The Chris Hedges Report with Dr. Cornel West

now you talk about terror [Music] what about for me [Music] i've been terrorized [Music] all my days welcome to the chris hedges report dr cornel west is the premier standard bearer for the black prophetic tradition the most important intellectual and spiritual movement in our history it has given rise to the prophetic voices of sojourner truth frederick douglass ida b wells e.b du bois james baldwin richard wright lorraine hansberry martin luther king malcolm x james cohn bell hooks and others rooted in the experience of american racism capitalist exploitation and imperialism this tradition has provided an ongoing critique of our economic social and political institutions and beliefs as well as calling out the country's spiritual bankruptcy so dr west i wanted to ask you about america's soul but then i wondered does a country have a soul um so i'll let you take it from there well first i want to begin by saluting you my dear brother i want the world to know that i believe you are one of the great prophetic and progressive voices of our time and i stand in deep solidarity with you both as brother as you know we spent much time together going to jails together taught in jails together broke bread and talked about dostoevsky and flo bear and sardin lukash du bois and james cohn so i just want the world know i love you though brother you and sister eunice and your family but no i think that when we talk about the soul of a nation you're talking about what is dominant soul craft is and the soul crap is a dominant way of life a mode of being in the world and the united states has always had a market driven way of being in the world and that sense of thinking it could it could conquer the world without losing the best of what's in it we have a great prophetic tradition in the united states you talked about the black side but we got the white side of melville we got the white white side of uh rabbi heschel or at least inside and with zaid and others but when you look at how commodification commodification in the form of arms manufacturers war profiteers commodification in the form of politicians bought off by big money legalized bribery normalized corruption commodification form of art education so that vocation becomes simply profession so that calling simply become careers so that education becomes more a matter of schooling gaining access to a skill to gain money and live large in some vanilla suburb rather than genuine education which is critical formation learning how to be a human being and a citizen in such a way that you can be enforced for good and beauty and justice we are in a profound moment of spiritual decadence in the united states militarism abroad grotesque wealth inequality at home white supremacy the face of the escalating neo-fascist movement of trump and others ecological catastrophe looming possible nuclear catastrophe with a gangster in russia able to push the button at any time and our own gangster in the white house who can push the button at any time you see neoliberal gangsters are not identical with neo-fascist gangsters yes there's differences but a gangster is someone who was cold callous and indifferent to the vulnerable and we could we can make arguments invasions and occupations of iraq mass incarceration regime siding with wall street and crushing the lives of poor working people in the case of biden and with putin of course you just have a matter of massive domination subjugation regimentation and repression within his own russian context and we just it's just a matter of telling the truth and that's what you've always tried to do and that's what i've always tried to do neither one of us have a monopoly on truth but we try to speak the truth because we are in deep solidarity with those friends for now called the wretched of the earth is there a period in american history that you think is analogous to where we are now well in some ways it's it's like the 1890s in which you actually have reactionary xenophobic uh uh market-driven forces in the driver's seat what linen called the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie workers had no right to organize black people were re-subjugated in a vicious way with the neo-slavery after 244 years of slavery indigenous peoples with wounded knee more and more attack the genocidal effects becoming even more and more apparent the rail road strike of 1877 the crushing of the working classes in the name of the bosses of the marginalizing even more intensely of women who are always marginalized there are some analogies the difference is is that america was a transcontinental empire at that time and was beginning to reach out it would bring in eight million people of color in guam and philippines and hawaii and puerto rico and uh and other places whereas now america as the largest the mightiest the most powerful empire in the history of the world is in deep internal decay and more and more experiencing the constraints and limitations of its power abroad i want to go back to that period of the 1890s because it was on the cusp of as you mentioned the expansion of america into a more traditional world empire but there was tremendous opposition to that expansion led by figures like mark twain and others who i think quite precedently understood what it would do i think they used the word soul what it would do to the soul of the country and i think they've been proven right perhaps you can comment on that well you're absolutely right i mean mark twain is our greatest comic writer and he stands with tony morrison and herman melville and william faulkner and thomas pension uh and a few others at the highest level of artistic literary achievement in the history of the american empire he like william james deeply anti-imperialist cutting against the grain you're absolutely right in that regard uh but he coined the gilded age and by guilty what he meant was the glitz the blitz the obsession with spectacle the obsession with image the object obsession with celebrity status he himself a celebrity critical of a celebrity it's like david bowie's fame david bowie is famous he got an indictment of fame with that deep phone that would have impressed george clinton and bootsy collins when that song came out so it is with mark twain we're living in the second gilded age you're absolutely right it's all about glitz and blitz and spectacle and money and status it's all about brand and not about cause you and i are fundamentally committed not to any brand we're committed to a cause it calls the poor working people all around the world with deep deep stress on struggles against white supremacy and male supremacy homophobia transphobia or any ideology that loses sight of the humanity of people could be disabled it could be knowledge it could be roma it could be landless peasants it could be any human being who's being crushed given asymmetric relations power that is a great tradition but it's a tradition that is such a threat that is usually repressed you're undergoing ugly censorship cancellation attempt to wipe out your own programs to wipe out your precious words and conversation that's powerful the course in the moment in which war is at the center of the consciousness of a nation we know truth is always the first casualty in any context of war and you begin to find out of course you know who what people are really made of it's very interesting to see universities that make claims about objectivity in their scholarship and as soon as the country goes to war they become major major cheerleaders and bootleggers of the vanguard who are promoting the war all the resources all the discourses all the orientation behind war we said well wait a minute we're concerned about truth and goodness and beauty we want to tell the truth across the board we keep track of the gangsterism being russians being americans being indians being hungarians whoever across the board and that's how they get in trouble brother that's why you're in trouble right now but you bouncing back bouncing back strong i want to talk about max weber uh weber in politics has a vocation uh talks about eternal vigilance uh that the moment you turn your back whatever advances you may make and we talked about the 1890s certainly a low point for the working class uh the reign of terror jim and jane crow in the south following uh the collapse of reconstruction and yet you did see a resurgence which was then crushed by woodrow wilson uh the espionage act the sedition act which were not used against german spies but were used against radicals joe hill is hanged emma goldman is deported there does seem to be this kind of push and pull and i wondered if you could explain that because we certainly seem at this moment at a low point we saw the rise of powerful popular movements in the 1960s the anti-war movement the women's movement the black power movement uh and and now it seems like we've just been rolled backwards can you talk about that cycle i think it has something to do with the fact that the most powerful ideology in the modern world which is nationalism and the allegiance to the nation state and convincing people and citizens to live and die for the nation state you know that has set at the center of so much of how we understand the world and therefore those of us who are internationalists those of us who believe that human beings in ethiopia and guatemala and brazil and bangladesh and india and japan and iran and turkey are human beings all having the same value significance and status it means we cut radically against the grain see when you think about think of class most workers will die for the flag in the nation state before they die for an international workers movement most black people no matter all the talk about race and blackness beautiful thing that's fine but most black people where they live would fight for the flag in the nation state before they would fight for blackness most women talk about gender all you want critiques of patriarchy very important they get behind the nation stick and so it's very difficult to have be consistent in your intellectual and your moral and your political practice to create international solidarity in a context in which nationalism is so intense and so powerful blinding that generates a whole you know a whole host of uh uh exclusions and and repressions and censorships and so forth and uh and it is what it is we have to confront the power of that nationalism but we have to bear witness to an international solidarity the names that you mentioned the boys we go on and on with the martin luther king jr vietnam war is the internationalism ella baker that's what is needed now more than ever and yet it seems to be so weak and so people i want to talk a little bit about the kind of war fever that's gripped the country around the ukraine i was as you know in eastern europe in 1989 as a reporter covering the collapse of the soviet bloc and the soviet union we talked about the peace dividend we thought very naively that nato was obsolete in fact nato has become a very aggressive force ask anyone in the middle east has expanded now uh throughout uh eastern and central europe uh and uh what is that kind of war fever done and and and juxtaposed that with the 20 years of war crimes that we have committed in countries like iraq afghanistan syria libya and everywhere else i mean i just wish that the mainstream press had spent as much time keeping track of the vicious atrocities visited upon iraqis those in yemen right now or some of the invasion occupation in latin america by u.s forces as they've done with our precious brothers and sisters in ukraine i think we all recognize war crimes are committed by nation states and empires across the board and so in our attempt to be consistent you see it said well wait a minute now we are in profound solidarity with our precious ukrainian brothers and sisters we're in solidarity with our russian brothers and sisters who have the courage to protest and maybe go to jail for 15 years because we look at the world through moral and spiritual lens from the vantage point of the least of these echoes of the 25th chapter of matthew of poor people and working people but we also recognize the american empire has no moral authority whatsoever when it comes to the violation of international law the under cutting of national sovereignties of other countries over and over again we've seen this and so if for example years ago gorbachev was promised that there would not be one inch added to the nato countries and now 14 are added if in fact there's missiles in poland and romania and no missiles in canada and mexico then we have to be very honest in terms of not in any way justifying excusing the barbaric criminal activities of putin and the russian army but recognizing that the united states has no moral status given its history given its record of doing similar things and not a mumbling word of the mainstream press not a mumbling word of one congressman or woman when you look at the situation of our precious palestinian brothers and sisters in gaza and the west bank how many was it in 50 days over 2 000 palestinians killed 550 babies that's more in number than the ukraine a palestinian baby has exactly the same moral status as a ukrainian baby or any other baby jewish baby precious palestinian baby precious sounds so simple but we get in trouble by trying to be consistent my brother well you're no longer at harvard because you have moral consistency well i can tell you one thing that if you are in profound solidarity with palestinians struggling for decency and dignity and are explicit about it then you are going to have to pay a cost there's no doubt about that that's true at harvard it's true in yale it's true in chicago that's true across the board it's just the way things are configurated these days that there's certain issues that you can't really tell the full truth about yet believe me in the years to come and the decades to come people are gonna wonder how could it be that the united states can get so fired up about one section of the world 100 000 precious ukrainians and admitted to the united states i give them a standing ovation please come please come but what about our haitians what about those from other parts of the world especially those who are of color the level of hypocrisy of the neo-liberal elites that you've talked about that brother glenn talks about it others has to be pointed out well his has to be pointed out and it's just opposed to the barbaric treatment of ukrainians by the russians but the neo-liberal elites have their own kind of vicious barbaric treatment of those outside of the u.s borders and mass incarceration regimes those inside the u.s borders isn't it just a confirmation of the underlying racism uh that ukrainians are somehow worthy victims and palestinians or yemenis or not it's both racing but it's also religion because you remember in the bosnian situation you had muslims you met a lot of muslims who looked like white folk right and they were still not treated the way that they are given to their human dignity and many of us were as you know fighting that uh and bringing power and pressure to best but you're right deep deep racism on the one hand and then the anti-muslim perceptions and practices on the other have to be have to be pointed out very much so you've spent your life in the academy uh would you finish harvard in three years i don't know how anyone does that and then would you lead the thomas pension book club when in your spare time really it's all frightening to the rest of us um i want to talk about the academy uh you of course went to princeton i also want to talk about philosophy because you're trained as a philosopher this is mentioned you mentioned this in the new yorker uh interview but you've never taught philosophy i think that's kind of fascinating uh on purpose that was your decision uh but let's talk about what's happened in the academy i mean academy itself has been so commodified so bureaucratized highly specialized so it's hard to get a sense of the whole uh if you look at the political economy of so many uh elite universities you'll see who the donors are you'll see who the benefactors are you see who provides the money and it's very difficult when you're tied to a corporate elites very difficult when you're tied to government prod contracts tell the truth about corporate elites tell the truth about government that's just the fact it's like if you you know in the old days when you had the catholic universities tied to the pope then it's going to be difficult to have a serious critique of the pope the way martin luther would for example or calvin or sweetly erasmus of course a complicated figure i love erasmus he was very critical but he's held on he stayed within but he stayed away from the universe the scholasticism university parish no this is praise the father complain of peace handbook militant christians that's the erasmus that i love and why is erasmus important because he was someone who whatever institutional affiliation he had he was still willing to think for himself he would stand up and say send socrates pray for us like he's talking about a pagan he said so what socrates is my spiritual comrade as a self-style christian and i think we say the same thing bell hooks buddhist oh okay hard to conceive of my work without her malcolm x prophetic islamic brother prophetic muslim i can't conceive of myself without without malcolm x james baldwin agnostic to the core with a deep spirituality i can't conceive myself as a christian without james baldwin and becker one of the great public intellects of the 20th century dalit converted from hinduism to buddhism i can't conceive of myself i'm still influenced by gandhi though gandhi of course falls so short in terms of dismantling cast he has a spirituality that still touches me that howard thurman and a william stewart nelson and a benjamin mays and a mordecai johnson and a martin luther king jr would build on as strategy tactic and as way of life for uh hated people for black folk and i'm thinking james in lawson jr who 93 years old still going strong new book revolutionary non-violent the forward he knows by angela davis isn't that interesting since the angela writing for james lawson the great freedom fighter after martin uh what he called critical plantation capitalism is what he talks about right always critical to militarism preacher pastor loving the people all the way down love that about the brother so you finish at princeton you study with the great sheldon wool and i think he was on your uh doctoral committee but she was you made it back you go to union you go to a seminary and i want you to talk about that you're trained as a philosopher i think of you as probably our preeminent moral philosopher but you don't teach philosophy so what's up with that yeah again you know the academic department's so narrow so you should never we should never confuse and conflate a philosopher a lover of wisdom with a professor of philosophy a professor of philosophy usually is one who engages in an analysis of the professional literature of the guild and you can learn much from them as well but they tend not to have a sense of the whole they haven't read enough cicero and quintillion and vico where you have to separate the forest from the shining of the nuts and the polishing of the bottom of the trees you got to get a sense of the whole you know synoptic vision and synecdoche imagination and the synthetic analysis you can see the relation of parts and parts so it's almost impossible to do that in most philosophy departments and i refuse to do because i knew i had to call it i'm from glen elder chocolate side of sacramento i'm from shiloh baptist church we have a sense of the whole we have a calling we have a sense of our vocation and mission and purpose and what is that to be blues men and women in the life of the mind we want to be intellectuals the way the musicians are because the musicians are an extension of the community they have the same spiritual cultural properties the very people that you are connected with organically so when they look at a brother wesley they look at a brother hedges they say hmm just like coltrane just like frank sinatra he touches our souls he empowers us there's a use and a function in the gifts that he gives that allows us to be more fortified in our living rather than when they see a professor of philosophies oh he's very smart very smart indeed can't follow much of what he does but yeah i know he's very smart very smart yeah i don't want to just be beauty in that way no no no no i want whatever wisdom i have whatever sense of joy quest for truth and beauty i have to be filtered directly into the empowerment of people so they can see more clearly feel more deeply and act more courageously before the worms get devised i i sat in on a lecture you gave at harvard on kierkegaard and i have already hold you in extremely high esteem but in that lecture hall i watched you do what pedants cannot do is you took kierkegaard and you you brought it you first of all brought a kierkegaard to life but second of all you were able to synthesize it in such a way that it immediately became relevant to every single student sitting in that lecture hall and i think that really is the definition of a great intellectual uh i wonder if kierkegaard has a lot to say to us at this particular moment in in with american malaise oh no doubt about it i mean he was dealing with the sense of the absurd he was dealing with the sense of self gratification and self-indulgent among the bourgeoisie and we see that in the states among the black bulls was the obsession with making is making it as opposed to keeping the faith being connected with the best of the past in order for the future to be very different kierkegaard had a sense something is very rare for most academicians of the catastrophic not just the problematic he wasn't about just solving problems in a managerial way no no no catastrophe hounds of hail organized hatred institutionalized greed fear hypocrisy resentment envy that's what kierkegaard marx is the same way the catastrophe of a capitalist project projects out of control greed profit maximization at any cost leading toward the undercutting of the very condition for the possibility of the of a healthy planet let alone the asymmetric relations of power at the workplace with workers across so it is a married marriage jelly the catastrophe of male supremacy divorce the catastrophe of white supremacy you see thinkers like kierkegaard are concerned with a sense of the whole and how we existentially as concrete human beings in space and time can mobilize spiritual moral political resources in order to be forces for good and then to contract and that's not an academic project and given the disciplinary division of knowledge in the professional managerial elite formative sites like universities it's hard to get a larger sense as a whole everybody majors in one thing you get in one discipline you don't see the connection of one in the other and when it comes to act no it's just getting a job you're just fitting in some hierarchy and the ending aim is what to make the hierarchy more diverse to make the hierarchy more inclusive so you get black folk at the top black presidents and congressmen and women who run the empire who accommodate themselves the wall street accommodate themselves to a national security state accommodate themselves in massive surveillance thank god for brother julian assange disclosing u.s war crimes thank god for brotherhood snowden we can go right down the line you and i were at uh at the court case chelsea manning chelsea manning we used to drive down at three in the morning were you driving [Laughter] right there that's right of what how is the u.s government house above that obama administration going to hide and conceal these vicious war crimes isn't it interesting to hear all these voices about war crimes now yeah yeah it's good i mean we ought to talk about putin war crime but of course the sad thing is you know the international court the only war crime that they've ever punished anybody is africans can you imagine that the major victims black people african people are the only ones charged and yugoslavia yugoslavia yugoslavia and liberia yeah that's right yeah yeah okay neighbors love you too baby but i mean it's like good god almighty but we can't ever though brother this is very important we should never ever be surprised by evil or paralyzed by despair we've got to keep engaging in our truth telling and our justice seeking in our joy sharing and our wounded healing and in being loved warriors and freedom fighters and those names that you started this show off with all you gotta do is add some curtis mate phil adam and they said the highest standards of moral and spiritual excellence that how you keep keeping on in the midst of overwhelming despair not allowing the spirit to have the last word that's why you continue to write i continue to write that's why you have your show that's why you continue to speak and i continue to speak and they're gonna have to crush us below the ground before we stop that's right we're gonna be faithful unto death ray that was the great dr cornell west i want to thank the real news network and its production team cameron granadino adam coley dwayne gladden and kayla rivera you can find me at chrisedges.substack.com [Music] you

Channel: The Real News Network

Views: 169,802

Keywords: Dr. Cornel West, Chris Hedges, American empire, The Chris Hedges Report, The Real News Network, TRNN

Id: 3cWfRdXjepE

Length: 32min 14sec (1934 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 15 2022