Russell Brand's fire crosses the Atlantic

As Russell Brand’s simultaneously visceral, emotional and intellectual case for revolutionary change goes viral, respected Pulitzer prize-winning US journalist Chris Hedges, arriving at the same conclusion, goes even further than the comedian.

Exactly one year ago, Hedges, who wrote for the New York Times for 15 years until 2005, described the US presidential election as “a battle between the corporate state and us”. His conclusions and actions then echoed the eruption of Occupy:

“If we do not immediately engage in this battle we are finished, as climate scientists have made clear. I will defy corporate power in small and large ways. I will invest my energy now solely in acts of resistance, in civil disobedience and in defiance.”

And in registering a protest vote for the Green Party, he said he was stepping outside the system. Twelve months later, Hedges’ ideas have moved on apace. Amongst other things, he’s been studying the work of Aristotle, Niccolò Machiavelli, Alexis de Tocqueville, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and anarchists, including Alexander Berkman.

Hedges now sees things much more clearly. While Brand was laying into Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight, Hedges noted: “Class struggle defines most of human history. Marx got this right. The sooner we realise that we are locked in deadly warfare with our ruling, corporate elite, the sooner we will realise that these elites must be overthrown.”

And this week, in Our Invisible Revolution, Hedges looks deeper at the revolutionary process itself. He believes that the ideas used to justify the “private and state institutions that serve our corporate masters” are losing their power over people. He adds:

“The battle of ideas is percolating below the surface. It is a battle the corporate state is steadily losing. An increasing number of Americans are getting it. They know that we have been stripped of political power. They recognise that we have been shorn of our most basic and cherished civil liberties, and live under the gaze of the most intrusive security and surveillance apparatus in human history. Half the country lives in poverty. Many of the rest of us, if the corporate state is not overthrown, will join them. These truths are no longer hidden.”

Hedges believes that once enough people “get it” – that free market capitalism does not serve their interests – then the process of change quickens and, as Berkman wrote, “evolution becomes revolution”.

There is a nervous air among America’s ruling elites, Hedges believes, because more and more people have rejected the ideas of the status quo. “This is why voices of dissent—as well as spontaneous uprisings such as the Occupy movement — are ruthlessly crushed by the corporate state.”

Like most people, however, Hedges comes to the realisation of the need for revolution unwillingly, reluctantly. He would prefer “the piecemeal and incremental reforms of a functioning democracy”, a system that allows its citizens to non-violently dismiss those in authority, “a system in which institutions are independent and not captive to corporate power”.

But, as after acknowledging that we don’t live under such a system, Hedges admits that “revolt is the only option left”.

To avoid spontaneous movements like Occupy being ruthlessly crushed by the state, Hedges is clear that we need a direction, a strategy and alternative ideas for how society could look in the future.

“An uprising that is devoid of ideas and vision is never a threat to ruling elites. Social upheaval without clear definition and direction, without ideas behind it, descends into nihilism, random violence and chaos. It consumes itself.”

So the key to a successful revolt, for Hedges, is a clear vision of a new society and a strategy for how it can be achieved. To which we should add, democratic forms of networked political organisations that can help us focus on the main prize.

Russell Brand and Chris Hedges are playing a tremendous role in bringing the case for system change out into the open. They have helped kick-start a social revolutionary process which millions will join.

Gerry Gold

Obama's 'terror' state under challenge

Journalist Chris Hedges is a passionate and principled man, and these attributes have brought him into a direct conflict with the Obama administration and the US state over the dubious “legality” of anti-terror laws. 

Hedges’ 15-year career as foreign correspondent for the New York Times ended in 2003 when he was reprimanded for opposing the unlawful invasion of Iraq.  In 2011 he took part in Occupy Wall Street, and was among those arrested.

In September last year, with others, he defeated the Obama government in court, challenging the administration’s new anti-terrorism legislation. Hedges argues that it restricts news reporting, protest and political organising in defence of controversial causes and could be used to indefinitely imprison journalists, activists and human rights workers. 

The appeal, which opens in court today coincides,  with the publication of a hitherto 16-page secret memo prepared by Obama’s Department of Justice that sets out to justify the president’s power to target even Americans for assassination by drone without due process.

Glenn Greenwald, noted writer on civil liberties and constitutional issues, commented: “The core distortion of the War on Terror under both Bush and Obama is the Orwellian practice of equating government accusations of terrorism with proof of guilt. One constantly hears US government defenders referring to ‘terrorists’ when what they actually mean is: those accused by the government of terrorism. This entire memo is grounded in this deceit.”

Hedges’ co-plaintiffs in the case include Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, linguistic philosopher and campaigner Noam Chomsky, Icelandic parliamentarian Birgitta Jónsdóttir, Jennifer Bolen, founder of the activist media group RevolutionTruth and Occupy London activist Kai Wargalla.

Hedges took his campaign to the People’s Recovery Summit in Brooklyn, on Saturday. The opening words of his extraordinarily stirring speech are about as direct and uncompromising as you can get: 

The corporate state has made it clear there will be no more Occupy encampments. The corporate state is seeking through the persistent harassment of activists and the passage of draconian laws such as Section 1021(b)(2) of the National Defence Authorization Act…to shut down all legitimate dissent. The corporate state is counting, most importantly, on its system of debt peonage to keep citizens — especially the 30 million people who make up the working poor —from joining our revolt. 

Hedges has teamed up with political activist and former consumer champion Ralph Nader, launching a campaign to raise the minimum hourly wage in the US from its current $7.25 – the lowest amongst the rich Western countries. Nader is pushing for $10.50 – to bring the value back up to what it would buy in 1968.  Hedges is going further. He wants it to be $11.

He argues that the dominance of the economy by credit and debt has changed the character of class warfare. He believes that a mass movement to raise the minimum wage by 50% will be a challenge to the corporate state, discrediting it, even paralysing it. He says: 

This debt peonage must be broken if we are going to build a mass movement to paralyze systems of corporate power. And the most effective weapon we have to liberate ourselves as well as the 30 million Americans who make up the working poor is a sustained movement to raise the minimum wage nationally to at least $11 an hour. 

Hedges believes that the moment workers rise up and demand justice is the “moment the staggering inequality of wealth begins to be reversed”. Hedges is clear that the campaign for a minimum, let alone a living wage is inseparable from the conflict with the state.

But the bankrupt capitalist economy cannot and will not concede to even such minimal demands. Inequality is not going to be “reversed” by mass pressure, athough the Hedges-Nader campaign deserves everyone's support. Inequality is actually built into global capitalism in whichever country it operates. And if the state decides to use anti-terror laws to suppress dissent and protest it won’t hesitate to do so because it exists to defend the status quo. Never forget that.

Gerry Gold

Economics editor

Federal agencies spy for corporate America

The United States is always awash with conspiracy theories, some more outlandish than others. But their source does not lie simply within the imagination of those who develop them. In fact, real, actual conspiracies by the American state constantly fuel people’s deep suspicions about their government. 

For the latest example, you have to look no further than the FBI’s secret war on the Occupy movement, whose activists were classed as “terrorists” and a threat to “homeland security”. Documents obtained by Partnership for Civil Justice Fund reveal the FBI collaborating with the Department for Homeland Security and using local branches of the Federal Reserve Bank in their illegal surveillance.

As to the fanciful notion that the FBI is there to protect its citizens against violent death, forget it. The FBI allowed a plot to murder Occupy activists in Texas with sniper rifles remain a secret until the heavily-redacted files were made public through a Freedom of Information request.

Even the right-wing John Birch Society is alarmed by the Obama administration-sponsored war on its own citizens. An article in its magazine notes: “According to analysts, in addition to exposing numerous violations of the Constitution, the newly released documents also offer a great deal of insight into the emerging ‘police state’ apparatus.”

Pullitizer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges is of a similar mind, although quite rightly he links the FBI-Homeland Security activities to a plot to silence critics of big business, which Occupy placed at the top of its agenda. Hedges says the FBI documents show how widespread surveillance is and amount to an “explicit warning by the security services to all who consider dissent”, adding: “Anyone who defies corporate power, even if he or she is nonviolent and acting within constitutional rights, is a suspect.”  

Government security services began monitoring Occupy activists before the high-profile camp in Zuccotti Park, New York. Documents obtained by the PCJF show, for example, that they were in attendance when activists met in Daytona Beach, Florida.

The 9.11 attacks spurred the Bush administration into creating a threatening security framework which the Obama White House has not only embraced but developed in new ways. The imminent appointment of John Brennan as head of the Central Intelligence Agency is a case in point.

Brennan, Obama’s principal counter-terrorism and security advisor, has made the use of targeted assassinations by drone attacks virtually an everyday event. They are considered illegal in international law. Brennan is a supporter of forms of torture and “extraordinary rendition”, by which suspects are kidnapped by US agents and flown to secret camps. No doubt Brennan will bring the CIA into closer focus with the FBI in the hunt for domestic opponents of the government.

At the heart of the Obama authoritarian state is a network of 77 “fusion centres” set up over the past decade. They were supposed to co-ordinate the “war on terror”. Instead, according to a recent according to a recent Senate report,  the centres pose a threat to civil liberties as well as producing a series of half-baked reports which were worse than useless.

So as Obama starts his second term, the illusions many held in his administration four years ago have all but disappeared. The state is there to protect capitalist corporations and big finance. And Obama is there to co-ordinate the work of the state, putting together an apparatus that resembles those of a police state.

Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the PCJF, said in a statement: “These documents show that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are treating protests against the corporate and banking structure of America as potential criminal and terrorist activity. These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America.”

As the struggles against massive inequality, unemployment and low wages gather pace, America’s capitalist state is tooling up for mass confrontation. The rights enshrined in the US constitution will have to be renewed through the creation of a more developed, revolutionary democracy. That much is clear.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor