8
street roots
March 18, 2011
Postmortem
for the left
A talk with Pulitzer-Prize w inning
journalist Chris Hedges on “Death of
the Liberal Class”
BY ROBIN LINDLEY
C O N T R IB U T IN G W R IT E R
nother story largely missed of
ignored by the mainstream media: bn
Thurs., Dec. 16, 2010, police arrested
131 antiwar activists outside the White
House at a nonviolent demonstration led by
Veterans for Peace to protest the U.S. wars
in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. Among
those arrested were Pentagon Papers
whistie-blower Daniel Ellsberg and Pulitzer
Prize-winning journalist and author Chris
Hedges.
Hedges saw the snowy White House
protest as an act of hope.
, “The normal mechanisms by which
democratic participation are rendered
possible in this country have been closed
shut, and if we don’t do this, we die,” he
said.
“This is what’s left of hope in this
country.”
In his most recent book, “Death of the
Liberal Class,” Hedges argues that the
traditional channels for democratic
.
participation, the five pillars of the liberal
class; the press, universities,.unions, liberal
«
churches and th e D em ocratic Party, have
becom e c o r r u p te d a n d p e r n u tte ^ th e r is e o L
a terrifying corporate-national securitystate
that has dismantled protections for ordinary
Americans.
Hedges also wrote the bestsellers *
“American Fascists”
and “Ehipire of
Illusion,” and was a
National Book Critics
Circle finalist f6r “War
"(The wars) are not covered
Is a Force That Gives
Us Meaning.” He was
anymore, In the same way
a foreign.
that poor people and a
correspondent for the
dispossessed working class
New York Times and
have a ll become invisible.
won the Pulitzer Prize
in 2002 as part of a
We are preoccupied w ith
team covering global
tawdry, running soap operas terror. Hedges now is
whether it's John Edwards'
a Senior Fellow at The
Nation Institute and a
love child or Michael
Lannan Literary
Jackson — I can't even keep
Fellow. He has taught
up with it. We're distracted
at Columbia
by the celluloid shadows on
University, New York
Plato's cave while what's left University and
Princeton. University.
of our democratic state is
Hedges recently
dismantled and destroyed." i talked about his
recent arrest and new
book by telephone
from the East Coast
Robin Lindley: I
heard a brief mention o f your December arrest
with 130 other antiw ar protesters on NPR, but
otherwise it seems the mainstream media
didn’t even note the demonstration.
Chris Hedges: There’s been a
constriction in the kinds of things covered
and those who still do journalism are very
circumspect about what and how they
report. They are very deferential to
corporate and state structures of power.
And that means that events like (the
demonstration] don’t get published.
P H O T O B Y K IM H E D G E S
C.H.: It’s not covered anymore, in the
sa^mewaytEaFpooT^eopT^andT^
dispossessed working class have all become
invisible. We are preoccupied with tawdry,
running soap operas whether,it’s John
Edwards’ lave child or Michaeljackson — I
can’t even keep up with it. We’re distracted
by the celluloid shadows on Plato’s cave
while what's left of our democratic state is
dismantled and destroyed.
R.L,.: You’re outspoken on portrayal o f the
poor an d wnderclass in the media, as on “The
Jerry Springer Show. ”
C.H.: Yes, they’re figures of ridicule in ,
the commercial media. The media
propagates a message that corporations
want, and. there’s a belittling and mocking of
the poor and celebration of wealth. A kind
of cutthroat, rapacious capitalism is '
celebrated on reality television shows where
you betray and manipulate and push aside
your competitors for fleeting fame and
money. These are sick values, but they’re
disseminated through corporate media in
almost every program you watch.
R.L.: Your new book is a n obituary not ju st
fo r the liberal class but also fo r democracy.
C.H.: p f course. You can’t have a
functioning democracy if liberal institutions
have atrophied and died. This was
something Dostoevsky understood: the
breakdown of the liberal class propelled you
into moral nihilism, which is what “Notes
from the Underground” is abput He’s right,
and this is the book of our time: The,
defeated dreamer who went to all of the
Obama rallies and chanted “Yes We Can,”
and was betrayed, and became cynical, and
went underground, and realized only fools
and idiots assumed power in this *
environment, and washed his hands of it all.
Then you’re trapped, and that’s precisely
what’s happening.
R.L.: The mainstream media seems to
R.L.: What is the role of the liberal class
in a democracy?
ignore war, disease and poverty, while you
focus on these difficult issues. Can you
comment on the coverage o f the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan?
C.H.: Liberal institutions, when they
function, provide a safety valve. They offer a
mechanism within toe formal structure of
pow er by which the injustices and Ü
v N e v a n c e ^ tw o r io n f ia n c H n id d l^ d a s ^ ^ ^ .
m em bers can be redressed. We saw this
with the New Deal. The New Deal was not a
product necessarily of Roosevelt but of very
militant labor activity (such as) sit down
strikes and Bonus marchers.
Now these institutions have Calcified to
such ah extent that the suffering visited on
our dispossessed working class, much of it
created by self-identified liberals such as
Clinton, has nowhere to go but outside the
formal channels of power. That’s what we’re
seeing with movements like the Tea Party
and militias that assault not only
government as toe enemy but attack the
liberal class with some justification, bècause
those self-identified liberals — people like
Obama and Clinton — have betrayed core
liberal values. The anger is not misplaced
(because of) the hypocrisy of the liberal.
class. -
. ;V .
R.L.: You single out supposed liberals who
supported the Iraq war.
C.H.: The liberalclass played itsz <
traditional function in toe buildup to the War
in that it argued the war was a necessary
eyil and defined themselves 'as reluctant
hawks. That’s traditionally why the power
elite tolerates the liberal class. They give a
moral veneer to activities that, in this ease,
were clearly criminal. People’like Michael
Ignatieff, George Packer, David Remnick of
Thé New Yorker, even figures like Frank
Rich, all supported the war with a kind of
anguish that gave the war a moral patina
that it didn’t have. That’s what liberals
traditionally do.
R.L.: You wrote after the 2010 election that
you see the Tea Party as a proto fascist
movement. M any view the Tea Party as
buffoons, and yo u ’v e mentioned that in
Yugoslavia, Milosevic and his ilk were seen as
buffoons before the w ar there in the 1990s, a n d
in Weimar Germany before 1933, H itler a n d "
his Nazis were seen as buffoons u n til H itler’s
sudden and unlikely rise to power.
C.H.: When a liberal class no longer
See POSTMORTEM, page 9