Articles by: Chris Hedges

Writing on War – And Living in a World from Hell

Writing on War – And Living in a World from Hell

As this century began, I was writing War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, my reflections on two decades as a war correspondent, 15 of them with the New York Times, in Central America, the Middle East, Africa, Bosnia, and Kosovo. I worked in a small, sparsely furnished studio apartment on First Avenue in New York City. The room had a desk,[Read More…]

by 26/10/2022 Comments are Disabled Book Review
"The Bankruptcy of the Liberal Ass." (Cartoon: Mr. Fish)

We Have Seen This Movie Before: The Fascists Have Arrived

The failure of the neoliberal order—which continues to ignore the needs and aspirations of the people—gives fuel to an ascendant far right that feeds on the despair and humiliation of the working class. Energy and food bills are soaring. Under the onslaught of inflation and prolonged wage stagnation, wages are in free fall. Billions of dollars are diverted by Western nations[Read More…]

by 27/09/2022 Comments are Disabled World
Nurses at Children's Minnesota and United Hospital in St. Paul, Minnesota take part in a strike on September 12, 2022. (Photo: John Autey/MediaNews Group/St. Paul Pioneer Press via Getty Images)

Strike, Strike, Strike

Mounting inequality is fueling protests around the globe. The global ruling class is determined to prevent these protests from employing the weapon that can bring them down—strikes. The ruling oligarchs are terrified that, for tens of millions of people, the economic dislocation caused by inflation, stagnant wages, austerity, the pandemic, and the energy crisis is becoming unendurable.  They warn, as Kristalina Georgieva,[Read More…]

by 21/09/2022 Comments are Disabled World
This Time the Collapse Will Be Global

This Time the Collapse Will Be Global

The archeological remains of past civilizations, including those of the prehistoric Cahokia temple mound complex in Illinois, are sobering reminders of our fate. I am standing atop a 100-foot-high temple mound, the largest known earthwork in the Americas built by prehistoric peoples. The temperatures, in the high 80s, along with the oppressive humidity, have emptied the park of all but a[Read More…]

by 17/08/2022 Comments are Disabled World
by Gila National Forest – New Mexico is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 / Flickr

The Global Ruling Class Is Frog-Marching Us Towards Extinction

We were warned for decades about the death march we are on because of global warming. And yet, the global ruling class continues to frog-march us towards extinction. The past week has seen record-breaking heat waves across Europe. Wildfires have ripped through Spain, Portugal and France. London’s fire brigade experienced its busiest day since World War II. The U.K. saw its hottest day on record of 104.54 Fahrenheit. In[Read More…]

by 27/07/2022 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
Plotting War on Iran

Plotting War on Iran

The United States, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, responsible for military fiascos, hundreds of thousands of deaths, and innumerable war crimes in the Middle East, are now plotting to attack Iran. The United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia are plotting a war with Iran. The 2015 Iranian nuclear arms accord, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which Donald Trump sabotaged,[Read More…]

by 18/07/2022 Comments are Disabled World
The Global Ruling Class, Endless War, and the Culture of Mass Death

The Global Ruling Class, Endless War, and the Culture of Mass Death

The global ruling class is cementing into place a world where they govern without accountability, we are reduced to serfdom, the climate crisis accelerates, and mass death is normalized. It is hard to be sanguine about the future. The breakdown of the ecosystem is well documented. So is the refusal of the global ruling elite to pursue measures that might mitigate[Read More…]

by 21/06/2022 1 comment World
On the Worthiness and Unworthiness of War Victims

On the Worthiness and Unworthiness of War Victims

Dividing the world into worthy and unworthy victims is a tactic used to justify our crimes and demonize our enemies. Conflicts will not be solved until all nations abide by international law and all victims are deemed worthy. Rulers divide the world into worthy and unworthy victims, those we are allowed to pity, such as Ukrainians enduring the hell of modern[Read More…]

by 09/03/2022 Comments are Disabled World
The execution of Julian Assange

The execution of Julian Assange

He exposed empire as a criminal enterprise. He documented its lies, its callous disregard for human life, its rampant corruption, and its innumerable war crimes. But, as history shows, empires kill those who inflict deep wounds. Let us name Julian Assange’s executioners. Joe Biden. Boris Johnson. Scott Morrison. Theresa May. Lenin Moreno. Donald Trump. Barack Obama. Mike Pompeo. Hillary Clinton.[Read More…]

by 14/12/2021 Comments are Disabled Human Rights
The Most Important Battle for Press Freedom of Our Time

The Most Important Battle for Press Freedom of Our Time

For the past two days, I have been watching the extradition hearing for Julian Assange via video link from London. The United States is appealing a lower court ruling that denied the US request to extradite Assange not, unfortunately, because in the eyes of the court he is innocent of a crime, but because, as Judge Vanessa Baraitser in January[Read More…]

by 30/10/2021 Comments are Disabled World
Handover ceremony at Camp Anthonic, from US Army to Afghan Special Forces, Helmand province, Afghanistan, May 2, 2021.

A Vengeful American Empire Has Been Humiliated in Afghanistan

The Americans, like the British and the Soviets before them, dug their own graveyard in Afghanistan. The Carthaginian general Hannibal, who came close to defeating the Roman Republic in the Second Punic War, committed suicide in 181 BC in exile as Roman soldiers closed in on his residence in the Bithynian village of Libyssa, now modern-day Turkey. It had been[Read More…]

by 31/08/2021 1 comment World
A wounded Palestinian girl is being brought to Indonesian Hospital to receive medical treatment after Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip, on May 10, 2021 in Beit Lahia, Gaza. (Photo: Ali Jadallah/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Israel Is Carrying Out Mass Murder, Aided and Abetted by the US

Israel is not exercising “the right to defend itself” in the occupied Palestinian territories. It is carrying out mass murder. It is a war crime.  Nearly all the words and phrases used by the Democrats, Republicans and the talking heads on the media to describe the unrest inside Israel and the heaviest Israeli assault against the Palestinians since the 2014[Read More…]

by 15/05/2021 Comments are Disabled Palestine
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks at a news conference with President Donald Trump on February 28, 2019 in Hanoi, Vietnam. U.S. (Photo: Tuan Mark/Getty Images)

War With Iran

The assassination by the United States of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, near Baghdad’s airport will ignite widespread retaliatory attacks against U.S. targets from Shiites, who form the majority in Iraq. It will activate Iranian-backed militias and insurgents in Lebanon and Syria and throughout the Middle East. The existing mayhem, violence, failed states and war,[Read More…]

by 05/01/2020 1 comment World
Chris Hedges: Rebellion Is The Only Way To Stop The Ruling Elites

Chris Hedges: Rebellion Is The Only Way To Stop The Ruling Elites

Clearing the FOG cohosts, Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, interviewed journalist and author Chris Hedges about the significant events of 2019 and what activists must prepare for in 2020 and beyond. Hedges covered uprisings and wars in the Middle East, Balkans, and Central America for twenty years as a foreign correspondent. He has studied and written books about sacrifice zones,[Read More…]

by 03/01/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Time to Rebel

Time to Rebel

Monday, Oct. 7. marks the start of what the British-based group Extinction Rebellion is calling the International Rebellion. Thousands of people will occupy the centers of some 60 cities around the globe, including Madrid, Amsterdam, Paris and New York, to stage nonviolent occupations of bridges and roads for at least a week. The goal is to paralyze commerce to force the[Read More…]

by 07/10/2019 1 comment Climate Change
The Coming Show Trial of Julian Assange

The Coming Show Trial of Julian Assange

On Friday morning I was in a small courtroom at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London. Julian Assange, held in Belmarsh Prison and dressed in a pale-blue prison shirt, appeared on a video screen directly in front of me. Assange, his gray hair and beard neatly trimmed, slipped on heavy, dark-frame glasses at the start of the proceedings. He listened intently[Read More…]

by 18/06/2019 Comments are Disabled World
(Drawing: Mr. Fish/TruthDig)

Chelsea Manning and the New Inquisition

The U.S. government, determined to extradite and try Julian Assange for espionage, must find a way to separate what Assange and WikiLeaks did in publishing classified material leaked to them by Chelsea Manning from what The New York Times and The Washington Post did in publishing the same material. There is no federal law that prohibits the press from publishing government secrets. It is a crime,[Read More…]

by 19/03/2019 Comments are Disabled World
(L-R) Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, Saudi King Salman, and Saudi Arabia's Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman stand together as Saudi Arabia's cabinet agrees to implement a broad reform plan known as Vision 2030 in Riyadh, April 25, 2016. To match Insight SAUDI-PLAN/PRINCE  Saudi Press Agency/Handout/File Photo via REUTERS.    ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS IMAGE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY. EDITORIAL USE ONLY. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVE.  - RTX2CU2M

Giving the Bomb to Saudi Arabia’s Dr. Strangelove

The most dangerous foreign policy decision of the Trump administration—and I know this is saying a lot—is its decision to share sensitive nuclear technology with Saudi Arabia and authorize U.S. companies to build nuclear reactors in that country. I spent seven years in the Middle East. I covered the despotic, repressive kingdom as the Middle East bureau chief for The[Read More…]

by 05/03/2019 Comments are Disabled World
“Nonviolent discipline, as the research shows, is the No. 1 criterion for maximizing the potential for success.”(Photo: Mr.Fish)

Extinction Rebellion

There is one desperate chance left to thwart the impending ecocide and extinction of the human species. We must, in wave after wave, carry out nonviolent acts of civil disobedience to shut down the capitals of the major industrial countries, crippling commerce and transportation, until the ruling elites are forced to publicly state the truth about climate catastrophe, implement radical measures to[Read More…]

by 26/02/2019 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
(Photo: Mr. Fish)

Confronting the Culture of Death

The issue before us is death. Not only our individual death, which is more imminent for some of us this morning than others, but our collective death. We have begun the sixth great mass extinction, driven by our 150-year binge on fossil fuel. The litany of grim statistics is not unfamiliar to many of you. We are pouring greenhouse gases into[Read More…]

by 23/01/2019 2 comments World
(Photo: Mr. Fish / Truthdig)

Neoliberalism’s Dark Path to Fascism

Neoliberalism as economic theory was always an absurdity. It had as much validity as past ruling ideologies such as the divine right of kings and fascism’s belief in the Übermensch. None of its vaunted promises were even remotely possible. Concentrating wealth in the hands of a global oligarchic elite—eight families now hold as much wealth as 50 percent of the world’s population—while demolishing government[Read More…]

by 27/11/2018 4 comments World
Photo: Mr. Fish / Truthdig

Crucifying Julian Assange

What is happening to Assange should terrify the press. And yet his plight is met with indifference and sneering contempt. Julian Assange’s sanctuary in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London has been transformed into a little shop of horrors. He has been largely cut off from communicating with the outside world for the last seven months. His Ecuadorian citizenship, granted to[Read More…]

by 14/11/2018 3 comments Human Rights
Image: Mr. Fish/Truthdig

The Rule of the Uber-Rich Means Either Tyranny or Revolution

At the age of 10 I was sent as a scholarship student to a boarding school for the uber-rich in Massachusetts. I lived among the wealthiest Americans for the next eight years. I listened to their prejudices and saw their cloying sense of entitlement. They insisted they were privileged and wealthy because they were smarter and more talented. They had[Read More…]

by 23/10/2018 3 comments World
Though federal estimates put the nation’s homeless number at 554,000, most cities—including Portland, which officially has about 4,000 people without shelter—estimate the homeless, notoriously hard to count, to be at least three times higher.(Photo: Mr. Fish / Truthdig)

Homeless America

It is 8 a.m. I am in the small offices of Street Roots, a weekly newspaper that prints 10,000 copies per edition. Those who sell the newspaper on the streets—all of them victims of extreme poverty and half of them homeless—have gathered before heading out with their bundles to spend hours in the cold and rain. “There is foot care on[Read More…]

by 09/10/2018 Comments are Disabled World
The War on Assange Is a War on Press Freedom

The War on Assange Is a War on Press Freedom

The failure on the part of establishment media to defend Julian Assange, who has been trapped in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London since 2012, has been denied communication with the outside world since March and appears to be facing imminent expulsion and arrest, is astonishing. The extradition of the publisher—the maniacal goal of the U.S. government—would set a legal precedent that would[Read More…]

by 17/07/2018 1 comment World
"Corporate oligarchs, lacking a valid response to the discrediting of their policies of economic pillage and endless war," writes Hedges, "have turned to the blunt instrument of censorship and to a new version of red baiting." (Cartoon detail: Mr. Fish/Truthdig)

Google, Facebook, Algorithms, And The Building of the Iron Wall

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, along with 18 members of the House of Representatives—15 Republicans and three Democrats—has sent a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions demanding that the Qatari-run Al-Jazeera television network register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). The letter was issued after Al-Jazeera said it planned to air a documentary by a reporter[Read More…]

by 21/03/2018 2 comments World
"Those who fight against the sicknesses, whether squatting in old warehouses, camped out at Zuccotti Park or Standing Rock or locked in prisons, have discovered that life is measured by infinitesimal and often unseen acts of solidarity and kindness." (Photo: Mr. Fish/truthdig)

Faces of Pain, Faces of Hope

It was close to midnight, and I was sitting at a small campfire with Sybilla and Josh Medlin in back of an old warehouse in an impoverished section of the city. The Medlins paid $20,000 for the warehouse. It came with three lots. They use the lots for gardens. The produce they grow is shared with neighbors and the local[Read More…]

by 10/10/2017 1 comment Life/Philosophy
"The deep disillusionment and anger that led to Donald Trump’s election—a reaction to the corporate coup d’état and the poverty afflicting at least half of the country—have destroyed the myth of a functioning democracy."(Photo: Mr. Fish)

The End of Empire

The American empire is coming to an end. The U.S. economy is being drained by wars in the Middle East and vast military expansion around the globe. It is burdened by growing deficits, along with the devastating effects of deindustrialization and global trade agreements. Our democracy has been captured and destroyed by corporations that steadily demand more tax cuts, more deregulation and[Read More…]

by 03/10/2017 1 comment Imperialism
(Photo: Mr. Fish / Truthdig)

Reign of Idiots

The idiots take over in the final days of crumbling civilizations. Idiot generals wage endless, unwinnable wars that bankrupt the nation. Idiot economists call for reducing taxes for the rich and cutting social service programs for the poor, and project economic growth on the basis of myth. Idiot industrialists poison the water, the soil and the air, slash jobs and[Read More…]

by 02/05/2017 4 comments World
Trump And The Last Chance For Resistance

Trump And The Last Chance For Resistance

The crawl toward despotism within a failed democracy is always incremental. No regime planning to utterly extinguish civil liberties advertises its intentions in advance. It pays lip service to liberty and justice while obliterating the institutions and laws that make them possible. Its opponents, including those within the establishment, make sporadic attempts to resist, but week by week, month by[Read More…]

by 21/03/2017 1 comment World
"Civilizations in decline, despite the palpable signs of decay around them, remain fixated on restoring their 'greatness,'" writes Hedges. "Their illusions condemn them." (Illustration detail: Mr. Fish/TruthDig.com)

The Dance of Death

The ruling corporate elites no longer seek to build. They seek to destroy. They are agents of death. They crave the unimpeded power to cannibalize the country and pollute and degrade the ecosystem to feed an insatiable lust for wealth, power and hedonism. Wars and military “virtues” are celebrated. Intelligence, empathy and the common good are banished. Culture is degraded[Read More…]

by 13/03/2017 2 comments World
U.S. Veterans joined the Standing Rock Sioux encampment protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline. (Photo: Joe Brusky/Overpass Light Brigade)

Make America Ungovernable

Donald Trump’s regime is rapidly reconfiguring the United States into an authoritarian state. All forms of dissent will soon be criminalized. Civil liberties will no longer exist. Corporate exploitation, through the abolition of regulations and laws, will be unimpeded. Global warming will accelerate. A repugnant nationalism, amplified by government propaganda, will promote bigotry and racism. Hate crimes will explode. New[Read More…]

by 07/02/2017 2 comments World
Revolt Is The Only Barrier To A Fascist America

Revolt Is The Only Barrier To A Fascist America

This is a transcript of a talk Chris Hedges gave at the Inaugurate the Resistance rally in Washington, D.C., on Saturday. The ruling elites, terrified by the mobilization of the left in the 1960s, or by what [political scientist] Samuel P. Huntington called America’s “excess of democracy,” built counter-institutions to delegitimize and marginalize critics of corporate capitalism and imperialism. They[Read More…]

by 24/01/2017 2 comments World
"The issues are, in a sense, the easy part," says Michael Gecan, co-director of the Industrial Areas Foundation. "Power is organized people and organized money." (Cartoon: Mr. Fish / Truthdig)

Building The Institutions For Revolt

Politics is a game of fear. Those who do not have the ability to make power elites afraid do not succeed. All of the movements that opened up the democratic space in America—the abolitionists, the suffragists, the labor movement, the communists, the socialists, the anarchists and the civil rights movement—developed a critical mass and militancy that forced the centers of[Read More…]

by 17/01/2017 1 comment Life/Philosophy
From Pixabay. CC0 Public Domain

In The Time Of Trump, All We Have Is Each Other

This Christmas I mourn the long, slow death of our democracy that led to the political ascendancy of Donald Trump. I fear the euphoria of those who have embraced the atavistic lust for violence and bigotry stoked by him. These nativist forces, part of the continuum of white vigilante violence directed against people of color and radical dissidents throughout American[Read More…]

by 27/12/2016 1 comment World
(Cartoon: Mr. Fish / Truthdig)

‘Fake News’ In America: Homegrown, And Far From New

The media landscape in America is dominated by “fake news.” It has been for decades. This fake news does not emanate from the Kremlin. It is a multibillion-dollar-a-year industry that is skillfully designed and managed by public relations agencies, publicists and communications departments on behalf of individuals, government and corporations to manipulate public opinion. This propaganda industry stages pseudo-events to[Read More…]

by 21/12/2016 3 comments World
'This is not a gap between the tolerant and the intolerant,' writes Hedges. 'It is a gap between most of the American population and our oligarchic and corporate elites, which Trump epitomizes.' (Cartoon: Mr. Fish)

We Are All Deplorables

My relatives in Maine are deplorables. I cannot write on their behalf. I can write in their defense. They live in towns and villages that have been ravaged by deindustrialization. The bank in Mechanic Falls, where my grandparents lived, is boarded up, along with nearly every downtown store. The paper mill closed decades ago. There is a strip club in[Read More…]

by 22/11/2016 1 comment World
In Latin America, The Empire Strikes Back

In Latin America, The Empire Strikes Back

A decade ago left-wing governments, defying Washington and global corporations, took power in Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Venezuela, Uruguay, Bolivia and Ecuador. It seemed as if the tide in Latin America was turning. The interference by Washington and exploitation by international corporations might finally be defeated. Latin American governments, headed by charismatic leaders such as Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Luiz Inácio[Read More…]

by 04/10/2016 1 comment Imperialism
Legalized Murder And The Politics Of Terror

Legalized Murder And The Politics Of Terror

Police officers carry out random acts of legalized murder against poor people of color not because they are racist, although they may be, or even because they are rogue cops, but because impoverished urban communities have evolved into miniature police states. Police can stop citizens at will, question and arrest them without probable cause, kick down doors in the middle[Read More…]

by 11/07/2016 1 comment World