Chris Hedges is America’s greatest public intellectual and chronicler of the failure of our late-20th-century imperial experiment. His lived experience as a war reporter and author has brought him face-to-face with the ugly realities of the hoovering necessity of post-industrial capitalism around the globe. In this excerpt from his RT program “On Contact” Hedges identifies the universal representations of the oligarchic class currently taking power in the US, India, Israel, Brazil, Indonesia, Russia, China and too many other countries to name.
Here’s a cheat sheet for neoliberal fascist messaging:
- Eschews verifiable fact for myth
- Peddles nostalgia for lost glory
- Attacks the spiritual bankruptcy of the modern technocratic world
- Preaches xenophobia and celebrates hypermasculinity
- Celebrates the cult of the warrior and acts of violence
- Rallies around demagogues
- Attacks artists and intellectuals
- Equates dissent with treason
- Persecutes ethnic and religious minorities
- Calls for the subjugation of women
- Peddles bizarre conspiracy theories
- Communicates in the Orwellian Newspeak of alternative facts