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Chris Hedges
179 quotes
“We now live in what the German political scientist Ernst Fränkl called the dual state. Totalitarian states are always dual states. ... The outward forms of democracy, of democratic participation, voting, competing political parties, judicial oversight and legislation remain, but are hollow political stagecraft. And Fränkl called those who wield this unchecked power over the citizenry “the prerogative state.” The masses in a totalitarian structure live in what he termed “the normative state.” The normative state, he said, is defenseless against the abuses of the prerogative state.”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All those who challenge the abuses of power by the prerogative state, like Snowden, who expose the crimes carried out by government, are turned into criminals. Totalitarian states always invert the moral order. It is the wicked that rule, and it is the just that are damned.”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This deadly impasse, the tightening of the corporate totalitarian noose, would have continued if Snowden had not jolted the nation awake by disclosing the massive crimes of the prerogative state.”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Societies such as ours that once had democratic traditions or periods when relative openness was possible are often the most easily seduced into totalitarian systems because those who rule and build totalitarian structures continue to pay outward fealty to the ideals, practices and forms of the old system.”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Reform will come and only come through the building of mass movements and alternative centers of power that can overthrow—let me repeat that word for Homeland Security—overthrow the corporate state. If we fail to sever these chains, we will become like many who did not rise up in time to save their civil society’s human chattel. This means we too must defy the law and engage in civil disobedience”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Those rebels who rise up to try to wrest back power from despotic forces will endure not only the violence of the state, but the hatred and vigilante violence meted out by the self-deluded victims of exploitation. The systems of propaganda will relentlessly demonize those who resist.”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Democracy, in this late stage of capitalism, has been replaced with a system of legalized bribery. All branches of government, including the courts, along with the systems of entertainment and news, are wholly owned subsidiaries of the corporate state. Electoral politics are elaborate puppet shows.”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Democratic Party—seeking to blame its election defeat on Russian “interference” rather than the grotesque income inequality, the betrayal of the working class, the loss of civil liberties, the deindustrialization and the corporate coup d’état that the party helped orchestrate—attacks Assange as a traitor, although he is not a U.S. citizen. Nor is he a spy. He is not bound by any law I am aware of to keep U.S. government secrets. He has not committed a crime....”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What is happening to Assange should terrify the press...The silence about the treatment of Assange is not only a betrayal of him but a betrayal of the freedom of the press itself. We will pay dearly for this complicity.... Assange is on his own. Each day is more difficult for him. This is by design. It is up to us to protest. We are his last hope, and the last hope, I fear, for a free press.”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The government is committed to spending $348 billion over the next decade to modernize nuclear weapons....”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We spend $100 billion a year on intelligence, surveillance, and 70% goes to private contractors....”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Department of Education spends $68 billion a year. Wall Street and hedge funds behind the charter school industry view public education as one more source of revenue.... Public lands, prisons, schools, water and power utilities, parking, sewers, garbage collection and health services are being sold off or privatized by desperate towns, cities and states. None of these seizures of basic services by for-profit corporations makes them more efficient or reduces costs. That is not the point. It is about extracting money from the carcass of the state.”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[pp 40-41] The opioid crisis, the mass shootings, the rising rates of suicide, especially among middle-age white males, the morbid obesity... magical thinking... the Christian Right....”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They have risen from a decayed world where opportunity which confers status, self-esteem and dignity has dried up for most Americans.... A decline in status and power, an inability to advance, a lack of education and health care and a loss of hope are crippling.... Humiliation fuels loneliness, frustration, anger and feelings of worthlessness. When you are marginalized and rejected by society, life often has little meaning.”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[pp 232-233] The message of the consumer society, pumped out over flat screens... is shrill and unrelenting: You are a failure. Pop culture celebrates those who wallow in power, wealth and self-obsession, and perpetuates the lie that if you work hard and are clever, you can become a "success."...”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The disparity between the glittering world that people watch and the bleak world they inhabit creates a collective schizophrenia. It manifests in diseases of despair, suicides, addictions, mass shootings, hate crimes and depression. We are to blame for our own misfortune....”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Noam Chomsky suggests, "If you care about other people, you might try to organize or undermine power. That's not going to happen if you care only about yourself. Maybe you can become rich; you don't care whether other people's kids can go to school or afford food. In the USA that's called 'libertarian' for some wild reason. I mean it's actually highly authoritarian, but that doctrine is extremely important as a way of atomizing and undermining the public.”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[p 308] The corporate state, however, is in trouble. It has no credibility. All the promises of the "free market," globalization and trickle-down economics have been exposed as a lie, an empty ideology used to satiate greed.”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The elites have no counterargument to their anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist critics. The attempt to blame the electoral insurgencies in the United States' two ruling political parties on Russian Interference, rather than massive social inequality - the worst in the industrialized world - is a desperate ploy.”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The courtiers in the corporate press are working feverishly, day and night, to distract us from reality. The moment the elites are forced to acknowledge social inequality as the root of our discontent is the moment they are forced to acknowledge their role in orchestrating this inequality.”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[pp 308-309] The U.S. government, subservient to corporate power, has become a burlesque. The last vestiges of the rule of law are evaporating. The kleptocrats openly pillage and loot. Programs instituted to protect the common good - public education, welfare, and environmental regulations - are being dismantled.”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The bloated military, sucking the marrow out of the nation, is unassailable. Poverty is a nightmare for half the population. Poor people of color are gunned down with impunity in the streets.”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our prison system, the world's largest, is filled with the destitute. There is no shortage of artists, intellectuals, and writers, from Martin Bubar and George Orwell to James Baldwin, who warned us that this dystopian era was fast approaching. But in our Disneyland world of intoxicating and endless images, cult of the self and willful illiteracy, we did not listen. We will pay for our negligence.”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Despite the Robert Mueller report’s conclusion that Donald Trump and his campaign did not collude with Russia during the 2016 presidential race, the new Cold War with Moscow shows little sign of abating. It is used to justify the expansion of NATO to Russia’s borders, a move that has made billions in profits for U.S. arms manufacturers.”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is used to demonize domestic critics and alternative media outlets as agents of a foreign power. It is used to paper over the Democratic Party’s betrayal of the working class and the party’s subservience to corporate power. It is used to discredit détente between the world’s two largest nuclear powers. It is used to justify both the curtailment of civil liberties in the United States and U.S. interventions overseas—including in countries such as Syria and Venezuela.”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Stephen F. Cohen said when I interviewed him: “The wall had come down...Germany was reunifying. The question became ‘where would a united Germany be?’ The West wanted Germany in NATO. For Gorbachev, this was an impossible sell.”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Twenty-seven point five million Soviet citizens had died in the war against Germany in the Second World War on the eastern front. Contrary to the bunk we’re told, the United States didn’t land on Normandy and defeat Nazi Germany. The defeat of Nazi Germany was done primarily by the Soviet army. How could Gorbachev go home and say, ‘Germany is reunited. Great. And it’s going to be in NATO.’ It was impossible.”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'The wall had come down,' Cohen said of the 1989 collapse of East Germany and the fall of the Berlin Wall. 'Germany was reunifying. The question became ‘where would a united Germany be?’ The West wanted Germany in NATO. For Gorbachev, this was an impossible sell. Twenty-seven point five million Soviet citizens had died in the war against Germany in the Second World War on the eastern front.”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Contrary to the bunk we’re told, the United States didn’t land on Normandy and defeat Nazi Germany. The defeat of Nazi Germany was done primarily by the Soviet army.”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How could Gorbachev go home and say, ‘Germany is reunited. Great. And it’s going to be in NATO.’ It was impossible. They told Gorbachev, ‘We promise if you agree to a reunited Germany in NATO, NATO will not move—this was Secretary of State James Baker—one inch to the east. In other words, NATO would not move from Germany toward Russia. And it did...”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As we speak today, NATO is on Russia’s borders, From the Baltics to Ukraine to the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. So, what happened? Later, they said Gorbachev lied or he misunderstood. [That] the promise was never made. But the National Security Archive in Washington has produced all the documents of the discussion in 1990. It was not only [[George H. W. Bush|President George H.W.] Bush]], it was the French leader François Mitterrand, it was Margaret Thatcher of England. Every Western leader promised Gorbachev NATO would not move eastward.”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Trump’s most unforgivable sin in the eyes of the deep state is his criticism of the empire’s endless wars, even though he lacks the intellectual and organizational skills to oversee a disengagement.”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The deep state committed the greatest strategic blunder in American history when it invaded and occupied Afghanistan and Iraq. Such fatal military fiascoes, a feature of all late empires, are called acts of “micro-militarism.” Dying empires historically squander the last capital they have, economic, political and military, on futile, intractable and unwinnable conflicts until they collapse. They seek in these acts of micro-militarism to recapture a former dominance and lost stature. Disaster piles on disaster.”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are no internal or external checks on the deep state. The democratic institutions, including the press, that once gave citizens a voice and a say in the exercise of power have been neutered. The deep state will further the corporate consolidation of wealth and power, expand the social inequality that has thrust half of Americans into poverty or near poverty, strip us of our remaining civil liberties and feed the rapacious appetites of the military and the war industry.”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Most Americans – regardless of whether they were once on the left or right – have become politically disempowered and economically insecure. Nowadays it’s the boardwalk versus private jets on their way to the Hamptons.”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Why hasn’t America risen up in protest? Because American democracy was dysfunctional even before Trump ran for president. The moneyed interests had already taken over much of it. It’s hard for people to get very excited about returning to the widening inequalities and growing corruption of the decades before Trump. Which partly explains why Biden is foundering.”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Neoliberalism, deindustrialization, the destruction of labor unions, slashing and even eliminating the taxes of the rich and corporations, free trade, globalization, the surveillance state, endless war and austerity — the ideologies or tools used by the oligarchs to further their own interests — are presented to the public as natural law, the mechanisms for social and economic progress, even as the oligarchs dynamite the foundations of a liberal democracy and exacerbate a climate crisis that threatens to extinguish human life.”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) first seen 2020 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Class: The Little Word the Elites Want You to Forget". Truthdig (March 2, 2020).
“[On the George Floyd protests] Many of those in the streets can’t find meaningful work, are often burdened by large sums of student debt and have realized that in this world of serfs and masters they don’t have much of a future. They understand that if these protests are to succeed, they must be led by people of color, those who suffer disproportionally from the inequities and violence meted out by the occupying forces of the . And they also know that social inequality is at the root of the evil we must vanquish.”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) first seen 2020 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Gaslighted by the Ruling Class" Scheerpost (June 15, 2020).
“Prisons, along with the police, are the twin pillars of . They are used by the ruling elites to keep those discarded by and fearful, intimidated and neutralized. Break the and the bonds of the and the ruling elites will stand naked before us. And this is why the reigning oligarchs, despite gaslighting us with promises of reform, have no intention of weakening the two principle institutions that keep those they have betrayed in bondage and themselves in power.”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) first seen 2020 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: My Student Comes Home" Scheerpost (June 29, 2020).
“As embarrassing and awful as Trump is, he serves corporate power just like Joe Biden. The big corporate Democratic Party donors made it clear that if Bernie Sanders became the presidential nominee, they would support Trump. The donor class has created a system where they cannot fail. If it's Trump or Biden, doesn't lose, doesn't lose, doesn't lose, doesn't lose. There is no way that they can lose. They have rigged the system so that their interests are always served.”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) first seen 2020 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview by Chuncey Devega "America faces a historic choice — 'ugly corporate tyranny' or revolution" (July 16, 2020).
“We have to acknowledge that the empire is tottering towards its collapse. So what is empire? Empire is the expression of white supremacy beyond our borders. The whole nature of empire is to go into the Middle East — previously into Vietnam, Latin America, the Philippines and elsewhere — and steal natural resources and exploit cheap labor in the name of white supremacy. And of course, we have an American society built on chattel slavery and genocide against indigenous peoples. What empires traditionally do at the end is they engage in what historians call "micro-militarism".”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As Aristotle said, once you have oligarchic rule, there are only two choices. It is revolution or tyranny, and that's it. I'm not naive enough to tell you the revolution is going to win, but I'm going to tell you that if it doesn't win then there will be a very ugly corporate tyranny in the United States.”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'm more optimistic because I see the resistance in the streets... That's where hope lies.... They're mostly young, incredibly courageous, they are out there braving economic misery, arrests, indiscriminate, brutal and often lethal police violence and COVID-19, and they're fighting against injustice and the elites anyway. They're all heroes in my book.”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) first seen 2020 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview by Chuncey Devega "America faces a historic choice — 'ugly corporate tyranny' or revolution Salon (July 16, 2020)
“The flashing red lights are all around us. Joe Biden and the Democratic Party will do little to restore the social bonds or address the social inequality and disenfranchisement of tens of millions of Americans, now facing evictions and bankruptcy, which is fueling the social collapse. Donald Trump and the Republican Party, along with media outlets such as FOX News, in a bid to retain power, are fanning the flames of violence, seeing in the incitement of far-right mobs a route to a ruthless police state.”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) first seen 2020 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: American Bloodlands" Scheerpost (September 8, 2020)
“History has repeatedly illustrated the dire consequences of extreme social inequality. It foments revolutionary ferment, which can come from the left or the right. Either a leftwing populism that smashes oligarchic power takes control or its counterfeit, a rightwing populism, built on the poisoned solidarity of hate, racism, vengeance and violence — and bankrolled by the hated oligarchs that use it as a front to solidify tyranny. We are barreling towards the latter.”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) first seen 2021 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Papering Over the Rot. Scheerpost, February 1, 2021
“Israel is not exercising “the right to defend itself” in the occupied Palestinian territories. It is carrying out mass murder, aided and abetted by the U.S.”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) first seen 2021 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Israel, the Big Lie Scheerpost, May 14, 2021
“It is not until people are reintegrated into the society, not until corporate and oligarchic control over our educational, political and media systems are removed, not until we recover the ethic of the common good, that we have any hope of rebuilding the positive social bonds that foster a healthy society. History has amply illustrated how this process works. It is a game of fear. And until we make the ruling elites afraid, until a terrified Joe Biden and the oligarchs he serves look out on a sea of pitchforks, we will not blunt the culture of sadism and social murder they have engineered.”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) first seen 2021 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Chris Hedges Speaks on ‘American Sadism’ Scheerpost, June 29, 2021
“The criminal ruling class has all of us locked in its death grip. It cannot be reformed. It has abolished the rule of law. It obscures and falsifies the truth. It seeks the consolidation of its obscene wealth and power. And so, to quote the Queen of Hearts, metaphorically of course, I say, "Off with their heads.”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is hard to be sanguine about the future. The breakdown of the ecosystem is well documented. So is the refusal of the global ruling elite to pursue measures that might mitigate the devastation. We accelerate the extraction of fossil fuels, wallow in profligate consumption, including our consumption of livestock, and make new wars as if we are gripped by a Freudian death wish. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse – Conquest, War, Famine and Death – gallop into the 21st century.”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) first seen 2022 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Triumph of Death. Scheerpost, June 20, 2022
“The commitment not to expand NATO, also made by Great Britain and France, appeared to herald a new global order. We saw the peace dividend dangled before us, the promise that the massive expenditures on weapons that characterized the Cold War would be converted into expenditures on social programs and infrastructures that had long been neglected to feed the insatiable appetite of the military.”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source