He's recently angered a lot of people.
https://youtu.be/EWrRNGc00To
I was on panel with @ChrisLynnHedges Jill Stein Medea Benjamin. Now Hedges excuses terrorists. Wouldn't do it again.
Chris Hedges is trash
Chris Hedges hates anti-fa
Chris Hedges lies
Chris Hedges draws false equivalences
Chris Hedges plagiarizes
Chris Hedges (and others) lie and slander Antifa militants. This is Why. Our preface and an article by Matt... http://fb.me/6zE2rKVJu
Counter Punch encourages the Left to unite around #Antifa in rebuttal of Chris Hedges & Noam Chomsky.
Equating the long history of right-wing violence with the comparatively negligible carried out by AntiFa is absurd.
- What's Wrong with Chris Hedges view that ‘Antifa’ Mirrors the ‘Alt-Right’ - antifainternational: ara-la:...
- Chris Hedges is a tool. God, I cant believe the support he garners. Its what a no sense of humor can get you I guess.
He's also had some supporters.
This is an important and beautiful essay. Thank you @ChrisLynnHedges and @Truthdig Please read, ponder RT and take action in your community
How ‘Antifa’ Mirrors the ‘Alt-Right’ https://www.truthdig.com/articles/antifa-mirrors-alt-right/ … Very wise article by Chris Hedges. Please read, take off your #Antifa mask
Online, he's had supporters and he's had opposers and the opposing has outnumbered the support.
We were largely staying out of the whole thing (Ann weighed in last month) until we saw Cindy Sheehan had linked to "Chris Hedges Is A Public Menace." This surprised us.
Maybe it shouldn't have?
First off, Chris Hedges is not a god.
He can be criticized positively and negatively.
Can and should be.
This community, in 2008, operated on a back off Chris.
Why?
Chris was lying and has never gotten honest about one thing.
C.I. was calling him out at THE COMMON ILLS for this.
Chris -- not Judith Miller -- wrote the first NEW YORK TIMES report falsely linking Iraq to the attacks of 9/11, click here for that front page story from November 8, 2001.
Not only did it falsely link, it did so via anonymice:
Two defectors from Iraqi intelligence said yesterday that they had worked for several years at a secret Iraqi government camp that had trained Islamic terrorists in rotations of five or six months since 1995.
One was exposed publicly by MOTHER JONES. Jack Fairweather exposed Abu Zainab posing as Jamal al-Ghurairy.
Chris was not pressed to expose that 'defector.'
Or the other one. And was the other one the source Jack Fairweather reported on who had spoken to Lowell Bergman of 60 MINUTES (Sabah Khodada) and, if so, why was Hedges self-presenting that he had spoken to two defectors when he had only spoken to one (who was an imposter)?
C.I. was publicly making the point that the two sources lied and they'd lost their right to be anonymous. They'd lie to start a war and they needed to be exposed.
Why did we back off Chris?
It was 2008. It was an election year. Tom Hayden called C.I. and explained Chris was endorsing Ralph Nader. Tom was a love slave to Barack Obama. He wanted to use this issue -- the front page NYT story from 2001 -- to discredit Chris Hedges.
For that reason, we all backed off.
It was brave of Chris to step out of the duopoly and we weren't going to be a part of an effort to trash him for that.
After the election, when needed, C.I. has brought up (at THE COMMON ILLS) the issue as coverage of Iraq (the focus at THE COMMON ILLS) has required.
As the Iraq War has continued, under Barack Obama and now Donald Trump, initial lies used to sell it have become far less important than the new lies used to keep it going.
We have praised Chris when we felt he deserved it, we have called him out when we felt he deserved it.
We not only praised his book DEATH OF THE LIBERAL CLASS, we included it on our list of the ten most important books of the last ten years in 2011.
We think that's part of the process of active thinking.
We encourage those bothered by his recent column to criticize and explore.
We also discourage blind worship and fan boi hero worship.
This is a crossroad for the movement -- or what passes for one.
Some will oppose Chris' argument and think of other ways. Some will agree with the argument Chris makes. Some will embrace violence.
And let's not kid because that's what the issue is.
The resorting to violence is what happens when a group of people feel left out of the process.
Chris is arguing that is understandable for some who feel powerless to be left out of the process and he thinks they can still be reached.
Maybe he's right, maybe he's wrong.
This road was hit by the SDS decades ago.
It led to the rise of the Weather Underground.
Some feel their actions helped end the war on Vietnam, some feel their actions harmed the left.
From a poli sci perspective, we have never condemned the Weather Underground and don't intend to.
(We have slammed would-be glamour girl Bill Ayers. The spouse of Bernardine frequently attempts to present himself as the James Dean of the Weather Underground when, in fact, he was the Natalie Wood.)
Violence is not a path we're going to take.
You're grown ups, you need to choose your own path.
But grasp that the issue does come down to violence.
You can call it self-defense, if you like.
But it is not a new path or something that has just popped up recently.
You'd do well to educate yourself on the history of movements because you're going to have to defend yourself with words to a number of people.
Not us.
We're not your enemy.
But there are a number of people who will slam you and if this is your path and you want more on it, you need to be strong advocates for yourselves and your actions.
And as you figure out your path, grasp that the real issue isn't Chris Hedges, the real issue will be your own actions. You will be attacked (verbally) and making it about Chris is not going to be a solid defense.
