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 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??

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.

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.?

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.

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.?

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.

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.

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.?

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.

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.?

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.?

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.

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.?

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 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.

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.?

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.

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. 

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.?

?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.?

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.?

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 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.

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.

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. 

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.?

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.?

"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.

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.?

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.

?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.

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.?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.?

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.

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.

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.

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.?

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.?