XR America & Chris Hedges: The Moral Imperative to Rebel

okay so Chris thanks so much for joining us I know it's been a very long day and I know you're writing a book at the moment so we really appreciate your time and yeah just wanting to you know spend 15 minutes with you and the core team of xor america the plan being that as we may be on board new people that they can you know have this recording shared with them as part of that onboarding process so with no further ado I'll hand over to you if that's okay Chris and the the idea is the sort of I guess they're the moral imperative to revolt you know and what it means to rebel that's the sort of theme of the talk well the coronavirus is certainly going to lift for many people the veil that somehow the system is functional and capable of addressing the most immediate and urgent demands of the citizenry whether that's the pandemic or climate change or the further consolidation of wealth and power in the hands of an oligarchic elite I know Roger has said and I really strongly support this imperative of reaching out to people who don't think like us you know X are like occupy I think is sometimes probably correctly been chastised for being too white so of course it's about diversity in terms of color and ethnicity religion but also politically that we have to talk to people and I'm specifically focusing on Trump supporters who whose politics may be very repugnant to us because these issues affect them and their families as much as they affect our families there's that quote from Lord Salisbury that Saul Alinsky used to always use there are no permanent allies only permanent power and I think for XR to succeed it's got to build coalitions that incorporate people whose particular views we find difficult if not even repugnant and that's hard as a reporter which is what I've done for most of my life I have spent a lot of time with people whose positions are quite difficult for me to countenance I wrote a book on the Christian right and the title of the book was American fascist Christian right in the war in America but in for two years I was inside megachurches and at pro-life seminars and creationist weekends and I took a course called evangelism explosion taught by D James Kennedy in Florida and I excoriated the movement and the manipulation of despair by these mega church pastors who remind me of Trump they're narcissists they're white males they've grown fabulously rich preying off of the despair of their congregations but by the end of the book I had a great deal of empathy for those people within the movement although they espoused political positions including homophobia and Islamophobia and everything else that I'm opposed to violently opposed to but I had seen what a train wreck their lives were I mean in terms of sexual abuse and domestic abuse and bankruptcies and struggles with addictions I see the movement as dangerous in the same way that I see the proto-fascist elements within Trump the Trump base as dangerous but I do think that if we are going to build a movement around climate change we can't speak only to our own I'll be the first thing the second thing is that we can't get caught up in what's practical or what's going to work you know if history is any guide you know most resistance movements are either crush or hijacked you know whether it's the Iranian Revolution or the French Revolution I would argue the Cuban Revolution I'm with Chomsky that Lenin and the Bolsheviks were counter revolutionaries that destroyed the anarchist Soviets where the workers control their own factories and rebuilt or built a form of state capitalism centralizing power and were ruthless about it but nevertheless and this of course is why I think x/r is right about being so insistent upon non-violence you know we have to rise up because it's the right thing to do and and not worry about whether it's effective or practical or the media is giving us good coverage I mean I watch the media pretty savagely mischaracterized occupy the Occupy movement in fact as a former employee that the New York Times actually went to the editor-in-chief of The Times and said you know you're writing that these people you're writing a stereotype these people are are just flakes and and and you know hippies and drummers of smoke blunts and I said in fact they're highly organized and you at least do them the you know you at least have to send a reporter down there for a day which they did to their credit and so you know there will be so many forces that will be hostile especially if XR becomes effective and the media will be at the forefront of that along with liberals along with the Democratic Party establishment which once Barack Obama shut down the Occupy movement immediately tried to hijack both the language and the movement itself so you don't have any friends out there at all including those wolves and sheep clothing who pretend to be your friends the liberal classes Noam Chomsky has pointed out is it acts as a kind of safety valve for a capitalist democracy in that it was willing to ameliorate some of the more egregious actions by the ruling elite but it it also is allowed to have its position and here I'm talking about quote-unquote liberals in the media liberals and academia it's allowed to have its position because it's used as an attack dog on the Left I've been a victim of it for many years it's as soon as you question the values and motives of the ruling elite that you step outside that liberal framework I mean for instance the perfect example would be George Packer II he writes for the New York Review of Books he critiques the Iraq war now he was a cheerleader for the war when Bush invaded Iraq and it the the mantra goes something like this you know we we wanted to liberate the Iraqi people we meant well but you know we made mistakes and it went wrong liberal apologists also did exactly the same thing during the Vietnam War so I think it's important to remember that the liberal class which will speak in the rhetoric of justice and climate justice is in fact your enemy and it is used essentially to discredit radical movements in fact they hate radical movements or detest radical movements even more fervently than the right wing because radical movements by their actions call out their own hypocrisy and lack of moral courage so you don't have any friends not within the establishment the class and economic divides which have created very frightening proto-fascist movements they're not unknown in Britain it's not the same the United States is far more diseased as a society than British society but you have Nigel Farage and and even figures like Boris Johnson which pander to these elements we are going to have to talk to them and I found in the two years that I was with members of the Christian Right I was quite upfront with them about where I came from that I grew up in the church my father was a minister that I graduated from Harvard Divinity School but that I came out of the liberal tradition of the church and I didn't I didn't them but at the same time I listened and that's really in many ways the key the fact that you're willing to listen and there will be things that they say and there's there's no problem with you know being firm about your own position whether it's on homophobia or anything else with them I found as long as you are willing to hear them out and and I think that's got to be an important part of the climate movement that we can't it's it's tempting even comforting to ghettoize ourselves and to people like us but it isn't gonna work it's hard work to step into communities where we feel estranged and where the views being expressed are difficult for us to hear but I think that you know certainly with the climate movement we have to open you know that kind of dialogue so I mean that would kind of don't know that I have anything else particularly imperative to say but I mean those are a couple important points thanks Chris no thank you and I know I promised I'd only be 15 minutes so we won't we won't do a Q&A and well I don't I can if people have a couple questions sorry marvelous day I did that's far the reason I said it just in case she works and I am said I am trying to stay awake to edit my first chapter but go ahead yeah no we did well I just could imagine TV fortunately and you know we've reached there to the young evangelicals for climate action and we're looking at how we can you know par know and actually message together so I think that'd be a pretty good start for us in that vein so but yet enough of me talking I've had too much coffee so is anybody got a question they'd like let me just add on that event ocol when I was at Harvard Divinity School I lived Roxbury which is the the ghetto the poor poorest section of the city I live I ran a church across the street for the housing project Harvard didn't have an inner city ministry program but Gordon Cromwell very right-wing conservative evangelical seminary in Boston did and I took it was interesting I took their inner city ministry course and I had far more connection with those students all of whom had to live in Roxbury for the semester because it turns out we just talked about nuts and bolts how do you deal with the guy who's selling heroin on your street you know how do you deal with a pimp was pimping a fourteen-year-old girl how do you and it was when we got down to that level that in fact it despite our very deep theological differences we actually were able not only to communicate but but to work together Dayna one thing that we as exchange for valiant America has as we set out with our launch into the country is that where there's already an established extinction rebellion us in our country and there's there's a misperception that's really wildly spread through that liberal movement I would say radically left liberal for much of the leadership of the extinction rebellion us and we I'm curious if you have any advice for as you were speaking about before the difficulty of the left criticizing the radical the more effective you become the more you'll be attacked and you will be attacked most viciously by the left I mean I saw that with occupy and I felt bad you know I was kind of the old father figure in Zuccotti I was there a lot and I mean these guys were men and women were so courageous and they you know they had a kind of exterior where they dealt with it but because I spent a lot of time with him I saw how it on it really unsettled them and made them question themselves and and that was the point so I think it's important to understand who these people are and what they're about I mean I know that there's been disputes with nxr about identity politics and all that kind of identity politics I mean I'm has been really hijacked by the ruling elites and by corporate power I mean what was Barack Obama he was exactly what Cornel West called him which was a black mascot for Wall Street and you know the whole notion that feminism is about a woman CEO or woman president no feminism if you read Andrea Dworkin and second wave feminists is about empowering oppressed women and there are no shortage I mean you know colonial I work used to work in Africa and you know you could find figures like Mobutu in the Congo or black and were Congolese but did the bidding of the Belgian and the French and the American colonizers and so we do need people of diversity and color without question but we can't you know I mean look at Buddha Church I mean this guy came from McKinsey which is one of the dirtiest consulting companies in the country and you know you can't support him simply because he's gay you know I'm not comparing him to Rome but I mean the head of the brown shirts under Nazi Germany was gay you know there has to be more than that so that's an asset I think you know being a woman or being a person of color or you know being from the G BLT community is unquestionably an asset but it has to go beyond that and I think that that you know that kind of identity politics has been very divisive within the left and used quite astutely by the ruling elites to mask what they're doing because there are always people from any marginalized group who in return for power and money are willing to serve their interests and in the end it's about combatting who you know who these you know the combating these structures of corporate powers about struck it's about confronting structures not individuals it's Chris as a mouse got a question at this stage Terry yeah Chris first very quickly thank you for doing this this is a very encouraging encounter and the earlier call also I was going to ask the question about the inverted totalitarianism and the wages of rebellion and your famous paraphrase of Sartre I don't find fastest expecting to win I fight them because they're fascists and I kind of like to follow up on that a little bit specifically with respect to Rowlands inverted totalitarianism democracy incorporated that book if I read it correctly and I used it in my doctoral work extensively that book was written kind of as I look forward if I remember correctly as if this is what's coming maybe but my question is is that a tipping point that we're beyond is that a Rubicon that we cry I would say he think woolen and you should go on YouTube I don't have you seen my interview with 100 yeah I mean Wolin felt we were pretty much there he felt that that what we were moving towards is a consolidation of unassailable corporate totalitarian power but that the system was so decayed that he defined the current system as inverted totalitarianism thank you okay anybody else yeah place no so - two questions so the first question is how do we pair you how do we fight identity politics how do we counter that that's the first question second question is what are some other groups who we can other groups who we can possibly make contact with and other than the young evangelicals so how do you I mean the kids not because I dread the COINTELPRO documents that you know they had no probably awareness of how deeply the state had penetrated and monitored their movement which it has with XR and how effective they had found identity politics to be in terms of being disruptive to the movement so you know a lot of these I mean you know when Malcolm X was assassinated in the ballroom the Audubon Ballroom there were nine FBI informants in the room they were all black and so identity politics has become a nice weapon in the hands of the ruling elites in order to muck up the movement and you know I find it kind of just I don't know what the word is I mean I I just find the the notion that you know that if somebody comes out of a marginalized group you know they are and yet essentially like Buddha to serve the interests of the ruling elites they should have a platform because they come from that marginalized group no people who come from marginalized groups who actually stand up and speak on behalf of those groups and confront power you know Hillary Clinton I mean Hill it for Hillary Clinton to run around and talk about women and families after being part of her husband's administration which destroyed welfare and and 70 percent of the original recipients under that welfare program were children is appalling and so I guess you counter identity politics by saying yes we do need people of color and and and different sexual orientation and gender and everything else and religion and we need these people because they have perspectives and understandings that I speak as a white male American you just don't have any what is it to be privileged privileges form of blindness I learned that you know I having spent 20 years of my life in the developing world and no matter how I speak Arabic I mean no matter how much time I spend in Gaza and I spent a lot of time in Gaza I would never fully understand what it meant to be a Palestinian in Gaza I worked as hard as I could to understand but there's always a gap and the same way I teach in a prison I'll never understand what it means to be a person of color locked in a cage but I work as hard but I respect that gap I understand that as a white male in particular there are just things that my own upbringing in my own privilege make it impossible for me to see and so we we desperately need people who come out of marginal communities for our own edification and also because these voices have traditionally been marginalized or silenced but to come out of that community alone is not enough that's my point you know there's a big difference between Condoleezza right and Jeremiah right Jeremiah Gary's a friend of mine and so that's the point but they the state will quite effectively use that I mean that's why transparency is our only weapon because you know they're sitting here or listening to this it's a waste of their time but they're doing it and we can't play we can't win at their game number one violence number two attempting secrecy I mean I was pretty tied to the Oakland occupy movement which got completely hijacked largely by the Black Bloc half of whom I'm convinced or cops you know there are very dark forces out there that that do not want us to succeed and we have to be very astute about how they operate and what the mechanisms are in our disposal to hold them at bay and one of them is identity politics they'll use it I mean they found out in Zuccotti that you know one person could have a bloc and and you know we oftentimes we knew who the cops were they look like cops and the other thing is they kept wandering around Zuccotti asking who the leaders were that was kind of a tip-off and then they said they were all from Reed College but they didn't have their student ID we have a picture there's a picture of three guys getting out of the back of a police van a few blocks from Zuccotti and they're all black lockers I mean the black bloc and the and antiva is a little more problematic because there are parts of an Tifa that are nonviolent well I thought the black bloc was a very effective tool used by the state to discredit and destroy occupy and I was quite vocal about it which meant that I was picketed by black bloc everywhere I went and it was always the same it was like a bunch of men they tend to be white Hill suburban men in like $600 were the kneepads and stuff but they go up and down wherever my lecture was with science I know I'll read you Chris Hedges which for me was kind of an indication of their political maturity so you will have enemies purportedly on the left and some of those people are sincere that's what they believe but you'll find the security and surveillance state will use them to destroy you especially if you become effective increased in terms of other groups that you've maybe come across that you feel could be worth reaching out to you know other than the young jackal is there any one that comes to mind that could be worth reaching answer labor labor unions I mean we don't have many in the States anymore I mean I wouldn't cross anyone off the list hmm yeah I mean how do you get into marginal communities that's difficult because the white the white left you know when Marge you know when deindustrialization was happening didn't you know I had forgotten about the primacy of economic justice so poor people of color were getting savaged you know no jobs unless it was in the illegal economy and then their police were militarized and they lost all legal rights due process habeas corpus fair trials 94% forced to plea out draconian sentences you know constructed by Clinton and Obama and others and evictions and all of the you know in the end though the white liberal elite was nowhere to be found so there's a deep and justifiable distrust on the part of people of color of a white liberal elite that was you know worried about whether the sociology department had you know at their university an appropriate array of you know races or genders or whatever which is great I'm all for that but they had kind of written people off in marginal communities and so there is I know because I teach in the prison so I deal with these people twice a week there's a deep end lit in an understandable distrust of the white left because they they weren't there when these people were you know really being decimated and that's gonna take a lot of work to repair thank you any of the questions guys we finish Chris I hate to take any more of your time but I was I was the last time I was an activist in my life was in the the anti-war protests and the civil rights protest back in the late 60s early 70s and one of the things I admired most about Malcolm X and the Black Panthers with the extent of which they went into the neighborhood and they built that trust exactly as you say the little LED had lost touch with and I'm just wondering that's not really what XR is about we're about nonviolent direct activism in the streets but how valuable do you think it would be if there were a function or a part or slant to our activism to do that sort of thing all right let me just historically draw a line between Malcolm and the Panthers there's a pretty big line there I mean there's never resonated in the black community the way Malcolm did you know Malcolm came out of a religious tradition and even though the black community is traditionally Christian it was that religious orientation that I think made Malcolm so much more effective than the Panthers I mean that that's a whole other discussion about the Panthers and Huey and where that went but yeah I think that that if you don't have a relationship with people in those communities you're not going to break down those walls of distrust I mean so I've been teaching in prisons for ten years but it's only now that I'm writing a book about prisons because it's taken me 10 years to guys at least before corona have been you know going to housing projects and interviewing the kids and the mothers of my students who don't want to talk even though their sons or their husbands her fathers are calling them from the prison saying talk to him you can trust him even then I have to go back to the prison and they have to call again because there's such understandable distrust especially if you're white so it takes a long time to build those relationships because these people have been burned including the white working-class which I come out of on my mother's side have been burned so often by do-gooders but I do think building those relationships are key and because it's really about trust it's about I mean these people feel so often incorrectly so that they're just used you know it it so yeah I mean you're right in that sense that I mean that's not really XR but that it is imperative that that the actions we carry out our such that they address or take into consideration and address the real needs of the vulnerable and the only way we know what though needs our is to listen to the vulnerable we may think we know what they are come and speak as someone who come lives in Princeton and comes from a position of privilege but we're wrong I know because I carry my assumptions in my into my books I just wrote a book called America the farewell tour where I was with opium addicts I'm a heroin addicts and eat white hate groups like the three percenters and you know addicted gamblers actually in Trump casino I mean that's kind of why I like reporting because often times my assumptions are just shattered and I think that's so often those people who seek to build social movements do not do a good job of listening and that's absolutely key and it that is key for X are they do have to listen they have to go out and listen they don't have to agree you know to understand is not to condole but they do have to listen thank you thank you Chris right well yeah we should try the evening is my opinion but now Chris thanks so much Frank said yeah I'm 4xr today yeah we all go okay

Channel: Extinction Rebellion (XR) UK

Views: 36,883

Keywords: extinction rebellion, climate change, xr, sixth extinction, global warming, air pollution, activism, climate breakdown, Ecological crisis, act now, tell the truth, join xr, recycle, protest, regenerative culture, carbon emissions, fossil fuels, chris hedges, jonathan mintram, covid 19, corona, virus, rebel

Id: xxAH6Q7kq0I

Length: 31min 6sec (1866 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 31 2020