Chris Hedges Speaks at Freedom Plaza

 

 

 

the harsh measures of the Espionage Act and the Sedition Act are used to jail, deport, even execute people
 

publications get shut down

 

 

the cult of the self, hedonism, is then trumpeted ever after

 

the self-sacrifice that made those social progressive movements popular is derided and replaced by this corporate culture - it wasn't American culture, it's corporate culture

 

the Red Scare -- this kind of permanent war psychosis - McCarthyism

 

empire of consumption

 

Politicians like Obama speak in that "feel your pain" language, but they have walked out on every basic value of liberalism - Clinton being the poster child for it - Clinton pushed through NAFTA, the greatest betrayal of the working class in this country since the Taft-Hartley Act, he deregulated the banks - Canada didn't have the crisis we had because they never tore down the firewalls between investment & commercial banks, Clinton destroyed welfare, Clinton deregulated the FCC, so the corporate consolidation of the media took place  

 

"It culminates with Obama, a figure who essentially codifies the destruction of int'l and domestic law put in place by the Bush admin, he hasn't found it in him to restore habeas corpus, he supports the FISA reform act which retroactively under our Constitution makes legal what has always been illegal - the warrantless wiretapping, monitoring, and eavesdropping of 10s of millions of Americans; of course he has pushed through legislation to make it legal to assassinate American citizens, the military detentions act, which also just went through. 

 

"These are utterly terrifying measures of state control - and anybody who understands how despotic or totalitarian regimes work - go back and look at what was happening in Germany in 1933, and I think this is what leads intellectuals like Noam Chomsky to compare our present state to Weimar - the first thing they do is destroy the legal system - there's actually quite a fine book - memoir by Sebastian Haffner, 'Defying Hitler' - he was a warrior in the law courts in '33 and he saw precisely what the fascists did - that you walk in and essentially make legal what before was illegal - and at that point the state has the control to use those measures as their will, as they have already with environmentalists and others -- there's circumstantial evidence that Homeland Security was tangentially involved in the shut-down of the 18 Occupy - you end up with a situation whereby in the name of the 'war on terror', in the name of 'homeland security', in the name of national security, we can all end up like Bradley Manning.  

 

"And that's precisely where we've come to today, it's why for me the Occupy movement is absolutely vital, because the only weapon we have left is civil disobedience. I don't have to tell anyone in this crowd that jail is not a pleasant experience - as I think the great moral voices - Wendell Berry, or Bill McKibben, and others have discovered, this is the only weapon left.  Wendell 77 years old - occupies along with others the governor's office in Kentucky to protest mountaintop removal -- Wendell says going to jail is more time than I care to donate to the U.S. government, but frankly that is all we have left. That is why this movement for me is the last best hope to protect what is left of our democracy, and finally to save our ecosystem, because unfettered capitalism is a revolutionary force as Karl Marx understood - turns everything into a commodity, human beings become commodities, the natural world becomes a commodity -- it exploits until exhaustion or collapse, which is why the environmental crisis is intimately twinned to the economic crisis" - latest scientific work, we have very little time left. 

 

"So in many ways, it's not hyperbolic to say that this movement is on many, many profound levels a fight for life, and it's why I say I enthusiastically and passionately support you and what you're doing, and -- I have a court, I'm trying to ration my court dates, I was arrested in front of Goldman Sachs -- and when I get through that, then I promise to get another one.  Thanks."