Chris Hedges on What it Takes to be a Rebel in Modern Times

you know that that's the thing about being a reporter they you know all this thing of objectivity this is all crap what journalists do is manipulate facts that's what I did for a living did you do that you do that yes of course we all do the difference is between those of us who cared about the truth and those of us who cared about news and it's not the same thing and if you care about the truth eventually you're going to run into problems Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist activist and best-selling author who spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent fifteen of those years he spent covering some of the most dangerous conflict zones in the world for the New York Times as a vocal anti-capitalist he's been a polarizing figure in the mainstream media which doesn't really matter to him because he thinks mainstream media is so don't take this the wrong way but you sound like a left-wing nut bar if you want to discuss issues that's fine but I mean it sounds like Fox News and I don't go on Fox News in his new book wages of rebellion Chris looks at how revolution has changed countries and society since the 17th century and argues that America is next he recently dropped by our new vice office in Toronto to talk about why America is on the edge of revolt and how that's maybe not such a bad thing so you're someone who's been shot at by drunk snipers you've seen death squads in El Salvador seen some pretty dark do you think that overly informs the way you look at the world I wouldn't say overly I would say that I understand the dark side of human nature because of it I know what human beings are capable of I also know how societies disintegrate I've seen them go down it's not theoretical for me so I look around I mean you know because I covered the war in Yugoslavia I can be in a supermarket and suddenly remember what it looked like when all the windows were smashed out in the shells were empty and there was no electricity and I think that's an asset because most people are unable to see the fragility of the structures around them and how easy they can collapse I think people have lost faith across the political spectrum and neoliberalism they don't but they're not buying it you know everything that neoliberalism and globalization supposedly was going to bring us is a lie you know it is concentrated wealth into the hands of a global corporate oligarchic elite it has pushed down wages it has created chronic unemployment and underemployment it has eviscerated the middle class and it has not been a force as it claims for democratization in fact the opposite it has been a force that has destroyed civil liberties the lie is harder and harder to sustain because it's more palpable in the physical conditions around us you drive through city after city in America and it's just wasteland after wasteland our infrastructure is falling apart we lie about unemployment figures I think the LA Times year or two ago ran a story saying real unemployment is probably about 70% but even then half of America eat by official statistics lives in poverty that's 40,000 per household which most economists argue is an unrealistic dividing line but then you add the category of near poverty which is another I mean you're pushing two thirds of the country look in the United States we are seeing a rise of very frightening nihilistic violence school shootings I think we've had 26 law enforcement officials assassinated now I'm not talking about like gun battles know about assassin guys walking up with guns shake sack park in their cars and this is very these are very disturbing signs and they are examples of people who I mean some of them obviously are psychotic and you know there are mental issues but people are breaking down I mean you should read Chomsky points this out and he's right read stacks this is the guy who drove you know flew his Cessna into the IRS building in Austin Texas but you should read his manifesto where he talks about living in a you know rundown project everybody's eating dog food that's real and this kind of mania for hope that is infected even the left is a political pacifier you know everybody is kind of addicted to these happy thoughts and that keeps us complacent so I've been reading wages of rebellion I want to ask you do you think a revolution could happen in North America well I hope so it's all we have left I think when you look at all of the ingredients that go into creating revolt the ingredients are there we are going to have to destroy the system of corporate power by non-cooperation by obstruction and by refusing to be fooled by these very clever political carnivals Canada having just finished one that coughed up these ineffectual figures that are going to do nothing to reverse c-51 which is the very draconian security and surveillance bill in some ways worse than the Patriot Act we've got the tar sands I mean these are the liberal party is not going to touch that and in the same way that Obama didn't touch security or it's up to us and it means acts of sustained civil disobedience we have a moral imperative to stand up if not for ourselves for those who come after that one revolts finally not for what they can achieve but for who it allows them to become and that we can't use the word hope if we don't revolt if we remain passive then we we have are we are accepting the death sentence that's being handed to us by these corporate forces there is no way in the American political system to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs you can't do it and so that creates governmental paralysis the inability on the part of the government to do anything but serve the needs of a tiny cabal in this case a corporate cabal in other words people feel like the game is fixed but it is fixed and it's not like they feel like the game is fix that they beginning to know the game is fixed and once they know the game is fixed it becomes very dangerous you know there are a lot of myths about revolution they're driven by what Bakunin calls de classe intellectuals which is what the Occupy movement was highly educated white sons and daughters of the middle class who began to experience what people of color have been experiencing for decades unemployment police repression you know foreclosure all that kind of stuff and and that's why the Occupy movement was an important in a seminal moment in modern history because it for the first time fused those day class se intellectuals with the underclass I can only speak about Zuccotti where I spent a fair bit of time they lost control of the park once they put up individual tents that's when you began sexual assaults came in drugs came in we have to remember they were heavily infiltrated by the government oh yeah yeah heavily infiltrate you think FBI CIA lately that's not even a question yeah so I mean we have pictures of a few blocks away from Zuccotti people dressed totally in black as Black Bloc getting out of the back of Police fans I mean occupied didn't isn't over I mean you know the it isn't over because if because the state didn't respond rationally to the occupy encampments I mean they closed it down by force and a rational response would have been a forgiveness of student debt a massive jobs program especially targeted people under the age of 25 a moratorium on foreclosures and bank repossession in a rational healthcare system that isn't you know allowing for-profit corporations to hold sick children hostage while their parents bankrupted themselves trying to save their sons or daughters that would have been rational they were didn't respond rationally which means that they're going to get blowback I mean people forget Rosa Parks got on that bus in 54 you didn't get the next Freedom Rides till 61 if the state doesn't respond and it's not responding then they're going to this is this movement is going to continue revolt will continue but but it's always the state that determines the configurations of revolt and the longer the state refuses to respond in a meaningful way and the state is not responding then they're they're going to get blowback that's just it's inevitable there's a passage in Kissinger's memoirs no one should ever buy the book where it's I think 1971 and there are you know tens of thousands of anti-war protestors surrounding the White House which is what we have to get back to and Nixon has taken empty city buses end-to-end and put them all around the White House to protect the White House and he's looking out the window wringing his hands going Henry they're going to break through the barricades and get us and that's exactly where we want all people in power to be that's our goal what would you tell young people who are disenfranchised I would advice can you give them well I wouldn't give them much advice I've learned more from a lot of these movements than I've given to them I mean you know my focus is delineating power and how it works and why we can't trust it and why they get all that because they're victims of it and you see with the rise of groups like black lives matter the traditional black elite Jesse Jackson al Sharpton come to Ferguson they're booed out of the city same in Baltimore they get it they're not buying Obama and I teach in a prison I teach and and boy you walk in that prison and these prisoners they understand the system no we're going to have to if we look for hope it's going to be idle no more this great indigenous First Nations movement in Canada Quebec students movement you know there's a picture of me going off to get a rest at Goldman Sachs I've long given up trying to look hip some dress kind of like this I think it was a tweed jacket and I'm surrounded by all these people who are like pierced and tattooed and well that's where I get my energy from I think they're wonderful so I don't think I have a lot to teach I mean I do in terms of I think explaining power and how it works and the breakdown of power but in terms of what we need to do in terms of the mechanics of revolt um you know I've sort found among black lives matter and among all these groups a kind of really amazing creativity political consciousness sense of innovation maturity yeah I learned as much from them as I give to them you know if I'm the government and I know who Chris Hedges is I'm probably thinking that you're not quite my friends you might be an enemy to my interest do you think sometimes that you've been spied on by NSA or oh look or FBI I mean I know they watch me because I've been stopped at airports and asked obnoxious questions and it was one point not allowed into the United States for an hour two at Newark and but it's just I think it's more like they're just kind of just kind of with you just trying to show you yeah that's happened before actually they're just friends yet you get the the quadruple s there's no stop is I get there and I see the face of the Homeland Security change I mean I don't look dangerous yeah but I can see their face change and oftentimes they get like really kind of caustic and rude and I think the people they're really scared of or the hackers I don't think the people who really frighten them are the hackers because the hackers I mean we have to back up so when you have wholesale surveillance you can't have investigative journalism because when somebody inside the systems of power reaches out to a journalist to talk about fraud criminal activity malfeasance lies of the government they're instantly traceable that's why Snowden fled traditional investigative journalists who wants the role of investigative journalism is to shine a light on these inner workings of darkness whether in the government or anywhere else and bring expose this to the public and that's you know very important to the health of a democracy that's gone I mean government officials are just too terrified to speak so the hackers are the last group Jeremy Hammond Chelsea Manning Julian Assange of course the people with the ability to break down those walls and give us information about war crimes for instance in the case of Chelsea Manning and and WikiLeaks how do you feel about the mainstream media I mean if you think if you think that all these corporate powers are always in play I mean is anything sacred anymore so the mainstream media what happened is the electro so Clinton deregulates the FCC that allows Viacom General Electric Rupert Murdoch's News Corp Disney Clear Channel they seized about a half dozen corporation seized the airwaves so this shrinks the parameters of acceptable debate first of all and you saw it like over Syria what's the debate on Syria well should we just bomb them or should we bomb them and put boots on the ground as if that's the debate it's what Freud call the narcissism minor difference so the electronic media gets bought up by these large corporations now it's not like the old Hearst newspaper Empire which were media conglomerates media is just one revenue stream perhaps out of hundreds of revenue streams and they have to compete against those revenue streams so it's all about money ratings and money basically and they'll do anything for it so I think the corporate media has now been so eviscerated that I would argue at least on the commercial networks they don't they're not interested in don't do journalism anymore what do you make of these new media companies like what do you make a vice do you think I think that they play the kind of role that has always been played in journalism which is that so-called alternative media which I would argue does far more real journalism than the established commercial media pressures the mainstream media to do their job that's always been the case that's why the CBC in Canada or the BBC in Britain or public television and public radio in the States which has been destroyed is so important because you should have a place in your society for people who are not beholden to business interests corporate power and the elites and that's why they destroy though mechanisms I mean you go back to the 60s we used to see Noam Chomsky on public TV and we need those voices you need those it's hard because if you really challenge dominant power dominant powers not going to invest in your operation and then maybe eventually they'll start coming to us with information they want us to disperse well what happens and I think you even see it a little bit with Vice I mean as you as you you know reach an audience and tell a story that the commercial media is not telling then the power elite comes to you and says oh you know once you come to the White House oh they did with mark my friend mark Mara and I love mark but and then you kind of get addicted to that access and you kind of like it and it kills you so I mean basically your rule of thumb wants to be is you know if everybody in power doesn't dislike you you're probably not doing your job so that's a good piece of unsolicited advice hedges that's right anarchist that's the anarchist in me

Channel: VICE

Views: 411,002

Keywords: documentary, documentaries, interview, interviews, culture, wild, lifestyle, world, exclusive, independent, underground, videos, funny, funny videos, journalism, vice guide, vice presents, vice news, vbs.tv, vice.com, vice, vice magazine, vice mag, vice videos, Chris Hedges, Politics, VICE Meets

Id: BUgaqJZLwOg

Length: 16min 35sec (995 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 02 2015