Chris Hedges: The Politics of Cultural Despair - The Rise of Fascism (2020)

i the genesis of this talk comes from fred stern the german historian's work the politics of cultural despair where he went back and examined what were the cultural forces that gave rise to fascism pinpointing of course widespread despair in weimar as hannah aaron did in the origins of totalitarianism and so that is really what i was exploring in my last book america the farewell tour where i looked at these self-destructive pathologies that are rippling across the country caused by despair and that's the focus of the talk this morning the physical and moral decay of the united states and the malaise that has spawned have predictable results we have seen in varying forms the consequences of social and political collapse during the twilight of the greek and roman empires the ottoman and habsburg empires tsarist russia weimar germany and the former yugoslavia which i covered for the new york times voices from the past aristotle cicero pfeidordofstowski joseph roth and mila vangilas warned us but blinded by self delusion and hubris as if we are somehow exempt from human experience in human nature we refuse to listen the united states is a shadow of itself it squanders its resources in futile military adventurism a symptom of all empires in decay as they attempt to restore a loss to germany by force vietnam afghanistan iraq syria libya tens of millions of lives wrecked failed states enraged fanatics there are 1.8 billion muslims in the world 24 of the global population and we have turned virtually all of them into our enemies we are piling up massive government deficits at triple this year to 3.1 trillion dollars and neglecting our basic infrastructure including electrical grids roads bridges and public transportation to spend more on our military than all the other major powers on earth combined we are the world's largest producer and exporter of arms and munitions the virtues we argue we have a right to impose by force on others human rights democracy the free market the rule of law and personal freedoms are mocked at home where grotesque levels of social inequality and austerity programs have impoverished most of the public destroyed democratic institutions including congress the courts and the press and created militarized forces of internal occupation that carry out wholesale surveillance of the public run the largest prison system in the world and gun down unarmed citizens in the streets with impunity the american burlesque darkly humorous with its absurdities of donald trump fake ballot boxes conspiracy theorists who believe the deep state hollywood hollywood run a massive child sex trafficking ring christian fascists that place their faith in magic jesus and teach creationism as science in our schools ten hour long voting lines and states such as georgia militia members planning to kidnap the governors of michigan and virginia and start a civil war is also ominous especially as we ignore the accelerating eco side all of our activism protests lobbying petitions appeals to the united nations the work of ngos and misguided trust in liberal politicians such as barack obama have been accompanied by a 60 percent rise in global carbon emissions since 1990 estimates predict another 40 percent in global emissions in the next decade we are less than a decade away from carbon dioxide levels reaching 450 parts per million the equivalent to a two degree celsius average temperature rise a global catastrophe that will make parts of the earth uninhabitable flood coastal cities dramatically reduce crop yields and result in suffering and death for billions of people this is what is coming and we can't wish it away despair is killing us it eats into the social fabric rupturing social bonds and manifests itself in an array of self-destructive and aggressive pathologies it fosters what the anthropologist roger lancaster calls poison solidarity the communal intoxication forged from the negative energies of fear suspicion envy and the lust for vengeance and violence after four years of lies the stoking of racist violence stunning ineptitude flagrant corruption and an abject failure to cope with a national health crisis trump expanded his base by 11 million votes those 74 million are absolutely frightening the civil rights attorney michael cord said of those who voted for trump they want a to be a permanent dictator that's what they want they want to go back to the jim crow era they want to disenfranchise americans they want to go back to the anti-science era of the dark ages they want to go back to or create a handmaiden's tale this is not hyperbole worse 70 percent of trump voters 51 america 51 million americans believe that quote radical left democrats end quote and anti-trump election officials rigged the elections through various forms of voter fraud including venezuelan voting software and counterfeit mail-in ballots to steal the election 126 republican house members joined a lawsuit filed by 18 republican state attorneys general asking the u.s supreme court to overturn biden's victory the majority of republican senators refused to acknowledge the election results following the november vote trump may be gone but he leaves behind a party that is openly authoritarian dismissive of democratic norms and attempted to carry out a coup electors from the electoral college were forced in many states to deliver their votes to state legislatures under armed guard armed protesters surrounded the home of democratic michigan secretary of state jocelyn benson demanding that she quote stop the steal of the election from the president 700 members of the white nationalist group the proud boys took over streets in washington last weekend to protest the theft of the election leading to more than three dozen arrests four stabbings four black churches being vandalized and black lives matter banners and signs ripped down and burned nations in terminal decline as sigmund freud understood embrace the death instinct no longer sustained by the comforting illusion of inevitable human progress they lose the only antidote to nihilism no longer able to build they confuse destruction with creation they descend into an atavistic savagery something not only freud but joseph conrad and primo levy knew lurks beneath the thin veneer of civilized society reason does not guide our lives reason as schopenhauer puts it echoing hume is the hard-pressed servant of the will men are not gentle creatures who want to be loved and who at the most can defend themselves if they are attacked freud wrote they are on the contrary creatures among whose instinctual endowments is to be reckoned a powerful share of aggressiveness as a result their neighbor is not for them not only a potential helper or sexual object but also someone who tempts them to satisfy their aggressiveness on him to exploit his capacity for work without compensation to use him sexually without his consent to seize his possessions to humiliate him to cause him pain to torture and kill him homo hominy lupus who in the face of all this experience of life and history will have the courage to dispute this assertion as a rule this cruel aggressiveness waits for some provocation or puts itself at the service of some other purpose whose goal might also have been reached by milder measures in circumstances that are favorable to it when the mental counter forces which ordinarily inhibit it are out of action it also manifests itself spontaneously and reveals man as a savage beast to whom consideration towards his own kind is something alien freud like primo levy got it the moral life is often a matter of circumstances moral consideration and i saw this in the wars i covered largely disappears in moments of extremity it is often the luxury of the privileged 10 of any population is cruel no matter what and 10 is merciful no matter what and the remaining 80 percent can be moved in either direction susan sontag said to survive it was necessary levy wrote of life in the death camps to quote throttle all dignity and kill all conscience to climb down into the arena as a beast against other beasts to let oneself be guided by those unsuspected subterranean forces which sustained families and individuals in cruel times it was he rode a hobbesian life a continuous war of everyone against everyone varlam shalom off imprisoned for 25 years and stalin's gulags was equally pessimistic all human emotions of love friendship envy concern for one's fellow man compassion a longing for fame honesty had left us with a flesh that had melted from our bodies during our long fasts the camp was a great test of our moral strength of our everyday morality and 99 of us failed it conditions in the camps do not permit men to remain men that is not what camps were created for social collapse will bring these latent pathologies to the surface but the fact that circumstances can reduce us to savagery does not negate the moral life as our empire implodes and with its social cohesion as the earth increasingly punishes us for our refusal to honor and protect the systems that give us life triggering a fight for diminishing natural resources and huge climate migrations we must face this darkness not only around us but within us the dance macabre is already underway hundreds of thousands of americans die each year from opioid overdoses alcoholism and suicide what sociologists call deaths of despair this despair fuels high rates of morbid obesity some 40 percent of the public gambling addictions the pornification of the society with the ubiquitous images of sexual sadism along with a proliferation of armed right-wing militias and nihilistic mass shootings as despair mounts so will these acts of self-immolation those overwhelmed by despair seek magical salvations whether in crisis cults such as the christian right or demagogues such as trump or rage-filled militias that see violence as a cleansing agent as long as these dark pathologies are allowed to fester and grow and the democratic party has made it clear it will not enact the kinds of radical social reforms that will curb these pathologies the united states will continue its march towards disintegration and social upheaval removing trump will neither halt nor slow the descent more than three hundred thousand americans are now dead from the pandemic a figure that is expected to rise to four hundred 000 in january and half a million in february chronic underemployment and unemployment close to 20 when those who have stopped looking for work those furloughed with no prospect of being rehired and those who work part-time but are still below the poverty line are included in the official statistics instead of being magically erased from the unemployment rolls our privatized health care system which is making record profits during the pandemic is not designed to cope with a public health emergency it is designed to maximize profit for its owners there are fewer than one million hospital beds nationally a result of the decades-long trend of hospital mergers and closures that have reduced access to care and communities across the nation cities such as milwaukee have been forced to erect field hospitals in states such as mississippi there are often no icu beds available the for-profit health care service did not stockpile the ventilators masks drugs or tests to deal with covid19 why should it this is not a route to increased revenue and there is no substantial difference between trump and biden's response to the health crisis where as many as three thousand people are now dying per day forty eight percent of frontline workers remain ineligible for sick pay some 43 million americans have lost their employer sponsored health insurance there are thousands of bankruptcies a day with perhaps two-thirds of them tied to exorbitant medical costs food banks are overrun roughly 10 to 14 million renter households or 23 to 34 million people were behind on their rent in september that amounts to 12 to 17 billion in unpaid rent and that figure is expected to rise to 34 billion dollars in past due rent in january the lifting of the moratorium on evictions and foreclosures will mean that millions of families many destitute will be tossed onto the street hunger in u.s households almost tripled between 2019 and this year according to the census bureau and the department of agriculture the proportion of american children who do not have enough to eat the study found is 14 times higher than it was last year a study by columbia university found that since may there are eight million more americans who can be classified as poor meanwhile the 50 richest americans hold as much wealth as half of the united states millennials some 72 million people have 4.6 percent of u.s wealth only one thing matters to the corporate state it is not democracy it is not truth it is not the consent of the governed it is not income inequality it is not the surveillance state it is not endless war it is not jobs it is not the climate emergency it is the primacy of corporate power which has extinguished our democracy taken from us our most basic civil liberties and left most of the working class in misery and the increase in consolidation of corporate power's wealth and power media outlets peddle a consumer version of what george orwell in his novel 1984 called the two minutes of hate our opinions and prejudices are skillfully catered to and reinforced with the aid of a detailed digital analysis of our proclivities and habits and then sold back to us the result as matt tybee writes is packaged anger just for you the public is unable to speak across the manufactured divide politics under the assault is atrophied into a tawdry reality show centered on manufactured political personalities civic discourse has been poisoned by invective and lies power meanwhile is left unexamined and unchallenged political coverage is modeled as tybee points out on sports coverage the sets look like the sets on sunday nfl countdown the anchor is on one side there are four commentators two from each team around him graphics keep us updated on the score political identities are reduced to easily digestible stereotypes tactics strategy image the monthly tallies of campaign contributions and polling are endlessly examined while real political issues are ignored it is the language and imagery of war this coverage masks the fact that on nearly all the major issues the two ruling political parties are in complete agreement the deregulation of the financial industry trade agreements the militarization of police and the pentagon has transferred more than 7.4 billion dollars in excess military gear and hardware to nearly 8 000 federal and state law enforcement agencies since 1990 the explosion in the prison population de-industrialization austerity support for fracking and the fossil fuel industry the endless wars in the middle east the bloated military budget the control of elections and mass media by corporations and the wholesale government surveillance of the population and when the government watches you 24 hours a day you cannot use the word liberty that's the relationship between a master and a slave all have bipartisan support and for this reason these issues are almost never discussed the goal is to pit demographic against demographic this stoking of antagonism is not news it is entertainment driven not by journalism but marketing strategies to increase viewership and corporate sponsors news divisions are corporate revenue streams competing against other corporate revenue streams the template for news as tybee writes in his book hate inc the cover of which has sean hannity on one side and rachel maddow on the other is the simplified morality play used in professional wrestling there are only two real political positions in the united states you love trump or you hate him which comes from the playbook of professional wrestling but if you voted for biden and the democratic party you did vote for something you voted to endorse the humiliation of courageous women such as anita hill who confront their abusers you voted for the architects of the endless wars in the middle east you voted for the apartheid state of israel you voted for wholesale surveillance of the public by government intelligence agencies and the abolition of due process and habeas corpus you voted for austerity programs including the destruction of welfare and cuts to social security you voted for nafta free trade deals de-industrialization a real decline in wages the loss of hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs and the offshoring of jobs to underpaid workers who toil in sweatshops in mexico china or vietnam you voted for the assault on teachers in public education and the transfer of federal funds to for-profit and christian charter schools you voted for the doubling of our prison population the tripling and quadrupling of sentences and huge expansion of crimes meriting the death penalty you voted for militarized police who gunned down poor people of color with impunity you voted against the new green deal the green new deal and immigration reform you voted for the fracking industry you voted for a segregated public school system in which the wealthy receive educational opportunities and poor people are denied a chance you voted for punitive levels of student debt and the inability to free yourself of those debt obligations even if you file for bankruptcy you voted for deregulating the banking industry and the abolition of glass-steagall you voted for the for-profit insurance and pharmaceutical corporations and against universal health care you voted for defense budgets that consume more than half of all discretionary spending you voted for the use of unlimited oligarchic and corporate money to buy elections and you voted for a politician who during his time in the senate adjectively served the interests of mbna the largest independent credit card company headquartered in delaware which also employed biden's son hunter biden was one of the principal architects of the wars in the middle east where we have squandered upwards of seven trillion dollars and destroyed or extinguished the lives of millions of people biden is responsible for far more suffering and death at home and abroad than trump and if we had a functioning judicial and legislative system biden along with the other architects of our disastrous imperial wars corporate plundering of the country and betrayal of the american working class would be put on trial not offered up as a solution to our political and economic debacle 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 these issues are societal or ethical issues and they are important but they are not social or political issues the seizure of control of the economy by a class of global speculators and corporations has ruined the lives of the very groups the democrats pretend to lift up when bill clinton and the democratic party for example destroyed the old welfare system 70 percent of the recipients were children those on the right of the political spectrum and we must never forget that the positions of the democratic party would make it a far-right party in europe demonize those on the margins of society as scapegoats these culture wars mask the reality both parties are full partners in the destruction of our democratic institutions both parties have reconfigured american society into a mafia state it only depends on how you want it dressed up the power of politicians such as nancy pelosi chuck schumer or mitch mcconnell comes from being able to funnel corporate money to anointed candidates in a functioning political system one not saturated with corporate cash they would not hold power they have transformed what the roman philosopher cicero called a commonwealth a raised publica a public thing or the property of a people into an instrument of pillage and repression on behalf of a global corporate oligarchy we are serfs ruled by the obscenely rich omnipotent masters who loot the u.s treasury pay little or no taxes and have perverted the judiciary the media and the legislative branches of government to strip us of civil liberties and give them the freedom to engage in tax boycotts financial fraud and theft in the midst of the pandem pandemic crisis what did our ruling kleptocrats do they looted four trillion dollars on a scale unseen since the 2008 bailout overseen by barack obama and joe biden they gorged and enriched themselves at our expense while tossing crumbs out of the windows of their private jets yachts penthouses and palatial estates to the suffering and despised masses the cares act handed trillions in funds or tax breaks to oil companies the airline industry which alone got 50 billion dollars in stimulus money the cruise ship industry it gave a 170 billion dollar windfall to the real estate industry it handed subsidies to private equity firms and lobbying groups whose political action committees gave almost 200 million dollars in campaign contributions to politicians in the last two decades it bailed out the meat industry and corporations that have moved offshore to avoid u.s taxes the act allowed the largest corporations to gobble up gobble up money that was supposed to keep small businesses solvent to pay workers it gave 80 percent of tax breaks under the stimulus package to millionaires and allowed the wealthiest to get stimulus checks that averaged 1.7 million dollars the cares act also authorized 454 billion dollars for the treasury department's exchange stabilization fund a massive slush fund doled out by trump cronies to corporations that when leveraged ten to one can be used to create a staggering 4.5 trillion dollars in assets the act authorized the fed to give 1.5 trillion dollars in loans to wall street which no one expects will ever be paid back and american billionaires have gotten 434 billion dollars richer since the pandemic jeff bezos the richest man in the world whose corporation amazon paid no federal taxes last year alone added over 70 billion dollars to his personal wealth since the pandemic started and during this same time 55 million americans have lost their jobs the molding of the public into warring factions works commercially it works politically it destroys as it is designed to do class solidarity but is also a recipe for social disintegration it propels us toward the kind of hobbesian world primo levi and sigmund freud warned us about i watched competing ethnic groups in the former yugoslavia retreat into antagonistic tribes they seized rival mass media outlets and used them to spew lies mythological narratives exalting themselves along with the vitriol and hate against the ethnicities they demonized this poisoned solidarity which we are replicating pumped out month after month in yugoslavia destroyed the capacity for empathy perhaps the best definition of evil and led to a savage fratricide the united states awash in military-grade weaponry is already plagued by an epidemic of mass shootings there are death threats against critics of trump including representative ilhan omar there was an aborted plot by 13 members of a right-wing militia group to kidnap and perhaps assassinate the governors of michigan and virginia and start a civil war a trump supporter mailed pipe bombs to prominent democrats in cnn an effort to decapitate the hierarchy of the democratic party as well as terrorize the media outlet that is the party's principal propaganda platform the spark that usually sets such tinder ablaze is martyrdom aaron j danielson a supporter of the right wing group patriot prayer was wearing a loaded glock pistol in a holster and had bear spray and an expandable metal baton when he was shot dead on august 29th allegedly by michael forrest reinhold a supporter of antifa in the streets of portland a woman in the crowd can be heard shouting after the shooting i am not sad that an effing fascist died tonight reinhold was ambushed and killed by federal agents in washington state in what appears to be an act of extrajudicial murder something i witnessed frequently during the war in el salvador once people start being sacrificed for the cause it takes little for demagogues to insist that self-preservation necessitates violence political stagnation and corruption along with economic and social misery spawn what anthropologists call crisis cults movements led by demagogues that prey on an unbearable psychological and financial distress and champion violence as a form of moral purification these crisis cults already well established among followers of the christian right right-wing militia groups and many supporters of donald trump who look at him not as a politician but as a cult leader pedal magical thinking and an infantilism that promises if you surrender all autonomy prosperity restored national glory a return to a mythical past order and security trump is a symptom he is not the disease and once he leaves office far more competent and dangerous demagogues will rise if the social conditions are not radically improved to take his place i fear we are headed towards a christianized fascism the greatest moral failing of the liberal christian church which i come out of was its refusal justified in the name of tolerance and dialogue to denounce the followers of the christian right as heretics by tolerating the intolerant it ceded religious legitimacy to an array of con artists charlatans and demagogues and their cultish supporters it stood by as the core gospel message concern for the poor and the oppressed was perverted into a magical world where god and jesus showered believers with material wealth and power the white race became god's chosen agent imperialism and war became divine instruments for purging the world of infidels and barbarians evil itself capitalism because god blessed the righteous with wealth and power and condemned the immoral to poverty and suffering became shorn of its inherent cruelty and exploitation the iconography and symbols of american nationalism became intertwined with the iconography and symbols of the christian faith the mega pastors narcissists who run despotic cult-like fiefdoms make millions of dollars by using this heretical belief system to prey on the despair and desperation of their congregations victims of neo-liberalism and de-industrialization these believers find in trump who preyed on this despair in his casinos and through his sham universities and these mega pastors champions of the unfettered greed cult of masculinity lust for violence white supremacy bigotry american chauvinism religious intolerance anger racism and conspiracy theories that are the core beliefs of the christian right when i wrote american fascists the christian right in the war on america i was serious about the term fascists tens of millions of americans live hermetically sealed inside the vast media and educational edifice erected by the christian right in this world miracles are real satan allied with liberal secular humanists in the deep state along with muslims immigrants feminists intellectuals artists and a host of other internal enemies is streak seeking to destroy america trump is god's appointed vessel to build a christian nation and cement into place a government that instills biblical values these biblical values include include banning abortion protecting the traditional family turning the ten commandments into secular law crushing infidels especially muslims indoctrinating children in schools with biblical teachings and thwarting sexual license which includes any sexual relationship other than marriage between a man and a woman trump is routinely compared by evangelical leaders to the biblical king cyrus who rebuilt the temple in jerusalem and restored the jews to the city trump filled his own ideological void with this christian fascism he elevated members of the christian right to prominent positions including mike pence to the vice presidency mike pompeo as secretary of state betsy devos as secretary of education ben carson as secretary of housing and urban development bill barr's attorney general neil gorsuch brett kavanaugh and amy coney barrett to the supreme court and the tele evangelist paula white to his faith and opportunities initiative more importantly trump handed the christian right veto and appointment power over key positions in government especially in the federal courts he installed 133 district court judges out of 677 total 50 appeals court judges out of 179 and three u.s supreme court justice justices this is 19 percent of the federal trial judges currently in service and nearly all of the extremists who make up the judicial appointees have been rated as unqualified by the american bar association the country's largest non-partisan coalition of lawyers i studied ethics at harvard divinity school with james luther adams who had been in germany in 1935 and 1936 adams witnessed the rise there of the so-called german christian church which was pro-nazi he warned us about the disturbing parallels between the german christian church and the christian right adolf hitler was in the eyes of the german christian church evoke messiah an instrument of god a view similar to the one held today about trump by many of his white evangelical supporters those demonized for germany's economic collapse especially jews and communists were branded as agents of satan fascism adams told us always cloaks itself in a nation's most cherished symbols and rhetoric fascism would come to america not in the guise of stiff-armed marching brown shirts and nazi swastikas but in mass recitations of the pledge of allegiance the biblical sanctification of the state and the sacralization of american militarism adams was the first person i heard labeled the extremists of the christian right as fascists and liberals he warned as a nazi germany were blind to the tragic dimension of history and radical evil and they would not react until it was too late liberals who expressed dismay or even more bizarrely a fevered hope about the corporatists and imperialists selected to fill the positions in the biden administration are the court jesters of our political burlesque they long ago sold their soul and abandoned their most basic principles to line up behind a bankrupt democratic party they chant with every election cycle the mantra of the least worst and sit placidly on the sidelines as a bill clinton or barack obama and the democratic party leadership betrays every issue they claim to support the only thing that mattered to liberals in the presidential race once again was removing a republican this time donald trump from office this the liberals achieved but their faustian bargain in election after election has shredded their credibility they are ridiculed not only among right-wing trump supporters but by the hierarchy of the democratic party that has been captured by corporate power no one can or should take liberals seriously they stand for nothing they fight for nothing the cost is too onerous and so the liberals do what they always do chatter endlessly about political and moral positions they refuse to make any sacrifices to achieve liberals largely comprised of the professional managerial class that dutifully recycles and shops for organic produce and is concentrated on the two coasts have profited from the ravages of neoliberalism they seek to endow it with a patina of civility but their routine in public humiliation has ominous consequences it not only exposes the liberal class as hollow and empty it discredits the liberal democratic values they claim to uphold liberals should have abandoned the democratic party when bill clinton in political hacks such as biden transformed the democratic party into the republican party and launched a war on traditional liberal values and left-wing populism they should have defected by the millions to support ralph nader and other green party candidates this defection as nader understood was the only tactic that could force the democrats to adopt parts of a liberal and left-wing agenda and save us from the slow-motion corporate coup d'etat fear is the real force behind political change not oily promises of mutual goodwill short of this pressure this fear especially with labor unions destroyed there is no hope and now we will reap the consequences of the liberal classes moral and political cowardice the democratic party elites are reveling in taunting liberals as well as left-wing populists who preached class warfare and supported bernie sanders how are we supposed to interpret the appointment of anthony blinken one of the architects of the wars in iraq and afghanistan and a supporter of the apartheid state in israel or secret secretary of state or john kerry who championed the massive expansion of domestic oil and gas production largely through fracking and according to barack obama's memoir worked doggedly to convince those concerned about the climate crisis too and i quote offer up concessions on subsidies for nuclear power industry and the opening of additional u.s coastlines to offshore oil drill drilling as the new climate policies are or brian deese the executive who was in charge of the climate portfolio at blackrock which invests heavily in fossil fuels including coal and who served as a former obama economic adviser who advocated austerity measures to run the white house's economic policy or nira tandon for director of the office of management and budget who as the president of the center for american progress raised millions in dark money from silicon valley and wall street while relentlessly ridiculing bernie sanders and his supporters on cable news and social media and who proposed a plank in the democratic platform calling for the bombing of iran by the administration will resemble the ineffectual german government formed by friends von poppin in 1932 that sought to recreate the asean regime a utopian conservatism that ensured germany's drift into fascism biden bereft like von poppin of new ideas and programs will eventually be forced to employ the brutal tools biden as a senator was so prominent in creating to maintain social control wholesale surveillance a corrupt judicial system the world's largest prison system and police that have been transformed into lethal paramilitary units those that resist as social and rest mounts will be attacked as agents of a foreign power and censored as many already are being censored including through algorithms and de-platforming on social media the most ardent and successful dissidents such as julian assange will be criminalized the shock troops of the state already ideologically bonded with a neofascist on the right will hunt down and wipe out an enfeebled and often phantom left as we saw in the chilling state assassination of reinhold who was unarmed and standing outside an apartment complex in lacey washington when he was shot multiple times compare the gunning down of reinhold by federal agents to the coddling of kyle rittenhouse the 17 year old accused of killing two protesters and injuring a third on august 25th in kenosha wisconsin police officers moments before the shooting are seen on video thanking rittenhouse and other armed right-wing militia members for coming to the city and handing them bottles of water ridden houses also seen in a video walking toward police with his hands up after his shooting spree as protesters yell that he has shot several people police nevertheless allow him to leave ridden houses killings have been defended by the right including trump and he has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations for his legal fees and been released on a two million dollar bail social unrest given a continuation of neoliberalism the climate crisis the siphoning off of diminishing resources to a bloated war machine political stagnation and the failure to contain the pandemic and its economic fallout is almost certain absent a left-wing populism a disenfranchised working class will line up as it did with trump behind counterfeit a right-wing populism the liberal elites will of history as any guide justify state repression as a response to social chaos in the name of law and order that they too are on the christian right and the corporate state's long list of groups to be neutralized will become evident to them when it is too late all the pieces are in place for our own descent into what i expect will be a militarized christianized fascism political dysfunction a bankrupt and discredited liberal class massive and growing social inequality a grotesquely rich and tone-deaf oligarchic elite the fragmentation of the public into warring tribes widespread food insecurity and hunger chronic underemployment and unemployment and misery all exacerbated by the failure of the state to cope with the crisis of the pandemic will combine with the rot of civil and political life to create a familiar cocktail leading to authoritarianism and fascism a constant barrage of vitriol and fabulous conspiracy theories will i fear embolden extremists to carry out political murder not only of mainstream democrats republicans trump is accused of betrayal such as georgia the georgia governor brian kemp and those targeted as part of the deep state but also those at media outlets such as cnn or the new york times that serve as propaganda arms for the democratic party once the pandora's box of violence is open it is almost impossible to close martyrs on one side of the divide demand martyrs on the other violence becomes the primary form of communication and as sebastian hoffner wrote once the violence and readiness to kill the lies beneath the surface of human nature has been awakened and turned against other humans and even made into a duty it is a simple matter to change the target this i suspect is what is coming the blame now lies not only with the goons and racists on the right the corporatists who pillage the country and the corrupt ruling elite that does their bidding but a feckless liberal class that found standing up for its beliefs too costly liberals will pay for their timidity and cowardice but so will we thank you

Channel: Community Church of Boston

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Keywords: justice, peace, unitarianism universalism, Chris Hedges, Chris hedges, chris hedges

Id: V7Z17e9qpgc

Length: 48min 11sec (2891 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 23 2022