Chris Hedges's Blog, page 687
February 19, 2012
Acts of Love
Love, the defining and most glorious element in human life, reminds us of why we have been created for our brief sojourns on the planet.
Related Entries
February 17, 2012 Occupy Fashion Week
February 16, 2012 The Imperial Way: American Decline in Perspective, Part 2
February 15, 2012 Will Catholic Bishops and the Religious Right Save Obama?
February 15, 2012 'Colbert Report': Contraception Crusade
February 14, 2012 A Religious War Out of Thin Air
February 17, 2012
Occupy Fashion Week
Fashionistas are a funny lot, sometimes unintentionally so, and often given to talking about the rag trade and all things stylish in highfalutin' terms. Here we have some from that set—and a couple of outliers, including Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges—holding forth about the nuanced relationship between fashion and OWS.
February 13, 2012
Occupy Draws Strength From the Powerless
There is a recipe for breaking popular movements. I watched it play out over five years in the war in El Salvador. I now see these familiar patterns in the assault against the Occupy movement.
Related Entries
February 13, 2012 Sheldon Adelson: An Anti-Semite's Dream
February 12, 2012 A 'Queer History' of Rick Santorum and Proposition 8
February 12, 2012 A 'Queer History' of Rick Santorum and Proposition 8
February 9, 2012 More From Chris Hedges on Black Bloc
February 9, 2012 Elections Are for Suckers
February 9, 2012
More From Chris Hedges on Black Bloc
With his column "The Cancer in Occupy," published earlier this week at Truthdig, Chris Hedges angered many on the radical left with his harsh criticism of the Black Bloc anarchists. Truthout's J.A. Myerson, an activist and journalist involved in OWS since the occupation's earliest days, got hold of Hedges by phone to press the issue. —ARK
Related EntriesJ.A. Myerson at Truthout:
JAM: You speak of the black bloc as though it were a political organization with membership, a violent, secretive, nihilistic cabal, which calls to mind the Black Hand, conveniently. It sounds like a really snarky question, but I swear I am genuinely interested in your answer: were you aware writing this piece that that is not an apt description of a black bloc, which is no organization at all, but a protest tactic that does more than just smash and burn?
CH: I put in there that they detest organization of any kind. I use part of their jargon - "feral" and "spontaneous" protest - whereby you walk down a street and nothing is planned. You walk by a window and you break it. They feel that any kind of attempt to plan immediately imposes a kind of hierarchy that they oppose. That's in the piece. There's a limit to expounding upon the internal - I didn't get into primitive anarchism and all this kind of stuff. But that was certainly part of the piece. It's precisely because they detest - there's a line in the article that says that they are opposed to those of us on the organized left. The operative word is "organization."
...
JAM: What then is the solution to the problem? What is the prognosis for the cancer?
CH: There has to be a rigid adherence to nonviolence. That does not mean that the black bloc can't exist. We saw a multiplicity of groups in the 1960s - from the Yippies to the Panthers to the Weather Underground - but the movement itself has to continue to operate in a way that it does not alienate the mainstream. If the security and surveillance state is able to alienate the mainstream from OWS, then OWS will be far more vulnerable to being destroyed. That's very similar to the civil rights movement. I'm a huge admirer of Malcolm X. And, yet, the establishment didn't really fear Malcolm X; they feared King. That's true here. They fear OWS. They don't fear the black bloc.
February 6, 2012 Nominate Our Next Truthdigger of the Week
February 6, 2012 The Cancer in Occupy
February 6, 2012
The Cancer in Occupy
The Black Bloc anarchists, who have been active on the streets in Oakland and other cities, are a gift from heaven to the security and surveillance state.
Related Entries
February 5, 2012 Dispatches From Cairo: Game of Death
February 5, 2012 Police Give Occupy D.C. a Tidying
February 4, 2012 For OWS, a Confrontation Within the Confrontation
February 3, 2012 'Out and Occupy' Condemns Corporate 'Pinkwashing '
February 3, 2012 'Out and Occupy' Condemns Corporate 'Pinkwashing'
January 30, 2012
Corporations Have No Use for Borders
It used to be the country we would flee to if life in the United States became unpalatable, but that was the old Canada.
Related Entries
January 30, 2012 Catholic Churches Bring Birth Control Debate Into Sunday Services
January 29, 2012 Oakland Police Arrest 400 and Counting
January 29, 2012 Not That Kind of Occupation
January 28, 2012 The Keystone XL Media Bias
January 27, 2012 Newt Gingrich, Shameless Demagogue
January 25, 2012
Chris Hedges and Lawrence Lessig: Getting Money Out of Politics
One invented Creative Commons, the other occupied the commons. Together, they talk about strategies for ridding our democracy of corrosive corporate dollars.
January 26, 2012 Obama's Faux Populism Sounds Like Bill Clinton
January 26, 2012 Mitch Daniels: Bombast From the Past
January 23, 2012
Thank You for Standing Up
We can vote for Romney or Obama, but Goldman Sachs and ExxonMobil and Bank of America and the defense contractors always win. However, the iron grip of corporations over our lives will, eventually, be broken.
Related Entries
January 23, 2012 Surviving the Hell of War, and Then Some
January 23, 2012 Gazillions
January 23, 2012 El Presidente
January 22, 2012 Pipeline Politics
January 22, 2012 What Newt Learned From Nixon
Thank You For Standing Up
We can vote for Romney or Obama, but Goldman Sachs and ExxonMobil and Bank of America and the defense contractors always win. However the iron grip of corporations over our lives will, eventually, be broken.
Related Entries
January 23, 2012 Surviving the Hell of War, and Then Some
January 23, 2012 Gazillions
January 23, 2012 El Presidente
January 22, 2012 Pipeline Politics
January 22, 2012 What Newt Learned From Nixon
January 16, 2012
Why I'm Suing Barack Obama
On my behalf, attorneys have challenged a law that allows imprisonment of U.S. citizens without trial.
Related Entries
January 15, 2012 Newt's Venom Is Mitt's Medicine
January 15, 2012 Huntsman to Endorse Romney
January 15, 2012 Moving Obama to Europe
January 14, 2012 White House Restores Diplomatic Relations With Burma
January 14, 2012 Obama's Mission Accomplished Moment?
Chris Hedges's Blog
- Chris Hedges's profile
- 1878 followers
