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...

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 thi...

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 bo...

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...

“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 participatio...

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...

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 w...

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 h...

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 Hedge...

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...

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 an...

The years of war and terror imposed upon the Middle East have left its people, as Jordan Elgrably tells host Chris Hedges, “tired of saying that [they’re] human too.” In this episode of The Chris Hedges Report, Elgrably discusses the stories that remind English-speaking Western readers of the humanity behind those from this often misunderstood and misrepresented region. In “ Stories From the Cente...

Any technology created by the US military industrial complex and adopted by the general public was always bound to come with a caveat. To most, the internet, GPS, touch screen and other ubiquitous technologies are ordinary tools of the modern world. Yet in reality, these technologies serve “dual-uses”; while they convenience typical people, they also enable the mass coercion, surveillance and cont...

Reporting from Israel in the aftermath of October 7th demands guts and courage. Censorship, rouge military personnel and an entire state hellbent on their goals of national security and ethnic cleansing spells a nightmare for journalists seeking to expose the truth. This nightmare became a reality for Grayzone reporter Jeremy Loffredo, who was detained in Israel in solitary confinement for three d...

A truly representative and honest voice for the working class—one that takes part in the struggle, resists cozying up to the centers of power, makes tangible, material commitments rather than settling for empty rhetoric—is hard to find in the United States. Kshama Sawant, the socialist and former Seattle City Council member who won the battle for a $15 minimum wage, introduced the Amazon tax and c...

Donald Trump will become the 47th president of the United States and given the host of global debacles the US has its hands in—ranging from the genocide in Gaza, to Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and Iran to the Ukraine war—nobody is quite certain what direction the country will take with the former president at the helm again. Joining host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report is L...

“The crime of all crimes.” That is how the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda declared genocide in the final judgment of Prosecutor v. Akayesu, the case against the mayor of Taba, Rwanda for crimes against humanity. Today, that crime repeats itself as UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese painfully details in her latest report .   Albanese joins h...

Decades of Islamophobia, relentless propaganda campaigns and heavily financed lobbying efforts have made it difficult to understand the political realities of the Middle East. John Mearsheimer, prominent political scientist, University of Chicago professor and self-proclaimed realist, has consistently demonstrated the courage and ability to bypass the noise, delivering honest and well-informed ana...

It is rare to hear a United States presidential candidate clearly and eloquently spell out the realities of the country — whether it’s the genocide in Gaza, rising economic inequality or the horrors of mass incarceration. Dr. Cornel West, renowned political activist, philosopher, public intellectual, author and now independent presidential candidate, joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The...

There is a careful art to good journalism. It involves not only seeing and writing what happens but also understanding the reason why, and the precedent that came before it. Empathy, combined with a cunning understanding of one’s environment and ability to talk to people are crucial instruments for a reporter hoping to get the whole story — not just the headline a paper may seek. Joining host Chri...

Watch this interview at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=see5c5Sgi14 The current world order is designed to be complex and confusing. Its function enshrines the power of our rulers, who purposely obscure its origins and underlying philosophy. Politicians, the media, so-called intellectuals at think tanks — along with the inertia of systemic falsehoods — perpetuate this veiled system. Neoliberalism...

The world has failed Palestine. The United States and European Union pay lip service to principles of human rights and democracy while providing limitless support to Israel’s genocidal project of ethnic cleansing and apartheid. Western media outlets censor reporting of Israeli atrocities, and international humanitarian organizations require that Palestinians prove their victimhood over and over ag...

Video and transcript available at: https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-looming-catastrophe-in-the-middle It has become quite rare to hear any meaningful accountability for Israel’s actions from Israeli citizens themselves. Israeli journalist Gideon Levy is an anomaly in Israel by today’s standards, as for his entire career he has challenged the apartheid and occupation of the Israeli state. On...

Watch this interview, or read the transcript, at:    Oftentimes the idea of “wokeness” or “woke” ideology, whether calling it as such or acknowledging its existence, can be thought of as coinage of the right wing. Christian Parenti, professor at John Jay College, journalist and author, joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to make the case that what he and many others...

Since the turn of the 21st century, the world has become deeply familiar with the global “war on terror.” Framed by the West’s ostensibly patriotic and “civilized” political narrative that conveniently expands their national security power and geopolitical interests, it also pins Muslims as savage, and Islam as a barbaric religion of people that want nothing but the destruction of the West. This p...