Get to Know Me: Chris Hedges

Chris Hedges is a journalist, writer, and professor (trained as a minister as will quickly become apparent if you listen to him), and a great social critic. He has been a war correspondent, winning a Pulitzer for his work, in societies that have broken down (he was in the Balkans as a senior correspondent as the Serbian/Croatian whole deal started), and as such is in a good place to see these kinds of things happening here.

What's quite interesting to me is that if you look at what he's written or listen to him speak, you can see a clear progression, with a recent hard tack in the direction of militant resistance. I first encountered him when I read his excellent book War is a Force Which Gives us Meaning years ago, which while very well written, tends to take the position that war is bad, but addictive, and ought to be avoided. That's fine, but is hardly an opinion which would keep the state from punishing you.

On the other hand, his most recent three books, Collateral Damage: America's War Against Iraqi Civilians (the title says it all), Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle (about how our culture has become empty of critical thinking and true education and full of delusion and illusion), and Death of the Liberal Class (about how there essentially is no method of peacefully or incrementally making change anymore from the left, making revolution inevitable), have become increasingly strident. Apparently his book which is coming out next, The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress seems to go the whole nine yards and condemn industrial civilization altogether. Awesome.

I strongly recommend you check him out. He's a great writer, and some people love his speaking. Personally, I feel like his speaking is more just reading his (again, quite good) words, in a tone which seems a bit too preachy for me. But do take a listen, because what he has to say is important.

To start checking him out, you can find links to articles he's written here for Truthdig, and here for his articles in the Nation. Then go read some of his books. He also has given maaany talks about each of his books which are available on the youtubes. I'll leave you with his most recent, and one of the best I've heard (seriously, go listen to it):



If you don't want to listen to the whole talk though, here's one Q and an A from afterward. It's pretty great advice, and talks about his background as well: