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Rule of Idiots - Read by Eunice Wong

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible's list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actorText originally published May 26, 2025Full text:The last days of dying empires are dominated by idiots. The Roman, Mayan, French, Habsburg, Ottoman, Romanoff, Iranian and Soviet dynasties crumbled under the stupidity of their decadent rulers who absented themselves from reality, plundered their nations and retreated into echo chambers where fact and fiction were indistinguishable.Donald Trump, and the sycophantic buffoons in his administration, are updated versions of the reigns of the Roman emperor Nero, who allocated vast state expenditures to attain magical powers; the Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang, who funded repeated expeditions to a mythical island of immortals to bring back a potion that would give him eternal life; and a feckless Tsarist court that sat around reading tarot cards and attending séances as Russia was decimated by a war that consumed over two million lives and revolution brewed in the streets.In “Hitler and the Germans,” the political philosopher Eric Voegelin dismisses the idea that Hitler — gifted in oratory and political opportunism, but poorly educated and vulgar — mesmerized and seduced the German people. The Germans, he writes, supported Hitler and the “grotesque, marginal figures,” surrounding him because he embodied the pathologies of a diseased society, one beset by economic collapse and hopelessness. Voegelin defines stupidity as a “loss of reality.” The loss of reality means a “stupid” person cannot “rightly orient his action in the world, in which he lives.” The demagogue, who is always an idiote, is not a freak or social mutation. The demagogue expresses the society’s zeitgeist, its collective departure from a rational world of verifiable fact.These idiots, who promise to recapture lost glory and power, do not create. They only destroy. They accelerate the collapse. Limited in intellectual ability, lacking any moral compass, grossly incompetent and filled with rage at established elites who they see as having slighted and rejected them, they remake the world into a playground for grifters, con artists and megalomaniacs. They make war on universities, banish scientific research, peddle quack theories about vaccines as a pretext to expand mass surveillance and data sharing, strip legal residents of their rights and empower armies of goons, which is what the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has become, to spread fear and ensure passivity. Reality, whether the climate crisis or the immiseration of the working class, does not impinge on their fantasies. The worse it gets, the more idiotic they become.Hannah Arendt blames a society that willingly embraces radical evil on this collective “thoughtlessness.” Desperate to escape from the stagnation, where they and their children are trapped, hopeless and in despair, a betrayed population is conditioned to exploit everyone around them in a desperate scramble to advance. People are objects to be used, mirroring the cruelty inflicted by the ruling class.A society convulsed by disorder and chaos, as Voegelin points out, celebrates the morally degenerate, those who are cunning, manipulative, deceitful and violent. In an open, democratic society, these attributes are despised and criminalized. Those who exhibit them are condemned as stupid; “a man [or woman] who behaves in this way,” Voegelin notes, “will be socially boycotted.” But the social, cultural and moral norms in a diseased society are inverted. The attributes that sustain an open society — a concern for the common good, honesty, trust and self-sacrifice — are ridiculed. They are detrimental to existence in a diseased society.When a society, as Plato notes, abandons the common good, it always unleashes amoral lusts — violence, greed and sexual exploitation — and fosters magical thinking, the focus of my book “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.”The only thing these dying regimes do well is spectacle. These bread and circus acts — like Trump’s $40 million Army parade to be held on his birthday on June 14 — keep a distressed population entertained.The Disneyfication of America, the land of eternally happy thoughts and positive attitudes, the land where everything is possible, is peddled to mask the cruelty of economic stagnation and social inequality. The population is conditioned by mass culture, dominated by sexual commodification, banal and mindless entertainment and graphic depictions of violence, to blame itself for failure.Søren Kierkegaard in “The Present Age” warns that the modern state seeks to eradicate conscience and shape and manipulate individuals into a pliable and indoctrinated “public.” This public is not real. It is, as Kierkegaard writes, a “monstrous abstraction, an all-embracing something which is nothing, a mirage.” In short, we became part of a herd, “unreal individuals who never are and never can be united in an actual situation or organization — and yet are held together as a whole.” Those who question the public, those who denounce the corruption of the ruling class, are dismissed as dreamers, freaks or traitors. But only they, according to the Greek definition of the polis, can be considered citizens.Thomas Paine writes that a despotic government is a fungus that grows out of a corrupt civil society. This is what happened to past societies. It is what happened to us.It is tempting to personalize the decay, as if ridding ourselves of Trump will return us to sanity and sobriety. But the rot and corruption has ruined all of our democratic institutions, which function in form, not in content. The consent of the governed is a cruel joke. Congress is a club on the take from billionaires and corporations. The courts are appendages of corporations and the rich. The press is an echo chamber of the elites, some of whom do not like Trump, but none of whom advocate the social and political reforms that could save us from despotism. It is about how we dress up despotism, not despotism itself.The historian Ramsay MacMullen, in “Corruption and the Decline of Rome,” writes that what destroyed the Roman Empire was “the diverting of governmental force, its misdirection.” Power became about enriching private interests. This misdirection renders government powerless, at least as an institution that can address the needs and protect the rights of the citizenry. Our government, in this sense, is powerless. It is a tool of corporations, banks, the war industry and oligarchs. It cannibalizes itself to funnel wealth upwards.“[T]he decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness,” Edward Gibbon writes. “Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the cause of the destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and, as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight. The story of the ruin is simple and obvious: and instead of inquiring why the Roman Empire was destroyed we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted for so long.”The Roman emperor Commodus, like Trump, was entranced with his own vanity. He commissioned statues of himself as Hercules and had little interest in governance. He fancied himself a star of the arena, staging gladiatorial contests where he was crowned the victor and killing lions with a bow and arrow. The empire — he renamed Rome the Colonia Commodiana (Colony of Commodus) — was a vehicle to satiate his bottomless narcissism and lust for wealth. He sold public offices the way Trump sells pardons and favors to those who invest in his cryptocurrencies or donate to his inauguration committee or presidential library.Finally, the emperor’s advisors arranged to have him strangled to death in his bath by a professional wrestler after he announced that he would assume the consulship dressed as a gladiator. But his assassination did nothing to halt the decline. Commodus was replaced by the reformer Pertinax who was assassinated three months later. The Praetorian Guards auctioned off the office of emperor. The next emperor, Didius Julianus, lasted 66 days. There would be five emperors in A.D. 193, the year after the assassination of Commodus.Like the late Roman Empire, our republic is dead.Our constitutional rights — due process, habeas corpus, privacy, freedom from exploitation, fair elections and dissent — have been taken from us by judicial and legislative fiat. These rights exist only in name. The vast disconnect between the purported values of our faux democracy and reality means our political discourse, the words we use to describe ourselves and our political system, are absurd.Walter Benjamin wrote in 1940 amid the rise of European fascism and looming world war:A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned towards the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe, which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.Our decay, our illiteracy and collective retreat from reality, was long in the making. The steady erosion of our rights, especially our rights as voters, the transformation of the organs of state into tools of exploitation, the immiseration of the working poor and middle class, the lies that saturate our airwaves, the degrading of public education, the endless and futile wars, the staggering public debt, the collapse of our physical infrastructure, mirror the last days of all empires.Trump the pyromaniac entertains us as we go down.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Thanks for reading The Chris Hedges Report! This post is public so feel free to share it.PhotosChris HedgesChris Hedges, a former Pulitzer Prize winning foreign correspondent for the New York Times and best selling author of 'Empire of Illusion', stands next to a window for a portrait, Princeton, NJ, November 2010. (Photo by Oliver Morris/Getty Images)Joined By Elon Musk, Trump Holds First Cabinet Meeting Of His Second TermWASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 26: U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks during a Cabinet meeting at the White House on February 26, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)Saluting New DictatorA jubilant crowd salutes Nazi Leader Adolf Hitler outside the Reich Chancellery, Berlin, after a plebiscite, which gave Hitler absolute power as German Fuhrer, 19th August 1934 (Photo by FPG/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)TOPSHOT-US-POLITICS-COMPUTERS-CLIMATE-ENERGY-CRYPTOCURRENCYTOPSHOT - US President Donald Trump (2R), flanked by US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick (L), US Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent (2L) and White House AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks (R), attends a the White House Crypto Summit in Washington, DC, March 7, 2025. (Photo by Jim WATSON / AFP) / ALTERNATE CROP (Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)National Guard Continues Border Security In TexasEAGLE PASS, TEXAS - FEBRUARY 4: U.S. Border Patrol agents guard migrants that crossed into Shelby Park as they wait to be picked up for processing on February 4, 2024 in Eagle Pass, Texas. (Photo by Michael Gonzalez/Getty Images)Portrait Of Hannah ArendtPortrait of German-born American political theorist and author Hannah Arendt (1906 - 1975), 1949. (Photo by Fred Stein Archive/Archive Photos/Getty Images)TOPSHOT-US-POLITICS-CPACTOPSHOT - Elon Musk (L) holds a chainsaw alongside Argentine President Javier Milei during the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center at National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland, on February 20, 2025. The chainsaw was a present to Elon Musk from Argentina's President Javier Milei. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)Washington DC Celebrates Army's 250th Anniversary With Parade And FestivitiesWASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 14: U.S. President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump stand together at the end of the U.S Army parade on June 14, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)Magic Returns to Disneyland Park as Theme Parks Plan to Reopen April 30ANAHEIM, CA - AUGUST 27: Mickey Mouse poses in front of Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland Park on August 27, 2019 in Anaheim, California. Disneyland plans to reopen on April 30, 2021. (Photo Joshua Sudock/Walt Disney World Resorts via Getty Images)New American Citizens Pledging AllegianceAlmost ten thousand new citizens, predominantly Hispanic, pledge allegiance to the United States of America during a naturalization ceremony at Miami's Orange Bowl Stadium.Thomas Painecirca 1770: The English-born American revolutionary philosopher Thomas Paine, (1737 - 1809), who wrote and published 'The Rights of Man', (1791 - 1792), in England. In it he expressed his support for the French Revolution and called for the overthrow of the British monarchy. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)President Of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky Addresses CongressWASHINGTON, DC - DECEMBER 21: President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky receives an American flag from U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Vice President Kamala Harris as he addresses a joint meeting of Congress in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol on December 21, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)The Rachel Maddow Show - Season 2019THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW -- Pictured: (l-r) Rachel Maddow, Secretary Hillary Clinton -- Interview with Secretary Hillary Clinton in Studio 3A, 30 Rockefeller Plaza on Wednesday May 1, 2019 -- (Photo by: Mackenzie Calle/MSNBC/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images)NYCC Protest Against Trump's Recent Financial Executive Order at NY, USANYCC is protesting due to the recent comments from Donald Trump on rolling back Dodd-Frank and his recent Finanical Executive Order written by former Goldman employee Gary Cohn at Liberty St near Federal Reserve Bank of New York, NY, USA, 7 february 2017. (Photo by Anik Rahman/NurPhoto via Getty Images)Portrait of Edward GibbonEdward Gibbon (1737-1794), British historian. His best known work is The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.The Roman Emperor Commodus Fires an Arrow to Subdue a Leopard Engraving by Giovanni StradanoThe Roman Emperor Commodus Fires an Arrow to Subdue a Leopard Engraving by Giovanni Stradano (Photo by © Historical Picture Archive/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)Portrait and scene of assassination.Commodus (161-192 AD). Roman emperor (177-192 AD). Nerva-Antonine Dynasty. Commodus had a passion for gladiatorial combat. Laetus formed a conspiracy with Eclectus and Marcia. The gladiator Narcissus strangling him in his bath. Portrait. Watercolour painting by Francisco Fonollosa, Spanish illustrator (late 20th century). (Photo by: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)WALTER BENJAMIN (1892-1940). German philosopher and writer.(Eingeschränkte Rechte für bestimmte redaktionelle Kunden in Deutschland. Limited rights for specific editorial clients in Germany.) WALTER BENJAMIN (1892-1940). German philosopher and writer. (Photo by ullstein bild/ullstein bild via Getty Images)Bill Tompkins The Celebrity Aprentice Donald Trump ArchiveNEW YORK, NY - May 10 MANDATORY CREDIT Bill Tompkins/Getty Images Joan Rivers, Donald Trump and melissa Rivers pose during the Season Finale of the Celebrity Apprentice on May 10, 2009 in New York City. (Photo by Bill Tompkins/Getty Images) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

The Last Days of Gaza - Read by Eunice Wong

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible's list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actorText originally published May 26, 2025Full text:This is the end. The final blood-soaked chapter of the genocide. It will be over soon. Weeks. At most. Two million people are camped out amongst the rubble or in the open air. Dozens are killed and wounded daily from Israeli shells, missiles, drones, bombs and bullets. They lack clean water, medicine and food. They have reached a point of collapse. Sick. Injured. Terrified. Humiliated. Abandoned. Destitute. Starving. Hopeless.In the last pages of this horror story, Israel is sadistically baiting starving Palestinians with promises of food, luring them to the narrow and congested nine-mile ribbon of land that borders Egypt. Israel and its cynically named Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), allegedly funded by Israel’s Ministry of Defense and the Mossad, is weaponizing starvation. It is enticing Palestinians to southern Gaza the way the Nazis enticed starving Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto to board trains to the death camps. The goal is not to feed the Palestinians. No one seriously argues there is enough food or aid hubs. The goal is to cram Palestinians into heavily guarded compounds and deport them.What comes next? I long ago stopped trying to predict the future. Fate has a way of surprising us. But there will be a final humanitarian explosion in Gaza’s human slaughterhouse. We see it with the surging crowds of Palestinians fighting to get a food parcel, which has resulted in Israeli and U.S. private contractors shooting dead at least 130 and wounding over seven hundred others in the first eight days of aid distribution. We see it with Benjamin Netanyahu’s arming ISIS-linked gangs in Gaza that loot food supplies. Israel, which has eliminated hundreds of employees with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), doctors, journalists, civil servants and police in targeted assassinations, has orchestrated the implosion of civil society.I suspect Israel will facilitate a breach in the fence along the Egyptian border. Desperate Palestinians will stampede into the Egyptian Sinai. Maybe it will end some other way. But it will end soon. There is not much more Palestinians can take.We — full participants in this genocide — will have achieved our demented goal of emptying Gaza and expanding Greater Israel. We will bring down the curtain on the live-streamed genocide. We will have mocked the ubiquitous university programs of Holocaust studies, designed, it turns out, not to equip us to end genocides, but deify Israel as an eternal victim licensed to carry out mass slaughter. The mantra of never again is a joke. The understanding that when we have the capacity to halt genocide and we do not, we are culpable, does not apply to us. Genocide is public policy. Endorsed and sustained by our two ruling parties.There is nothing left to say. Maybe that is the point. To render us speechless. Who does not feel paralyzed? And maybe, that too, is the point. To paralyze us. Who is not traumatized? And maybe that too was planned. Nothing we do, it seems, can halt the killing. We feel defenseless. We feel helpless. Genocide as spectacle.I have stopped looking at the images. The rows of little shrouded bodies. The decapitated men and women. Families burned alive in their tents. The children who have lost limbs or are paralyzed. The chalky death masks of those pulled from under the rubble. The wails of grief. The emaciated faces. I can’t.This genocide will haunt us. It will echo down history with the force of a tsunami. It will divide us forever. There is no going back.And how will we remember? By not remembering.Once it is over, all those who supported it, all those who ignored it, all those who did nothing, will rewrite history, including their personal history. It was hard to find anyone who admitted to being a Nazi in post-war Germany, or a member of the Klu Klux Klan once segregation in the southern United States ended. A nation of innocents. Victims even. It will be the same. We like to think we would have saved Anne Frank. The truth is different. The truth is, crippled by fear, nearly all of us will only save ourselves, even at the expense of others. But that is a truth that is hard to face. That is the real lesson of the Holocaust. Better it be erased.In his book “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This,” Omar El Akkad writes:Should a drone vaporize some nameless soul on the other side of the planet, who among us wants to make a fuss? What if it turns out they were a terrorist? What if the default accusation proves true, and we by implication be labeled terrorist sympathizers, ostracized, yelled at? It is generally the case that people are most zealously motivated by the worst plausible thing that could happen to them. For some, the worst plausible thing might be the ending of their bloodline in a missile strike. Their entire lives turned to rubble and all of it preemptively justified in the name of fighting terrorists who are terrorists by default on account of having been killed. For others, the worst plausible thing is being yelled at.You can see my interview with El Akkad here.You cannot decimate a people, carry out saturation bombing over 20 months to obliterate their homes, villages and cities, massacre tens of thousands of innocent people, set up a siege to ensure mass starvation, drive them from land where they have lived for centuries and not expect blowback. The genocide will end. The response to the reign of state terror will begin. If you think it won’t you know nothing about human nature or history. The killing of two Israeli diplomats in Washington and the attack against supporters of Israel at a protest in Boulder, Colorado, are only the start.Chaim Engel, who took part in the uprising at the Nazis’ Sobibor death camp in Poland, described how, armed with a knife, he attacked a guard in the camp.“It’s not a decision,” Engel explained years later. “You just react, instinctively you react to that, and I figured, ‘Let us to do, and go and do it.’ And I went. I went with the man in the office and we killed this German. With every jab, I said, ‘That is for my father, for my mother, for all these people, all the Jews you killed.’”Does anyone expect Palestinians to act differently? How are they to react when Europe and the United States, who hold themselves up as the vanguards of civilization, backed a genocide that butchered their parents, their children, their communities, occupied their land and blasted their cities and homes into rubble? How can they not hate those who did this to them?What message has this genocide imparted not only to Palestinians, but to all in the Global South?It is unequivocal. You do not matter. Humanitarian law does not apply to you. We do not care about your suffering, the murder of your children. You are vermin. You are worthless. You deserve to be killed, starved and dispossessed. You should be erased from the face of the earth.“To preserve the values of the civilized world, it is necessary to set fire to a library,” El Akkad writes:To blow up a mosque. To incinerate olive trees. To dress up in the lingerie of women who fled and then take pictures. To level universities. To loot jewelry, art, food. Banks. To arrest children for picking vegetables. To shoot children for throwing stones. To parade the captured in their underwear. To break a man’s teeth and shove a toilet brush in his mouth. To let combat dogs loose on a man with Down syndrome and then leave him to die. Otherwise, the uncivilized world might win.There are people I have known for years who I will never speak to again. They know what is happening. Who does not know? They will not risk alienating their colleagues, being smeared as an antisemite, jeopardizing their status, being reprimanded or losing their jobs. They do not risk death, the way Palestinians do. They risk tarnishing the pathetic monuments of status and wealth they spent their lives constructing. Idols. They bow down before these idols. They worship these idols. They are enslaved by them.At the feet of these idols lie tens of thousands of murdered Palestinians.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Thanks for reading The Chris Hedges Report! This post is public so feel free to share it.PhotosTOPSHOT-PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICTTOPSHOT - A man walks past shelter tents erected near collapsed buildings in the Bureij camp for Palestinian refugees in the central Gaza Strip on October 1, 2024 amid the ongoing war in the Palestinian territory between Israel and Hamas. (Photo by Eyad BABA / AFP) (Photo by EYAD BABA/AFP via Getty Images)PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICTSewage water from collapsed underground pipes covers an area by destroyed buildings in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on July 8, 2024 amid the ongoing conflict in the Palestinian territory between Israel and Hamas. (Photo by Bashar TALEB / AFP) (Photo by BASHAR TALEB/AFP via Getty Images)Jewish Ghetto Streetcar(Original Caption) The Star of David attached to the top of this street car indicates it is in use for residents of Warsaw's ghetto, wherein live Jews from every Nazi occupied country of Europe. The German caption for this picture states that the car travels back and forth early and late.PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICTDisplaced Palestinians gather to collect portions of cooked food at a charity distribution point in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on May 19, 2025. (Photo by Bashar TALEB / AFP) (Photo by BASHAR TALEB/AFP via Getty Images)TOPSHOT-PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICT-DISPLACEDTOPSHOT - Displaced Gazans cross the Netzarim corridor from the southern Gaza Strip into Gaza City on January 27, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP) (Photo by OMAR AL-QATTAA/AFP via Getty Images)TOPSHOT-US-POLITICS-TRUMP-BIDENTOPSHOT - US President Joe Biden shakes hands with US President-elect Donald Trump during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on November 13, 2024. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)TOPSHOT-PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICTTOPSHOT - A fireball erupts from an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City on October 9, 2023. (Photo by MAHMUD HAMS / AFP) (Photo by MAHMUD HAMS/AFP via Getty Images)The new Anne Frank exhibit will open 1The new Anne Frank exhibit will open 11 June 2003 by US First Lady Laura Bush at The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. (Photo credit should read TIM SLOAN/AFP via Getty Images)Nazi Sympathisers SaluteNazi Sympathisers taking the salute during a meeting, New York City, New York, United States, 8th April 1934. (Photo by UPI/Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)TOPSHOT-US-ISRAEL-DIPLOMACYTOPSHOT - US President Donald Trump greets Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he arrives for meeting on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, January 27, 2020. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)Primary voting in New Hampshire.MANCHESTER, NH - FEBRUARY 9: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, surrounded by family and friends, shouts as he celebrates his victory at a New Hampshire primary campaign watch party at the Executive Court Banquet Facility in Manchester, NH on Tuesday Feb. 09, 2016. (Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)President Biden Departs The White House For MarylandWASHINGTON, DC - NOVEMBER 07: U.S. President Joe Biden gives a thumbs up as he shouts to the press while walking to Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on November 7, 2022 in Washington, DC. The President and first lady are traveling to Bowie, MD where they will be participating in a rally for Democratic gubernatorial nominee Wes Moore before the midterm elections tomorrow. (Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

American Concentration Camps - Read by Eunice Wong

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible's list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actorText originally published May 26, 2025Full text: Our offshore concentration camps, for now, are in El Salvador and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. But don’t expect them to remain there. Once they are normalized, not only for U.S.-deported immigrants and residents, but U.S. citizens, they will migrate to the homeland. It is a very short leap from our prisons, already rife with abuse and mistreatment, to concentration camps, where those held are cut off from the outside world — “disappeared” — denied legal representation and crammed into fetid, overcrowded cells.Prisoners in the camps in El Salvador are forced to sleep on the floor or in solitary confinement in the dark. Many suffer from tuberculosis, fungal infections, scabies, severe malnutrition and chronic digestive illnesses. The inmates, including over 3,000 children, are fed rancid food. They endure beatings. They are tortured, including by water-boarding or being forced naked into barrels of ice-cold water, according to Human Rights Watch. In 2023, the State Department described imprisonment as “life-threatening,” and that was before the Salvadoran government declared a “state of exception” in March 2022. The situation has been greatly “exacerbated,” the State Department notes, by the “addition of 72,000 detainees under the state of exception.” Some 375 people have died in the camps since the state of exception was established, part of El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s “war on gangs,” according to the local human rights group Socorro Jurídico Humanitario.These camps — the “Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo” (Center for Terrorism Confinement) known as CECOT, to which U.S. deportees are being sent, holds some 40,000 people — are the model, the harbinger of what awaits us.Metal worker and union member Kilmar Ábrego García, who was abducted in front of his five-year-old son on March 12, 2025, was accused of being a gang member and sent to El Salvador. The Supreme Court agreed with District Judge Paula Xinis who found that García’s deportation was an “illegal act.” Trump officials blamed their deportation of García on an “administrative error.” Xinis ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” his return. But that does not mean he is coming back.“I hope you’re not suggesting that I smuggle a terrorist into the United States,” Bukele told the press at a White House meeting with Trump. “How can I smuggle — how can I return him to the United States? Like, I smuggle him into the United States? Well, of course I’m not going to do it…the question is preposterous.”This is the future. Once a segment of the population is demonized — including U.S. citizens Trump labels “homegrown criminals” — once they are stripped of their humanity, once they embody evil and are seen as an existential threat, the end result is that these human “contaminants” are removed from society. Guilt or innocence, at least under the law, is irrelevant. Citizenship offers no protection.“The first essential step on the road to total domination is to kill the juridical person in man,” writes Hannah Arendt in “The Origins of Totalitarianism.” “This was done, on the one hand, by putting certain categories of people outside the protection of the law and forcing at the same time, through the instrument of denationalization, the nontotalitarian world into recognition of lawlessness; it was done, on the other, by placing the concentration camp outside the normal penal system, and by selecting inmates outside the normal judicial procedure in which a definite crime entails a predictable penalty.”Those who build concentration camps build societies of fear. They issue relentless warnings of mortal danger, whether from immigrants, Muslims, traitors, criminals or terrorists. Fear spreads slowly, like a sulfurous gas, until it infects all social interactions and induces paralysis. It takes time. In the first years of the Third Reich, the Nazis operated ten camps with about 10,000 inmates. But once they managed to crush all competing centers of power — labor unions, political parties, an independent press, universities and the Catholic and Protestant churches — the concentration camp system exploded. By 1939, when World War II broke out, the Nazis were running over 100 concentration camps with some one million inmates. Death camps followed.Those that create these camps give them wide publicity. They are designed to intimidate. Their brutality is their selling point. Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp, was not, as Richard Evans writes in “The Coming of The Third Reich” “an improvised solution to an unexpected problem of overcrowding in the goals, but a long-planned measure that the Nazis had envisioned virtually from the very beginning. It was widely publicized and reported in the local, regional and national press, and served as a stark warning to anyone contemplating offering resistance to the Nazi regime.”Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, wearing plainclothes and circling neighborhoods in unmarked cars, kidnap legal residents such as Mahmoud Khalil. These abductions replicate those I witnessed on streets of Santiago, Chile under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, or in San Salvador, El Salvador’s capital, during the military dictatorship.ICE is swiftly evolving into our homegrown version of the Gestapo or The People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD). It oversees 200 detention facilities. It is a formidable domestic surveillance agency that has amassed data on most Americans, according to a report compiled by The Center of Privacy & Technology at Georgetown.“By reaching into the digital records of state and local governments and buying databases with billions of data points from private companies, ICE has created a surveillance infrastructure that enables it to pull detailed dossiers on nearly anyone, seemingly at any time,” the report reads. “In its efforts to arrest and deport, ICE has — without any judicial, legislative or public oversight — reached into datasets containing personal information about the vast majority of people living in the U.S., whose records can end up in the hands of immigration enforcement simply because they apply for driver’s licenses; drive on the roads; or sign up with their local utilities to get access to heat, water and electricity.”Those abducted, including the Turkish national and PhD student at Tufts University, Rümeysa Öztürk, are accused of amorphous behaviour such as “engaging in activities in support of Hamas.” But this is a subterfuge, accusations no more real than the invented crimes under Stalinism where people were accused of belonging to the old order — Kulaks or members of the petit bourgeoisie — or were convicted for plotting to overthrow the regime as Trotskyites, Titoites, agents of capitalism or saboteurs, known as “wreckers.” Once a category of people is targeted, the crimes they are charged with, if they are charged at all, are almost always fabrications.Concentration camp inmates are severed from the outside world. They are disappeared. Erased. They are treated as if they never existed. Nearly all efforts to obtain information about them are met with silence. Even their death, should they die in custody, becomes anonymous, as if they were never born.Those who run concentration camps, as Hannah Arendt writes, are people without the curiosity or the mental capacity to form opinions. They don’t, she notes, “even know any more what it means to be convinced.” They simply obey, conditioned to act as “perverted animals.” They are intoxicated by the God-like power they have to turn human beings into quivering flocks of sheep.The goal of any concentration camp system is to destroy all individual traits, to mold people into fearful, docile, obedient masses. The first camps are training grounds for prison guards and ICE agents. They master the brutal techniques designed to infantilize inmates, an infantilization that soon warps the wider society.The 250 purported Venezuelan gang members shipped to El Salvador in defiance of a federal court were denied due process. They were summarily herded onto planes, which ignored the judge’s order to turn back, and once they arrived, were stripped, beaten and had their heads shaved. Shaved heads are a feature of all concentration camps. The excuse is lice. But of course it is about depersonalization and why they are in uniforms and identified by numbers.The autocrat openly revels in the cruelty. “I look forward to watching the sick terrorist thugs get 20 year jail sentences for what they are doing to Elon Musk and Tesla,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Perhaps they could serve them in the prisons of El Salvador, which have become so recently famous for such lovely conditions!”Those that build concentration camps are proud of them. They show them off to the press, or at least the sycophants posing as the press. Secretary for Homeland Security Kristi Noem, who posted a video of herself visiting the El Salvadoran prison, used the shirtless and head shaved inmates as a stage prop for her threats against immigrants. If fascism does one thing well, it is spectacle.First they come for the immigrants. Then they come for the activists on foreign student visas on college campuses. Then they come for green card holders. Next are the U.S. citizens who fight Israeli genocide or the creeping fascism. Then they come for you. Not because you broke the law. But because the monstrous machine of terror needs a constant supply of victims to sustain itself.Totalitarian regimes survive by eternally battling mortal, existential threats. Once one threat is eradicated, they invent another. They mock the rule of law. Judges, until they are purged, may decry this lawlessness, but they have no mechanism to enforce their rulings. The Department of Justice, turned over to the Trump sycophant Pam Bondi, is, as in all autocracies, designed to block enforcement, not facilitate it. There are no legal impediments left to protect us. We know where this is going. We have seen it before. And it is not good.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Thanks for reading The Chris Hedges Report! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

Trump’s Useful Idiots - Read by Eunice Wong

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible's list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actorText originally published May 26, 2025Full text: The media, universities, the Democratic Party and liberals, by embracing the fiction of “rampant antisemitism,” laid the groundwork for their own demise. Columbia and Princeton, where I have taught, and Harvard, which I attended, are not incubators of hatred towards Jews. The New York Times, where I worked for fifteen years and which Trump calls “an enemy of the people,” is slavishly subservient to the Zionist narrative. What these institutions have in common is not antisemitism, but liberalism. And liberalism, with its creed of pluralism and inclusiveness, is slated by our authoritarian regime for obliteration.The conflation of outrage over the genocide with antisemitism is a sleazy tactic to silence protest and placate Zionist donors, the billionaire class and advertisers. These liberal institutions, weaponizing antisemitism, aggressively silenced and expelled critics, banned student groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine, allowed police to make hundreds of arrests of peaceful protests on campuses, purged professors and groveled before Congress. Use the words ‘apartheid’ and ‘genocide’ and you are fired or excoriated.Zionist Jews, in this fictional narrative, are the oppressed. Jews who protest the genocide are slandered as Hamas stooges and punished. Good Jews. Bad Jews. One group deserves protection. The other deserves to be thrown to the wolves. This odious bifurcation exposes the charade.In April 2024, Columbia University President Minouche Shafik, along with two board members and a law professor, testified before the House of Representative education committee. They accepted the premise that antisemitism was a significant problem at Columbia and other higher education institutions.When Co-Chair of the Board of Trustees of Columbia University David Greenwald and others told the committee that they believed “from the river to the sea” and “long live the intifada” were antisemitic statements, Shafik agreed. She threw students and faculty under the bus, including long-time professor Joseph Massad.The day after the hearings, Shafik suspended all the students at the Columbia protests and called in the New York City Police Department (NYPD), who arrested at least 108 students.“I have determined that the encampment and related disruptions pose a clear and present danger to the substantial functioning of the University,” Shafik wrote in her letter to the police.NYPD Chief John Chell, however, told the press, “the students that were arrested were peaceful, offered no resistance whatsoever, and were saying what they wanted to say in a peaceful manner.”“What disciplinary action has been taken against that professor?” Representative Elise Stefanik asked in the hearing about Columbia law Professor Katherine Franke.Shafik volunteered that Franke, whose position at the law school where she had taught for 25 years was terminated, and other professors, were being investigated. In an apparent reference to visiting Columbia Professor Mohamed Abdou, she claimed he was “terminated” and promised he “will never teach at Columbia again.” Professor Abdou is suing Columbia for defamation, discrimination, harassment and financial and professional loss.The Center for Constitutional Rights wrote of the betrayal of Franke:In an egregious attack on both academic freedom and Palestinian rights advocacy, Columbia University has entered into an “agreement” with Katherine Franke to leave her teaching position after an esteemed 25-year career. The move — “a termination dressed up in more palatable terms,” according to Franke’s statement — stems from her advocacy for students who speak out in support of Palestinian rights.Her ostensible offense was a comment expressing concern about Columbia’s failure to address harassment of Palestinians and their allies by Israeli students who come to campus straight from military service — after Israeli students sprayed Palestinian rights protestors with a toxic chemical. For this, she was investigated for harassment and found to be in violation of Columbia’s policies. The actual cause of her forced departure is the crackdown on dissent at Columbia resulting from historic protests opposing Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Franke’s fate was sealed when former Columbia president Minouche Shafik threw her under the bus during her cowardly appearance before Congress.You can see my interview with Franke here.Despite her capitulation to the Zionist lobby, Shafik resigned a little more than a year after assuming her position as head of the university.The crackdown at Columbia continues, with an estimated 80 people arrested and over 65 students suspended following a protest in the library in the first week of May. Former television journalist and Columbia’s acting president Claire Shipman condemned the protest, stating,“Disruptions to our academic activities will not be tolerated and are violations of our rules and policies…Columbia strongly condemns violence on our campus, antisemitism and all forms of hate and discrimination, some of which we witnessed today.”Of course, appeasement does not work. This witch hunt, whether under the Biden or Trump administration, was never grounded in good faith. It was about decapitating Israel’s critics and marginalizing the liberal class and the left. It is sustained by lies and slander, which these institutions continue to embrace.Watching these liberal institutions, who are hostile to the left, be smeared by Trump for harboring “Marxist lunatics,” “radical leftists,” and “communists,” exposes another failing of the liberal class. It was the left that could have saved these institutions or at least given them the fortitude, not to mention analysis, to take a principled stand. The left at least calls apartheid apartheid and genocide genocide.Media outlets regularly publish articles and OpEds uncritically accepting claims made by Zionist students and faculty. They fail to clarify the distinction between being Jewish and being Zionist. They demonize student protesters. They never bothered reporting with any depth or honesty from the student encampments where Jews, Muslims and Christians made common cause. They routinely mischaracterize anti-Zionist, anti-genocide and pro-Palestinian liberation slogans and policy demands as hate speech, antisemitic, or contributing to Jewish students feeling unsafe.Examples include, The New York Times: “Why the Campus Protests Are So Troubling,” “I’m a Columbia Professor. The Protests on My Campus Are Not Justice,” and “Universities Face an Urgent Question: What Makes a Protest Antisemitic?”; The Washington Post: “Call the campus protests what they are” “At Columbia, excuse the students, but not the faculty”; The Atlantic: “Campus Protest Encampments Are Unethical” and “Columbia University’s anti-Semitism Problem”; Slate: “When Pro-Palestine Protests Cross Into Antisemitism”; Vox: The Rising Tide of Antisemitism on College Campuses Amid Gaza Protests”; Mother Jones: “How Pro-Palestine Protests Spark Antisemitism on Campus”; The Cut (New York Magazine): “The Problem With Pro-Palestine Protests on Campus”; and The Daily Beast: “Antisemitism Surges Amid Pro-Palestine Protests at U.S. Universities.”The New York Times, in a decision worthy of George Orwell, instructed its reporters to eschew words such as “refugee camps,” “occupied territory,” “slaughter,” “massacre,” “carnage,” “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing,” when writing about Palestine, according to an internal memo obtained by The Intercept. It discourages the very use of the word “Palestine” in routine text and headlines.In December 2023, Democratic Governor of New York Kathy Hochul sent a letter to university and college presidents who failed to condemn and address “antisemitism,” and calls for the “genocide of any group.” She warned that they would be subjected to “aggressive enforcement action” by New York State. The following year, in late August, Hochul repeated these warnings during a virtual meeting with 200 university and college leaders.Hochul made clear in October 2024 that she considered pro-Palestine slogans to be explicit calls for genocide of Jews.“There are laws on the books – human rights laws, state and federal laws – that I will enforce if you allow for the discrimination of our students on campus, even calling for the genocide of the Jewish people which is what is meant by ‘From the river to the sea,’ by the way,” she said at a memorial event at the Temple Israel Center in White Plains. “Those are not innocent sounding words. They're filled with hate.”The Governor successfully pressured City University of New York (CUNY) to remove a job posting for a Palestinian studies professorship at Hunter College which referenced “settler colonialism,” “genocide” and “apartheid.”Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in his new book “Antisemitism in America: A Warning,” leads efforts by the Democratic Party — which has a dismal 27 percent approval rating in a recent NBC News poll — to denounce those protesting the genocide as carrying out a “blood libel” against Jews.“Whatever one’s view of how the war in Gaza was conducted, it is not and has never been the policy of the Israeli government to exterminate the Palestinian people,” he writes, ignoring hundreds of calls by Israeli officials to wipe Palestinians from the face of the earth during 19 months of saturation bombing and enforced starvation.The grisly truth, openly acknowledged by Israeli officials, is far different.“We are disassembling Gaza, and leaving it as piles of rubble, with total destruction [which has] no precedent globally. And the world isn’t stopping us,” gloats Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.“Last night, almost 100 Gazans were killed…it doesn’t interest anyone. Everyone has gotten used to [the fact] that [we can] kill 100 Gazans in one night during a war and nobody cares in the world,” Israeli Knesset member Zvi Sukkot, told Israel’s Channel 12 on May 16.The perpetuation of the fiction of widespread antisemitism, which of course exists but which is not fostered or condoned by these institutions, coupled with the refusal to say out loud what is being live streamed to the world, has shattered what little moral authority these institutions and liberals had left. It gives credibility to Trump’s effort to cripple and destroy all institutions that sustain a liberal democracy.Trump surrounds himself with neo-Nazi sympathizers such as Elon Musk, and Christian fascists who condemn Jews for crucifying Christ. But antisemitism by the right gets a free pass since these “good” antisemites cheer on Israel’s settler colonial project of extermination, one these neo-Nazis and Christian fascists would like to replicate on Brown and Black people in the name of the great replacement theory. Trump trumpets the fiction of “white genocide” in South Africa. He signed an executive order in February that fast-tracked immigration to the U.S. for Afrikaners — white South Africans.Harvard, which is attempting to save itself from the wrecking ball of the Trump administration, was as complicit in this witch hunt as everyone else, flagellating itself for not being more repressive towards campus critics of the genocide.The university’s former president Claudine Gay condemned the pro-Palestine slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which demands the right of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, as bearing “specific historical meanings that to a great many people imply the eradication of Jews from Israel.”Harvard substantially tightened its regulations regarding student protests, in January 2024, and increased the police presence on its campus. It barred 13 students from graduating, citing alleged policy violations linked to their participation in a protest encampment, despite an earlier agreement to avoid punitive measures. It placed more than 20 students on “involuntary leave” and in some cases evicted students from their housing.Such policies were replicated across the country.The capitulations and crackdowns on pro-Palestine activism, academic freedom, freedom of speech, suspensions, expulsions and firings, since Oct. 7, 2023, have not spared U.S. colleges and universities from further attacks.Since Trump took office, at least $11 billion in federal research grants and contracts have been cut or frozen nationwide according to NPR. This includes Harvard ($3 billion), Columbia ($400 million), University of Pennsylvania ($175 million) and Brandeis ($6-7.5 million annually).On May 22, the Trump administration intensified its attacks on Harvard by terminating its ability to enroll international students that make up around 27 percent of the student body.“This administration is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus,” Kristi Noem, DHS Secretary wrote on X, when posting screenshots of the letter she sent to Harvard revoking foreign student enrollment. “Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country.”Harvard, like Columbia, the media, the Democratic Party and the liberal class, misread power. By refusing to acknowledge or name the genocide in Gaza, and persecuting those who do, they provided the bullets to their executioners.They are paying the price for their stupidity and cowardice.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.PhotosChris HedgesChris Hedges, a former Pulitzer Prize winning foreign correspondent for the New York Times and best selling author of 'Empire of Illusion', stands next to a window for a portrait, Princeton, NJ, November 2010. Hedges is also the author of 'Death of the Liberal Class' and is a columnist for Truthdig. (Photo by Oliver Morris/Getty Images)Protestors Rally In Support Of Gaza In New York CityNEW YORK, NEW YORK - OCTOBER 5: Pro-Palestinian protesters rally in support of Gaza and Lebanon in Times Square on October 5, 2024 in New York City. Protesters are ramping up their demonstrations in anticipation of the October 7th one year anniversary of the attack on Israel by Hamas. (Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)Protesters Hold A Rally Outside The U.S. Capitol Building Calling For A Ceasefire In Mideast WarWASHINGTON, DC - OCTOBER 18: Protesters hold a demonstration in support of a cease fire in Gaza in the Cannon House Office Building on October 18, 2023 in Washington, DC. Members of the Jewish Voice for Peace and the IfNotNow movement staged a rally to call for a cease fire in the Israel–Hamas war. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)Protesters Hold A Rally Outside The U.S. Capitol Building Calling For A Ceasefire In Mideast WarWASHINGTON, DC - OCTOBER 18: Demonstrators are detained by U.S. Capitol Police after they staged a sit-in inside the Cannon House Office Building to demand a cease-fire against Palestinians in Gaza on Independence Avenue near the U.S. Capitol October 18, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)Columbia in Crisis: Columbia University's Response to AntisemitismUNITED STATES - APRIL 17: Minouche Shafik, president of Columbia University, testifies during the House Education and the Workforce Committee hearing titled "Columbia in Crisis: Columbia University's Response to Antisemitism," in Rayburn building on Wednesday, April 17, 2024. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)Dueling Rallies Held At George Washington University As Campus Protests Continue NationwideWASHINGTON, DC - MAY 2: A woman wears a hat that reads "Curb Your Antisemitism" during a rally against campus antisemitism at George Washington University on May 2, 2024 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)Columbia in Crisis: Columbia University's Response to AntisemitismUNITED STATES - APRIL 17: David Greenwald, Board of Trustees Co-Chair, Columbia University, testifies during the House Education and the Workforce Committee hearing titled "Columbia in Crisis: Columbia University's Response to Antisemitism," in Rayburn building on Wednesday, April 17, 2024. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)NYPD officers arrest pro-Palestinian protests began at Columbia University spread to other schools in New YorkNEW YORK, US - APRIL 22: Police intervene and arrest more than 100 students at New York University (NYU) who continue their demonstration on campus in solidarity with the students at Columbia University and to oppose Israel's attacks on Gaza, in New York, United States on April 22, 2024. (Photo by Fatih Aktas/Anadolu via Getty Images)Columbia University President Minouche Shafik Visits Campus After Protest Encampment ClearedNEW YORK, NEW YORK - MAY 1: Columbia University President Minouche Shafik visits Hamilton Hall on the campus of Columbia University on May 1, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Indy Scholtens/Getty Images)NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell speaks during Mayor Eric...NEW YORK, UNITED STATES - 2024/10/26: NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell speaks during Mayor Eric Adams and NYPD (New York City Police Department) executives hold briefing on security preparations in advance of Former President Trump's rally at 1 Police Plaza. (Photo by Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)Rally In Support Of Israel Held In Times SquareNEW YORK, NY - MAY 20: Pro Palestinian protesters face off with a group of Israel supporters and police in a violent clash in Times Square on May 20, 2021 in New York City. Despite an announcement of a cease fire between Israel and Gaza militants, dozens of supporters of both sides of the conflict fought in the streets of Times Square. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)USA-PALESTINE-COLUMBIA-GRADUATION-PROTEST-NYCNew York, United States 2025-05-21 NYPD officers push through demonstrators wearing keffiyehs during a pro-Palestinian protest on Columbia University s campus. (Photo by Madison Swart / Hans Lucas / Hans Lucas via AFP) (Photo by MADISON SWART/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images)US-EDUCATION-POLITICS-COMMENCEMENTColumbia University Acting President Claire Shipman speaks during the Commencement Ceremony at Columbia University in New York on May 21, 2025, (Photo by Seth Wenig / POOL / AFP) (Photo by SETH WENIG/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)New York Governor Kathy Hochul Announces Large Scale Increase In Law Enforcement Within Subway SystemNEW YORK, NEW YORK - MARCH 6: New York Governor Kathy Hochul speaks during a press conference to announce new subway safety measures at NYCTA Rail Control Center on March 6, 2024 in New York City. Hochul announced that 1,000 New York State Police, MTAPD and the New York National Guard will be used to support the NYPD in conducting bag checks. (Photo by Adam Gray/Getty Images)New York State Governor Kathy Hochul...Melville, N.Y.: New York State Governor Kathy Hochul visits Newsday headquarters on Jan. 22, 2024 in Melville, New York. (Photo by Howard Schnapp/Newsday RM via Getty Images)ISRAEL-POLITICS-RELIGION-JUDAISM-ORTHODOX-FUNERALThe leader of Israel's Religious Zionist Party Bezalel Smotrich (C) attends the funeral of Israeli Orthodox Jewish rabbi Haim Drukman, a spiritual leader of the nationalist Religious Orthodox Jewish movement, at Merkaz Shapira near Kiryat Malachi on December 26, 2022. (Photo by Gil COHEN-MAGEN / AFP) (Photo by GIL COHEN-MAGEN/AFP via Getty Images)Israeli extreme right member of Knesset, Zvi Sukkot holds an...JERUSALEM, ISRAEL - 2024/06/05: Israeli extreme right member of Knesset, Zvi Sukkot holds an Israeli flag outside Damascus gate in Jerusalem. Tens of thousands of young religious Ultra nationalists Zionist men and women have paraded through Muslim parts of the Old City of Jerusalem in the annual Jerusalem Day Flag march, an event that threatens to trigger further violence in the Israel-Hamas war.(Photo by Eyal Warshavsky/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)A protester holds a placard comparing Elon Musk to Hitler...LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM - 2025/03/29: A protester holds a placard comparing Elon Musk to Hitler doing the Nazi salute during the demonstration. Protesters gathered outside the Tesla Centre in Park Royal as part of the Tesla Takedown Global Day of Action against Tesla and Elon Musk. (Photo by Vuk Valcic/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)SAFRICA-US-POLITICS-DEMOA man wears a Make Afrikaners Great Again (MAGA) cap in reference to the American MAGA as white South Africans supporting US President Donald Trump and South African and US tech billionaire Elon Musk gather in front of the US Embassy in Pretoria, on February 15, 2025 for a demonstration. (Photo by Marco Longari / AFP) (Photo by MARCO LONGARI/AFP via Getty Images)University Presidents Testify In House Hearing On Campus AntisemitismWASHINGTON, DC - DECEMBER 05: Dr. Claudine Gay, President of Harvard University, testifies before the House Education and Workforce Committee at the Rayburn House Office Building on December 05, 2023 in Washington, DC. The Committee held a hearing to investigate antisemitism on college campuses. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images) This is a public episode. 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Palestine Post: A Genocide Foretold w/ Chris Hedges – Spring Fund Drive Special

The interview starts at 9 minutes into the recording. Text below is from KPFA, linked here, where this podcast was originally posted. You can participate in the fund drive special here. FUND DRIVE SPECIAL – Pledge $120 and receive Chris Hedges new book, A Genocide Foretold: Reporting on Survival and Resistance in Occupied Palestine. In it, the Pulitzer Prize–winning former Middle East Bureau Chief for The New York Times, explores zionist settler colonialism in Gaza with a powerful emotional depth. A Genocide Foretold confronts the stark realities of life under siege in Gaza and the heroic effort ordinary Palestinians are waging to resist and survive. Weaving together personal stories, historical context, and unflinching journalism, Chris Hedges provides an intimate portrait of systemic oppression, occupation, and violence.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Thanks for reading The Chris Hedges Report! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe