the_dunk_tank

I've loosely followed Hedges' career for several years since I read his book, Empire of Illusion.

Because he's a journalist who tours countries and interviews people, his experiences are anecdotal and real. He touched grass for a living while his contemporaries were in hotel rooms in safe areas in conflict zones, e.g: he was an active duty journalist in the wars in Yugoslavia and the uprisings in Palestine. So while it is a personal experience he brings to his analysis, his anecdotes are not without empirical merit, nor does he remove empiricism from his books and articles.

In that sense, Hedges thinks of himself as a prognosticator of capitalism's and humanity's fate and a diagnostician of our current state of affairs. He is deliberately vague on a post-revolutionary society- he does not know or have an imagination on what one would look like.

Hedges claims there should be some style of Nordic "socialism"/social democracy, he may even think there are some aspects of capitalism worth having but Hedges is quite critical on private control, operation, and ownership of fossil fuels, etc. He probably would go along with a mass proleterian communist revolution if one were to come along.

Hedges does not specifically advocate for these positions, but instead chooses to be more of a critic than advocate of capitalism, liberalism, Western hegemony, etc. Ultimately, what he does explicitly advocate for is for the resurgence of non-violent mass movements to retake power and pressure both state and capital to capitulate to the demands and aspirations of the public. Not through voting but organizing, educating, agitating, and civil disobedience and resistance. While Hedges says he is not a pacifist, he does write that because the state "speaks" violence much more brutally and brazenly, non-violence - distinct from passive resistance - is a more sophisticated form of resistance than violence is.

He does revere leaders like MLK but Hedges is not ignorant of the context and parallel movements that had violent resistance in its time, or that sometimes it is necessary. (e.g, Palestine)

What Hedges is trying to accomplish is the advocacy fo that old axioms: educate, agitate, organize. Or touch grass with other people. What every "breadtuber" just ultimately has to advocate for and toward. Because that is all going on in the moment; there is no Lenin or vanguard here in the US or West to catapult change in this current hour, year, decade.

On Marx & Hedges:

I remember reading or hearing him speak about Marx; not as that Marx's analyses are wrong but his solutions are. He says he doesn't really believe the proleteriat are the origin and catalyst of revolt - as we can see in the decade of the 2010s that spontaneous proleterian that amounted to little - but the intellectual and middle manager class of decaying institutions and states that find no hope of advancement and self-actualization, that these people who abandon the project are ultimately the vanguard leaders - these disillusioned administrators of capital and empire - that lead worker revolutions.

I think it's fair to be critical of Marx, Lenin, and other leftist thought leaders because it still is a science of sociology and understanding our world. Heretics are necessary to defend and adapt your ideas toward, to reinforce current ones or adapt new strategies for advancing political struggles.

Ultimately, I just think this interview is a bad one. He has bad interviews, like the previous one on his website with Jimmy Dore. :facepalm