Thoughts on Chris Hedges? He addresses most of the issues encountered by every ordinary American, referring in particular to Durkheim's definition of "anomy", yet I do not see him much on this board. He made a pretty good speech recently in Eugene, OR. Sure he was promoting his new book, but I believe what he says can benefit anyone interested in social empowerment so I'll post a link here:
Also Durkheim was a contemporary of Karl Marx, the new Thesaurus defines the concept of anomy as: "a personal state of isolation and anxiety resulting from a lack of social control and regulation". I have a feeling that may ring a bell to some like it does to me.
I know the video is an hour and a half and that requires more attention than what the corporate media feeds us on a daily basis, but I can safely say that it deserves to be watched. What are your thoughts on this, user? What are your general thoughts on the work he's done?
good orator, but he's still a liberal social democrat
Ryder Adams
Would probably agree with him on many issues although he comes off as very pedantic and long-winded. His appearance on the Jimmy Dore show was pretty cool though.
Leo Foster
I'd say he's more than just an orator. He sued Obama.
I heard him say "I'm not a marxist, I still want to keep capitalism". This was a recent talk as well, It sort of confused me because he rails on and on about the problems with it.
Also when he was talking about society being degenerate - coming from his religious background - rang some alarm bells. I know I sound liberal but this guy is sketchy as fuck.
Bentley Johnson
...
Adrian Nguyen
Makes sense. Dude is also a TERF and a SWERF.
Jayden Gonzalez
Yes it is, but how can you still be FOR capitalism after knowing this? The only people who want to remove "degeneracy" from society while keeping capitalism are fascists.
Owen Perry
Maybe he only says it so as not to scare away funding. There's too much trepidation among our lefty voices. Hedges, Jimmy Dore, Abby Martin and Telesur. Even Chomsky. No decent strategists or theorists. Well maybe Harvey
Christian Nelson
wtf I love Chris Hedges now
Jose Torres
If these are what people consider left then I don't want anything to do with it. I'm a communist, fuck western leftists.
Joshua Martin
I think the last great one must have been Bookchin. Name some you like.
Caleb James
Parenti and Grover Furr for starters. Unapologetic.
Also Telesur has been putting out some extremely dumb shit lately regarding Venezuela.
Gabriel Martin
Telesur is one of the best stations for reporting the truth about Venezuela what are you smokin?
Liam Nguyen
Dude is also a TERF and a SWERF That's entirely compatible with Marxism. Believing a person can have a sex of the soul, a sexual identity that's somehow prior to the environment and society around you and also to anything in your genes that determine your junk is pure idealism.
James Rodriguez
I keep going back and forth on him. He has some serious pluses - he's a good writer, and intelligent commentator on religion, and Truthdig has done a lot of good, important work. But he also comes across as extremely self-important. I also remember a Q&A where the audience members kept trying to get him to come up with ways to avert environmental disaster and avoid fascism in the US, and Hedges' response to pretty much everything was basically "nope, we're all just fucked."
Blake Bennett
you are a liberal.
Wyatt Harris
Fuck off gender essentialist
Leo Adams
I think he has the potential to appeal to boomers, mainstream liberals/progressives, the politically unaware/unmotivated, and even some conservatives in a way that people like Parenti, Zizek, and even someone more milquetoast like Chomsky cannot.
I like the fact that he's eloquent, well regarded within what we might call actual journalism, and collapse aware. Honestly he's probably the most mainstream speaker that I know of who is collapse aware.
I might cringe a bit when he talks about feminism and his religion, but I do respect his work.
What stroke me was when he started speaking about suicides and quoted Durkheim for saying that what drives people to kill themselves is the result of being alone and out of the system. I've been close to that point like so many others, but always thought it was because of me. Understanding that there are environmental causes out of my own control behind this situation came as an eye-opener. Corporate interests kill every day. They are never linked to suicides by the corporate press nor are they held accountable for the social disaster they cause, or anything else in that regard. If someday you get there as well you may want to think about what he says and do what you can to take care of yourself.
boring religious moralism, sanctimonious speeches, and veganism - precisely what the left needs more of.
Jordan Walker
I think the left shouldn't mobilize support on the basis of weakness. Of course, workers are in a weaker position than the bourgeoisie but the basis of the left gaining power should be righteousness. It is more righteous for the workers to be in power than the parasitical capitalist, because workers produce and capitalists don't. Focussing too much on weakness and vulnerability will only invite more of the SJW left-liberal pampered youth, not the working class. Most of the workers would rather work in a coal mine than receive handouts as we see in the US. That is a feeling of righteousness that we should play on
Landon Morris
+1 for ☭TANKIE☭.
Wage increases benefit the working class and have the righteous appeal you mentioned. Taxes benefit everyone regardless of employment status and, depending on how they are spent, increase the feeling of dependency/handout.
A dual approach - fair wages & fair taxes on corporations - would probably appeal to both. You want the base to be as large as possible when starting a new movement (see Alinsky - Rules for Radicals). Then you need to make them come outside, which is another level of pain.
Revolutions usually happen in fall. They know it. People have had all summer to think and prepare, the weather is still okay so they will come out, if it is not then, it's never. That's why every year in September they will push all the fear you can take and more through every screen possible. Be a good citizen and be afraid of bearded men living on the other side of the world, don't go outside and defend your rights in any way. It is more about pumping public support in favor of an unending conflict in Afghanistan and other places, frightening everyone so they won't think of revolting - than it is about remembering the victims. When the equivalent of cities o/d every year you don't have the whole annual show to remember them. So coming back to your post, it's not about promoting weakness. It's about building a form of anger. An anger that beats this fear. An anger that gets people out all at once and sends governments to a page in history books.
Building up that anger is a long and slow process, but can be faster depending on circumstances. It's hard to tell when a tipping point will occur.
Coal mines pay workers there upwards of $60k/year. Miners understand that they are essentially sacrificing 20 years or so from their life span for the money. It has nothing to do with "righteousness." Stop being idealist. Speak to real material needs, not feels (unless absolutely necessary.)
Aiden Mitchell
I think a lot of people confuse the concepts of market economies and free enterprise with captialism; a theoretical socialist state wouldn't have a problem with workers launching their own democratically controlled firms. So they think, I like the idea of markets for things that aren't basic needs, I like employee ownership, therefor I can't be a Marxist.
Ryder Cook
:'( OHH NOEZ!!1 They no lyke twanny n sex workk??! You mean like 99% of Marxists (including Marx and Engels) before the New Left decided to steer the workers' movement into the toilet? Guess we can't listen to Chris….
Slavoj Zizek? What do y'all not seem to like about Slavoj? His German idealist return to materialism is actually philosophically more useful to our future action than pure Marxist historical materialism as we know it.
Grayson Moore
reported for transphobia and use of homophobic slurs
Adam Williams
IDK dude. The Soviet Union had public and private firms, but no private capital. Is that not Marxist?
Ethan Kelly
...
Sebastian Barnes
Well, I wanted to like him. Some of the things I sampled from him just didn't make too much sense. I don't really know where he stands. A soc-dem Stalinist? I think he's just kidding half the time. Which makes him like some kind of modern Socrates. Chomsky, Wolff, Harvey. These guys I understand
The only German idealism I've taken in is Stirner and Nietzsche, and they jive perfectly with my Epicureanism and anarchist thoughts. How is Slavoj useful?
Either term is bizzaro speak.
Xavier Brown
What exactly is wrong with hedonism? It seems like a non-issue to me. Pleasure is really the only thing a man can base his life around without outing himself as an utter buffoon. See: priests, politicians, etc. It's also the only thing that has some degree of permanence outside of property. A gourmand can sit down and remember quite a few good meals he ate, a nymphomaniac can think back and remember each and every partner he had, how pleasureful they were, someone who occupies themselves with pastimes can figure all day to find out the best strategies for chess, and each time he makes a conclusion it leads to yet another hit of dopamine. There's absolutely nothing wrong with hedonism, and pleasure should be the life goal of every man and woman.
Whose virtue? Whose morality? The things which the Hindus find virtuous is incredibly opposed to that that the Muslims do, and the Muslims are absolutely appalled by Post-Christian Secular virtues, which look down upon both the backwards views of those Christians and the hedonistic, self-serving values of a Libertine. So whose right? At the end of the day, bread, circuses and harlots will beat anything else, so it should be a man's goal to acquire as many loaves, tickets and holes as he can and wants to.
Only on this joke of a board would such an attitude be suggested and even encouraged.
Brody Hughes
Why should I read mistranslations of fragmented text from a dead language vaguely similar to modern day Greek? A crony of the period's regent imperialist conqueror must be without bias, must be utterly enlightened and not at-all a parrot for propaganda, yes? Furthermore, will this somehow establish the existence of universal morality which excludes or limits the seeking of pleasure? How will it prove that this is preferable to pleasure? How could it? Dopamine and serotonin are more pleasurable than self-restraint, this is plain as day, and you can test it yourself if you somehow haven't realized it yet.
Hedonist degenerate who never knows happiness detected.
Now that's spooky.
Benjamin Wood
Epicurus was the rightest of the early thinkers. Negative-hedonism is the best way to live. Stirner addresses one topic and is 100% right and he does it with a wicked sense of humor.
This man is a traitor to the West. While sucking a dick of a failed milkman. Sad!
Ayden Lewis
Oh please. Kill your idolatry.
I can acknowledge the significance of historical figures, even Aristotle, but it's you who can't see the really significant people. Epicurus' atomism was proto-materialism, and I see Stirner more opposed to Plato's imaginary world of forms. There's room enough for greatness fir this ex-school teacher, ex-entrepreneur, ex-husband, debtor. No hero worship there.
He can't really be said to have discovered the scientific method, although some of his work was certainly early "science" (this wasn't strictly separate from philosophy at the time; almost every earlier philosopher also had a theory of nature and engaged in "science").
Julian Diaz
Hedges' views may not be perfect to everyone I get that. But is there another contemporary thinker, other than good ol' Chomsky, capable of explaining problems like in that webm that are not even acknowledged by mainstream politics? And capable of proposing solutions as well?
Not soul. Female brain in otherwise male body or vice versa.
Matthew Powell
Hedonists aren't really happy. That's what's wrong with it. Nothing to do with it being "immoral", but that hedonists themselves are in reality never happy. Only in unrealistic thought experiments where you plug your brain into the ultimate pleasure machine they are thought of as being completely fulfilled, but in reality they are degenerate, joyless, addicts.
John Long
Jesus is feelz.
Jordan Carter
He's the one guy on RT network I won't watch. He's a boring twat.
Logan Wilson
Given how many on the trannie train are programmers, isn't it rather likely that their brains are even less female than those of men on average? If there are differences between the average male and female brain and autism tends to be more of a male thing, couldn't autistic introverted men be attracted to the idea of switching gender because of society being more accepting of introverted passive behavior among women? Taking those pills also helps against getting bald, another plus.
Andrew Myers
If the young people could leave the thread and banter about alternate sexual orientations elsewhere we could perhaps focus on identifying how to make the next generation less degenerate than the current one. Which is ultimately what the man is trying to do. Thank you.
Ethan Morales
He's a plagiarist, and a sanctimonious idiot. But his original journalism is ok.
Christian Lewis
One of his interviews had the effect of a "reality check" on me. Hedges was comforted: "yur kids gon' die due to climate change!"
His answer? "We must have faith."
I mean… this is not even acceptable… Hedges basically fetishizes currently existing shit and says that this is all "okay" and "manageable"…
ffs, why would you make kids that can die off asap?
Charles Bailey
You want to remove the cause of global warming before you can even think of doing anything else about it. His faith may be his own, but at least he tries. Regarding plagiarism, he can't possibly explain everything just from his own personal experience. Others deserve credit when due and relevant ideas generally gain being shared and debated. Putting these different ideas together and organizing them is the key to thinking creatively, thus allowing you to prove your point instead of dropping a line out of hatred like we tend to see on (almost) every internet debate.
Chris Hedges is great for blackpilling liberals and IdPol warriors and has led many Americans to Marxism. He also was pretty much the sole public voice on the American "Left" to be critical of Bernie Sanders from the get go. So I have to give him his due credit for all of that.
On the other hand he's fundamnetally a reformist SuccDem at heart and his Christian moralism on certain things is cancer. He's basically like a smarter Jimmy Dore.
Essentially the way it goes in American political discourse right now as far as the public speakers of the "Far Left" is
Sanders(to the Left of Hillary)>>>>Dore (to the Left of Bernie)>>>Hedges (to the Left of Dore)>>>>Wolff (to the Left of Hedges)>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Parenti (to the Left of Wolff)
America is a shit 100848503049803820 dead neoliberals
Carter Lewis
In his last show he mentions that everything put online is used by the ruling apparatus to tighten its grasp on us all. That is, if you can bear the horny lady barely capable of finishing her sentences as she's hitting so hard on him. There's a f*ing bird on fire in the background too wtf.
If you're not marxist at least, you're not left and may as well be fascist. I am sick to death of liberals and all these fake leftists soying out over Jimmy Dore.
hey comr8 you can download OBS Project for free and record those videos using a screen capture. It won't leave a watermark either. If you want help just post on the /netcom/ board.
Samuel Hall
thx m8 sorry about the quality, I'll try obs from now on.
Sebastian Mitchell
like others have said Hedges is good for bridging the gap between angry liberal and genuine anti-capitalism. Plus guys like Hedges and Bernie are pretty old, they're here to partially radicalize the next generation not be their voice forever. also fyi that link isn't working for me
Colton Cox
Looks like the plug was pulled on yt. Interesting.
Hudson Mitchell
I like that he’s pulling American Socdems to the left. He’s flat out telling Jimmy Doe’s audience that “any institution that exists inside the system can’t be used to oppose the system.” However his Christian moralism is shit. However I’m willing to overlook that. Right now people like Chris Hedges and Cornell West are more useful for spreading Marxist Ideas and propelling the American Communist Movement that most American Communists.
