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The Chris Hedges Report

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges interviews a wide array of authors, journalists, artists and cultural figures on complex topics of history, politics and war.

Chris Hedges

There are many books exploring how and why voters in the United States elected President Donald Trump, but author Susan Neiman argues that “Nobody has really focused on the moral background to this administration and to our acceptance of it.” It was that void she sought to fill in her newest book, “Call It Evil: Understanding the Trump Era.”
Neiman joins Hedges in this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to discuss her new book and examine the crises of today: the rise of fascism, the ravages of neoliberalism, and how institutions and individuals have surrendered to them.
Ideology, Neiman explains, are assumptions so ingrained in a culture that individuals often see them as “iron laws,” rather than ideas they have about the world. In reality, they are “philosophical ideas which we could question if we wanted to,” as has happened in the past. Most are unable to offer this analysis, Hedges claims, because these assumptions of American hegemony have “infected not just economics but all sorts of disciplines, academic disciplines, including religion.” Our beliefs drive our motivations and actions. People behave differently when they believe that “we exist to perpetuate our own self-interest,” a notion driven by neoliberalism and capitalism, than they do in more socialized nations where social and political rights are recognized and integrated into the body politic.

Call It Evil: Understanding the Trump Era (w/ Susan Neiman) | TCHR

For all of President Trump’s recent threats to “annihilate Iran,” the reality is that the United States is running out of both options and time to resolve this US- Israeli-initiated war. The US has made overtures toward renewing a hot war, but it has not gone further than that as the economy, both domestically and globally, deteriorates and other countries reconsider their relationships to the US and to each other. The midterm elections this Fall, with Republicans not poised to do well, are further impacting decisions being made by the Trump administration as well.
Professor John Mearsheimer, a former Air Force captain and author of numerous books on foreign policy and the Middle East, joins The Chris Hedges Report to unpack the competing interests surrounding the war, and to discuss what options are available to the US. Mearsheimer says, “We have no strategy for producing victory in Iran, other than hoping that their economy collapses, which leads to regime change, and then they make all the necessary concessions to us.” This is highly unlikely to happen.
Mearsheimer predicts that the Trump administration is aware that the US has failed and is waiting until after the midterm elections to make a decision about next steps, but he cautions that the US will be in the same position militarily as it is now — the world could enter a long-term economic recession, or worse, depression, by that time. The Bessent strategy of increasing sanctions and recruiting allies to participate in an economic blockade of Iran isn’t working either, as major powers like China and Russia have already defied the US and continue to work with Iran.
The clock is ticking as the closure of the Strait and the successful Ansar Allah attacks on Saudi oil infrastructure, blocking Gulf oil coming through the Red Sea, are causing oil supplies, including what remains in the strategic reserves, to dwindle. As it currently stands, the US and Israel have failed to achieve virtually all of their military objectives. Israel’s most important stated goal, preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, is hardly even discussed anymore. With the Supreme Leader assassinated, one of the last remaining impediments to Iranian nuclear armament is gone, and the new guard is increasingly considering developing nuclear weapons. With the US and Israel facing military defeat and devastating economic consequences, a new regional power is rising, and the relationships that have defined the era of US hegemony are shifting rapidly.

The Iran War and the Looming Economic Collapse (w/ John Mearsheimer) | TCHR

The images created by socialist and antiwar political cartoonists during the period around World War I were powerful tools for countering the elite’s propaganda of the time. The Russian Revolution had just occurred, and in response to extreme wealth inequality, a militant working class was on the rise in the United States. The ruling class was afraid and responded to the growing dissent with severe measures – a massive propaganda campaign, laws that limited free expression, deportations, violence and imprisonment. It was an era that echoes the repression – ICE raids, the designation of Leftists as “terrorists” and restrictions of academic freedom - that is occurring today.
In his new graphic novel, “Dissidents, Autocrats, Vigilantes, Communists, and Cartoonists,” political cartoonist and writer Derf Backderf analyzes this period through the untold stories of contemporary cartoonists who were targeted by the Wilson administration. Backderf joins Chris Hedges to discuss his new novel and its lessons for today on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report.
Hedges and Backderf explore some of the most prominent political cartoonists and writers of the early 20th century, leftist publications, such as The Masses, and the initially subtle methods of censoring them. Hedges explains, “This is the way totalitarianism always works…it was incremental.” Then came the Red Scare and more overt oppression through the American Protective League and the Palmer raids.
The parallels between the period of the anti-socialist and anti-communist efforts one hundred years ago and the current demonization of socialism and communism today under the Trump administration are stark. Hedges and Backderf describe the impacts of the Red Scare on Leftists of that period and what we have learned, or failed to learn, from that. “That's why the book is so important because when these ruling capitalist elites feel threatened, they're vicious,” adds Hedges. At the same time, there are reasons for optimism because the United States avoided a fascist turn in the past. Backderf concludes, “I hope that's what people take away from this book, that it doesn't have to be inevitable.”

The Dissidents (w/ Cartoonist Derf Backderf) | TCHR

The blowback of the failed 2024 Biden-and-then-Harris Democratic presidential campaign, which supported Israel’s genocide in Gaza, continues as another grassroots candidate runs for Congress. Dr. Karishma Manzur, a scientist who is running for senate in the September New Hampshire Democratic Primary against Chris Pappas, joins Chris Hedges in this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to talk about her campaign.
Manzur, who is also an activist for peace and climate justice, has had firsthand experiences with elected officials through her non-profit work, revealing to her the corrosive power of money in politics. She witnessed the ways big donors, such as AIPAC, control the politicians and both political parties, and the corruption and deceit, which she says are most pervasive at the federal level. She finally asked herself, “Why am I being forced to pick the lesser of two evils because the lesser of two evils is still evil. We’re having to choose between bad and really bad.”
Both the Democrats and Republicans engage in anti-democratic practices and demonstrate their allegiance to the wealthy. Manzur criticizes the revolving door between Congressmembers and corporations: “The money in politics is not just bribing our lawmakers and bribing our candidates, these lawmakers themselves are part of the big money.” A major focus for Manzur is what it means to be a public servant. She loathes the culture of treating politicians as celebrities rather than people who work for the public.
Manzur’s campaign rejects corporate donations and is running on a popular program of Medicare for All, affordable housing, living wages and stopping wars, all of which are gaining traction with voters. Despite the Democrat’s efforts to marginalize Manzur and the wide disparity in fundraising between her and her opponent, Manzur is optimistic that she can win.

Fighting Big Money in Politics (w/ Karishma Manzur) | TCHR

John Mearsheimer breaks down the current state of the Iran War, and how the conflict increasingly appears to look like the most dire strategic mistake in US history.

The Iran War Is the Biggest Strategic Blunder in US History (w/ John Mearsheimer) | TCHR

Chris Hedges, who has extensive experience as a former New York Times Middle East Bureau Chief, describes the information published by the Israeli State as lies: “If there is one indisputable fact, it is that Israel lies like it breathes.” The task of professional journalists and media outlets is to review evidence and verify the information they are reporting, but when it comes to Israel, Western establishment media function as stenographers, echoing their lies globally.
In this episode of The Chris Hedges Report, Hedges explores the mechanisms by which Western media function as propaganda outlets for Israel with media scholar Robin Andersen, who documented these practices in her new book, “The Complicit Lens.” They begin with a discussion of the ways media corporations control the narrative through omissions of historical context, dehumanization of Palestinians and censorship of specific words, such as ‘massacres.’ Journalists who work for these commercial outlets are aware of their complicity but sacrifice their integrity and honesty for access to those in power and to protect themselves from retaliation.
Hedges and Andersen explain the ways that media outlets manipulate language to cover up war crimes being committed by the Israelis and shift the blame for Israeli attacks on civilians and infrastructure, such as hospitals and schools, onto the victims, Palestinians themselves. Outlets engage in ‘atrocity propaganda,’ amplifying horrific lies about sexual assault and “beheaded babies” told by the Israeli State without factchecking them to generate public support for the genocide of Palestinians, who are characterized as ‘terrorists’ and members of the demonized organization, Hamas. Andersen reports, “The Israelis were presented in their whole humanity… and the Palestinians are dead bodies, and that’s it.”
Another method of information control is by limiting access. Foreign journalists are restricted from entering Gaza, and those who are allowed in are vetted by Israel in advance. In violation of international law, the Palestinian press is censored through murder. Over 270 Palestinians, including those who work for major media outlets, and their families have been targeted and killed by the Israeli military. The price that we all pay for this complicity by the media is the legitimization of genocide, the absence of accountability and the lack of reliable news sources. As Andersen concludes, our loss is that there are “fewer and fewer voices, fewer and fewer documentation [that] can make sense of this and bring it to global publics.”

Documenting the U.S. Media’s Complicity in the Genocide of Gaza (w/ Robin Andersen) | TCHR

The bipartisan US-backed genocide in Gaza exposed the corruption of the political system in the United States and the hypocrisy of the Democratic Party, which claims to represent working people. Rather than recognizing this fact and shifting its stances to better represent its voting base, the Democratic Party establishment is attacking candidates who run on progressive platforms and is setting the stage for another Republican victory.
In this episode of The Chris Hedges Report, Chris Hedges speaks with Dr. Adam Hamawy, a military veteran and trauma surgeon running for Congress in New Jersey to replace the retiring representative Bonnie Watson Coleman. Similarly to Dr. El-Sayed, who won his Democratic primary in Michigan despite record spending to oppose him by the Israeli lobby, AIPAC, and Democratic Party leadership’s support for his opponent, Dr. Hamawy recently won the primary and will face a Republican in the November election.
Hamawy discusses how his experiences of talking to members of Congress after coming home from volunteering in hospitals in Gaza drove him into politics and describes the vicious, racist and false attacks launched against him, his family and co-workers since the start of his campaign. He laments the influence of money on politics, especially by the military industrial complex, that puts profits over people and robs communities of funding for basic necessities. Hamawy calls for the consistent application of laws, especially the Leahy Law, which restricts foreign aid to countries that violate human rights.
Hedges and Hamawy analyze the failures of the Democratic Party to unify around a platform that represents their voting base’s interests, instead trying and failing to push progressive candidates out of the party. Dr. Hamawy says, “The Democratic Party has actually shifted more to the right and we are really holding that center.” Hamawy outlines his political priorities if he is elected and the struggles ahead for this new “wave of candidates that are fighting for the people,” saying, “We are going to fight to start bringing these resources back home.”

Why This Former U.S. Army Physician is Running for Congress (w/ Dr. Adam Hamawy) | TCHR

The United States and Israel’s attacks on Iran have inflamed West Asia to the point that it has turned “into a matrix of smaller wars taking place across the region, all of which are interconnected, but all of which have quite separate agendas,” describes Alistair Crooke of Conflicts Forum, a former diplomat who served in the Middle East and who authored, “Resistance: The Essence of the Islamist Revolution”. In this episode of the Chris Hedges Report, Hedges and Crooke explore the wide-reaching geopolitical and economic ramifications of the war on Iran and what options remain for the Trump administration, which has been forced multiple times to walk back its threats of escalation.
The war on Iran has depleted a significant percentage of US munitions, costing tens of billions of dollars so far, and has lowered the US’ strategic petroleum reserves to its lowest level in over forty years. The closure of both the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab al-Mandab Strait have blocked oil exports from Saudi Arabia completely, as well as other products that were previously traded through these major transit routes. This has rocked the global economy, sending Japan into a debt crisis.
As countries scramble to adjust to these new realities, there is no end in sight to the crisis. The Trump administration is running out of options. Crooke describes the fall of US military hegemony in the region and how this has changed the mood in Iran, saying, “It’s triggered something much more profound, a memory of Iran as a major civilizational power, as something that has been a dominant influence in the region for thousands of years.” He states that Iran is prepared for and expects a long war as negotiations with the United States are not a reliable route to peace.
Hedges and Crooke discuss the numerous and growing wars in the region from the state of Israel, where leaders are pushing to force Palestinians out of the West Bank ahead of the October election, to the increasingly fragile situation in Iraq, to the hot war between Saudi Arabia and Yemen. No country in the region is untouched as even Egypt and Jordan are positioning troops along their borders. The fate of millions of people in West Asia is at stake as Washington scrambles to protect dollar hegemony and risks what Crooke refers to as a “slow tactical nuclear weapons strike,” the destruction of infrastructure that provides the energy and water necessary to sustain their lives.

Why the Iran War Won’t End Soon (w/ Alastair Crooke) | TCHR

Under the radar, the billionaire class is building the infrastructure and models necessary to create a dystopian future in which cities become billionaire fiefdoms - completely privatized, governed by dictatorial CEOs and financed by subservient taxpayers. The buildout of data centers is one essential part of the effort to construct a totalitarian capitalist society, which is already advancing.
In this episode of The Chris Hedges Report, Hedges interviews investigative journalist Whitney Webb, the author of “One Nation Under Blackmail,” who unravels the complex relationships between elected leaders, the National Security State, the state of Israel and Big Tech. Webb discusses the methods being used in the Silicon Heartland, the area around Columbus, Ohio, where Les Wexner, who has ties to organized crime and was Jeffrey Epstein’s most notable benefactor, and other powerful billionaires such as Peter Thiel of Palantir, have made significant headway in creating a privately-run city — New Albany. She describes their use of innocent-sounding front groups, such as Jobs Ohio, private development corporations and political bribery to enrich themselves and create what they are marketing as Smart Cities.
Hedges and Webb expose the connections between the billionaires behind this effort and the State of Israel. Webb argues that Israeli startups have been promoted to Big Tech “so that US technological infrastructure on multiple levels would be so intimately enmeshed with Israeli interests that they could never meaningfully boycott Israel.” The same technological infrastructure is also being fused with the National Security State – intelligence and the military – to also make it dependent on the private sector.
The ideology underlying this new model of feudalism originates from the Neo-Reactionary Movement. Beyond that, Webb explains, the billionaires involved believe fervently in a transhumanist future where “the end goal of humanity is to have humanity merge with AI in some capacity” such that there are two classes, the wealthy and a large underclass that is either exploitable or expendable, and obedience is enforced through technology. There is still time to prevent further development of this dystopian future by, among other actions, unplugging from the very technology being employed to create it.

How the Epstein Network is Privatizing the Government & Building Out the Surveillance State (w/Whitney Webb) | TCHR

In Abby Martin's new film, 'Earth's Greatest Enemy,' she exposes how the US military has unleashed death, devastation and more pollution than any other institution in the world on the global populace. 

Why the U.S. Military is 'Earth's Greatest Enemy' (w/ Abby Martin) | The Chris Hedges Report

Compared to other wealthy Western nations, the United States stands out for its high incarceration rates and military spending and declining standard of living. In her new book, “Crime and No Punishment: Wealth, Power and Violence, in America”, Professor Marie Gottschalk connects the dots between the “twin evils of state violence at home and imperial violence abroad.” She chronicles the rise of President Trump as a manifestation of the failures of the Democrats to stem police violence and address economic insecurity when they had opportunities to do so, and illustrates how the tendrils of US Empire permeate the current crises.
Chris Hedges explores this history with University of Pennsylvania Professor Gottschalk in this episode of The Chris Hedges Report. They begin with Frederick Engel’s concept of ‘social murder’ in which the state creates conditions of social decline that shorten the lifespans of the general population. Hedges and Gottschalk point to deindustrialization during the mid-twentieth century and the oligarchic class’s fears of popular backlash as precursors to mass incarceration. They also discuss the growing militarization of policing as returning veterans were hired into the force and equipped with excess military equipment.
The Great Recession of 2008 was another critical turning point as millions of people lost their pensions and homes. Gottschalk refers to the Obama administration paving the way for the election of Donald Trump by refusing to prosecute those responsible for crashing the economy and then giving the banks billions of dollars in bailouts while people struggled financially. The public’s awareness of this disparity, plus the fact that corporations and law enforcement are permitted to commit crimes with impunity, has fueled growing mistrust in Congress.
Rural communities, which represent President Trump’s political base, have been hit particularly hard by the unequal recovery. Gottschalk describes the shift in police violence and incarceration from urban to rural communities where there are white majorities. Rural communities feel abandoned by the Democrats. Hedges explains, “We have a figure like Trump, a con artist, demagogue because the one thing he did was tap into that very legitimate sense of betrayal, by both parties, a sense of anger and in some ways the mask has been ripped off and we’re seeing all of the poisons that you document in the book being turbocharged by the Trump administration.”

How America's Corporate Class Became Legally Unaccountable (w/ Marie Gottschalk) | TCHR

Is Iran Becoming Another 'Forever War'? (w/ John Mearsheimer) | The Chris Hedges Report

We are living in an age of climate collapse, which will most likely result in mass displacement and death, warns Roger Hallam, co-founder of Extinction Rebellion in the United Kingdom on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report. . And while that reality is hard to accept, it is an honest assessment of what lies ahead that must be addressed as we decide how to navigate what Hallam calls humanity’s “darkest hour.” In his new book, “Suicide: The Political and Legal Implications of Creating Endless Mass Death,” written while he was in prison for climate action, Hallam shares his background in academic sociology and organizing for social change to provide tools for resisting under the current repressive legal and political systems.
People often respond to repression with greater courage and resolve to resist it. Hallam’s experiences in prison and elsewhere taught him that “we always have that opportunity to choose how we’re going to react and how we’re going to live our lives in response to the involuntary hell that’s imposed upon us by the powers that be.”
Hedges and Hallam explore the ways that societies can fracture as they are collapsing, tending towards violence or hedonism. Some people may “retreat into crisis cults” as demonstrated by the growth of the Christian Right in the United States. They emphasize the necessity of a form of spiritual or moral grounding that transcends the individual and awakens our sense of connection, of being part of something greater than ourselves, of being willing to ask difficult questions and to make sacrifices. It is through organizing and collective action that people can confront the power structure effectively and build a different society.
Finally, Hedges and Hallam analyze the state of social movements and what it takes to create a popular revolution. They call out the liberal class, including mainstream climate organizations, that “perpetually undermines the ability to bring along the objective revolutionary conditions, which are strategically and ethically undeniably necessary at the present time.” They point to the dire need for revolutionary demands and prophetic leaders who will guide social movements. In the end though, Hallam points out that social transformation is the result of door-to-door organizing in our communities, building support systems and challenging power in the streets.

Democracy Necessitates Resistance (w/ Roger Hallam) | The Chris Hedges Report

Forced to leave her home country due to political and economic repression under the dictatorship of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkish author Ece Temelkuran sought an understanding of how a population can be led down the path to fascism. Whether it is under Narendra Modi in India, Erdogan in Turkey or Donald Trump in the United States, she found that the stages are very similar and so are the mistakes people make along the way. Temelkuran strives to provide readers with an understanding of the roots of the fascist new world order and the language necessary to change direction.
In this episode of The Chris Hedges Report, Hedges and Temelkuran discuss her newest work, “Nation of Strangers: Rebuilding Home in the 21st Century,” and a previous book, “How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Fascism.” Temelkuran connects the crises of today to the neoliberalism of the late twentieth century, which made promises of prosperity but instead destroyed social infrastructure and financial security and increased state repression to subdue resultant popular struggles. Hedges calls this ‘cutthroat capitalism’, a system that divides people and pits them against each other and against their own interests. Temelkuran states, “I think people have been cheated enough with this liberal democracy promises, which were never fulfilled, so, they are perhaps taking a revenge on the entire political establishment.”
While it is tempting to believe that ousting particular political leaders, such as President Donald Trump, will solve the current crises, Temelkuran emphasizes that the crises are systemic in nature and require a long-term approach to organizing resistance.
Fundamental to that effort is breaking with a culture of fear, hatred and hostility that has been instilled by the ruling class. In this new world order, Temelkuran explains that more people are becoming ‘unhomed’ in the sense that the life they once knew no longer exists and won’t return. The antidote is a greater sense of connectedness and solidarity, of realizing that we are all vulnerable in a state that knows no boundaries in the violence, exploitation and displacement it will inflict on populations. Many people in the United States are waking up to this new phenomenon and are searching for answers. Temelkuran advises, “What neoliberalism made us believe, a dim view of humanity, we need to see that humanity and have faith in it…. Our entire economic and social system stands upon that fundamental definition of human.”

Rebuilding 'Home' in the 21st Century (w/ Ece Temelkuran) | The Chris Hedges Report

United Nations Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese shares stories of the immense suffering in Palestine and laments the gutting of international law in her new book, “When the World Sleeps”.

What Happens 'When the World Sleeps' (w/ Francesca Albanese) | The Chris Hedges Report

The war on information in the West has tread new grounds since the genocide in Palestine. Journalists and media outlets who report on the imperialist endeavors of the ruling class increasingly find themselves under the boot of legislators who concoct fascist legislation to act as imperial henchmen. Their methods are stretching the limits of the law with the scope and severity of the punishments imposed. Nowhere is this repression more apparent than in Germany where, since October 7 of 2023, governments have banned languages and symbols related to Palestine and many people, not only journalists but also professors, doctors and lawyers, have lost their jobs for speaking out against the genocide or participating in pro-Palestine demonstrations.
In this episode of The Chris Hedges Report, Chris Hedges speaks with Hüseyin Dogru, a German citizen and father of three young children, who founded Red Media, an anti-imperialist, socialist media outlet. Since May 20 of 2025, Dogru has been experiencing a “civil death,” as Hedges calls it. Dogru and his family members are sanctioned by the European Union as part of its sanctions package against Russia. Their bank accounts are frozen, and they are forced to live on 506 euros a month, which is wholly inadequate for a family of five. Providing any support for Dogru’s family, such as bringing them food, is considered a violation of the sanctions and is punishable by heavy prison sentences and fines.
The allegations against Dogru are unfounded and inaccurate, but even though he has not committed any crimes, he is left with little recourse in the judicial system. Dogru describes the day-to-day struggles to find answers about what he is or isn’t permitted to do and the painful uncertainty of not knowing whether his children will have enough food or other necessities. His case illustrates the state’s expanding powers to weaponize the legal system and to control every aspect of a citizen’s life.
Dogru calls this attack on press freedom “militarization of the information space” and he notes its effectiveness. His trade union is siding with the government. Journalists are afraid to even report on his plight. Dogru explains, “What is happening to me and to my family scares the people and journalists so much that they self-censor.” When asked about Germany’s support for the Zionist State, Dogru exposes the hypocrisy of Germany’s claim to a historical responsibility to Jewish people. He places Germany’s actions in the context of its declining economy and search for relevance in a rising multipolar world, saying, “German imperialism is trying to be the leading force in Europe as well. And we know how it ended the last time when German imperialism got militarized and expanded in the world.”

Weaponizing Civil Death to Crush Dissidents (w/ Hüseyin Doğru) | The Chris Hedges Report

In this episode of The Chris Hedges Report, Chris Hedges speaks with Kshama Sawant, a revolutionary socialist based in Seattle, Washington, who is challenging long-time incumbent Democrat Adam Smith for Congress. Sawant served in the Seattle City Council for more than a decade during which she and her supporters won unprecedented victories for higher wages, affordable housing, taxing Amazon, LGBTQ rights and more. She then went on to organize a national working-class movement, Workers Strike Back.
Sawant is building on that work by running a courageous and unabashed anti-capitalist campaign for the working class. Her platform includes defunding and opposing wars and genocide, supporting universal public health care, education and affordable housing, challenging the power of police and ICE agents, and advocating for LGBTQ rights, issues to which Democrats, even those who claim to be progressive, pay lip service at best. She frames her campaign in the current political moment where the billionaire class is wreaking havoc on people and the planet with the help of Democratic and Republican parties and gatekeepers in the labor movement who engage in ‘business unionism,’ which she describes as “being aligned with the bosses, having made peace with the bosses, which also means… being aligned, intertwined with the bosses’ parties.”
Sawant, who has faced these attacks throughout her time in political office and prevailed, sheds light on how the Democrats, in collusion with Republicans, deploy Machiavellian schemes to thwart anti-establishment candidates; they will run multiple candidates to split the vote, exclude challengers, malign them in the media, and, if a figure becomes threatening enough, ignore them outright. She says, “If you are fighting for the working class, you will become enemy number one of the Democratic Party,” a title she proudly embraces. Despite the many obstacles, Sawant has built a powerful base of support locally and nationally.
During her time in city council, Sawant succeeded because she used her platform and office to organize an unwavering and strategic working-class base focused on specific demands and confronted anyone who attempted to undermine their efforts. She explains how one office in Congress that does the same could make significant breakthroughs in policy. For those who say that electoral politics in the United States are a dead end, Sawant responds, “Capitalism is class war. Working people didn’t choose the system, but this is the system, and our only choices are we sit down and accept the class war from the billionaire class against us, which is the status quo under capitalism, or we stand up and go to class war back against the billionaire class and their political representatives.”

Fighting the Corporate Duopoly at the Ballot Box (w/ Kshama Sawant) | The Chris Hedges Report

Since the Zionist siege of Gaza began 19 years ago, people from around the world have been organizing to break through it and establish a humanitarian corridor to guarantee that Palestinians receive the supplies they need to survive. International flotillas are one way people challenge the Israeli blockade of Gaza. As is occurring with all forms of resistance to the Zionist State, retaliation against activists is escalating. Participants on the most recent flotillas have been subjected to abuse, torture and rape perpetrated by the Israelis with near impunity.
On this episode of The Chris Hedges Report, Chris Hedges speaks with longtime flotilla organizer and pro-Palestine activist Thiago Ávila to describe his harrowing experience in an Israeli torture dungeon. Ávila recounts in detail the illegal kidnapping of flotilla activists this spring, the abusive treatment, and the activist’s courage in resisting the efforts of the Zionists to intimidate them and attempt to prevent future flotillas. He places the work of the flotilla organizers in the context of a global struggle, which employs a variety of tactics, in support of Palestinian liberation.
While flotilla participants are almost guaranteed to be detained and subject to abuse by Israelis on their humanitarian missions, this last effort was met with a uniquely brutal response by the Israelis. Activists were locked in cold cells with minimal water, kept from getting their medications, and when they demanded better treatment in protest, Israeli flashbangs were thrown into their cells and disoriented them as Israeli soldiers launched further physical violence against them. Ávila in particular was brutally tortured, beaten unconscious by Israelis, locked in solitary confinement while blindfolded and zip tied, and constantly threatened with hanging by the Zionist officers jailing him.
Despite the horrors inflicted upon the flotilla participants, Ávila emphasizes that their treatment pales in comparison to the severe abuse of Palestinian prisoners, which include children, and the genocide. Hedges states that the actions of the Zionist state are a mirror into “the inversion of the international and moral order” and the West’s complicity, which impacts everyone. Ávila agrees, and adds, “The Palestinian people… show us the lenses to see society as it really is, but also show us the map, that there’s no way out of this except for resisting, except for mobilizing.”

His Harrowing Experience in an Israeli Torture Dungeon (w/ Thiago Ávila) | The Chris Hedges Report

As the global economy teeters on the brink of a major crisis, the United States, with the aid of the Pakistani government, is once again attempting to finalize an agreement to end the war on Iran that could be signed this weekend. There are still many steps that must be taken before there can be a complete cessation of US/Israeli hostilities on Iran, but as oil reserves dwindle, time is running out. And, of course, even if a deal is signed, it remains to be seen whether the United States and Israel will violate it.
In this episode, Chris Hedges speaks with Professor Mohammad Marandi, who is a former adviser to Iran’s nuclear negotiating team, about the status of a peace agreement and how the war on Iran has reshaped the geopolitical configuration of the Middle East. Dr. Marandi notes that the power dynamics have shifted in Iran’s favor since the Twelve Day War on Iran last year, which is a significant change from the environment during the negotiations of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015.
Professor Marandi states that Iran has surprised and impressed the world and even its own population with its successful military strategy in the current conflict. Now, Iranians are, for the most part, confident that they can win the war and are unwilling to make significant concessions to the US and Israel. Marandi recounts how Iranians, who view this as “a war for their survival” are undaunted. He describes the Iranian culture as one of resilience and deeply embedded resistance. Iranians are also resolute in their support for Palestinians and the Lebanese people.
Hedges and Marandi discuss the failure of many Arab states to counter the Zionist vision of a Greater Israel and its brutal attacks on Gaza and Beirut, calling their leaders “traitors”. They predict that the Israeli regime won’t survive after this, describing “the war between Trump and Iran [as] a historical moment and probably the most important event in world affairs in recent decades.”

Where Will the Coming Iran War Negotiations Lead? (w/ Mohammad Marandi) | The Chris Hedges Report

The US-Israeli war heated up again over the weekend as Iran launched “Operation Victory” in response to Israel’s continued attacks on Southern Lebanon and attacks on Iranian infrastructure, and the United States bombing islands in the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend. In this episode, Chris Hedges speaks with former British Diplomat Alastair Crooke of the Conflicts Forum Substack, who explains that given the failure of diplomatic negotiations, Iran has entered a new phase of the war utilizing the methodology of ‘escalatory deterrence’ in which every attack on Iran will be met with an increasingly greater response.
A change in Israel’s military strategy has occurred following the events of the 7th of October 2023. Crookes describe this as a shift away from primarily using military force to expand settlements to a focus on ‘permanent security’ — aimed at eliminating any potential threats in the region. Israel is on a mission to establish a Greater Israel by force, but this is taking a toll on the Israeli military, which is at a “point of implosion.”
Both Netanyahu and Trump have boxed themselves in with the wars on Palestine, Lebanon and Iran, generating heavy losses and little possibility of victory but no clear politically acceptable path to a resolution. Both face declining support in the polls and are likely to fare poorly in the next elections. The Likud party is fragmenting, and Crooke explains that “it’s quite possible that the machine that [Netanyahu’s] put into place over 20 and more years could implode.”
For President Trump, the outcome will be decided by what happens to the global economy as shortages of critical resources — fuel, fertilizer and industrial inputs — cause a growing crisis. “Pain is a great transformer,” states Crooke, which may lead Western allies to accept greater concessions to Iran. In the big picture, Hedges and Crooke concur that the West, with its failing institutions, is in a process of catharsis, a period of decline, which is necessary, they say, for there to be any possibility of its renewal and restoration. “This is the process we’ve got to start slowly addressing.”

Is the Ceasefire Dead? (w/ Alastair Crooke) | The Chris Hedges Report

The release of the Epstein Files has shocked the public with unimaginable stories of the pedophilia, exploitation of women and brash depravity of the ruling class. While these stories have been the major source of public outrage, a deeper dive into the Epstein Files reveals the inside world of how the billionaire class operates to control information and collude with each other - hide their crimes and gain massive wealth at the expense of the working class.
In this episode, Chris Hedges speaks with Maureen Tkacik, an investigative journalist who has studied and written about the Epstein Files for The American Prospect and The Nation. Tkacik exposes the players behind the looting of the Soviet Union after its collapse, the truth about Larry Summers’ abrupt resignation from Harvard, the controversy around the death of the media magnate Robert Maxwell and more.
In addition to providing women for wealthy men, Epstein became their trusted finance manager, funneling money to Israel and other members of the elite class. Epstein was also talented at building friendships with their wives, such as Noam Chomsky’s wife Valeria Wasserman and Woody Allen’s wife Soon-Yi Previn, for example. Tkacik describes Epstein as “a magnet for these sort of ‘much older man with money and younger wife’ combinations,” exploiting these connections to divert the finances of these aging men to his, and the class he represents, preferred causes.
Tkacik concludes the interview with a discussion of the liberal media’s complicity in hiding the crimes of the ruling class and federal law enforcement’s disinterest in holding the powerful to account. “Ponzi schemes, money laundering, intelligence, you see that triumvirate over and over again,” Tkacik explains. Tkacik refers to the current times as “bleak” but also “very illuminating.” In summary, Hedges states, “It’s the depravity, the greed, the hedonism, the lack of empathy, the callousness, the cruelty that has defined all oligarchic classes throughout history.”

Jeffrey Epstein, the Russian Mob, & the Hidden Assets of the Maxwells (w/ Moe Tkacik) | The Chris Hedges Report

In the United States, but also around the world, fascism is on the rise again, similar to what occurred in Germany and Italy after World War I. Its foot soldiers in the US include right wing extremists who enter the military, where they are welcomed and encouraged, for empowerment and training. The current Trump administration, includes Christian Nationalists, such as Pete Hegseth who heads the Pentagon, and openly supports fascist and Zionist leaders — Javier Milei in Argentina, Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel, to name a few.
To understand the rise of neo-Nazis in the US military and law enforcement, Chris Hedges speaks with British investigative journalist Matt Kennard. For his new book, “Irregular Army,” Kennard interviewed hard-right veterans who were open about enlisting to gain the skills they need to wage RaHoWa, a Racial Holy War, at home.
The book demonstrates that the War on Terror gave rise to the Trump presidency. He cites the repressive powers granted to the state under the Patriot Act, the rise of the Imperial Presidency, the loosening of restrictions on qualifications for military recruitment, the cover up of atrocities committed by military members in Afghanistan and Iraq and the epidemic of PTSD as factors that allowed White Supremacy and racism to flourish in the United States government and military brass.
Hedges asks if an even more extremist body politic could develop. Kennard’s response is that many alarm bells are ringing: “I think that we’re on a slippery slope and things have been normalized now that we wouldn’t have even believed could be normalized a long time ago.” The fact that those in power do not have a cohesive strategy provides a ray of hope, but if we are to develop strategies to stop the rise of fascism, we must first understand the social and political factors that underlie it.

How the War on Terror Created the Age of Trump (W/ Matt Kennard) | The Chris Hedges Report

“We tell the stories that perpetuate the narrative or the myth we want, and we erase the others,” Chris Hedges states in this interview with Ray Nayler about his new book, “Palaces of the Crow,” which centers around four teenagers from varying backgrounds who struggle to survive during World War II. The war, Nayler says, fundamentally reshaped the world geopolitically, technologically and socially in ways that have profoundly impacted the environment in which we live today. Critical lessons from that moment in time are being lost, with media and governments covering up the deep and long-lasting wounds inflicted upon tens of millions of people. Nayler says that “We can’t move away from that time period before understanding it.”
During World War II people were trapped in unimaginably horrible circumstances and were forced to make difficult, and at times self-sacrificial, decisions. The story of the “ways in which people came together to protect their neighbors, to protect family members, to protect friends, to protect strangers” is rarely told, Nayler says.
In Nayler’s novel, crows play an essential role in the story. Like humans, crows are social animals. He describes the crows’ niche as the flock and the flock as a type of organism whose niche is the forest, much like the human’s niche is society and our society’s niche is the world. Contrary to their typical association with death and destruction, Nayler utilizes them as “a symbol of cooperation and group living and non-violence.” From this viewpoint, one sees that human connection, cooperation, nonviolence and mutual aid are fundamental to survival.
The theme of connection, “a primal sense of togetherness,” is central to the story of the four teenagers thrown together under hostile conditions. This connection allows people, and other animals, to find common ground and get along despite their different cultures. Civilization, which Nayler portrays as “being inside a painted box and trying to ignore what’s out there,” is an obstacle to connection that prevents us from recognizing reality. We erase the reality that humans are social, nonviolent, interconnected and caring beings at our own peril.

A Discussion on the New Novel 'Palaces of the Crow' (w/ Ray Nayler) | The Chris Hedges Report

Dr. Ramzy Baroud, a Palestinian historian and author, in his new book, “Before the Flood: A Gaza Family Memoir Across Three Generations of Colonial Invasion, Occupation, and War in Palestine,” traces the long arc of Palestinian resistance to the Zionist settler-colonial state leading to its current form in Hamas. It is resistance, defined by Palestinians themselves, as Dr. Baroud explains, that is the “sole leverage” of the Palestinian people in their struggle for existence, which began before the Nakba of 1948.
In this episode, Chris Hedges speaks with Professor Baroud about his deep personal connection to this struggle. Dr. Baroud’s family lived in the village of Beit Daras before being forcibly displaced to Gaza during the Nakba. In the current war, more than a hundred of his family members have been murdered by the Israeli Occupying Forces, including his sister, Dr. Soma Baroud, who was a physician and community leader. His losses go beyond that. Professor Baroud explains that due to the decades of confinement in Gaza, “everyone who dies in Gaza is somehow family, friend, neighbor, relative, connection of some kind.”
Dr. Baroud describes the “slow-motion genocide” of Palestinians through the blockade of Gaza and regular attacks, cruelly referred to by Zionists as ‘mowing the lawn’, which led to the Palestinian uprising on October 7, 2023. The world watched as the Israeli state waged a full-blown genocide that destroyed 92% of Gaza. Now, Palestinians are being squeezed into an even smaller area without the infrastructure they relied on previously. He describes the situation as more dire than before as “[Gazans] are being asked to engineer a miracle of survival while the world is looking on somewhere else.”
Hedges and Baroud discuss what the future holds for Palestine. Baroud is hopeful that Palestine will prevail given the steadfastness and ingenuity of Palestinians in their fight for survival. In his book, a type of people’s history that challenges the mainstream Zionist narrative, Baroud explains that even though there are divisions in Palestinian society - as there are in all societies and national liberation movements – there is an underlying unity he refers to as the “secret code of Gaza.” Palestinians also have a long history of “scholar-warriors” who have led successive liberation movements and have fostered connections with other liberation movements around the world. The Zionist state can only exist through military force, and Palestinians have demonstrated their powerful abilities to resist. Dr. Baroud admits proudly, “I don’t want to say [we are] super humans in Gaza, but our story speaks for itself.”

The History of National Resistance Movements in Palestine (w/ Ramzy Baroud) | The Chris Hedges Report

The global economic impacts of the American-Israeli war on Iran are already being felt, particularly in Asia, through shortages of fuel and other necessities, the closure of factories and the loss of jobs. We are now on a path heading for a global recession, or even worse, a global depression. To sort out what potentially lies ahead and the likelihood of preventing the worst outcomes, Chris Hedges speaks with economist Richard D. Wolff, professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
Wolff begins the interview by discussing the weaknesses of the capitalist economic system. Since the 1970s, corporations have been moving production to areas of the world where they can maximize profits. This has created fragile supply chains that are vulnerable to changes in the availability of energy and the fallout of political turmoil.
Research demonstrates that capitalist systems result in cyclical downturns every four to seven years. The last economic crisis was five to six years ago, so we may very well be on the edge of another one. Wolff reports that it is too early to determine if that will result in inflation, stagflation or deflation. For the United States, commitments to greater military spending, a historically high debt of $40 trillion and a declining credit rating will force the government to borrow money at higher interest rates, adding to the burden of an already financially stressed population.
Wolff states, “We are living through the end of the empire and that end has been accelerated and brought closer by everything going on in the Middle East.” The United States faces a critical decision. If it chooses to escalate the war on Iran, the risk of a global depression rises. The future appears to be grim. At this time, there is an absence of a functioning international mechanism through which countries can solve the current crises cooperatively. For the United States, there is also denial about the state of our falling empire. Wolff concludes: “It’s not a question of maintaining your dominance. That’s gone. It’s a question of working things out. Our leaders don’t think or talk like that.”

How the Iran War is Accelerating the Decline of Empire (w/ Richard Wolff) | The Chris Hedges Report

The United States, in its recent war on Iran, has completely misread the Iranian people and failed to recognize the deep revolutionary spirit that pervades Iranian culture. Rather than inciting Iranian people against their government, the US-Israeli war on Iran has united the population. Rather than promoting democracy in Iran and empowering the people, US economic punishment and aggression have accomplished the opposite and have made life more difficult for most Iranians. Like Cuba, Iran is being targeted because it will not relinquish its sovereignty. As Chris Hedges explains, Iran is being punished for “its refusal to become a client state aligned with American interests in the region.”
In this episode, Hedges speaks with Professor Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, the author of “The Long War on Iran: New Events, Old Questions” (OR Books, January 2026). Ghamari is currently a visiting scholar at the Center for Place, Culture and Politics at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York. In his book, Ghamari tackles the myths perpetuated by the United States to demonize Iran in order to justify the imposition of severe sanctions and to go to war on Iran twice in less than one year. He discusses the many reasons why the Islamic Republic does not trust the United States to negotiate in good faith.
Year zero in the current struggle, Ghamari explains, was 1953 when the United States and the United Kingdom conducted a successful coup of the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. This led to the Iranian Revolution in 1979, described by Ghamari as “the largest, most populous revolution in world history [that] defeated the fifth largest military in the world at the time.” Following that, events such as the Eight Year War, in which the United States provided the tools for chemical warfare on Iranians by Iraq, and the betrayal of Iran by President Bush, calling it part of the Axis of Evil despite Iran playing an instrumental role with the US in defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan, have created the conditions for “ the transfer of collective revolutionary consciousness generation after generation.”
Ghamari discusses Iran’s support for the Axis of Resistance as a way to create a “Ring of Fire” around it, opportunities to struggle against US and Israeli imperialism outside of Iran’s borders with the hope of avoiding a war at home. He states that initially Iranians opposed the use of resources to support Palestinians, Hezbollah and the defense of Syria, but now they understand the utility. Iranians see themselves in these struggles, and that is why a popular movement has taken the streets night after night against US attacks.
The outcome of the current conflict is uncertain, but Ghamari theorizes, and Hedges agrees, that Iran has a strong hand to play and the best result would be a return to a lifting of the economic sanctions in return for limits on Iran’s nuclear enrichment efforts, as was agreed in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2015. The wildcards are the United States and Israel, who may be unwilling to compromise and may resort to dropping nuclear bombs in desperation.

The Revolutionary Spirit of Iran (w/ Behrooz Ghamari) | The Chris Hedges Report

At the last minute, Iran agreed on Monday to participate in negotiations with the United States in Islamabad, Pakistan. The fragile ceasefire agreement between the two countries ends on Wednesday. Following the US attack on and seizure of an Iranian cargo ship in the Sea of Oman on Saturday, and contradictory tweets by President Trump in recent days, Iran was understandably hesitant to engage in further discussions with the US. There are additional obstacles to a successful resolution of the US-Israeli war on Iran to consider.
To dissect the challenges involved in negotiating peace and the potential ramifications of a resumption of the war, Chris Hedges speaks with Professor John Mearsheimer. A fundamental difficulty is whether the United States realizes that Iran has the upper hand in this conflict. Mearsheimer explains that if the US chooses to escalate the situation, this would be to Iran’s advantage as they have the capacity to inflict greater harm on the global economy beyond restricting passage through the Strait of Hormuz, which has already created shortages in critical materials needed for manufacturing and agriculture.
The United States will have to make compromises in its demands to reach an agreement with Iran, something the US has so far been unwilling to do. Mearsheimer adds that the Trump administration must balance both the interests of Israel and its powerful lobby in the US, which “has no interest in settling this war,” and the domestic impacts of a global recession if the war continues that could hurt Trump in the midterms. If the administration succeeds in extending a ceasefire, Mearsheimer points out that the Israel lobby “will be working overtime not to make that framework morph into a peaceful agreement.”
The stakes are high and neither Mearsheimer or Hedges are optimistic that the United States has the capacity to navigate the complicated and competing challenges involved in reaching a lasting resolution. Mearsheimer summarizes the situation by stating, “The only thing I can say with a high degree of certainty is it looks like one giant mess that’s going to lead to endless trouble.”

Is There a Way out of the Iran War? (w/ John Mearsheimer) | The Chris Hedges Report

Is Hezbollah Beating Israel in Lebanon? (w/ Laith Marouf) | The Chris Hedges Report

Medea Benjamin, a co-founder of the antiwar organization CODEPINK, speaks with Chris Hedges about her recent visit to Cuba as part of one of the many humanitarian delegations that have visited the island in response to the severe economic blockade imposed by the Trump administration. Benjamin describes the current situation as “dire”, the worst she has experienced in her 50 years of solidarity work with Cuba, referring to the escalation of the blockade as a “medieval siege.”
The fuel shortages have had deadly impacts, imposing nationwide power outages. Sanctions and the blockade have created shortages of food, medicine and other necessities. Benjamin recounts, “People can’t go to work because the buses aren’t working or if they got to work, there’s no electricity or no materials.” She says that doctors and teachers are leaving the country because their salaries are too low to survive.
The U.S. media blame the hardships in Cuba on its communist government, but Benjamin shares the advancements that have been made since the Revolution, despite enduring more than sixty years of U.S.-imposed sanctions. A poor country of ten million, Cuba created a once-enviable universal healthcare system and an excellent education system that is free to residents. Now, many of those gains, such as reductions in infant mortality and improvements in life expectancy, are deteriorating under the boot of American imperialism.
Delegations have traveled to Cuba from all over the world this year to bring solar panels, medicines and other necessities. Palestinians participated in the delegation that Benjamin helped to organize, and they witnessed many similarities between Cuba and Gaza. In addition to the shortages, another similarity is the growing power of the Cuban-American lobby that supports the blockade, which is modeled on the Israeli-American lobby, AIPAC.
Despite this, the situation in Cuba is so severe that even many members of Congress can no longer deny the cruelty of the situation. There are two new pieces of legislation in Congress that CODEPINK and other Cuba solidarity organizations support. Benjamin urges people to take action in any way that they can because she believes Cubans will not be able to endure the hardships of the blockade for much longer.

The Trump Administration's War on Cuba (w/ Medea Benjamin) | The Chris Hedges Report

The whole world is watching as negotiations begin today in Islamabad, Pakistan between Iran and the United States following an agreement to cease military action for two weeks. The negotiations are based on a ten-point plan outlined by Iran and approved by the United States as a basis for the talks.
Israel has not been invited to the negotiations, which are being conducted indirectly and with a great deal of skepticism by the Iranian team. The outcome of these talks will impact the entire global economy and the fate of millions of people in West Asia, six million of whom have already been forcibly displaced by US and Israeli aggression in recent years.
Chris Hedges discusses the peace talks with former British Diplomat Alastair Crooke, who has participated in past negotiations between Palestinian groups and Israel and who studied the rise of Islamic groups in the region. Crooke explains that the current Islamabad talks are rife with contradictions and are impeded by a failure of the West to understand that the goal of Iran, in the defense of its sovereignty, is “to blow up the existing paradigm” that has plagued Iran for nearly 50 years, which Crooke describes as a “revolutionary objective” that has both financial and cultural elements.
Many factors have led to Iran maintaining a position of strength throughout the recent US-Israeli aggression, which gives it an advantage in these talks. Meanwhile, Israel is in a position of weakness as it fights on multiple fronts with a military in a state of collapse and a population in distress. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces a court case, which could result in his imprisonment, and an upcoming election.
And for the United States, Crooke explains that its miscalculated war on Iran has backfired, leading to the rise of the Chinese Yuan, the decline of the petrodollar, significant losses of its infrastructure in the Middle East and a conflict that, like the Vietnam War, is being fought on difficult terrain for which the US is not prepared. Hedges compares this situation to the Suez Crisis in 1956 that accelerated the decline of the British Empire. When asked if the US is likely to restart the war on Iran, Crooke responds with “What’s really left to the United States militarily to do that would be a game changer?”

America’s Suez Crisis (w/ Alastair Crooke) | The Chris Hedges Report

Is the Iranian War About to Become Apocalyptic? (w/ Trita Parsi) | The Chris Hedges Report

In an attempt to justify and garner popular support for the American-Israeli war on Iran, the Trump administration is pressuring its allied nations to join the US in designating Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps as the world’s greatest sponsor of state terrorism. The administration points to Iran’s participation in the Axis of Resistance, which includes Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine and Ansar Allah in Yemen, as evidence for its position. This raises the question of whether Iran, by supporting proxy organizations, is doing anything differently from what US intelligence agencies have done for many decades.
To answer this question, Chris Hedges speaks with John Kiriakou, a former CIA analyst and counterterrorism operations officer who worked in West Asia. Kiriakou is known for blowing the whistle on the CIA’s torture program, for which he was the sixth person convicted under the Espionage Act. In this interview, Kiriakou makes the distinction between organizations that carry out terrorism and those that are fighting for national liberation from foreign oppressors.
Kiriakou explains that throughout recent history, many countries or organizations backed by the United States have engaged in terrorist acts, and that the US has used the terrorist designation “as a cudgel against countries that we don’t like or whose policies we disagree with,” making the designation lose its meaning.
Hedges and Kiriakou discuss US support for terrorists, including the State of Israel, which Kiriakou calls “an extreme example” of an entity that uses violence, and the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), a “cult” co-founded by Maryam Rahjavi, an Iranian who opposes the Islamic Republic of Iran and who has cultivated strong ties with both Democrats and Republicans in the US.
They conclude the interview with an analysis of the current US-Israel war on Iran and how it plays a part in Israel’s goal to create chaos in the region. Kiriakou laments that the US has missed many opportunities to partner with Iran in curbing terrorism and narcotics production. He warns that the US’ aggression against Iran will likely result in unintended blowback.

Is Iran the 'Leading State Sponsor of Terrorism?' (w/ John Kiriakou) | The Chris Hedges Report

In filmmaker Annemarie Jacir’s new film, Palestine 36, one of the most pivotal moments in Palestine’s history is brought to life for the first time through cinema.
In this episode of The Chris Hedges Report, host Chris Hedges speaks with Jacir about the 1936–39 Palestinian uprising against British colonial rule — a mass revolt that laid the groundwork for the modern Palestinian struggle, and also the crushing of Palestine’s organizational infrastructure that culminated into the founding of the Zionist state a decade later.
Jacir explains that this period represents “the beginning of the national movement for liberation in Palestine,” emphasizing its scale and significance as “the first really mass uprising” that spread from “countryside to city” and “across classes.” For her, revisiting this moment is essential to understanding everything that followed, as “it sets up everything for the Nakba in 1948 and the loss of Palestine.”
Jacir explains how her film reconstructs not only the revolt itself but also the conditions that shaped it—British colonialism, offensive attacks on Palestinian labor, and the exploitation of the Palestinian elite’s fractured nature and ambitions for power. In her research, Jacir says she was struck by the extent of that brutality, noting, “I was really… surprised… I’d never really heard about that under the British,” only to later uncover detailed accounts in archival records, including testimonies from British soldiers themselves. In fact, “it’s the blueprint of military occupation that we live today,” she says.
But Jacir frames Palestine 36 as more than a historical drama. It is, she says, about “a moment of real possibility” and the moral choices faced by those living under oppression. Even during production—disrupted by the war in Gaza—the film’s themes felt urgently contemporary. “There is no past and present,” she reflects. “We’re still living the same thing.”

Making the Film 'Palestine 36' (w/ director Annemarie Jacir) | The Chris Hedges Report

As the war between the United States, Israel, and Iran intensifies, the justifications for its outbreak grow increasingly murky, shifting between nuclear fears, regime change, and regional security concerns. In this interview, Israeli journalist Gideon Levy joins Chris Hedges to cut through the official narratives and examine the deeper ideological forces driving Israel’s long-standing push toward confrontation with Iran under Benjamin Netanyahu.
Levy argues that the war cannot be understood purely through strategy or geopolitics, but instead through a deeply embedded national mindset. “War is always the first option, not the last one in Israel,” he explains, pointing to a political culture that consistently defaults to military solutions while sidelining diplomacy. This helps explain why lessons from past conflicts—from Gaza to Lebanon—have failed to meaningfully alter Israeli policy, even when those campaigns produced questionable results.
At the same time, the human consequences have been dire. As the region destabilizes further, Levy emphasizes the sheer scale of displacement caused by Israeli military actions, noting that “six million human beings…were expelled, uprooted, displaced from their homes.” In other words, the war’s impact extends far beyond its stated objectives, raising urgent moral and strategic questions.
Levy goes on to discuss Israeli society itself. He delivers a scathing critique of the country’s media landscape, arguing that self-censorship have infected Israeli “open” society. Levy says the press voluntarily “made Israel totally ignorant about what’s going on on our behalf in Gaza,” insulating the public from the realities of its own military actions.
As the conflict with Iran threatens to spiral into a wider regional war, Levy remains deeply pessimistic. Without a fundamental shift away from militarism, he suggests, Israel risks entrenching itself in an endless cycle of violence—one whose consequences will ultimately extend far beyond the Middle East.

Why Israel Wants a War with Iran (w/ Gideon Levy) | Chris Hedges Report

As the chaos and destruction of the war in Iran escalates by the day, a lesser known element of the conflict remains ensconced in the shadows of statespeak and bureaucracy. Max Blumenthal, editor-in-chief of The Grayzone, joins Chris Hedges to explain how an Israeli psychological warfare campaign worked to exploit Donald Trump’s imbecilic intelligence and increasing paranoia with the ultimate goal of luring the President into a war with Iran.
Blumenthal says the Israelis and their allies convinced President Trump that Iran was trying to assassinate him – a fear first stoked when Trump began a vicious cycle of violence with the regime after he assassinated Iranian General Qasem Soleimani during his first term.
The FBI played an active role in this covert lobbying effort, utilizing War- on- Terror-esque sting operations to manufacture threats in order to justify foreign policy measures. “Trump is an enigmatic figure,” Blumenthal points out, “less stable and predictable than a Bill Clinton or even a Barack Obama. However, he offers a massive opportunity because he’s totally transactional and entered politics essentially to make a profit.”
As the war drags on and thousands of lives are claimed in the process, the grim reality that cynical actors likely played a role in manipulating American leadership into the interests of the Zionist lobby casts an embarrassing light on any propagandistic narrative about combatting “terror” in the region.
“Do you think [fear of assassination] was the primary motivation behind Trump’s support of the war?” Hedges asks Blumenthal.
“I think Trump has to answer for that.”

How Israel Convinced Trump to Wage War Against Iran (w/ Max Blumenthal) | The Chris Hedges Report

As the U.S.-Israel and Iran War enters its second week, American and Israeli strategy becomes increasingly opaque, while Iran’s resolve hardens. Professor John Mearsheimer, a renowned voice in international politics, joins host Chris Hedges again on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to spell out what can be expected from the conflict.
Mearsheimer chronicles everything that is known about the war so far, from Benjamin Netanyahu’s victory in convincing an American president to finally launch this long-awaited attack on Iran to the reluctance within Trump’s own cabinet to go through with it. Mearsheimer also spells out the major implications this conflict has on the whole of the world economy; with Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz, countries in East Asia such as South Korea and Japan as well as the whole of Europe will suffer.
“You could have a worldwide depression. You could have something less than that, like a worldwide recession, that would have huge consequences for people all over the planet, especially in developing countries, less so in developed countries. But even in developed countries, it’s quite clear that the importance of oil for running the international economy simply can’t be underestimated,” Mearsheimer tells Hedges.

How the War With Iran Will Trigger a Global Financial Crisis (w/ Yanis Varoufakis) | The Chris Hedges Report

As the U.S.-Israel and Iran War enters its second week, American and Israeli strategy becomes increasingly opaque, while Iran’s resolve hardens. Professor John Mearsheimer, a renowned voice in international politics, joins host Chris Hedges again on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to spell out what can be expected from the conflict.
Mearsheimer chronicles everything that is known about the war so far, from Benjamin Netanyahu’s victory in convincing an American president to finally launch this long-awaited attack on Iran to the reluctance within Trump’s own cabinet to go through with it. Mearsheimer also spells out the major implications this conflict has on the whole of the world economy; with Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz, countries in East Asia such as South Korea and Japan as well as the whole of Europe will suffer.
“You could have a worldwide depression. You could have something less than that, like a worldwide recession, that would have huge consequences for people all over the planet, especially in developing countries, less so in developed countries. But even in developed countries, it’s quite clear that the importance of oil for running the international economy simply can’t be underestimated,” Mearsheimer tells Hedges.

Why America is Losing the War With Iran (w/ John Mearsheimer) | The Chris Hedges Report

While the official White House X account posts video montages featuring video games and Hollywood movies spliced with real footage of their attacks on Iran, the situation on the ground could not be more different than an American propaganda blockbuster.
To pierce the fog of war and offer a concrete analysis of what is taking place across the Middle East, author and former British diplomat Alastair Crooke joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report.
Iran’s military power has seen the depletion of Israeli defensive interceptor missiles, the destruction of billion-dollar American radar systems and the diligent preparation of the Iranian leadership — Crooke explains these losses of the hegemonic West and their ally in Tel Aviv is what’s shaping the reality of the unfolding war.
“The Iranians say they also have newer missiles, which they will show and unfold at a later stage. They haven’t reached that stage yet, but that is waiting to be used and deployed at the right moment. They’re quite comfortable that they have huge missile stocks that they can continue for a long war,” Crooke tells Hedges.
Crooke also touches on the wider implications this war will have on the region, in particular, the Gulf states that have been subservient to American and Israeli interests and subject to attacks since the war began. “The Gulf used to be known and thought of as a safe place for businessmen, for investors and others and that — AI, holidays, airliners, tourism, et cetera… That’s finished.”

Can Israel & the U.S. Sustain Iran's Military Power? (w/ Alastair Crooke) | The Chris Hedges Report

As Donald Trump’s administration continues down the path of self destruction, it is taking the rest of the American population down with it. The abandonment of international allies, treaties and norms, the political scientist Stephen Walt argues, will slowly ostracize the United States and give rise to a multipolar world order which will leave the country behind.
Walt, the Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School and author of multiple books, joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to chronicle what this decline may look like and how Trump’s policy choices are not unlike past empires in history.
The decline, Walt and Hedges emphasize, is multifaceted. On the one hand, Trump is motivated by personal gain for himself and his family, and on the other, petty grievances towards countries once considered allies. This policy pattern will isolate the U.S. as Walt says, “we’re already starting to see lots of countries who are currently accommodating the United States in the short term also looking to find ways to de-risk, to reduce their vulnerability, to create alternative structures to one in which the United States has the central role. This isn’t going to leave the United States completely isolated. We’re too big for that. But it’s going to mean a long-term diminution in American wealth, power, influence, and security.”
International politicians, such as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, have already begun to understand that rather than groveling to a toxic Trump regime, standing up for your citizens can ultimately pay greater dividends. “You are going to see other leaders realize that kowtowing to Trump doesn’t get you any good, may prompt something of a nationalist backlash in your own country as well. And that in fact, taking a more principled position, defending your own country’s interests, even in the face of American pressure actually will pay political benefits,” Walt explains.

The Predatory Hegemon (w/ Stephen Walt) | The Chris Hedges Report

Karl Marx, in his essay “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,” said that history repeats itself, “the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.” Donald Trump’s actions in the first year of his second term have spelled out to many that tragedies of history are beginning to repeat themselves, this time certainly as farces.
 
John Mearsheimer, the renowned scholar, author and R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to contextualize what Trump’s political missions mean through the lens of history.
 
“Things like soft power, things like international institutions, international law, allies, they're just not important to [Trump],” Mearsheimer says. “[Trump] thinks that U.S. economic might and U.S. military might are all he needs to basically be a benign dictator and act unilaterally and get what he wants around the world.”
 
With this thinking, there are real threats to the world order, Mearsheimer argues, especially Europe and East Asia. In Europe, Trump’s disregard for international law and alliances, such as NATO, alarms a leadership class that has always relied on American security guarantees. In East Asia, China’s dominance and lack of adherence to the Western imperial status quo may become a flashpoint similar to that in Europe before World War I.
 
“For the first time in our history, we face a serious problem in East Asia. Imperial Japan was not that big a problem… China is a completely different story. This is a formidable power. Really, we've never seen anything like this when you look at the key building blocks of military power, the size of the population, the wealth, the ability to develop sophisticated technologies better than we do.”

What Is the World’s Future in the ‘New World Order?’ (W/ John Mearsheimer) | The Chris Hedges Report

As U.S. hegemony continues to dwindle, Donald Trump and his international allies are making preparations to maintain some grip on world power. One of these methods includes the “Board of Peace,” which was ostensibly created to reconstruct Gaza, but has demonstrated yet another attempt by Trump to undermine international law.
Yanis Varoufakis, the Secretary-General of the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25), the former Finance Minister of Greece and author of Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism joins host Chris Hedges to discuss what the Board of Peace really means and how it relates to Trump’s larger geopolitical goals, including one seeking to curb China’s rising influence on the world stage.
When it comes to the European Union, Varoufakis explains that European nations are “freaking out about the Board of Peace not only replacing the United Nations, but also targeting them. And this is what they get for ignoring the very clear signs that Trump was sending their way, that he’s out to get them, that he’s no longer interested in having vassals that think that they are part of a Western multilateral design… it seems to me that the Donald Trump policy is forcing his allies, so to speak, firstly to accept that the genocide will continue. Secondly, not to dare say anything about it. And third, go into these spasms of quasi-autonomy.”
As for China, Varoufakis says that Trump understands that the U.S. will have to coexist with the East Asian nation but must also to rein in the Europeans while maintaining control of the Western hemisphere, likening the tentacles of the American empire to a bicycle wheel. “The bicycle wheel has a hub in the middle and it’s got spokes… you can break one or two or three spokes and the wheel still works,” Varoufakis says. “As long as you are the hub and you negotiate with each spoke separately, you keep them separate and you don’t allow them to get together and negotiate with you collectively, then you can extend your hegemony and make a lot of money in the process.”
While the context Trump faces with China rising on the world stage has pushed the United States into a new paradigm, Varoufakis casts doubt on the idea that Trump’s colonialism is much different than that conducted within the liberal international world order. “Well, I don’t want to mythologize the world we’re exiting,” he says. “Because you see, this is what liberal centrists do, radical centrists. They say, everything was so good until this man [Trump] came and destroyed it. I’m sorry, it wasn’t good. You know…I grew up in a NATO country that was a fascist dictatorship. So when people say, NATO is democracy. No, I’m sorry. It’s not for me.”

Is the 'New World Order' Really New? (w/ Yanis Varoufakis) | The Chris Hedges Report

Palestinian professor and activist Amin Husain knows what Western settler colonialism looks, sounds and feels like. Growing up in Palestine, Husain experienced the iron grip of Israeli force and came to understand how important it was to struggle against such a powerful imperial entity, even in the face of defeat.
In the United States, Husain applied his learned experience to organize and educate about how colonialism and imperialism not only exists in the modern world, but is intertwined in the economy and culture of the global capitalist world order. Husain joins host Chris Hedges to chronicle his story and his approach to fighting settler colonialism, which, after October 7th, led to his firing from New York University.
“A lot of people exceptionalize Palestine, but what Palestine does is clarify what is happening in the world. It’s one type of future,” Husain explains.
Some of Husain’s activism work involved organizing alternative tours in museums such as the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where the very layout and structure of the museum was challenged in a way that brought material change.
“You go into a museum and you think that that’s neutral but this is how the nation state narrative gets perpetuated from a very young age so that you think it’s normal. There’s nothing normal about a 36-foot monument that’s about imperialism and white supremacy,” Husain says of the infamous Teddy Roosevelt statue depicting the president riding on horseback accompanied by a colonized Native American and African, each wielding guns.
Husain’s work, which has been censored by the military-contracting Big Tech companies, demonstrates a model of resilience and education that can challenge power and cultivate community.

Decolonizing The World (w/ Amin Husain) | The Chris Hedges Report

Lawlessness has been a common theme characterizing the events of the first weeks of the year. The kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the murder of Renee Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross, the threat of bombing Iran by the Trump administration. Perhaps one of the worst violations of the law has slipped under the radar amidst the chaos — the continued genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and the United Nations’ abetting of Israel and the U.S.’s efforts to ethnically cleanse the region.
Professor Norman Finkelstein, author and scholar of the Middle East, knows better than anyone how to interpret international action at the hands of the United Nations in relation to Palestine and Israel. As for the adoption of Resolution 2803 (2025) in November, Finkelstein tells host Chris Hedges, “[The resolution] abolished 70 years of UN history… [It] gave Gaza to Donald J. Trump.”
The resolution, Finkelstein points out, legitimizes Israel and the U.S.’s ethnonationalist and imperialist goals and delegitimizes the sanctity of international law. He explains, “there was a robust consensus on how to resolve the conflict, which means that Israel didn’t have a leg to stand on. But guess what? It now has a leg to stand on. It has you right here.”

Deconstructing Trump's Gaza 'Peace' Plan (w/ Norman Finkelstein) | The Chris Hedges Report

History, as it’s understood in most Western countries, often misses important chapters that leave critical gaps in the story of how modern countries came to be. In Latin America in the 20th century, episodes of guerilla warfare and juntas are acknowledged, along with portrayals of a drug war, usually depicted through popular culture.
What is left out, however, is the clandestine involvement of American intelligence agencies, including the CIA and DEA, and how their drug operations were intimately tied to the Latin American anticommunist brigades funded by Western capital throughout the Cold War, and the brutal liquidation of the Left these narco-terrorists often carried out.
Maureen Tkacik, investigations editor at The American Prospect, joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report, to chronicle some of these missing chapters, including ones connected to the current Secretary of State and Acting National Security Advisor Marco Rubio.
In her article “The Narco-Terrorist Elite,” Tkacik dives into Rubio’s personal ties to the drug trafficking racket in the 20th century as well as how this history informs his own policy, one that attempts to cynically use drug trafficking as a means to achieving the Trump administration’s extrajudicial goals.
“When Marco Rubio maligns the efficacy of interdiction and other traditional law enforcement approaches to mitigating narco trafficking in favor of military operations, as he did in a recent speech on Trump’s speedboat bombings, he is contradicting every empirical evaluation of drug war efficacy that exists,” Hedges says.

The Narco-Trafficking Elite Set to Run Venezuela (w/ Maureen Tkacik) | The Chris Hedges Report

The military-industrial-complex (MIC) is unique in its ability to pull untold flows of tax revenue into “defensive” infrastructure that benefits no one other than the private sector manufacturing and investing in it. The machine, which perpetuates itself through an incestuous milieu that lobbies for war and defense spending, wages psychological warfare on citizens and engages in corrupt backroom deals, has risen to once unthinkable heights of influence and power since Dwight D. Eisenhower first warned Americans of its growing presence in 1961.
Political scientist William D. Hartung joins this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to discuss his and Ben Freeman’s new book, The Trillion Dollar War Machine, which contextualizes the growth of the MIC behind the backdrop of Silicon Valley’s increasing radicalism and integration into American military infrastructure, as well as the Trump administration’s chaotic and unabashed foreign policy.
These tech elites push for automated warfare, domestic surveillance, and the full diffusion of any line still separating the corporate and public sectors. In essence, they symbolize how significantly Western capital has grown since Eisenhower’s warning — bolstering a corporate state bent on maximizing profit through warfare and manufacturing reliance on its often faulty products both in the public and private sector.
Empowered by the Trump administration, the trillion dollar war machine only looks to grow — and Hartung says that it will harm the entire nation in its endless quest for domination.

The Trillion Dollar War Machine (w/ William D. Hartung) | The Chris Hedges Report

Noam Chomsky once said “The more privilege you have, the more opportunity you have. The more opportunity you have, the more responsibility you have.”
Today, this profound quote from an important figure is ensconced in irony, not only in light of Chomsky’s close ties with Jeffrey Epstein, but also regarding the entire ruling class structure’s facilitation of the pedophile’s rise to the top. Anand Giridharadas, in his book Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, talks about this privilege and the elite delusions that capitalism and capitalists can save the planet from the very problems that they create.
Giridharadas joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report and shares how the world today, one of vast inequality and stark class divide, is perpetuated by the self-serving and egotistic mentality of oligarchs who see themselves as humanity’s figureheads.
Many of the elite class, especially those in Silicon Valley, believe they are shaping the world for the better. They believe, according to Giridharadas, “the way to solve gender inequality is through Silicon Valley tech companies. The way to solve the environment is through Tesla. The way to solve poverty in Africa is MasterCard and Goldman Sachs figuring out credit cards for rural people in Kenya.”
Their belief that they are the agents of change, efficiency and good in the world leads them to gut government programs and proceed to point “to the failures of government, failures they helped engineer, as evidence for why government cannot be entrusted with the solution of public problems, thus leaving only them, the private sector, to step in,” Giridharadas explains.
As for the Jeffrey Epstein-aligned elite, they are different because they can still function as good capitalists but have no reservations about the morality of their work. After Epstein’s conviction in 2008, Giridharadas spells out that Epstein surrounded himself with these people, those who do their business and have no trouble looking away.
“[Epstein] picked a group of people who are expert, if at nothing else, in putting fingers in their ears when people begin to scream.”

How the 'Epstein Class' Fails to the Top | The Chris Hedges Report (w/ Anand Giridharadas)

While Palestine has always represented a contradiction in the Western-established world order, the genocide in Gaza has brought the issue to the forefront of the world’s conscience — and moreover, may signal the end of an era marked by U.S. hegemony. As today’s guest Dylan Saba, host of the Turbulence podcast, puts it, the genocide is
“the capstone of the War on Terror, [with] Israel as the greatest representation of U.S. overextension…What’s happened is all of those forces, all of those colonial forces that had been amassing over over generations really exploded on October 7th, and catalyzed the most dramatic imperial overreaction that we’ve seen to date.”
Amidst the chaotic collapse of American hegemony — where do normal people, those who are ruled by the elite, fit in? And must they fall victim to the violence and psychological warfare that characterizes the policy doctrine of Western democracies, or can they seize the moment and build parallel systems of oppositional power?
“The cause of Palestine can be this tip of the spear, both in terms of repression but also potentially in terms of catalyzing a political response that’s adequate for the moment,” Saba tells host Chris Hedges.
In a post-October 7th world, one where the need to cloak brutal warfare in humanitarian rhetoric is disintegrating, what pressure points can the working class exploit? Though the masses are outgunned and militaristically vulnerable in the face of the American empire and its allies, “there are ways to think strategically about how to leverage a marginal position to have an outsized impact.”
The Houthis in Yemen, Saba suggests, have demonstrated this reality. With targeted, strategic planning that can kneecap critical parts of the machinery of state, we may stand a chance against the oligarchy dominating the globe.

Taking Power Amidst the Turbulence (w/ Dylan Saba) | The Chris Hedges Report

The ongoing genocide in Gaza has become a litmus test of institutional integrity. When a university denies the reality of Israel’s brutality, it reveals complicity with the genocidal regime’s actions. To then misrepresent campus dissent over institutional investment in the Zionist entity as illegitimate — or even “antisemitic” — makes it clear that that these institutions are invested in the existence of Israeli apartheid and genocide. 
 
These contradictions were brought to a head during the Gaza solidarity encampment movement in 2024, where hundreds of college campuses around the world protested against their universities’ affiliations and investments in anything related to Israel. The media and Zionists inside these universities cried wolf about widespread bigotry and hatred, and many believed them.
 
Michael T. Workman and Kei Pritsker documented through their film, “The Encampments,” that these protests were not only peaceful and nonviolent but that the violence described in the media almost always came from the Zionist counter protestors.
 
Workman and Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate student who was a negotiator for the encampment movement and was made famous after being kidnapped by ICE agents, join host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report. They share their experiences seen in the film as well as updates to Khalil’s case as he faces potential deportation by the Trump administration. The film — as well as their accounts — document a clear narrative that demonstrates the failure of our institutions to abide by any moral standards, and their active role in descending Western society into fascist authoritarianism. 

The Encampments (w/ Mahmoud Khalil and Michael Workman) | The Chris Hedges Report

Achieving greatness requires immense sacrifice. Nobody knows this better than perhaps professional athletes or, as author and journalist Brin-Jonathan Butler reveals, chess players. Butler joins host Chris Hedges to discuss his book, The Grandmaster: Magnus Carlsen and the Match That Made Chess Great Again and how the history of chess’ greatest players is riddled with psychological dysfunction.
Butler invokes famous chess figures such as Bobby Fischer, Peter Winston and Magnus Carlsen to demonstrate how those who reach the top do so at the expense of their humanity. Referencing Fischer’s famous victory over Boris Spassky in 1972, Butler explains how Fischer was not satisfied because “it’s not enough to murder your opponent, you need to compel their suicide.”
“That was a very common sort of narrative throughout all the top levels of chess, how often the metaphor of blood execution, murder, blood on the board was commonly used,” Butler adds.
The level of obsession that develops within the best chess players transforms into an addiction, similar to one with drugs, alcohol or gambling. Despite it being a fun, challenging game for most, for others who have a propensity to become addicted in such an obsessive way, it must be cautioned with. Butler says, “For that narrow group, which I think comprises the people at the top because you have to be that way, it’s not only sort of recommended that you be this way, there’s no other way to qualify for that top zone unless you happen to be this relentlessly devoted.”

The Toxic Pursuit of Greatness in Chess (w/ Brin-Jonathan Butler) | The Chris Hedges Report

“How do we understand now if we don’t understand 1948 or 1917 or all the things that happened during the British Mandate?”
This is a central question Micaela Sahhar, author and educator, asks while dissecting her book, Find Me at the Jaffa Gate. Sahhar reframes these monumental events in Palestinian history through an intimate, granular lens of her own family’s displacement during the 20th century.
Sahhar joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report, sharing more personal narratives, revealing how her family lived through the pivotal moments that shaped modern Palestine.
“To grow up as a diaspora Palestinian,” Sahhar explains, “ is to be equipped with a particular kind of superpower, which is to understand the enormous rift between a dominant culture and what you know to be true from the people you love and trust.”

How Palestinian History Is Systemically Forgotten (w/ Micaela Sahhar) | The Chris Hedges Report

Filmmaker, author and journalist Antony Loewenstein documents how Israel has used Gaza as a weapons showcase. Spyware, killer drones, robot dogs and other weapons are debuted in Gaza and field-tested on the civilian population, demonstrating their effectiveness to regimes around the world that await their chance to purchase them.
Loewenstein joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to chronicle what he has learned from writing The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World and producing The Palestine Laboratory, a documentary based on the book.
“I think the whole idea of what Israel…has been showing the world, I say two things. One, what weapons you can use to murder, kill, target Palestinians but also how to get away with it. I think Israel sells that concept,” Loewenstein explains.
As spyware companies like Pegasus and Paragon and arms companies like Elbit and Rafael see business boom, Loewenstein argues countries have a moral imperative to end trading with Israel. These same technologies perpetuating the genocide in Gaza, Loewenstein explains, will come back to haunt the citizenry of purchasing countries.
“All these governments around the world, whether they’re so-called democratic or repressive, are obsessed with these tools. They can’t give them up. They’re desperate to listen to their opponents, to the journalists, to activists,” Loewenstein remarks.
“It’s very hard for these regimes to give them up because there’s no regulation. There’s just none. It just doesn’t exist.”

The Palestine Lab: Exporting Occupation Technology (w/ Antony Loewenstein) | The Chris Hedges Report

After two years of genocide, it is no longer possible to hide complicity in Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians. Entire countries and corporations are — according to multiple reports by UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine Francesca Albanese — either directly or indirectly involved in Israel’s economic proliferation.
In her latest report, “Gaza Genocide: a collective crime,” Albanese details the role 63 nations played in supporting Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians. She chronicles how countries like the United States, which directly funds and arms Israel, are a part of a vast global economic web. This network includes dozens of other countries that contribute with seemingly minor components, such as warplane wheels.
Rejection of this system is imperative, Albanese says. These same technologies used to destroy the lives of Palestinians will inevitably be turned against the citizens of Israel’s funders.
“Palestine today is a metaphor of our life and where our life is going to go,” Albanese warns.
“Every worker today should draw a lesson from what’s happening to the Palestinians, because the large injustice system is connected and makes all of us connected to what’s happening there.”

The Member States Complicit in GENOCIDE (w/ Francesca Albanese) | The Chris Hedges Report

The meddling and infiltration of governments in Latin America by the United States is a huge chapter of its 20th century history. One of the most egregious and blatant examples of intervention was in Chile, where the democratically elected socialist president Salvador Allende was overthrown by the CIA-backed military coup in 1973.
The ensuing years saw violent repression of student activists, labor leaders, journalists, leftwing politicians and dissidents at the helm of a brutal military dictatorship led by Augusto Pinochet. Among the victims of this ruthless crackdown were two American citizens, Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi.
Joining host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report is journalist John Dinges who, in his new book Chile in Their Hearts: The Untold Story of Two Americans Who Went Missing After the Coup, dives into their involvement in Chile at a time where grand hope quickly turned into great despair.

How America Left Their Own to Die in the '73 Chilean Coup (w/ John Dinges) | The Chris Hedges Report

Despite the demoralization and destruction produced by Israel’s two-year-long genocidal campaign on the Palestinians, Israel potentially finds itself at its weakest point in its short history.
In his new book, Israel on the Brink, renowned Israeli historian Ilan Pappé makes the case that Israel’s current path forward is unsustainable. With a combination of domestic, political, military and international pressures, Israel will continue to destabilize.
Pappé writes, “A potential fall of Israel could either be like the end of South Vietnam, the total erasure of a state, or like South Africa, the fall of a particular ideological regime and its replacement by another. I believe that in the case of Israel, elements of both scenarios will unfold sooner than many of us can comprehend or prepare for.”
Hedges and Pappé chronicle the path Israel has taken to reach this point, one of radical religious fanaticism manifesting itself in figures such as Benjamin Netanyahu and Itamar Ben-Gvir at the highest positions in government, and what the future looks like for them as well as the devastated Palestinian population.

Is Israel 'On the Brink?' (w/ Ilan Pappé)

The descent into a new, mutated and technology-focused form of American fascism is already here. Those who have kept track of the rise of the Thielverse, which includes figures such as Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and JD Vance, have understood that an agenda to usher in a unique form of authoritarianism has been slowly introduced into the mainstream political atmosphere.
 
Whitney Webb, investigative journalist and author of One Nation Under Blackmail, joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to document the rise of this cabal into the most powerful positions of the American government.
 
“I think now it's quite clear that this is the PayPal Mafia's moment. These particular figures have had an extremely significant influence on US government policy since January, including the extreme distribution of AI throughout the US government,” Webb explains.
 
It’s clear that the architects of mass surveillance and the military industrial complex are beginning to coalesce in unprecedented ways within the Trump administration and Webb emphasizes that now is the time to pay attention and push back against these new forces.
 
If they have their way, all commercial technology will be completely folded into the national security state — acting blatantly as the new infrastructure for techno-authoritarian rule. The underlying idea behind this new system is “pre-crime,” or the use of mass surveillance to designate people criminals before they’ve committed any crime. Webb warns that the Trump administration and its benefactors will demonize segments of the population to turn civilians against together, all in pursuit of building out this elaborate system of control right under our noses. 

The Rise of the Thielverse and the Construction of the Surveillance State (w/ Whitney Webb) | The Chris Hedges Report

For decades, clandestine foreign military and intelligence operations have been the deadly, destabilizing engine of American foreign policy. Today, as exposed by investigative journalist Seth Harp in his new book The Fort Bragg Cartel, 21st-century Special Forces operations have become their brutal, logical successor.
Harp joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to highlight the dark culture of violence inflicted by Special Forces operators both abroad and domestically. These operators exist in a world where battlefield impunity spirals into rampant drug use and trafficking, extrajudicial killings and domestic violence. Harp’s reporting insists that these are not isolated events but rather part of a system built on secrecy and unaccountable violence.
“The book,” according to Harp, “is not a work of history, it’s intended to be a murder mystery at the heart of it, kind of a police beat reporting but in order to tell the backstory of these operators’ lives, I recapitulate a brief history of the Global War on Terrorism with a focus on Fort Bragg soldiers in particular, because Fort Bragg is really the beating heart of the global special operations complex, and many people are unaware of its centrality in all of these events.”

Drug Trafficking and Murder In the Special Forces (w/ Seth Harp) | The Chris Hedges Report

Historian Rashid Khalidi, author of The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine, joins host Chris Hedges to detail the dwindling academic freedom in American universities and society at large as Donald Trump’s grip on free speech tightens.
Khalidi notes that while the conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism is an old tactic to stifle academic scrutiny of Israel, its current deployment is unprecedented. Today, professors are intimidated out of teaching about Israel and Palestine, entire Middle Eastern studies departments are threatened with receivership and federal funding is withheld from universities.
“I know many people who are not going to teach courses this semester of my colleagues out of fear that if I teach about settler colonialism, if I teach about genocide, if I teach this or that about the Middle East, I’m going to be hauled up before these kangaroo courts,” Khalidi tells Hedges.
“That means your life is going to be ruined. You’re going to have to get lawyers, have to deal with a process that is completely opaque and which is designed… to punish and discipline anybody who opens their mouth on Palestine.”

Inside America's Academic Gulags (w/ Rashid Khalidi) | The Chris Hedges Report

"Are you a worker? Yes. Are you a consumer shopper? Yes. Are you a taxpayer? Yes. Voter? Well, sometimes. Are you a parent? Yes. Are you a veteran? Sometimes. Well, how can you say you're a nobody? You know things about those roles. You've experienced them. You've been frustrated. If you lie to yourself to be a nobody, you're going to be treated like a nobody. You're going to be treated like someone who doesn't count, someone who doesn't matter, somebody who can be disrespected, someone who can be ripped off, somebody who could be underinsured, somebody who can be suppressed."
 
Ralph Nader, consumer advocate, corporate critic and former presidential candidate, asks these questions to demonstrate how Americans often sell themselves short regarding their power as citizens.
 
Nader, whose life-long mission has been to empower people to fight back against corrupt politicians and greedy corporate criminals, joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to continue to spread this message at a critical juncture in American politics.
 
With Donald Trump’s increasing fascistic repression and an impending government shutdown, Nader offers a roadmap for how both government officials and ordinary people can fight back.
 
His latest book, Citizen Self-Respect, serves as a call to action, arguing that Americans must not passively allow the Trump administration and corporate elites to consolidate their power.
 

It's Time to Fight Back Against Trump's Fascist Regime (w/ Ralph Nader) | The Chris Hedges Report

Medea Benjamin and CODEPINK, the organization she cofounded, are synonymous with accosting power in the United States. Their fearless confrontations with the nation’s most prominent and powerful politicians in the halls of Congress, often seen through viral videos, are a stark embodiment of the First Amendment. Despite over 20 years of activism and consistent critique of America’s representatives over their subservience to the military industrial complex and other big money interests, their ability to have these conversations is beginning to dwindle.
 
Benjamin joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to discuss the current moment in American politics, which sees free speech sitting on a knife’s edge following the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the American political class’s continued support of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
 
Benjamin was recently arrested after questioning Rep. Darrell Issa about Israel’s recent airstrike targeting Hamas negotiators in Qatar. Despite police saying she did nothing wrong, Issa continued with lodging a complaint against her, a move she believes is also in line with the suppression of activists and free speech.
 
Furthermore, after CODEPINK activists confronted Donald Trump and his cabinet at a restaurant and chanted at the president, ““Free DC, free Palestine, Trump is the Hitler of our time,” Trump said he is looking into having US Attorney General Pam Bondi bring RICO charges against the protestors “because they should be put in jail.”

Trump's Crackdown on Anti-War Activists (w/ CODEPINK's Medea Benjamin)

Israel, Charlie Kirk, and the Weaponization of Murder (w/ Max Blumenthal) | The Chris Hedges Report

Raz Segal, an Israeli historian and an associate professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Stockton University, analyzes how the weaponization and distortion of the Holocaust, in the midst of the genocide in Gaza, has been used to serve the narrative of Zionists and the Israeli government. He tells host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report:
“We know that Holocaust education eventually was more focused on transmitting this feeling of exceptionality than actually teaching about Holocaust as history, as real history, as normal history, as a part, indeed, of the making of the modern and late modern world.”
Segal recounts his personal experience learning about the Holocaust in Israel, revealing a Zionist perspective that is both skewed and contradictory.
“Jews, because they were a unique people, always faced a unique hatred, anti-Semitism, which then culminated in a unique genocide, really the only genocide ever in human history, in this framework: the Holocaust,” he explains.
Though Segal outgrew this propagandized view, he explains that many in Israel and its international supporters still frame Jews and the Holocaust as exceptional. This belief in exceptionalism, Segal argues, blurs the history that led to the Holocaust and the events that have followed.
“We really can't understand the phenomena of modern genocide without understanding the nation-state system, the exclusionary nation system and colonialism, European expansion around the world, settler colonialism and colonial genocides that accompanied this expansion for hundreds of years,” Segal contends.

The Death of Holocaust Studies (w/ Raz Segal) | The Chris Hedges Report

“I've witnessed a lot of war and in that there is nothing that compares to the level of destruction, the level of [dis]proportionality, the absolute disregard for Geneva Convention and international humanitarian law and considerations of the laws of armed conflict. [Nowhere] in my career… have I witnessed anything close to the absolute escalation of violence and [unnecessary] force I witnessed in Gaza.”
This is what Anthony Aguilar, a retired Lieutenant Colonel who served for 25 years in the U.S. Army Special Forces as a Green Beret, tells host Chris Hedges in this episode of The Chris Hedges Report, as he recalls his experiences in Gaza serving as a subcontractor for UG Solutions, which provides security for The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
His testimony has added another crucial dimension to understanding the genocide in this late stage, as hundreds of thousands face starvation and desperation for food and aid. While GHF presents itself as a humanitarian aid group, in reality it is an arm of Israel’s infrastructure of genocide, facilitating violence and imposing increased desperation against Palestinians at the behest of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).
Aguilar’s testimony — detailing the weaponry he was supplied as a contractor, the money he was paid, the operating procedures he was given and the internal structure linking the GHF and the IDF — provides undeniable evidence of Israel’s continued aggression and depravity. From high tech-surveillance that beams Palestinians with biometric scanners to scan their faces at aid sites, to dehumanizing crowd control techniques, to blatant indiscriminate murder, Aguilar makes clear that GHF is a project of Israeli genocide.

GHF Contractor Tells All On Genocidal Israeli 'Aid' Plan (w/ Anthony Aguilar) | The Chris Hedges Report

It is rare to find war correspondents who are willing to break the rules of access and safety imposed by dominant powers. Only by challenging these structures and facing the dangers of war can journalists begin a true effort to report the truth and, if they are lucky, materially alter the course of conflict.
Journalist, author and documentary filmmaker Ben Anderson joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to detail what it means to be a reporter who is committed to chasing and documenting the truth in a media landscape that often chooses complacency.
Anderson chronicles his motivations and influences, such as the late John Pilger, early on in his career. “Back then, I really believed that if I went to these places, got this shocking footage, something would happen to help the people that you were actually covering,” he explains.
Over time, Anderson realized that this youthful optimism may not translate to reality — but his cynicism did not deter him from covering brutal conflict in Afghanistan. Anderson went far beyond typical embedded reporting, choosing to spend weeks away operating independently with other journalists to the point of exhaustion and hunger, refusing to submit to the relatively comfortable lifestyle of most foreign correspondents.
Anderson’s commitment to journalism drove him and his work: “I just thought, this is obviously the most important story in the world and here is something I can do. Just by having a bit of endurance, I can stick it out and get footage that might make a difference.”

Reporting on War (w/ Ben Anderson) | The Chris Hedges Report

To Destroy Gaza, Israel Must Destroy UNRWA (w/ Mara Kronenfeld) | The Chris Hedges Report

One of the most stark examples of the expanding tide of authoritarianism worldwide was the 2017 murder of Gauri Lankesh, an Indian journalist and activist, allegedly assassinated by a far-right religious group in India for her fearless journalism.
Joining host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report is Rollo Romig, a journalist whose Pulitzer Prize-finalist book, I Am On the Hit List: A Journalist’s Murder and the Ruse of Autocracy in India, examines the historic and political context of Lankesh’s murder.
Romig chronicles the rise of Hindu nationalist extremism in India, linking it to India’s current authoritarian policies under Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The group accused of Lankesh’s assassination, Sanatan Sanstha, operates on the vision “of making India an officially Hindu country and, equally importantly, relegating all non-Hindus to second-class citizenship and ostracizing, particularly, Muslims from Hindu society,” according to Romig.
Much like in the United States, Romig and Hedges argue that such fringe groups serve a strategic purpose of mainstreaming extremist ideologies that ultimately benefit the ruling class. Gauri’s work represented a threat to far-right political movements in India and she was often subjected to fierce intimidation campaigns, including, as the title of Romig’s book suggests, being placed on murder hit lists.

When Religious Mafia & Rightwing Extremists Take Over (w/ Rollo Romig) | The Chris Hedges Report

Known as the “Silent Holocaust,” the genocide in Guatemala is seldom mentioned in modern history. The United States, with support from Israel, backed yet another violent crusade against an indigenous population as well as against communism. The Guatemalan genocide — preceded by a CIA-instigated coup d’état of the Guatemalen government in 1954 and the ensuing civil war — saw hundreds of thousands of the Mayan Indigenous peoples and alleged communists massacred or disappeared.
Jennifer Harbury, an attorney, author and human rights activist, witnessed the horrors of the genocidal campaign waged by the U.S.-backed Guatemalan military. Included in these horrors was the torture and disappearance of her husband, Mayan rebel leader Efraín Bámaca Velásquez (known as Everardo) by CIA-backed Guatemalan military officials.
Harbury joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to dissect the brutal history of the genocide as well as recount her own experiences, including several hunger strikes in Guatemala and Washington, D.C., that ultimately led to the exposure of the CIA’s complicity in the atrocities.

'The Silent Holocaust' — The Israeli and CIA Sponsored Guatemalan Genocide (w/ Jennifer Harbury) | The Chris Hedges Report

Fame and fortune are often corrupting forces, ones that beget power and comfort. To stand with the afflicted requires sacrificing this privilege and few embody that sacrifice more profoundly than the legendary musician of Pink Floyd Roger Waters.
For years, through his music and political action, Waters has amplified the voices of the oppressed. He has championed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, defended attorney Steven Donziger, demanded the closure of Guantánamo Bay, has long stood against the apartheid state of Israel and now unwaveringly against the genocide of Palestinians.
Waters joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to discuss his political activism, including his support for Palestine Action, a group criminalized by the British government for their protest against Israel.
The pair discuss how Waters’ art has documented his moral devotion against oppression over the years while also examining the political decay — fueled by greed and corruption — of the United States, the United Kingdom and other world powers.

This Is Not a Drill (w/ Roger Waters) | The Chris Hedges Report

The gutting of public funding for higher education in the United States has led to the takeover of universities by private donors, many of whom are Zionist entities and billionaires. As a result, universities have become, as guest Dr. Maura Finkelstein calls them, “banks and real estate development companies that offer classes.”
As demonstrated by Finkelstein’s story, this new paradigm of higher education has pushed aside democratic values and academic freedom. In January 2024, as a result of a McCarthyist-style crackdown on pro-Palestinian faculty, Finkelstein was fired from her position as a tenured associate professor and chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Muhlenberg College. Her dismissal followed a farcical Department of Education investigation, making her one of the latest victims in the purge of dissenters against the Zionist narrative.
On this episode of The Chris Hedges Report, Finkelstein explains how Muhlenberg reached this point of seemingly no return and how it serves as an example of how universities nationwide are capitulating to the Trump administration’s crackdown on free speech with regard to the genocide in Gaza.
From the increasing pressures from Zionist campus organizations like Hillel International to the constant monitoring and surveillance of those sympathetic to the Palestinian plight on social media, Finkelstein and host Chris Hedges make clear the walls are closing in on American education and democracy itself.

The End of Academic Freedom (w/ Maura Finkelstein) | The Chris Hedges Report

Perhaps the biggest elephant in the room of American politics is the existence of a pedophilic blackmail network that involves some of the most powerful people in the country and the world. Despite efforts to get to the bottom of the Jeffrey Epstein case, which saw the trafficking and sexual exploitation of thousands of children, justice continues to be evaded and the cabal associated with Epstein — President Donald Trump notwithstanding — continues its conspiracy.
 
Nick Bryant is a journalist and author who first published Epstein’s infamous “black book” in 2015 as well as Epstein’s flight logs. This information exposed the powerful names associated with Epstein and those who likely participated in his abhorrent pedophilic escapades as well as those who are likely controlled via Epstein’s extensive blackmail apparatus.
 
Bryant joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to discuss his work as well as the history of the Epstein case and what can be expected next. Trump has resorted to calling the entire matter a “hoax” and Attorney General Pam Bondi, despite promising to release the Epstein files, has recently balked at the idea that there is evidence of an Epstein client list.
 
Bryant and Hedges discuss how there is already myriad evidence of Epstein’s crimes and relationships but efforts by the current administration could cloud the hope for justice.

Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump and Sexual Blackmail Networks (w/ Nick Bryant) | The Chris Hedges Report

Following attacks on Iran by Israel and the United States, the world held its breath as the prospect of World War III loomed on the horizon. After 12 days of conflict, a ceasefire has brought about new uncertainty for the future.
 
Former British diplomat Alastair Crooke joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to make sense of the current situation in the Middle East and what can be expected in the coming weeks or months.
 
Crooke details the lead up to the Israeli attacks, including the use of technology and neighbouring countries that allowed for the element of surprise. Cyber attacks, drones flown in from Azerbaijan and American military software served as crucial elements for the Israeli attacks on Iran.
 
As for the American strikes weeks later, Crooke explains Donald Trump’s alleged anxiety in not engaging in a prolonged conflict and theorizes about what the damage on Iran’s nuclear facilities actually looks like and what it could mean going forward.
 
Hedges and Crooke lay out what could come next, indicating that this conflict is far from over and the future of the Middle East, along with the rest of the world’s economy, hinges on what comes next from Israel, Iran or the United States.

Everything You Need To Know About War With Iran (w/ Alastair Crooke) | The Chris Hedges Report

Zohran Mamdani’s emphatic victory in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary has shaken the core of American politics. A self-described democratic socialist, Mamdani ran a campaign centered around affordability as well as relentless denunciation of the genocide in Gaza. Mamdani drew the ire of Zionists, right-wingers and the billionaire class not only in New York City but across the country, including calls for his deportation by Congressman Andy Ogles and subsequent slander by President Donald Trump.
Former Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant, who is now running for Washington state's 9th congressional district, weighs in on her fellow democratic socialist’s journey on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report.
Sawant has been a standout figure for working class representation, winning a $15 an hour minimum wage in Seattle during her city council tenure as well as the Amazon Tax, which helped fund affordable housing. She says Mamdani’s victory should be celebrated, especially because it shows the Zionist lobby can be defeated not just in the U.S. but in a state home to the largest Jewish population outside of Israel.
Despite this encouraging repudiation of the billionaire class in the wealthiest city in America, Sawant emphasizes the need to continue the fight and make sure Mamdani sticks to his original promises.
“If you don't understand that careerism is one of the death knells of winning anything substantial for the working class, then you will sell out even with those good intentions because you will make it about yourself and you will immediately get the memo that in order to fight for working people, you will need to be in battle mode every single day when you enter City Hall,” she says.
Mamdani’s alignment with the Democratic Party is concerning, according to Sawant, pointing to a pattern in which groundbreaking campaigns, like those of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, have fallen short of delivering promises for working class people once in office.
“At the end of the day, the Democratic Party is a party of capitalism itself,” Sawant asserts. “The working class loses out more and more and is subjected to more and more misery with every passing decade that you're not going to stand up for working people.”
So far, Mamdani’s campaign has made strides to inspire the American working class. “It's a real boost of confidence for working class people nationally to see that yes, working people will fight alongside you if you put forward demands that make a huge difference in their lives and which reflect their anger, their just anger at the Wall Street billionaires,” Sawant says.

Will Zohran Mamdani Empower or Betray the Working Class? (w/ Kshama Sawant) | The Chris Hedges Report

There is not much more that can be said about the unfathomable levels of devastation the genocide in Gaza has reached. Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, has been chronicling the genocide and joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to shed light on the current situation in Gaza, including parts from her upcoming report on the profiteers of the genocide.
 
Israel’s siege on the Palestinians is leaving the population starving, and Albanese lambasts other nations for not stepping up and completing their obligations under international law. “[Countries] have an obligation not to aid, not to assist, not to trade with Israel, not to send weapons, not to buy weapons, not to provide military technology, not to buy military technology. This is not an act of charity that I'm asking you. This is your obligation,” she explains.
 
Albanese compares Gaza and Israel’s siege to a concentration camp, stating it is unsustainable but also allows the world to witness how a Western settler colonial entity functions. “There is a global awareness of something that has for a long time been a prerogative, a painful prerogative of the global majority, the Global South, meaning the awareness of the pain and the wounds of colonialism,” Albanese tells Hedges.
 
In her forthcoming report, Albanese will detail exactly how Palestine has been exploited by the global capitalist system and will highlight the role certain corporations have played in the genocide. “[T]here are corporate entities, including from Palestine-friendly states, who have for decades made businesses and made profits out of the economy of the occupation, because Israel has always exploited Palestinian land and resources and Palestinian life,” she says. 
 
“The profits have continued and even increased as the economy of the occupation transformed into an economy of genocide.”



Starvation and Profiteering in Gaza (w/ Francesca Albanese) | The Chris Hedges Report

The ultra-wealthy hover above the realities of the world around them like extraterrestrial aliens. Their material reality physically separates them from the rest of society with gated communities and private jets but paradoxically, their very wealth also severs them psychologically, unable to understand the reality of the 99%.
Joining host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report is professor and author of Mastering the Universe: The Obscene Wealth of the Ruling Class, What They Do with Their Money, and Why You Should Hate Them Even More, Rob Larson.
Larson begins by bringing attention to basic data points that nakedly reflect the state of the world and particularly the U.S. when it comes to wealth inequality. “[The] richest 1% owned 35% of all US wealth and that's cash, that's real estate, that's all kinds of investment portfolio assets… the bottom 50% of all US households, very similar to the bottom half in most regions of the world, you're looking at about 1.5% of the national wealth is owned by that half of the population,” he explains.
This gross wealth imbalance produces a number of problems within a society, including the wealthy’s overreaching influence into policymaking. Tax breaks, deregulation and other neoliberal doctrines have defined the last few decades of American politics, and that imbalance means “that's more cash chasing the same number of assets, and it just tends to have the effect of hideously inflating every asset market, making housing out of reach for so many people, making the market absurdly overpriced,” Larson spells out.
Hedges and Larson go on to describe the evolution of elites and the psychology behind handling obscene wealth, from personal relationships to the way they dress. Both agree, however, that it is possible to continue the fight against this inequality through labor organizing and local community building.

Why You Should Hate the Rich Even More (w/ Rob Larson)

Journalist A. J. Liebling famously said, "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” Today, in a world dominated by corporate capitalism — including subservient politicians and careerists — the press’s freedom has been eroded to mere margins. Journalist and writer Patrick Lawrence joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to chronicle the decline of journalism, which he details in his book, Journalists and Their Shadows.
 
Lawrence defines what a journalist is meant to do and be, a definition he attributes to John Dewey. A journalist “has to stand outside of power and present to readers and viewers the known considerations whenever a question of national policy was at issue, and engender a public debate so people could draw their conclusions and register those conclusions.”


This is no longer the case. “Context, history, causality, agency, and responsibility are all essential for us to understand events in the world around us. And none is permitted to any effective extent in corporate media,” Lawrence explains. Drawing on examples of reporting from the Vietnam War up until the Iraq War and even the current war in Ukraine, Lawrence dives into how the views from the State Department became the views of the press and anybody who differed from that would be cast out.
 
Lawrence points to psychological disruptions within journalists as a result of the nature of their work as part of the reason why the press has deteriorated. “The corruptions in the press begin with the corruptions of the personalities who want to get paid, want to be promoted, and so on,” he says.
 
Instead of employing the Socratic process of reasoning, mainstream journalists today have agendas they must serve. “[Reasoning] has been turned upside down in our hyper-ideological polity such that you draw your conclusion first and then you reason backwards,” Lawrence declares.

Journalists and Their Shadows (w/ Patrick Lawrence) | The Chris Hedges Report

There are few pieces of literature that remain as prescient and relevant throughout history as John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Thomas Jefferson, Malcolm X, Virginia Woolf, Thomas Paine and dozens more drew inspiration from and studied Milton’s grand work and the revolutionary themes within it.
 
Professor Orlando Reade, in his book, What in Me Is Dark: The Revolutionary Afterlife of Paradise Lost, examines the epic poem’s influence in the four centuries since its publication and joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to discuss this history.
 
Reade begins with the historical context of the poem, which was after the seventeenth century English revolution that overthrew the monarchy. Milton’s work, Reade and Hedges explain, embodies critiques of both monarchy and revolution.
 
“The reader is presented with a figure of Satan that seems a lot like Milton himself, a failed revolutionary recovering from a disastrous defeat and often articulating arguments against God, who Satan calls a tyrant, that Milton himself had made against the English King,” Reade explains. “So the great mystery of Paradise Lost is trying to figure out why Milton gives us a Satan that seems so much like himself.”
 
The historical parallels found within Paradise Lost clearly resonate with figures in history, especially those in the struggle for freedom and abolition. Reade emphasizes how many times the poem is referenced throughout this history.
 
“This is not an epic poem that spends much time celebrating the heroic deeds of men. It's not a macho poem. It's a poem for which the most heroic acts are true to the New Testament. They're humble and often quiet acts of love, of forgiveness, and so on,” he says.

How Paradise Lost Revolutionized the World (w/ Orlando Reade) | The Chris Hedges Report

The narratives surrounding Israel and their genocidal campaign against the Palestinians took decades to create and embed into the West’s psyche. The Holocaust, decades after its end, became a central part of the Jewish and Israeli identity. Enemies of the Israeli state were conflated with Nazis. The physical location of Israel became essential to Christian evangelicals who believe the second coming of Jesus Christ was to take place there.
 
The late Amy Kaplan, in her book, Our American Israel: The Story of an Entangled Alliance, explored how these narratives developed through popular culture and the media’s reporting on the Israeli government’s actions throughout the 20th century, particularly in the United States. Professor Joan Scott, professor emerita in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and adjunct professor of history at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to discuss Kaplan’s book and how prevalent it is in the face of Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians.
 
“Part of the invincible victim story is that Jews have to always be alert about defending themselves against any sign that the Holocaust is about to reappear and then attribute it to Palestinians, the possibility that they will bring another Holocaust,” Scott says. “So the whole defense industry of Israel, the whole occupation of Gaza and the West Bank become a way of arguing against the possibility of another Holocaust.”
 
When it comes to Christian Zionism, Scott explains that cynicism in the Israeli government tolerates the antisemites within these groups “because they're bringing a large sector of the American population, a powerfully politically influential sector of the American population, certainly now with Trump, to support the activities that Israel is engaging in.”

The Shared Mythological History of Israel and the US (w/ Joan Scott) | The Chris Hedges Report

In a world gripped by daily catastrophes, there is one that affects all but lacks the attention it deserves. The climate crisis — pervaded by ecological collapse, war, endless resource accumulation fueled by capitalism — is the issue of our time. The warning signs are there but as author Eiren Caffall tells host Chris Hedges, people are not able to handle the facts regarding the “fragility of our ecosystem, and [they] just don't really have a great way of managing the emotional impact of that.”
 
Caffall joins Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to discuss her novel, All the Water in the World, and her memoir, The Mourner’s Bestiary. She explains that climate talk is often a tough pill to swallow because it deals with ideas of impermanence: “I think we are struggling to talk about our climate grief, our experience with the eco-collapse as a collective, as a planet who are all confronted with the evidence of our mortality.”
 
As someone who has dealt with loss and trauma her whole life as a result of inheriting polycystic kidney disease, a genetic illness that has plagued her family for over 150 years, Caffall employs a unique perspective when it comes to preserving her family’s stories and art.
 
“That sense of it is vital to protect whatever stories we can in the face of great loss is kind of baked into my background, my childhood, my understanding of my role as an adult to tell the stories of the dead, to hold on to the culture of those folks, to make sure that there's a continuance,” she tells Hedges.
 
Caffall understands the need for stories like hers to create the empathy that is lacking in a world that continually sees violence as an answer to problems. “I just think actually it's that vulnerability and that presence that's the real tool that we need to be able to move carefully through the world that we're being confronted with at this moment and in a possible bleaker future.”

Facing the Climate Crisis and Human Mortality (w/ Eiren Caffall) | The Chris Hedges Report

On this episode of The Chris Hedges Report, Chris Hedges speaks with filmmaker Alex Gibney about Gibney’s documentary series The Dark Money Game, which examines the “labyrinth of mirrors” that facilitates untraceable corruption through the American political system. Although both the Democratic and Republican parties have served the interests of the billionaire class since well before the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission Supreme Court ruling in 2010, the removal of restrictions on political spending created a system by which corporations could route millions of dollars in bribes through an intricate, opaque network of nonprofit organizations and super PACs. 
 
FirstEnergy, a failing Ohio nuclear power operator, exploited this network to pay $60 million to former Ohio State Representative Larry Householder, in exchange for his support of a “Clean Energy” bill that would award FirstEnergy $1.3 billion in benefits. Ohio Confidential, the first documentary in Gibney’s series, follows the affair, which was subject to an FBI investigation, and which offers a view into mechanisms of illegitimate influence which are rarely visible to the public. Nonetheless, Hedges notes, the FirstEnergy story is likely a “microcosm of the whole system.” 
 
The second film in the series, Wealth of the Wicked, portrays the contradictory but effective partnership between the anti-abortion Christian right and the billionaire class, which has used a variety of sordid tactics to sway the Supreme Court towards conservative and pro-corporate decisions. For example, Gibney describes how wealthy donors would “engage in a kind of romance” with justices, offering expensive gifts and pursuing “friendships that ultimately would have the effect of turning their perspectives...”
 
The faster the dark money flows through the American political system, the greater the power of the billionaire class to oppose regulations and steal wealth. “It's a series of interlocking favors,” Gibney observes, “but all these interlocking favors, which—let's face it—are traditional tools of the political system… are made possible and made far more corrupt by the application of tens of millions of dollars, which to the public is completely invisible.”

The Dark Money Game (w/ Alex Gibney) | The Chris Hedges Report

Richard Barnard, Sarah Wilkinson, Asa Winstanley and Richard Medhurst. These are some of the canaries in the coal mine for what is to come in the West as the region’s elite quickly becomes Israel’s international police. Medhurst joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to talk about his own experiences in the United Kingdom and Austria, where federal agents and police arrested him and searched his home under draconian counterterrorism laws.
“I was just trying to tell the truth as best as I could with the facts that we had at that time and that's it. And I think they're trying to make an example out of me, definitely,” Medhurst tells Hedges.
Medhurst points to Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000 in the UK as one of the broad laws being used to silence people like him. “If they really want to, they can charge you for just saying a simple fact just because the fact is uncomfortable to the government or perhaps they can twist it into saying you're glorifying a group but it's not true,” he explains.
For Medhurst, the UK pinned Schedule 12(1A) on him, which he explains “has never been used before, and escalated it straight to an arrest.” They then took his “fingerprints, [his] DNA, [and] they put [him] in jail for 24 hours.”
Despite his accurate reporting, Medhurst says that the validity of what one says does not matter when it conflicts with the establishment line. “You're not glorifying anyone. You're just stating a fact, but they can still charge you. That's what's so dangerous about this law,” he said.
Austrian security service agents still possess most of Medhurst’s journalistic tools. There is still no clear time table as to when he will get his tools back.
As Medhurst explained:
“It wasn't just my phone and my laptop, which I also use for work, which are my work tools, but …you know, hard drive adapters, things that don't even have data on them, analog microphones. Why would you do that to someone unless you're trying to make a point that you don't want them to continue their work?”

The West Serves as Israel's Police (w/ Richard Medhurst) | The Chris Hedges Report

If anyone can witness the genocide in Gaza with utmost clarity, it would be medical professionals working there. Their accounts continue to be as harrowing as those of journalists and Gazans themselves, stripped of rhetoric and left with only raw truth. Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a general, trauma and critical care surgeon in California, has been to Gaza twice and he joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report.
“There is no serious health system in Gaza anymore,” Sidhwa tells Hedges. Instead, what’s left of hospitals are mere buildings filled with medical professionals stripped of the equipment vital to saving lives, refugees seeking anything more than tents and endless streams of people barely surviving the constant onslaught of bombs.
Sidhwa explains the gut wrenching details of treating people mangled by bombs, children shot in the head and the inability to save people because of the lack of basic equipment. While describing the treatment of a six-year-old boy with severe shrapnel injuries, Sidhwa explains, “In the flagship hospital of any third world country, this kid could have survived. But at Nasser [Medical Complex], we don't have the right types of pressures, the right types of critical care medications and even just simple things like a pediatric ventilator, which just wasn't available. So he died 12 hours later.”
The situation in Gaza, as Sidhwa details, is morbidly bleak:
“I don't know how women who need C-sections will get them. I don't know how people who even just have regular role general surgery problems will be able to get them. I don't know how a kid that has asthma will be able to get albuterol. I don't know how somebody with heart disease will be able to get their medications. Just leaving aside the trauma. And then on top of that…the whole population is being starved. Literally no food has gone into Gaza for six weeks.”

Israel’s Eradication of Gaza’s Healthcare System (w/ Dr. Feroze Sidhwa) | The Chris Hedges Report

Israel, both materially and rhetorically, has made their intent to destroy the Palestinian people clear. One of the most renowned and courageous Middle East scholars, Norman Finkelstein, has assiduously documented the Palestinian plight for decades and he joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report. Finkelstein and Hedges assess the current state of the genocide in Palestine as well as how the media and the universities have all but abandonded their principles in servitude to the Zionist agenda.
Finkelstein makes clear the gravity of Israel’s unprecedented actions: “If you take any metric—number of UN workers killed, number of medics killed, number of journalists killed, proportion of civilians to combatants killed, proportion of children killed, proportion of women and children killed—if you take any metric, Israel for the 21st century is in a class all its own.”
Israel’s use of propaganda and strategically timed attacks—often lining up with other major world events so as to avoid media scrutiny—has muddied political outlook of the genocide into one of war and defense rather than ethnic cleansing. The American media has done its part to feed these narratives as well.
“What is going to prove that Hamas has been defeated?” Finkelstein asks. “I know what's going to prove it: when there's no one left in Gaza. That will be the proof.”

Emptying Gaza (w/ Norman Finkelstein) | The Chris Hedges Report

“These are levels of craziness that are part of the decline I suspect of all empires when they consume themselves,” Professor Richard Wolff says of America’s current situation in the outset of Donald Trump’s second term. He joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to discuss the history and rationale behind the decisions made by Trump and how it relates to the decline of the US empire.
From tariffs to deregulation, Wolff says it is all erratic, uncoordinated and unpredictable, which are tangible signs of America’s decay. “You cannot tell people what a tariff will do. The reason is a tariff sets off a whole series of reactions. You can't know them in advance. [People and governments] will all respond, but how they do it, it's like knowing in advance the chess move: you have some probabilities, maybe, but you never know,” Wolff tells Hedges.
 
Wolff explains how historic economic suffering has led to the protections and regulations Trump is now dismantling.
China and the expanding BRICS bloc also represent a growing challenge to U.S. global hegemony—a strategic shift that has significantly influenced the Trump administration’s policies and reflects today’s unique geopolitical tensions. Wolff says, “The United States is different now from what it has been for a century, because we really have an economic competitor.”

The Economics of a Dying Empire (w/ Richard Wolff) | The Chris Hedges Report

The internet, from its inception, was created to be a tool of mass surveillance. It was developed first as a counterinsurgency tool for the Vietnam War and the rest of the Global South, but like many devices of foreign policy naturally it made its way back to U.S. soil. Yasha Levine, in his book Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet, chronicles the linear history of the internet’s birth at the Pentagon to its now ubiquitous use in all aspects of modern life. He joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to explain the reality of the internet’s history.
 
Levine describes the early concept of the internet as “an operating system for the American empire, an information system that could collect all this data and that could provide useful, meaningful information to the managers of the world.” 
 
This was understood by university students with close proximity to the internet project as well as domestic critics. Far from its coy, modern day interpretation of the internet as a mere communication technology, Levine makes clear the originator’s plans as well as the surprising resistance to them that followed. Levine explains that at the height of the Vietnam War, when much of America’s youth were protesting and seeking to understand the American empire, people were aware of the large amounts of capital it took to purchase and run computers, capital that only the most powerful in America had access to.
 
“This history or this understanding [was repressed] and people have been propagandized to view computers in a totally different light, in a benign light, in a utopian light, which was not the case in the 1950s, in the 1960s, in the 1970s and even up into the 1980s,” Levine tells Hedges.
 
Today, the internet’s omnipresence vindicates the skepticism of those early skeptics. Even the supposedly privacy-advocating technologies developed in response to the internet project, Levine explains, came out of the Pentagon for military purposes. Levine reveals the Tor browser, Signal messaging app and other tools that were meant to help ordinary people hide themselves from American surveillance spies were actually developed to help the spies these same applications claim that they are  subverting.
 
“Jacob Appelbaum and Roger Dingledine, who was also the head of the Tor project back then…these guys were on the payroll of the US government.”

The Secret Military History of the Internet (w/ Yasha Levine) | The Chris Hedges Report

Ever since the first Donald Trump administration, the word “fascism” has dominated discussion around Trump’s policies and ambitions to the extent of semantic satiation. Liberals and leftists often use fascism as a blanket term for anything right-wing politicians represent and Republicans equally use “communism” to denote Democratic or left-wing politics. Jason Stanley, author, American philosopher and Yale professor, joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to give proper context to what fascism means and how the Trump administration’s second term could really mean the completion of the American fascist state.
One key element in the spread of fascism is the attack on a central pillar of democracy: education. Stanley explores the recent assault on crucial parts of the American education system, including critical race theory, Black history and now the sanctity of free speech. Legislation pushing for the suppression of these segments is expected, Stanley explains, since “it creates a fake version of the past and it tells students that you're the greatest country in history and your leaders are the greatest people in history. It's exactly what Hitler in Mein Kampf said the education system of the Third Reich should be.”
Stanley also illustrates the various ways in which fascist regimes attempt to psychologically manipulate the public into being subservient and by eliminating any reference to historic self-determination. “An education system should give people the sense that they have agency to change history,” Stanley tells Hedges. “And if you want to impose patriotic education, you want to impose the kind of education that fits into an authoritarian system, you want to remove agency from people.”
The bleakness of the near future is hard to avoid, Stanley warns. He likens the deportation and hunting down of pro-Palestinian student protestors to the stripping of W.E.B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson’s passports:
“That's what happened with Du Bois and Robeson. Like if they can take down those people, they can take down anyone. And so that is clearly the next phase. Clearly the next phase is stripping the passports of people they don't like. You know, every authoritarian country does that. We've done it and I expect that to come, unfortunately.”

Erasing History: How Fascism Works (w/ Jason Stanley)

Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest and detention in a Louisiana ICE facility is a harbinger for a new authoritarian era of the United States. Khalil’s arrest, the capitulation of Columbia University against dissent and protest by its own students and the Trump administration’s threat of stripping the university of $400 million in grants if it does not meet its requests is just one place where the tentacles of fascism tighten their grip.
Katherine Franke, a former law school professor at Columbia, is on the front lines of this assault. Her support for student protests and her condemnation of the university for not addressing the harassment of pro-Palestinian students has earned what she called, “a termination dressed up in more palatable terms.”
Franke joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to address the Constitutional crisis that faces the US, how it has manifested itself on university campuses and what are the next steps in challenging it.
“They're using immigration laws now to come after protesters or people who are voicing views that are critical of the Trump administration who are not US citizens. They'll come next for us, the US citizens, with the criminal law,” Franke warns.
As for universities and Columbia specifically, Franke points to the shift in institutional integrity within schools. Hedge fund managers, venture capitalists and corporate lawyers now run these institutions and their goals aren’t to maintain the principles of education and democracy, but rather the financial bottom line.
Franke says Columbia “is humiliating itself in this process of negotiation with a bully that will not end because it's that repeated proof of ‘I have all the power and you have none.’ That is what governance looks like at this point. There's no principle at stake here. It's about an abusive exercise of power accompanied by humiliation.”

America’s Constitutional Crisis (w/ Katherine Franke) | The Chris Hedges Report

Any account of the decades-long occupation of Palestine from a Palestinian is immediately expected to be refined within a specific lens to appeal to the pathos of Western society. Well meaning activists, journalists and politicians may intend to share the stories of Palestinians, but end up curating them into a digestible format, one adjacent to the truth rather than one that embodies the whole of it. In other words, society forces Palestinians to justify and format their identities, experiences and traumas in order to be seen. Yet in the process, crucial and real pieces of their stories are sacrificed. 
 
Mohammed el-Kurd is a Palestinian writer and poet who defines this concept in his new book, ““Perfect Victims: And the Politics of Appeal.” He joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to share the ways in which Palestinians must bog down their identities, even in the midst of the genocide in Gaza, to crack through the limited and racist perspectives of Western audiences.
 
“None of these anchors or pundits are interested in what my political analysis or my assessment of Hamas or Islamic Jihad or PFLP [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine], they are just keen to know whether I fit in in their world order, whether I submit to their worldview and they would operate accordingly. And if I don't condemn Hamas or if I don't fall into their kind of world order, then I am condemned and it's okay for me to die,” El-Kurd tells Hedges.
 
Any positive support for Palestinians is always conditional, El-Kurd explains. He says, “in order for these people to become sympathetic victims or order for them to acquire a spot in the newspaper… they need to be transformed from this political subject into this humanitarian subject. And in doing so, you obfuscate who the killer is, you obfuscate what the genesis of their suffering is, which is, again, in our case, Zionism.”
 
In writing about Palestine, El-Kurd admits that “you're talking to an audience that is suspicious of you.” That changes the way people and particularly Palestinians write and speak, implanting a self-censorship that is hard to overcome. “So you write and you draft your eulogies as if they are addressed to people who are eager to indict you,” he says.

Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal (w/ Mohammed el-Kurd) | The Chris Hedges Report

The American corporate coup d'état is almost complete as the first weeks of the Trump administration exemplify. If there has been one person who saw this coming, and has taken courageous action over the years to prevent it, it would be Ralph Nader. The former presidential candidate, consumer advocate and corporate critic joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to chronicle his life’s work battling the corporate takeover of the country and how Americans can still fight back today despite the growing repression from the White House.
 
“The sign of a decaying democracy is that when the forces of plutocracy, oligarchy, multinational corporations increase their power, in all sectors of our society, the resistance gets weaker,” Nader tells Hedges.
 
Nader asks people to look around them and witness the decay through the ordinary parts of their lives. “If you just look at the countervailing forces that hold up a society—civilized norms, due process of law and democratic traditions—they're all either AWOL [absent without official leave] or collapsing,” he said. Civic groups are outnumbered by corporate lobbyists, the media barely pays attention to any grassroots organizing and the protests that do occur, such as the encampments at universities, are brutally suppressed.
 
It’s not an impossible task, Nader says, recalling the precedent of organizing in the U.S. He says the fundamental basics are supported by a majority of people regardless of their political labels.
 
“Living wage is one. Universal health insurance is two. Crackdown on corporate crooks is three. A fair tax system is four. De-bloating the military budget and coming back home to repair and modernize infrastructure and public services in every community. Creating a lot of jobs is five. And empowering people so they can take back their sovereign power and condition it before they give their instructions back to their senators or their state legislators or their city council person.”

How the Media Walked us into Autocracy (w/ Ralph Nader) | The Chris Hedges Report

The Holocaust is the quintessential example of human evil for people in the West. In the rest of the world, especially in the Global South, the atrocity of the Holocaust — genocide — has had a closer proximity both in time and place. Colonialism in Africa, destructive wars in Asia and most recently, genocide in the Middle East, have shaped the lives of billions of people.
 
On this episode of The Chris Hedges Report, essayist and novelist Pankaj Mishra joins host Chris Hedges to discuss his latest book, “The World After Gaza.” Mishra argues that the shifting power dynamics in the world means the Global South’s narrative on atrocity can no longer be ignored and the genocide in Gaza is the current crux of the issue.
 
“Large parts of the world have a cultural memory, historical memory of the atrocities that were inflicted on those parts of the world by Western powers. And that has actually gone to the making of their collective identity. And that is how they see themselves in the world,” Mishra tells Hedges.
 
Mishra explains that in the case of Israel, Zionist leaders weaponize this narrative by tying the safety and existence of the state of Israel to the defense against the evils of the Holocaust. In other words, the Zionist state exploits the suffering of millions for the benefit of the powerful.
 
“The words of politicians like Netanyahu, the rhetoric of people like Joe Biden insisting that no Jewish person in the world is safe if Israel is not safe, consistently connecting the fate of millions of Jews living outside of Israel to the fate of the state of Israel, I cannot think of anything more antisemitic. And yet these people keep doing it, endangering Jewish populations elsewhere,” Mishra says.

Chris Hedges: The World After Gaza (w/ Chris Hedges) | The Chris Hedges Report

To the West, the concept of the rules-based order functions either as a list on paper to be ignored, or a strict set of laws to be weaponized. Omar El Akkad, Egyptian-Canadian novelist and journalist, has witnessed many instances, both in the West and in the Middle East, where banners of virtue are used to justify hypocritical behavior. El Akkad writes about such instances in his new book, “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This,” and he joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to discuss them.
 
In the West, El Akkad admits there is a tendency of including indigenous land acknowledgements at gatherings like literary festivals and while it may be honest, he argues it continues the same pattern of theft. “You steal land, you steal lives, and what's left to steal at the end but a narrative? The narrative that absolves all that came before,” he tells Hedges. This has always been the playbook of colonialism, he explains. “We can all be sorry afterwards.”
 
With regard to the genocide in Gaza, Western media brushes over the daily acts of brutality with “neutral,” unassuming language. Akkad recounts the description of children being killed as as bullets colliding with their bodies, and says “What [they’re] trying to do is give someone on the other side of the planet who has the privilege of looking away the language with which to look away without feeling a pang in their conscience,” El Akkad says.
 
Many in the West are quick to pillory resistance movements in places like Palestine, but resistance and the right and methods of resistance, El Akkad illustrates, belong to those under oppression and occupation. He explains:
 
“I have zero right to tell anybody anywhere who lives under occupation and injustice how to resist that occupation and that injustice. There is no acceptable form of resistance in the view of the institutions doing the oppressing. You engage in boycotts, that's economic terrorism. You try to march peacefully, you are shot with the intent to kill and or maimed. You boycott cultural institutions, you are being illiberal. You take up arms, you are a terrorist, and you will be wiped out. All you can do is die. That is your only acceptable form of resistance.”

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This (w/ Omar El Akkad) | The Chris Hedges Report

The material needs of working class people in America continue to be obscured and co-opted by politicians and people claiming to know what’s best on both sides of the political aisle. While Republicans and right-wingers address some of these needs head on, they do so by luring people through empty rhetoric and culture war distractions. On the other side, Democrats and liberals police and enforce a cancel-culture paradigm built by elites that also distracts and divides the proletariat from ever engaging in meaningful connection and change.
Catherine Liu, a professor of film and media studies at the University of California, Irvine, joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to discuss her new book, “Virtue Hoarders: The Case Against the Professional Managerial Class.”
The PMC, as Liu calls it, is a group of courtiers made up of academics, media figures and cultural elites who hover above the working class and dictate the aesthetic direction of “progress,” notably without ever addressing the material needs of the workers it claims to look after. They stifle debate, discourage dissent and issue dire punishments of anyone who dare challenge their rationale. After the victory of Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election, the liberal PMC blame “people who are concerned with bread and butter issues for the defeat of these candidates that have been promoted by [Democrats,] a party completely captured by one segment of capital who are trying to show the American worker that they are idiots, they are racist, they're anti-immigrant, they're transphobic, they're homophobic, they're sexist,” Liu tells Hedges.
Liu points to a podcast appearance by Democratic campaign managers and their response to not combating Trump on a simple advertisement because of focus group testing as an example of the PMC’s disconnection from their constituents. “They were in a box. They didn't go outside. They didn't talk to Americans. They didn't talk to people. They don't know people.”

Virtue Hoarders and the Rejection of Liberalism (w/ Catherine Liu) | The Chris Hedges Report

Farah El Sherif, writer, academic and Visiting Scholar at Stanford, is uncompromisingly blunt in her assessment of the Middle East. The decades of repression faced by an entire people have produced a fragmented society—culturally and through colonially imposed borders. To help understand why the Muslim world is so broken, corrupt and full of contradictions, El Sherif joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report.
 
“The systemic repression that Muslim communities worldwide experience is inextricably linked to the interventionist, expansionist, supremacist American-Israeli Western project,” El Sharif says. Though the region has grown to have perceived independence from its former colonial states, El Sharif explains that the imperial agenda and the manufacturing of a Muslim menace continues.
 
The psychological and physical damage runs so deep that many give in to their oppressors in hope of selfish prosperity, while others look at themselves as less than deserving of a dignified existence. The genocide in Gaza proves to be the most crucial litmus test, as the leaders of fellow Muslim countries stand by and witness the slaughter of their own people in exchange for “petty crumbs” from Western powers and the Zionist state.
 
“A lot of Muslims even internalize this war on terror rhetoric and they themselves start being apologetic and say, Islam is peaceful, Islam is this, Islam is compatible with democracy, Islam is compatible with civility,” El Sharif explains. “I see that as a sign of decimated consciousness, not just double consciousness. They don't know their own faith, they don't know their own history, and so they start being apologetic about it, and that is a position of weakness.”

The ‘Diseased Body’ of the Middle East (w/ Farah El-Sharif) | The Chris Hedges Report

The year 2008 signaled to many the weak foundations of modern capitalism in the hands of the greedy, untethered financial sector—the “vampire squid” investment banks as journalist Matt Taibbi called them. Rising from the ashes of the crash, these banks used government money—”socialism for the bankers”—to enrich themselves and Big Business. This money never got to the masses. Instead shares were bought back in traditional capitalist industries and an emerging powerful bloc—the Jeff Bezos’s, the Microsoft’s, the Google’s of the world—invested in what guest Yanis Varoufakis calls, “cloud capital.”
Former member of the Greek parliament and Minister of Finance Yanis Varoufakis joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to explain how capitalism is dead and a new form of capital, the title of his new book, “Technofeudalism,” has arisen and holds power akin to the feudal lords of medieval times.
Varoufakis argues that the two pillars of capitalism, markets and profits, have now been replaced and a familiar system of fiefdoms and serfs has emerged. “Markets have been replaced by these digital platforms that look like markets but are not markets. They're more like digital or cloud fiefdoms like Amazon.com or Alibaba, where you have a digital fence keeping within it producers, consumers, artisans, intellectuals, and we are all essentially producing value for the owner of that digital fiefdom, Jeff Bezos in this particular case, in the case of Amazon, who charges ground rent, but of course it's cloud rent,” Varoufakis tells Hedges.
The huge amount of investment in phones, laptops, cell towers, server farms and thousands of miles of optical fiber cables has brought about a system that now dominates all parts of life, including even behavior modification in individual people. The most common platforms used today—Instagram, Google, Amazon, etc.—use their automated systems to produce “tailor-made advertisements which are in a dialectical relationship with us,” Varoufakis says. “We train them to train us, to train them to train us, to convince us that we want something.”
Varoufakis discusses this and more, including how private equity companies like BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard also tap into this system of rentier capitalism and do away with competition, parasitically exploiting working people and traditional capitalists alike.

Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism (w/ Yanis Varoufakis) | The Chris Hedges Report

Mary Shelley, in the preface to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein, writes, “Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos.” In the chaos of war and inequity, cartoonist Joe Sacco pioneered the first graphic illustration journalism. Sacco has covered some of the most devastating warzones such as in Bosnia, which gave birth to his book, “Safe Area Gorazde,” and Gaza, which inspired “Footnotes in Gaza,” a book host Chris Hedges calls, “A masterpiece… one of the finest books done on the Palestine-Israel conflict, hands down.”
 
Sacco joins Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to talk about his continued journey through chaos and how Israel’s genocide in Gaza influenced the newest iteration of his invention, his book “War on Gaza.”
 
Hedges quotes a question Sacco asks in the book, “Is it genocide or is it self-defense? Let's make everyone happy and say it is both. In that case, we'll need new terminology. I propose genocidal self-defense that should give both sides something to work with.”
 
Through visual renderings, dark humor and objective reporting, Sacco is able evoke responses to events playing out in ways traditional media can never achieve.
 
“You will find humor in places like Gaza, places like Bosnia, and it's always of the darkest sort. It's their way of sort of managing their own thoughts, being funny, but understanding the underlying darkness of their humor. And I think I picked that up and I'm reflecting it back,” Sacco tells Hedges.
 
The two reference several parts of Sacco’s new book, touching on the different ways the genocide has altered life in the West, including academic censorship, the question of democracy and biblical interpretation.
 
In the end, Sacco says it all comes back to his own personal life and the connection it has with such an atrocity. “I've always had this idea that whatever I'm paying in taxes really just adds up to one small piece of shrapnel. I mean, as a nightmare, I just imagine that all my money is funneled into a small part of a bomb that causes someone to lose their life in Gaza.”

War on Gaza (w/ Joe Sacco) | The Chris Hedges Report

“You can't just sit there and build drones and not talk about who it's serving and who does it help,” says Richard Solomon, PhD student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and member of the Coalition for Palestine at MIT. On this episode of The Chris Hedges Report, Solomon and fellow MIT PhD student Prahlad Iyengar detail their battle against the historic institution’s active participation in the genocide in Gaza. Their story exemplifies the repression students face across the country who dare question how their work and labor are used to advance the illegal and morally reprehensible goals of the Israeli military.
“What this ultimately means is that MIT's research can enable a genocide and in fact is enabling the ongoing genocide against Palestinians,” Iyengar states plainly. The two students have found themselves in hot water recently following Iynegar’s tepid encounter at an MIT career fair as well as an op-ed authored by the student coalition.
Iyengar’s engagement with Lockheed Martin recruiters—where, after politely waiting in line at a career fair, he expressed his discomfort for their involvement in the genocide and climate crisis—resulted in him being charged with harassment and intimidation of the recruiters. The op-ed called out Daniela Rus, director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, for the laboratory’s direct collaboration with the Israeli military. Rus successfully pressured MIT’s paper, The Tech, to retract the article despite presenting publicly available information and real ties to the Israeli military apparatus.
“By introducing these technologies and by enabling these technologies,” Iyengar tells Hedges, “what is really being enabled by MIT's research for the Israeli military is the ability for drones to engage in tracking, in facial recognition, in targeting of Palestinians.”
Solomon makes clear that the politicization of academic work is not novel and recently, MIT itself has distanced itself from projects that are tied to genocides or wars. “If MIT did it for the genocide in Darfur in 2008, if they could divest from the Draper labs, if they could, at one point, I think in 2022, they ended their relationships with a Russian university that they'd helped establish—I mean, if they can do those things over political crimes and acts and recognize them as political moves, they can also do the same for the Palestinians,” he says.

America's Academic Gulag (w/ MIT Student Activists) | The Chris Hedges Report

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said, “The protection of hospitals during warfare is paramount and must be respected by all sides, at all times.” International law enshrines medical facilities as sanctuaries for those in direst need but as Dr. Rupa Marya tells host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report, Israel’s attacks on hospitals amidst the ongoing genocide represent a catastrophic violation of this principle.
A professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, Marya now faces suspension for speaking out against Israel’s blatant violations of international law. “The killing of healthcare workers [in Gaza] is related to the silencing of healthcare workers here [in the U.S.], and that by silencing us, the medical institutions we are a part of, which have an obligation, professionally and morally, to uphold all life, are actually abetting and enabling genocide,” Marya tells Hedges.
Marya describes the horror scenes at hospitals across Gaza. The IDF not only targets hospitals with airstrikes but also enters them to deploy gun strapped drones that kill patients and staff as well as destroy vital medical machines and instruments. “Hamas is not hiding in those machines. This is an attempt to shorten the life of Palestinian people,” Marya says.
Mayra, collaborating with a handful of medical professionals and lawyers, is authoring a UN report, addressing what they refer to as “the genocide enablement apparatus of Israel.” Alongside bringing critical attention to the collapse of Gaza’s healthcare system, they urge the inclusion of medical professionals future international legal frameworks for defining genocide. “It does not take months to see that this was a genocide. So for those of us who were in touch with the physicians on the ground and the healthcare workers on the ground in October, it was clear that this was a genocide.”

The Zionists Kill Doctors in Gaza and Silence Them Here (w/ Rupa Marya) | The Chris Hedges Report

The vast censorship and suppression campaign launched by American tech companies since October 7, 2023 has been both systemic and deliberate. Instagram, Facebook, X as well as other tech platforms and companies like Google, Microsoft and Apple have actively worked to stifle information regarding the genocide in Gaza. Dissent against policies or individuals who enable these decisions is often met with swift reprimand in the form of job loss.
 
Joining host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report are three courageous individuals who chose to put their careers on the line to fight against Big Tech suppression of voices fighting for Palestinian lives.
 
Saima Akhter, a former data analyst at Meta; Hossam Nasr, a former software engineer at Microsoft; and Tariq Ra’ouf, a former tech expert at Apple, speak about the internal struggles they dealt with in light of the genocide, which ultimately led to each of their dismissals.
 
Tariq recalls how Muslim Slack channels at Apple were often subjected to mass flaggings for innocuous things such as posting Quran verses yet Jewish Slack channels, “were advocating for the genocide… calling all Palestinians terrorists. They were saying that we need to stop this company supporting pro-Palestinian causes.” Those messages, Tariq says, were never removed and nobody was ever fired for them.
 
Saima details the problematic dangerous organizations and individuals [DOI] policies, which she says are heavily influenced by the Israeli and American governments. “Even though this is a platform that is global—Instagram and Facebook is the way the world communicates, but it is an American company, and the American government heavily influences what it determines to be a terrorist,” she tells Hedges.
 
The most critical and perhaps frightening part, Hossam describes, is the actual complicity many of these tech companies have on the genocide. “The truly scary part of this is that all the major American cloud companies—Google, Amazon and Microsoft—are deeply critical to that infrastructure, providing cloud services, storage services, artificial intelligence services without which the Israeli military would not have been able to be as effective,” Hossam says. Israel simply does not have the in-house power to be able to collect and process the data that is being used to target Palestinians, according to Hossam, and tech companies, at the objection of hundreds of employees, fill that need.

Exposing Big Tech’s Complicity in Genocide | The Chris Hedges Report

In a case of tragic coincidence, the place most closely associated with the uplifting story of Jesus Christ, Christmas and the teachings of the Bible is now being subject to some of the most sustained and severe death and destruction that modern society has seen.
Rev. Munther Isaac, the pastor at the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem and the Lutheran Church in Beit Sahour, joins host Chris Hedges on this special episode of The Chris Hedges Report to revisit the story of Christmas and how it relates to Palestine then and now.
Rev. Isaac wastes no time in reminding people that despite the usual jolly associations with Christmas, the story of Jesus Christ is one of oppression, one that involves the struggle of refugees, the rule of a tyrant, the witnessing of a massacre and the levying of taxation. “To us here in Palestine,” Rev. Isaac says, the terms linked to the struggle “actually make the story, as we read it in the Gospel, very much a Palestinian story, because we can identify with the characters.”
Hedges and Rev. Isaac invoke the story of the Good Samaritan to point out the deliberate blindness the world has bestowed upon the Palestinians, particularly in Gaza in the midst of the ongoing genocide. The conclusion of the [Good Samaritan] story is that there is no us and them, Rev. Isaac tells Hedges. “Everybody is a neighbor. You don't draw a circle and determine who's in and who's out.”
It’s clear, Rev. Isaac points out, “the Palestinians are outside of the circle. We've been saying it—human rights don't apply on us, not even compassion.”

The Meaning of Christmas (w/ Rev. Munther Isaac) | The Chris Hedges Report

While the trauma that Palestinians continue to face in Gaza is sustained, brutal and seemingly never-ending, the way people experience the effects of trauma has the potential to unite humanity as much as it divides the self. Dr. Gabor Maté, renowned physician and expert in trauma and childhood development, illustrates this point articulately and beautifully on the latest episode of The Chris Hedges Report through attempting to make sense of the psychology, trauma and reason behind the actions of Palestinians, IDF soldiers, WWII survivors, Nazis and even himself. 
Hedges begins the show by asking Maté to describe the trauma that Palestinians currently face, as they struggle to survive the constant shelling and murder delivered by their occupiers for over a year now. But even Maté struggles to make sense of it all: “This weekend, 40 members of a single family were killed. So when that child is orphaned, it means that their whole support system is gone. So you know what? I can't tell you. I can only extrapolate from what I've seen and imagine something unfathomable.”
Hedges and Maté do not only reckon with the psychology of the victims of genocide, but also grapple with how “ordinary men” become willing, ruthless, executioners under the rule of totalitarian regimes. Hedges, not sure if these seemingly normal people commit atrocities as a result of trauma or because they are not “morally sentient,” is challenged by Maté, who poses the question, “Well, why would somebody become morally insentient?” 
The doctor goes on to describe how humans achieve a healthy moral compass. Rather than be taught morality or indoctrinated into it, people gain moral sentience “because [caretakers] treat you well, because they see you, they understand you, they love you, they embrace you. They promote the development of moral faculties, which is a natural human process given the right conditions. So the lack of moral sentience is actually a sign of trauma.” 
Maté’s analysis connects back to the Palestinian resistance itself, and the atrocities they often commit in pursuit of liberation from their occupiers. Hedges, who knew the co-founder of Hamas, Dr. Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, tells Maté that when he pressed al-Rantisi on the act of suicide bombing, Rantisi justified his stance with statistics as a way to “morally evade” the subject. Maté simply, yet wisely, explains that Rantisi, who witnessed the Israelis execute his uncle at the age of 10, did not receive the “right conditions” that would have equipped him to recognize these moral contradictions. “I think what happens is that one of the impacts of trauma is it can close your heart, and when your heart is closed, you don't see the humanity of the other.”

Enduring the Trauma of Genocide (w/ Gabor Maté) | The Chris Hedges Report

The fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, ending a 55-year dynasty begun by his father, dramatically shifts the pieces on the chessboard of the Middle East. The rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), led by Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, is armed and backed by Turkey and was once allied with Al Qaeda. It is sanctioned as a terrorist group. Turkey’s primary goal is to prevent an independent Kurdish state in northern Syria where Kurds have formed an autonomous enclave. But it may not only be Turkey that is behind the overthrow of Assad. It may also be Israel. Israel has long sought to topple the Syrian regime which is the transit point for weapons and aid sent from Iran to the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah. The Syrian regime was backed by Russia and Iran, indeed Russian warplanes routinely bombed Syrian rebel targets. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has gloated about the ousting of Assad calling it an "historic day" and said it was a direct result of Israel's actions against Hezbollah and Iran. But at the same time, Israel will soon have an Islamic state on its border.
Syria, a country of 23 million, is geopolitically important. It links Iraq’s oil to the Mediterranean, the Shia of Iraq and Iran to Lebanon, and Turkey, a NATO ally, to Jordan’s deserts.
Assad’s decision to brutally crush a pro-democracy movement triggered a 14-year-long civil war in 2011 that led to 500,000 people being killed and more than 14 million displaced.
Now What? Will Hayat Tahrir al-Sham seek to renew relations with Iran? Will it impose an Islamic state, given its jihadist roots? Will Syria’s many minority groups, Alawite, Druze, Circassian, Armenian, Chechen, Assyrian, Christian and Turkoman, be persecuted, especially the Alawites, a heterodox offshoot of Shiite Islam comprising around 10 percent of the population, which Assad and the ruling elites were members of? How will it affect the U.S.-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which holds the Syrian oil-rich territory in north and east Syria? Why are the U.S. and Israel bombing targets in Syria following the ouster of Assad? Will the new regime be able to convince the U.S. and Europe to lift sanctions and return the occupied oil fields? What does this portend for the wider Middle East, especially in Lebanon and the Israeli occupied territories?
Joining Chris Hedges to discuss the overthrow of the Assad regime and its ramifications is former British diplomat Alastair Crooke. He served for many years in the Middle East working as a security advisor to the EU special envoy to the Middle East, as well as helping lead efforts to set up negotiations and truces between Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian resistant groups with Israel. He was instrumental in establishing the 2002 ceasefire between Hamas and Israel. He is also the author of Resistance: The Essence of the Islamist Revolution, which analyzes the ascendancy of Islamic movements in the Middle East.

The Fall of Assad & What it Means for The Mid East (w/ Alastair Crooke) | The Chris Hedges Report

The American material life is taken for granted. Things just appear. There is no consideration for what country the Empire destroyed to fuel their cars, which people are earning pennies inside sweatshops for their clothes or how many children’s hands touched the lithium in their phone batteries fresh out of the mine. The U.S. Empire makes sure these realities are out of the public consciousness and only the shiny, finished products end up in the public view, no questions asked. Matt Kennard, founder of the independent investigative outlet Declassified UK, joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to talk about his book, “The Racket: A Rogue Reporter vs The American Empire.”
 
In his book, Kennard details his journey as a reporter for the Financial Times and how his time in the mainstream media permitted him unrestricted access to countries around the world, not to report on the destruction, destabilization and ransacking by the corporate state the U.S. serves but rather on the veneer of what he calls the “empire of acronyms.”
 
The NED (National Endowment for Democracy, USAID (United States Agency for International Development), DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration), CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) all feature in Kennard’s book as the supposed benevolent American representatives abroad. This is what makes them so effective and their strategy unprecedented.
 
“The United States is unlike all previous empires which did operate on exploitative terms… . It operates on noble principles like freedom, democracy, development, whatever these words are, and it's pervasive,” Kennard tells Hedges.
 
Exposing this facade, as Kennard does, quickly exposes the true nature of the “benevolent” US organizations operating overseas: “The U.S. is the major impediment to human progress.”
 
His reporting and research paints a clear picture of how the modern day empire works. U.S. subversion in Bolivian elections, U.S. presence on military bases around the world, U.S. undermining of anti-imperialist British politicians and, of course, U.S. subservience to Israel all paints this bloody picture. “The primary role of the U.S. Empire is to make a global economy run in the interests of American corporate power.” 