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<h2 style="margin: 0.42em 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-weight: 400; line-height: 1.2em; font-size: 2.6em; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">
The elites “have no credibility left:” An interview with journalist Chris Hedges</h2>
<h5 style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-weight: 400; line-height: 1.3em; font-size: 1.1em; font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);" class="">
By David North <br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" class="">
6 October 2017</h5>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
On Monday, WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North interviewed Chris Hedges, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author, lecturer and former <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" class="">New York Times</em>correspondent. Among Hedges’ best-known
books are <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" class="">War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, The Death of the Liberal Class</em>, <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" class="">Empire of Illusion: the End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, Days
of Destruction, Days of Revolt</em>, which he co-wrote with the cartoonist Joe Sacco, and <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" class="">Wages of Rebellion: the Moral Imperative of Revolt</em>.</p>
<div class="imageRight" style="margin: 15px 0px 10px 10px; padding: 0px; float: right; width: 200px;">
<img src="http://www.wsws.org/asset/4f8cc374-8241-425c-8633-fcbfc8e99a7D/image.png?rendition=image480" srcset="http://www.wsws.org/asset/4f8cc374-8241-425c-8633-fcbfc8e99a7D/image.png?rendition=image960 2x" width="200" style="margin: 2px; padding: 0px; float: none; width: 200px; max-width: 100%; border: 0px solid rgb(255, 255, 255);" class=""><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 2px; display: block; font-weight: 700; font-size: 1.2em; line-height: 1.1em;" class="">Chris
Hedges</span></div>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
In an article published in <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" class="">Truthdig</em>September 17<em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" class="">,</em> titled “The Silencing of Dissent,” Hedges referenced the WSWS coverage of Google’s censorship of left-wing
sites and warned about the growth of “blacklisting, censorship and slandering dissidents as foreign agents for Russia and purveyors of ‘fake news.’”</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
Hedges wrote that “the Department of Justice called on RT America and its ‘associates’—which may mean people like me—to register under the Foreign Agent Registration Act. No doubt, the corporate state knows that most of us will not register as foreign agents,
meaning we will be banished from the airwaves. This, I expect, is the intent.”</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
North’s interview with Hedges began with a discussion of the significance of the anti-Russia campaign in the media.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.36em; font-weight: 700;" class="">David North:</span> How do you interpret the fixation on Russia and the entire interpretation of the election within the framework of Putin’s manipulation?</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.36em; font-weight: 700;" class="">Chris Hedges:</span> It’s as ridiculous as Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. It is an absolutely unproven allegation that is used to perpetuate
a very frightening accusation—critics of corporate capitalism and imperialism are foreign agents for Russia.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
I have no doubt that the Russians invested time, energy and money into attempting to influence events in the United States in ways that would serve their interests, in the same way that we have done and do in Russia and all sorts of other countries throughout
the world. So I’m not saying there was no influence, or an attempt to influence events.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
But the whole idea that the Russians swung the election to Trump is absurd. It’s really premised on the unproven claim that Russia gave the Podesta emails to WikiLeaks, and the release of these emails turned tens, or hundreds of thousands, of Clinton supporters
towards Trump. This doesn’t make any sense. Either that, or, according to the director of national intelligence, RT America, where I have a show, got everyone to vote for the Green Party.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
This obsession with Russia is a tactic used by the ruling elite, and in particular the Democratic Party, to avoid facing a very unpleasant reality: that their unpopularity is the outcome of their policies of deindustrialization and the assault against working
men and women and poor people of color. It is the result of disastrous trade agreements like NAFTA that abolished good-paying union jobs and shipped them to places like Mexico, where workers without benefits are paid $3.00 an hour. It is the result of the
explosion of a system of mass incarceration, begun by Bill Clinton with the 1994 omnibus crime bill, and the tripling and quadrupling of prison sentences. It is the result of the slashing of basic government services, including, of course, welfare, that Clinton
gutted; deregulation, a decaying infrastructure, including public schools, and the de facto tax boycott by corporations. It is the result of the transformation of the country into an oligarchy. The nativist revolt on the right, and the aborted insurgency within
the Democratic Party, makes sense when you see what they have done to the country.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
Police forces have been turned into quasi-military entities that terrorize marginal communities, where people have been stripped of all of their rights and can be shot with impunity; in fact over three are killed a day. The state shoots and locks up poor people
of color as a form of social control. They are quite willing to employ the same form of social control on any other segment of the population that becomes restive.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
The Democratic Party, in particular, is driving this whole Russia witch-hunt. It cannot face its complicity in the destruction of our civil liberties—and remember, Barack Obama’s assault on civil liberties was worse than those carried out by George W. Bush—and
the destruction of our economy and our democratic institutions.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
Politicians like the Clintons, Pelosi and Schumer are creations of Wall Street. That is why they are so virulent about pushing back against the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party. Without Wall Street money, they would not hold political power. The Democratic
Party doesn’t actually function as a political party. It’s about perpetual mass mobilization and a hyperventilating public relations arm, all paid for by corporate donors. The base of the party has no real say in the leadership or the policies of the party,
as Bernie Sanders and his followers found out. They are props in the sterile political theater.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
These party elites, consumed by greed, myopia and a deep cynicism, have a death grip on the political process. They’re not going to let it go, even if it all implodes.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.36em; font-weight: 700;" class="">DN:</span> Chris, you worked for the <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" class="">New York Times</em>. When was that, exactly?</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.36em; font-weight: 700;" class="">CH:</span> From 1990 to 2005.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.36em; font-weight: 700;" class="">DN:</span> Since you have some experience with that institution, what changes do you see? We’ve stressed that it has cultivated a constituency among the
affluent upper-middle class.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.36em; font-weight: 700;" class="">CH:</span> The <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" class="">New York Times</em> consciously targets 30 million upper-middle class and affluent Americans.
It is a national newspaper; only about 11 percent of its readership is in New York. It is very easy to see who the <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" class="">Times</em> seeks to reach by looking at its special sections on Home, Style, Business or Travel.
Here, articles explain the difficulty of maintaining, for example, a second house in the Hamptons. It can do good investigative work, although not often. It covers foreign affairs. But it reflects the thinking of the elites. I read the <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" class="">Times</em> every
day, maybe to balance it out with your web site.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.36em; font-weight: 700;" class="">DN:</span> Well, I hope more than balance it.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.36em; font-weight: 700;" class="">CH:</span> Yes, more than balance it. The <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" class="">Times</em> was always an elitist publication, but it wholly embraced
the ideology of neo-conservatism and neoliberalism at a time of financial distress, when Abe Rosenthal was editor. He was the one who instituted the special sections that catered to the elite. And he imposed a de facto censorship to shut out critics of unfettered
capitalism and imperialism, such as Noam Chomsky or Howard Zinn. He hounded out reporters like Sydney Schanberg, who challenged the real estate developers in New York, or Raymond Bonner, who reported the <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" class="">El Mozote</em> massacre
in El Salvador.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
He had lunch every week, along with his publisher, with William F. Buckley. This pivot into the arms of the most retrograde forces of corporate capitalism and proponents of American imperialism, for a time, made the paper very profitable. Eventually, of course,
the rise of the internet, the loss of classified ads, which accounted for about 40 percent of all newspaper revenue, crippled the <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" class="">Times</em> as it has crippled all newspapers. Newsprint has lost the monopoly
that once connected sellers with buyers. Newspapers are trapped in an old system of information they call “objectivity” and “balance,” formulae designed to cater to the powerful and the wealthy and obscure the truth. But like all Byzantine courts, the <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" class="">Times</em> will
go down clinging to its holy grail.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
The intellectual gravitas of the paper—in particular the Book Review and the Week in Review—was obliterated by Bill Keller, himself a neocon, who, as a columnist, had been a cheerleader for the war in Iraq. He brought in figures like Sam Tanenhaus. At that
point the paper embraced, without any dissent, the utopian ideology of neoliberalism and the primacy of corporate power as an inevitable form of human progress. The <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" class="">Times</em>, along with business schools, economics
departments at universities, and the pundits promoted by the corporate state, propagated the absurd idea that we would all be better off if we prostrated every sector of society before the dictates of the marketplace. It takes a unique kind of stupidity to
believe this. You had students at Harvard Business School doing case studies of Enron and its brilliant business model, that is, until Enron collapsed and was exposed as a gigantic scam. This was never, really, in the end, about ideas. It was about unadulterated
greed. It was pushed by the supposedly best educated among us, like Larry Summers, which exposes the lie that somehow our decline is due to deficient levels of education. It was due to a bankrupt and amoral elite, and the criminal financial institutions that
make them rich.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
Critical thinking on the op-ed page, the Week in Review or the Book Review, never very strong to begin with, evaporated under Keller. Globalization was beyond questioning. Since the <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" class="">Times</em>, like all elite
institutions, is a hermetically sealed echo chamber, they do not realize how irrelevant they are becoming, or how ridiculous they look. Thomas Friedman and David Brooks might as well write for the<em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" class=""> Onion</em>.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
I worked overseas. I wasn’t in the newsroom very much, but the paper is a very anxiety-ridden place. The rules aren’t written on the walls, but everyone knows, even if they do not articulate it, the paper’s unofficial motto: <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" class="">Do
not significantly alienate those upon whom we depend for money and access!</em> You can push against them some of the time. But if you are a serious reporter, like Charlie Leduff, or Sydney Schanberg, who wants to give a voice to people who don’t have a voice,
to address issues of race, class, capitalist exploitation or the crimes of empire, you very swiftly become a management problem and get pushed out. Those who rise in the organization and hold power are consummate careerists. Their loyalty is to their advancement
and the stature and profitability of the institution, which is why the hierarchy of the paper is filled with such mediocrities. Careerism is the paper’s biggest Achilles heel. It does not lack for talent. But it does lack for intellectual independence and
moral courage. It reminds me of Harvard.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.36em; font-weight: 700;" class="">DN:</span> Let’s come back to this question of the Russian hacking news story. You raised the ability to generate a story, which has absolutely no factual
foundation, nothing but assertions by various intelligence agencies, presented as an assessment that is beyond question. What is your evaluation of this?</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.36em; font-weight: 700;" class="">CH:</span> The commercial broadcast networks, and that includes CNN and MSNBC, are not in the business of journalism. They hardly do any. Their celebrity
correspondents are courtiers to the elite. They speculate about and amplify court gossip, which is all the accusations about Russia, and they repeat what they are told to repeat. They sacrifice journalism and truth for ratings and profit. These cable news
shows are one of many revenue streams in a corporate structure. They compete against other revenue streams. The head of CNN, Jeff Zucker, who helped create the fictional persona of Donald Trump on “Celebrity Apprentice,” has turned politics on CNN into a 24-hour
reality show. All nuance, ambiguity, meaning and depth, along with verifiable fact, are sacrificed for salacious entertainment. Lying, racism, bigotry and conspiracy theories are given platforms and considered newsworthy, often espoused by people whose sole
quality is that they are unhinged. It is news as burlesque.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
I was on the investigative team at the <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" class="">New York Times</em> during the lead-up to the Iraq War. I was based in Paris and covered Al Qaeda in Europe and the Middle East. Lewis Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney, Richard
Perle and maybe somebody in an intelligence agency, would confirm whatever story the administration was attempting to pitch. Journalistic rules at the <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" class="">Times</em> say you can’t go with a one-source story. But
if you have three or four supposedly independent sources confirming the same narrative, then you can go with it, which is how they did it. The paper did not break any rules taught at Columbia journalism school, but everything they wrote was a lie.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
The whole exercise was farcical. The White House would leak some bogus story to Judy Miller or Michael Gordon, and then go on the talk shows to say, ‘as the Times reported….’ It gave these lies the veneer of independence and reputable journalism. This was a
massive institutional failing, and one the paper has never faced.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.36em; font-weight: 700;" class="">DN:</span> The CIA pitches the story, and then the <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" class="">Times</em> gets the verification from those who pitch
it to them.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.36em; font-weight: 700;" class="">CH:</span> It’s not always pitched. And not much of this came from the CIA. The CIA wasn’t buying the “weapons of mass destruction” hysteria.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.36em; font-weight: 700;" class="">DN:</span> It goes the other way too?</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.36em; font-weight: 700;" class="">CH:</span> Sure. Because if you’re trying to have access to a senior official, you’ll constantly be putting in requests, and those officials will decide
when they want to see you. And when they want to see you, it’s usually because they have something to sell you.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.36em; font-weight: 700;" class="">DN:</span> The media’s anti-Russia narrative has been embraced by large portions of what presents itself as the “left.”</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.36em; font-weight: 700;" class="">CH:</span> Well, don’t get me started on the American left. First of all, there is no American left—not a left that has any kind of seriousness, that understands
political or revolutionary theories, that’s steeped in economic study, that understands how systems of power work, especially corporate and imperial power. The left is caught up in the same kind of cults of personality that plague the rest of society. It focuses
on Trump, as if Trump is the central problem. Trump is a product, a symptom of a failed system and dysfunctional democracy, not the disease.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
If you attempt to debate most of those on the supposedly left, they reduce discussion to this cartoonish vision of politics.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
The serious left in this country was decimated. It started with the suppression of radical movements under Woodrow Wilson, then the “Red Scares” in the 1920s, when they virtually destroyed our labor movement and our radical press, and then all of the purges
in the 1950s. For good measure, they purged the liberal class—look at what they did to Henry Wallace—so that Cold War “liberals” equated capitalism with democracy, and imperialism with freedom and liberty. I lived in Switzerland and France. There are still
residues of a militant left in Europe, which gives Europeans something to build upon. But here we almost have to begin from scratch.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
I’ve battled continuously with Antifa and the Black Bloc. I think they’re kind of poster children for what I would consider phenomenal political immaturity. Resistance is not a form of personal catharsis. We are not fighting the rise of fascism in the 1930s.
The corporate elites we have to overthrow already hold power. And unless we build a broad, popular resistance movement, which takes a lot of patient organizing among working men and women, we are going to be steadily ground down.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
So Trump’s not the problem. But just that sentence alone is going to kill most discussions with people who consider themselves part of the left.</p>
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The corporate state has made it very hard to make a living if you hold fast to this radical critique. You will never get tenure. You probably won’t get academic appointments. You won’t win prizes. You won’t get grants. The <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" class="">New
York Times</em>, if they review your book, will turn it over to a dutiful mandarin like George Packer to trash it—as he did with my last book. The elite schools, and I have taught as a visiting professor at a few of them, such as Princeton and Columbia, replicate
the structure and goals of corporations. If you want to even get through a doctoral committee, much less a tenure committee, you must play it really, really safe. You must not challenge the corporate-friendly stance that permeates the institution and is imposed
through corporate donations and the dictates of wealthy alumni. Half of the members of most of these trustee boards should be in prison!</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
Speculation in the 17th century in Britain was a crime. Speculators were hanged. And today they run the economy and the country. They have used the capturing of wealth to destroy the intellectual, cultural and artistic life in the country and snuff out our
democracy. There is a word for these people: traitors.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.36em; font-weight: 700;" class="">DN:</span> What about the impact that you’ve seen of identity politics in America?</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.36em; font-weight: 700;" class="">CH:</span> Well, identity politics defines the immaturity of the left. The corporate state embraced identity politics. We saw where identity politics got
us with Barack Obama, which is worse than nowhere. He was, as Cornel West said, a black mascot for Wall Street, and now he is going around to collect his fees for selling us out.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
My favorite kind of anecdotal story about identity politics: Cornel West and I, along with others, led a march of homeless people on the Democratic National Convention session in Philadelphia. There was an event that night. It was packed with hundreds of people,
mostly angry Bernie Sanders supporters. I had been asked to come speak. And in the back room, there was a group of younger activists, one who said, “We’re not letting the white guy go first.” Then he got up and gave a speech about how everybody now had to
vote for Hillary Clinton. That’s kind of where identity politics gets you. There is a big difference between shills for corporate capitalism and imperialism, like Corey Booker and Van Jones, and true radicals like Glen Ford and Ajamu Baraka. The corporate
state carefully selects and promotes women, or people of color, to be masks for its cruelty and exploitation.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
It is extremely important, obviously, that those voices are heard, but not those voices that have sold out to the power elite. The feminist movement is a perfect example of this. The old feminism, which I admire, the Andrea Dworkin kind of feminism, was about
empowering oppressed women. This form of feminism did not try to justify prostitution as sex work. It knew that it is just as wrong to abuse a woman in a sweatshop as it is in the sex trade. The new form of feminism is an example of the poison of neoliberalism.
It is about having a woman CEO or woman president, who will, like Hillary Clinton, serve the systems of oppression. It posits that prostitution is about choice. What woman, given a stable income and security, would choose to be raped for a living? Identity
politics is anti-politics.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.36em; font-weight: 700;" class="">DN:</span> I believe you spoke at a Socialist Convergence conference where you criticized Obama and Sanders, and you were shouted down.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.36em; font-weight: 700;" class="">CH:</span> Yes, I don’t even remember. I’ve been shouted down criticizing Obama in many places, including Berkeley. I have had to endure this for a long
time as a supporter and speech writer for Ralph Nader. People don’t want the illusion of their manufactured personalities, their political saviors, shattered; personalities created by public relations industries. They don’t want to do the hard work of truly
understanding how power works and organizing to bring it down.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.36em; font-weight: 700;" class="">DN:</span> You mentioned that you have been reading the <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" class="">World Socialist Web Site</em> for some time. You
know we are quite outside of that framework.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.36em; font-weight: 700;" class="">CH:</span> I’m not a Marxist. I’m not a Trotskyist. But I like the site. You report on important issues seriously and in a way a lot of other sites don’t.
You care about things that are important to me—mass incarceration, the rights and struggles of the working class and the crimes of empire. I have read the site for a long time.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.36em; font-weight: 700;" class="">DN:</span> Much of what claims to be left—that is, the pseudo-left—reflects the interests of the affluent middle class.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.36em; font-weight: 700;" class="">CH:</span> Precisely. When everybody was, you know, pushing for multiculturalism in lead institutions, it really meant filtering a few people of color or
women into university departments or newsrooms, while carrying out this savage economic assault against the working poor and, in particular, poor people of color in deindustrialized pockets of the United States. Very few of these multiculturalists even noticed.
I am all for diversity, but not when it is devoid of economic justice. Cornel West has been one of the great champions, not only of the black prophetic tradition, the most important intellectual tradition in our history, but the clarion call for justice in
all its forms. There is no racial justice without economic justice. And while these elite institutions sprinkled a few token faces into their hierarchy, they savaged the working class and the poor, especially poor people of color.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
Much of the left was fooled by the identity politics trick. It was a boutique activism. It kept the corporate system, the one we must destroy, intact. It gave it a friendly face.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.36em; font-weight: 700;" class="">DN:</span> The <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" class="">World Socialist Web Site</em> has made the issue of inequality a central focus of its coverage.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.36em; font-weight: 700;" class="">CH:</span> That’s why I read it and like it.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.36em; font-weight: 700;" class="">DN:</span> Returning to the Russia issue, where do you see this going? How seriously do you see this assault on democratic rights? We call this the new
McCarthyism. Is that, in your view, a legitimate analogy?</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.36em; font-weight: 700;" class="">CH:</span> Yes, of course it’s the new McCarthyism. But let’s acknowledge how almost irrelevant our voices are.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.36em; font-weight: 700;" class="">DN:</span> I don’t agree with you on that.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.36em; font-weight: 700;" class="">CH:</span> Well, irrelevant in the sense that we’re not heard within the mainstream. When I go to Canada I am on the CBC on prime time. The same is true
in France. That never happens here. PBS and NPR are never going to do that. Nor are they going to do that for any other serious critic of capitalism or imperialism.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
If there is a debate about attacking Syria, for example, it comes down to bombing Syria or bombing Syria and sending in troops, as if these are the only two options. Same with health care. Do we have Obamacare, a creation of the Heritage Foundation and the
pharmaceutical and insurance industries, or no care? Universal health care for all is not discussed. So we are on the margins. But that does not mean we are not dangerous. Neoliberalism and globalization are zombie ideologies. They have no credibility left.
The scam has been found out. The global oligarchs are hated and reviled. The elite has no counterargument to our critique. So they can’t afford to have us around. As the power elite becomes more frightened, they’re going to use harsher forms of control, including
the blunt instrument of censorship and violence.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.36em; font-weight: 700;" class="">DN:</span> I think it can be a big mistake to be focused on the sense of isolation or marginalization. I’ll make a prediction. You will have, probably sooner
than you think, more requests for interviews and television time. We are in a period of colossal political breakdown. We are going to see, more and more, the emergence of the working class as a powerful political force.</p>
<p style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.36em;" class="">
<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.36em; font-weight: 700;" class="">CH:</span> That’s why we are a target. With the bankruptcy of the ruling ideology, and the bankruptcy of the American liberal class and the American left,
those who hold fast to intellectual depth and an examination of systems of power, including economics, culture and politics, have to be silenced.</p>
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