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Watch the full interview with Chris Hedges here: https://open.substack.com/pub/usefulidiots/p/chris-hedges-rallies-for-a-left-right?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
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Rage Against the War Machine Rally on Feb 19: https://rageagainstwar.com/#home
Chris Hedges Substack: https://chrishedges.substack.com/
“If we do not build left-right coalitions on issues such as militarism, health care, a living wage and union organizing,” warns Chris Hedges, “we will be impotent in the face of corporate power and the war machine.”
Award-winning journalist Chris Hedges returns to the show to argue for a left-right alliance and explain why he’s speaking at the Rage Against The War Machine rally on Sunday.
The stakes are too high to not form a coalition: “We’re flirting with a nuclear holocaust.”
“The Democrats made a conscious decision to become the Republican Party,” he says. They consciously and very cynically decided to sell out the underclass for political expediency. But the damage they did, the hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of families that they destroyed, we don’t talk about it. There’s just no accountability.”
But people, on both the left and right, who were terrorized by these policies, know who hurt them.
“They know what the Democrats did to their neighborhoods by militarizing police and creating internal armies of occupation. I teach at a prison and half the students wouldn’t be there but for Clinton. They know who did that to them.”
But fighting the powerful from just one side has shown not to work: “It’s much scarier for politicians when you have people from both sides of the political spectrum making demands than it is from just one side.” A left-right coalition can’t be bought off, it can’t be smeared as partisan. It’s a movement.
This is why Chris Hedges is joining activists from all across the political spectrum to rally this weekend to Rage Against the War Machine. If you can get to DC this weekend, your voice can make a difference.
Watch the extended episode where Chris Hedges discusses how the silence on the Nord Stream story is an indication of how degraded the media has become, how mainstream consumers may never learn the truth of Russiagate, and his disgust for the leaders in our government:
“These people are really frightening, amoral, they cover themselves in the veneer of Ivy League degrees and cloying snobbery, but they’re very limited intellectually. They’re drunk with their own power and hubris, and of course they have made a very good living being shills for weapons manufacturers. They’re pimps of war.”
Plus, catch this week’s Thursday Throwdown where the White House takes a break from covering up the chemical explosion that devastated East Palestine, Ohio to cover up the other major story (not) in the news: Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh’s groundbreaking reporting that the US blew up the Nord Stream pipeline.
And join the Absurd Arena live discussion board with Katie and Aaron every Tuesday at 12pm est.
It’s all this, and more, on this week’s episode of Useful Idiots. Check it out.
0:00 Intro
4:38 The Four Food Groups of News
20:33 Chris Hedges interview
Thumbnail credit: modified version of Mr. Fish illustration
Free Leonard Peltier, Julian Assange and Daniel Hale. Jail war criminals.
The 60s hippies and the groups of people who organized to promote positive change were a freak phenomenon just like the music that came from that period in time. There was more awesome music and culture in the 60s than any other time in the 20th century. It was as if the moon and stars and sun all were at the perfect position in the heavens and for a very short time humans in every field were producing great things.
Chris! Let me down too effer.We have to be our own heroes.
Katie is not cool.All of them have heated rooms with a pay check coming.They all have a master.
Am I putting down lies?
I love Mr.Hedges.He is very noble in the moment.
We can all be broken.These effers spread their legs.
The whole “the right are now the party of anti war is ridiculous” there are plenty of right leaning people that have always been against fighting other peoples battles
Be a annoying sh*tbag for you r own moment.
America is a spirit that they underestimate.They stold the constitution from us.They are cowards.They did it on the down.
Some people get breaks,some don't.
Obama is not special.A million can do it.
Love the channel, but could you please provide links to the videos you share so we can share them via social media? I looked for the David Sirota video and couldn't find it.
The thus that people do,has no face no centralized what ever.If your soul is being drained,do your thing.I don't know about thoughts,real prayers are hot.You have to feel me.
Sorry mate reminds of the autistic guy goes to prison from the onion.Still laughing
I wanna smooch Aaron Mate…
Chris Hedges for president. ☺🕊💜
Yeah but at the age you need a toilet break intermission, is the time of life when you come back to the movie and you forgot what's going on
What a load of crap we would not have a war without NATO increasing Eastern European countries. Russia does this every century to Ukraine. Putin actually proved the opposite, if the NATO umbrella included Ukraine he would not have invaded. Russia is not some helpless creature in the night that is forced to bomb cities to rubble.
Finally Aaron brushed his hair
I believe the NED playbook talks about building coalitions too. If they can use it to overthrow governments, surely you can do it to just change a policy I think the whole world wishes you luck.
Russian disinformation 😉 it wasn't Norfolk Southern, it was Southfork Eastern.
Hope you went to LA on a bicycle and caught some tasty bugs for your meals.
They say moscitos taste horrible, except the chili seasoned.
Holding the breath for 6 minutes is far from the world record.
We've got a guy here in Denmark who can hold his breath (of course under water as it has to be for these weird records) for, I think it's more than 22 minutes, and I'm not sure if he holds the world record any longer.
Won’t work. As soon as some poor unsuspecting sod says coloured people instead of people of colour, it’s a fucking war!
Those earrings. Hot AF!! Love you guys!
Fun fact: "All Quiet on the Western Front" is the first book in a series; the others that I am aware of are "The Road Back," and "Three Comrades," about the struggles of veterans who survive the Imperialist War. The characters are from other platoons of the same company as the characters of AQWF. RB is set in the war's immediate aftermath, while TC is set about a decade later.
00:29:58 or joining with Nazis I mean part of the point of this rally I think is to oppose Nazis because it's just a fact that the US is arming a Ukrainian military it has a Neo-Nazi paramilitary formation
In a prior episode we figured out there are @ 3,000 Nazis in Ukraine, a country of 43.79 million people.
Didn’t Aaron just violate Hedges’ coalition premise? Or are we going to flush 43.79 million people go down the toilet?
What a wonderfully informative segment, Chris makes a very enlightning point about the need to demolish top-down structures.
How could Medea Benjamin not speak then it’s not Medea Benjamin
It's what happened to the chickens in this horrorshow that really breaks my heart the most! This has happened in Canada, in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec in 2013, and forty-seven people died. Same corrupt clusterf*** (railroads, lobbyists, government) as were responsible for this disaster in Palestine, Ohio.
I never eat breakfast lol
Great talk! I always watch Useful Idiots — congrats Katie and Aaron — but this time with a really special guest.
Nobody ever talks about the first speech Obama made after leaving office in 2017. It was tagged at $400k and before an audience of JP Morgan executives or Goldman Sachs. Yes, he was a brand. And if one hasn’t figured out that by now, said person is manifestly a woke liberal.
Chemical industry lobbyists "PRESSURED" the NTSB to limit regulations. Define "PRESSURED". Specifically define it. You will find that it means a combination of extortion and graft, i.e., BRIBES. EVERY pundit out there should begin using SPECIFIC terms so that the public will know just how EVIL these lobbyist monsters are.
Lol Blueanon. Nice. Also dang Russia and China having hundreds of bases around the world.
Spouting Putins propaganda about Ukraine Nazis, Russia has way far more Nazis, its a Fascist imperial expansionist regime.
In the last general election, 2.5 percent of Ukrainians voted for fascist candidates. In the USA, about half of the population regularly votes for fascists known as "Republicans". That makes the USA vastly more fascist than Ukraine.
The 2008 Financial Crisis was primarily a case of massive Fraud (Accounting Control Fraud) where the perps got away with their crimes, resulting in one of the largest wealth transfers in history.
See: "The Best Way To Rob a Bank Is To Own One" by William K. Black.
Regardless of our different beliefs, nobody likes being lied to, robbed, and lied to about what was taken. Let's all set aside the petty shit, and go after the thieves who deceive us.
A reasonable gauge of political principles is the level of fear that your intended opponent has of your action. In that context (the Rage Against the War Rally), does the Biden Administration fear a small meeting held at the Royal Oak Senior Center where half a dozen non party members show up and the entire room is maybe a couple of dozen people or a rally on the mall in DC where there are thousands and Ron Paul also happens to be speaking? The powerful don't fear the former. They do fear the latter. The other obvious question is how many people are you going to influence either way? That's the difference between a savvy politician and a sectarian imbecile.
So, the rally featured oath keepers, one percenters, proud boys, a "MAGA communist" and Traditionalist Workers Party members, LaRouche cultists as well as Gabbard, Kucinich and Paul.
Red lines ain't worth shit and what was accomplished?
At least, we could call our congress persons and senators and tell them to stop wars.
If you do nothing else but sitting on Ur butt.
"Woke circle-jerks"…love it.
Truly is inspiring to have such credible, and hopefully sane, rational folks on. thanks you two.
Katie an efficiency expert, cool, outstanding.
The most vocal elements of todays “left” have zero idea about coalition building. They are almost as intolerant as anyone on the right at this point. The "party of the left" is dominated by secular zealots hell bent on imposing their woke imperium on the entire world, they love imperialism more than anyone.
Aye, or in the case of abortion, you Do throw the baby out with the baptismal water.😉