and say let’s rap it up. I’m going to shut the mic off. ”Our sin was that we dared to mention the unmentionable – the genocide in Gaza.The Zionists in the room were verbally and physically abusive to the Muslims who had come to oppose the bill. One Zionist repeatedly shoved himself into the bodies of those outside the state capital holding a rally against the bill.You can see his harassment here.Amy Gallatin, who is on the commission of the West Orange Human Relations Commission, “established by municipal ordinance in 1992 in order to create and foster values of diversity, equity and inclusion among groups in the community,” pulled up pictures on her iPad in one of the overflow rooms and said to those seated around her “Look, it’s Mohammed!”You can see her Islamophobic hate speech here.When Rabbi Yitzchok Deutsch made an emotional plea to save the people of Gaza Lisa Swain of District 38 and Assemblyman Avi Schnall of District 30, both Democrats, snickered and laughed as he spoke.You can see their reactions to Rabbi Deutsch here.Zionists, who painted lurid pictures of Jews living under harassment and in fear for their lives, and of Nazism supposedly running amok on the streets of New Jersey, were not muted, although their statements were hyperbolic to the extreme and often a product of over-active imaginations. They openly salivated at the adoption of the bill, which they said would give law enforcement the tools to criminalize those who engage in hate speech, which, if you read the “contemporary examples of antisemitism,” that accompany the IHRA, include speech that criticizes Israeli policies.The IHRA has been adopted by 35 states, the District of Columbia and universities such as Harvard and Columbia.“The IHRA working definition of antisemitism includes protected criticism of Israel and its policies,” writes the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). “For example, the definition declares that ‘denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor,’ ‘drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis,’ and ‘applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation’ are all examples of antisemitism.”“If the Department of Education were to adopt this definition, and investigate universities for Title VI complaints based on it, college and university administrators would likely silence a range of protected speech including criticism of the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians, analogies likening Israeli policies to those of Nazi Germany, or sharing differing beliefs about the right to a Jewish state,” the ACLU continues. “People may disagree about whether such speech is antisemitic, but that debate is irrelevant to the First Amendment, which prohibits the government from censoring or penalizing core political speech.”U.S. attorney Kenneth S. Stern — a self-professed Zionist and the lead drafter of what became the IHRA definition of antisemitism — laments that the IHRA has been “grossly abused” to “restrict academic freedom and punish political speech,” including “pro-Palestinian speech.”The five committee members, who had clearly made up their minds before they entered the packed hearing room, unanimously passed the measure, which will go to the floor of the State Assembly for a vote. They will, like all politicians who bow before the dictates of the Israel lobby, no doubt, be compensated for their perfidy.America, like Israel, exists in a parallel reality. It denies the stark and incontrovertible reality of the live-streamed genocide. It slanders anyone, including Israeli holocaust scholars such as Professor Segal, as antisemites.I know, sadly, where this goes. I witnessed it in the many dictatorships I covered as a foreign correspondent for two decades in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. Those of us who fight for an open society are silenced, attacked as traitors and criminals. We are blacklisted, censored and at times, locked up. If we can escape in time, we are forced into exile. As we are silenced, the sycophants, grifters, Christian fascists, billionaires, Zionists and thugs, elevated to the highest positions in the federal government by the Trump White House, are rewarded with absolute power, luxury and debauchery.Our corporate-indentured ruling class has no genuine political ideology. Political parties are a farce, a species of entertainment to beguile the population in our pretend democracy. Liberalism, and the values it claims to represent, is a spent and bankrupt force.The burlesque in the committee room in Trenton was another depressing reminder that there is little now that will halt our path towards an authoritarian state, not the press, not the universities, not the courts, which cannot enforce the few rulings made by courageous judges, not the political class, including the Democratic Party, and not the electoral process.We must resist, if only to assert our integrity and dignity, if only to stand in solidarity with the oppressed, if only to slow the consolidation of tyranny, if only to revel in the small pyrrhic victories that resistance alone makes possible.But we should not be fooled.Thanks for reading The Chris Hedges Report! This post is public so feel free to share it.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible's list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actorText originally published July 26, 2025.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Full Text: Israelis do not see the images of skeletal corpses of Palestinian children who they have starved to death as a curse. They do not see the slain families they gun down at food hubs — designed not to deliver aid but lure starving Palestinians into a massive concentration camp in the south of Gaza in preparation for deportation — as a war crime. Israelis do not look at the savage bombing and shelling that kill or wound dozens of Palestinian civilians, where an average of 28 children die daily, as anything extraordinary. They do not see the wasteland of Gaza, pulverized by bombs and methodically being torn down by bulldozers and excavators, leaving virtually the entire population of Gaza homeless, as barbaric. They do not see the destruction of water purification plants, decimation of hospitals and clinics, where doctors and medical staff are often unable to work because they are weak from malnutrition, as savage. They do not blink at the assassinations of doctors as well as journalists, 232 of whom have been murdered for trying to document the horror.Israelis have blinded themselves morally and intellectually. They view the genocide through the lens of a bankrupt media and political class that tells them only what they want to hear and shows them only what they want to see. They are intoxicated by the power of their industrial weapons and license to kill with impunity. They are drunk on self-adulation and the fantasy that they are the vanguard of civilization. They believe that the extermination of a people, including children, condemned as human contaminants, makes the world, especially their world, a happier and safer place.They are the heirs of Pol Pot, the killers that carried out the genocides in East Timor, Rwanda and Bosnia and, yes, the Nazis. Israel, like all genocidal states — no population since World War II has been dispossessed and starved with such speed and ruthlessness – has a final solution that would have earned the stamp of approval from Adolf Eichmann.Starvation was always the plan, the preordained final chapter of the genocide. Israel methodically set out from the beginning of the genocide to destroy sources of food, bombing bakeries and blocking food shipments into Gaza, something it has accelerated since March, when it severed nearly all food supplies. It targeted the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) — on which most Palestinians depended on for food — for destruction, accusing its employees, without providing evidence, of being involved in the attacks of Oct. 7. This accusation was used to give funders such as the United States, which provided $422 million to the agency in 2023, the excuse to halt financial support. Israel then banned UNRWA.Over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers and U.S. mercenaries in the chaotic scramble to get one of the few food packages distributed during the brief blocks of time, usually an hour, at the four aid sites set up by the Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, according to the U.N. Human Rights Office.Once Gaza was turned into a moonscape after 21 months of saturation bombing, once Palestinians were forced to live in tents, under crude tarps or in the open air, once clean water, food and medical aid became nearly impossible to find, once civil society was obliterated, Israel began its grim campaign to starve the Palestinians out of Gaza.One in three people in Gaza are going multiple days without eating, according to the U.N.Starvation is not a pretty sight. I covered the famine in Sudan in 1988 that took an estimated 250,000 lives. There are streaks in my lungs — scars from standing amid hundreds of Sudanese who were dying of tuberculosis. I was strong and healthy and fought off the contagion. They were weak and emaciated and did not.I watched hundreds of skeletal figures, ghosts of human beings, trudge at a glacial pace across the barren Sudanese landscape. Hyenas, accustomed to eating human flesh, routinely picked off small children. I stood over clusters of bleached human bones on the outskirts of villages where dozens of people, too weak to walk, had laid down in a group and never got up. Many were the remains of entire families.The starved lack enough calories to sustain themselves. They eat anything to survive — animal feed, grass, leaves, insects, rodents, even dirt. They suffer from constant diarrhea. They have trouble breathing because of respiratory infections. They rip up tiny bits of food, often spoiled, and ration it in a vain attempt to hold off the gnawing hunger pains.Starvation reduces the iron needed to produce hemoglobin, a protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen from the lungs to the body, and myoglobin, a protein that provides oxygen to muscles, coupled with a lack of vitamin B1, which affects heart and brain function. Anemia sets in. The body, in essence, feeds on itself. Tissue and muscle waste away. It is impossible to regulate body temperature. Kidneys shut down. Immune systems crash. Vital organs atrophy. Blood circulation slows. The volume of blood decreases. Infectious diseases such as typhoid, tuberculosis and cholera become an epidemic, killing people by the thousands.It is impossible to concentrate. Emaciated victims succumb to mental and emotional withdrawal and apathy. They do not want to be touched or moved. The heart muscle is weakened. Victims, even at rest, are in a state of virtual heart failure. Wounds do not heal. Vision is impaired with cataracts, even among the young. Finally, wracked by convulsions and hallucinations, the heart stops. This process can last up to 40 days for an adult. Children, the elderly and the sick expire at faster rates.This is the future Israel has preordained for the two million people in Gaza.But it is not the future Israelis see. They see paradise. They see an ethno-nationalist Jewish state where Palestinians, whose land they stole and occupied and whose people they have subjugated and forced into an apartheid existence, do not exist. They see cafes and hotels rising up where thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of bodies lie buried under the rubble. They see tourists frolicking on the Gaza beachfront, a vision enhanced by an Artificial Intelligence-generated video uploaded to social media by Israeli Minister of Innovation, Science and Technology, Gila Gamliel. It is what a Gaza devoid of Palestinians would look like, echoing the absurdist AI video posted by Donald Trump.In the new video, carefree Israelis eat at seaside restaurants. Anchored in the sparkling Mediterranean are luxury yachts. Gleaming hotels and office high rises, including a Trump Tower, dot the beachfront. Attractive residential neighborhoods stand where now there are broken, jagged mounds of concrete. The video shows Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, as well as Trump and Melania, strolling along the seaside.Gamliel, like other Israeli leaders and Trump, cynically uses the term “voluntary emigration” to describe the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. This omits the stark choice Israel actually offers the Palestinians — leave or die.Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has called for a “security annexation” of the northern Gaza Strip and vowed that Gaza will become an “inseparable part of the State of Israel.” He made the remarks at a Knesset conference called “The Gaza Riviera — from vision to reality,” which presented proposals for the building of Jewish colonies in Gaza. Smotrich said Israel would “relocate Gazans to other countries,” and that Trump endorsed the plan.Israeli Minister of Heritage Amichai Eliyahu, who once proposed dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza, declared that “All Gaza will be Jewish.” The Israeli government “is racing ahead for Gaza to be wiped out,” Eliyahu said. He described Palestinians as Nazis. “Thank God, we are wiping out this evil. We are pushing this population that has been educated on ‘Mein Kampf.’”Genocidal killers embrace fantasies of eradicating a native population and expanding their ethnonationalist state. The Nazis carried out their genocidal assault, which included mass starvation, on Slavs, Eastern European Jews and other indigenous people, dismissed as Untermenschen, or subhumans. Colonists were then to be shipped to Central and Eastern Europe to Germanize the occupied territory.These killers do not reckon with the darkness they unleash. The upscale beachfront properties dreamt of by Israel will never appear, just as the modern, exclusively Serb capital, with its golden domed cathedral, imposing presidency building, 15-story clock tower, state-of-the-art medical center and national theater with a 72-foot revolving stage was never built on the ruins of Bosnia.Rather, there will be ugly apartment blocks, populated by the usual miscreants, proto-fascists, racists and mediocrities who live in the Jewish colonies in the West Bank. These ultranationalists, who have formed rogue militias to seize Palestinian land and joined the Israeli army in murdering over 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank since Oct. 7, will define Israel. They are the Israeli version of the 3-million-strong Pancasila Youth — Indonesia’s equivalent of the Brown Shirts or the Hitler Youth — that in 1965 helped carry out the genocidal mayhem that left half a million to one million dead.These rogue militias, equipped with automatic weapons provided by the Israeli government, lynched Saifullah Musallet, a 20-year-old Palestinian-American, who was attempting to protect his family’s land two weeks ago. He is the fifth U.S. citizen killed in the West Bank since Oct. 7.Once these Israeli goons and thugs are done with the Palestinians, they will turn on each other.The genocide in Gaza signals the abolition, for Israelis as well as Palestinians, of the rule of law. It marks the obliteration of even the pretense of an ethical code. Israelis are the barbarians they condemn. If there is any warped justice in this genocide it is that Israelis, once they finish with the Palestinians, will be forced to live together in moral squalor.Thanks for reading The Chris Hedges Report! This post is public so feel free to share it.PhotosChris HedgesChris Hedges, a former Pulitzer Prize winning foreign correspondent for the New York Times and best selling author of 'Empire of Illusion', stands next to a window for a portrait, Princeton, NJ, November 2010. Hedges is also the author of 'Death of the Liberal Class' and is a columnist for Truthdig. (Photo by Oliver Morris/Getty Images)TOPSHOT-PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICT-GAZA-AIDTOPSHOT - Palestinians gather at an aid distribution point set up by the privately-run Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), near the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on June 25, 2025. (Photo by Eyad BABA / AFP) (Photo by EYAD BABA/AFP via Getty Images)Right Wing Supporters Take Part In March Towards GazaSOUTHERN ISRAEL, ISRAEL - JULY 30: An explosion is seen in the northern Gaza Strip as right-wing activists observe from a vantage point during a rally calling to resettle the Northern Gaza Strip on July 30, 2025 in Southern Israel, Israel. Reports in the Israeli press suggest that President Netanyahu has promised far-right politicians in the coalition government that Israel will begin to resettle North Gaza in the near future. (Photo by Amir Levy/Getty Images)Israeli army withdraws from Al-Shifa Hospital in GazaGAZA CITY, GAZA - APRIL 1: A woman mourns as the Palestinians gather around the burned and destroyed Al-Shifa Hospital after the Israeli attacks as Israeli forces withdrew from Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, Gaza on April 1, 2024. (Photo by Dawoud Abo Alkas/Anadolu via Getty Images)TOPSHOT-ISRAEL-PALESTINIAN-GAZA-CONFLICTTOPSHOT - Israeli soldiers prepare tanks at an Israeli army deployment area near the Israel-Gaza Strip border for a potential ground operation in the Palestinian coastal enclave on November 20, 2012. AFP PHOTO / JACK GUEZ (Photo by JACK GUEZ / AFP) (Photo by JACK GUEZ/AFP via Getty Images)IDF Soldiers Remain On The Gaza Border After CeasefireISRAEL/GAZA, ISRAEL - NOVEMBER 22: Israeli soldiers laugh and dance to music provided by visiting Hassidic Jews who visited to show their support to soldiers at the border with the Gaza Strip on November 22, 2012 close to the northern Gaza Strip border with Israel. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)An undated photo of genocidal leader Pol Pot (L) wANLONG VENG, CAMBODIA: An undated photo of genocidal leader Pol Pot (L) with former Khmer Rouge foreign minister Ieng Sary (C) recovered from the guerilla's former stronghold of Anlong Veng by Agence France-Presse reporter Reach Sambath on March 28 1998. The picture was believed to be taken in China in the late 1970's, according to Pich Chheang, former Khmer Rouge ambassador to China. Man on the right is unidentified. AFP PHOTO (Photo credit should read AFP via Getty Images)Prime Talking5th November 1975: Foreign Minister Ernesto Melo Antunes with his Indonesian counterpart Adam Malik outside the Portuguese Embassy in Rome, discussing the civil war on the Portuguese island of Timor. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)Hitler And Goebbels Being Saluted(Original Caption) 10/31/1933.Berlin, Germany- Chancellor Adolf Hitler & Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels (left) receiving the cheers and Nazi salutes of their followers in the Berlin sports Palast where they opened the campaign of Hitler's government to get the support of the citzens for their program for the nation.The ballots for this election do not contain names of candidates for this or that office.Food distributed to Palestinians struggling with hunger in GazaGAZA CITY, GAZA - AUGUST 01: Palestinians, including children gather with cooking pots to receive hot meals distributed by a charitable organization in the Al-Ansar area of western Gaza City on August 1, 2025. The food distribution comes amid severe hunger and humanitarian crisis caused by ongoing Israeli attacks. (Photo by Abdalhkem Abu Riash/Anadolu via Getty Images)Ethiopian RefugeesAn Ethiopian woman from Eritrea and her starving children sit in a hospital tent located in a refugee camp in eastern Sudan. (Photo by Peter Turnley/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images)SUDAN-FAMINEAn elderly woman and some children shown in a file photo dated 03 November 1988 waiting by an empty bowl in Juba, southern Sudan, four days after their last meal. The international medical charity Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF-Doctors without Borders) warned 08 June of famine in southern Sudan's Bahr el-Ghazal state and called for urgent measures to avert disaster. (Photo by ALEXANDER JOE / AFP FILES / AFP) (Photo by ALEXANDER JOE/AFP FILES/AFP via Getty Images)ISRAEL-IRAN-POLITICSIranian crown prince Reza Pahlavi (L), whose father was the shah overthrown in the 1979 Islamic revolution, alongside Israel's Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel visit the Sorek Desalination Plant, south of Tel Aviv, on April 19, 2023. (Photo by JACK GUEZ / AFP) (Photo by JACK GUEZ/AFP via Getty Images)TOPSHOT-ISRAEL-ARGENTINA-POLITICS-DIPLOMACY-PARLIAMENTTOPSHOT - Israel's (L to R) Foreign Minister Gideon Saar and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attend the address of Argentina's President to a session of the Israeli parliament (Knesset) at its headquarters in Jerusalem on June 11, 2025. (Photo by Menahem KAHANA / AFP) (Photo by MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP via Getty Images)Amichai Eliyahuhttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Amichai_Eliyahu.jpgIsraeli settlers march to Gaza border, demand resettlementISRAEL - JULY 30: Jewish settlers and far-right activists march from Sderot toward the northern border of Gaza, calling for the re-establishment of settlements in the territory, on July 30, 2025, in Israel. Chanting slogans such as "We are returning to Gaza," the demonstrators carried Israeli flags throughout the march. (Photo by Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu via Getty Images)Sumpah Pemudahttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HUT_Sumpah_Pemuda_.jpg This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible's list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actorText originally published July 9, 2025.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Full Text: When the history of the genocide in Gaza is written, one of the most courageous and outspoken champions for justice and the adherence to international law will be Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur, who today the Trump administration is sanctioning. Her office is tasked with monitoring and reporting on human rights violations that Israel commits against Palestinians.Albanese, who regularly receives death threats and endures well-orchestrated smear campaigns directed by Israel and its allies, valiantly seeks to hold those who support and sustain the genocide accountable. She lambasts what she calls “the moral and political corruption of the world” that allows the genocide to continue. Her office has issued detailed reports documenting war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank, one of which, called “Genocide as colonial erasure,” I have reprinted as an appendix in my latest book, “A Genocide Foretold.”She has informed private organizations that they are “criminally liable” for assisting Israel in carrying out the genocide in Gaza. She announced that if true, as has been reported, that the former British prime minister David Cameron threatened to defund and withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC) after it issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant, which Cameron and the other former British prime minister Rishi Sunak could be charged with a criminal offense for, under the Rome Statute. The Rome Statute criminalizes those who seek to prevent war crimes from being prosecuted.She has called on top European Union (EU) officials to face charges of complicity of war crimes over their support for the genocide, saying that their actions cannot be met with impunity. She was a champion of the Madleen flotilla that sought to break the blockade of Gaza and deliver humanitarian aid, writing that the boat which was intercepted by Israel, was carrying not only supplies, but a message of humanity.You can see the interview I did with Albanese here.Her latest report lists 48 corporations and institutions, including Palantir Technologies Inc., Lockheed Martin, Alphabet Inc. (Google), Amazon, International Business Machine Corporation (IBM), Caterpillar Inc., Microsoft Corporation and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), along with banks and financial firms such as BlackRock, insurers, real estate firms and charities, which in violation of international law, are making billions from the occupation and the genocide of Palestinians.You can read my article on Albanese’s most recent report here.Secretary of State Marco Rubio condemned her support for the ICC, four of whose judges have been sanctioned by the U.S. for issuing arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant last year. He criticized Albanese for her efforts to prosecute American or Israeli nationals who sustain the genocide, saying she is unfit for service as a special rapporteur. Rubio also accused Albanese of having "spewed unabashed antisemitism, expressed support for terrorism, and open contempt for the United States, Israel, and the West." The sanctions will most likely prevent Albanese from travelling to the U.S. and will freeze any assets she may have in the country.The attack against Albanese presages a world without rules, one where rogue states, such as the U.S. and Israel, are permitted to carry out war crimes and genocide without any accountability or restraint. It exposes the subterfuges we use to fool ourselves and attempt to fool others. It reveals our hypocrisy, cruelty and racism. No one, from now on, will take seriously our stated commitments to democracy, freedom of expression, the rule of law or human rights. And who can blame them? We speak exclusively in the language of force, the language of brutes, the language of mass slaughter, the language of genocide.“The acts of killing, the mass killing, the infliction of psychological and physical torture, the devastation, the creation of conditions of life that would not allow the people in Gaza to live, from the destruction of hospitals, the mass forced displacement and the mass homelessness, while people were being bombed daily, and the starvation — how can we read these acts in isolation?” Albanese asked in an interview I did with her when we discussed her report, “Genocide as colonial erasure.”The militarized drones, helicopter gunships, walls and barriers, checkpoints, coils of concertina wire, watchtowers, detention centers, deportations, brutality and torture, denial of entry visas, apartheide existence that comes with being undocumented, loss of individual rights and electronic surveillance, are as familiar to desperate migrants along the Mexican border, or attempting to enter Europe, as they are to Palestinians.This is what awaits those who Frantz Fanon calls “the wretched of the earth.”Those that defend the oppressed, such as Albanese, will be treated like the oppressed.Thanks for reading The Chris Hedges Report! This post is public so feel free to share it.Photos Chris HedgesChris Hedges, a former Pulitzer Prize winning foreign correspondent for the New York Times and best selling author of 'Empire of Illusion', stands next to a window for a portrait, Princeton, NJ, November 2010. Hedges is also the author of 'Death of the Liberal Class' and is a columnist for Truthdig. (Photo by Oliver Morris/Getty Images)NATO Foreign Ministers Meeting April 2024BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - APRIL 03: Britain's Foreign Secretary David Cameron speaks to the press after his arrival at NATO headquarters on the first day of the NATO Foreign Ministers' meeting on April 03, 2024 in Brussels, Belgium. The meeting of foreign ministers from NATO countries coincided with the 75th anniversary of the alliance's founding. (Photo by Omar Havana/Getty Images)The State Visit Of The President Of The Republic Of Korea - Day 1LONDON, ENGLAND - NOVEMBER 21: Britain's Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, right, and David Cameron, the Foreign Secretary, left, walk across Horse Guards parade for the Ceremonial Welcome by King Charles and Queen Camilla for the President of Korea Yoon Suk Yeol and First Lady, Kim Keon Hee, on November 21, 2023 in London, England. The President of Korea Yoon Suk Yeol is on a four-day State visit to Britain. (Photo by Frank Augstein - WPA Pool/Getty Images)'Freedom Flotilla' And Greta Thunberg Prepare To Depart Italy For GazaCATANIA, ITALY - JUNE 01: The bow of the Madleen ship, featuring an illustration inspired by the Palestinian flag, ready to set off from the port of San Giovanni Li Cuti on June 01, 2025 in Catania, Italy. (Photo by Fabrizio Villa/Getty Images)'Freedom Flotilla' And Greta Thunberg Prepare To Depart Italy For GazaCATANIA, ITALY - JUNE 01: Greta Thunberg with part of the crew of the ship Madleen, shortly before departure for Gaza, during the press conference in San Giovanni Li Cuti on June 01, 2025 in Catania, Italy. (Photo by Fabrizio Villa/Getty Images)Senators Meet For Their Policy Luncheons On Capitol HillWASHINGTON, DC - MAY 10: Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) leaves the Senate Chamber following a vote at the U.S. Capitol on May 10, 2023 in Washington, DC. Republican and Democratic Congressional leaders met with President Joe Biden at the White House yesterday to continue to negotiate how to raise the debt limit. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)TOPSHOT-US-ISRAEL-POLITICS-DIPLOMACY-TRUMP-NETANYAHUTOPSHOT - US President Donald Trump shakes hands with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on April 7, 2025. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICT-FOODPalestinians shove to receive a hot meal at a charity kitchen in the Mawasi area of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on July 22, 2025. The head of Gaza's largest hospital said 21 children have died due to malnutrition and starvation in the Palestinian territory in the past three days, amid a devastating assault by Israeli forces. (Photo by AFP) (Photo by -/AFP via Getty Images)TOPSHOT-PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-US-BARRIER-TRUMPTOPSHOT - A man walks past graffiti depicting US President Donald Trump on the controversial Israeli separation barrier in the West Bank town of Bethlehem on August 4, 2017. (Photo by Musa AL SHAER / AFP) (Photo by MUSA AL SHAER/AFP via Getty Images)Emergency Ministerial Conference on Global Leaders Convene in BogotaBOGOTA, COLOMBIA - JULY 15: Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanes attends the Emergency Ministerial Conference on Palestine at the San Carlos Palace in Bogota, Colombia, on July 15, 2025. (Photo by Juancho Torres/Anadolu via Getty Images) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible's list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actorText originally published July 12, 2025.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Full Text: The refusal by the Trump administration to release the files and videos amassed during investigations into the activities of the pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, should put to rest the absurd idea, embraced by Trump supporters and gullible liberals, that Trump will dismantle the Deep State. Trump is part of, and has long been part of, the repugnant cabal of politicians – Democrat and Republican – billionaires and celebrities who look at us, and often underage girls and boys, as commodities to exploit for profit or pleasure.The list of those who were in Epstein’s orbit is a who’s who of the rich and famous. They include not only Trump, but Bill Clinton, who allegedly took a trip to Thailand with Epstein, Prince Andrew, Bill Gates, hedge fund billionaire Glenn Dubin, former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, former Secretary of the Treasury and former president of Harvard University Larry Summers, cognitive psychologist and author Stephen Pinker, Alan Dershowitz, billionaire and Victoria’s Secret CEO Leslie Wexner, the former Barclays banker Jes Staley, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, the magician David Copperfield, actor Kevin Spacey, former CIA director Bill Burns, real estate mogul Mort Zuckerman, former Maine senator George Mitchell and disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, who reveled in Epstein’s perpetual Bacchanalia.They also include law firms and high-priced attorneys, federal and state prosecutors, private investigators, personal assistants, publicists, servants and drivers. They include the numerous procurers and pimps, including Epstein’s girlfriend and daughter of Robert Maxwell, Ghislaine Maxwell. They include the media and politicians who ruthlessly discredited and silenced the victims, and strong armed anyone, including a handful of intrepid reporters, seeking to expose Epstein’s crimes and circle of accomplices.There is a lot that remains hidden. But there are some things we know. Epstein installed hidden cameras in his opulent residences and on his private Caribbean island, Little St. James, to capture his high-powered friends engaging in sexual romps and abuse of teenage and underage girls and boys. The recordings were blackmail gold. Were they part of an intelligence operation on behalf of the Israeli Mossad? Or were they used to ensure that Epstein had a steady source of investors who funneled him millions of dollars to avoid being outed? Or were they used for both? He shuttled underage girls between New York and Palm Beach on his private jet the Lolita Express, which was allegedly outfitted with a bed for group sex. His coterie of famous friends, including Clinton and Trump, are recorded as traveling on the jet numerous times on released flight logs, although many other flight logs have disappeared.Epstein’s videos are in the vaults of the FBI, along with detailed evidence that would rip back the veil on the sexual proclivities and callousness of the powerful. I doubt there is a client list, as Attorney General Pam Bondi claims. There is also no single Epstein file. The investigative material amassed on Epstein fills many, many boxes, which would bury Bondi’s desk and probably, if collected in one room, dominate most of the space in her office.Did Epstein commit suicide, as the official autopsy report claims, by hanging himself in his jail cell on August 10, 2019 at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City? Or was he murdered? Since the cameras recording activity in his cell the night were not functional, we do not know. Michael Baden, a forensic pathologist hired by Epstein's brother, who served as the chief medical examiner for New York City and who was present at the autopsy, said he believes Epstein's autopsy suggests homicide.The Epstein case is important because it implodes the fiction of deep divisions between Democrats, who had no more interest in releasing the Epstein files than Trump, and the Republicans. They belong to the same club. It exposes how the courts and law enforcement agencies collude to shield powerful figures who engage in crimes. It lays bare the depravity of our exhibitionist ruling class, accountable to no one, free to violate, plunder, loot and prey on the weak and the vulnerable. It is the tawdry record of our oligarchic masters, those who lack the capacity for shame or guilt, whether dressed up as Donald Trump or Joe Biden.This class of ruling parasites was parodied in the first-century satirical novel “Satyricon” by Gaius Petronius Arbiter, written during the reigns of Caligula, Claudius, and Nero. As in Satyricon, Epstein’s circle was dominated by pseudointellectuals, pretentious buffoons, grifters, con artists, petty criminals, the insatiable rich and the sexually depraved. Epstein and his inner circle routinely engaged in sexual perversions of Petronian proportions, as The Miami Herald investigative reporter Julie Brown, whose dogged reporting was largely responsible for reopening the federal investigation in Epstein and Maxwell, documents in her book “Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story.”As Brown writes, in 2016 an anonymous woman, using the pseudonym “Kate Johnson,” filed a civil complaint in a federal court in California alleging she was raped by Trump and Epstein when she was thirteen, over a four-month period, from June to September 1994.“I loudly pleaded with Trump to stop,” she said in the lawsuit about being raped. “Trump responded to my pleas by violently striking me in the face with his open hand and screaming that he could do whatever he wanted.”Brown continues:Johnson said that Epstein invited her to a series of ‘underage sex parties’ at his New York mansion where she met Trump. Enticed by promises of money and modeling opportunities, Johnson said she was forced to have sex with Trump several times, including once with another girl, twelve years old, whom she labeled ‘Marie Doe.’Trump demanded oral sex, the lawsuit said, and afterward he “pushed both minors away while angrily berating them for the ‘poor’ quality of the sexual performance,” according to the lawsuit, filed April 26 in U.S. District Court in Central California.Afterward, when Epstein learned that Trump had taken Johnson’s virginity, Epstein allegedly ‘attempted to strike her about the head with his closed fists,’ angry he had not been the one to take her virginity. Johnson claimed that both men threatened to harm her, and her family if she ever revealed what had happened.The lawsuit states that Trump did not take part in Epstein’s orgies but liked to watch, often while the thirteen-year-old “Kate Johnson” gave him a hand job.It appears Trump was able to quash the lawsuit by buying her silence. She has since disappeared.In 2008, Alex Acosta, who at the time was the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, negotiated a plea deal for Epstein. The deal granted immunity from all federal criminal charges to Epstein, four named co-conspirators and any unnamed “potential co-conspirators.” The agreement shut down the FBI probe into whether there were more victims and other powerful figures who took part in Epstein’s sex crimes. It halted the investigation and sealed the indictment. Trump, in what many consider an act of gratitude, appointed Acosta as Secretary of Labor in his first term.Trump contemplated pardoning Ghislaine Maxwell after she was arrested in July 2020, fearing she would reveal details of his decades-long friendship with Epstein, according to Trump biographer Michael Wolff. In July 2022, Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison.“Jeffrey Epstein’s closest relationship in life was with Donald Trump…these were two guys joined at the hip for a good 15 years. They did everything together,” Wolff told host Joanna Coles on The Daily Beast Podcast. “And this is from sharing, pursuing women, hunting women, sharing at least one girlfriend for at least a year in this kind of rich-guy relationship with each other’s planes, to Epstein advising Trump on how to cheat on his taxes.”The legal anomalies, including the disappearance of massive amounts of evidence incriminating Epstein, saw Epstein avoid federal sex-trafficking charges in 2007, when his attorneys negotiated the secret plea deal with Acosta. He was able to plead guilty to lesser state charges of soliciting a minor for prostitution.The prominent men accused of engaging in Epstein’s carnival of pedophilia, including Epstein’s attorney Dershowitz, viciously threaten anyone who seeks to expose them. Dershowitz, for example, claims that an investigation which he has refused to make public, by the former FBI director Louis Freeh, proves he had never had sex with Epstein’s victim Virginia Giuffre, who was trafficked at 17 to Prince Andrew. Giuffre, one of the few victims to publicly take on her abusers, said she was “passed around like a platter of fruit” among Epstein and Maxwell’s friends, until at the age of 19 when she escaped. She “committed suicide” in April 2025. Dershowitz has sent repeated threats to Brown and her editors at The Miami Herald.Brown continues:[Dershowitz] kept referring to information that was contained in sealed documents. He accused the newspaper of not reporting “facts” that he said were in those sealed documents. The truth is, I tried to explain, newspapers just can’t write about things because Alan Dershowitz says they exist. We need to see them. We need to verify them. Then, because I said “show me the material,” he publicly accused me of committing a criminal act by asking him to produce documents that were under court seal.This is the way Dershowitz operates.What disturbs me the most about Dershowitz is the way that the media, with few exceptions, fails to critically challenge him. Journalists fact-checked Donald Trump and others in his administration almost every day, yet, for the most part, the media seems to give Dershowitz a pass on the Epstein story.In 2015, when Giuffre’s allegations first became public, Dershowitz went on every television program imaginable swearing, among other things, that Epstein’s plane logs would exonerate him. “How do you know that?” he was asked.He replied that he was never on Epstein’s plane during the time that Virginia was involved with Epstein.But if the media had checked, they could have learned that he was indeed a passenger on the plane during that time period, according to the logs.Then he testified, in a sworn deposition, that he never went on any plane trips without his wife. But he was listed on those passage manifests as traveling multiple times without his wife. During at least one trip, he was on the plane with a model named Tatiana.Epstein donated money to Harvard and was made a visiting fellow in Harvard’s Department of Psychology, although he had no academic qualifications in the field. He was given a key card and pass code, as well as an office in the building that housed Harvard’s Program for Evolutionary Dynamics. He referred to himself in his press releases as “Science Philanthropist Jeffrey Epstein,” “Education activist Jeffrey Epstein,” “Evolutionary Jeffrey Epstein,” “Science patron Jeffrey Epstein” and “Maverick hedge funder Jeffrey Epstein.”Epstein, replicating the pretensions and vacuity of the characters who were parodied in the “Dinner with Trimalchio” chapter of Satyricon, organized elaborate dinner gatherings for his billionaire friends, including Elon Musk, Salar Kamangar and Jeff Bezos. He dreamed up bizarre schemes of social engineering, including a plan to seed the human species with his own DNA by creating a baby compound at his sprawling ranch in New Mexico.“Epstein was also obsessed with cryonics, the transhumanist philosophy whose followers believe that people can be replicated or brought back to life after they are frozen,” Brown writes. “Epstein apparently told some of the members of his scientific circle that he wanted to inseminate women with his sperm for them to give birth to his babies, and that he wanted his head and his penis frozen.”The Epstein story is a window into the moral bankruptcy, hedonism and greed of the ruling class. This crosses political lines. It is the common denominator between Democratic politicians, such as Bill Clinton, philanthropists, such as Bill Gates, the billionaire class, and Trump. They are one class of predators and grifters. It is not only girls and women they exploit, but all of us.Thanks for reading The Chris Hedges Report! This post is public so feel free to share it.PhotosChris HedgesChris Hedges, a former Pulitzer Prize winning foreign correspondent for the New York Times and best selling author of 'Empire of Illusion', stands next to a window for a portrait, Princeton, NJ, November 2010. Hedges is also the author of 'Death of the Liberal Class' and is a columnist for Truthdig. (Photo by Oliver Morris/Getty Images)Donald TrumpDonald Trump (L), owner of the New Jersey Generals, of the U.S. Football League, said 10/18 his league’s $1.32 billion antitrust suit against the national Football League will crack “one of the great monopolies in the is country.” At right is his attorney Roy Cohn.Robert MaxwellBritish media proprietor Robert Maxwell (1923 - 1991), UK, 21st November 1973. (Photo by Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)"Chinese Box" ScreeningGhislaine Maxwell attends "Chinese Box" Screening at the Paris Theater in New York City on November 22, 1997. (Photo by Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)Bob Woolmer Death Investigation ContinuesKINGSTON, JAMAICA - MARCH 27: A CCTV camera operates in the Pegasus Hotel in Jamaica where Pakistan Coach Bob Woolmer was found dead a week ago, March 27, 2007 in Kingston, Jamaica. A murder investigation is now under way into the death of Bob Woolmer after the post-mortem results proved that Bob Woolmer's death was due to asphyxia as a result of manual strangulation. (Photo by Clive Rose/Getty Images)Messy Retro Desk - stock photoIntentionally aged wide angle photo of a cluttered desk with old monitor. High dynamic range photo. (by DaveLongMedia)Dr. Michael Baden Testifying(Original Caption) WASHINGTON: Dr. Michael Baden, chief medical examiner of New York City, uses drawing during testimony before the House Assassination Committee 9/7 on the shooting of President Kennedy demonstrating the path of the bullet through Kennedy's head.Bust of Claudius(Original Caption) Claudius, Roman Emperor. 41-54 A. D.Bust Of Roman Emperor Nero(Original Caption) Bust of the Roman Emperor Nero (37-68 A.D.). The bust is in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence. Undated.CPJ's 29th Annual International Press Freedom AwardsNEW YORK, NEW YORK - NOVEMBER 21: Julie K. Brown speaks onstage at the Committee to Protect Journalists' 29th Annual International Press Freedom Awards on November 21, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images)President Donald Trump Departs White House For Midwest TripWASHINGTON, DC - JULY 12: Labor Secretary Alex Acosta stands with U.S. President Donald Trump while announcing his resignation to the media at the White House on July 12, 2019 in Washington, DC. Acosta has been under fire for his role in the Jeffrey Epstein plea deal over a decade ago when he was a U.S. Attorney in Florida. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)Author Michael Wolff Discusses His Controversial New Book On Trump AdministrationPHILADELPHIA, PA - JANUARY 16: Author Michael Wolff discusses his controversial book on the Trump administration titled "Fire and Fury" on January 16, 2018 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Trump's lawyer had previously sent a cease-and-desist letter to the author and publisher of the book claiming that it was defamatory and libelous and should not be published or distributed. (Photo by Jessica Kourkounis/Getty Images)Ghislaine MaxwellTenerife, Mort du magnat et homme politique britannique Robert Maxwell. Ici, sa fille Ghislaine Maxwell sur le yacht de son père "Le Lady Ghislaine". Elle sera, au début des années 2000, la compagne de l'homme d'affaires Jeffrey Epstein (Photo by Mathieu Polak/Sygma/Sygma via Getty Images)Trump, Knauss, Epstein, & Maxwell At Mar-A-LagoFrom left, American real estate developer Donald Trump and his girlfriend (and future wife), former model Melania Knauss, financier (and future convicted sex offender) Jeffrey Epstein, and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell pose together at the Mar-a-Lago club, Palm Beach, Florida, February 12, 2000. (Photo by Davidoff Studios/Getty Images)Senate Impeachment Trial Of President Trump ContinuesWASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 29: Attorney Alan Dershowitz, a member of President Donald Trump's legal team, speaks to the press in the Senate Reception Room during the Senate impeachment trial at the U.S. Capitol on January 29, 2020 in Washington, DC. Wednesday begins the question-and-answer phase of the impeachment trial that will last up to 16 hours over the next two days. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)Donald Trump Holds Campaign Rally At Madison Square Garden In NYCNEW YORK, NEW YORK - OCTOBER 27: Tesla and X CEO Elon Musk raises his hands as he takes the stage during a campaign rally for Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump, at Madison Square Garden on October 27, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)International Center For Journalists 2012 Awards DinnerWASHINGTON, DC - NOVEMBER 13: Salar Kamangar poses for a photo during the International Center for Journalists 2012 Awards dinner at the Ronald Reagan Building on November 13, 2012 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Kris Connor/Getty Images)British PM Boris Johnson Meets With Amazon Founder Jeff BezosNEW YORK, NEW YORK - SEPTEMBER 20: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos arrives for his meeting with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson at the UK diplomatic residence on September 20, 2021 in New York City. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible's list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actorText originally published June 19, 2025Full text: There are few differences between the lies told to ignite the war with Iraq and the lies told to ignite a war with Iran. The assessments of our intelligence agencies and international bodies are, as they were during the calls to invade Iraq, airily dismissed for hallucinations.All the old tropes have been resurrected to entice us into another military fiasco. A country that poses no threat to us, or to its neighbors, is on the verge of acquiring a Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD) that imperils our existence. The country and its leaders embody pure evil. Freedom and democracy are at stake. If we do not act now the next smoking gun will be a mushroom cloud. Our military superiority assures victory. We are the saviors of the world. Massive bombing, an updated version of Shock and Awe, will bring peace and harmony.We heard these canards leading up to the 2003 war in Iraq. Twenty-two years later they have been resurrected. Anyone who advocates for negotiations, for diplomacy and peace, is a stooge for terrorists.Did we learn any lessons from the fiascos in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, not to mention Ukraine?All the ghouls who sold us these past wars on false pretenses, such as conservative talk show host Mark Levin, Max Boot — who writes, “that strategic imperative argues for bombing Fordow,” where Iran’s nuclear enrichment program is buried underground — David Frum, John Bolton, Gen. Jack Keane, Newt Gingrich, Sean Hannity and Thomas Friedman, have returned to saturate the airwaves with breathless fearmongering.Never mind that their grand plan to topple the Taliban in Afghanistan and then invade and replace the regimes in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Somalia — and finally in Iran — blew up in their faces. Never mind that their lust for war left hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions dead and drained trillions from the U.S. Treasury. Never mind the sheer idiocy of their arguments. Their megaphones are secure. They are dutiful shills for the war industry, brain dead neoconservatives and genocidal Zionists, who believe in the magical regeneration of the world through violence, ignoring catastrophe after catastrophe.Forget the intelligence community’s Annual Threat Assessment that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme leader Khomeini has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003,” something reiterated by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi this week. Forget that Benjamin Netanyahu, for almost three decades, has been breathlessly warning that Iran is on the cusp of producing a nuclear weapon. Forget that the preemptive attack on Iran by Israel is a war crime, not to mention the bombings of a hospital, ambulance and journalists. Forget the hundreds of Iranian civilians Israel has slaughtered in its waves of airstrikes. Forget that Israel launched its attack on Iran as the sixth round of negotiations on nuclear enrichment between the U.S. and Iran were set to take place in Oman. Forget that it is the Israeli prime minister, not the leader of Iran, who is subject to an arrest warrant, accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Forget that Israel, in the midst of carrying out a campaign of genocide against the Palestinians, possesses at least 90 nuclear weapons — built in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) — and blocks inspections by the IAEA. Forget that Donald Trump ripped up the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2018, an agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear program, which Iran was abiding by. Forget that Washington and London orchestrated the 1953 coup to topple Iran’s democratically elected government, the first in the region, and installed the compliant Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi into power. Forget that the U.S., along with Israel, trained and equipped the SAVAK, the Shah’s savage secret police.Bomb! Bomb! Bomb!Iran’s purported nuclear weapons program is the evidence-free equivalent of Saddam Hussein’s mythical WMDs and alliance with Al-Qaeda.The invasion and occupation of Iraq, which led to the deaths of over 4,000 U.S. soldiers and Marines and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, resulted in widespread destruction, regional instability and gave birth to a range of fanatical extremist groups, including the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The assurances — that our invasion would implant democracy in Baghdad, which would emanate outwards across the Middle East, that we would be greeted as liberators and that the oil revenues would pay for the reconstruction — were a fantasy dreamed up by the George W. Bush administration and Washington think tanks. These shills for endless war do not grasp the mechanism or the consequences of war. They are culturally, historically, and linguistically illiterate about the countries they attack. Iraq. Afghanistan. Libya. Syria. Iran. I doubt they can tell the difference.These cheerleaders of war, once they are proven wrong, are adept at issuing mea culpas. They assure us of their good intentions. They did not mean to peddle disinformation. They only wanted to keep the world safe from “evildoers” and protect our national security. No one, even those within the Bush and now Trump administrations, are intentionally dishonest. It is not their fault if they act on flawed intelligence. The problem is one of judgment, not virtue. They are good people.But this, perhaps, is the biggest lie. The intelligence assessments used to justify the war against Iraq were cooked up by a cabal of lunatic neoconservatives and rabid Zionists because they did not like the assessments of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other intelligence agencies. Now another cabal, dominated by Israel-firsters, is concocting bogus intelligence assessments to justify a war with Iran. These wars are not prosecuted in good faith. They are not based on a careful and rational assessment of verifiable intelligence. They are utopian visions severed from reality where our own intelligence agencies are ignored along with international bodies such as the United Nations, WMD inspectors or the IAEA.The history of modern Iran is the history of a people battling tyrants propped up and funded by Western powers. The brutal crushing of legitimate democratic movements over the decades resulted in the 1979 revolution that brought the Iranian clerics to power. The new Islamic government of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini championed Islam and argued for standing up to “arrogant” world powers and their regional allies, who would oppress others – including Palestinians – to serve their own interests.“The central story of Iran over the last 200 years has been national humiliation at the hands of foreign powers who have subjugated and looted the country,” Stephen Kinzer, the author of “All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror,” told me. “For a long time the perpetrators were the British and Russians. Beginning in 1953, the United States began taking over that role. In that year, the American and British secret services overthrew an elected government, wiped away Iranian democracy, and set the country on the path to dictatorship.”“Then, in the 1980s, the U.S. sided with Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war, providing him with military equipment and intelligence that helped make it possible for his army to kill hundreds of thousands of Iranians,” Kinzer said. “Given this history, the moral credibility of the U.S. to pose as a promoter of democracy in Iran is close to nil.”You can see an interview I did with Kinzer about Iran here.How would we react if Iran orchestrated a coup in the U.S. to replace an elected government with a brutal dictator, who for decades persecuted, assassinated and imprisoned democracy activists? How would we react if Iran armed and funded a neighboring state, as we did during the eight year war with Iraq, to wage war against us? How would we react if Iran shot down one of our passenger jets as did the USS Vincennes (CG49) — caustically nicknamed the “Robocruiser” by the crews of other American vessels — when in July 1988 it fired missiles at a commerical aircraft filled with Iranian civilians, killing all 290 passengers, including 66 children? How would we react if Iranian intelligence services sponsored terrorism within the U.S., as our and Israel’s intelligence services do in Iran? How would we react if these state-sponsored terrorist attacks included suicide bombings, kidnappings, beheadings, sabotage and “targeted assassinations,” of government officials, scientists and other Iranian leaders? How would we react if, like Israel, a country attacked us based on a hypothesis, an attack that is illegal under the U.N. charter, which forbids preemptive war?The pimps of war who orchestrate these military fiascos have risen once again from the crypt. They migrate like zombies from administration to administration. They are ensconced in think tanks — Project for the New American Century, American Enterprise Institute, Foreign Policy Research Initiative, The Atlantic Council and The Brookings Institution — funded by corporations, the Israel lobby and the war industry. They are puppets jerked up and down by their masters, given megaphones by a bankrupt media, urging us forward from one quagmire to the next.The old faces and the old lies are back, exhorting us into another nightmare.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Thanks for reading The Chris Hedges Report! This post is public so feel free to share it.Photos TOPSHOT-UN-SECURITY COUNCIL-POWELL VIAL 2TOPSHOT - US Secretary of State Colin Powell holds up a vial that he said was the size that could be used to hold anthrax as he addresses the United Nations Security Council 5 February, 2003 at the UN in New York. (Photo by Timothy A. CLARY / AFP) (Photo by TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images)Iranian Supreme Leader Ali KhameneiTEHRAN, IRAN - MAY 10: (----EDITORIAL USE ONLY MANDATORY CREDIT - 'IRANIAN LEADER PRESS OFFICE / HANDOUT' - NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS - DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS----) Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei attends an event in Tehran, Iran on May 10, 2025. (Photo by IRANIAN LEADER PRESS OFFICE/Anadolu via Getty Images)Baghdad Under SiegeBAGHDAD, IRAQ - MARCH 21: (USA and Canada SALES ONLY) Fires rage on the west bank of the Tigris river on March 21, 2003 in Baghdad, Iraq as hostilities between U.S. led Coalition forces and the Iraqi Regime continue. (Photo by Mirrorpix/Getty Images) GETTY IMAGES HAS EXCLUSIVE RIGHTS TO THIS IMAGE IN NORTH AMERICARadio Hall Of Fame 2018 Induction CeremonyNEW YORK, NY - NOVEMBER 15: Inductee Mark Levin speaks on stage during Radio Hall Of Fame 2018 Induction Ceremony at Guastavino's on November 15, 2018 in New York City. (Photo by Michael Kovac/Getty Images for Radio Hall of Fame )Max Boot at the 2024 Library of Congress National Book Festival on August 24, 2024https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Max_Boot_at_the_2024_Library_of_Congress_National_Book_Festival_on_August_24,_2024_(cropped).jpgPoliticon 2017 - Day 1David Frum speaks during Politicon at the Pasadena Convention Center in Pasadena, California on July 29, 2017. Politicon is a bipartisan convention that mixes politics, comedy and entertainment. (Photo by: Ronen Tivony) (Photo by Ronen Tivony/NurPhoto via Getty Images)John Bolton Joins NCRI-US Conference Examining Iran's Nuclear AgendaWASHINGTON, DC - AUGUST 17: Former National Security Adviser John Bolton speaks at a panel hosted by the National Council of Resistance of Iran – U.S. Representative Office (NCRI-US) at the Willard InterContinental Hotel on August 17, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)House Homeland Security and Foreign Affairs Committee Hearing on TerrorismUNITED STATES - NOVEMBER 18 - Ret. Gen. Jack Keane, Chairman of the Board of the Institute for the Study of War, listens during a House Homeland Security and Foreign Affairs Committee joint hearing on "on examining the rise of radicalism, growing terrorist sanctuaries, and the threat to the U.S. homeland," on Capitol Hill, in Washington, Wednesday, November 18, 2015. (Photo By Al Drago/CQ Roll Call)Newt Gingrich Speaking to PressHouse Speaker Newt Gingrich speaks to the press about term limits at the U.S. Capitol. (Photo by © Wally McNamee/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)Gov. Ron DeSantis Visits "Hannity"NEW YORK, NEW YORK - SEPTEMBER 13: Sean Hannity host a live taping of Hannity at Fox News Channel Studios on September 13, 2023 in New York City. (Photo by Steven Ferdman/Getty Images)"Women In The World: Stories And Solutions" Summit - Day 2NEW YORK - MARCH 13: Thomas L. Friedman attends day 2 of the "Women In The World: Stories and Solutions" Summit at Hudson Theatre on March 13, 2010 in New York City. (Photo by Marc Bryan-Brown/WireImage)Intelligence Chiefs Testify To House Select Committee On IntelligenceWASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 26: Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testifies during an annual worldwide threats assessment hearing at the Longworth House Office Building on March 26, 2025 in Washington, DC. The hearing held by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence addressed top aides inadvertently including Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief for The Atlantic magazine, on a high level Trump administration Signal group chat discussing plans to bomb Houthi targets in Yemen. (Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)International Atomic Energy Agency Holds Annual Board MeetingVIENNA, AUSTRIA - SEPTEMBER 11: Rafael Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, arrives for a meeting of the Board of Governors at IAEA headquarters on September 11, 2023 in Vienna, Austria. (Photo by Thomas Kronsteiner/Getty Images)Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (Front)WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 10: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (Front) addresses the joint session of US Congress as the Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R) and US Vice President Al Gore (L) listen 10 July at the Capitol in Washington DC. Netanyahu called on Europe and Asia to join efforts to isolate Iran and Iraq and prevent them from developing nuclear capabilities that he warned would bring catastrophe. AFP Photo Travis HEYING A (Photo credit should read Travis HEYING/AFP via Getty Images)Israel Holds Successful Test Of Arrow Anti-Missile MissileISRAEL - DECEMBER 2: In this photo released by Israel Aircraft Industries, an Arrow II anti-missile missile is successfully launched December 2, 2005 from an unnamed military base in central Israel. (Photo by IAI via Getty Images)TOPSHOT-IRAQ-UNRESTTOPSHOT - Military helicopters fly over the Green Zone area in Baghdad following a loud explosion early on October 18, 2010. Violence in Iraq has plunged dramatically since its peak in 2006-2007 but casualties from insurgent and military action still remain part of daily life. AFP PHOTO / SABAH ARAR (Photo by SABAH ARAR / AFP) (Photo by SABAH ARAR/AFP via Getty Images)Islamic State/Iraq/Syria: A masked Islamic State soldier poses holding the ISIL banner somewhere in the deserts of Iraq or Syria. ISIL publicity image, 2015Islamic State/Iraq/Syria: A masked Islamic State soldier poses holding the ISIL banner somewhere in the deserts of Iraq or Syria. ISIL publicity image, 2015. (Photo by: Pictures from History/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)Rumsfeld, Libby And CheneyWASHINGTON, UNITED STATES - SEPTEMBER 5:Vice President Dick Cheney (left) with Chief of Staff to the Vice President, Scooter Libby (centre), and Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, outside the Pentagon briefing room September 5, 2002 in Washington, DC. (Photo by David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images)Tehran MarchDemonstrators guided by clergymen in Tehran, during the Iranian Revolution, 19th January 1979. As many as 17 million people up and down the country marched peacefully to demand the removal of the Shah and the return of Ayatollah Khomeini. (Photo by Kaveh Kazemi/Getty Images)IRAN-POLITICS-REVOLUTION-ANNIVERSARYThis handout picture provided by the office of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei shows him praying inside the tomb of the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Tehran on January 30, 2025, ahead of the 46th anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. (Photo by KHAMENEI.IR / AFP via Getty Images)Exiled Shah Reads Telegram(Original Caption) 8/22/1953-Rome, Italy- Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi is flanked by reporters, as he reads a telegram urging him to return to Tehran. After five days in exile in Rome, the ruler of Iran was notified that Mossadegh's coup was thwarted and that it was safe to return.IRAN-COUP D'ETAT-MONARCHISTESDes manifestants monarchistes qui viennent d'incendier un journal gouvernemental, défilent sur l'Avenue Chah Abbas en plein centre de Téhéran le 26 août 1953. Le Shah d'Iran est rentré d'Italie le 22 août, où il était en exil, après la réussite du coup d'Etat pour restaurer la monarchie. (Photo by - / INTERCONTINENTALE / AFP) (Photo by -/INTERCONTINENTALE/AFP via Getty Images)Saddam Hussein with Soldiers in North IraqIraqi leader Saddam Hussein visits soldiers in northern Iraq. (Photo by Jacques Pavlovsky/Sygma via Getty Images)USS Vincenneshttps://www.history.navy.mil/about-us/leadership/director/directors-corner/h-grams/h-gram-020/h-020-1-uss-vincennes-tragedy--.html This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible's list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actorText originally published May 26, 2025Full text:War opens a Pandora’s box of evils that once unleashed are beyond anyone’s control. The warmongers who ordered the strikes by U.S. bombers on Iranian nuclear sites have no more of a plan for what comes next in Iran than they had in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya or Syria. European allies, whom Israel and Trump have alienated with these air assaults, are in no mood to cooperate with Washington. The Pentagon, even if it wanted to, does not have the hundreds of thousands of troops it would need to attack and occupy Iran -- the only way Iran might be subdued. And the idea that the marginal and discredited Iranian resistance group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), which fought alongside Saddam Hussein in the war against Iran and is viewed by most Iranians as composed of traitors, is a viable counter force to the Iranian government is ludicrous. In all these equations the 90 million people in Iran are ignored just as the people of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria were ignored. They will not welcome the United States and certainly not Israel as liberators. They may hate the regime, but they will resist. They don’t want to be dominated by foreign powers. A war with Iran will be interpreted throughout the region as a war against Shiism. Soon there will be retaliation. Lots of it. It will come at first with desultory missile strikes and then attacks carried out by elusive enemies on ships, military bases and installations. Steadily it will grow in volume and lethality. The death toll, including among the some 40,000 soldiers and Marines stationed in the Middle East, will mount. Ships, including aircraft carriers, will be targeted. We will, as we did in Iraq and Afghanistan, begin to lash out with a blind fury, fueling the conflagration we began. Those who lured us into this war know little about the instrument of war and even less about the cultures or peoples they seek to dominate. Blinded by hubris, believing their own hallucinations, they have learned none of the lessons of the last two decades of warfare in the Middle East. A war with Iran will be a self-defeating and costly quagmire, one more nail in the rotting edifice of the empire.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Thanks for reading The Chris Hedges Report! This post is public so feel free to share it.PhotosIRAN-US-ISRAEL-CONFLICTA banner bearing a painting that represents various categories of the Iranian society is deployed against the facade of a building in Tehran, with a message that reads in Farsi: " we are all soldiers of Iran", on June 22, 2025. (Photo by AFP) (Photo by -/AFP via Getty Images)Chris HedgesChris Hedges, a former Pulitzer Prize winning foreign correspondent for the New York Times and best selling author of 'Empire of Illusion', stands next to a window for a portrait, Princeton, NJ, November 2010. Hedges is also the author of 'Death of the Liberal Class' and is a columnist for Truthdig. (Photo by Oliver Morris/Getty Images)President Trump Addresses Nation After US Bombs Iranian Nuclear SitesWASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 21: U.S. President Donald Trump delivers an address to the nation from the White House on June 21, 2025 in Washington, D.C. President Trump addressed the three Iranian nuclear facilities that were struck by the U.S. military early Sunday. (Photo by Carlos Barria - Pool/Getty Images)The Iran–Iraq WarMojahedin women during the Iran–Iraq War. The People's Mojahedin of Iran (aka Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK)) is an Iranian leftist revolutionary organization that participated in the 1979 Revolution that overthrew the Pahlavi Shah. (Photo by José Nicolas/Corbis via Getty Images)Remaining US Troops In Iraq Patrol Restive Babil ProvinceISKANDARIYA, IRAQ - JULY 18: Military vehicles that have been cleaned and repaired are lined-up for return to the U.S. from Iraq at U.S. military base Kalsu on July 18, 2011 in Iskandariya, Babil Province Iraq. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)(FILE) The Third Anniversary Of The Fall Of BaghdadBAGHDAD, IRAQ - APRIL 9: (FILE PHOTO) U.S marines and Iraqis are seen on April 9, 2003 as the statue of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is toppled at al-Fardous square in Baghdad, Iraq. (Photo by Wathiq Khuzaie /Getty Images) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible's list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actorText originally published May 26, 2025Full text:The last days of dying empires are dominated by idiots. The Roman, Mayan, French, Habsburg, Ottoman, Romanoff, Iranian and Soviet dynasties crumbled under the stupidity of their decadent rulers who absented themselves from reality, plundered their nations and retreated into echo chambers where fact and fiction were indistinguishable.Donald Trump, and the sycophantic buffoons in his administration, are updated versions of the reigns of the Roman emperor Nero, who allocated vast state expenditures to attain magical powers; the Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang, who funded repeated expeditions to a mythical island of immortals to bring back a potion that would give him eternal life; and a feckless Tsarist court that sat around reading tarot cards and attending séances as Russia was decimated by a war that consumed over two million lives and revolution brewed in the streets.In “Hitler and the Germans,” the political philosopher Eric Voegelin 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, its collective departure from a rational world of verifiable fact.These idiots, who promise to recapture lost glory and power, do not create. They only destroy. They accelerate the collapse. Limited in intellectual ability, lacking any moral compass, grossly incompetent and filled with rage at established elites who they see as having slighted and rejected them, they remake the world into a playground for grifters, con artists and megalomaniacs. They make war on universities, banish scientific research, peddle quack theories about vaccines as a pretext to expand mass surveillance and data sharing, strip legal residents of their rights and empower armies of goons, which is what the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has become, to spread fear and ensure passivity. Reality, whether the climate crisis or the immiseration of the working class, does not impinge on their fantasies. The worse it gets, the more idiotic they become.Hannah Arendt blames a society that willingly embraces radical evil on this collective “thoughtlessness.” Desperate to escape from the stagnation, where they and their children are trapped, hopeless and in despair, a betrayed population is conditioned to exploit everyone around them in a desperate scramble to advance. People are objects to be used, mirroring the cruelty inflicted by the ruling class.A society convulsed by disorder and chaos, as Voegelin points out, celebrates the morally degenerate, those who are cunning, manipulative, deceitful and violent. In an open, democratic society, these attributes are despised and criminalized. Those who exhibit them are condemned as stupid; “a man [or woman] who behaves in this way,” Voegelin notes, “will be socially boycotted.” But the social, cultural and moral norms in a diseased society are inverted. The attributes that sustain an open society — a concern for the common good, honesty, trust and self-sacrifice — are ridiculed. They are detrimental to existence in a diseased society.When a society, as Plato notes, abandons the common good, it always unleashes amoral lusts — violence, greed and sexual exploitation — and fosters magical thinking, the focus of my book “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.”The only thing these dying regimes do well is spectacle. These bread and circus acts — like Trump’s $40 million Army parade to be held on his birthday on June 14 — keep a distressed population entertained.The Disneyfication of America, the land of eternally happy thoughts and positive attitudes, the land where everything is possible, is peddled to mask the cruelty of economic stagnation and social inequality. The population is conditioned by mass culture, dominated by sexual commodification, banal and mindless entertainment and graphic depictions of violence, to blame itself for failure.Søren Kierkegaard in “The Present Age” warns that the modern state seeks to eradicate conscience and shape and manipulate individuals into a pliable and indoctrinated “public.” This public is not real. It is, as Kierkegaard writes, a “monstrous abstraction, an all-embracing something which is nothing, a mirage.” In short, we became part of a herd, “unreal individuals who never are and never can be united in an actual situation or organization — and yet are held together as a whole.” Those who question the public, those who denounce the corruption of the ruling class, are dismissed as dreamers, freaks or traitors. But only they, according to the Greek definition of the polis, can be considered citizens.Thomas Paine writes that a despotic government is a fungus that grows out of a corrupt civil society. This is what happened to past societies. It is what happened to us.It is tempting to personalize the decay, as if ridding ourselves of Trump will return us to sanity and sobriety. But the rot and corruption has ruined all of our democratic institutions, which function in form, not in content. The consent of the governed is a cruel joke. Congress is a club on the take from billionaires and corporations. The courts are appendages of corporations and the rich. The press is an echo chamber of the elites, some of whom do not like Trump, but none of whom advocate the social and political reforms that could save us from despotism. It is about how we dress up despotism, not despotism itself.The historian Ramsay MacMullen, in “Corruption and the Decline of Rome,” writes that what destroyed the Roman Empire was “the diverting of governmental force, its misdirection.” Power became about enriching private interests. This misdirection renders government powerless, at least as an institution that can address the needs and protect the rights of the citizenry. Our government, in this sense, is powerless. It is a tool of corporations, banks, the war industry and oligarchs. It cannibalizes itself to funnel wealth upwards.“[T]he decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness,” Edward Gibbon writes. “Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the cause of the destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and, as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight. The story of the ruin is simple and obvious: and instead of inquiring why the Roman Empire was destroyed we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted for so long.”The Roman emperor Commodus, like Trump, was entranced with his own vanity. He commissioned statues of himself as Hercules and had little interest in governance. He fancied himself a star of the arena, staging gladiatorial contests where he was crowned the victor and killing lions with a bow and arrow. The empire — he renamed Rome the Colonia Commodiana (Colony of Commodus) — was a vehicle to satiate his bottomless narcissism and lust for wealth. He sold public offices the way Trump sells pardons and favors to those who invest in his cryptocurrencies or donate to his inauguration committee or presidential library.Finally, the emperor’s advisors arranged to have him strangled to death in his bath by a professional wrestler after he announced that he would assume the consulship dressed as a gladiator. But his assassination did nothing to halt the decline. Commodus was replaced by the reformer Pertinax who was assassinated three months later. The Praetorian Guards auctioned off the office of emperor. The next emperor, Didius Julianus, lasted 66 days. There would be five emperors in A.D. 193, the year after the assassination of Commodus.Like the late Roman Empire, our republic is dead.Our constitutional rights — due process, habeas corpus, privacy, freedom from exploitation, fair elections and dissent — have been taken from us by judicial and legislative fiat. These rights exist only in name. The vast disconnect between the purported values of our faux democracy and reality means our political discourse, the words we use to describe ourselves and our political system, are absurd.Walter Benjamin wrote in 1940 amid the rise of European fascism and looming world war:A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned towards the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe, which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.Our decay, our illiteracy and collective retreat from reality, was long in the making. The steady erosion of our rights, especially our rights as voters, the transformation of the organs of state into tools of exploitation, the immiseration of the working poor and middle class, the lies that saturate our airwaves, the degrading of public education, the endless and futile wars, the staggering public debt, the collapse of our physical infrastructure, mirror the last days of all empires.Trump the pyromaniac entertains us as we go down.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Thanks for reading The Chris Hedges Report! This post is public so feel free to share it.PhotosChris HedgesChris Hedges, a former Pulitzer Prize winning foreign correspondent for the New York Times and best selling author of 'Empire of Illusion', stands next to a window for a portrait, Princeton, NJ, November 2010. (Photo by Oliver Morris/Getty Images)Joined By Elon Musk, Trump Holds First Cabinet Meeting Of His Second TermWASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 26: U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks during a Cabinet meeting at the White House on February 26, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)Saluting New DictatorA jubilant crowd salutes Nazi Leader Adolf Hitler outside the Reich Chancellery, Berlin, after a plebiscite, which gave Hitler absolute power as German Fuhrer, 19th August 1934 (Photo by FPG/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)TOPSHOT-US-POLITICS-COMPUTERS-CLIMATE-ENERGY-CRYPTOCURRENCYTOPSHOT - US President Donald Trump (2R), flanked by US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick (L), US Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent (2L) and White House AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks (R), attends a the White House Crypto Summit in Washington, DC, March 7, 2025. (Photo by Jim WATSON / AFP) / ALTERNATE CROP (Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)National Guard Continues Border Security In TexasEAGLE PASS, TEXAS - FEBRUARY 4: U.S. Border Patrol agents guard migrants that crossed into Shelby Park as they wait to be picked up for processing on February 4, 2024 in Eagle Pass, Texas. (Photo by Michael Gonzalez/Getty Images)Portrait Of Hannah ArendtPortrait of German-born American political theorist and author Hannah Arendt (1906 - 1975), 1949. (Photo by Fred Stein Archive/Archive Photos/Getty Images)TOPSHOT-US-POLITICS-CPACTOPSHOT - Elon Musk (L) holds a chainsaw alongside Argentine President Javier Milei during the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center at National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland, on February 20, 2025. The chainsaw was a present to Elon Musk from Argentina's President Javier Milei. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)Washington DC Celebrates Army's 250th Anniversary With Parade And FestivitiesWASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 14: U.S. President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump stand together at the end of the U.S Army parade on June 14, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)Magic Returns to Disneyland Park as Theme Parks Plan to Reopen April 30ANAHEIM, CA - AUGUST 27: Mickey Mouse poses in front of Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland Park on August 27, 2019 in Anaheim, California. Disneyland plans to reopen on April 30, 2021. (Photo Joshua Sudock/Walt Disney World Resorts via Getty Images)New American Citizens Pledging AllegianceAlmost ten thousand new citizens, predominantly Hispanic, pledge allegiance to the United States of America during a naturalization ceremony at Miami's Orange Bowl Stadium.Thomas Painecirca 1770: The English-born American revolutionary philosopher Thomas Paine, (1737 - 1809), who wrote and published 'The Rights of Man', (1791 - 1792), in England. In it he expressed his support for the French Revolution and called for the overthrow of the British monarchy. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)President Of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky Addresses CongressWASHINGTON, DC - DECEMBER 21: President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky receives an American flag from U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Vice President Kamala Harris as he addresses a joint meeting of Congress in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol on December 21, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)The Rachel Maddow Show - Season 2019THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW -- Pictured: (l-r) Rachel Maddow, Secretary Hillary Clinton -- Interview with Secretary Hillary Clinton in Studio 3A, 30 Rockefeller Plaza on Wednesday May 1, 2019 -- (Photo by: Mackenzie Calle/MSNBC/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images)NYCC Protest Against Trump's Recent Financial Executive Order at NY, USANYCC is protesting due to the recent comments from Donald Trump on rolling back Dodd-Frank and his recent Finanical Executive Order written by former Goldman employee Gary Cohn at Liberty St near Federal Reserve Bank of New York, NY, USA, 7 february 2017. (Photo by Anik Rahman/NurPhoto via Getty Images)Portrait of Edward GibbonEdward Gibbon (1737-1794), British historian. His best known work is The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.The Roman Emperor Commodus Fires an Arrow to Subdue a Leopard Engraving by Giovanni StradanoThe Roman Emperor Commodus Fires an Arrow to Subdue a Leopard Engraving by Giovanni Stradano (Photo by © Historical Picture Archive/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)Portrait and scene of assassination.Commodus (161-192 AD). Roman emperor (177-192 AD). Nerva-Antonine Dynasty. Commodus had a passion for gladiatorial combat. Laetus formed a conspiracy with Eclectus and Marcia. The gladiator Narcissus strangling him in his bath. Portrait. Watercolour painting by Francisco Fonollosa, Spanish illustrator (late 20th century). (Photo by: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)WALTER BENJAMIN (1892-1940). German philosopher and writer.(Eingeschränkte Rechte für bestimmte redaktionelle Kunden in Deutschland. Limited rights for specific editorial clients in Germany.) WALTER BENJAMIN (1892-1940). German philosopher and writer. (Photo by ullstein bild/ullstein bild via Getty Images)Bill Tompkins The Celebrity Aprentice Donald Trump ArchiveNEW YORK, NY - May 10 MANDATORY CREDIT Bill Tompkins/Getty Images Joan Rivers, Donald Trump and melissa Rivers pose during the Season Finale of the Celebrity Apprentice on May 10, 2009 in New York City. (Photo by Bill Tompkins/Getty Images) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible's list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actorText originally published May 26, 2025Full text:This is the end. The final blood-soaked chapter of the genocide. It will be over soon. Weeks. At most. Two million people are camped out amongst the rubble or in the open air. Dozens are killed and wounded daily from Israeli shells, missiles, drones, bombs and bullets. They lack clean water, medicine and food. They have reached a point of collapse. Sick. Injured. Terrified. Humiliated. Abandoned. Destitute. Starving. Hopeless.In the last pages of this horror story, Israel is sadistically baiting starving Palestinians with promises of food, luring them to the narrow and congested nine-mile ribbon of land that borders Egypt. Israel and its cynically named Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), allegedly funded by Israel’s Ministry of Defense and the Mossad, is weaponizing starvation. It is enticing Palestinians to southern Gaza the way the Nazis enticed starving Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto to board trains to the death camps. The goal is not to feed the Palestinians. No one seriously argues there is enough food or aid hubs. The goal is to cram Palestinians into heavily guarded compounds and deport them.What comes next? I long ago stopped trying to predict the future. Fate has a way of surprising us. But there will be a final humanitarian explosion in Gaza’s human slaughterhouse. We see it with the surging crowds of Palestinians fighting to get a food parcel, which has resulted in Israeli and U.S. private contractors shooting dead at least 130 and wounding over seven hundred others in the first eight days of aid distribution. We see it with Benjamin Netanyahu’s arming ISIS-linked gangs in Gaza that loot food supplies. Israel, which has eliminated hundreds of employees with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), doctors, journalists, civil servants and police in targeted assassinations, has orchestrated the implosion of civil society.I suspect Israel will facilitate a breach in the fence along the Egyptian border. Desperate Palestinians will stampede into the Egyptian Sinai. Maybe it will end some other way. But it will end soon. There is not much more Palestinians can take.We — full participants in this genocide — will have achieved our demented goal of emptying Gaza and expanding Greater Israel. We will bring down the curtain on the live-streamed genocide. We will have mocked the ubiquitous university programs of Holocaust studies, designed, it turns out, not to equip us to end genocides, but deify Israel as an eternal victim licensed to carry out mass slaughter. The mantra of never again is a joke. The understanding that when we have the capacity to halt genocide and we do not, we are culpable, does not apply to us. Genocide is public policy. Endorsed and sustained by our two ruling parties.There is nothing left to say. Maybe that is the point. To render us speechless. Who does not feel paralyzed? And maybe, that too, is the point. To paralyze us. Who is not traumatized? And maybe that too was planned. Nothing we do, it seems, can halt the killing. We feel defenseless. We feel helpless. Genocide as spectacle.I have stopped looking at the images. The rows of little shrouded bodies. The decapitated men and women. Families burned alive in their tents. The children who have lost limbs or are paralyzed. The chalky death masks of those pulled from under the rubble. The wails of grief. The emaciated faces. I can’t.This genocide will haunt us. It will echo down history with the force of a tsunami. It will divide us forever. There is no going back.And how will we remember? By not remembering.Once it is over, all those who supported it, all those who ignored it, all those who did nothing, will rewrite history, including their personal history. It was hard to find anyone who admitted to being a Nazi in post-war Germany, or a member of the Klu Klux Klan once segregation in the southern United States ended. A nation of innocents. Victims even. It will be the same. We like to think we would have saved Anne Frank. The truth is different. The truth is, crippled by fear, nearly all of us will only save ourselves, even at the expense of others. But that is a truth that is hard to face. That is the real lesson of the Holocaust. Better it be erased.In his book “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This,” Omar El Akkad writes:Should a drone vaporize some nameless soul on the other side of the planet, who among us wants to make a fuss? What if it turns out they were a terrorist? What if the default accusation proves true, and we by implication be labeled terrorist sympathizers, ostracized, yelled at? It is generally the case that people are most zealously motivated by the worst plausible thing that could happen to them. For some, the worst plausible thing might be the ending of their bloodline in a missile strike. Their entire lives turned to rubble and all of it preemptively justified in the name of fighting terrorists who are terrorists by default on account of having been killed. For others, the worst plausible thing is being yelled at.You can see my interview with El Akkad here.You cannot decimate a people, carry out saturation bombing over 20 months to obliterate their homes, villages and cities, massacre tens of thousands of innocent people, set up a siege to ensure mass starvation, drive them from land where they have lived for centuries and not expect blowback. The genocide will end. The response to the reign of state terror will begin. If you think it won’t you know nothing about human nature or history. The killing of two Israeli diplomats in Washington and the attack against supporters of Israel at a protest in Boulder, Colorado, are only the start.Chaim Engel, who took part in the uprising at the Nazis’ Sobibor death camp in Poland, described how, armed with a knife, he attacked a guard in the camp.“It’s not a decision,” Engel explained years later. “You just react, instinctively you react to that, and I figured, ‘Let us to do, and go and do it.’ And I went. I went with the man in the office and we killed this German. With every jab, I said, ‘That is for my father, for my mother, for all these people, all the Jews you killed.’”Does anyone expect Palestinians to act differently? How are they to react when Europe and the United States, who hold themselves up as the vanguards of civilization, backed a genocide that butchered their parents, their children, their communities, occupied their land and blasted their cities and homes into rubble? How can they not hate those who did this to them?What message has this genocide imparted not only to Palestinians, but to all in the Global South?It is unequivocal. You do not matter. Humanitarian law does not apply to you. We do not care about your suffering, the murder of your children. You are vermin. You are worthless. You deserve to be killed, starved and dispossessed. You should be erased from the face of the earth.“To preserve the values of the civilized world, it is necessary to set fire to a library,” El Akkad writes:To blow up a mosque. To incinerate olive trees. To dress up in the lingerie of women who fled and then take pictures. To level universities. To loot jewelry, art, food. Banks. To arrest children for picking vegetables. To shoot children for throwing stones. To parade the captured in their underwear. To break a man’s teeth and shove a toilet brush in his mouth. To let combat dogs loose on a man with Down syndrome and then leave him to die. Otherwise, the uncivilized world might win.There are people I have known for years who I will never speak to again. They know what is happening. Who does not know? They will not risk alienating their colleagues, being smeared as an antisemite, jeopardizing their status, being reprimanded or losing their jobs. They do not risk death, the way Palestinians do. They risk tarnishing the pathetic monuments of status and wealth they spent their lives constructing. Idols. They bow down before these idols. They worship these idols. They are enslaved by them.At the feet of these idols lie tens of thousands of murdered Palestinians.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Thanks for reading The Chris Hedges Report! This post is public so feel free to share it.PhotosTOPSHOT-PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICTTOPSHOT - A man walks past shelter tents erected near collapsed buildings in the Bureij camp for Palestinian refugees in the central Gaza Strip on October 1, 2024 amid the ongoing war in the Palestinian territory between Israel and Hamas. (Photo by Eyad BABA / AFP) (Photo by EYAD BABA/AFP via Getty Images)PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICTSewage water from collapsed underground pipes covers an area by destroyed buildings in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on July 8, 2024 amid the ongoing conflict in the Palestinian territory between Israel and Hamas. (Photo by Bashar TALEB / AFP) (Photo by BASHAR TALEB/AFP via Getty Images)Jewish Ghetto Streetcar(Original Caption) The Star of David attached to the top of this street car indicates it is in use for residents of Warsaw's ghetto, wherein live Jews from every Nazi occupied country of Europe. The German caption for this picture states that the car travels back and forth early and late.PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICTDisplaced Palestinians gather to collect portions of cooked food at a charity distribution point in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on May 19, 2025. (Photo by Bashar TALEB / AFP) (Photo by BASHAR TALEB/AFP via Getty Images)TOPSHOT-PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICT-DISPLACEDTOPSHOT - Displaced Gazans cross the Netzarim corridor from the southern Gaza Strip into Gaza City on January 27, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP) (Photo by OMAR AL-QATTAA/AFP via Getty Images)TOPSHOT-US-POLITICS-TRUMP-BIDENTOPSHOT - US President Joe Biden shakes hands with US President-elect Donald Trump during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on November 13, 2024. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)TOPSHOT-PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICTTOPSHOT - A fireball erupts from an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City on October 9, 2023. (Photo by MAHMUD HAMS / AFP) (Photo by MAHMUD HAMS/AFP via Getty Images)The new Anne Frank exhibit will open 1The new Anne Frank exhibit will open 11 June 2003 by US First Lady Laura Bush at The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. (Photo credit should read TIM SLOAN/AFP via Getty Images)Nazi Sympathisers SaluteNazi Sympathisers taking the salute during a meeting, New York City, New York, United States, 8th April 1934. (Photo by UPI/Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)TOPSHOT-US-ISRAEL-DIPLOMACYTOPSHOT - US President Donald Trump greets Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he arrives for meeting on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, January 27, 2020. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)Primary voting in New Hampshire.MANCHESTER, NH - FEBRUARY 9: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, surrounded by family and friends, shouts as he celebrates his victory at a New Hampshire primary campaign watch party at the Executive Court Banquet Facility in Manchester, NH on Tuesday Feb. 09, 2016. (Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)President Biden Departs The White House For MarylandWASHINGTON, DC - NOVEMBER 07: U.S. President Joe Biden gives a thumbs up as he shouts to the press while walking to Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on November 7, 2022 in Washington, DC. The President and first lady are traveling to Bowie, MD where they will be participating in a rally for Democratic gubernatorial nominee Wes Moore before the midterm elections tomorrow. (Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible's list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actorText originally published May 26, 2025Full text: 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. The inmates, including over 3,000 children, are fed rancid food. They endure beatings. They are tortured, including by water-boarding or being forced naked into barrels of ice-cold water, according to Human Rights Watch. In 2023, the State Department described imprisonment as “life-threatening,” and that was before the Salvadoran government declared a “state of exception” in March 2022. The situation has been greatly “exacerbated,” the State Department notes, by the “addition of 72,000 detainees under the state of exception.” Some 375 people have died in the camps since the state of exception was established, part of El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s “war on gangs,” according to the local human rights group Socorro Jurídico Humanitario.These camps — the “Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo” (Center for Terrorism Confinement) known as CECOT, to which U.S. deportees are being sent, holds some 40,000 people — are the model, the harbinger of what awaits us.Metal worker and union member Kilmar Ábrego García, who was abducted in front of his five-year-old son on March 12, 2025, was accused of being a gang member and sent to El Salvador. The Supreme Court agreed with District Judge Paula Xinis who found that García’s deportation was an “illegal act.” Trump officials blamed their deportation of García on an “administrative error.” Xinis ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” his return. But that does not mean he is coming back.“I hope you’re not suggesting that I smuggle a terrorist into the United States,” Bukele told the press at a White House meeting with Trump. “How can I smuggle — how can I return him to the United States? Like, I smuggle him into the United States? Well, of course I’m not going to do it…the question is preposterous.”This is the future. Once a segment of the population is demonized — including U.S. citizens Trump labels “homegrown criminals” — once they are stripped of their humanity, once they embody evil and are seen as an existential threat, the end result is that these human “contaminants” are removed from society. Guilt or innocence, at least under the law, is irrelevant. Citizenship offers no protection.“The first essential step on the road to total domination is to kill the juridical person in man,” writes Hannah Arendt in “The Origins of Totalitarianism.” “This was done, on the one hand, by putting certain categories of people outside the protection of the law and forcing at the same time, through the instrument of denationalization, the nontotalitarian world into recognition of lawlessness; it was done, on the other, by placing the concentration camp outside the normal penal system, and by selecting inmates outside the normal judicial procedure in which a definite crime entails a predictable penalty.”Those who build concentration camps build societies of fear. They issue relentless warnings of mortal danger, whether from immigrants, Muslims, traitors, criminals or terrorists. Fear spreads slowly, like a sulfurous gas, until it infects all social interactions and induces paralysis. It takes time. In the first years of the Third Reich, the Nazis operated ten camps with about 10,000 inmates. But once they managed to crush all competing centers of power — labor unions, political parties, an independent press, universities and the Catholic and Protestant churches — the concentration camp system exploded. By 1939, when World War II broke out, the Nazis were running over 100 concentration camps with some one million inmates. Death camps followed.Those that create these camps give them wide publicity. They are designed to intimidate. Their brutality is their selling point. Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp, was not, as Richard Evans writes in “The Coming of The Third Reich” “an improvised solution to an unexpected problem of overcrowding in the goals, but a long-planned measure that the Nazis had envisioned virtually from the very beginning. It was widely publicized and reported in the local, regional and national press, and served as a stark warning to anyone contemplating offering resistance to the Nazi regime.”Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, wearing plainclothes and circling neighborhoods in unmarked cars, kidnap legal residents such as Mahmoud Khalil. These abductions replicate those I witnessed on streets of Santiago, Chile under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, or in San Salvador, El Salvador’s capital, during the military dictatorship.ICE is swiftly evolving into our homegrown version of the Gestapo or The People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD). It oversees 200 detention facilities. It is a formidable domestic surveillance agency that has amassed data on most Americans, according to a report compiled by The Center of Privacy & Technology at Georgetown.“By reaching into the digital records of state and local governments and buying databases with billions of data points from private companies, ICE has created a surveillance infrastructure that enables it to pull detailed dossiers on nearly anyone, seemingly at any time,” the report reads. “In its efforts to arrest and deport, ICE has — without any judicial, legislative or public oversight — reached into datasets containing personal information about the vast majority of people living in the U.S., whose records can end up in the hands of immigration enforcement simply because they apply for driver’s licenses; drive on the roads; or sign up with their local utilities to get access to heat, water and electricity.”Those abducted, including the Turkish national and PhD student at Tufts University, Rümeysa Öztürk, are accused of amorphous behaviour such as “engaging in activities in support of Hamas.” But this is a subterfuge, accusations no more real than the invented crimes under Stalinism where people were accused of belonging to the old order — Kulaks or members of the petit bourgeoisie — or were convicted for plotting to overthrow the regime as Trotskyites, Titoites, agents of capitalism or saboteurs, known as “wreckers.” Once a category of people is targeted, the crimes they are charged with, if they are charged at all, are almost always fabrications.Concentration camp inmates are severed from the outside world. They are disappeared. Erased. They are treated as if they never existed. Nearly all efforts to obtain information about them are met with silence. Even their death, should they die in custody, becomes anonymous, as if they were never born.Those who run concentration camps, as Hannah Arendt writes, are people without the curiosity or the mental capacity to form opinions. They don’t, she notes, “even know any more what it means to be convinced.” They simply obey, conditioned to act as “perverted animals.” They are intoxicated by the God-like power they have to turn human beings into quivering flocks of sheep.The goal of any concentration camp system is to destroy all individual traits, to mold people into fearful, docile, obedient masses. The first camps are training grounds for prison guards and ICE agents. They master the brutal techniques designed to infantilize inmates, an infantilization that soon warps the wider society.The 250 purported Venezuelan gang members shipped to El Salvador in defiance of a federal court were denied due process. They were summarily herded onto planes, which ignored the judge’s order to turn back, and once they arrived, were stripped, beaten and had their heads shaved. Shaved heads are a feature of all concentration camps. The excuse is lice. But of course it is about depersonalization and why they are in uniforms and identified by numbers.The autocrat openly revels in the cruelty. “I look forward to watching the sick terrorist thugs get 20 year jail sentences for what they are doing to Elon Musk and Tesla,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Perhaps they could serve them in the prisons of El Salvador, which have become so recently famous for such lovely conditions!”Those that build concentration camps are proud of them. They show them off to the press, or at least the sycophants posing as the press. Secretary for Homeland Security Kristi Noem, who posted a video of herself visiting the El Salvadoran prison, used the shirtless and head shaved inmates as a stage prop for her threats against immigrants. If fascism does one thing well, it is spectacle.First they come for the immigrants. Then they come for the activists on foreign student visas on college campuses. Then they come for green card holders. Next are the U.S. citizens who fight Israeli genocide or the creeping fascism. Then they come for you. Not because you broke the law. But because the monstrous machine of terror needs a constant supply of victims to sustain itself.Totalitarian regimes survive by eternally battling mortal, existential threats. Once one threat is eradicated, they invent another. They mock the rule of law. Judges, until they are purged, may decry this lawlessness, but they have no mechanism to enforce their rulings. The Department of Justice, turned over to the Trump sycophant Pam Bondi, is, as in all autocracies, designed to block enforcement, not facilitate it. There are no legal impediments left to protect us. We know where this is going. We have seen it before. And it is not good.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Thanks for reading The Chris Hedges Report! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible's list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actorText originally published May 26, 2025Full text: 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.The conflation of outrage over the genocide with antisemitism is a sleazy tactic to silence protest and placate Zionist donors, the billionaire class and advertisers. These liberal institutions, weaponizing antisemitism, aggressively silenced and expelled critics, banned student groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine, allowed police to make hundreds of arrests of peaceful protests on campuses, purged professors and groveled before Congress. Use the words ‘apartheid’ and ‘genocide’ and you are fired or excoriated.Zionist Jews, in this fictional narrative, are the oppressed. Jews who protest the genocide are slandered as Hamas stooges and punished. Good Jews. Bad Jews. One group deserves protection. The other deserves to be thrown to the wolves. This odious bifurcation exposes the charade.In April 2024, Columbia University President Minouche Shafik, along with two board members and a law professor, testified before the House of Representative education committee. They accepted the premise that antisemitism was a significant problem at Columbia and other higher education institutions.When Co-Chair of the Board of Trustees of Columbia University David Greenwald and others told the committee that they believed “from the river to the sea” and “long live the intifada” were antisemitic statements, Shafik agreed. She threw students and faculty under the bus, including long-time professor Joseph Massad.The day after the hearings, Shafik suspended all the students at the Columbia protests and called in the New York City Police Department (NYPD), who arrested at least 108 students.“I have determined that the encampment and related disruptions pose a clear and present danger to the substantial functioning of the University,” Shafik wrote in her letter to the police.NYPD Chief John Chell, however, told the press, “the students that were arrested were peaceful, offered no resistance whatsoever, and were saying what they wanted to say in a peaceful manner.”“What disciplinary action has been taken against that professor?” Representative Elise Stefanik asked in the hearing about Columbia law Professor Katherine Franke.Shafik volunteered that Franke, whose position at the law school where she had taught for 25 years was terminated, and other professors, were being investigated. In an apparent reference to visiting Columbia Professor Mohamed Abdou, she claimed he was “terminated” and promised he “will never teach at Columbia again.” Professor Abdou is suing Columbia for defamation, discrimination, harassment and financial and professional loss.The Center for Constitutional Rights wrote of the betrayal of Franke:In an egregious attack on both academic freedom and Palestinian rights advocacy, Columbia University has entered into an “agreement” with Katherine Franke to leave her teaching position after an esteemed 25-year career. The move — “a termination dressed up in more palatable terms,” according to Franke’s statement — stems from her advocacy for students who speak out in support of Palestinian rights.Her ostensible offense was a comment expressing concern about Columbia’s failure to address harassment of Palestinians and their allies by Israeli students who come to campus straight from military service — after Israeli students sprayed Palestinian rights protestors with a toxic chemical. For this, she was investigated for harassment and found to be in violation of Columbia’s policies. The actual cause of her forced departure is the crackdown on dissent at Columbia resulting from historic protests opposing Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Franke’s fate was sealed when former Columbia president Minouche Shafik threw her under the bus during her cowardly appearance before Congress.You can see my interview with Franke here.Despite her capitulation to the Zionist lobby, Shafik resigned a little more than a year after assuming her position as head of the university.The crackdown at Columbia continues, with an estimated 80 people arrested and over 65 students suspended following a protest in the library in the first week of May. Former television journalist and Columbia’s acting president Claire Shipman condemned the protest, stating,“Disruptions to our academic activities will not be tolerated and are violations of our rules and policies…Columbia strongly condemns violence on our campus, antisemitism and all forms of hate and discrimination, some of which we witnessed today.”Of course, appeasement does not work. This witch hunt, whether under the Biden or Trump administration, was never grounded in good faith. It was about decapitating Israel’s critics and marginalizing the liberal class and the left. It is sustained by lies and slander, which these institutions continue to embrace.Watching these liberal institutions, who are hostile to the left, be smeared by Trump for harboring “Marxist lunatics,” “radical leftists,” and “communists,” exposes another failing of the liberal class. It was the left that could have saved these institutions or at least given them the fortitude, not to mention analysis, to take a principled stand. The left at least calls apartheid apartheid and genocide genocide.Media outlets regularly publish articles and OpEds uncritically accepting claims made by Zionist students and faculty. They fail to clarify the distinction between being Jewish and being Zionist. They demonize student protesters. They never bothered reporting with any depth or honesty from the student encampments where Jews, Muslims and Christians made common cause. They routinely mischaracterize anti-Zionist, anti-genocide and pro-Palestinian liberation slogans and policy demands as hate speech, antisemitic, or contributing to Jewish students feeling unsafe.Examples include, The New York Times: “Why the Campus Protests Are So Troubling,” “I’m a Columbia Professor. The Protests on My Campus Are Not Justice,” and “Universities Face an Urgent Question: What Makes a Protest Antisemitic?”; The Washington Post: “Call the campus protests what they are” “At Columbia, excuse the students, but not the faculty”; The Atlantic: “Campus Protest Encampments Are Unethical” and “Columbia University’s anti-Semitism Problem”; Slate: “When Pro-Palestine Protests Cross Into Antisemitism”; Vox: The Rising Tide of Antisemitism on College Campuses Amid Gaza Protests”; Mother Jones: “How Pro-Palestine Protests Spark Antisemitism on Campus”; The Cut (New York Magazine): “The Problem With Pro-Palestine Protests on Campus”; and The Daily Beast: “Antisemitism Surges Amid Pro-Palestine Protests at U.S. Universities.”The New York Times, in a decision worthy of George Orwell, instructed its reporters to eschew words such as “refugee camps,” “occupied territory,” “slaughter,” “massacre,” “carnage,” “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing,” when writing about Palestine, according to an internal memo obtained by The Intercept. It discourages the very use of the word “Palestine” in routine text and headlines.In December 2023, Democratic Governor of New York Kathy Hochul sent a letter to university and college presidents who failed to condemn and address “antisemitism,” and calls for the “genocide of any group.” She warned that they would be subjected to “aggressive enforcement action” by New York State. The following year, in late August, Hochul repeated these warnings during a virtual meeting with 200 university and college leaders.Hochul made clear in October 2024 that she considered pro-Palestine slogans to be explicit calls for genocide of Jews.“There are laws on the books – human rights laws, state and federal laws – that I will enforce if you allow for the discrimination of our students on campus, even calling for the genocide of the Jewish people which is what is meant by ‘From the river to the sea,’ by the way,” she said at a memorial event at the Temple Israel Center in White Plains. “Those are not innocent sounding words. They're filled with hate.”The Governor successfully pressured City University of New York (CUNY) to remove a job posting for a Palestinian studies professorship at Hunter College which referenced “settler colonialism,” “genocide” and “apartheid.”Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in his new book “Antisemitism in America: A Warning,” leads efforts by the Democratic Party — which has a dismal 27 percent approval rating in a recent NBC News poll — to denounce those protesting the genocide as carrying out a “blood libel” against Jews.“Whatever one’s view of how the war in Gaza was conducted, it is not and has never been the policy of the Israeli government to exterminate the Palestinian people,” he writes, ignoring hundreds of calls by Israeli officials to wipe Palestinians from the face of the earth during 19 months of saturation bombing and enforced starvation.The grisly truth, openly acknowledged by Israeli officials, is far different.“We are disassembling Gaza, and leaving it as piles of rubble, with total destruction [which has] no precedent globally. And the world isn’t stopping us,” gloats Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.“Last night, almost 100 Gazans were killed…it doesn’t interest anyone. Everyone has gotten used to [the fact] that [we can] kill 100 Gazans in one night during a war and nobody cares in the world,” Israeli Knesset member Zvi Sukkot, told Israel’s Channel 12 on May 16.The perpetuation of the fiction of widespread antisemitism, which of course exists but which is not fostered or condoned by these institutions, coupled with the refusal to say out loud what is being live streamed to the world, has shattered what little moral authority these institutions and liberals had left. It gives credibility to Trump’s effort to cripple and destroy all institutions that sustain a liberal democracy.Trump surrounds himself with neo-Nazi sympathizers such as Elon Musk, and Christian fascists who condemn Jews for crucifying Christ. But antisemitism by the right gets a free pass since these “good” antisemites cheer on Israel’s settler colonial project of extermination, one these neo-Nazis and Christian fascists would like to replicate on Brown and Black people in the name of the great replacement theory. Trump trumpets the fiction of “white genocide” in South Africa. He signed an executive order in February that fast-tracked immigration to the U.S. for Afrikaners — white South Africans.Harvard, which is attempting to save itself from the wrecking ball of the Trump administration, was as complicit in this witch hunt as everyone else, flagellating itself for not being more repressive towards campus critics of the genocide.The university’s former president Claudine Gay condemned the pro-Palestine slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which demands the right of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, as bearing “specific historical meanings that to a great many people imply the eradication of Jews from Israel.”Harvard substantially tightened its regulations regarding student protests, in January 2024, and increased the police presence on its campus. It barred 13 students from graduating, citing alleged policy violations linked to their participation in a protest encampment, despite an earlier agreement to avoid punitive measures. It placed more than 20 students on “involuntary leave” and in some cases evicted students from their housing.Such policies were replicated across the country.The capitulations and crackdowns on pro-Palestine activism, academic freedom, freedom of speech, suspensions, expulsions and firings, since Oct. 7, 2023, have not spared U.S. colleges and universities from further attacks.Since Trump took office, at least $11 billion in federal research grants and contracts have been cut or frozen nationwide according to NPR. This includes Harvard ($3 billion), Columbia ($400 million), University of Pennsylvania ($175 million) and Brandeis ($6-7.5 million annually).On May 22, the Trump administration intensified its attacks on Harvard by terminating its ability to enroll international students that make up around 27 percent of the student body.“This administration is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus,” Kristi Noem, DHS Secretary wrote on X, when posting screenshots of the letter she sent to Harvard revoking foreign student enrollment. “Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country.”Harvard, like Columbia, the media, the Democratic Party and the liberal class, misread power. By refusing to acknowledge or name the genocide in Gaza, and persecuting those who do, they provided the bullets to their executioners.They are paying the price for their stupidity and cowardice.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.PhotosChris HedgesChris Hedges, a former Pulitzer Prize winning foreign correspondent for the New York Times and best selling author of 'Empire of Illusion', stands next to a window for a portrait, Princeton, NJ, November 2010. Hedges is also the author of 'Death of the Liberal Class' and is a columnist for Truthdig. (Photo by Oliver Morris/Getty Images)Protestors Rally In Support Of Gaza In New York CityNEW YORK, NEW YORK - OCTOBER 5: Pro-Palestinian protesters rally in support of Gaza and Lebanon in Times Square on October 5, 2024 in New York City. Protesters are ramping up their demonstrations in anticipation of the October 7th one year anniversary of the attack on Israel by Hamas. (Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)Protesters Hold A Rally Outside The U.S. Capitol Building Calling For A Ceasefire In Mideast WarWASHINGTON, DC - OCTOBER 18: Protesters hold a demonstration in support of a cease fire in Gaza in the Cannon House Office Building on October 18, 2023 in Washington, DC. Members of the Jewish Voice for Peace and the IfNotNow movement staged a rally to call for a cease fire in the Israel–Hamas war. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)Protesters Hold A Rally Outside The U.S. Capitol Building Calling For A Ceasefire In Mideast WarWASHINGTON, DC - OCTOBER 18: Demonstrators are detained by U.S. Capitol Police after they staged a sit-in inside the Cannon House Office Building to demand a cease-fire against Palestinians in Gaza on Independence Avenue near the U.S. Capitol October 18, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)Columbia in Crisis: Columbia University's Response to AntisemitismUNITED STATES - APRIL 17: Minouche Shafik, president of Columbia University, testifies during the House Education and the Workforce Committee hearing titled "Columbia in Crisis: Columbia University's Response to Antisemitism," in Rayburn building on Wednesday, April 17, 2024. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)Dueling Rallies Held At George Washington University As Campus Protests Continue NationwideWASHINGTON, DC - MAY 2: A woman wears a hat that reads "Curb Your Antisemitism" during a rally against campus antisemitism at George Washington University on May 2, 2024 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)Columbia in Crisis: Columbia University's Response to AntisemitismUNITED STATES - APRIL 17: David Greenwald, Board of Trustees Co-Chair, Columbia University, testifies during the House Education and the Workforce Committee hearing titled "Columbia in Crisis: Columbia University's Response to Antisemitism," in Rayburn building on Wednesday, April 17, 2024. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)NYPD officers arrest pro-Palestinian protests began at Columbia University spread to other schools in New YorkNEW YORK, US - APRIL 22: Police intervene and arrest more than 100 students at New York University (NYU) who continue their demonstration on campus in solidarity with the students at Columbia University and to oppose Israel's attacks on Gaza, in New York, United States on April 22, 2024. (Photo by Fatih Aktas/Anadolu via Getty Images)Columbia University President Minouche Shafik Visits Campus After Protest Encampment ClearedNEW YORK, NEW YORK - MAY 1: Columbia University President Minouche Shafik visits Hamilton Hall on the campus of Columbia University on May 1, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Indy Scholtens/Getty Images)NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell speaks during Mayor Eric...NEW YORK, UNITED STATES - 2024/10/26: NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell speaks during Mayor Eric Adams and NYPD (New York City Police Department) executives hold briefing on security preparations in advance of Former President Trump's rally at 1 Police Plaza. (Photo by Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)Rally In Support Of Israel Held In Times SquareNEW YORK, NY - MAY 20: Pro Palestinian protesters face off with a group of Israel supporters and police in a violent clash in Times Square on May 20, 2021 in New York City. Despite an announcement of a cease fire between Israel and Gaza militants, dozens of supporters of both sides of the conflict fought in the streets of Times Square. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)USA-PALESTINE-COLUMBIA-GRADUATION-PROTEST-NYCNew York, United States 2025-05-21 NYPD officers push through demonstrators wearing keffiyehs during a pro-Palestinian protest on Columbia University s campus. (Photo by Madison Swart / Hans Lucas / Hans Lucas via AFP) (Photo by MADISON SWART/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images)US-EDUCATION-POLITICS-COMMENCEMENTColumbia University Acting President Claire Shipman speaks during the Commencement Ceremony at Columbia University in New York on May 21, 2025, (Photo by Seth Wenig / POOL / AFP) (Photo by SETH WENIG/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)New York Governor Kathy Hochul Announces Large Scale Increase In Law Enforcement Within Subway SystemNEW YORK, NEW YORK - MARCH 6: New York Governor Kathy Hochul speaks during a press conference to announce new subway safety measures at NYCTA Rail Control Center on March 6, 2024 in New York City. Hochul announced that 1,000 New York State Police, MTAPD and the New York National Guard will be used to support the NYPD in conducting bag checks. (Photo by Adam Gray/Getty Images)New York State Governor Kathy Hochul...Melville, N.Y.: New York State Governor Kathy Hochul visits Newsday headquarters on Jan. 22, 2024 in Melville, New York. (Photo by Howard Schnapp/Newsday RM via Getty Images)ISRAEL-POLITICS-RELIGION-JUDAISM-ORTHODOX-FUNERALThe leader of Israel's Religious Zionist Party Bezalel Smotrich (C) attends the funeral of Israeli Orthodox Jewish rabbi Haim Drukman, a spiritual leader of the nationalist Religious Orthodox Jewish movement, at Merkaz Shapira near Kiryat Malachi on December 26, 2022. (Photo by Gil COHEN-MAGEN / AFP) (Photo by GIL COHEN-MAGEN/AFP via Getty Images)Israeli extreme right member of Knesset, Zvi Sukkot holds an...JERUSALEM, ISRAEL - 2024/06/05: Israeli extreme right member of Knesset, Zvi Sukkot holds an Israeli flag outside Damascus gate in Jerusalem. Tens of thousands of young religious Ultra nationalists Zionist men and women have paraded through Muslim parts of the Old City of Jerusalem in the annual Jerusalem Day Flag march, an event that threatens to trigger further violence in the Israel-Hamas war.(Photo by Eyal Warshavsky/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)A protester holds a placard comparing Elon Musk to Hitler...LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM - 2025/03/29: A protester holds a placard comparing Elon Musk to Hitler doing the Nazi salute during the demonstration. Protesters gathered outside the Tesla Centre in Park Royal as part of the Tesla Takedown Global Day of Action against Tesla and Elon Musk. (Photo by Vuk Valcic/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)SAFRICA-US-POLITICS-DEMOA man wears a Make Afrikaners Great Again (MAGA) cap in reference to the American MAGA as white South Africans supporting US President Donald Trump and South African and US tech billionaire Elon Musk gather in front of the US Embassy in Pretoria, on February 15, 2025 for a demonstration. (Photo by Marco Longari / AFP) (Photo by MARCO LONGARI/AFP via Getty Images)University Presidents Testify In House Hearing On Campus AntisemitismWASHINGTON, DC - DECEMBER 05: Dr. Claudine Gay, President of Harvard University, testifies before the House Education and Workforce Committee at the Rayburn House Office Building on December 05, 2023 in Washington, DC. The Committee held a hearing to investigate antisemitism on college campuses. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images) This is a public episode. 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The interview starts at 9 minutes into the recording. Text below is from KPFA, linked here, where this podcast was originally posted. You can participate in the fund drive special here. FUND DRIVE SPECIAL – Pledge $120 and receive Chris Hedges new book, A Genocide Foretold: Reporting on Survival and Resistance in Occupied Palestine. In it, the Pulitzer Prize–winning former Middle East Bureau Chief for The New York Times, explores zionist settler colonialism in Gaza with a powerful emotional depth. A Genocide Foretold confronts the stark realities of life under siege in Gaza and the heroic effort ordinary Palestinians are waging to resist and survive. Weaving together personal stories, historical context, and unflinching journalism, Chris Hedges provides an intimate portrait of systemic oppression, occupation, and violence.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Thanks for reading The Chris Hedges Report! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible's list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actorText originally published March 11, 2025I Stink Therefore I Am - by Mr. FishThe attacks on colleges and universities — Donald Trump’s administration has warned some 60 colleges that they could lose federal money if they fail to make campuses safe for Jewish students and is already pulling $400 million from Columbia University — has nothing to do with fighting antisemitism. Antisemitism is a smoke screen, a cover for a much broader and more insidious agenda. The goal, which includes plans to abolish the Department of Education and terminate all programs of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), is to turn the educational system, from kindergarten to graduate school, into an indoctrination machine.Totalitarian regimes seek absolute control over the institutions that reproduce ideas, especially the media and education. Narratives that challenge the myths used to legitimize absolute power — in our case historical facts that blemish the sanctity of white male supremacy, capitalism and Christian fundamentalism — are erased. There is to be no shared reality. There are to be no other legitimate perspectives. History is to be static. It is not to be open to reinterpretation or investigation. It is to be calcified into myth to buttress a ruling ideology and the reigning political and social hierarchy. Any other paradigm of power and social interaction is tantamount to treason.“One of the most significant threats that a class hierarchy can face is a universally accessible and excellent public school system,” writes Jason Stanley in “Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future:”The political philosophy that feels this threat most acutely — and that unites hostility toward public education with support for class hierarchy — is a certain form of rightwing libertarianism, an ideology that sees free markets as the wellspring of human freedom. These kinds of libertarians oppose government regulation and virtually all forms of public goods, including public education. The political goal of this version of libertarian ideology is to dismantle public goods. The dismantling of public education is backed by oligarchs and business elites alike, who see in democracy a threat to their power, and in the taxes required for public goods a threat to their wealth. Public schools are the foundational democratic public good. It is therefore perfectly logical that those who are opposed to democracy, including fascist and fascist-leaning movements, would join forces with right-wing libertarians in undermining the institution of public education.I taught Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” in a New Jersey prison classroom. Zinn’s book is one of the primary targets of the far-right. Trump denounced Zinn in 2020 at the White House Conference on American History, saying, “Our children are instructed from propaganda tracts, like those of Howard Zinn, that try to make students ashamed of their own history.”Zinn implodes the lies used to glorify the conquest of the Americas. He allows readers to see the United States through the eyes of Native Americans, immigrants, the enslaved, women, union leaders, persecuted socialists, anarchists and communists, abolitionists, anti-war activists, civil rights leaders and the poor. He holds up the testimonies of Sojourner Truth, Chief Joseph, Henry David Thoreau, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, Randolph Bourne, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. As I gave my lectures I would hear students mutter “Damn” or “We been lied to.”Zinn makes clear that organized militant forces opened up democratic space in American society. None of these democratic rights — the abolition of slavery, the right to strike, equality for women, Social Security, the eight-hour work day, civil rights — were given to us by a benevolent ruling class. It involved struggle and self-sacrifice. Zinn, in short, explains how democracy works.Zinn’s book was revered in my cramped prison classroom. It was revered because my students intimately understood how white privilege, racism, capitalism, poverty, police, the courts, and lies peddled by the powerful, deformed their communities and their lives. Zinn allowed them to hear, for the first time, the voices of their ancestors. He wrote history, not myth. He not only educated my students, but empowered them. I had always admired Zinn. After that class I too revered him.Zinn, when he was teaching at Spelman College, a historically Black women’s college in Atlanta, became involved in the civil rights movement. He served on the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. He marched with his students demanding civil rights. Spelman’s president was not amused.“I was fired for insubordination,” Zinn recalled. “Which happened to be true.”Education is meant to be subversive. It gives students the ability and the language to ask questions about reigning assumptions and ideas. It questions dogma and ideology. It can, as Zinn writes, “counteract the deception that makes the government’s force legitimate.” It lifts up the voices of the marginalized and oppressed to honor a plurality of perspectives and experiences. This leads, when education works, to empathy and understanding, a desire to right historical wrongs, to make society better. It fosters the common good.Education is not only about knowledge, it is about inspiration. It is about passion. It is about the belief that what we do in life matters. It is about, as James Baldwin writes in his essay “The Creative Process,” the ability to drive “to the heart of every answer and expose the question the answer hides.”The rightwing attacks on programs such as critical race theory or DEI, as Stanley points out in his book, “intentionally distort these programs to create the impression that those whose perspectives are finally included — like Black Americans, for instance — are receiving some sort of illicit benefit or unfair advantage. And so they target Black Americans who have risen to positions of power and influence and seek to delegitimize them as undeserving. The ultimate goal is to justify a takeover of the institutions, transforming them into weapons in the war against the very idea of multi-racial democracy.”The integrity and quality of public higher education in America has been under assault for decades, as Ellen Schrecker documents in her book “The Lost Promise: American Universities in the 1960s.”The protests on college campuses in the 1960s, Schrecker points out, saw “the enemies of the liberal academy” attack its “ideological and financial underpinnings.”Tuitions, once low, if not free, have soared, and with them tremendous student debt. State legislators and the federal government have slashed funding to public universities, forcing them to seek support from corporations and reduce most faculty to the status of poorly paid adjuncts, often lacking benefits, as well as job security. Nearly 75 percent of the instruction at colleges and universities is in the hands of adjuncts, part-time lecturers, and non-tenure-track full-time faculty, who have no hope of being granted tenure, according to the American Federation of Teachers.Public institutions, which serve 80 percent of the nation’s students, are chronically short of funding and basic resources. Higher education has evolved, even at major research universities, into vocational training, no longer a vehicle for learning but economic mobility. The assault sees elite schools, where tuition can run over $80,000 a year, cater to the wealthy and the privileged, locking out the poor and the working class.“The current academy functions primarily to replicate an increasingly inequitable status quo, it is hard to imagine how it could be restructured to serve a more democratic purpose without external pressure for something like universal free higher education,” Schrecker writes.Totalitarian societies do not teach students how to think but what to think. They churn out students who are historically and politically illiterate, blinded by an enforced historical amnesia. They seek to produce servants and apologists who conform, not critics and rebels. Liberal arts colleges, for this reason, do not exist in totalitarian states.PEN America has documented nearly 16,000 book bans in public schools nationwide since 2021, a number, PEN writes, “not seen since the Red Scare McCarthy era of the 1950s.” These books include titles such as “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison, “The Color Purple” by Alice Walker and “Maus,” the graphic novel on the Holocaust by Art Spiegelman.The most important human activity, as Socrates and Plato remind us, is not action, but contemplation, echoing the wisdom enshrined in eastern philosophy. We cannot change the world if we cannot understand it. By digesting and critiquing the philosophers and realities of the past, we become independent thinkers in the present. We are able to articulate our own values and beliefs, often in opposition to what these ancient philosophers advocated. A capacity to think, to ask the right questions, however is a threat to totalitarian regimes seeking to inculcate a blind obedience to authority.Unconscious civilizations are totalitarian wastelands. They replicate and embrace dead ideas, captured in José Clemente Orozco’s mural “The Epic of American Civilization” where skeletons in academic robes bring forth baby skeletons.“Before they seize power and establish a world according to their doctrines, totalitarian movements conjure up a lying world of consistency which is more adequate to the needs of the human mind than reality itself; in which, through sheer imagination, uprooted masses can feel at home and are spared the never-ending shocks which real life and real experiences deal to human beings and their expectations,” Hannah Arendt writes in “The Origins of Totalitarianism.” “The force possessed by totalitarian propaganda — before the movements have the power to drop iron curtains to prevent anyone’s disturbing, by the slightest reality, the gruesome quiet of an entirely imaginary world — lies in the ability to shut the masses off from the real world.”As bad as things are, they are about to get much worse. The nation’s educational system is being dragged into the slaughterhouse, where it will be dismembered and privatized. The corporations profiting from the charter schools system and online colleges — whose primary concern is certainly not with education — replace real teachers with non-unionized, poorly trained instructors. Students, rather than being educated, will be taught by rote and fed the familiar tropes of authoritarian playbooks — paeans to white supremacy, national purity, patriarchy and the nation’s duty to impose its “virtues” on others by force. This mass indoctrination will not only ensure ignorance, but obedience. And that is the point.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Photos Chris HedgesChris Hedges, a former Pulitzer Prize winning foreign correspondent for the New York Times and best selling author of 'Empire of Illusion', stands next to a window for a portrait, Princeton, NJ, November 2010. Hedges is also the author of 'Death of the Liberal Class' and is a columnist for Truthdig. (Photo by Oliver Morris/Getty Images)'The Pequot War'A colorized engraving shows a militia raised in Connecticut Colony as they attack and ultimately set fire to an encampment of Pequot indians in what became Mystic, Connecticut, 1637. (Photo by Stock Montage/Getty Images)TOPSHOT-US-POLITICS-CPACTOPSHOT - Billionaire Elon Musk, the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), holds a chainsaw reading "Long live freedom, damn it" as he shakes hands with Argentinian President Javier Milei at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center at National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland, on February 20, 2025. The chainsaw was a present to Elon Musk from Argentina's President Javier Milei. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)US-POLITICS-TRUMP-HISTORYUS President Donald Trump speaks during the White House Conference on American History at the National Archives in Washington, DC, September 17, 2020. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)Protesters Being Hosed by Fireman(Original Caption) Firemen bear in on a group of African Americans who sought shelter in a doorway as hoses and dogs were used in routing anti-segregation demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama, 3rd May 1963.Celebrity Reading Of "Voices Of A People's History Of The United States"LOS ANGELES, CA - OCTOBER 05: Author Howard Zinn, reads on stage at the Celebrity Reading Of "Voices Of A People's History Of The United States" held at the Japan America Theatre, on October,2005 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)James BaldwinAmerican novelist and activist James Baldwin (1924 – 1987), USA, October 1963. (Photo by Mario Jorrin/Pix/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)Police Point Revolver at Student DemonstratorsSAN FRANCISCO -- DECEMBER: Policeman with a drawn gun holds back anti-war demonstrators who attacked the Administration Building at San Francisco State College. They were also protesting the selection of S.I. Hayakawa as president of the school, December, 1968. (Photo by David Hume Kennerly/Bettmann/Corbis via Getty Images)The Epic of American CivilizationSource: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Orozco_-_Dartmouth_c.JPG This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible's list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actorText Originally posted Mar. 22, 2025This is the last chapter of the genocide. It is the final, blood-soaked push to drive the Palestinians from Gaza. No food. No medicine. No shelter. No clean water. No electricity. Israel is swiftly turning Gaza into a Dantesque cauldron of human misery where Palestinians are being killed in their hundreds and soon, again, in their thousands and tens of thousands, or they will be forced out never to return.The final chapter marks the end of Israeli lies. The lie of the two-state solution. The lie that Israel respects the laws of war that protect civilians. The lie that Israel bombs hospitals and schools only because they are used as staging areas by Hamas. The lie that Hamas uses civilians as human shields, while Israel routinely forces captive Palestinians to enter potentially booby-trapped tunnels and buildings ahead of Israeli troops. The lie that Hamas or Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ) are responsible — the charge often being errant Palestinian rockets — for the destruction of hospitals, United Nations’ buildings or mass Palestinian casualties. The lie that humanitarian aid to Gaza is blocked because Hamas is hijacking the trucks or smuggling in weapons and war material. The lie that Israeli babies are beheaded or Palestinians carried out mass rape of Israeli women. The lie that 75 percent of the tens of thousands killed in Gaza were Hamas “terrorists.” The lie that Hamas, because it was allegedly rearming and recruiting new fighters, is responsible for the breakdown of the ceasefire agreement.Israel’s naked genocidal visage is exposed. It has ordered the evacuation of northern Gaza where desperate Palestinians are camped out amid the rubble of their homes. What comes now is mass starvation — the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said on March 21 it has six days of flour supplies left — deaths from diseases caused by contaminated water and food, scores of killed and wounded each day under the relentless assault of bombs, missiles, shells and bullets. Nothing will function, bakeries, water treatment and sewage plants, hospitals — Israel blew up the damaged Turkish-Palestinian hospital on March 21 — schools, aid distribution centers or clinics. Less than half of the 53 emergency vehicles operated by the Palestine Red Crescent Society are functional due to fuel shortages. Soon there will be none.Israel’s message is unequivocal: Gaza will be uninhabitable. Leave or die.Since Tuesday, when Israel broke the ceasefire with heavy bombing, over 700 Palestinians have been killed, including 200 children. In one 24 hour period 400 Palestinians were killed. This is only the start. No Western power, including the United States, which provides the weapons for the genocide, intends to stop it. The images from Gaza during the nearly sixteen months of incessant attacks were awful. But what is coming now will be worse. It will rival the most atrocious war crimes of the twentieth century, including the mass starvation, wholesale slaughter and leveling of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943 by the Nazis.Oct. 7 marked the dividing line between an Israeli policy that advocated the brutalization and subjugation of the Palestinians and a policy that calls for their extermination and removal from historic Palestine. What we are witnessing is the historical equivalent of the moment triggered by the annihilation of some 200 soldiers led by George Armstrong Custer in June 1876 at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. After that humiliating defeat, Native Americans were slated to be killed with the remnants forced into prisoner of war camps, later named reservations, where thousands died of disease, lived under the merciless gaze of their armed occupiers and fell into a life of immiseration and despair. Expect the same for the Palestinians in Gaza, dumped, I suspect, in one of the world’s hellholes and forgotten.“Gaza residents, this is your final warning,” Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz threatened:The first Sinwar destroyed Gaza and the second Sinwar will completely destroy it. The Air Force strikes against Hamas terrorists were just the first step. It will become much more difficult and you will pay the full price. The evacuation of the population from the combat zones will soon begin again…Return the hostages and remove Hamas and other options will open for you, including leaving for other places in the world for those who want to. The alternative is absolute destruction.The ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas was designed to be implemented in three phases. The first phase, lasting 42 days, would see an end to hostilities. Hamas would release 33 Israeli hostages who were captured on Oct. 7, 2023 — including women, those aged above 50, and those with illnesses — in exchange for upwards of 2,000 Palestinian men, women and children imprisoned by Israel (around 1,900 Palestinian captives have been released by Israel as of March 18). Hamas has released a total of 147 hostages, of whom eight were dead. Israel says there are 59 Israelis still being held by Hamas, 35 of whom Israel believes are deceased.The Israeli army would pull back from populated areas of Gaza on the first day of the ceasefire. On the seventh day, displaced Palestinians would be permitted to return to northern Gaza. Israel would allow 600 aid trucks with food and medical supplies to enter Gaza daily.The second phase, which was expected to be negotiated on the sixteenth day of the ceasefire, would see the release of the remaining Israeli hostages. Israel would complete its withdrawal from Gaza maintaining a presence in some parts of the Philadelphi corridor, which stretches along the eight-mile border between Gaza and Egypt. It would surrender its control of the Rafah border crossing into Egypt.The third phase would see negotiations for a permanent end of the war and the reconstruction of Gaza.Israel habitually signs agreements, including the Camp David Accords and the Oslo Peace Agreement, with timetables and phases. It gets what it wants — in this case the release of the hostages — in the first phase and then violates subsequent phases. This pattern has never been broken.Israel refused to honor the second phase of the deal. It blocked humanitarian aid into Gaza two weeks ago, violating the agreement. It also killed at least 137 Palestinians during the first phase of the ceasefire, including nine people, — three of them journalists — when Israeli drones attacked a relief team on March 15 in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza.Israel’s heavy bombing and shelling of Gaza resumed March 18 while most Palestinians were asleep or preparing their suhoor, the meal eaten before dawn during the holy month of Ramadan. Israel will not stop its attacks now, even if the remaining hostages are freed — Israel’s supposed reason for the resumption of the bombing and siege of Gaza.The Trump White House is cheering on the slaughter. They attack critics of the genocide as “antisemites” who should be silenced, criminalized or deported while funneling billions of dollars in weapons to Israel.Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza is the inevitable denouement of its settler colonial project and apartheid state. The seizure of all of historic Palestine — with the West Bank soon, I expect, to be annexed by Israel — and displacement of all Palestinians has always been the Zionist goal.Israel’s worst excesses occurred during the wars of 1948 and 1967 when huge parts of historic Palestine were seized, thousands of Palestinians killed and hundreds of thousands were ethnically cleansed. Between these wars, the slow-motion theft of land, murderous assaults and steady ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, continued.That calibrated dance is over. This is the end. What we are witnessing dwarfs all the historical assaults on Palestinians. Israel’s demented genocidal dream — a Palestinian nightmare — is about to be achieved. It will forever shatter the myth that we, or any Western nation, respect the rule of law or are the protectors of human rights, democracy and the so-called “virtues” of Western civilization. Israel’s barbarity is our own. We may not understand this, but the rest of the globe does.Thanks for reading The Chris Hedges Report! This post is public so feel free to share it.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.PhotosChris HedgesChris Hedges, a former Pulitzer Prize winning foreign correspondent for the New York Times and best selling author of 'Empire of Illusion', stands next to a window for a portrait, Princeton, NJ, November 2010. Hedges is also the author of 'Death of the Liberal Class' and is a columnist for Truthdig. (Photo by Oliver Morris/Getty Images)Food distribution in Gaza amid Israeli blockadeJABALIA, GAZA - MARCH 27: Crowd of starving Palestinians, including children, wait to receive food distributed by charity organizations amid Israel's blockade as the situation dramatically deteriorates in Jabalia refugee camp, Gaza on March 27, 2024. (Photo by Mahmoud Issa/Anadolu via Getty Images)Aftermath of Israeli army's withdrawal from Al-Shifa Hospital and its surroundingsGAZA CITY, GAZA - APRIL 1: An aerial view of damaged area around the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Gaza on April 01, 2024. The Israeli army said Monday that it wrapped up its military operation at the Al-Shifa Hospital complex in Gaza City, following a 14-day siege and incursion that resulted in scores of casualties and hundreds of arrests. (Photo by Omar El Qattaa/Anadolu via Getty Images)TOPSHOT-PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICTTOPSHOT - Members of a Palestinian family rush out of a bombed house during Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City on October 9, 2023. (Photo by Eyad AL-BABA / AFP) (Photo by EYAD AL-BABA/AFP via Getty Images)The destruction in Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital in GazaGAZA CITY, GAZA - JANUARY 28: A view of the destruction at Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital, built by Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TKA) between the years 2011-2017 in Gaza City, Gaza on January 28, 2025. (Photo by Hamza Z. H. Qraiqea/Anadolu via Getty Images)Israeli airstrikes continue on the 17th day in GazaGAZA CITY, GAZA - OCTOBER 23: A woman holding a girl reacts after Israeli airstrikes hit Ridwan neighborhood of Gaza City, Gaza on October 23, 2023. (Photo by Ali Jadallah/Anadolu via Getty Images)TOPSHOT-ISRAEL-PALESTINIAN-CONFLICTTOPSHOT - Journalists take cover behind cars as Israeli soldiers take position during clashes with Palestinian fighters near the Gevim Kibbutz, close to the border with Gaza on October 7, 2023. (Photo by Oren ZIV / AFP) (Photo by OREN ZIV/AFP via Getty Images)TOPSHOT-PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICTTOPSHOT - Displaced Palestinian children walk on a hill facing their makeshift camp in Rafah, on the southern Gaza Strip on the border with Egypt on January 19, 2024, amid continuing battles between Israel and the militant group Hamas. (Photo by AFP) (Photo by -/AFP via Getty Images)Custer Attacks Black Kettle's CampEngraving depicts the 7th U.S. Cavalry, under the command of General George Arnstrong Custer, as it attacks a camp of Cheyenne Native Americans under Chief Black Kettle along the Washita River, near what is now Cheyenne, Oklahoma, November 27, 1868. (Photo by Kean Collection/Getty Images)TOPSHOT-PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICTTOPSHOT - Palestinian families fleeing Gaza City and other parts of northern Gaza towards the southern areas, walk along a road on November 10, 2023 amid ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (Photo by MAHMUD HAMS / AFP) (Photo by MAHMUD HAMS/AFP via Getty Images)ISRAEL-FRANCE-PALESTINIAN-POLITICS-DIPLOMACY-CONFLICTIsrael's Foreign Minister Israel Katz waits to receive France's Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs in Jerusalem on October 7, 2024. (Photo by Ahmed GHARABLI / AFP) (Photo by AHMED GHARABLI/AFP via Getty Images)Israeli snipers seen taking positions on the rooftop during...WEST BANK, KAFR QADDUM, QALQILYA, PALESTINE - 2019/04/19: Israeli snipers seen taking positions on the rooftop during the clashes. Palestinians clashed with Israeli army during demonstration in the village of Kafr Qaddum. (Photo by Bruno Thevenin/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)IDF Takes Delivery Of Long-Range DronePALMACHIM, ISRAEL - MARCH 7: In this photo provided by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), the IDF's first long-range drone, named the Heron, comes in for landing March 7, 2007 at Palmachim air base in central Israel. (Photo by IDF via Getty Images)Sahur meal of Ramadan in a shelter on Gaza as Israeli attacks continueGAZA - MARCH 12: A Palestinian family, who left their homes due to the Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip, has sahur (pre-dawn) meal with za'atar, pepper sauce, a few pieces of bread and tea during the holy month of Ramadan at Salah al-Din shelter center in Gaza on March 12, 2024. (Photo by Dawoud Abo Alkas/Anadolu via Getty Images)President Trump Meets With Visiting Israeli PM Netanyahu At The White HouseWASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 04: U.S. President Donald Trump, accompanied by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L), speaks during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House on February 04, 2025 in Washington, DC. Netanyahu is the first foreign leader to visit Trump since he returned to the White House last month. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)Egyptian Prisoners in the Six-Day WarA truck full of captured Egyptian soldiers meets a convoy of Israeli troops near El Arish, Egypt. The Israelis had taken El Arish and are heading toward the Sinai Desert. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible's list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actorText Originally posted Feb. 18, 2025One Mind - by Mr. FishThe Trump administration’s war with the deep state is not a purgative. It is not about freeing us from the tyranny of intelligence agencies, militarized police, the largest prison system in the world, predatory corporations or the end of mass surveillance. It will not restore the rule of law to hold the powerful and the wealthy accountable. It will not slash the bloated and unaccountable spending — some $1 trillion dollars — by the Pentagon.All revolutionary movements, on the left or the right, dismantle the old bureaucratic structures. The fascists in Germany and the Bolsheviks in the Soviet Union, once they seized power, aggressively purged the civil service. They see in these structures, correctly, an enemy that would stymie their absolute grip on power. It is a coup d'état by inches. Now we get our own.Rearguard battles — as in the early years of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany — are taking place in the courts and media outlets openly hostile to Trump. There will be, at first, pyrrhic victories — the Bolsheviks and the Nazis were stalled by their own judiciaries and hostile press — but gradually the purges, aided by a bankrupt liberalism that no longer stands or fights for anything, ensures the triumph of the new masters.The Trump administration has expelled or fired officials who investigate wrongdoing within the federal government, including 17 inspectors general. Federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies, such as the FBI and Homeland Security, are being purged of those deemed hostile to Trump. Courts, as they are stacked with compliant judges, will be mechanisms for the persecution of state “enemies” and protection rackets for the powerful and the rich. The Supreme Court, which has granted Trump legal immunity, has already reached this stage.“The original purge after the Shah’s fall sought to rid the ministries of senior-level holdovers from the former regime and to provide the revolutionary faithful with jobs,” reads a declassified CIA memo, dated Aug. 28, 1980, on the then newly formed Islamic Republic of Iran. “The second wave of purges began last month after a series of Khomeini speeches. Lower-level individuals who had been part of the Shah’s bureaucracy, those with Western training, or those who were deemed to lack full Revolutionary fervor have been retired or fired on an increasingly large scale.”We are repeating the steps that led to the consolidation of power by past dictatorships, albeit with our own idiom and idiosyncrasies. Those naively lauding Trump’s hostility towards the deep state — which I concede did tremendous damage to democratic institutions, eviscerated our most cherished liberties, is an unaccountable state within a state and orchestrated a series of disastrous global interventions, including the recent military fiascos in the Middle East and Ukraine — should look closely at what is being proposed to take its place.The ultimate target for the Trump administration is not the deep state. The target is the laws, regulations, protocols and rules, and the government civil servants who enforce them, which hinder dictatorial control. Compromise, limited power, checks and balances and accountability are slated to be abolished. Those who believe that the government is designed to serve the common good, rather than the dictates of the ruler, will be forced out. The deep state will be reconstituted to serve the leadership cult. Laws and the rights enshrined in the Constitution will be irrelevant.“He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” Trump boasted on Truth Social and X.The chaos of the first Trump administration has been replaced with a disciplined plan to throttle what is left of America’s anemic democracy. Project 2025, the Center for Renewing America and the America First Policy Institute compiled in advance detailed blueprints, position papers, legislative proposals, proposed executive orders and policies.The legal cornerstone for this deconstruction of the state is the unitary executive theory, articulated by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in his dissenting opinion in the case of Morrison v. Olson. In Scalia’s opinion, Article II of the Constitution means that everything not designated as legislative or judicial power must be executive power. The executive branch, he writes, can execute all the laws of the United States outside of everything that is not explicitly given to Congress or the judiciary in the Constitution. It is a legal justification for dictatorship.Although the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 does not use the term “unitary executive theory,” it advocates for policies that align with the theory’s principles. Project 2025 recommends firing tens of thousands of government employees and replacing them with loyalists. Key to this project is the weakening of labor protections and rights of governmental employees, making it easier for them to be fired at the behest of the executive branch. Russell Vought, the founder of Center for Renewing America and one of the key architects of Project 2025, has returned as director of the Office of Management and Budget, a position he also held in Trump’s first term.One of Trump’s final acts in his first term was signing the order “Creating Schedule F in the Excepted Service.” This order removed employment protections from career government bureaucrats. Joe Biden rescinded it. It has been resurrected with a vengeance. It too has echoes from the past. The Nazis’ 1933 “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service” saw political opponents and non-Aryans, including Germans of Jewish descent, dismissed from the civil service. The Bolsheviks likewise purged the military and civil service of “counter-revolutionaries.”The firing of over 9,500 federal workers — with 75,000 others accepting a less-than-ironclad deferred buyout agreement amid plans to cut 70 percent of staff from various government agencies — freezing of billions of dollars in funding and ongoing seizure of confidential data by Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is not about downsizing and efficiency.The cuts to federal agencies will do little to curb the rapacious spending by the federal government if the military budget — Congressional Republicans are calling for at least $100 billion in additional military spending during the next decade — remains sacrosanct. And while Trump wants to end the war in Ukraine, part of his effort to build an alliance with the autocrat in Moscow he admires, he backs the genocide in Gaza. The purge is about gutting oversight and protections. It is about circumventing thousands of statutes that set the rules for government operations. It is about filling federal positions with “loyalists” from a database compiled by the Conservative Partnership Institute. It is about enriching private corporations — including several owned by Musk — that will be handed lucrative government contracts.This deconstruction is also, I suspect, about increasing Musk’s cloud capital, his algorithmic and digital infrastructure. Musk plans to turn X into the “everything app.” He is launching “X Money,” an add-on to the social media app, which gives users a digital wallet “to store money and make peer-to-peer transfers.”A few weeks after the announcement of X Money’s partnership with Visa, DOGE requested access to classified Internal Revenue Service data, including millions of tax returns. The data includes Social Security numbers and addresses, details on how much individuals earn, how much money they owe, properties they own and child custody agreements. In the wrong hands, this information can be commercialized and weaponized.Musk is pursuing an “AI-first” agenda to increase the role of artificial intelligence (AI) across government agencies. He is building “a centralized data repository” for the federal government, according to Wired. Oracle founder, business associate of Elon Musk and longtime Trump donor Larry Ellison, who recently announced a $500 billion AI infrastructure plan alongside Trump, urged nations to move all of their data into “a single, unified data platform” so it can be “consumed and used” by AI models. Ellison has previously stated that an AI-based surveillance system will guarantee that “Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that's going on."Trump has, like all despots, long enemy lists. He has pulled security details from former officials from his previous administration, including retired Gen. Mark Milley, who was the highest-ranking officer in the military during Trump’s first term, and Mike Pompeo, who was Trump’s Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and Secretary of State. He has revoked or threatened to revoke, the security clearances of President Biden and former members of his administration including Antony Blinken, the former secretary of state, and Jake Sullivan, the former national security adviser. He is targeting media outlets he deems hostile, blocking their reporters from covering news events at the Oval Office and evicting them from their working spaces in the Pentagon.These enemy lists will expand as larger and larger segments of the population realize they have been betrayed, widespread discontent becomes palpable and the Trump White House feels threatened.Once the new system is in place, laws and regulations will become whatever the Trump White House says they are. Independent agencies such as the Federal Election Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Federal Reserve System will lose their autonomy. Mass deportations, the teaching of “Christian” and “patriotic” values in schools — Trump has vowed to “remove the radicals, zealots, and Marxists who have infiltrated the federal Department of Education” — along with the gutting of social programs, including Medicaid, low-income housing, job training, and assistance for children, will create a society of serfs and masters. Predatory corporations, such as the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries, will be licensed to exploit and pillage a disempowered public. Totalitarianism demands complete conformity. The result, to quote Rosa Luxemburg, is the “brutalization of public life.”The hollowed-out remnants of the old system — the media, the Democratic Party, academia, the shells of labor unions — will not save us. They mouth empty platitudes, cower in fear, seek useless incremental reforms and accommodation, and demonize Trump supporters regardless of their reasons for voting for him. They are fading into irrelevance. This ennui is a common denominator in the rise of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. It engenders apathy and defeatism.The “Trump’s Birthday and Flag Day Holiday Establishment Act,” introduced by Congresswoman Claudia Tenny, is a harbinger of what lies ahead. The act would designate June 14 as a federal holiday to commemorate “Donald J. Trump’s Birthday and Flag Day.” The next step is choreographed state parades with oversized portraits of the great leader.Joseph Roth was one of the few writers in Germany to understand the attraction and inevitable rise of fascism. In his essay “The Auto-da-Fé of the Mind,” which addressed the first mass burning of books by the Nazis, he counseled fellow Jewish writers to accept that they had been vanquished: “Let us, who were fighting on the front line, under the banner of the European mind, let us fulfill the noblest duty of the defeated warrior: Let us concede our defeat.”Roth, blacklisted by the Nazis, forced into exile and reduced to poverty, did not delude himself with false hopes.“What use are my words,” Roth asked, “against the guns, the loudspeakers, the murderers, the deranged ministers, the stupid interviewers and journalists who interpret the voice of this world of Babel, muddied anyhow, via the drums of Nuremberg?”He knew what was coming.“It will become clear to you now that we are heading for a great catastrophe,” Roth, after going into exile in France in 1933, wrote to Stefan Zweig about the seizure of power by the Nazis. “The barbarians have taken over. Do not deceive yourself. Hell reigns.”But Roth also argued even if defeat was certain, resistance was a moral imperative, a way to defend one’s dignity and the sanctity of the truth.“One must write, even when one realizes the printed word can no longer improve anything,” he insisted.I am as pessimistic as Roth. Censorship and state repression will expand. Those with a conscience will become an enemy of the state. Resistance, when it happens, will be expressed in spontaneous eruptions which coalesce outside the established centers of power. These acts of defiance will be met with brutal state repression. But if we do not resist, we succumb morally and physically to the darkness. We become complicit in a radical evil. This, we must never allow.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Photos in videoChris HedgesChris Hedges, a former Pulitzer Prize winning foreign correspondent for the New York Times and best selling author of 'Empire of Illusion', stands next to a window for a portrait, Princeton, NJ, November 2010. Hedges is also the author of 'Death of the Liberal Class' and is a columnist for Truthdig. (Photo by Oliver Morris/Getty Images)Hitler And Goebbels Being Saluted(Original Caption) 10/31/1933.Berlin, Germany- Chancellor Adolf Hitler & Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels (left) receiving the cheers and Nazi salutes of their followers in the Berlin sports Palast where they opened the campaign of Hitler's government to get the support of the citzens for their program for the nation.The ballots for this election do not contain names of candidates for this or that office.Lenin Statue Unveiled to CrowdOn the 9th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, a large statue of Lenin is unveiled to a tremendous crowd in Leningrad.Ayatollah Khomeini Returns to Iran During Iranian RevolutionAyatollah Ruhollah Khomeini greets the crowd at Tehran University after his return to Iran from exile in France during the Iranian Revolution. (Photo by Alain Dejean/Sygma via Getty Images)Supreme Court Justices Scalia and Ginsburg Discuss First Amendment At ForumWASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 17: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia waits for the beginning of the taping of "The Kalb Report" April 17, 2014 at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. The Kalb Report is a discussion of media ethics and responsibility at the National Press Club held each month. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)Senate Holds Confirmation Hearing For OMB Director Nominee Russell VoughtWASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 15: U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought arrives for a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill on January 15, 2025 in Washington, DC. If confirmed as director, Vought is poised to play a pivotal role in implementing a plan to reduce both the size of the federal government and federal spending. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)TOPSHOT-US-POLITICS-CPACTOPSHOT - Elon Musk (L) holds a chainsaw alongside Argentine President Javier Milei during the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center at National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland, on February 20, 2025. The chainsaw was a present to Elon Musk from Argentina's President Javier Milei. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)Exchanging Bitcoin via smart phones - stock photo (Getty Images)F1 Grand Prix of Miami - Final PracticeMIAMI, FLORIDA - MAY 06: Red Bull Racing Team Principal Christian Horner talks with Larry Ellison in the Red Bull Racing garage during final practice ahead of the F1 Grand Prix of Miami at Miami International Autodrome on May 06, 2023 in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Mark Thompson/Getty Images)President Trump Delivers Remarks, Announces Infrastructure Plan At White HouseWASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 21: Oracle co-founder, CTO and Executive Chairman Larry Ellison, accompanied by U.S. President Donald Trump in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on January 21, 2025 in Washington, DC. Trump announced an investment in artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and took questions on a range of topics including his presidential pardons of Jan. 6 defendants, the war in Ukraine, cryptocurrencies and other topics. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)Monitoring through AI holographic eye - stock photoAI holographic eye and data with network on a dark blue background.House Committee On Foreign Affairs Examines The Biden Administration's Afghanistan WithdrawalWASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 19: Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley awaits the start of a hearing with the House Foreign Affairs Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building on March 19, 2024 in Washington, DC. The committee held the hearing to question retired U.S. Generals on the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)The former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is seen speaking...AUVERS-SUR-OISE, FRANCE - 2025/01/09: The former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is seen speaking during the conference. He said that Iran has a battle-tested force, the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), which has been confronting the regime for decades in Iran & was the primary victim of 1988 massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in Iran. A conference titled Iran: Organized Resistance, Key to Overthrow was held at the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) headquarters in Auvers-sur-Oise (north of Paris) to review the future US policy towards Iran. The conference was held in the presence of Mike Pompeo, former US Secretary of State and NCRI President-elect Maryam Rajavi. (Photo by Siavosh Hosseini/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)President Biden Meets With Indonesian President Widodo At White HouseWASHINGTON, DC - NOVEMBER 13: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken (L) and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan (R) listen as U.S. President Joe Biden meets with Indonesian President Joko Widodo in the Oval Office of the White House November 13, 2023 in Washington, DC. Biden and Widodo were expected to discuss a range of bilateral issues during their meeting. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)Luxemburg, Rosa - Politician(KPD), Social theorist, D *05.03.1870-15.01.1919+ - Klara Zetkin (2nd from left) and Rosa Luxemburg (3rd from left) on the way to a SPD-party convention in Magdeburg - 18.-24.09.1910 Vintage property of ullstein bild(Eingeschränkte Rechte für bestimmte redaktionelle Kunden in Deutschland. Limited rights for specific editorial clients in Germany.) Luxemburg, Rosa - Politician(KPD), Social theorist, D *05.03.1870-15.01.1919+ - Klara Zetkin (2nd from left) and Rosa Luxemburg (3rd from left) on the way to a SPD-party convention in Magdeburg - 18.-24.09.1910 Vintage property of ullstein bild (Photo by ullstein bild/ullstein bild via Getty Images)Rep. Claudia Tenney...UNITED STATES - SEPTEMBER 6: Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y, participates in the press conference calling on President Trump to declassify the Carter Page FISA applications on Thursday, Sept. 6, 2018. (Photo By Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)Stefan Zweig and Josef Roth in OstendeAUSTRIA - JANUARY 01: Stefan Zweig and Josef Roth in Ostende, Belgium. Photography. 1936. (Photo by Imagno/Getty Images) [Stefan Zweig (li.) und Joseph Roth in Ostende, Belgien. Photographie, 1936]Stefan Zweigcirca 1940: Stefan Zweig (1881 - 1942), Austrian-born British writer, poet, pacifist and translator of Ben Johnson, working on a piece with his wife and secretary Lotte Altmann. (Photo by Three Lions/Getty Images) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible's list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actorKiss the Ring - by Mr. FishKiss the ring. Grovel before the Godfather. Give him tribute, a cut of the spoils. If he and his family get rich you get rich. Enter his inner circle, his “made” men and women, and you do not have to follow rules or obey the law. You can disembowel the machinery of government. You can turn us and the natural world into commodities to exploit until exhaustion or collapse. You can commit crimes with impunity. You can make a mockery of democratic norms and social responsibility. Perfidy is very profitable at first. In the long term it is collective suicide.America is a full blown kleptocracy. The demolition of the social and political structure, begun long before Trump, makes a few very, very rich and immiserates everyone else. Mafia capitalism always leads to a mafia state. The two ruling parties gave us the first. Now we get the second. It is not only our wealth that is being taken from us, but our liberty.Since the election of Donald Trump, Elon Musk, currently worth $394 billion, saw his wealth increase by $170 billion. Mark Zuckerberg, worth $254 billion, saw his net worth increase by nearly $41 billion.Tidy sums for kneeling before Moloch.At least 11 federal agencies that have been affected by the slash and burn campaign of the Trump administration have more than 32 continuing investigations, pending complaints or enforcement actions, into Musk’s six companies, according to a review by The New York Times.The mafia state ignores legal constraints and regulations. It lacks external and internal control. It cannibalizes everything, including the ecosystem, until there is nothing left but a wasteland. It cannot distinguish between reality and illusion, which obscures and exacerbates gross incompetence. And then the hollowed-out edifice will collapse leaving in its wake a shell of a country with nukes. The Roman and Sumerian empires fell this way. So did the Mayans and the sclerotic reign of the French monarch Louis XVI.In the final stages of decay for all empires, the rulers, focused exclusively on personal enrichment, ensconced in their versions of Versailles or The Forbidden City, squeeze the last drops of profit from an increasingly oppressed and impoverished population and ravaged environment.Unprecedented wealth is inseparable from unprecedented poverty.The more extreme life becomes, the more extreme ideologies become. Huge segments of the population, unable to absorb the despair and bleakness, severs itself from a reality-based universe. It takes comfort in magical thinking, a bizarre millennialism — one embodied for us in a Christianized fascism — which turns con artists, morons, criminals, charlatans, gangsters and grifters into prophets while branding those who decry the pillage and corruption into traitors. The rush towards self-immolation accelerates intellectual and moral paralysis.The mafia state makes no pretense of defending the common good. Trump, Musk and their minions are swiftly repealing executive orders regarding health, environmental and safety regulations, food assistance, as well as child care programs such as Head Start. They are fighting a court order to halt their dismantling of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has ensured that Americans have been reimbursed with more than $21 billion due to cancelled debts, financial compensation and other forms of consumer relief. They are abolishing the U.S. Agency for International Development. They are closing federal defenders’ offices, which provide legal representation to the poor. They have cut billions of dollars from the budget of the National Institutes of Health jeopardizing biomedical research and clinical trials. They have frozen permits for solar and wind projects, including sign-offs needed for projects on private land. They fired more than 300 staffers at the National Nuclear Security Administration, the agency that manages our nuclear stockpile. They are gutting the workforce of the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service and the United States Geological Survey.The mafia state, its blueprint contained in Project 2025, ignores the dire lessons from history of extreme social inequality, political disintegration, wanton ecological plunder and the evisceration of the rule of law.We are, of course, not naturally destined for freedom. It was two millennia before democracy reappeared in Europe after its collapse — largely because Athens became an empire — in ancient Greece. The mafia state, not democracies, may be the wave of the future, one where the wealthiest one percent of the globe owns some 43 percent of all global financial assets – more than 95 percent of the human race — while 44 percent of the planet’s population lives below the World Bank’s poverty line of less than $6.85 per day. These calcified regimes endure solely because of draconian systems of internal control, wholesale surveillance and the evisceration of civil liberties.We have at the same time wiped out 90 percent of the large fish such as cod, sharks, halibut, grouper, tuna, swordfish, and marlin and degraded or destroyed two thirds of the mature tropical forests, the lungs of the planet. Lack of access to safe drinking water, and the resultant spread of infectious diseases, kills at least 1.4 million people annually — 3,836 per day — and also contributes to 50 percent of global malnutrition, according to the World Bank. Between 150 and 200 million children are impaired by malnourishment. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is well above the 350 parts per million that most climate scientists warn is the maximum level for sustaining life as we know it. By May of this year, atmospheric CO2 levels are forecast to reach 429.6 ppm, the highest concentration in over two million years. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that the measurement could reach 541 to 970 ppm by the year 2100. At that point huge parts of the planet, beset with high population density, droughts, soil erosion, freak storms, massive crop failures and rising sea levels, will be unfit for human existence.Clans, in the later period of the Easter Island civilization, competed to honor their ancestors by constructing larger and larger hewn stoner images, which demanded the last remnants of the timber, rope and manpower on the island. By the year 1400 the woods were gone. The soil had eroded and washed into the sea. The islanders began to fight over old timbers and were reduced to eating their dogs and soon all the nesting birds.The desperate islanders developed a magical belief system that the erected stone gods, the moai, would come to life and save them from disaster.The belief by Christian nationalists in the rapture, which does not exist in the Bible, is no less fantastic. These Christian fascists — embodied in Trump appointees such as Russell Vought, head of Trump’s Office of Budget and Management, Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Mike Huckabee, nominated to be the ambassador to Israel — intend to use schools and universities, the media, the judiciary and the federal government as platforms to carry out indoctrination and enforce conformity.The followers of this movement defer to a leader they believe has been anointed by God. They embrace the illusion that the righteous will be saved, floating naked upwards into heaven, at the end of time and the secularists they despise will perish. This retreat into magical thinking, which is the foundation of all totalitarian movements, explains their suffering. It helps them cope with despair and anxiety. It gives them the illusion of security. It also ensures retribution against a long list of enemies — liberals, intellectuals, gays, immigrants, the deep state — blamed for their economic and social misery.Our millennialism is an updated version of the faith in the moai, the doomed Taki Onqoy revolt against the Spanish invaders in Peru, the Aztec prophecies of the 1530s and the Ghost Dance, which Native Americans believed would see the return of the buffalo herds and slain warriors rise alive from the earth to vanquish the white colonizers.This retreat into fantasy is what happens when reality becomes too bleak to be absorbed. It is the appeal of Trump. Of course, this time it will be different. When we go down the whole planet will go with us. There will be no new lands to pillage, no new peoples to exploit. We will be exterminated in a global death trap.Karl Polanyi in “The Great Transformation” writes that once a society surrenders to the dictates of the market, once its mafia economy becomes a mafia state, once it succumbs to what he calls “the ravages of this satanic mill,” it inevitably leads to “the demolition of society.”The mafia state cannot be reformed. We must organize to break our chains, one-by-one, to use the power of the strike to cripple the state machinery. We must embrace a militant radicalism, one that offers a new vision and a new social structure. We must hold fast to moral imperatives. We must forgive mortgage and student debt, institute universal health care and break up monopolies. We must raise the minimum wage and end the squandering of resources and funds to sustain the empire and the war industry. We must establish a nationwide jobs program to rebuild the country’s collapsing infrastructure. We must nationalize the banks, pharmaceutical corporations, military contractors and transportation and embrace environmentally sustainable energy sources.None of this will happen until we resist.The mafia state will be brutal with any who revolt. Capitalists, as Eduardo Galeano writes, view communal cultures as “enemy cultures.” The billionaire class will do to us what it did to the radicals who rose up to form militant unions in the past. We had the bloodiest labor wars in the industrialized world. Hundreds of American workers were killed, tens of thousands were beaten, wounded, jailed and blacklisted. Unions were infiltrated, shut down and outlawed. We can’t be naïve. It will be difficult, costly and painful. But this confrontation is our only hope. Otherwise, we, and the planet that sustains us, are doomed.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible's list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actorText Originally published Feb. 07, 2025And Then the World Blew Up - by Mr. FishThe 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. Agencies and departments, created and funded by acts of Congress, are going up in smoke.They are removing government reports and data on climate change and withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement,. They are pulling out of the World Health Organization. They are sanctioning officials who work at the International Criminal Court — which issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant over war crimes in Gaza. They suggested Canada become the 51st state. They have formed a task force to “eradicate anti-Christian bias.” They call for the annexation of Greenland and the seizure of the Panama Canal. They propose the construction of luxury resorts on the coast of a depopulated Gaza under U.S. control which, if it takes place, would bring down the Arab regimes propped up by the U.S.The rulers of all late empires, including the Roman emperors Caligula and Nero or Charles I, the last Habsburg monarch, are as incoherent as the Mad Hatter, uttering nonsensical remarks, posing unanswerable riddles and reciting word salads of inanities. They, like Donald Trump, are a reflection of the moral, intellectual and physical rot that plague a diseased society.I spent two years researching and writing about the warped ideologues of those who have now seized power in my book “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.” Read it while you still can. Seriously.These Christian fascists, who define the core ideology of the Trump administration, are unapologetic about their hatred for pluralistic, secular democracies. They seek, as they exhaustively detail in numerous “Christian” books and documents such as the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, to deform the judiciary and legislative branches of government, along with the media and academia, into appendages to a “Christianized” state led by a divinely anointed leader. They openly admire Nazi apologists such as Rousas John Rushdoony, a supporter of eugenics who argues that education and social welfare should be handed over to the churches and Biblical law must replace the secular legal code, and Nazi party theorists such as Carl Schmitt. They are avowed racists, misogynists and homophobes. They embrace bizarre conspiracy theories from the white replacement theory to a shadowy monster they call “the woke.” Suffice it to say, they are not grounded in a reality based universe.Christian fascists come out of a theocratic sect called Dominionism. This sect teaches that American Christians have been mandated to make America a Christian state and an agent of God. Political and intellectual opponents of this militant Biblicalism are condemned as agents of Satan.“Under Christian dominion, America will no longer be a sinful and fallen nation but one in which the 10 Commandments form the basis of our legal system, creationism and ‘Christian values’ form the basis of our educational system, and the media and the government proclaim the Good News to one and all,” I noted in my book. “Labor unions, civil-rights laws and public schools will be abolished. Women will be removed from the workforce to stay at home, and all those deemed insufficiently Christian will be denied citizenship. Aside from its proselytizing mandate, the federal government will be reduced to the protection of property rights and ‘homeland’ security.”The Christian fascists and their billionaire funders, I noted, “speak in terms and phrases that are familiar and comforting to most Americans, but they no longer use words to mean what they meant in the past.” They commit logocide, killing old definitions and replacing them with new ones. Words — including truth, wisdom, death, liberty, life and love — are deconstructed and assigned diametrically opposed meanings. Life and death, for example, mean life in Christ or death to Christ, a signal of belief of unbelief. Wisdom refers to the level of commitment and obedience to the doctrine. Liberty is not about freedom, but the liberty that comes from following Jesus Christ and being liberated from the dictates of secularism. Love is twisted to mean an unquestioned obedience to those, such as Trump, who claim to speak and act for God.As the death spiral accelerates, phantom enemies, domestic and foreign, will be blamed for the demise, persecuted and slated for obliteration. Once the wreckage is complete, ensuring the immiseration of the citizenry, a breakdown in public services and engendering an inchoate rage, only the blunt instrument of state violence will remain. A lot of people will suffer, especially as the climate crisis inflicts with greater and greater intensity its lethal retribution.The near-collapse of our constitutional system of checks and balances took place long before the arrival of Trump. Trump’s return to power represents the death rattle of the Pax Americana. The day is not far off when, like the Roman Senate in 27 BC, Congress will take its last significant vote and surrender power to a dictator. The Democratic Party, whose strategy seems to be to do nothing and hope Trump implodes, have already acquiesced to the inevitable.The question is not whether we go down, but how many millions of innocents we will take with us. Given the industrial violence our empire wields, it could be a lot, especially if those in charge decide to reach for the nukes.The dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) — Elon Musk claims is run by “a viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America” — is an example of how these arsonists are clueless about how empires function.Foreign aid is not benevolent. It is weaponized to maintain primacy over the United Nations and remove governments the empire deems hostile. Those nations in the U.N. and other multilateral organizations who vote the way the empire demands, who surrender their sovereignty to global corporations and the U.S. military, receive assistance. Those who don’t do not.When the U.S. offered to build the airport in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince, investigative journalist Matt Kennard reports, it required that Haiti oppose Cuba’s admittance into the Organization of American States, which it did.Foreign aid builds infrastructure projects so corporations can operate global sweatshops and extract resources. It funds “democracy promotion” and “judicial reform” that thwart the aspirations of political leaders and governments that seek to remain independent from the grip of the empire.USAID, for example, paid for a “political party reform project” that was designed “as a counterweight” to the “radical” Movement Toward Socialism (Movimiento al Socialismo) and sought to prevent socialists like Evo Morales from being elected in Bolivia. It then funded organizations and initiatives, including training programs so Bolivian youth could be taught American business practices, once Morales assumed the presidency, to weaken his hold on power.Kennard in his book, “The Racket: A Rogue Reporter vs The American Empire,” documents how U.S. institutions such as the National Endowment for Democracy, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Inter-American Development Bank, USAID and the Drug Enforcement Administration, work in tandem with the Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency to subjugate and oppress the Global South.Client states that receive aid must break unions, impose austerity measures, keep wages low and maintain puppet governments. The heavily funded aid programs, designed to bring down Morales, eventually led the Bolivian president to throw USAID out of the country.The lie peddled to the public is that this aid benefits both the needy overseas and us at home. But the inequality these programs facilitate abroad replicates the inequality imposed domestically. The wealth extracted from the Global South is not equitably distributed. It ends up in the hands of the billionaire class, often stashed in overseas bank accounts to avoid taxation.Our tax dollars, meanwhile, disproportionately funds the military, which is the iron fist that sustains the system of exploitation. The 30 million Americans who were victims of mass layoffs and deindustrialization lost their jobs to workers in sweatshops overseas. As Kennard notes, both home and abroad, it is a vast “transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich globally and domestically.”“The same people that devise the myths about what we do abroad have also built up a similar ideological system that legitimizes theft at home; theft from the poorest, by the richest,” he writes. “The poor and working people of Harlem have more in common with the poor and working people of Haiti than they do with their elites, but this has to be obscured for the racket to work.”Foreign aid maintains sweatshops or “special economic zones” in countries such as Haiti, where workers toil for pennies an hour and often in unsafe conditions for global corporations.“One of the facets of special economic zones, and one of the incentives for corporations in the U.S., is that special economic zones have even less regulations than the national state on how you can treat labor and taxes and customs,” Kennard told me in an interview. “You open these sweatshops in the special economic zones. You pay the workers a pittance. You get all the resources out without having to pay customs or tax. The state in Mexico or Haiti or wherever it is, where they're offshoring this production, doesn't benefit at all. That’s by design. The coffers of the state are always the ones that never get increased. It’s the corporations that benefit.”These same U.S. institutions and mechanisms of control, Kennard writes in his book, were employed to sabotage the electoral campaign of Jeremy Corbyn, a fierce critic of the U.S. empire, for prime minister in Britain.The U.S. disbursed nearly $72 billion in foreign aid in fiscal year 2023. It funded clean water initiatives, HIV/Aids treatments, energy security and anti-corruption work. In 2024, it provided 42 percent of all humanitarian aid tracked by the United Nations.Humanitarian aid, often described as “soft power,” is designed to mask the theft of resources in the Global South by U.S. corporations, the expansion of the footprint of the U.S. military, the rigid control of foreign governments, the devastation caused by fossil fuel extraction, the systemic abuse of workers in global sweatshops and the poisoning of child laborers in places like the Congo, where they are used to mine lithium.I doubt Musk and his army of young minions in the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — which isn’t an official department within the federal government — have any idea about how the organizations they are destroying work, why they exist or what it will mean for the demise of American power.The seizure of government personnel records and classified material, the effort to terminate hundreds of millions of dollars worth of government contracts — mostly those which relate to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), the offers of buyouts to “drain the swamp” including a buyout offer to the entire workforce of the Central Intelligence Agency — now temporarily blocked by a judge — the firing of 17 or 18 inspectors general and federal prosecutors, the halting of government funding and grants, sees them cannibalize the leviathan they worship.They plan to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Education and the U.S. Postal Service, part of the internal machinery of the empire. The more dysfunctional the state becomes, the more it creates a business opportunity for predatory corporations and private equity firms. These billionaires will make a fortune “harvesting” the remains of the empire. But they are ultimately slaying the beast that created American wealth and power.Once the dollar is no longer the world’s reserve currency, something the dismantling of the empire guarantees, the U.S. will be unable to pay for its huge deficits by selling Treasury bonds. The American economy will fall into a devastating depression. This will trigger a breakdown of civil society, soaring prices, especially for imported products, stagnant wages and high unemployment rates. The funding of at least 750 overseas military bases and our bloated military will become impossible to sustain. The empire will instantly contract. It will become a shadow of itself. Hypernationalism, fueled by an inchoate rage and widespread despair, will morph into a hate-filled American fascism.“The demise of the United States as the preeminent global power could come far more quickly than anyone imagines,” the historian Alfred W. McCoy writes in his book “In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power”:Despite the aura of omnipotence empires often project, most are surprisingly fragile, lacking the inherent strength of even a modest nation-state. Indeed, a glance at their history should remind us that the greatest of them are susceptible to collapse from diverse causes, with fiscal pressures usually a prime factor. For the better part of two centuries, the security and prosperity of the homeland has been the main objective for most stable states, making foreign or imperial adventures an expendable option, usually allocated no more than 5 percent of the domestic budget. Without the financing that arises almost organically inside a sovereign nation, empires are famously predatory in their relentless hunt for plunder or profit — witness the Atlantic slave trade, Belgium’s rubber lust in the Congo, British India’s opium commerce, the Third Reich’s rape of Europe, or the Soviet exploitation of Eastern Europe.When revenues shrink or collapse, McCoy points out, “empires become brittle.”“So delicate is their ecology of power that, when things start to go truly wrong, empires regularly unravel with unholy speed: just a year for Portugal, two years for the Soviet Union, eight years for France, eleven years for the Ottomans, seventeen for Great Britain, and, in all likelihood, just twenty-seven years for the United States, counting from the crucial year 2003 [when the U.S. invaded Iraq],” he writes.The array of tools used for global dominance — wholesale surveillance, the evisceration of civil liberties including due process, torture, militarized police, the massive prison system, militarized drones and satellites — will be employed against a restive and enraged population.The devouring of the carcass of the empire to feed the outsized greed and egos of these scavengers presages a new dark age.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible's list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actorText originally published Feb. 01, 2025Explore Gaza - by Mr. FishGaza is a wasteland of 50 million tons of rubble and debris. Rats and dogs scavenge amid the ruins and fetid pools of raw sewage. The putrid stench and contamination of decaying corpses rises from beneath the mountains of shattered concrete. There is no clean water. Little food. A severe shortage of medical services and hardly any habitable shelters. Palestinians risk death from unexploded ordnance, left behind after over 15 months of air strikes, artillery barrages, missile strikes and blasts from tank shells, and a variety of toxic substances, including pools of raw sewage and asbestos.Hepatitis A, caused by drinking contaminated water, is rampant, as are respiratory ailments, scabies, malnutrition, starvation and the widespread nausea and vomiting caused by eating rancid food. The vulnerable, including infants and the elderly, along with the sick, face a death sentence. Some 1.9 million people have been displaced, amounting to 90 percent of the population. They live in makeshift tents, encamped amid slabs of concrete or the open air. Many have been forced to move over a dozen times. Nine in 10 homes have been destroyed or damaged. Apartment blocks, schools, hospitals, bakeries, mosques, universities — Israel blew up Israa University in Gaza City in a controlled demolition — cemeteries, shops and offices have been obliterated. The unemployment rate is 80 percent and the gross domestic product has been reduced by almost 85 percent, according to an October 2024 report issued by the International Labor Organization.Israel’s banning of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East — which estimates that clearing Gaza of the rubble left behind will take 15 years — ensures that Palestinians in Gaza will never have access to basic humanitarian supplies, adequate food and services.The United Nations Development Programme estimates that it will cost between $40 billion and $50 billion to rebuild Gaza and will take, if the funds are made available, until 2040. It would be the largest post-war reconstruction effort since the end of World War Two.Israel, supplied with billions of dollars of weapons from the U.S. Germany, Italy and the U.K., created this hell. It intends to maintain it. Gaza is to remain under siege. After an initial burst of aid deliveries at the start of the ceasefire, Israel has once again severely cut back the trucked-in assistance. Gaza’s infrastructure will not be restored. Its basic services, including water treatment plants, electricity and sewer lines, will not be repaired. Its destroyed roads, bridges and farms will not be rebuilt. Desperate Palestinians will be forced to choose between living like cave dwellers, camped out amid jagged chunks of concrete, dying from disease, famine, bombs and bullets, or permanent exile. These are the only options Israel offers.Israel is convinced, probably correctly, that eventually life in the coastal strip will become so onerous and difficult, especially as Israel finds excuses to violate the ceasefire and resume armed assaults on the Palestinian population, a mass exodus will be inevitable. It has refused, even with the ceasefire in place, to permit foreign press into Gaza, a ban designed to blunt coverage of the horrendous suffering and death.Stage Two of Israel’s genocide and the expansion of “Greater Israel” — which includes the seizing of more Syrian territory in the Golan Heights (as well as calls for expansion to Damascus), southern Lebanon, Gaza and the occupied West Bank — is being cemented into place. Israeli organizations, including the far right Nachala organization, have held conferences to prepare for Jewish colonization of Gaza once Palestinians are ethnically-cleansed. Jewish-only colonies existed in Gaza for 38 years until they were dismantled in 2005.Washington and its allies in Europe do nothing to halt the live-streamed mass slaughter. They will do nothing to halt the wasting away of Palestinians in Gaza from hunger and disease and their eventual depopulation. They are partners in this genocide. They will remain partners until the genocide reaches its grim conclusion.But the genocide in Gaza is only the start. The world is breaking down under the onslaught of the climate crisis, which is triggering mass migrations, failed states and catastrophic wildfires, hurricanes, storms, flooding and droughts. As global stability unravels, the terrifying machine of industrial violence, which is decimating the Palestinians, will become ubiquitous. These assaults will be committed, as they are in Gaza, in the name of progress, Western civilization and our supposed “virtues” to crush the aspirations of those, mostly poor people of color, who have been dehumanized and dismissed as human animals.Israel’s annihilation of Gaza marks the death of a global order guided by internationally agreed upon laws and rules, one often violated by the U.S. in its imperial wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, but one that was at least acknowledged as a utopian vision. The U.S. and its Western allies not only supply the weaponry to sustain the genocide, but obstruct the demand by most nations for an adherence to humanitarian law.The message this sends is clear: You, and the rules that you thought might protect you, do not matter. We have everything. If you try and take it away from us we will kill you.The militarized drones, helicopter gunships, walls and barriers, checkpoints, coils of concertina wire, watch towers, detention centers, deportations, brutality and torture, denial of entry visas, apartheid existence that comes with being undocumented, loss of individual rights and electronic surveillance are as familiar to the desperate migrants along the Mexican border or attempting to enter Europe as they are to the Palestinians.Israel, which as Ronen Bergman notes in “Rise and Kill First” has “assassinated more people than any other country in the Western world,” uses the Nazi Holocaust to sanctify its hereditary victimhood and justify its settler-colonial state, apartheid, campaigns of mass murder and Zionist version of Lebensraum.Primo Levi, who survived Auschwitz, saw the Shoah, for this reason, as “an inexhaustible source of evil” which “is perpetrated as hatred in the survivors, and springs up in a thousand ways, against the very will of all, as a thirst for revenge, as moral breakdown, as negation, as weariness, as resignation.”Genocide and mass extermination are not the exclusive domain of fascist Germany. Adolf Hitler, as Aimé Césaire writes in “Discourse on Colonialism”, appeared exceptionally cruel only because he presided over “the humiliation of the white man.” But the Nazis, he writes, had simply applied “colonialist procedures which until then had been reserved exclusively for the Arabs of Algeria, the coolies of India, and the blacks of Africa.”The German slaughter of the Herero and Namaqua, the Armenian genocide, the Bengal famine of 1943 — then British Prime Minister Winston Churchill airily dismissed the deaths of three million Hindus in the famine by calling them “a beastly people with a beastly religion” — along with the dropping of nuclear bombs on the civilian targets of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, illustrate something fundamental about “western civilization.” As Hannah Arendt understood, antisemitism alone did not lead to the Shoah. It needed the innate genocidal potential of the modern bureaucratic state.“In America,” the poet Langston Huges said, “Negros do not have to be told what fascism is in action. We know. Its theories of Nordic supremacy and economic suppression have long been realities to us.”We dominate the globe not because of our superior virtues, but because we are the most efficient killers on the planet. The millions of victims of racist imperial projects in countries such as Mexico, China, India, the Congo, Kenya and Vietnam are deaf to the fatuous claims by Jews that their victimhood is unique. So are Black, Brown and Native Americans. They also suffered holocausts, but these holocausts remain minimised or unacknowledged by their western perpetrators.“These events which took place in living memory undermined the basic assumption of both religious traditions and the secular Enlightenment: that human beings have a fundamentally ‘moral’ nature,” Pankaj Mishra writes in his book “The World After Gaza.” “The corrosive suspicion that they don’t is now widespread. Many more people have closely witnessed death and mutilation, under regimes of callousness, timidity and censorship; they recognise with a shock that everything is possible, remembering past atrocities is no guarantee against repeating them in the present, and the foundations of international law and morality are not secure at all.”Mass slaughter is as integral to western imperialism as the Shoah. They are fed by the same disease of white supremacy and the conviction that a better world is built upon the subjugation and eradication of the “lower” races.Israel embodies the ethnonationalist state the far-right in the U.S. and Europe dreams of creating for themselves, one that rejects political and cultural pluralism, as well as legal, diplomatic and ethical norms. Israel is admired by these proto-fascists, including Christian nationalists, because it has turned its back on humanitarian law to use indiscriminate lethal force to “cleanse” its society of those condemned as human contaminants.Israel and its western allies, James Baldwin saw, is headed towards the “terrible probability” that the dominant nations “struggling to hold on to what they have stolen from their captives, and unable to look into their mirror, will precipitate a chaos throughout the world which, if it does not bring life on this planet to an end, will bring about a racial war such as the world has never seen.”What is lacking is not knowledge — our perfidy and Israel’s is part of the historical record — but the courage to name our darkness and repent. This willful blindness and historical amnesia, this refusal to be accountable to the rule of law, this belief that we have a right to use industrial violence to exert our will marks the start, not the end, of campaigns of mass slaughter by the Global North against the world’s growing legions of the poor and the vulnerable.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible's list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actorText originally published Jan. 12, 2025A Final Toast - by Mr. FishThe apocalyptic wildfires that have erupted in the boreal forest in Siberia, the Russian Far East and Canada, climate scientists repeatedly warned, would inevitably move southwards as rising global temperatures created hotter, more fire-prone landscapes. Now they have. The failures in California, where Los Angeles has had no significant rainfall in eight months, are not only failures of preparedness — the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, decreased funds for the fire department by $17 million — but a failure globally to halt the extraction of fossil fuel. The only surprise is that we are surprised. Welcome to the age of the “Pyrocene” where cities burn and water does not come out of the hydrants.The boreal forest is the largest forest system on earth. It circumnavigates the Northern Hemisphere. It stretches across Canada and Alaska. It travels through Russia where it is known as “the taiga.” It reaches into Scandinavia, picks up again in Iceland and Newfoundland, and moves westward across Canada, completing the circle. The boreal forest has more sources of freshwater than any other biome, including the Amazon Rainforest. It is the lungs of the earth, able to store 208 billion tons of carbon, or 11 percent of the world’s total. Yet it has been steadily degraded, assaulted by deforestation and the extraction of the tar sands in Alberta, Canada — which produces 58 percent of Canada’s oil and is the U.S.’s largest source of imported oil — man-made drought and rising temperatures from carbon emissions.Almost two million acres of boreal forest have been destroyed by extraction industries and timber companies. They have scraped away the topsoil and left behind poisoned wastelands. The production and consumption of one barrel of tar sands crude oil releases between 17 and 21 percent more carbon dioxide than the production and consumption of a standard barrel of oil. The oil is transported thousands of miles to refineries as far away as Houston, through pipelines and in tractor-trailer trucks or railroad cars.This vast assault, perhaps the largest such project in the world, has accelerated the release of carbon emissions that, unchecked, will render the planet uninhabitable for humans and most other species. There is a direct line from the destruction of the boreal forest and the raging wildfires in California.The boreal forest system has, for over a decade, seen some of the planet’s worst wildfires, including the 2016 Wood Buffalo (aka Fort McMurray) wildfire, which consumed nearly 1.5 million acres and which was not fully extinguished for 15 months. The monster wildfire, which was, according to journalist John Vaillant, about 950 degrees Fahrenheit — hotter than Venus — destroyed thousands of homes and forced the evacuation of 88,000 people. The fire ripped into Fort McMurray with such ferocity and speed that residents barely escaped in their cars as buildings and houses were instantly vaporized. Flames shot 300 feet into the air. Fireballs rolled up into the smoke column for another 1,000 feet. It was a harbinger of the new normal.More than 100 climate scientists have called for a moratorium on the extraction of tar sands oil. Former NASA scientist James Hansen warned over a decade ago that if the tar sands oil is fully exploited, it will be “game over” for the planet. He has also called for the CEOs of fossil fuel companies to be tried for “high crimes against humanity and nature.”It is hard to get a sense of the scale of the destruction unless you visit, as I did in 2019, the Alberta tar sands. I spent time with the 500 inhabitants of Beaver Lake, the Cree reserve, most of whom are impoverished and live in small, boxy prefabricated houses. They are victims of the latest iteration of colonial exploitation, one centered on the extraction of oil that is poisoning the water, soil and air around them.Beaver Lake, as I wrote at the time, is surrounded by over 35,000 oil and natural gas wells and thousands of miles of pipelines, access roads and seismic lines. The area also contains the Cold Lake Air Weapons Range, which has appropriated huge tracts of traditional territory from the native inhabitants to test weapons. Giant processing plants, along with gargantuan extraction machines, including bucket wheelers that are over half a mile long and draglines that are several stories high, ravage hundreds of thousands of acres.“These stygian centers of death belch sulfurous fumes, nonstop, and send fiery flares into the murky sky,” I wrote. “The air has a metallic taste. Outside the processing centers, there are vast toxic lakes known as tailings ponds, filled with billions of gallons of water and chemicals related to the oil extraction, including mercury and other heavy metals, carcinogenic hydrocarbons, arsenic and strychnine. The sludge from the tailings ponds is leaching into the Athabasca River, which flows into the Mackenzie, the largest river system in Canada.”Nothing in this moonscape, by the end, will support life. “The migrating birds that alight at the tailings ponds die in huge numbers,” I noted. “So many birds have been killed that the Canadian government has ordered extraction companies to use noise cannons at some of the sites to scare away arriving flocks. Around these hellish lakes, there is a steady boom-boom-boom from the explosive devices.”The water in much of northern Alberta is no longer safe for human consumption. Drinking water has to be trucked in for the Beaver Lake reserve. Cancer and respiratory diseases are rampant.John Vaillant, author of “Fire Weather: On the Front Lines of a Burning World” describes the tars sands landscape:…mile upon mile of black and ransacked earth pocked with stadium-swallowing pits and dead, discolored lakes guarded by scarecrows in cast-off rain gear and overseen by flaming stacks and fuming refineries, the whole laced together by circuit board mazes of dirt roads and piping, patrolled by building-sized machines that, enormous as they are, appear dwarfed by the wastelands they have made. The tailings ponds alone cover well over a hundred square miles and contain more than a quarter of a trillion gallons of contaminated water and effluent from the bitumen upgrading process. There is no place for this toxic sludge to go except into the soil, or the air, or, if one of the massive earthen dams should fail, into the Athabasca River. For decades, cancer rates have been abnormally high in the downstream community.The out-of-control fire storms and blizzard of swirling embers, he chronicles, are what we are witnessing in California, a state which normally experiences wildfires during June, July, and August. Neighborhoods burn “to their foundations beneath a towering pyrocumulus cloud typically found over erupting volcanoes” and fires generate “hurricane-force winds and lightning that ignites fires miles away.”These cyclone-like fires resemble the firebombing of Hamburg or Dresden during World War Two, rather than forest fires of the past. They are almost impossible to control.You can see an interview I did with Vaillant here.“Fire wants to climb,” Vaillan told me. “[W]e all know heat rises. It’s rising up into the treetops and it’s sucking in wind from underneath because it needs oxygen all the time. So the fire, it’s helpful to think of it as a breathing entity. It’s pulling oxygen in from all around and rising into the architecture of the trees and so there’s this rushing chimney-like effect. Where the fire is in a way happiest, most energetic, most charismatic, and dynamic is up in the treetops, and then it’s pulling in wind from down below. As that heat builds, as the whole tree is engaged, you have this increasing heat and increasing wind which then builds on itself so it becomes almost a self-perpetuation machine. If you have hot enough, dry enough, [and] windy enough conditions, those flames will then begin to leap from treetop to treetop.”The heat releases vapor, hydrocarbons from the fuels around it, which is why we see “explosive fireballs and massive surges of flame coming out of big boreal fires because that’s the superheated vapor rising up and then ignited. Imagine an empty gas can — even though there might not be a lot of liquid in it, it will still explode in a spectacular fashion. Well, that’s really what the fire is enabling in the forest, for all those hydrocarbons to release in this gaseous cloud that then ignites. That’s when you see, especially a boreal fire, in full run. It’s called a Rank 6. It’s comparable to a Category 5 hurricane.”When houses and buildings become very hot they, like trees, release hydrocarbons. Vaillant calls modern buildings “incendiary devices.” They are packed with petrochemicals and often sheathed with petroleum products like vinyl siding and tar shingles. When fires push temperatures to over 1,400 degrees the vinyl siding, tar shingles, glues and laminates in the plywood vaporize.“The modern home is in fact more flammable than a log cabin or a 19th-century home that’s made mostly out of wood, mostly furnished with cotton-stuffed furniture or horse hair stuffed furniture, things that we think of as antiques now,” Vaillant said. “But the modern home is really in a way a giant gas can and we don’t think of that when it’s 75 degrees. But when it’s 300 degrees because of the radiant heat coming off a fire, or 1,000 degrees because of the radiant heat coming off a boreal wildfire, it turns into something completely different.”“All of us alive today have grown up in the petroleum age,” Vaillant said. “It feels normal to us the way I think people smoking on airplanes and in doctors’ waiting rooms felt normal to people in the 1950s. We’re completely habituated to it, to the point that it’s invisible to us. But if you really stop and think about how petroleum is rendered and what it in fact is, it’s literally toxic at every stage of its life. From the moment it’s drawn from the ground through the incredibly polluting refining process, into our cars and where it’s burned…Petroleum will kill you in every form, whether as a liquid, as a toxic spill, as a gas, as an emission. It’s strange to think that we have surrounded ourselves and persuaded ourselves that this profoundly toxic substance is an ally to us and an enabler of this wonderful lifestyle that we live that is now being compromised in measurable and visible ways by that very energy source.”We have harnessed the concentrated energy of 300 million years and set it alight. We are addicted to fossil fuels. But it is a suicide pact. We ignore the freakish weather patterns and disintegration of the planet, retreating into our electronic hallucinations, pretending the inevitable is not inevitable. This vast cognitive dissonance, fed to us by mass culture, makes us the most self-deluded population in human history. The cost of this self-delusion will be mass death. The devastation in California is the harbinger of the apocalypse.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Photos used in video:TOPSHOT-US-FIRE-CALIFORNIATOPSHOT - A beach house is engulfed in flames as the Palisades Fire burns along Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, California, on January 8, 2025. (Photo by AGUSTIN PAULLIER / AFP) (Photo by AGUSTIN PAULLIER/AFP via Getty Images)Powerful Winds Fuel Multiple Fires Across Los Angeles AreaLOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - JANUARY 8: California Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass tour the downtown business district of Pacific Palisades as the Palisades Fire continues to burn on January 8, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Eric Thayer/Getty Images)Boreal forest...BRITISH COLOMBIA, CANADA - 2009/06/25: Boreal forest. (Photo by John Greim/LightRocket via Getty Images)TOPSHOT-ENVIRONMENT-CLIMATE-FORESTS-GOVERNMENT-ANIMALTOPSHOT - A reindeer walks in the boreal forest, above The Arctic Circle, in Finnish Lapland, near Kaakkurilampi on October 7, 2022, where during the last 20 years Scandinavian Arctic forests have been the target of an increasing amount of wood bugs, due to longer summers. (Photo by Olivier MORIN / AFP) (Photo by OLIVIER MORIN/AFP via Getty Images)Canada, Alberta, Northwest territories of Wood Buffalo National Park (UNESCO World Heritage List, 1983). Fire in coniferous forestUNSPECIFIED - DECEMBER 16: Canada, Alberta, Northwest territories of Wood Buffalo National Park (UNESCO World Heritage List, 1983). Fire in coniferous forest (Photo by DEA / G. CARFAGNA/De Agostini via Getty Images)John Vaillant Portrait SessionSAINT MALO, FRANCE - MAY 27. John Vaillant, American writer poses during portrait session held on May 27, 2012 in Saint Malo, France. (Photo by Ulf Andersen/Getty Images)CANADA-FIRE-FORESTS-OIL-EVACUATIONFlames engulf trees along a highway near Fort McMurray, Alberta, on May 6, 2016. - Canadian police led convoys of cars through the burning ghost town of Fort McMurray Friday in a risky operation to get people to safety far to the south. (Photo by Cole Burston / AFP) (Photo by COLE BURSTON/AFP via Getty Images)Northern Lights Glow Over Alaskan PipelineMILNE POINT, AK - NOVEMBER 19: A full moon helps illuminate the Alaskan pipeline under the faint glow of the Aurora Borealis November 19, 2002 near Milne Point, Alaska. Smaller oil pipes deliver oil direct from the well pump houses to the main oil production facility at Milne Point/Prudhoe Bay. (Photo by Greg A. Syverson/Getty Images)CANADA-ENVIRONMENT-CLIMATE-COP27-UN-FORESTSA general view shows a Syncrude oil sands mining facility near Fort McKay, Alberta, on September 7, 2022. At Fort McKay near Fort McMurray in western Canada, in the heart of the country's boreal forest, the pines and the people were long ago cleared out to make way for huge open-pit mines dedicated to excavation of oil sands. (Photo by Ed JONES / AFP) (Photo by ED JONES/AFP via Getty Images)Fisherman Ed Cooper, 76, shows his formeFisherman Ed Cooper, 76, shows his former fishing spot on the Athabasca River which he claims is now too polluted to fish due to its proximity to oil sands mines and extraction facilities near the town of Fort MacKay in Alberta on October 23, 2009. AFP PHOTO/Mark RALSTON (Photo credit should read MARK RALSTON/AFP via Getty Images)The Syncrude extraction facility in the...Fort McMurray, CANADA: The Syncrude extraction facility in the northern Alberta oil sand fields is reflected in the pool of water being recycled for re-use in the extraction process 14 June 2007 in Fort McMurray, Canada. AFP PHOTO/David BOILY == WITH AFP STORY: CANADA-ENERGY-OIL-TAKEOVER BY GUILLAUME LAVALLEE == (Photo credit should read DAVID BOILY/AFP via Getty Images)Canada - Energy - Tar SandsA scarecrow rides on a barrel in a tailings pond at the Syncrude open pit oil excavation mine in Fort McMurray. (Photo by Orjan F. Ellingvag/ Dagens Naringsliv/Corbis via Getty Images)Fast-Spreading Hill and Woolsey Fires Force Evacuations In California's Ventura CountyMALIBU, CA - NOVEMBER 09: The Woolsey Fire approaches homes on November 9, 2018 in Malibu, California. About 75,000 homes have been evacuated in Los Angeles and Ventura counties due to two fires in the region. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)US-WEATHER-FIREA fire fighting helicopter drops water as the Palisades fire grows near the Mandeville Canyon neighborhood and Encino, California, on January 11, 2025. (Photo by Patrick T. Fallon / AFP) (Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images)Powerful Winds Fuel Multiple Fires Across Los Angeles AreaLOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - JANUARY 8: A firefighter watches the flames from the Palisades Fire burning homes on the Pacific Coast Highway amid a powerful windstorm on January 8, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Apu Gomes/Getty Images)Powerful Winds Fuel Multiple Fires Across Los Angeles AreaLOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - JANUARY 8: A firefighter watches the flames from the Palisades Fire burning homes on the Pacific Coast Highway amid a powerful windstorm on January 8, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Apu Gomes/Getty Images)Ruptured Pipeline Spills Oil Along Santa Barbara CoastGOLETA, CALIFORNIA - MAY 20: An oil-covered lobster lies dead on the beach after an oil spill near Refugio State Beach on May 20, 2015 north of Goleta, California. About 21,000 gallons spilled from an abandoned pipeline on the land near Refugio State Beach, spreading over about four miles of beach within hours. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible's list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actorText originally filed January 16, 2025Piece Plan - by Mr. FishIsrael, going back decades, has played a duplicitous game. It signs a deal with the Palestinians that is to be implemented in phases. The first phase gives Israel what it wants — in this case the release of the Israeli hostages in Gaza — but Israel habitually fails to implement subsequent phases that would lead to a just and equitable peace. It eventually provokes the Palestinians with indiscriminate armed assaults to retaliate, defines a Palestinian response as a provocation and abrogates the ceasefire deal to reignite the slaughter.If this latest three-phase ceasefire deal is ratified — and there is no certainty that it will be by Israel — it will, I expect, be little more than a presidential inauguration bombing pause. Israel has no intention of halting its merry-go-round of death.The Israeli cabinet has delayed a vote on the ceasefire proposal while it continues to pound Gaza. At least 81 Palestinians have been killed in the last 24 hours.The morning after a ceasefire agreement was announced, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Hamas of reneging on part of the deal “in an effort to extort last minute concessions.” He warned that his cabinet will not meet “until the mediators notify Israel that Hamas has accepted all elements of the agreement.”Hamas dismissed Netanyahu’s claims and repeated their commitment to the ceasefire as agreed with the mediators.The deal includes three phases. The first phase, lasting 42 days, will see a cessation of hostilities. Hamas will release some Israeli hostages – 33 Israelis who were captured on Oct. 7, 2023, including all of the remaining five women, those aged above 50, and those with illnesses – in exchange for up to 1,000 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.The Israeli army will pull back from the populated areas of the Gaza Strip on the first day of the ceasefire. On the 7th day, displaced Palestinians will be permitted to return to northern Gaza. Israel will allow 600 aid trucks with food and medical supplies to enter Gaza daily.The second phase, which begins on the 16th day of the ceasefire, will see the release of the remaining Israeli hostages. Israel will complete its withdrawal from Gaza during the second phase, maintaining a presence in some parts of the Philadelphi corridor, which stretches along the eight-mile border between Gaza and Egypt. It will surrender its control of the Rafah border crossing into Egypt.The third phase will see negotiations for a permanent end of the war.But it is Netanyahu’s office that appears to have already reneged on the agreement. It released a statement rejecting Israeli troop withdrawal from the Philadelphi Corridor during the first 42-day phase of the ceasefire. “In practical terms, Israel will remain in the Philadelphi Corridor until further notice," while claiming the Palestinians are attempting to violate the agreement. Palestinians throughout the numerous ceasefire negotiations have demanded Israeli troops withdraw from Gaza. Egypt has condemned the seizure of its border crossings by Israel.The deep fissures between Israel and Hamas, even if the Israelis finally accept the agreement, threaten to implode it. Hamas is seeking a permanent ceasefire. But Israeli policy is unequivocal about its “right” to re-engage militarily. There is no consensus about who will govern Gaza. Israel has made it clear the continuance of Hamas in power is unacceptable. There is no mention of the status of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the U.N. agency that Israel has outlawed and that provides the bulk of the humanitarian aid given to the Palestinians, 95 percent of whom have been displaced. There is no agreement on the reconstruction of Gaza, which lies in rubble. And, of course, there is no route in the agreement to an independent and sovereign Palestinian state.Israeli mendacity and manipulation is pitifully predictable.The Camp David Accords, signed in 1979 by Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, without the participation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), normalized diplomatic relations between Israel and Egypt. But the subsequent phases, which included a promise by Israel to resolve the Palestinian question along with Jordan and Egypt, permit Palestinian self-governance in the West Bank and Gaza within five years, and end the building of Israeli colonies in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, were never honored.Or take the 1993 Oslo Accords. The agreement, signed in 1993, which saw the PLO recognize Israel’s right to exist and Israel recognize the PLO as the legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people, and Oslo II, signed in 1995, which detailed the process towards peace and a Palestinian state, was stillborn. It stipulated that any discussion of illegal Jewish “settlements” was to be delayed until “final’ status talks, by which time Israeli military withdrawals from the occupied West Bank were to have been completed. Governing authority was to be transferred from Israel to the supposedly temporary Palestinian Authority. The West Bank was carved up into Areas A, B and C. The Palestinian Authority has limited authority in Areas A and B. Israel controls all of Area C, over 60 percent of the West Bank.The right of Palestinian refugees to return to the historic lands seized from them in 1948 when Israel was created — a right enshrined in international law — was given up by the PLO leader Yasser Arafat, instantly alienating many Palestinians, especially those in Gaza where 75 percent are refugees or the descendants of refugees. Edward Said called the Oslo agreement “an instrument of Palestinian surrender, a Palestinian Versailles” and lambasted Arafat as “the Pétain of the Palestinians.”The scheduled Israeli military withdrawals under Oslo never took place. There was no provision in the interim agreement to end Jewish colonization, only a prohibition of “unilateral steps.” There were around 250,000 Jewish colonists in the West Bank at the time of the Oslo agreement. They have increased to at least 700,000. No final treaty was ever concluded.The journalist Robert Fisk called Oslo “a sham, a lie, a trick to entangle Arafat and the PLO into abandonment of all that they had sought and struggled for over a quarter of a century, a method of creating false hope in order to emasculate the aspiration of statehood.”Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, who signed the Oslo agreement, was assassinated on Nov. 4, 1995 following a rally in support of the agreement, by Yigal Amir, a far-right Jewish law student. Itamar Ben-Gvir, now Israel’s National Security Minister, was one of many rightwing politicians who issued threats against Rabin. Rabin’s widow, Leah, blamed Netanyahu and his supporters — who distributed leaflets at political rallies depicting Rabin in a Nazi uniform — for her husband’s murder.Israel has carried out a series of murderous assaults on Gaza ever since, cynically calling the bombardment “mowing the lawn.” These attacks, which leave scores of dead and wounded and further degrade Gaza’s fragile infrastructure, have names such as Operation Rainbow (2004), Operation Days of Penitence (2004), Operation Summer Rains (2006), Operation Autumn Clouds (2006) and Operation Hot Winter (2008).Israel violated the June 2008 ceasefire agreement with Hamas, brokered by Egypt, by launching a border raid that killed six Hamas members. The raid provoked, as Israel intended, a retaliatory strike by Hamas, which fired crude rockets and mortar shells into Israel. The Hamas barrage provided the pretext for a massive Israeli attack. Israel, as it always does, justified its military strike on the right to defend itself.Operation Cast Lead (2008-2009), which saw Israel carry out a ground and aerial assault over 22 days, with the Israeli air force dropping over 1,000 tons of explosives on Gaza, killed 1,385 — according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem — of whom at least 762 were civilians, including 300 children. Four Israelis were killed over the same period by Hamas rockets and nine Israeli soldiers died in Gaza, four of whom were victims of “friendly fire.” The Israeli newspaper Haaretz would later report that “Operation Cast Lead” had been prepared over the previous six months.Israeli historian Avi Shlaim, who served in the Israeli military, wrote that:the brutality of Israel’s soldiers is fully matched by the mendacity of its spokesman…their propaganda is a pack of lies…It was not Hamas but the IDF that broke the ceasefire. It did so by a raid into Gaza on 4 November that killed six Hamas men. Israel’s objective is not just the defense of its population, but the eventual overthrow of the Hamas government in Gaza by turning the people against their rulers.These series of attacks on Gaza were followed by Israeli assaults in November 2012, known as Operation Pillar of Defense and in July and August 2014 in Operation Protective Edge, a seven week campaign that left 2,251 Palestinians dead, along with 73 Israelis, including 67 soldiers.These assaults by the Israeli military were followed in 2018 by largely peaceful protests by Palestinians, known as The Great March of Return, along Gaza’s fenced-in barrier. Over 266 Palestinians were gunned down by Israeli soldiers and 30,000 more were injured. In May 2021, Israel killed over 256 Palestinians in Gaza following attacks by Israeli police on Palestinian worshippers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem. Further attacks on worshippers at Al-Aqsa mosque took place in April 2023.And then the breaching of the security barriers on Oct. 7, 2023 that enclose Gaza, where Palestinians had languished under a blockade for over 16 years in an open air prison. The attacks by Palestinian gunmen left some 1,200 Israeli dead — including hundreds killed by Israel itself — and gave Israel the excuse it had long sought to lay waste to Gaza, in its Swords of Iron War.This horrific saga is not over. Israel’s goals remain unchanged – the erasure of Palestinians from their land. This proposed ceasefire is one more cynical chapter. There are many ways it can and, I suspect, will fall apart.But let us pray, at least for the moment, that the mass slaughter will stop.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible's list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actorText originally published Dec. 30, 2024This, That or the Other Carter - by Mr. FishJimmy 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.”But Carter’s years as an ex-president should not mask his dogged service to the empire, penchant for fomenting disastrous proxy wars, betrayal of the Palestinians, embrace of punishing neoliberal policies and his subservience to big business when he was in office.Carter played a significant role in dismantling New Deal legislation with the deregulation of major industries including airlines, banking, trucking, telecommunications, natural gas and railways. He appointed Paul Volcker to the Federal Reserve, who, in an effort to combat inflation, drove up interest rates and pushed the U.S. into the deepest recession since the Great Depression, a move that saw the start of punishing austerity cuts. Carter is the godfather of the pillage known as neoliberalism, a pillage fellow Democrat Bill Clinton would turbo charge.Carter fell under the disastrous influence of his Svengali-like national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Polish exile, who rejected the Nixon-Kissinger reliance on détente with the Soviet Union. Brzezinski’s life’s mission, one that meant he saw the world in black and white, was to confront and destroy the Soviet Union along with any government or movement he deemed to be under communist influence or sympathetic to it.Carter, under Brzezinski’s influence, walked away from the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks treaty (SALT II) with the Soviet Union, which sought to curb nuclear weapons deployment. He increased military spending. He sent military aid to the Indonesian New Order government during the Indonesian invasion and occupation of East Timor, which many have characterized as a genocide. He supported, along with the apartheid state of South Africa, the murderous counter revolutionary group, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), led by Jonas Savimbi. He provided aid to the brutal Zairian dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. He supported the Khmer Rouge.He instructed the Central Intelligence Agency to back opposition groups and political parties to bring down the Sandinista government in Nicaragua once it took power in 1979, leading under the Reagan administration to the formation of the Contras and a bloody and senseless U.S.-backed insurgency. He provided military aid to the dictatorship in El Salvador, ignoring an appeal from Archbishop Oscar Romero — later assassinated — to cease U.S. arms shipments.He poisoned U.S. relations with Iran by backing the repressive regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi until the last minute and then allowing the deposed Shah to seek medical treatment in New York, triggering the occupation of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and a 444-day hostage crisis. Carter’s belligerence — he froze Iranian assets, stopped importing oil from Iran and expelled 183 Iranian diplomats from the U.S. — played into Ayatollah Khomeini’s demonization of the U.S. and calls for Islamic rule. He obliterated the credibility of Iran’s secular opposition.Carter gave Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, although he ruled under martial law, billions in military aid. He armed the Mujahideen in Afghanistan after the Soviet intervention in 1979, a decision that cost the U.S. $3 billion, saw the deaths of 1.5 million Afghans and led to the creation of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The blowback from this Carter policy alone is catastrophic.He backed the South Korean military in 1980 when it laid siege to the city of Gwangju, where protestors had formed a militia, which led to the massacre of some 2,000 people.Finally, he sold out the Palestinians when he negotiated a separate peace deal, known as the Camp David Accords, in 1979 between Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. The agreement excluded the Palestine Liberation Organization from the talks. Israel never, as promised to Carter, attempted to resolve the Palestine question with Jordan and Egypt’s involvement. It never permitted Palestinian self-government in the West Bank and Gaza within five years. It did not end Israeli settlements — a refusal that led Carter to later claim Begin had lied to him. But since there was no mechanism in the agreement for enforcement, and since Carter was unwilling to defy the Israel lobby to impose sanctions on Israel, the Palestinians found themselves, once again, powerless and abandoned.Carter, to his credit, did appoint the civil rights activist Patricia Derian as his Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, leading to the blocking of loans and reduction in military aid to the military junta in Argentina during the Dirty War, restrictions the Reagan administration removed. Derian’s commitment to human rights was genuine. She supported Philippines leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr. and the South Korean dissident and former president Kim Dae-jung. Carter allowed her to anger a few of our most repressive allies. But his human rights policy was primarily designed to back democratic dissidents and worker movements in Central and Eastern Europe, especially Poland, in an effort to weaken the Soviet Union.Carter had a decency most politicians lack, but his moral crusades, which came once he was out of power, seem like a form of penance. His record as president is bloody and dismal, although not as bloody and dismal as the presidents who followed. That’s the best we can say of him. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible's list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actorText originally published Dec. 23, 2024Inside Out - by Mr. FishFor over two decades, I and a handful of others — Sheldon Wolin, Noam Chomsky, Chalmers Johnson, Barbara Ehrenreich and Ralph Nader — warned that the expanding social inequality and steady erosion of our democratic institutions, including the media, the Congress, organized labor, academia and the courts, would inevitably lead to an authoritarian or Christian fascist state. My books — “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America” (2007), “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle” (2009), “Death of the Liberal Class” (2010), “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt” (2012), written with Joe Sacco, “Wages of Rebellion” (2015) and “America: The Farewell Tour” (2018) were a succession of impassioned pleas to take the decay seriously. I take no joy in being correct.“The rage of those abandoned by the economy, the fears and concerns of a beleaguered and insecure middle class, and the numbing isolation that comes with the loss of community, would be the kindling for a dangerous mass movement,” I wrote in “American Fascists” in 2007. “If these dispossessed were not reincorporated into mainstream society, if they eventually lost all hope of finding good, stable jobs and opportunities for themselves and their children — in short, the promise of a brighter future — the specter of American fascism would beset the nation. This despair, this loss of hope, this denial of a future, led the desperate into the arms of those who promised miracles and dreams of apocalyptic glory.”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. The Democrats are as guilty as the Republicans.“Trump and his coterie of billionaires, generals, half-wits, Christian fascists, criminals, racists, and moral deviants play the role of the Snopes clan in some of William Faulkner’s novels,” I wrote in “America: The Farewell Tour.” “The Snopeses filled the power vacuum of the decayed South and ruthlessly seized control from the degenerated, former slaveholding aristocratic elites. Flem Snopes and his extended family — which includes a killer, a pedophile, a bigamist, an arsonist, a mentally disabled man who copulates with a cow, and a relative who sells tickets to witness the bestiality — are fictional representations of the scum now elevated to the highest level of the federal government. They embody the moral rot unleashed by unfettered capitalism.”“The usual reference to ‘amorality,’ while accurate, is not sufficiently distinctive and by itself does not allow us to place them, as they should be placed, in a historical moment,” the critic Irving Howe wrote of the Snopeses. “Perhaps the most important thing to be said is that they are what comes afterwards: the creatures that emerge from the devastation, with the slime still upon their lips.”“Let a world collapse, in the South or Russia, and there appear figures of coarse ambition driving their way up from beneath the social bottom, men to whom moral claims are not so much absurd as incomprehensible, sons of bushwhackers or muzhiks drifting in from nowhere and taking over through the sheer outrageousness of their monolithic force,” Howe wrote. “They become presidents of local banks and chairmen of party regional committees, and later, a trifle slicked up, they muscle their way into Congress or the Politburo. Scavengers without inhibition, they need not believe in the crumbling official code of their society; they need only learn to mimic its sounds.”The political philosopher Sheldon Wolin called our system of governance “inverted totalitarianism,” one that kept the old iconography, symbols and language, but had surrendered power to corporations and oligarchs. Now we will shift to totalitarianism’s more recognizable form, one dominated by a demagogue and an ideology grounded in the demonization of the other, hypermasculinity and magical thinking.Fascism is always the b*****d child of a bankrupt liberalism.“We live in a two-tiered legal system, one where poor people are harassed, arrested and jailed for absurd infractions, such as selling loose cigarettes — which led to Eric Garner being choked to death by the New York City police in 2014 — while crimes of appalling magnitude by the oligarchs and corporations, from oil spills to bank fraud in the hundreds of billions of dollars, which wiped out 40 percent of the world’s wealth, are dealt with through tepid administrative controls, symbolic fines, and civil enforcement that give these wealthy perpetrators immunity from criminal prosecution,” I wrote in “America: The Farewell Tour.”The utopian ideology of neoliberalism and global capitalism is a vast con. Global wealth, rather than being spread equitably, as neoliberal proponents promised, was funneled upward into the hands of a rapacious, oligarchic elite, fueling the worst economic inequality since the age of the robber barons. The working poor, whose unions and rights were stripped from them and whose wages have stagnated or declined over the past 40 years, have been thrust into chronic poverty and underemployment. Their lives, as Barbara Ehrenreich chronicled in “Nickel and Dimed,” are one long, stress-ridden emergency. The middle class is evaporating. Cities that once manufactured products and offered factory jobs are boarded-up-wastelands. Prisons are overflowing. Corporations have orchestrated the destruction of trade barriers, allowing them to stash $1.42 trillion in profits in overseas banks to avoid paying taxes.Neoliberalism, despite its promise to build and spread democracy, swiftly gutted regulations and hollowed out democratic systems to turn them into corporate leviathans. The labels “liberal” and “conservative” are meaningless in the neoliberal order, evidenced by a Democratic presidential candidate who bragged about an endorsement from Dick Cheney, a war criminal who left office with a 13 percent approval rating. The attraction of Trump is that, although vile and buffoonish, he mocks the bankruptcy of the political charade.“The permanent lie is the apotheosis of totalitarianism,” I wrote in “America: The Farewell Tour”:It no longer matters what is true. It matters only what is ‘correct.’ Federal courts are being stacked with imbecilic and incompetent judges who serve the ‘correct’ ideology of corporatism and the rigid social mores of the Chrtistian right. They hold reality, including science and the rule of law, in contempt. They seek to banish those who live in a reality-based world defined by intellectual and moral autonomy. Totalitarian rule always elevates the brutal and the stupid. These reigning idiots have no genuine political philosophy or goals. They use clichés and slogans, most of which are absurd and contradictory, to justify their greed and lust for power. This is as true for the Christian right as it is for the corporatists that preach the free market and globalization. The merger of the corporatists with the Christian right is the marrying of Godzilla to Frankenstein.The illusions peddled on our screens — including the fictitious persona created for Trump on The Apprentice — have replaced reality. Politics is burlesque as Kamala Harris’ vapid, celebrity-filled campaign illustrated. It is smoke and mirrors created by the army of agents, publicists, marketing departments, promoters, script writers, television and movie producers, video technicians, photographers, bodyguards, wardrobe consultants, fitness trainers, pollsters, public announcers and television news personalities. We are a culture awash in lies.“The cult of the self dominates our cultural landscape,” I wrote in “Empire of Illusion”:This cult has within it the classic traits of psychopaths: superficial charm, grandiosity and self-importance; a need for constant stimulation, a penchant for lying, deception, and manipulation, and the inability to feel remorse or guilt. This is, of course, the ethic promoted by corporations. It is the ethic of unfettered capitalism. It is the misguided belief that personal style and personal advancement, mistaken for individualism, are the same as democratic equality. In fact, personal style, defined by the commodities we buy or consume, has become a compensation for our loss of democratic equality. We have a right, in the cult of the self, to get whatever we desire. We can do anything, even belittle and destroy those around us, including our friends, to make money, to be happy, and to become famous. Once fame and wealth are achieved, they become their own justification, their own morality. How one gets there is irrelevant. Once you get there, those questions are no longer asked.My book “Empire of Illusion” begins in Madison Square Garden at a World Wrestling Entertainment tour. I understood that professional wrestling was the template for our social and political life, but did not know that it would produce a president.“The bouts are stylized rituals,” I wrote, in what could have been a description of a Trump rally:They are public expressions of pain and a fervent longing for revenge. The lurid and detailed sagas behind each bout, rather than the wrestling matches themselves, are what drive crowds to a frenzy. These ritualized battles give those packed in the arenas a temporary, heady release from mundane lives. The burden of real problems is transformed into fodder for a high-energy pantomime.It is not going to get better. The tools to shut down dissent have been cemented into place. Our democracy cratered years ago. We are in the grip of what Søren Kierkegaard called “sickness unto death” — the numbing of the soul by despair that leads to moral and physical debasement. All Trump has to do to establish a naked police state is flip a switch. And he will.“The worse reality becomes, the less a beleaguered population wants to hear about it,” I wrote at the conclusion of “Empire of Illusion,” “and the more it distracts itself with squalid pseudo-events of celebrity breakdowns, gossip and trivia. These are the debauched revels of a dying civilization.”The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible's list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actorText originally published Dec. 10, 2024The Power of the Pen - Mr. FishDear Refaat,We are not silent. We are being silenced. The students who, during the last academic year set up encampments, occupied halls, went on hunger strikes and spoke out against the genocide, were met this fall with a series of rules that have turned university campuses into academic gulags. Among the minority of academics who dared to speak out, many have been sanctioned or dismissed. Medical professionals who criticize the wholesale destruction by Israel of hospitals, clinics and targeted assassinations of health workers in Gaza have been suspended or terminated from medical school faculties with some facing threats to revoke their medical licenses.Journalists who detail the mass slaughter and expose Israeli propaganda have been taken off air or fired from their publications. Jobs are lost over social media posts. The tiny handful of politicians who condemn the killing have seen millions of dollars spent to drive them from office. Algorithms, shadow-banning, deplatforming and demonetizing – all of which I have experienced – are used to marginalize or ban us on digital media platforms. A whisper of protest and we are disappeared.None of these measures will be lifted once the genocide ends. The genocide is the pretext. The result will be one huge step towards an authoritarian state, especially with the ascendancy of Donald Trump. The silence will expand, like a great cloud of sulfurous gas. We choke on forbidden words. They killed you. They are strangling us. The goal is the same. Erasure. Your story, the story of all Palestinians, is not to be told.The Zionists and their allies have nothing left in their arsenal but lies, censorship, smear campaigns and violence, the blunt instruments of the damned. But I hold in my hand the weapon that will, ultimately, defeat them. Your book, “If I Must Die: Poetry and Prose”.“Stories teach life,” you write, “even if the hero suffers or dies in the end.”Writing, you told your students, “is a testimony, a memory that outlives any human experience, and an obligation to communicate with ourselves and the world. We lived for a reason, to tell the tales of loss, survival, and of hope.”It has been a year since an Israeli missile targeted the second-floor apartment where you were sheltering. You had been receiving death threats for weeks online and by phone from Israeli accounts. You had already been displaced multiple times. You fled in the end to your sister’s home in Al-Sidra neighborhood in Gaza City. But you did not escape your hunters. You were murdered with your brother Salah and one of his children and your sister and three of her children.You wrote your poem “If I Must Die” in 2011. You released it again a month before your death. It has been translated into dozens of languages. You wrote it for your daughter Shymaa. In April 2024, four months after your death, Shymaa was killed in an Israeli airstrike along with her husband and their two-month-old son, your grandson, who you never met. They had sought refuge in the building of the international relief charity Global Communities.You write to Shymaa:If I must die,you must liveto tell my storyto sell my thingsto buy a piece of clothand some strings,(make it white with a long tail)so that a child, somewhere in Gazawhile looking heaven in the eyeawaiting his dad who left in a blaze—and bid no one farewellnot even to his fleshnot even to himself—sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up aboveand thinks for a moment an angel is therebringing back loveIf I must dielet it bring hopelet it be a taleYou have joined the martyred poets. The Spanish poet Federico García Lorca. The Russian poet Osip Mandelstam. The Hungarian poet Miklós Radnóti who wrote his final verses on a death march. The Chilean singer and poet Víctor Jara. The Black poet Henry Dumas, shot dead by New York City police.In your poem “And We Live On…” you write:Despite Israel’s birds of deathHovering only two meters from our breathFrom our dreams and prayersBlocking their ways to God.Despite that.We dream and pray,Clinging to life even harderEvery time a dear one’s lifeIs Forcibly rooted up.We live.We live.We do.Why do killers fear poets? You were not a combatant. You did not carry a weapon. You put words on paper. But all the might of the Israeli army and intelligence services were deployed to track you down.In times of distress, when the world is enveloped by cruelty and suffering, when lives are perched on the edge of the abyss, poetry is the sad lament of the oppressed. It makes us feel the suffering. It is intuitive. It captures the mix of complex emotions — joy, love, loss, fear, death, trauma, grief — when the world falls apart. It creates in its beauty a salvific meaning out of despair. It is an absurd act of hope, a defiant act of resistance, taunting those who dehumanize you with erudition and sensitivity. Its fragility and beauty, its sanctification of memory, experience and the intellect, its musicality, mock the simplistic slogans and cant of the killers.In your poem “Freshly Baked Souls” you write:The hearts are not hearts.The eyes can’t seeThere are no eyes thereThe bellies craving for moreA house destroyed except for the doorThe family, all of them, goneSave for a photo albumThat has to be buried with themNo one was left to cherish the memoriesNo one.Except freshly baked souls in bellies.Except for a poem.Writing, as Edward Said reminds us, is “the final resistance we have against the inhuman practices and injustices that disfigure human history.”Violence cannot create. It only destroys. It leaves nothing of value behind.“Don’t forget that Palestine was first and foremost occupied in Zionist literature and Zionist poetry,” you said in a lecture given to your students in Advanced English Poetry at the Islamic University in Gaza. “When the Zionists thought of going back to Palestine, it wasn’t like, ‘Oh, let’s go to Palestine.’”You snapped your fingers:It took them years, like over fifty years of thinking, of planning, all the politics, money, and everything else. But literature played one of the most crucial roles here. This is our class. If I tell you, ‘let’s move to the other class.’ you need guarantees that we’re going to go there, we’re going to find chairs — right? That the other class, the other place, is better, is more peaceful. That we have some kind of connection, some kind of right.So, for fifty years before the occupation of Palestine and the establishment of the so-called Israel in 1948, Palestine in Zionist Jewish literature was presented to the Jewish people around the world [as]… ‘a land without a people [for] a people without a land.’ ‘Palestine flows with milk and honey.’ ‘There is no one there, so let’s go.’Killers are trapped in a literal world. Their imaginations are calcified. They have shut down empathy. They know poetry’s power, but they do not know where that power comes from, like an audience left gaping at the deft skill of a magician. And what they cannot understand they destroy. They lack the capacity to dream. Dreams terrify them.The Israeli general Moshe Dayan said that the poems of Fadwa Tuqan, who was educated at Oxford, “were like facing twenty enemy fighters.”Taqan writes in “Martyrs Of The Intifada” of the youth throwing stones at heavily armed Israeli soldiers:They died standing, blazing on the roadShining like stars, their lips pressed to the lips of lifeThey stood up in the face of deathThen disappeared like the sun.Many Palestinians can recite from memory passages of the poems “To My Mother” and “Write Down I am an Arab” by Palestine’s most celebrated poet Mahmoud Darwish. Israeli authorities persecuted, censored, imprisoned and kept Darwish under house arrest before driving him into exile. His lines adorn the concrete barriers erected by Israel to wall off the Palestinians in the West Bank and are incorporated into popular protest songs.His poem “Write Down I am an Arab” reads:Write down:—I am an ArabAnd my ID number is 50,000I got eight kidsAnd the ninth is due after summer.So will you be mad?—I am an ArabAnd I work along with my labor buddies in a stone quarryAnd I got eight kidsI secure them bread, clothing and notebooksHacked out of the rocksAnd I don’t beg for charity at your door,And don’t lower myself at the footsteps of your court—So will you be mad?Write down:—I am an Arab.I am a name without an epithet,Patient in a country where everythinghas a tantrum.—My roots—Were deeply entrenched before the birth of time—And prior to the ushering of eras,—Before cypresses and olive trees,—And even before the grass grew.My dad hails from a family of plowers, not blue-blood baronsMy grandpa was a farmer, totally unknownTaught me about the zenith of the soul before teaching me how to readAnd my home is a cabin made out of sticks and bamboosSo are you displeased with my status?I am a name without an epithet!Write down:—I am an Arab.Hair color: coal-like; eye color: brownDistinguishing marks: I wear a headband on top of a keffiyeh—And my palm is rock-solid, scratches whoever touches itAs to my address: I am from an isolated village, forgotten—Its streets are unnamed—And all its men are in the field or in the stone quarry—So will you be mad?Write down.—I am an ArabYou stole the meadows of my ancestors and a land I used to cultivate—Together with all my kids—You didn’t leave to us or to my offspring—Anything - except these rocks—So will your government take them away as well, as it’s been announced—In that case—Write down—On the top of the first page:—I don’t hate people and I don’t rob anyone—But… If I starve to death, I’m left with nothing else but—The flesh of my usurper to feed from—So beware, beware of my hunger and angerYou wrote about your children. Your words were to be their legacy.To your daughter Linah, then eight-years-old, or as you say “in Gazan time, two wars old,” you told bedtime stories when Israel was bombarding Gaza in May 2021, when your children “all sat up in bed, shaking, saying nothing.” You did not leave your home, a decision you made so “we would die together.”You write:On Tuesday, Linah asked her question again after my wife and I didn't answer it the first time: Can they destroy our building if the power is out? I wanted to say: “Yes, little Linah, Israel can still destroy the beautiful al-Jawharah building, or any of our buildings, even in the darkness. Each of our homes is full of tales and stories that must be told. Our homes annoy the Israeli war machine, mock it, haunt it, even in the darkness. It can’t abide their existence. And, with American tax dollars and international immunity, Israel presumably will go on destroying our buildings until there is nothing left.”But I can’t tell Linah any of this. So I lie: “No, sweetie, they can’t see us in the dark.”Mass death was not new to you. You were shot by Israeli soldiers with three rubber-coated metal bullets when you were a teenager. In 2014, your brother, Hamada, your wife’s grandfather, her brother, her sister and her sister’s three children were all killed in an Israeli strike. During the bombardment Israeli missiles destroyed the offices of the English Department at the Islamic University of Gaza, where you stored “stories, assignments, and exam papers for potential book projects.”The Israeli army spokesman claimed they bombed the university to destroy a “weapons development center,” a statement later amended by the Israeli defense minister who said “IUG was developing chemicals, to be used against us.”You write:My talks about tolerance and understanding, Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) and nonviolent resistance, and poetry and stories and literature did not help us or protect us against death and destruction. My motto “This too shall pass” became a joke to many. My mantra “A poem is mightier than a gun” was mocked. With my own office gone by wanton Israeli destruction, students would not stop joking about me developing PMDs, “Poems of Mass Destruction,” or TMDs, “Theories of Mass Destruction.” Students joked that they wanted to be taught chemical poetry alongside allegorical and narrative poetry. They asked for short-range stories and long-range stories instead of normal terms like short stories and novels. And I was asked if my exams would have questions capable of carrying chemical warheads!But why would Israel bomb a university? Some say Israel attacked IUG just to punish its twenty thousand students or to push Palestinians to despair. While that is true, to me IUG’s only danger to the Israeli occupation and its apartheid regime is that it is the most important place in Gaza to develop student’s minds as indestructible weapons. Knowledge is Israel’s worst enemy. Awareness is Israel’s most hated and feared foe. That’s why Israel bombs a university: it wants to kill openness and determination to refuse living under injustice and racism. But again, why does Israel bomb a school? Or a hospital? Or a mosque? Or a twenty-story building? Could it be, as Shylock put it, “a merry sport”?The existential struggle of the Palestinians is to reject the barbarity of the Israeli occupiers, to refuse to mirror their hatred or replicate their savagery. This does not always succeed. Rage, humiliation and despair are potent forces that feed a lust for vengeance. But you heroically fought this battle for your humanity, and ours, until the end. You embodied a decency your oppressors lacked. You found salvation and hope in the words that captured the reality of a people facing erasure and death. You asked us to feel for these lives, including your own, which have been lost. You knew that there would come a day, a day you understood you might never see, when your words would expose the crimes of those who murdered you and lift up the lost lives of those you honored and loved. You succeeded. Death took you. But not your voice or the voices of those you memorialized.You, and they, live on.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.This article was read by Eunice Wong is a Juilliard-trained actor and narrator, featured on Audible's list of Best Women Narrators. In 2024 Eunice won the Audie Award, the audiobook industry's highest honor, for Mystery, and was nominated the same year for Best Fiction Narrator, and for Nonfiction.Eunice is the recipient of the Helen Hayes Award for Lead Actress, 11 AudioFile Earphone Awards for excellence in audiobook performance, and the American Library Association's Rusa Listen List: Outstanding Audiobook Narration.Eunice's work has been featured on the yearly Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile Magazine, and Library Journal, for 2022, 2023, and 2024. She has recorded 150 books for publishers such as Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, Harper, Hachette, and Audible.On stage she has worked at professional theaters in New York and across the country, including the Atlantic, Classic Stage, Guthrie, McCarter, American Repertory Theater, Yale Rep, and Cincinnati Playhouse.Her website is www.eunicewong.com This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible's list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actorText originally posted Nov. 18, 2024Forget Us Not - by Mr. FishNEW YORK: I am in the The Krikor and Clara Zohrab Information Center next to the St. Vartan Armenian Cathedral in Manhattan. I am holding a bound, hand-written memoir, which includes poetry, drawings, and scrapbooked images, by Zaven Seraidarian, a survivor of the Armenian genocide. The front cover of the book, one of six volumes, reads “Bloody Journal.” The other volumes have titles such as “Drops of Springtime,” “Tears” and “The Wooden Spoon.”“My name will remain immortal on the earth,” the author writes. “I will speak about myself and tell more.”The center houses hundreds of documents, letters, hand-drawn maps of villages that have disappeared, sepia photographs, poems, drawings and histories — much of it untranslated — on the customs, traditions and notable families of lost Armenian communities.Jesse Arlen, the director of the center, looks forlornly at the volume in my hand.“No one has probably read it, looked at it or even knew it was here,” he says.He opens a box and hands me a hand drawn map by Hareton Saksoorian of Havav village in Palu, where Armenians in 1915 were massacred or expelled. Saksoorian drew the map from memory after he escaped. The drawings of Armenian homes have the tiny, inked in names of the long dead.This will be the fate of the Palestinians in Gaza. They too will soon battle to preserve memory, to defy an indifferent world that stood by as they were slaughtered. They too will doggedly seek to preserve scraps of their existence. They too will write memoirs, histories and poems, draw maps of villages, refugee camps and cities that have been obliterated, set down painful stories of butchery, carnage and loss. They too will name and condemn their killers, lament the extermination of families, including thousands of children, and struggle to preserve a vanished world. But time is a cruel master.Intellectual and emotional life for those who are cast out of their homeland is defined by the crucible of exile, what the Palestinian scholar Edward Said told me is “the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place.” Said’s book “Out of Place” is a record of this lost world.The Armenian poet Armen Anush was raised in an orphanage in Aleppo, Syria. He captures the life sentence of those who survive genocide in his poem “Sacred Obsession.”He writes:Country of light, you visit me every night in my sleep.Every night, exalted, as a venerable goddess,You bring fresh sensations and hopes to my exiled soul.Every night you ease the waverings of my path.Every night you reveal the boundless deserts,The open eyes of the dead, the crying of children in the distance,The crackle and red flame of the countless burned bodies,And the unsheltered caravan, always unsure, always faltering.Every night the same hellish, deathly scene –The tired Euphrates washing the blood off the savaged corpses,The waves making merry with the rays of the sun,And relieving the burden of its useless, weary weight.The same humid, black wells of charred bodies,The same thick smoke enveloping the whole of the Syrian desert.The same voices from the depths, the same moans, soft and sunless,And the same brutal, ruthless barbarity of the Turkish mob.The poem ends, however, with a plea not that these nighttime terrors end, but that they “come to me every night,” that “the flame of your heroes” always “accompany my days.”“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting,” Milan Kundera reminds us.It is better to endure crippling trauma than to forget. Once we forget, once memories are purged — the goal of all genocidal killers — we are enslaved to lies and myths, severed from our individual, cultural and national identities. We no longer know who we are.“It takes so little, so infinitely little, for a person to cross the border beyond which everything loses meaning: love, convictions, faith, history,” Kundera writes in “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting.” “Human life — and herein lies its secret — takes place in the immediate proximity of that border, even in direct contact with it; it is not miles away, but a fraction of an inch.”Those who have crossed that border return to us as prophets, prophets no one wants to hear.The ancient Greeks believed that the souls of the departed drank the water from the River Lethe to erase memory. The destruction of memory is the final obliteration of a life.The genocide in Gaza mirrors the physical annihilation of Armenian Christians by the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Turks, who feared a nationalist revolt like the one that had convulsed the Balkans, drove nearly all of the two million Armenians out of Turkey. Men and women were usually separated. The men were often immediately murdered or sent to death camps, such as those at Ras-Ul-Ain — in 1916 over 80,000 Armenians were slaughtered there — and Deir-el-Zor in the Syrian desert. At least a million were forced on death marches — not unlike the Palestinians in Gaza who have been forcibly displaced by Israel, up to a dozen times — into the deserts of what are now Syria and Iraq. There, hundreds of thousands were slaughtered or died of starvation, exposure and disease. Corpses littered the desert expanse. By 1923, an estimated 1.2 million Armenians were dead. Orphanages throughout the Middle East were flooded with some 200,000 destitute Armenian children.The doomed resistance by several Armenian villages in the mountains along the coast of present-day Turkey and Syria that chose not to obey the deportation order was captured in Franz Werfel’s novel “The Forty Days of Musa Dagh.” Marcel Reich-Ranicki, a Polish-German literary critic who survived the Holocaust, said it was widely read in the Warsaw ghetto, which mounted a doomed uprising of its own in April 1943.In 2000, when he was 98-years-old, I interviewed the writer and singer Hagop H. Asadourian, one of the last survivors of the Armenian genocide. He was born in the village of Chomaklou in eastern Turkey and deported, along with the rest of his village, in 1915. His mother and four of his sisters died of typhus in the Syrian desert. It would be 39 years before he reunited with his only surviving sister, who he was separated from one night near the Dead Sea as they fled with a ragged band of Armenian orphans from Syria to Jerusalem.He told me he wrote to give a voice to the 331 people with whom he trudged into Syria in September 1915, only 29 of whom survived.“You can never really write what happened anyway,” Asadourian said. “It is too ghoulish. I still fight with myself to remember it as it was. You write because you have to. It all wells up inside of you. It is like a hole that fills constantly with water and no amount of bailing will empty it. This is why I continue.”He stopped to collect himself before continuing.“When it came time to bury my mother, I had to get two other small boys to help me carry her body up to a well where they were dumping the corpses,” he said. “We did this so the jackals would not eat them. The stench was terrible. There were swarms of black flies buzzing over the opening. We pushed her in feet first, and the other boys, to escape the smell, ran down the hill. I stayed. I had to watch. I saw her head, as she fell, bang on one side of the well and then the other before she disappeared. At the time, I did not feel anything at all.”He halted, visibly shaken.“What kind of a son is that?”' he asked hoarsely.He eventually found his way to an orphanage in Jerusalem.“These things dig into you, not only once, but throughout life, throughout life, through these days,” he told an interviewer from the USC Shoah Foundation. “I am 98-years-old. And today, to this day, I cannot forget any of this. I forget what I saw yesterday maybe, but I could not forget these things. And yet, we have to beg nations to recognize genocide. I lost 11 members of my family and I have to beg people to believe me. That’s what hurts you most. It’s a terrible world, a terrible experience.”His 14 books were a fight against erasure, but when I spoke with him he admitted that the work of the Turkish army was now almost complete. His last book was “The Smoldering Generation,” which he said was “about the inevitable loss of our culture.”The present is something in which the dead hold no shares.“No one takes the place of those who are gone,” he said, seated in front of a picture window that looked out on his garden in Tenafly, New Jersey. “Your children do not understand you in this country. You cannot blame them.”The world of the Armenians in eastern Turkey, first mentioned by the Greeks and Persians in 6 B.C., has, like Gaza, whose history spans 4,000 years, all but disappeared. The contributions of Armenian culture are forgotten. It was Armenian monks, for example, who rescued works by ancient Greek writers such as Philo and Eusebius, from oblivion.I stumbled on the ruins of Armenian villages when I worked as a reporter in southeastern Turkey. Like Palestinian villages destroyed by Israel, these villages did not appear on maps. Those who carry out genocide seek total annihilation. Nothing is to remain. Especially memory.This will be our next battle. We must not forget.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible's list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actorText originally published Nov. 16, 2024An Unjust Burden — by Mr. FishI just got off the phone with the Canadian feminist and activist Lee Lakeman. She is in hospice. The battles she has spent her life fighting, including her advocacy for impoverished aboriginal women prostituted in desolate urban landscapes such as the Downtown Eastside in Vancouver, which once had the highest HIV-infection rate in the West, lay behind her. When she is gone, we are the ones who will be impoverished, bereft of her searing intellect and unwavering fight for justice. She will leave in her wake a sterling example of what it means to live the moral life, a life of meaning.“Everything you and I have spent our life fighting for is worse,” she said to me ruefully over the phone.Yes. Worse. But her clear, steely-eyed view of the world, her understanding of power and how it works, never dampened her commitment or passion. To fight battles in the face of almost certain defeat, to demand justice for the oppressed no matter the cost, and to know that despite all your efforts, the forces of oppression are growing stronger and crueler, is the essence of nobility.Prostitution, she argues, is the quintessential expression of global capitalism. Our corporate masters are pimps. We are all being debased and degraded, fleeced economically and stripped of basic civil liberties and political agency, to service the cruel and lascivious demands of the corporate elite. Jeffrey Epstein surrounded himself not only with prostituted underage girls, but the powerful, including Donald Trump, who 27 women have accused of sexual misconduct, along with Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew. The hard drives found in Epstein’s safe at his Manhattan mansion, which purportedly included videos of sexual encounters filmed on his properties, have disappeared. It is unlikely they will reappear. The wretched of the earth are reduced in the neoliberal model to serving the desires and fetishes of the wealthy and the privileged.The widening income disparities, the collapse of the social contract and the grotesque entitlement that comes with celebrity, political power and wealth, has deformed all institutions, including the courts, into instruments that serve the exclusive interests of the entitled. The fight for equal pay, equal distribution of wealth and resources, access to welfare, legal aid that offers adequate protection under the law, social services, job training, healthcare and education services, have been so degraded, they barely exist. This is especially true for poor women and girls.When the elites tire of us, or when we are no longer of use, we are discarded, like the women and girls men exploit. We are being transformed into serfs on a global plantation ruled by corporations and oligarchs. The fight against prostitution, Lee says, is not only the fight for women and girls, but the fight against a dehumanizing neoliberalism. Poverty, she reminds us, is not an aphrodisiac. Those who sell their bodies most often do so out of desperation. They are usually women and girls of color trafficked from the Global South, as well as refugees from countries at war such as Ukraine. They end up physically injured, with a variety of diseases and medical conditions, and suffer severe emotional trauma. The average age at which a girl enters prostitution is estimated to be 12 to 14. Their life spans are often short.This fight against prostitution – Lee seeks to decriminalize those who are prostituted and bring criminal charges against the clients, pimps and traffickers – along with her insistence that we should not abolish the police but strengthen its mandate to go after those who abuse women and girls, makes her an anathema to the left. But she has as little time for a feckless left as it does for her. The left, with its woke politics, lack of class consciousness and naiveté about “sex work,” she argues, is bankrupt.“Selling your body for sex is not a choice,” she says. “It is not about freedom. It is an act of economic slavery.”You can see an interview I did with Lee and Alice Lee, one of the founders of Asian Women Coalition Ending Prostitution, here.I met Lee in March 2015. I did not know that my few hours with her would trigger a firestorm. I was in Vancouver to give a lecture. I had admired her as one of Canada’s most important radicals and collective member of Vancouver Rape Relief & Women’s Shelter. I arranged to speak with her and other women from the shelter along with the women who run Asian Women Coalition Ending Prostitution the morning before my talk in the shelter’s storefront office.In the 1970s, Lee opened her home in Ontario to abused women and their children. By 1977 she was in Vancouver working with Vancouver Rape Relief & Women’s Shelter, which was founded in 1973 and is the oldest rape crisis center in Canada. She built alliances with groups such as the Aboriginal Women’s Action Network and Asian Women Coalition Ending Prostitution to mount court cases to challenge the prostitution industry.Lee and the shelter refuse to give the provincial government access to victims’ files in order to protect the anonymity of the women. They also deny this information to the courts, in which, Lee says, “defense attorneys try to discredit or bully women complainants in criminal cases of male violence against women.” This defiance has led to losses of government funding.“It is still impossible to work effectively in a rape crisis center or a transition house and not be breaking the Canadian law on a regular basis,” Lee says.But Lee is not only the bête noire of the state, but of liberals who, she says, think physical abuse of a woman is abhorrent if it occurs in a sweatshop, but is acceptable in a rented room, an alley, a brothel, a massage parlor or a car.She stands with the feminist Andrea Dworkin who writes:Capitalism is not wicked or cruel when the commodity is the w***e, profit is not wicked or cruel when the alienated worker is a female piece of meat; corporate bloodsucking is not wicked or cruel when the corporations in question, organized crime syndicates, sell c**t; racism is not wicked or cruel when the black c**t or yellow c**t or red c**t or Hispanic c**t or Jewish c**t has her legs splayed for any man’s pleasure; poverty is not wicked or cruel when it is the poverty of dispossessed women who have only themselves to sell; violence by the powerful against the powerless is not wicked or cruel when it is called sex; slavery is not wicked or cruel when it is sexual slavery; torture is not wicked or cruel when the tormented are women, w****s, c***s. The new pornography is left-wing; and the new pornography is a vast graveyard where the Left has gone to die. The Left cannot have its w****s and its politics too.Lee battles a world going numb, a world banishing empathy, a world where solidarity with the oppressed and marginalized is increasingly a foreign concept. She warns that with the political and economic upheavals ahead, caused by climate change, the rise of authoritarian governments, misogynist demagogues and the breakdown of global capitalism, the exploitation of women and girls will explode.“We have never stopped having to deal with misogyny among activists,” she once told me. “It is a serious problem. How do we talk to each other as movements? We want to talk about coalition building. But we want new formations to take women’s leadership seriously, to use what has been learned in the last 40 or 50 years. We deal with the most dispossessed among women. And it is clear to us that every sloppy uprising, or every unplanned, chaotic uprising, devastates poor women. We need to have thoughtfulness built into our practices of revolt. We do not want the traditional right-wing version of law and order. We work against it. We do not call for a reduction in men’s rights. But, without an organized community, without state responsibility, every woman is on her own against a man with more power.”“We are seeing a range of violence against women that generations before us never saw — incest, wife abuse, prostitution, trafficking and violence against lesbians,” she went on. “It has become normal. But in periods of chaos, it gets worse. We are trying to hang on to what we know about how to care for people, what we know about working democratically, about nonviolence, yet not be subsumed by the state. Yet we have to insist on a woman’s right not to face every man alone. We have to demand the rule of law. Globalization and neoliberalism have accelerated a process in which women are being sold wholesale, as if it is OK to prostitute Asian women in brothels because they are sending money home to poor families. This is the neoliberal model proposed to us. It is an industry. It is considered OK…just a job like any other job. This model says people are allowed to own factories where prostitution is done. They can own distribution systems for prostitution. They can use public relations to promote it. They can make profits. Men who pay for prostitution support this machinery. The state that permits prostitution supports this machinery. The only way to fight capitalism, racism and protect women is to stop men from buying prostitutes. And once that happens, we can mobilize against the industry and the state to benefit the whole anti-racist and anti-capitalist struggle. But men will have to accept feminist leadership. They will have to listen to us. And they will have to give up the self-indulgence of prostitution.”“The left broke apart in the 1970s over the failure to contend with racism, imperialism and women’s freedom,” she told me. “These are still the fault lines. We have to build alliances across these gaps. But there are deal breakers. You can’t buy women. You can’t beat women. You can’t expect us to coalesce on the ‘wider’ issues unless you accept this. The problem with the left is it is afraid of words like ‘morality.’ The left does not know how to distinguish between right and wrong. It does not understand what constitutes unethical behavior.”She warns that backing movements such as Defund the Police are counterproductive. The problem is not policing, the problem is the misuse of the police and the courts to protect the powerful, especially powerful men.“In the progressive left it is popular to be anti-state,” she said. “It is not popular to say we have to press the state to carry out particular policies. But all resistance has to be precise. It has to reshape society step by step. We can’t abandon people. This is hard for the left to get. It is not, for us, a rhetorical position. It comes from our answering the rape crisis line every day. There is cheap, thin rhetoric from the left about compassion for the prostituted, without ever doing anything concrete for the prostituted.”She has been boycotted. Grants and funds are denied, especially since the shelter does not allow “male bodied” people who identify as women to take refuge there. Many in the shelter are victims of rape and they need to know, Lee argues, that they can heal and recover in a space where biological males are not present. She has been shamed at public events, attacked as homophobic, “transphobic,” hyper-moralistic, pro-state, “hateful” of men and “anti-sex.”The battle she and the other feminists fight have its origins in not only patriarchy, but settler colonialism and imperialism, systems of power and exploitation where women are viewed as commodities and rape is ubiquitous.“For women of color, prostitution is an extension of imperialism,” Alice Lee said. “It is sexualized racism. Prostitution is built on the social power disparities of race and class. Women of color are disproportionately exploited through prostitution. This racism is not acknowledged by those in First World countries, including the left. When the left argues prostitution is a choice, its purpose is to cement the sexualized racism and the status quo of men’s access to our bodies. Sexualized racism renders us invisible and irrelevant. It makes it impossible for us to be considered human.”“The global trade, particularly of Asian women, has been steadily worsened by the neoliberal policies of First World countries,” said Alice, part of the Asian Women Coalition Ending Prostitution. “These policies are grounded in social disparities of race, class and gender. They create conditions that force poor women to migrate and funnels women of color into prostitution. Those who support legalizing prostitution often argue that trafficking is bad, but prostitution is acceptable. But trafficking and prostitution are inseparable.”Women and girls from indigenous communities are especially vulnerable.“Indigenous women get beat up and killed because of prostitution more than anyone else,” Lee told me. “They have less access to police and less access to support. This is where the rubber hits the road. If you’re not willing to arrest men for endangering the prostituted indigenous women in the Downtown Eastside, how the hell do you call yourself a leftist or a revolutionary? How do you call yourself a decent human being? And if the people around you don’t call you out, who are you to say you’re leading us to a better future or a better life?”“When some women are bought and sold,” said Hilla Kerner, who when I interviewed her had worked at the shelter for 10 years, “all women can be bought and sold. When some women are objectified, all women are objectified.”I included the interviews, which I have quoted from here, in a column titled “The Whoredom of the Left.” Liberals were not pleased. I was scheduled to give the keynote address six weeks later at Simon Fraser University for a conference on the climate crisis and the efforts to halt the extraction of fossil fuels. The conference organizers disinvited me. They said they would pay me the lecture fee, but I should not bother attending.What they did not anticipate was that Lee and other feminists would mount a nationwide campaign to shame the university. I was reinvited but my lecture, scheduled in a large auditorium, was moved to a smaller hall that sat 300 people. My class visits were canceled. Those on the wait-list were told not to come to the event because there were no seats. There was a reception, but when I arrived it was boycotted.I have faced this kind of shunning and hostility before. It is not pleasant. But this time I did not face it alone. Ten women from the shelter and Asian Women Coalition Ending Prostitution, most of whom crashed the event without tickets, joined me. This public solidarity and willingness to face an antagonistic crowd speaks not only to their courage, but their integrity. I was very moved. Of course, I focused the talk on the exploitation of women and girls.“Hedges’ Keynote Sparks Controversy,” read the headline in the Watershed Sentinel.“Advocates from both camps chimed in online, some radical feminists denounced Hedges, and a few State of Extraction organizers tried to cancel his opening address,” the article read. “But attend he did, and as to be expected from an unbridled social critic, Hedges’ keynote address on Friday night continued to rattle some chains. Eloquently and with the rolling cadence of a seasoned preacher, Hedges described how the extraction industry gives predatory power to men and launched into a graphic account of sexual exploitation of women and girls, (particularly those of color), under global capitalism. He gave a callout to men and the left to ‘stand with all who are turned into objects, especially girls and women’.”“What is done to girls and women through prostitution is a version of what is done to all of those who do not sign on to the demented project of global capitalism,” I told the crowd. “And if we have any chance of fighting back, we will have to stand up for all the oppressed, all of those who have become prey. To fail to do this will be to commit moral and finally political suicide. To turn our backs on some of the oppressed is to fracture our power. It is to obliterate our moral authority. It is to fail to see that the entire system of predatory exploitation seeks to swallow and devour us all. To be a radical is to stand with all who are turned into objects, especially girls and women whom the global community, and much of the left, has abandoned.”Lee’s clash with the university, a clash in which she triumphed, was national news. There was a lot of press.“I know we disagree on this issue, but we have most everything else in common,” one of the reporters said, turning to Alice Lee.Alice stared at him icily.“You and I have nothing in common.” she said.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

Text Originally posted Dec, 04, 2024We do not yet know the motive for the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. But it would not surprise me if the killer stalked Thompson because UnitedHealthcare had denied medical coverage, or forced a family or an individual into bankruptcy, after the company failed to cover a serious illness. Insurers reject about 1 in 7 claims for treatment, often by deciding the treatment is not “medically necessary.”Among 10 high-income nations, the United States spends the most on health care but has the worst health outcomes. Americans die four years earlier than their counterparts in other industrialized nations.There are more than 200 million Americans who rely on private health insurance, but once they become seriously ill, they are often tossed aside, left with crippling medical bills and unable to receive adequate treatment. Exorbitant medical bills account for about 40 percent of bankruptcies. Many of those driven into bankruptcy because of medical bills had medical insurance.The revenue of six largest insurers -- Anthem, Centene, Cigna, AVS/Aetna, Humana and UnitedHealth -- have more than quadrupled from 2010 to $1.1 trillion. Combined revenues of the 3 biggest -- United, CVS/Aetna and Cigna -- have quintupled.These corporations, in moral terms, are legally permitted to hold sick children hostage while their parents bankrupt themselves to save their sons or daughters. That many die, at the very least premature deaths, because of these policies is indisputable.Nothing absolves the killer of Thompson, but nothing absolves those who run for-profit health care corporations that embrace a business model that destroys and terminates lives in the name of profit.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

Text Originally published Oct. 30, 2024Bibi on Board - by Mr. FishA United Nations report, published on Monday, lays out in chilling detail the advances made by Israel in Gaza as it seeks to eradicate “the very existence of the Palestinian people in Palestine.” This genocidal project, the report ominously warns, “is now metastasizing to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.” The Nakba or “catastrophe,” which in 1948 saw Zionist militias drive 750,000 Palestinians from their homes, carry out more than 70 massacres and seize 78 percent of historic Palestine, has returned on steroids. It is the next and, perhaps, final chapter in “a long-term intentional, systematic, State-organized forced displacement and replacement of the Palestinians.”Francesca Albanese, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, who issued the report, titled “Genocide as colonial erasure,” makes an urgent appeal to the international community to impose a full arms embargo and sanctions on Israel until the genocide of Palestinians is halted. She calls on Israel to accept a permanent ceasefire. She demands that Israel, as required by international law and U.N. resolutions, withdraw its military and colonists from Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. At the very least, Israel, unchecked, should be formally recognized as an apartheid state and persistent violator of international law, Albanese states. The U.N. should reactivate the Special Committee Against Apartheid to address the situation in Palestine, and Israel’s membership in the U.N. should be suspended. Short of these interventions, Israel’s goal, Albanese warns, will likely come into fruition.You can see my interview with Albanese here.“This ongoing genocide is doubtlessly the consequence of the exceptional status and protracted impunity that has been afforded to Israel.” she writes. “Israel has systematically and flagrantly violated international law, including Security Council resolutions and [International Criminal Court] ICJ orders. This has emboldened the hubris of Israel and its defiance of international law. As the ICC Prosecutor has warned, ‘if we do not demonstrate our willingness to apply the law equally, if it is seen as applied selectively, we will be creating the conditions of its complete collapse. This is the true risk we face at this perilous moment.’”The U.N. report comes amid an Israeli blockade of northern Gaza where over 400,000 Palestinians are enduring a starvation siege and constant airstrikes in an attempt to depopulate the north. Israeli forces have killed 1,250 Palestinians in the assault, launched on October 5, a medical source told Al Jazeera. Reports from northern Gaza are difficult to obtain as internet and phone services have been cut and the few journalists on the ground continue to be killed. Israel’s ground and aerial assaults are centered on Jabaliya, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun. Civil defense units say they have been barred by Israeli forces from reaching the sites of recent strikes and their crews have been attacked. Israel has ordered Palestinians to flee to designated “safe zones,” but once in these “safe zones” they have been attacked and ordered to move to new “safe zones.” “Displaced people have been systematically chased down and targeted in shelters, including in United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) schools, 70 percent of which Israel has repeatedly attacked.” In May, Israel’s Rafah invasion caused the displacement of nearly one million Palestinians, driven into southern Gaza because of Israeli evacuation orders, into “uninhabitable wastelands of rubble, sewage and decomposing bodies,” Albanese notes.By August, 90 percent of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million Palestinians were displaced “under dire conditions,” according to the U.N.The months of “relentless shunting of weakened humans from one unsafe area to another — fleeing bombs and bullets, with minimal chances of escape, amid loss, fear and grief, and with little access to shelter, clean water, food and healthcare — have inflicted incalculable harm, especially on children,” the report reads. “The movement of displaced Palestinians resembles the death marches of past genocides, and the Nakba. Forced displacement severs connection with the land, undermining food sovereignty and cultural belonging, and triggering further displacement. Communal bonds are broken, the social fabric shredded and reserves of resilience depleted. Systematic forced displacement contributes to ‘the destruction of the spirit, of the will to live, and of life itself.’”The constant displacement — many Palestinians have been displaced nine or 10 times — from one part of Gaza to another is accompanied by calls from Israeli officials to “renew settlements in Gaza” and encourage the “voluntary transfer of all Gazan citizens” to other countries. Israel has killed at least 43,163 people in Gaza and wounded 101,510 in Israeli attacks since October 7, 2023. An estimated 1,139 people were killed – some by Israeli forces – in Israel during the incursion by armed Palestinian fighters into Israel and more than 200 were taken captive. In Lebanon, at least 2,787 people have been killed and 12,772 wounded since the Israeli assault on Gaza began, with 77 killed in strikes across the country on Tuesday alone.The report found evidence that Israel has carried out “more than 93 massacres.” U.N. investigators concede the numbers of dead in Gaza are probably a vast undercount given that at least 10,000 people, including 4,000 children, are missing, probably buried under the rubble, where “the voices of those trapped and dying are often audible.” Other Palestinians, an “uncertain number,” have been seized by Israel forces and “disappeared.”Israel has repeatedly attacked aid distribution sites, tent encampments, hospitals, schools and markets “through the indiscriminate use of aerial and sniper fire.” The report notes that “at least 13,000 children, including more than 700 babies, have been killed, many shot in the head and chest” while approximately “22,500 Palestinians have sustained life-changing injuries.”“The disturbing frequency and callousness of the killing of people known to be civilians are ‘emblematic of the systematic nature’ of a destructive intent,” the report reads. “Six-year-old Hind Rajab, killed with 355 bullets after pleading for help for hours; the fatal mauling by dogs of Muhammed Bhar, who had Down’s Syndrome; the execution of Atta Ibrahim Al-Muqaid, an older deaf man, in his home, later bragged about by his killer and other soldiers on social media; the premature babies deliberately left to die a slow death and decompose in the intensive care unit at Al-Nasr Hospital; the elderly man, Bashir Hajji, killed en route to southern Gaza after appearing in a propaganda photograph of a ‘safe corridor;’ Abu al-Ola, the handcuffed hostage shot by a sniper after being sent into Nasser Hospital with evacuation orders. When the dust settles on Gaza, the true extent of the horror experienced by Palestinians will become known.”The genocide has turned the landscape into a toxic wasteland.“Nearly 40 million tons of debris, including unexploded ordnance and human remains, contaminate the ecosystem,” the report goes on. “More than 140 temporary waste sites and 340,000 tons of waste, untreated wastewater and sewage overflow contribute to the spread of diseases such as hepatitis A, respiratory infections, diarrhea and skin diseases. As Israeli leaders promised, Gaza has been made unfit for human life.”In a further blow, the Israeli parliament on Monday approved a bill to ban UNRWA, a lifeline for Palestinians in Gaza, from operating on Israeli territory and areas under Israel’s control. The ban almost certainly ensures the collapse of aid distribution, already crippled, in Gaza.As of Oct. 20,  233 UNRWA workers have been killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023, making it the deadliest conflict for U.N. workers.Israel has expanded its “buffer zone” along the Gaza perimeter to 16 percent of the territory, in the process leveling homes, apartment blocks and farms. It has pushed over 84 percent of the 2.3 million people in Gaza into  “a shrinking, unsafe ‘humanitarian zone’ covering 12.6 percent of a territory now reconfigured in preparation for annexation.” Satellite imagery indicates that the Israeli military has built roads and military bases in over 26 percent of Gaza, “suggesting the aim of a permanent presence.” The blockade of food is accompanied by the destruction of water treatment plants, sewage systems, reservoirs, aid convoys, healthcare facilities and food distribution points — crowds of desperate people waiting for food “have been massacred” by Israeli soldiers. Israel has all but obliterated medical facilities and services in Gaza. It has damaged 32 of 36 hospitals, with 20 hospitals and 70 of 119 primary healthcare centers incapacitated. By this August it had attacked healthcare facilities 492 times. Israel besieged Al-Shifa Hospital for the second time in March and April, killing more than 400 people and detaining 300, including doctors, patients, displaced persons and civil servants. It carried out a forced evacuation of all but 100 of 650 patients in Al-Aqsa hospital.“In August,” the report reads, “entry permits for humanitarian organizations nearly halved. Access to water has been restricted to a quarter of pre-7 October levels. Approximately 93 per cent of the agricultural, forestry and fishing economies has been destroyed; 95 per cent of Palestinians face high levels of acute food insecurity, and deprivation for decades to come.”“In recent months, 83 percent of food aid was prevented from entering Gaza, and the civilian police in Rafah were repeatedly targeted, impairing distribution,” the report notes. “At least 34 deaths from malnutrition were recorded by 14 September 2024.”These measures “indicate an intent to destroy its population through starvation.”Palestinians detained by Israeli forces “have been systematically abused in a network of Israeli torture camps. Thousands have disappeared, many after being detained in appalling conditions, often bound to beds, blindfolded and in diapers, deprived of medical treatment, subjected to unsanitary conditions, starvation, torturous cuffing, severe beatings, electrocution and sexual assault by both humans and animals. At least 48 detainees have died in custody.”The report cites the role of the Israeli media in “inciting” the genocide “by helping to foster an unchecked genocidal climate.” The report criticizes the Israeli media for platforming “proponents of genocide” and withholding “facts from the Israeli public.” At the same time, the Israeli military has killed over 130 Palestinian journalists. Palestinians are equated with the Amalek, the Biblical enemies of the Israelites, as well as Nazis, to justify their extermination.Albanese’s report, in a section titled “Risk of genocide in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem,” notes that Israel has accelerated its lethal attacks, detentions and land seizures in the West Bank. “Genocidal conduct in Gaza set an ominous precedent for the West Bank,” it notes.In May 2024, the governance of the West Bank was “officially transferred from military to civilian authorities — further de jure annexation — and placed under [Bezalel] Smotrich, a committed Eretz Yisrael politician,” the report reads. “The largest single land appropriation in 30 years was then approved.” Smotrich, the Minister of Finance, claims there are “two million Nazis” in the West Bank. He has threatened to turn parts of the West Bank into “ruined cities like in the Gaza strip” and stated that starving the entire Gaza population was “justified and moral,” even if two million people died. Minister of Foreign Affairs Israel Katz has also called for the West Bank to receive the same treatment as Gaza.Thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank towns of Jenin, Nablus, Qalqilya, Tubas and Tulkarem live for days under curfew, making it difficult to access food and water. As in Gaza, the Israeli army, during its Operation Summer Camps, has “targeted ambulances, blocked entrances to hospitals and laid siege to Jenin Hospital. Bulldozers destroyed streets and electricity and public health infrastructure.” Drones and war planes carry out airstrikes. Israeli roadblocks, checkpoints and blockades make travel difficult or impossible. Israel has suspended financial transfers to the Palestinian Authority, which nominally governs the West Bank in collaboration with Israel. It has revoked 148,000 work permits for those who had jobs in Israel.“The gross domestic product (GDP) of the West Bank contracted by 22.7 percent, nearly 30 percent of businesses have closed, and 292,000 jobs have been lost,” the report reads. Over 692 Palestinians — “10 times the previous 14 years’ annual average of 69 fatalities,” have been killed and more than 5,000 have been injured. Of the 169 Palestinian children who have been killed, “nearly 80 percent were shot in the head or the torso.”Since August, in the Jenin refugee camp “approximately 180 homes were levelled and 3,800 structures damaged, destroying or damaging power supplies, public services and amenities, displacing thousands of families and causing widespread disruption. More than 181,000 Palestinians have been affected, many multiple times.”  The report dismisses the claim that Israel is carrying out the assault in Gaza and the West Bank to “defend itself,” “eradicate Hamas” or “bring the hostages home,” charging that these claims are “camouflage,” a way of “invisibilizing the crime.” Genocidal intent, as Judge Dalveer Bhandari from the ICJ points out, “may exist simultaneously with other, ulterior motives.”Rather, the incursion into Israel by Hamas and other resistance fighters on Oct. 7 “provided the impetus to advance towards the goal of a ‘Greater Israel.’” “In the context of Israel ignoring the ICJ directive to end the unlawful occupation, the aim to eradicate resistance contradicts the rights to self-determination and to resist an oppressive regime, protected by Customary International Law,” the report reads. “It also portrays the entire population as engaged in resistance and therefore eliminable. By continuing to suppress the right to self-determination, Israel is replicating historical instances in which self-defence, counter-insurgency or counter-terrorism were used to justify destruction of the group, leading to genocide.”It notes that Israel, rather than abiding by the 1993 Oslo Accords, which were supposed to lead to a two-state solution, increased its colonies in the West Bank from 128 to 358 and the numbers of Jewish settlers “have grown from 256,400 to 714,600.” Israel passed the 2018 Nation State Law that asserts exclusive Jewish sovereignty over “Eretz Yisrael” and names “Jewish settlement” on occupied Palestinian land a “national priority.” It cultivates “a political doctrine that frames Palestinian assertions of self-determination as a security threat to Israel” and uses it “to legitimize permanent occupation.”“The current intent to destroy the people as such could not be more evident from Israeli conduct when viewed in its totality,” the report states.A leaked Israeli Ministry of Intelligence “concept paper” from October 2023 outlines the plan to expel the entire Gaza population to Egypt and recolonize Gaza. It is a plan Israel appears to be following.Albanese writes that Israel is replicating the patterns of past genocides. It creates through its rhetoric a “vengeful atmosphere” that conditions soldiers to be “willing executioners.” It claims it is acting in self-defense while targeting a civilian population. It is obliterating the infrastructure that sustains life, a process of “genocide by attrition.” It uses starvation as a weapon. It is attempting to hide its crimes by killing Palestinian journalists and U.N. workers and blocking international agencies and the international media from Gaza. We have seen genocide before. We have also seen the complicity or silence of nations that have the power to intervene. History doesn’t repeat itself, but too often it rhymes.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. 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Text originally filed Nov. 6, 2024The Mourning After - by Mr. FishIn the end, the election was about despair. Despair over futures that evaporated with deindustrialization. Despair over the loss of 30 million jobs in mass layoffs. Despair over austerity programs and the funneling of wealth upwards into the hands of rapacious oligarchs. Despair over a liberal class that refuses to acknowledge the suffering it orchestrated under neoliberalism or embrace New Deal type programs that will ameliorate this suffering. Despair over the futile, endless wars, as well as the genocide in Gaza, where generals and politicians are never held accountable. Despair over a democratic system that has been seized by corporate and oligarchic power. This despair has been played out on the bodies of the disenfranchised through opioid and alcoholism addictions, gambling, mass shootings, suicides — especially among middle-aged white males — morbid obesity and the investment of our emotional and intellectual life in tawdry spectacles and the allure of magical thinking, from the absurd promises of the Christian right to the Oprah-like belief that reality is never an impediment to our desires. These are the pathologies of a deeply diseased culture, what Friedrich Nietzsche calls an aggressive despiritualized nihilism.Donald Trump is a symptom of our diseased society. He is not its cause. He is what is vomited up out of decay. He expresses a childish yearning to be an omnipotent god. This yearning resonates with Americans who feel they have been treated like human refuse. But the impossibility of being a god, as Ernest Becker writes, leads to its dark alternative -- destroying like a god. This self-immolation is what comes next. Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party, along with the establishment wing of the Republican Party, which allied itself with Harris, live in their own non-reality-based belief system. Harris, who was anointed by party elites and never received a single primary vote, proudly trumpeted her endorsement by Dick Cheney, a politician who left office with a 13 percent approval rating. The smug, self-righteous “moral” crusade against Trump stokes the national reality television show that has replaced journalism and politics. It reduces a social, economic and political crisis to the personality of Trump. It refuses to confront and name the corporate forces responsible for our failed democracy. It allows Democratic politicians to blithely ignore their base -  77 percent of Democrats and 62 percent of independents support an arms embargo against Israel. The open collusion with corporate oppression and refusal to heed the desires and needs of the electorate neuters the press and Trump  critics. These corporate puppets stand for nothing, other than their own advancement. The lies they tell to working men and women, especially with programs such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), do far more damage than any of the lies uttered by Trump.Oswald Spengler in “The Decline of the West” predicted that, as Western democracies calcified and died, a class of “monied thugs,” people such as Trump, would replace the traditional political elites. Democracy would become a sham. Hatred would be fostered and fed to the masses to encourage them to tear themselves apart.The American dream has become an American nightmare.The social bonds, including jobs that gave working Americans a sense of purpose and stability, that gave them meaning and hope, have been sundered. The stagnation of tens of millions of lives, the realization that it will not be better for their children, the predatory nature of our institutions, including education, health care and prisons, have engendered, along with despair, feelings of powerlessness and humiliation. It has bred loneliness, frustration, anger and a sense of worthlessness.“When life is not worth living, everything becomes a pretext for ridding ourselves of it … ,” Émile Durkheim writes. “There is a collective mood, as there is an individual mood, that inclines nations to sadness. … For individuals are too closely involved in the life of society for it to be sick without their being affected. Its suffering inevitably becomes theirs.”Decayed societies, where a population is stripped of political, social and economic power, instinctively reach out for cult leaders. I watched this during the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. The cult leader promises a return to a mythical golden age and vows, as Trump does, to crush the forces embodied in demonized groups and individuals that are blamed for their misery. The more outrageous cult leaders become, the more cult leaders flout law and social conventions, the more they gain in popularity. Cult leaders are immune to the norms of established society. This is their appeal. Cult leaders seek total power. Those who follow them grant them this power in the desperate hope that the cult leaders will save them.All cults are personality cults. Cult leaders are narcissists. They demand obsequious fawning and total obedience. They prize loyalty above competence. They wield absolute control. They do not tolerate criticism. They are deeply insecure, a trait they attempt to cover up with bombastic grandiosity. They are amoral and emotionally and physically abusive. They see those around them as objects to be manipulated for their own empowerment, enjoyment and often sadistic entertainment. All those outside the cult are branded as forces of evil, prompting an epic battle whose natural expression is violence.We will not convince those who have surrendered their agency to a cult leader and embraced magical thinking through rational argument. We will not coerce them into submission. We will not find salvation for them or ourselves by supporting the Democratic Party. Whole segments of American society are now bent on self-immolation. They despise this world and what it has done to them. Their personal and political behavior is willfully suicidal. They seek to destroy, even if destruction leads to violence and death. They are no longer sustained by the comforting illusion of human progress, losing the only antidote to nihilism.Pope John Paul II in 1981 issued an encyclical titled “Laborem exercens,” or “Through Work.” He attacked the idea, fundamental to capitalism, that work was merely an exchange of money for labor. Work, he wrote, should not be reduced to the commodification of human beings through wages. Workers were not impersonal instruments to be manipulated like inanimate objects to increase profit. Work was essential to human dignity and self-fulfillment. It gave us a sense of empowerment and identity. It allowed us to build a relationship with society in which we could feel we contributed to social harmony and social cohesion, a relationship in which we had purpose.The pope castigated unemployment, underemployment, inadequate wages, automation and a lack of job security as violations of human dignity. These conditions, he wrote, were forces that negated self-esteem, personal satisfaction, responsibility and creativity. The exaltation of the machine, he warned, reduced human beings to the status of slaves. He called for full employment, a minimum wage large enough to support a family, the right of a parent to stay home with children, and jobs and a living wage for the disabled. He advocated, in order to sustain strong families, universal health insurance, pensions, accident insurance and work schedules that permitted free time and vacations. He wrote that all workers should have the right to form unions with the ability to strike.We must invest our energy into organizing mass movements to overthrow the corporate state through sustained acts of mass civil disobedience. This includes the most powerful weapon we possess – the strike. By turning our ire on the corporate state, we name the true sources of power and abuse. We expose the absurdity of blaming our demise on demonized groups such as undocumented workers, Muslims or Blacks. We give people an alternative to a corporate-indentured Democratic Party that cannot be rehabilitated. We make possible the restoration of an open society, one that serves the common good rather than corporate profit. We must demand nothing less than full employment, guaranteed minimum incomes, universal health insurance, free education at all levels, robust protection of the natural world and an end to militarism and imperialism. We must create the possibility for a life of dignity, purpose and self-esteem. If we do not, it will ensure a Christianized fascism and ultimately, with the accelerating ecocide, our obliteration.Thanks for reading The Chris Hedges Report! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

Text originally published Oct. 06, 2024Roger Hallam — by Mr. FishNorfolk, U.K. — I am sitting with Roger Hallam, his gray hair pulled back in a ponytail, in the visitor’s room at HM Prison Wayland. On the walls are large photographs of families picnicking on lawns, verdant meadows and children playing. The juxtaposition of the photographs, no doubt hung to give the prison visiting room a homey feel, is jarring. There is no escaping, especially with prison guards circulating around us, where we are. Roger and I sit on squat upholstered chairs and face each other across from a low, white plastic table. Roger’s lanky frame tries to adjust to furniture designed to accommodate children.   Roger, one of the founders of Extinction Rebellion, Insulate Britain and Just Stop Oil, is serving a five-year prison sentence for “causing a public nuisance without reasonable excuse.”He and his four co-defendants, who each received four-year sentences, were convicted for hosting a Zoom call in 2022 to organize activists to climb onto bridges over the M25, the main motorway that circles Greater London. The short-term aim was to stop traffic. The long-term aim was to force the government to stop new oil and gas licenses. This was not a symbolic protest, exemplified by protesters hurling tomato soup at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, preserved by protective glass, in the National Gallery in London. It was a protest designed to disrupt, as it did, commerce and the machinery of state. Although even the protestors who tossed soup at the painting, which was not damaged, received harsh prison terms of nearly three years.Global warming is expected to exceed 1.5 degree Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) in the 2020s and 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Farenheit) before 2050, according to a 2023 study published in the Oxford Open Climate Change journal. NASA scientists warn that “a 2-degree rise in global temperatures is considered a critical threshold above which dangerous and cascading effects of human-generated climate change will occur.” The more the planet warms, the more extreme events such as severe droughts, heat waves, intense storms, and heavy rainfall intensify. The extinction of animal and plant life — one million plant and animal species are currently threatened with extinction — accelerates.We are on the verge of tipping points, thresholds beyond which ice sheets, ocean circulation patterns, and other components of the climate system sustain and accelerate irreversible changes. There are also tipping points in ecosystems, which can become so degraded that no effort to save them can halt the effects of runaway climate change. At that point “feedback loops” see environmental catastrophes accelerate each other. The game will be up. Nothing will save us.Mass death from climate disasters is becoming the norm. The official death toll from Hurricane Helene is at least 227, making it the deadliest in mainland U.S. since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In North Carolina, South Carolina and northern Georgia 1.1 million people remain without power. Mountain towns, without electricity and cell phone service, are cut off. Hundreds of people are missing with many of them feared dead. Anywhere from 5,000 to 15,000 people were killed last year in a single night by Cyclone Daniel in Libya.These climate catastrophes, which occur routinely in the Global South, will soon characterize life for all of us. “A billion refugees, the worst episode of suffering in human history,” Roger says of the 2 degrees Celsius mark, “and then human extinction.”And yet with the devastation outside their doors, including the Southwest United States enduring the highest temperatures ever recorded in October — 117 degrees Fahrenheit in Palm Springs — the global oligarchs have no intention of risking their privilege and power by disrupting an economy driven by fossil fuel and animal agriculture, which is responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. Livestock and their byproducts account for 32,000 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) released each year into the atmosphere and 51 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.Instead of a rational response, we get more drilling and oil leases, more catastrophic storms, more wildfires, more droughts, toxic factory farms, the charade of the U.N. Conference of the Parties (COP) summits, the eradication of the rain forests and the false panacea of geoengineering, carbon capture and artificial intelligence. Fossil fuel subsidies have increased worldwide — from  $2 trillion to $7 trillion according to the International Monetary Fund — as governments seek to protect consumers from rising energy prices. This is despite the fact that two years ago, at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, governments promised to phase out fossil fuel subsidies.The governments that facilitate genocide in Gaza are, not surprisingly, the overlords of global genocide. As the Swedish author and professor of human ecology Andreas Malm writes, “the destruction of Palestine is the destruction of the earth.”“The destruction of Gaza is executed by tanks and fighter jets pouring out their projectiles over the land: the Merkavas and the F-16s sending their hellfire over the Palestinians, the rockets and bombs that turn everything into rubble — but only after the explosive force of fossil fuel combustion has put them on the right trajectory,” writes Malm who with Wim Carton wrote “Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown.” “All these military vehicles run on petroleum. So do the supply flights from the US, the Boeings that ferry the missiles over the permanent airbridge. An early, provisional, conservative analysis found that emissions caused during the first 60 days of the war equaled annual emissions of between 20 and 33 low-emitting countries: a sudden spike, a plume of CO2 rising over the debris of Gaza. If I repeat the point here, it is because the cycle is self-repeating, only growing in scale and size: Western forces pulverize the living quarters of Palestine by mobilizing the boundless capacity for destruction only fossil fuels can give.”The genocide is tied to fossil fuels in other ways. “One of the many frontiers of oil and gas extraction is the Levant basin along the coast running from Beirut via Akka to Gaza,” Malm writes. “Two of the major gas fields discovered here, called Karish and Leviathan, are in waters claimed by Lebanon. What does the West think of this dispute? In 2015, Germany sold four warships to Israel so it could better defend its gas platforms against any eventualities. Seven years later, in 2022, as the war in Ukraine caused a crisis on the gas market, the state of Israel was for the first time elevated into a fossil fuel exporter of note, supplying Germany and other EU states with gas as well as crude oil from Leviathan and Karish, which came online in October of that year. 2022 sealed the high status of Israel in this department.”“A year later, Toufan al-Aqsa [the incursion into Israel from the Gaza by Palestinian fighters on Oct. 7, 2023] threw a spanner in the expansion,” Malm notes. “It posed a direct threat to the Tamar gas platform, which can be seen from northern Gaza on a clear day; in the range of rocket fire, the platform was shut down. A major player on the Tamar field is Chevron. On 9 October, the New York Times reported: ‘The fierce fighting could slow the pace of energy investment in the region, just as the eastern Mediterranean’s prospects as an energy center have gained momentum.”Expanding Israeli production requires occupying Gaza’s coastline and the removal of the Palestinians.“Five weeks after 7 October, however, when most of northern Gaza had been comfortably turned into rubble, Chevron resumed operations at the Tamar gas field,” Malm continues. “In February, it announced another round of investment to further bolster output. In late October, the day after the ground invasion of Gaza began, the state of Israel awarded 12 licenses for the exploration of new gas fields — one of the companies picking them up being BP, the very same company that first discovered oil in the Middle East and built the Kirkuk-Haifa pipeline.”The connection between the genocide in Gaza and global mass death is not lost on the Global South, where climate refugees are dying on the open seas and in deserts as they attempt to flee north. UNHCR, the UN’s refugee agency, calculates that weather-related “sudden onset hazards” — such as floods, storms, wildfires and extreme temperatures — forcibly displaced an annual average of 21.5 million people every year between 2008 and 2016. There are now 260 million people in coastal areas — an increase of 100 million from three decades ago — who are at “high risk” of being displaced by rising sea levels. Ninety percent of them live in poor developing countries and small island states.As the ecocide and genocide in Gaza accelerates, we also get more draconian laws to criminalize protests. Laws designed to protect the fossil fuel industry in the U.K. include “conspiracy to interfere with national infrastructure” or the new “lock on” offense that can see a protester who attaches him or herself to an object, land or another person with some form of adhesive or handcuffs, in a manner that is capable of causing serious disruption, go to prison for six months and receive an unlimited fine. The trajectory is clear. Burn the planet. Lock up dissidents. Censorship. Crush those who resist, especially those in the Global South, with industrial weapons and indiscriminate violence. And, if you are part of the privileged class, retreat into gated compounds that provide food, water, medical care, electricity and security that will be denied to the rest of us. In the end, everyone will go the way of the dinosaurs, who, at least, were not responsible for their own demise. The tragedy is that most of the ruling criminal class will probably survive a little longer than the rest of us. Collective suicide will define what we call human progress.The three-week trial for the Just Stop Oil activists, like the court hearings for Julian Assange, denied the accused the right to submit objective evidence. The defendants were not permitted to speak about climate change, the motive for their protest. Roger, defying the ban, attempted to address the jury about the climate crisis. The judge ordered him arrested for contempt of court. He was removed from the courtroom by six police officers. When the judge sentenced Roger and his co-defendants, Daniel Shaw, Louise Lancaster, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu and Cressida Gethin, he told them that they had “crossed the line from concerned campaigner to fanatic.” The five activists were not convicted for taking part in the protests, but for its planning. The evidence used in court to convict them came from an online Zoom meeting that was captured by Scarlet Howes, a reporter posing as a supporter from the tabloid newspaper “The Sun.” No doubt some fossil fuel think tank is dreaming up a journalism prize for Howes now. Sentences for those engaging in climate protests have steadily got harsher, longer than many of the sentences imposed on those who engaged in acts of violence during the racist riots in Southport, as Linda Lakhdhir, the legal director of Climate Rights International, points out. I have long admired Roger, who has on the rust-colored vest all prisoners in the visiting room are required to wear, not only for his courage, but for his belief that resistance against radical evil is a moral imperative. It is not, ultimately, about what we can or cannot achieve. It is about defying, quite literally when we speak of the ecocide, the forces of death to protect and nurture life.I addressed a crowd in London on Sept. 11 to raise money for the legal defense of the five imprisoned activists. The organizers at the Kairos Center played a recorded introduction Roger had sent from his prison cell before my talk. “Change,” he said in the taped message, “comes about not through instrumental reason, that meaning, you do something in order to get something to happen, but rather because you cannot stand by, and so you act, in order to be what you are. The critical reason we’re failing, in my view, is because we buy into the idea that they can oppress us by sending us to prison. While in fact, power resides in our fear of going to prison, not the act of doing it in itself. Once we realize it’s all about fear, we have that lightbulb moment. It’s not what they do to us, it’s how we choose to react that determines their power.”“You carry out the good, not to create good outcomes,” he says to me, “but because it is good, because it’s truthful, because it’s a beautiful thing to do, because it creates a metaphysical harmony, a balance.”The tactics employed over the past few decades by environmentalists — marching, lobbying, voting and petitioning — have failed. In 1900, the burning of fossil fuel — mostly coal — produced about 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide. That number rose threefold by 1950. Today the level is nearly 20 times higher than the 1900 figure. During the six decades the increase in CO2 was 100 times faster than what the earth experienced during the transition from the last ice age, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This is Roger’s seventh time incarcerated in the British prison system which is plagued by a lack of adequate funding, decaying infrastructure, reduced services, staff recruitment and retention issues and severe overcrowding. “When I first went to prison the guards could be sadists, ex-military from our colonial wars,” he says. “Now they are usually polite, but nothing works.”His shoes disintegrated, but his repeated requests for new shoes were ignored. Another prisoner, who had an extra pair, gave them to him.I line up at the small canteen to buy us something to eat. I have been allowed to bring 40 British pounds into the prison. On the menu they have a vegan sausage sandwich. Roger and I are vegan. But when I get to the counter, I am curtly informed the vegan options are unavailable. Roger argues that if 10,000 people are willing to engage in civil resistance, which means accepting prison terms for non-violent civil disobedience, carry out grassroots educational campaigns and mobilize public assemblies, they can ignite one to two percent of the population to embrace the militancy to rupture the existing order.He draws on the research by Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard University, and Maria J. Stephan who examined 100 years of violent and nonviolent resistance movements in their book “Why Civil Resistance Works.” They concluded that nonviolent movements succeed twice as often as violent uprisings. Violent movements work primarily in civil wars or in ending foreign occupations, they found. Nonviolent movements that succeed appeal to those within the power structure, especially the police and civil servants, who are cognizant of the corruption and decadence of the power elite and are willing to abandon them. And we only need one to five percent of the population actively working for the overthrow of a system, history has shown, to bring down even the most ruthless totalitarian structures.“It’s not only about changing the world,” Roger says. “It’s about seeing the world in a different way, one that rejects the narrative of the dominant ideology. It is a re-enchantment of the world. It is about our spirit taking center stage. This is where it belonged all the time. But the spirit only becomes real through action. The spirit is made flesh, to use some old language.”“I am not calling for an individualistic journey to personal enlightenment, which is a contradiction in terms,” he says. “I am not calling for calmness that never leaves your head, that never gets you off the couch and into the streets. The spirit is in the street. The street is the spirit. The spirit is in the prison cell. The time for pretending is over. We are facing the end of the old world, and we are going to have to battle to create what comes next.”And then it is time to leave. We embrace. I promise to mail him books. Those of us in the visiting room are lined up and escorted by the guards through a series of locked doors to the prison courtyard. Roger is paying a steep price for resistance, for the moral life. Henry David Thoreau refused to pay a poll tax to protest the U.S. invasion of Mexico, which he condemned as an effort to seize territory to expand slavery. He was arrested and jailed for tax evasion in 1846.“I say, break the law,” Thoreau wrote in his essay “Civil Disobedience.” “Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.”Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Transcendentalist philosopher whose Divinity School address provoked outrage among the clergy and led Harvard University not to invite him back to speak for another thirty years, visited Thoreau in jail.“Henry, what are you doing in here?” Emerson asked.“What are you doing out there?” Thoreau responded.  This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

Text Originally published Sept. 17, 2024Aysenur Ezgi Eygi - by Mr. FishI know you. I met you in the dense canopies in the war in El Salvador. It was there that I first heard the single, high-pitched crack of the sniper bullet. Distinct. Ominous. A sound that spreads terror. Army units I traveled with, enraged by the lethal accuracy of rebel snipers, set up heavy .50 caliber machine guns and sprayed the foliage overhead until your body, a bloodied and mangled pulp, dropped to the ground.I saw you at work in Basra in Iraq and of course Gaza, where on a fall afternoon at the Netzarim Junction, you shot dead a young man a few feet away from me. We carried his limp body up the road.I lived with you in Sarajevo during the war. You were only a few hundred yards away, perched in high rises that looked down on the city. I witnessed your daily carnage. At dusk, I saw you fire a round in the gloom at an old man and his wife bent over their tiny vegetable plot. You missed. She ran, haltingly, for cover. He did not. You fired again. I concede the light was fading. It was hard to see. Then, the third time, you killed him. This is one of those memories of war I see in my head over and over and over and never talk about. I watched it from the back of the Holiday Inn, but by now I have seen it, or the shadows of it, hundreds of times.You targeted me, too. You struck down colleagues and friends. I was in your sights traveling from northern Albania into Kosovo with 600 fighters from the Kosovo Liberation Army, each insurgent carrying an extra AK-47 to hand off to a comrade. Three shots. That crisp crack, too familiar. You must have been far away. Or maybe you were a bad shot, although you came close. I scrambled for cover behind a rock. My two bodyguards bent over me, panting, the green pouches strapped to their chests packed full of grenades.I know how you talk. The black humor. “Pint sized terrorists” you say of the children you kill. You are proud of your skills. It gives you cachet. You cradle your weapon as if it is an extension of your body. You admire its despicable beauty. This is who you are. A killer. In your society of killers, you are respected, rewarded, promoted. You are numb to the suffering you inflict. Maybe you enjoy it. Maybe you think you are protecting yourself, your identity, your comrades, your nation. Maybe you believe the killing is a necessary evil, a way to make sure Palestinians die before they can strike. Maybe you have surrendered your morality to the blind obedience of the military, subsumed yourself into the industrial machinery of death. Maybe you are scared to die. Maybe you want to prove to yourself and others that you are tough, you can kill. Maybe your mind is so warped that you believe killing is righteous.You are intoxicated by the god-like power to revoke another person’s charter to live on this earth. You revel in the intimacy of it. You see in fine detail through the telescopic sight, the nose and mouth of your victim. The triangle of death. You hold your breath. You pull slowly, gently on the trigger. And then the pink puff. Severed spinal cord. Death. It is over.You were the last person to see Aysenur alive. You were the first person to see her dead. This is you now. And now no one can reach you. You are death’s angel. You are numb and cold. But, I suspect, this will not last. I covered war for a long time. I know, even if you do not, the next chapter of your life. I know what happens when you leave the embrace of the military, when you are no longer a cog in these factories of death. I know the hell you are about to enter.It starts like this. All the skills you acquired as a killer on the outside are useless. Maybe you go back. Maybe you become a gun for hire. But this will only delay the inevitable. You can run, for a while, but you cannot run forever. There will be reckoning. And it is the reckoning I will tell you about. You will face a choice. Live the rest of your life, stunted, numb, cut off from yourself, cut off from those around you. Descend into a psychopathic fog, trapped in the absurd, interdependent lies that justify mass murder. There are killers, years later, who say they are proud of their work, who claim not a moment’s regret. But I have not been inside their nightmares. If this is you then you will never again truly live.Of course, you do not talk about what you did to those around you, certainly not to your family. They think you are a good person. You know this is a lie. The numbness, usually, wears off. You look in the mirror, and if you have any shred of conscience left, your reflection disturbs you. But you repress the bitterness. You escape down the rabbit hole of opioids and alcohol. Your intimate relationships, because you cannot feel, because you bury your self-loathing, disintegrate. This escape works. For a while. But then you go into such darkness that the stimulants you use to blunt your pain begin to destroy you. And maybe that is how you die. I have known many who died like that. And I have known those who ended it quickly. A gun to the head. Between 1973 and 2024, 1,227 Israeli soldiers committed suicide according to official statistics, but the actual number is believed to be far higher. In the U.S. an average of 16 veterans commit suicide every day.I have trauma from war. But the worst trauma I do not have. The worst trauma from war is not what you saw. It is not what you experienced. The worst trauma is what you did. They have names for it. Moral injury. Perpetrator Induced Traumatic Stress. But that seems tepid given the hot, burning coals of rage, the night terrors, the despair. Those around you know something is terribly, terribly wrong. They fear your darkness. But you do not let them into your labyrinth of pain.And then, one day, you reach out for love. Love is the opposite of war. War is about smut. It is about pornography. It is about turning other human beings into objects, maybe sexual objects, but I also mean this literally, for war turns people into corpses. Corpses are the end product of war, what comes off its assembly line. So, you will want love, but the angel of death has made a Faustian bargain. It is this. It is the hell of not being able to love. You will carry this death inside you for the rest of your life. It corrodes your soul. Yes. We have souls. You sold yours. And the cost is very, very high. It means that what you want, what you most desperately need in life, you cannot attain.Then one day, maybe you are a father or a mother or an uncle or an aunt, and a young woman you love, or want to love as a daughter, comes into your life. You see in her, it will come in a flash, Aysenur’s face. The young woman you murdered. Come back to life. Israeli now. Speaking Hebrew. Innocent. Good. Full of hope. The full force of what you did, who you were, who you are, will hit you like an avalanche.You will spend days wanting to cry and not knowing why. You will be consumed by guilt. You will believe that because of what you did the life of this other young woman is in danger. Divine retribution. You will tell yourself this is absurd, but you will believe it anyway. Your life will start to include little offerings of goodness to others as if these offerings will appease a vengeful god, as if these offerings will save her from harm, from death. But nothing can wipe away the stain of murder. Yes. You killed Aysenur. You killed others. Palestinians who you dehumanized and taught yourself to hate. Human animals. Terrorists. Barbarians. But it is harder to dehumanize her. You know, you saw it through your scope, she was no threat. She did not throw rocks, the paltry justification the Israeli army uses to shoot live rounds at Palestinians, including children. You will be overwhelmed with sorrow. Regret. Shame. Grief. Despair. Alienation. You will have an existential crisis. You will know that all the values you were taught to honor in school, at worship, in your home, are not the values you upheld. You will hate yourself. You will not say this out loud. You may, one way or another, extinguish yourself.There is a part of me that says you deserve this torment. There is a part of me that wants you to suffer for the loss you inflicted on Aysenur’s family and friends, to pay for taking the life of this courageous and gifted woman.Shooting unarmed people is not bravery. It is not courage. It is not even war. It is a crime. It is murder. You are a murderer. I am sure you were not ordered to kill Aysenur. You shot Aysenur in the head because you could, because you felt like it. Israel runs an open-air shooting gallery in Gaza and the West Bank. Total impunity. Murder as sport.You will, one day, not be the killer you are now. You will exhaust yourself trying to ward off demons. You will desperately want to be human. You will want to love and be loved. Maybe you will make it. Being human again. But that will mean a life of contrition. It will mean making your crime public. It will mean begging, on your knees, for forgiveness. It will mean forgiving yourself. This is very hard. It will mean orientating every aspect of your life to nurturing life rather than extinguishing it. This will be your only hope for salvation. If you do not take it, you are damned.     The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

Text Originally published July 22, 2024Joe 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.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

Text Originally published July 12, 2024Which Genocide Are You On? - by Mr. FishRAMALLAH, Occupied Palestine: It comes back in a rush, the stench of raw sewage, the groan of the diesel, sloth-like Israeli armored personnel carriers, the vans filled with broods of children, driven by chalky faced colonists, certainly not from here, probably from Brooklyn or somewhere in Russia or maybe Britain. Little has changed. The checkpoints with their blue and white Israeli flags dot the roads and intersections. The red-tiled roofs of the colonist settlements — illegal under international law — dominate hillsides above Palestinian villages and towns. They have grown in number and expanded in size. But they remain protected by blast barriers, concertina wire and watchtowers surrounded by the obscenity of lawns and gardens. The colonists have access to bountiful sources of water in this arid landscape that the Palestinians are denied. The winding 26-foot high concrete wall that runs the 440 mile length of occupied Palestine, with its graffiti calling for liberation, murals with the Al-Aqsa mosque, faces of martyrs and the grinning and bearded mug of Yasser Arafat — whose concessions to Israel in the Oslo agreement made him, in the words of Edward Said, “the Pétain of the Palestinians” — give the West Bank the feel of an open air prison. The wall lacerates the landscape. It twists and turns like some huge, fossilized antediluvian snake severing Palestinians from their families, slicing Palestinian villages in half, cutting communities off from their orchards, olive trees and fields, dipping and rising out of wadis, trapping Palestinians in the Jewish state’s updated version of a Bantustan.It has been over two decades since I reported from the West Bank. Time collapses. The smells, sensations, emotions and images, the lilting cadence of Arabic and the miasma of sudden and violent death that lurks in the air, evokes the old evil. It is as if I never left.  I am in a battered black Mercedes driven by a friend in his thirties who I will not name to protect him. He worked construction in Israel but lost his job — like nearly all Palestinians employed in Israel — on Oct. 7. He has four children. He is struggling. His savings have dwindled. It is getting hard to buy food, pay for electricity, water and petrol. He feels under siege. He is under siege. He has little use for the quisling Palestinian Authority. He dislikes Hamas. He has Jewish friends. He speaks Hebrew. The siege is grinding him, and everyone around him, down.“A few more months like this and we’re finished,” he says puffing nervously on a cigarette. “People are desperate. More and more are going hungry.”We are driving the winding road that hugs the barren sand and scrub hillsides snaking up from Jericho, rising from the salt-rich Dead Sea, the lowest spot on the earth, to Ramallah. I will meet my friend, the novelist Atef Abu Saif, who was in Gaza on Oct. 7 with his 15-year-old son, Yasser. They were visiting family when Israel began its scorched earth campaign. He spent 85 days enduring and writing daily about the nightmare of the genocide. His collection of haunting diary entries have been published in his book “Don’t Look Left.” He escaped the carnage though the border with Egypt at Rafah, traveled to Jordan and returned home to Ramallah. But the scars of the genocide remain. Yasser rarely leaves his room. He does not engage with his friends. Fear, trauma and hatred are the primary commodities imparted by the colonizers to the colonized.“I still live in Gaza,” Atef tells me later. “I am not out. Yasser still hears bombing. He still sees corpses. He does not eat meat. Red meat reminds him of the flesh he picked up when he joined the rescue parties during the massacre in Jabalia, and the flesh of his cousins. I sleep on a mattress on the floor as I did in Gaza when we lived in a tent. I lie awake. I think of those we left behind waiting for sudden death.”We turn a corner on a hillside. Cars and trucks are veering spasmodically to the right and left. Several in front of us are in reverse. Ahead is an Israeli checkpoint with thick boxy blocks of dun colored concrete. Soldiers are stopping vehicles and checking papers. Palestinians can wait hours to get past. They can be hauled from their vehicles and detained. Anything is possible at an Israeli checkpoint, often erected with no advance warning. Most of it is not good.We back up. We descend a narrow, dusty road that veers off from the main highway. We travel on bumpy, uneven tracks through impoverished villages.It was like this for Blacks in the segregated south and Indigenous Americans. It was like this for Algerians under the French. It was like this in India, Ireland and Kenya under the British. The death mask — too often of European extraction — of colonialism does not change. Nor does the God-like authority of colonists who look at the colonized as vermin, who take a perverse delight in their humiliation and suffering and who kill them with impunity. The Israeli customs official asked me two questions when I crossed into occupied Palestine from Jordan on the King Hussein Bridge. “Do you hold a Palestinian passport?” “Are either of your parents Palestinian?” In short, are you contaminated?This is how apartheid works.The Palestinians want their land back. Then they will talk of peace. The Israelis want peace, but demand Palestinian land. And that, in three short sentences, is the intractable nature of this conflict.I see Jerusalem in the distance. Or rather, I see the Jewish colony that lines the hills above Jerusalem. The villas, built in an arc on the hilltop, have windows intentionally narrowed into upright rectangles to double as gun slits.We reach the outskirts of Ramallah. We are held up in the snarl of traffic in front of the sprawling Israeli military base that oversees the Qalandia checkpoint, the primary checkpoint between East Jerusalem and the West Bank. It is the scene of frequent demonstrations against the occupation that can end in gunfire.I meet Atef. We walk to a kebab shop and sit at a small outdoor table. The scars of the latest incursion by the Israeli army are around the corner. At night, a few days ago, Israeli soldiers torched the shops that handle money transfers from abroad. They are charred ruins. Money from abroad will now be harder to get, which I suspect was the point.Israel has dramatically tightened its stranglehold on the more than 2.7 million Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, who are surrounded by more than 700,000 Jewish colonists housed in some 150 strategically placed developments with their own shopping malls, schools and medical centers. These colonial developments along with special roads that can only be used by the colonists and the military, checkpoints, tracts of land that are off limits to Palestinians, closed military zones, Israeli-declared “nature preserves” and military outposts form concentric circles. They can instantly sever the flow of traffic to isolate Palestinians cities and towns into a series of ringed ghettos.“Since Oct. 7 it is hard to travel anywhere in the West Bank,” Atef says. “There are checkpoints at the entrances of every city, town and village. Imagine you want to see your mother or your fiancée. You want to drive from Ramallah to Nablus. It can take seven hours because the main roads are blocked. You are forced to drive through back roads in the mountains.”The trip should take 90 minutes.Israeli soldiers and colonists have killed 528 Palestinian civilians, including 133 children, and injured more than 5,350 others in the West Bank, since Oct. 7, according to the UN human rights chief. Israel has also detained over 9,700 Palestinians — or should I say hostages? — including hundreds of children and pregnant women. Many have been severely tortured, including doctors tortured to death in Israeli dungeons and aid workers killed upon their release. Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has called for the execution of Palestinian prisoners to free up space for more. Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority, was in the past spared the worst of Israeli violence. Since Oct. 7, this has changed. Raids and arrests take place almost daily in and around the city, sometimes accompanied by lethal gunfire and aerial bombardments. Israel has bulldozed or confiscated more than 990 Palestinian dwellings and homes in the West Bank since Oct. 7, at times forcing owners to demolish their own buildings or pay exorbitant fines.Heavily armed Israeli colonists have carried out murderous rampages on villages east of Ramallah, including attacks following the murder of a 14-year-old colonist on April 12 near the village of al Mughayyir. The colonists, in retaliation, burned and destroyed Palestinian homes and vehicles across 11 villages, ripped up roads, killed one Palestinian and wounded more than two dozen others. Israel has ordered the largest West Bank land seizure in more than three decades, confiscating vast tracts of land northeast of Ramallah. The extreme rightwing Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who lives in a Jewish colony and is in charge of colonial expansion, has promised to flood the West Bank with a million new colonists. Smotrich has vowed to obliterate the distinct areas in the West Bank created by the Oslo accords. Area A, which comprises 18 percent of the West Bank, is under exclusive Palestinian control. Area B, nearly 22 percent of the West Bank, is under Israeli military occupation, in collusion with the Palestinian Authority. Area C, over 60 percent of the West Bank, is under total Israeli occupation.“Israel realizes that the world is blind, that no one will force it to end the genocide in Gaza, and no one will pay attention to the war in the West Bank,” Atef says. “The word war is not even used. This is called a normal Israeli military operation, as if what is happening to us is normal. There is no distinction now between the status of the occupied territories, classified as A, B and C. The settlers are confiscating more land. They are carrying out more attacks. They do not need the army. They have become a shadow army, supported and armed by Israel’s rightwing government. We have lived in a continuous war since 1948. This is simply the newest phase.” Jenin and its neighboring refugee camp are assaulted daily by Israeli armed units, undercover commando teams, snipers and bulldozers, which level entire neighborhoods. Drones equipped with machine guns and missiles, as well as warplanes and Apache attack helicopters, circle overhead and obliterate dwellings. Medics and doctors, as in Gaza, are assassinated. Usaid Kamal Jabarin, a 50-year-old surgeon, was killed on May 21 by an Israel sniper as he arrived for work at the Jenin Governmental Hospital. Hunger is endemic.“The Israeli military carries out raids that kill Palestinians and then departs,” Atef says. “But it returns a few days later. It is not enough for the Israelis to steal our land. They seek to kill as many of the original inhabitants as possible. This is why it carries out constant operations. This is why there are constant armed clashes. But these clashes are provoked by Israel. They are the pretext used to continually attack us. We live under constant pressure. We face death daily.”The dramatic escalation of violence in the West Bank is overshadowed by the genocide in Gaza. But it has become a second front. If Israel can empty Gaza, the West Bank will be next.“Israel’s objective has not changed,” he says. “It seeks to shrink the Palestinian population, confiscate larger and larger tracts of Palestinian land and build more and more colonies. It seeks to Judaize Palestine and strip the Palestinians of all the means to sustain themselves. The ultimate goal is the annexation of the West Bank.”“Even at the height of the peace process, when everyone was mesmerized by peace, Israel was turning this peace proposal into a nightmare,” he goes on. “Most Palestinians were opposed to the peace accords Arafat signed in 1993, but still they welcomed him when he returned. They did not kill him. They wanted to give peace a chance. In Israel, the prime minister who signed the Oslo accords was assassinated.” “A few years ago, someone daubed a strange slogan on the wall of the U.N. school east of Jabaliya,” Atef wrote from the hell of Gaza. “‘We progress backwards.’ It has a ring to it. Every new war drags us back to basics. It destroys our houses, our institutions, our mosques and our churches. It razes our gardens and parks. Every war takes years to recover from, and before we’ve recovered, a new war arrives. There are no warning sirens, no messages sent to our phones. War just arrives.”The Jewish settler colonial project is protean. It changes its shape but not its essence. Its tactics vary. Its intensity comes in waves of severe repression and less repression. Its rhetoric about peace masks its intent. It grinds forward with its deadly, perverted, racist logic. And yet, the Palestinians endure, refusing to submit, resisting despite the overwhelming odds, grasping at tiny kernels of hope from bottomless wells of despair. There is a word for this. Heroic.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

The assassination of Trump would not remove the yearning of tens of millions of people, many conditioned by the Christian right, for a cult leader. Most of the leaders of the Christian right have built cult followings of their own. These Christian fascists embraced magical thinking, attacked their enemies as agents of Satan and denounced reality-based science and journalism long before Trump did. Cults are a product of social decay and despair, and our decay and despair are expanding, soon to explode in another financial crisis.The efforts by the Democratic Party and much of the press, including CNN and The New York Times, to discredit Trump, as if our problems are embodied in him, are futile. The smug, self-righteousness of this crusade against Trump only contributes to the national reality television show that has replaced journalism and politics. This crusade attempts to reduce a social, economic and political crisis to the personality of Trump. It is accompanied by a refusal to confront and name the corporate forces responsible for our failed democracy. This collusion with the forces of corporate oppression, which have impoverished the working class, fostered endless war, militarized our police, created the largest prison system in the world, licensed corporations to exploit the most vulnerable and transferred wealth upwards into the hands of a billionaire class, neuters the press, Trump's critics and the Democratic Party.Our only hope is to organize the overthrow of the corporate state that vomited up Trump. Our democratic institutions, including the legislative bodies, the courts and the media, are hostage to corporate power. They are no longer democratic. We must, like resistance movements of the past, engage in acts of sustained mass civil disobedience, especially strikes, and non-cooperation. By turning our ire on the corporate state, rather than Trump, we name the true sources of power and abuse. We expose the absurdity of blaming our demise on demonized groups such as undocumented workers, Muslims, African-Americans, Latinos, liberals, feminists, gays and others. We give people an alternative to a bankrupt Democratic Party — whose presidential candidate is in clear cognitive decline — that is a full partner in corporate oppression and cannot be rehabilitated. We make possible the restoration of an open society. If we fail to embrace this resistance, which alone has the ability to destroy cult leaders, we will continue the march toward tyranny.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

Text originally published July 1, 2024Craig Murray - by Mr. FishBlackburn, England: I am standing with Craig Murray who is running for Parliament in this gritty former mill town. We are on a narrow street with brick row houses that jaggedly descend down a hill. The sky is overcast. There is intermittent rain.Craig, portly, his white hair unkempt and dressed in a clashing checkered shirt with a paisley tie, is handing out leaflets at the entrance of the Masjid e Tauheedul Islam, Blackburn’s largest mosque. He introduces himself politely to those leaving the midday prayers. I speak with about half a dozen of the worshippers, who like most of the Muslim community in Blackburn, are of Indian and Pakistani origin. They curtly dismiss the leaders of the ruling Labour and Conservative parties as out of touch with their lives and concerns, including their outrage over the genocide in Gaza.Craig’s central campaign issue, like that of George Galloway — who was recently elected as MP for Rochdale — is ending the genocide in Gaza, including the halting of all arms shipments to Israel. Craig is running on the ticket of Galloway’s socialist Workers Party of Britain, to counter what he says is the “appalling pro-genocide stance” of the opposition Labour Party, which looks set to win the British elections on July 4, ousting the Conservative Party government led by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.The Labour Party has won the parliamentary elections in Blackburn for the last 69 years. The socialist crusader, Barbara Castle — instrumental in exposing the British atrocities in Kenya, including the deaths of perhaps 300,000 Kikuyu people and the detention of up to 320,000 more in over 100 camps, where prisoners were tortured, murdered and died of disease — previously held this seat, as did the former foreign secretary Jack Straw. Straw was decidedly less progressive. He was one of the architects of the 2003 war in Iraq under former prime minister Tony Blair. Craig challenged Straw for the seat in 2005 on an anti-war platform. He received five percent of the vote.The Labour MP for Blackburn, Kate Hollern, in the last election in 2019, won 64.9 percent of the vote. She deviates from the Labour Party line on Gaza, calling for an immediate ceasefire and a suspension of arms shipments to Israel. She was one of the few party members who remained loyal to Jeremy Corbyn when his campaign to run for prime minister was sabotaged by party apparatchiks close to Blair, who accused him of being an anti-Semite because of his defense of Palestinians.“I have nothing bad to say about the woman really, except that if elected, she would be part of putting Keir Starmer into Number 10 and I have a very great deal against Keir Starmer,” Craig says of his Labour opponent.Straw, although out of Parliament, casts an ominous shadow over Craig’s campaign. For, as in most of the constituencies where Labour is being challenged by candidates that oppose Labour’s support for Israel, a second well-funded independent, devoid of political experience or a public record on nearly all issues, is also running on an anti-genocide platform. In the case of Blackburn, this person is Adnan Hussain. While Hussain spends much of his campaign attacking Craig, Craig has held a series of meetings on Palestine, including one where he, Richard Medhurst and I spoke to a packed hall at Saint Paul’s Methodist church in Blackburn. Craig has also hosted campaign events with Professor David Miller, who was fired in 2021 from the University of Bristol for his criticisms of Israel, and Dr. Bob Gill, who has documented the defunding, outsourcing and marketization of Britain’s National Health Service by all ruling parties since Margaret Thatcher. Roger Waters is scheduled to hold a campaign rally in Blackburn for Craig on July 2.The Muslim media site, 5Pillars, proposed that Craig and Hussain toss a coin to see who should run as an independent against the Labour Party. Craig agreed. Hussain, a 34-year-old lawyer, refused.                                                         “The people behind Hussain’s campaign are Jack Straw’s people,” Craig says. “The people financing and organizing his campaign are Jack Straw’s people. The Labour Party is splitting the challenge. It’s not only here. It’s happening around the country.”Craig’s cluttered second floor campaign office sits on a narrow street above the Mi Chaii cafe on Whalley Range. Covering the windows outside are huge posters and billboards with pictures of public figures, including George Galloway, Roger Waters and Stella Assange, with their brief endorsements supporting Craig’s candidacy.Nearly half of Blackburn’s constituents are Muslim. The town is reputed to have more mosques than any town in Europe. British Muslims, like Muslims in the U.S. who have abandoned Joe Biden, have walked away from the Labour Party because of Starmer’s unequivocal support for Israel. In Blackburn’s local council elections in May, Labour suffered a significant decline in votes.Craig, the former ambassador to Uzbekistan, was pushed out of the Foreign Office after leaking to The Financial Times, in 2004, a memorandum he authored that detailed the CIA torture and extraordinary rendition program in Uzbekistan. Craig says his internal protests to the Foreign Office were ignored.He exposed practices in Uzbek black sites of sexual humiliation, genital mutilation, the rape of men and women, cutting and the dousing of prisoners with boiling liquid, including the death of a prisoner who was immersed in a vat of boiling water.“The Uzbeks were doing it on behalf of the CIA,” he tells me one morning as we sit in his campaign office. “At first, the prisoners were mostly Uzbeks who had been captured in Afghanistan. But latterly, people were being brought in from all over the place.”According to the Council of Europe report on extraordinary rendition, of all the CIA flights that stopped in Poland, 50 percent went to Uzbekistan.Straw, at the time of Craig’s revelations, was the foreign secretary. He pushed for Craig’s prosecution, something the Foreign Office decided against. Caught in a “cash for access” sting, Straw was forced to retire from politics. But he remains a powerbroker in the Labour Party, especially in Blackburn.“This is entirely prompted by the genocide in Gaza,” Craig says of his parliamentary campaign. “I wouldn’t have come back were it not for the genocide in Gaza. Starmer’s attitude to the genocide in Gaza reminds me of Straw’s attitude to torture, extraordinary rendition and the Iraq war. The Labour Party is corrupt. It doesn’t stand for any of the principles the Labour Party is supposed to stand for.”“Gaza represents the dislocation of the political class from the people,” he says. “The people want to stop it, certainly here in the U.K., but they have no leverage. The political class is no longer connected to the people. It is connected to the arms industry, to the lobbyists, particularly the Zionist lobby. That’s where the interests of the political class lie. They don’t care about the people. That’s true of both of the main parties. They suffer no hardship because there’s nobody else likely to be elected. Western democracy has become meaningless. The political class is homogeneous. All of them could move from one of the main parties to the other main party without changing anything. If we’re going to save democracy, we have to offer an actual democratic alternative. Gaza brought that home to people.”Craig, an ardent supporter of Julian Assange, who produced the most erudite reporting on Julian’s many court hearings, spent four months in prison in Edinburgh in the summer of 2022.He was found in media contempt of court for his reporting on the trial of the Scottish independence leader Alex Salmond, who was accused of sexual assault.“It was another example of the state using sexual allegations to undermine and wreck the reputation of an opponent,” he says of Salmond and Julian.The group of women who brought the charges against Salmond were closely connected to the then first minister, Nicola Sturgeon. Craig was jailed for hinting at this fact in his court reports. Salmond was found not guilty.“Over 5,000 individuals wrote to me in jail,” he says. “I answered all those by hand, 50 or 60 letters a day.”“There were quite a lot of illiterate prisoners,” he says. “If you want anything in jail you have to fill in a form. If you cut your foot and need a sticking plaster, you have to fill a form. If you want a family visit you have to fill in a form. Forms would appear under my cell door. Someone would shout through the door what they wanted filled in. A majority of prisoners are there because of poverty. Their crime is poverty. They’ve all been born into deprivation. They’ve had a very poor education. Most of them were born into addiction. The number who are not addicts is tiny. On my entire block, which would be 120 people, there were two people who weren’t addicts and one of them was me.” “Most of them are in jail for very, very petty crimes,” he continues. “They shoplift or burgle or deal small amounts of drugs in order to feed their addiction. And then they get put in jail. They get no treatment for addiction in jail. They get prescribed drugs daily because the guards want to keep them dazed. Every morning they get their fix. They serve two years. They’re released back out again. They go and burgle someone else and get caught and then they’re back in again. Most of them have been in jail five or six times. The number of real criminals, as in violent people or people who have done large scale crime, is tiny. Most of them are very, very sad, incapable people who need help with their lives. They don’t need locking up.”“I hadn’t realized so many people have abject, bleak lives, lives without hope,” he says softly. “Their whole life has been without hope from the day they were born. They never had a chance, never had direction. I thought I was socially aware. I realized I’m not. I didn’t know what it was like at the bottom of society.”“The state has a monopoly on violence and uses it,” he says. “It used extreme violence against Julian Assange, which had a deleterious effect on his health, both mental and physical.”On October 16, 2023, as he was returning from a WikiLeaks meeting in Reykjavik, where he also attended a pro-Palestine demonstration, Craig was detained and interrogated in Glasgow airport under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000. He was questioned about his relationship with WikiLeaks and his support for the Palestinians. He later received a letter informing him that he was under investigation under the Terrorism Act and that his electronic devices, which had been confiscated at the airport, would not be returned. The Terrorism Act 2000 is often used to detain and interrogate politically active individuals, members of “suspect communities” such as Muslims, Tamils and Kurds, and journalists, such as David Miranda, for carrying the Snowden files. Kit Klarenberg of The Grayzone was detained under the 2019 Counter-Terrorism and Border Act, after his report revealed journalist Paul Mason’s close ties to British intelligence.“I’m a traitor in their eyes,” Craig says of the ruling class. “I was an insider, a member of the establishment who turned against the establishment.”“It’s empathy,” he says when I ask him what drives him, “empathy for the people being tortured in Uzbekistan and for their families, for all those who suffer. I was driven by horror at what happened to the victims of the Iraq war. I am driven by horror at what I see happening to the children of Gaza. I hate human suffering. I do my best to alleviate it.”The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

Text Originally Published June 26, 2024Free as a Bird — by Mr. FishThe dark machinery of empire, whose mendacity and savagery Julian Assange exposed to the world, spent 14 years trying to destroy him. They cut him off from his funding, canceling his bank accounts and credit cards. They invented bogus allegations of sexual assault to get him extradited to Sweden, where he would then be shipped to the U.S. They trapped him in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London for seven years after he was given political asylum and Ecuadorian citizenship by refusing him safe passage to Heathrow Airport. They orchestrated a change of government in Ecuador that saw him stripped of his asylum, harassed and humiliated by a pliant embassy staff. They contracted the Spanish security firm UC global in the embassy to record all his conversations, including those with his attorneys. The CIA discussed kidnapping or assassinating him. They arranged for London’s Metropolitan Police to raid the embassy – sovereign territory of Ecuador – and seize him. They held him for five years in the high security HM Prison Belmarsh, often in solitary confinement. And all the while they carried out a judicial farce in the British courts where due process was ignored so an Australian citizen, whose publication was not based in the U.S. and who, like all journalists, received documents from whistleblowers, could be charged under the Espionage Act.They tried over and over and over to destroy him. They failed. But Julian was not released because the courts defended the rule of law and exonerated a man who had not committed a crime. He was not released because the Biden White House and the intelligence community have a conscience. He was not released because the news organizations that published his revelations and then threw him under the bus, carrying out a vicious smear campaign, pressured the U.S. government. He was released — granted a plea deal with the U.S. Justice Department, according to court documents — in spite of these institutions. He was released because day after day, week after week, year after year, hundreds of thousands of people around the globe mobilized to decry the imprisonment of the most important journalist of our generation. Without this mobilization, Julian would not be free.Mass protests do not always work. The genocide in Gaza continues to exact its gruesome toll on Palestinians. Mumia Abu-Jamal is still locked up in a Pennsylvania prison. The fossil fuel industry ravages the planet. But it is the most potent weapon we have to defend ourselves from tyranny. This sustained pressure — during a London hearing in 2020, to my delight, District Judge Vanessa Baraitser of the Old Bailey court overseeing Julian’s case, complained about the noise protestors were making in the street outside — shines a continuous light on injustice and exposes the amorality of the ruling class. This is why spaces in the British courts were so limited and blurry eyed activists lined up outside as early as 4 a.m. to secure a seat for journalists they respected, my spot secured by Franco Manzi, a retired policeman.These people are unsung and often unknown.  But they are heroes. They move mountains. They surrounded parliament. They stood in the pouring rain outside the courts. They were dogged and steadfast. They made their collective voices heard. They saved Julian. And as this dreadful saga ends, and Julian and his family I hope, find peace and healing in Australia, we must honor them. They shamed the politicians in Australia to stand up for Julian, an Australian citizen, and finally Britain and the U.S. had to give up. I do not say to do the right thing. This was a surrender. We should be proud of it. I met Julian when I accompanied his attorney, Michael Ratner, to meetings in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Michael, one of the great civil rights attorneys of our era, stressed that popular protest was a vital component in every case he brought against the state. Without it, the state could carry out its persecution of dissidents, disregard for the law and crimes in darkness. People like Michael, along with Jennifer Robinson, Stella Assange, WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Kristinn Hrafnsson, Nils Melzer, Craig Murray, Roger Waters, Ai WeiWei, John Pilger and Julian’s father John Shipton and brother Gabriel, were instrumental in the fight. But they could not have done it alone.We desperately need mass movements. The climate crisis is accelerating. The world, with the exception of Yemen, stands passive watching a live streamed genocide. The senseless greed of limitless capitalist expansion has turned everything from human beings to the natural world into commodities that are exploited until exhaustion or collapse. The decimation of civil liberties has shackled us, as Julian warned, to an interconnected security and surveillance apparatus that stretches across the globe.The ruling global class has shown its hand. It intends, in the global north, to build climate fortresses and in the global south to use its industrial weapons to lock out and slaughter the desperate the way it is slaughtering the Palestinians.State surveillance is far more intrusive than that employed by past totalitarian regimes. Critics and dissidents are easily marginalized or silenced on digital platforms. This totalitarian structure — the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin called it “inverted totalitarianism” —  is being imposed by degrees. Julian warned us. As the power structure feels threatened by a restive population that repudiates its corruption, amassing of obscene levels of wealth, endless wars, ineptitude and mounting repression, the fangs it exposed to Julian will be exposed to us. The goal of wholesale surveillance, as Hannah Arendt writes in “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” is not, in the end, to discover crimes, “but to be on hand when the government decides to arrest a certain category of the population.” And because our emails, phone conversations, web searches and geographical movements are recorded and stored in perpetuity in government databases, because we are the most photographed and followed population in human history, there will be more than enough “evidence” to seize us should the state deem it necessary. This constant surveillance and personal data waits like a deadly virus inside government vaults to be turned against us. It does not matter how trivial or innocent that information is. In totalitarian states, justice, like truth, is irrelevant.The object of all totalitarian systems is to inculcate a climate of fear to paralyze a captive population. Citizens seek security in the structures that oppress them. Imprisonment, torture and murder are saved for unmanageable renegades such as Julian. The totalitarian state achieves this control, Arendt wrote, by crushing human spontaneity, and by extension human freedom. The population is immobilized  by trauma. The courts, along with legislative bodies, legalize state crimes. We saw all this in the persecution of Julian. It is an ominous harbinger of the future.The corporate state must be destroyed if we are to restore our open society and save our planet. Its security apparatus must be dismantled. The mandarins who manage corporate totalitarianism, including the leaders of the two major political parties, fatuous academics, pundits and a bankrupt media, must be driven from the temples of power. Mass street protests and prolonged civil disobedience are our only hope. A failure to rise up — which is what the corporate state is counting on — will see us enslaved and the earth’s ecosystem become inhospitable to human habitation. Let us take a lesson from the courageous men and women who took to the streets for 14 years to save Julian. They showed us how it is done.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

Text Originally posted May 21, 2024Dust to Dust - by Mr. FishThe decision by the High Court in London to grant Julian Assange the right to appeal the order to extradite him to the United States may prove to be a Pyrrhic victory. It does not mean Julian will elude extradition. It does not mean the court has ruled, as it should, that he is a journalist whose only “crime” was providing evidence of war crimes and lies by the U.S. government to the public. It does not mean he will be released from the high-security HMS Belmarsh prison where, as Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, after visiting Julian there, said he was undergoing a “slow-motion execution.”It does not mean that journalism is any less imperiled. Editors and publishers of  five international media outlets —– The New York Times, the Guardian, Le Monde, El Pais and DER SPIEGEL —– which published stories based on documents released by WikiLeaks, have urged that the U.S. charges be dropped and Julian be released. None of these media executives were charged with espionage. It does not dismiss the ludicrous ploy by the U.S. government to extradite an Australian citizen whose publication is not based in the U.S. and charge him under the Espionage Act. It continues the long Dickensian farce that mocks the most basic concepts of due process.This ruling is based on the grounds that the U.S. government did not offer sufficient assurances that Julian would be granted the same First Amendment protections afforded to a U.S. citizen, should he stand trial. The appeal process is one more legal hurdle in the persecution of a journalist who should not only be free, but feted and honored as the most courageous of our generation.  Yes. He can file an appeal. But this means another year, perhaps longer, in harsh prison conditions as his physical and psychological health deteriorates. He has spent over five years in HMS Belmarsh without being charged. He spent seven years in the Ecuadorian Embassy because the U.K. and Swedish governments refused to guarantee that he wouldn’t be extradited to the U.S., even though he agreed to return to Sweden to aid a preliminary investigation that was eventually dropped.The judicial lynching of Julian was never about justice. The plethora of legal irregularities, including the recording of his meetings with attorneys by the Spanish security firm UC Global at the embassy on behalf of the CIA, alone should have seen the case thrown out of court as it eviscerates attorney-client privilege.The U.S. has charged Julian with 17 counts under the Espionage Act and one count of computer misuse, for an alleged conspiracy to take possession of and then publish national defense information. If found guilty on all of these charges he faces 175 years in a U.S. prison.The extradition request is based on the 2010 release by WikiLeaks of the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs — hundreds of thousands of classified documents, leaked to the site by Chelsea Manning, then an Army intelligence analyst, which exposed numerous U.S. war crimes including video images of the gunning down of two Reuters journalists and 10 other unarmed civilians in the Collateral Murder video, the routine torture of Iraqi prisoners, the covering up of thousands of civilian deaths and the killing of nearly 700 civilians that had approached too closely to U.S. checkpoints.In February, lawyers for Julian submitted nine separate grounds for a possible appeal. A two-day hearing in March, which I attended, was Julian’s last chance to request an appeal of the extradition decision made in 2022 by the then British home secretary, Priti Patel, and of many of the rulings of District Judge Baraitser in 2021. The two High Court judges, Dame Victoria Sharp and Justice Jeremy Johnson, in March rejected most of Julian’s grounds of appeal. These included his lawyers’ contention that the UK-US extradition treaty bars extradition for political offenses; that the extradition request was made for the purpose of prosecuting him for his political opinions; that extradition would amount to retroactive application of the law — because it was not foreseeable that a century-old espionage law would be used against a foreign publisher; and that he would not receive a fair trial in the Eastern District of Virginia. The judges also refused to hear new evidence that the CIA plotted to kidnap and assassinate Julian, concluding — both perversely and incorrectly — that the CIA only considered these options because they believed Julian was planning to flee to Russia.But the two judges determined Monday that it is “arguable” that a U.S. court might not grant Julian protection under the First Amendment, violating his rights to free speech as enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights.The judges in March asked the U.S. to provide written assurances that Julian would be protected under the First Amendment and that he would be exempt from a death penalty verdict. The U.S. assured the court that Julian would not be subjected to the death penalty, which Julian’s lawyers ultimately accepted. But the Department of Justice was unable to provide an assurance that Julian could mount a First Amendment defense in a U.S. court. Such a decision is made in a U.S. federal court, their lawyers explained. Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Kromberg, who is prosecuting Julian, has argued that only U.S. citizens are guaranteed First Amendment rights in U.S. courts. Kromberg has stated that what Julian published was “not in the public interest” and that the U.S. was not seeking his extradition on political grounds.Free speech is a key issue. If Julian is granted First Amendment rights in a U.S. court it will be very difficult for the U.S. to build a criminal case against him, since other news organizations, including The New York Times and The Guardian, published the material he released. The extradition request is based on the contention that Julian is not a journalist and not protected under the First Amendment.Julian’s attorneys and those representing the U.S. government have until May 24 to submit a draft order, which will determine when the appeal will be heard. Julian committed the empire’s greatest sin — he exposed it as a criminal enterprise. He documented its lies, routine violation of human rights, wanton killing of innocent civilians, rampant corruption and war crimes. Republican or Democrat, Conservative or Labour, Trump or Biden — it does not matter. Those who manage the empire use the same dirty playbook.The publication of classified documents is not a crime in the United States, but if Julian is extradited and convicted, it will become one. Julian is in precarious physical and psychological health. His physical and psychological deterioration has resulted in a minor stroke, hallucinations and depression. He takes antidepressant medication and the antipsychotic quetiapine. He has been observed pacing his cell until he collapses, punching himself in the face and banging his head against the wall. He has spent weeks in the medical wing of Belmarsh, nicknamed “hell wing.” Prison authorities found “half of a razor blade” hidden under his socks. He has repeatedly called the suicide hotline run by the Samaritans because he thought about killing himself “hundreds of times a day.” These slow-motion executioners have not yet completed their work. Toussaint L’Ouverture, who led the Haitian independence movement, the only successful slave revolt in human history, was physically destroyed in the same manner. He was locked by the French in an unheated and cramped prison cell and left to die of exhaustion, malnutrition, apoplexy, pneumonia and probably tuberculosis. Prolonged imprisonment, which the granting of this appeal perpetuates, is the point. The 12 years Julian has been detained — seven in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and over five in high-security Belmarsh Prison — have been accompanied by a lack of sunlight and exercise, as well as unrelenting threats, pressure, prolonged isolation, anxiety and constant stress. The goal is to destroy him.We must free Julian. We must keep him out of the hands of the U.S. government. Given all he did for us, we owe him an unrelenting fight. If there is no freedom of speech for Julian, there will be no freedom of speech for us.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe