The
book Wages
of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of
Revolt by Chris Hedges, Vintage Canada
Edition, 2016 is aimed at an
American audience and is about people like
Snowden who have defied the American
State or defied dubious laws. Habeas
Corpus rights, fair trial rights, privacy
rights and freedom of press
rights, resource exploitation, climate change,
pollution and decent employment
are all negative and without recourse. It aims
to show that revolution is
coming and shows that revolution is plausible.
But the book also shows that the
poor seldom revolt and are more likely to become
lackeys for reactionary
forces. The book is a painful pulling together
of rights lost and important messages
from rebels that have been forgotten. There are
useful insights.
“We
live in a
revolutionary moment” – the book says in its
introduction chapter. And the
analyses sets one thinking about revolution,
since there seems no plausible way
of making needed major reforms. Hedges considers
The Anatomy of Revolution by
Crane Brinton looking at Iran, Czarist
Russia and others, noting that how or when
revolution will happen is uncertain,
but getting a preponderance of armed force on
the “change” side seems to be the
significant factor. A key driving feature, the
gap between what people expect
and what they get, is already in place in
America with growing scarcity, lower
wages, joblessness, austerity, indebtedness,
assaults on civil liberties and a
concern with inequality.
Chapter
1 is
special, but then each chapter consists of
interviews plus ideas from other
authors about rebels. The accounts of interviews
with these people and the
telling of their stories are well written and
make interesting reading. Throughout
he shows there is a huge human cost to serious
rebellion.
Chapter
1,
Doomed
Voyages
uses a summary account of the
novel Moby
Dick to set up a kind of
allegory for today’s world - or rather current
America - as a doomed voyage.
There are references to climate change,
environmental degradation fueled by
unbridled greed together with accounts of life
situations of poor people
impacted by Hurricane Sandy supposedly from
climate change from unbridled
greed. There is an account of ordinary people
helping with relief and aid and
the thought that self-help communities are
important.
The
Post Constitutional Era,
chapter 2,
begins with an interview with a
defense lawyer from the 70s who had defended the
persecuted, showing how she
herself ended up disbarred and imprisoned and
showing how “fair trial” for her
clients and herself became contrived
incarceration. Constitutional rights
disappeared. Hedges v
Obama is a
case in which Hedges challenged the
constitutionality of a legal provision allowing
the military to seize US
citizens and jail them indefinitely without due
process. An opinion poll showed
this provision had 97% of the populace against
it, but the case against the
provision was lost. By the provision the state
has essentially abolished Habeas
Corpus – the right to have an
independent hearing about a jailing.
The
chapter
turns to government spying. The theory of state
spying, allowing the state to
gather the evidence to go after any particular
group in society when it wants
to, is from Hannah Arendt in The Origins
of Totalitarianism. The extent of US
spying was revealed by Snowdon - to
his cost. A New York Times editorial 1 Jan 2014
described Snowdon’s revelation
as “a great service.” Hedges says Snowdon showed
a rare and commendable “moral
courage.”
The
chapter
switches to a “pathology of our oligarchic
corporate elite” that “the public”
cannot grasp. Hedges draws on F. Scott
Fitzgerald and on his own experience to
suggest that there is a class of rich people for
whom human beings are just
another disposable commodity. He relies on a
Joseph Stiglitz article to say 1%
take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income and
control 40% of the nation’s
wealth. He states “Oligarchs do not believe in
self-sacrifice for the common
good.” He notes democratic beginnings were not
happen-chance – they were paid
for by the blood of abolitionists, African
Americans, suffragists, workers,
anti-war and civil rights activists. “Class
struggle defines most of human
history …”
“The seesaw of history has
pushed the oligarchs upward ...” “The only route
left to us, as Aristotle knew,
is either submission or revolt.”
The
Invisible Revolution,
chapter 3,
begins theoretically. Societies are captive
to and governed by language.
“When it is clear that official words and ideas
no longer fit the reality the
institutions that buttress the ruling class
deflate and collapse.” The increase
of poverty and loss of work and civil liberties
undermine the myths of America.
Until a new language comes to interpret us to
ourselves we live in an
interregnum. Hedges uses Ralston Saul’s words
describing technocrats as priests
who have rendered the law powerless to protect
the individual, instead making
it a weapon of injustice. Hedges moves through
Zweig’s 1942 novela Chess Game
and Arndt’s Eichmann in
Jerusalem to reinforce the
idea of a technocrat incapable of reflecting on
what he or she will end up
causing. Hedges talks of the need to move away
from the state religion of neoliberalism
and outside the bounds of
popular culture or academia where the dominant
ideology curtails creativity and
independent thought.
The
chapter
jumps to Zapatistas in Chiapas Mexico using
non-violent action aimed at the
conversion of others. They set up alternative
models by their “Councils of Good
Governance” running community programs.
Another
jump
takes the reader to Oxford and Professor Offer
who has studied the gap between
reality and economic ideology. The theory is
that people make rational choices
among outcomes and they act independently on the
basis of full information.
This is a “just-world” theory – people get what
they deserve. Milton Friedman
and the free market economy mean: “To each
according to what he and the
instruments he owns produces.” The invisible
hand ensures that individual
self-interest adds up for the good of society.
In fact, however, economics has
become preoccupied with other invisible hands
like opportunism and “asymmetric
information” – forms of cheating. The current
economic model that informs
policies has not produced greater productivity
or efficiency, just greater
inequality; and this model is ill-equipped for
dealing with environmental
degradation and scarcity. Better to hang
together than fall apart says Offer,
and his examination of wartime rationing shows
scarcity can be addressed
without falling apart. Offer notes that Adam
Smith said reciprocal obligation
rather than individual self-interest motivates
us in his market vision.
This
chapter
returns to theories of revolution. In the past
social groups like unions or
anti-war movements played roles in social change
but now these are weakened.
The key element leading to revolution is the
discrediting of the ideas that the
current order depends on. At first, coercion by
those in power can overcome the
gaps between theory and reality. In the end, any
use of the language of the
current order becomes an irrelevant joke. Hedges
favours non-violence, but
knows there is a risk of the revolutionary
process being captured by a small
ruthless and violent minority – like the
Bolsheviks in Russia.
Conversion,
chapter 4, is
about individuals involved in resistance or
rebellion. The chapter begins with an account of
Kasrils who saw the
Sharpeville massacre in 1960 in South Africa. He
saw the angry resistance of
the blacks and met some of the leaders. He
became a rebel, joined the Communist
party and the ANC and later, with Nelson
Mandela, became a founding member of
the ANC’s armed wing – and he was active in it.
Such conversions as Kasrils’
are facilitated by a traumatic event and involve
empathy. In Hedges’ later
interview of him, Karils justified the action of
this time by seeing it as a
revolutionary war. After
apartheid
Karils remained a fighter, critical of the
compromises made on a market
economy.
Hedges
writes
about counterrevolutionaries and the aim of
winning hearts and minds. Violence
changes things. “Violence is directed against
society not to convert, but to
eradicate. All aspects of civilian life are
targeted …” Hedges shows how
anything attempted can justify further terror,
assassination, imprisonment,
infiltration, demonizing. He refers to Czech
resistor Havel and says “All we
have … is our powerlessness.” And Havel’s
contention that any success depends
on transparency and non-violence – including
respect of property. Hedges quotes
Havel’s essay that underlines the importance of
“living in the truth” rather
than complying with the expected behavior.
Hedges concedes this hasn’t always
worked. The efforts became civil wars as in
Nicaragua and El Salvador. Efforts
were suppressed as in China, and in Iran have
lead nowhere yet. Hedges suggests
“the resistance movement’s most powerful asset
is that it articulates a
fundamental truth” which, as it is understood by
the mainstream, “gathers a
force that jeopardizes the credibility of the
ruling elite.”
Hedges
talks
with occupy movement participant Zeese who
affirms that people are not drawn to
violent movements. Fithian’s “Open Letter to the
Occupy Movement” makes
arguments for non-violence including the point
that the few violent protesters
can often flee, leaving elderly and children to
catch the repressive
consequences that use of violence seems to
justify. Hedges turns to Mandela to
point out that as a revolutionary process
unfolds different tactics may be
called for. Hedges adds that as the unraveling
of societies becomes worldwide,
neither violence nor non-violence may do much to
avert self destruction.
The
chapter
moves to a discussion of Hanna Krall’s book Shielding
the Flame that is about Edelman, until
his death in 20009 the only surviving
leader of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in 1943.
Essentially, Edelman shows a
choice between being part of a community in
denial, or choosing to stay
together and die fighting. Hedges surmises:
“Death in moments of extremity was
about retaining one’s dignity.” Criticizing a
Jewish leader’s suicide, Edelman
says: “…one should die only after having called
other people into the
struggle.” Hedges concludes “there will be no
moral hierarchy to resistance”
but notes from Edelman, so long as one does not
survive at the expense of
someone else.
Chapter
5,
The
Rebel Caged, is
about consequences for several
people of rebellion but it is also a devastating
critique of the role jails now
play in the US. Hedges visits Abu-Jamal, Black
Panther, then radical journalist
in Philadelphia, whose incarceration for 30
years on death row for killing a
police officer, now amended to life, was by a
trial criticized by Amnesty
International and other human rights groups.
There are continuing measures to
silence him but he has written several books
including his best selling Live from
Death Row. After a
pre-recorded commencement address came a law
banning prisoners from public
statements that cause mental anguish. “I was
punished for communicating”
Abu-Jamal said. Hedges could not take pencil or
paper in for his “conversation”
with Abu-Jamal. He says this is part of a wider
pattern to render the rebel or
the poor invisible and voiceless. Abu-Jamal’s
venom is for liberal politicians
like Bill Clinton and Obama who, he says,
disempowered the poor and working
class for their corporate patrons. Clinton began
the “prison industrial
complex” with the 1994 Omnibus Crime Bill.
The
solution
to the economic situation seems to be to
incarcerate the poor and destitute.
That provides employment as guards and border
patrols in small towns that have
no other employer. Prisons are a growth industry
making the US the world leader
in incarceration rate.
Hedges considers the black prophetic tradition
and touches on some of its
leaders like Rev. Jeremiah Wright. He believes
the tradition expressed radical
truths with a force and clarity that eludes most
other critics. He talks about
the tradition with Cornel West who says Obama
essentially gives people the old
adjustment and submission line - work harder,
get an education and obey the
law. And a critique of Obama as a war president
with drones and a death list
follows – with similar reference to Clinton and
Bush as fellow imperialists.
The discussion suggests that West is fighting on
in the black prophetic
tradition as its press becomes emaciated and as
it loses its foothold in the
minds of the black masses.
Hedges
talks
with Bonnie Kerness who runs Prison Watch for
the American Friends Service
Committee and who sees a “seamless evolution” of
incapacitation of poor people
of colour and lists the practices that keep the
prisons full – 60% of inmates
are coloured and 58% of incarcerated
Afro-American youth are in adult jails.
Women of colour are 69% more likely to be
imprisoned. Offenders of colour receive
longer sentences. Most have never harmed
anybody. She says the bottom line is
social control and creating a business. Also
prisoners can be forced to work
for pennies an hour; the people in prison call
it neo-slavery. Hedges quotes
Marie Gottschalk, pointing out that the forms of
social control extend beyond
the jails affecting 1 out of every 23 adults by
controls like probation,
parole, community sanctions, drug courts,
immigration detention. And the
effects extend to families and children. The
expansion of the prisons, paroles,
police and courts and has created a large
bureaucracy and has been a boom to
everyone from architects to food vendors – all
enjoy a paycheck earned by
keeping human beings in cages. The social safety
net has been replaced with a
dragnet. Prisons are hugely expensive - and
profitable. The money is public –
the profit is private.
Over
the
years conditions have deteriorated through use
of permanent lock-down to
widespread use of isolation and sensory
deprivation. Behind prison walls people
become prey to rape, torture, beatings,
isolation, sensory deprivation, chain
gangs and forced labour, rancid food, poor
health care, endemic violence.
Hedges gives a case followed by Kerness that
illustrates all these and some
more! Those who resist are dealt with with super
severely.
Afro
American
radicals like Abu-Jamal came first in the US,
then came Muslims like Fahad
Hashmi who accepted a plea bargain sentence of
15 years for conspiracy to
support terrorism rather than risk a 70 year
sentence. It seems that while a
student in London he allowed another American
student, Junaid Babar, to stay in
his apartment and to use his cell phone. That
student is alleged to have had
ponchos, raincoats and socks in his luggage to
pass to a member of al-Qaeda in
Pakistan. Babar pleaded guilty, but agreed to be
a government witness against
Hashmi and others in return for a less than 70
year jail sentence. Hashmi was
denied bail. Letters and family visits were
severely restricted. And he was
subjected to extreme sensory deprivation.
Hedges
ends
his chapter writing about his talk with Cecily
McMillan, a graduate student at
the New School of Social Work in New York, now
incarcerated as a result of an
incident during her participation in the
peaceful occupy movement. It appears
her breasts were fondled from behind by a person
subsequently identified as a
police officer and in her reaction her elbow hit
him just below the eye. She
ended up badly beaten up by police and on the
ground. One might have expected
this would be an issue of a victim of a police
assault – but not in the Occupy
context. Hedges attended her trial and he notes
that The Guardian too reported
on it and its irregularities - like not allowing
several pieces of pertinent
evidence. She went to jail. She said she was
committed to non-violence and so
could not accept a plea deal that would have
branded her as violent. She served
the sentence and has become an informed resource
on the situation of those
inside the jail. Hedges tells us his pen and
paper were taken during the two
hour process it took to enter Rickers Island
jail to speak with her and he had
body searches and two metal detector inspections
– as is routine. The chapter
ends with McMillan telling how the experience
made her see that the people she
met in jail were, like her, not there as a
result of justice. She felt a
kinship and appreciated that if there is to be a
movement, these people should
be part of it.
Chapter
6,
Vigilante
Violence,
reveals how the US has a tradition
of vigilante violence beyond state violence, and
a massive availability of
firearms. Hedges says “we” have “ dangerous
historical amnesia and
self-delusional fantasies about the virtues and
goodness of ourselves and
empire. We have masked our propensity for
widespread indiscriminate murder.”
The vigilante tradition goes with tacit state
approval to crush dissent, keep
minorities in fear or to exact revenge on those
the state brands as traitors.
Vigilante groups have shaped America. Hedges
reminds us of the White Citizens’
Council, Knights of the White Camelia, and the
Ku Klux Clan with its 3 million
members 1914-1944.
The
struggle
to abolish slavery, then to free blacks from the
reign of terror after the
Civil War, and the struggle to build trade
unions and organize for worker’s
rights, all these flushed from American society
“the thugs who found a sense of
self-worth and intoxicating power in their role
as armed vigilantes. They work
for minimum pay and the license to use
indiscriminant violence against those
branded as anti-American.” The US
has
the most violent labour wars in the Western
world. There is no immigrant group
that has not suffered the wrath of armed
vigilantes. There is a long continuum
from murders and lynchings to present day police
shooting of unarmed blacks.
The
ostensible rationale of vigilantes – to hold
guns to protect from tyranny – is
not supported by historical evidence elsewhere.
In Nazi Germany the Communists
did not lack weapons. In Saddam Hussein’s Iraq
citizens had assault weapons in
their homes. In a Yugoslavia full of assault
rifles, when the army arrived,
people surrendered. The real motive is fear by
whites of the black underclass
and those who champion the cause of the
oppressed. The vigilantes see people of
colour and those who support the liberal values
of college educated elites –
like gun control – as contaminants of society.
Hedges
quotes
Richard Rorty Achieving
our Country:
Leftist Thought in Twentieth Century America,
who feared a breakdown when
workers realized the government had no interest
in ending low wages, stopping
exportation of jobs overseas, or helping
crippling personal debt. The downsized
white collar workers will turn to the far right.
“The
non-suburban electorate will decide the system
has failed and start looking fro
a strongman to vote for – someone willing to
assure them … smug bureaucrats,
overpaid bond salesmen and postmodern professors
will no longer be calling the
shots. … Once such a strongman takes office
nobody can predict what will
happen. … likely
all the gains made by
black and brown Americans … and homosexuals will
be wiped out. …”
America’s
episodic
violence is entrenched. Vigilante killers are
mythologized – even
idolized. Vigilantes and lone avengers are
popular heroes on TV and films.
Griffiths 1914 film The Birth
of a Nation
“swept the nation.” White audiences cheered
the white vigilantes and the
ranks of the Ku Klux Clan rose by a few million
a few years after its release.
A century later, infatuation with guns and
vigilante killings continues to
inspire lone vigilantes and one finds agencies
like the National Rifle
Association helping with the funding of legal
defense leading to minor jail
terms.
Hedges
moves
to the 2012 shooting at a Connecticut elementary
school and the lack of
controls on the sale of guns. He notes there has
been little focusing of
attacks on government, rather one group against
another. He attributes this to
the US diffuseness of power among federal and
state governments.
Contrary
to
the myths, the US has no revolutionary
tradition. Rhetoric aside, The War of
Independence merely replaced a foreign oligarchy
with a local slaveholding
oligarchy. And the “revolutionaries” set up
mechanisms to thwart the popular
will. The ideologies and utopian visions that
sparked revolutions elsewhere are
alien to the US intellectual tradition.
Hedges
turns
to the life of Thomas Paine who, he argues, is
the only US revolutionary
theorist among many US anarchists such a Chomsky
and radical leaders from oppressed
groups like Sitting Bull and Martin Luther King
Jr. Paine understood the
realities of British power – important for
appreciating that nothing short of
revolution would suffice to get the needed
reforms. The new language of Paine
included “common sense,” “rights of man,” “age
of reason.” It was the language
of secular rationalism rather than that of
religion. For Hedges a new language
of socialism will be needed today. And as Paine
was a clear writer accessible
in the tavern as well as in the salons, so today
a wide reach will be needed.
“Paine paid for his honesty” – persecuted in
Britain, in France and by the new
leaders of the American republic. Like most
rebels who held fast to the vision
that took hold of them, he was an outcast by the
end of his life. Six people
were at his 1809 funeral in New York. Two were
black.
Any
revolutionary movement will have to contend with
the state orchestrated
vilification and vigilante violence that plagued
Paine’s life. The reactionary
movements claiming to be guardians of patriotism
and the Christian faith draw
on the deep reserves of racial hostility. The
breakdown of American society
will trigger a backlash glimpsed in the response
to the Occupy movement,
energizing the traditional armed vigilante
groups that embrace an American
fascism that fuses Christian and national
symbols.
Hedges
says
the language of violence presages violence
itself. He saw this in Latin America
the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. In
Yugoslavia, following the economic
collapse, “petty criminals and goons who took
power harnessed the rage and
despair of the unemployed … They singled out
convenient scapegoats from ethnic
Croats to Muslims to Kosovar Albanians to
Gypsies and armed their own
vigilantes.” In the US the movements are not yet
fully blown fascist movements
calling for the extermination of ethnic or
religious groups …”
Hedges
talks
about “beleaguered whites” who are retreating
into a mythical glorification of
the Confederacy. July 13 Tennessee celebrates
Forrest Day, birthday of the
Confederate general and first leader of the KKK.
In 2013, while Hedges was
traveling there, fliers inviting membership in
the KKK arrived in mailboxes in
Memphis. Hedges gives an account of his
discussion with Stevenson, an African
American lawyer who defends death row prisoners,
as they walked in the state of
Alabama along the Alabama river through a tunnel
into Montgomery coming out at
the head of Commerce St that runs into Court
Square. This was a notorious
centre in the slave trade, with few if any rules
about the origin of the slave
or about the purchase of parts of families. The
square has a marker celebrating
the presence of Jefferson Davis, president of
Confederacy. There is nothing
about the slave history. Whites in Montgomery,
which is half black, recently
re-enacted the inauguration of Jefferson Davis,
parading through the streets in
Confederate uniforms, holding flags, and having
the ceremony on the steps of
the state capitol. Alabama sentences more people
to death than any other state.
There is a moving account of how a collect call
got Stevenson into his career
as death-row lawyer – of his promise to the
condemned man to try to prevent
others from following him and of how a black
woman called him a “stone catcher”
– a reference to the Christian story of Jesus
saying that the one without sin
should cast the first stone. Hedges notes stone
catchers are not popular.
Hedges
flips
to a visit to the old house of a German
immigrant named Burkle in a depressed
northern part of Memphis. The house is now a
small museum called Slave Haven –
a trapdoor in the porch floor leads to a crawl
space. Burkle purportedly guided
slaves through a tunnel or trench to sympathetic
traders on the Mississippi
river who would convey them to Illinois. Burkle
and his descendants kept the
activities secret until very recently. The
modest house contrasts with the
grand monument to General Forrest.
Memphis
was
where Martin Luther King Jr was killed in 1968
and it was a centre for white
racism and the KKK. There is an account of a
courageous journalist, Ida Wells,
who learned and spoke out about lynching as it
related to removing black
business competitors; her newspaper was torched
by a mob. Hedges says honoring
Forrest while neglecting Wells is like putting
up the statue of a Nazi death
camp commander in the hometown of Schindler who
rescued 1,200 Jews. Hedges
notes evidence that the Civil War was about
preserving slavery. He gives
accounts showing that Forrest, in addition to
becoming head of the KKK, was
excessively brutal at butchering “negroes” as a
general – in an eyewitness
account by a southern solder of the 1864
massacre at Fort Willow. Hedges says
that written evidence and eyewitness accounts do
not mean anything to those
seeking meaning and worth in an invented past.
Chapter
7,
The
Rebel Defiant,
is a collection of
accounts about people who released information –
and paid. A mixture of story,
information and an interview of Assange shows
the importance of Wikileaks for
revealing such things as massacres in the Iraq
and Afghanistan wars. It also
reveals the unprecedented lengths the US went to
stop the leaks - bullying and
bribing associates to become informers or to
hand over files. Assange remains
in the Ecuadorian embassy in London with
continuous British guard. Hedges
outlines how Assange continues to work and how
oppressive the restrictions are.
Beyond
the
huge resources deployed against those seeking to
inform the public about what
is going on, anyone who reveals an aptitude for
obtaining data from computers
is also targeted with excessive charges and
penalties. Aaron Swartz who
downloaded academic articles from an online
warehouse was charged and faced $1
million in fines and 35 years in jail. He
committed suicide. Brown and Hammond
were trapped by an informant known as Sabu. For
identifying 8 of his peers Sabu
was sentenced to 7 months in jail and a year of
supervision instead of the
maximum 26-year sentence.
The
FBI has
been advised that arrest inconsistent with
international or foreign law does
not violate the fourth amendment – the right to
an independent judgment on the
matter of incarceration. Two Swedes and a Briton
were seized by the US in
Africa in August 2012 and disappeared. They
reappeared
– the Briton stripped of citizenship – in
a
Brooklyn courtroom in December facing terrorism
charges.
Hedges
notes
the importance of Assange’s work. He says there
is no free press without a
willingness to defy the law and expose abuse as
the New York Times did with the Pentagon
Papers in 1971 and the Times did
in
its prize winning 2005 exposure of the
warrantless wiretapping of US
citizens by the National Security Agency. And
that data was “top secret” - more
secret than the Wikileaks releases. While it is
true that the international
newspapers published Wikileaks, it was in
redacted form. And they have said
little about the unfair prosecution of Manning
and the entrapment of Assange.
Assange says in a co-authored book “We are
living under martial law as far as
our communications are concerned …”
Hedges
turns
to Manning who got 35 years from a military
court (presumably because she was
in the military). Hedges says the court showed
how the law can be misused to
avoid investigation of abuses of power or war
crimes. With a better judiciary,
Manning could have been a witness in a trial of
war criminals. But the court
blocked arguments that, under international law,
it is required to reveal
torture and killings. The court refused to let
the classified documents of
possible torture and war crimes released by
Manning to be used in court. Nor
could Manning’s motives be presented. Hedges
says: “Manning showed us through
the documents … released … what all Iraqis know
… None of the atrocities from
the leaked videos and documents have been
investigated.”
Hedges
talks
about Hammond. He heard a New York federal court
sentence Hammond to ten years
in November 2013 – the longest in US history for
hacking. He hacked computers
of a private security firm working for Homeland
Security. “The documents showed
the private firm’s infiltration, monitoring and
surveillance of protesters and
dissidents on behalf of corporations and the
national security state.” The
trial shows that courts do not protect the
citizen. Idealists will regard the
law as owned by other interest groups. They will
work outside it.
The
final
chapter, 8, Sublime Madness,
focuses on the eccentric messianic Christian
preacher Wiebo Ludwig and his
religious community in Alberta that sabotaged at
least one well-head by pouring
concrete down it, and blew up others. Hedges
puts Ludwig as the first to wage
war on “fracking” – now a broader rural protest
movement.
Hedges
says
Ludwig understood that environmental laws are
not to protect the environment –
they regulate continued exploitation. Hedges
talks with David York who made the
film Wiebo’s
War who says Ludwig saw
it as a spiritual crisis. Ludwig and his
community moved to northern Alberta in
1985 to flee evil, but ended up in a farm on top
of one of the largest oil and
gas reserves in the world. An owner only owns
the top 6”. Everything else is
the government’s to sell or lease or use.
Shortly
after
1990, oil and gas companies put wells down on
the edge of his farm. He spent
the first 5 years using legal and political
channels to protest, attending
hearings and writing letters. The “sour gas” is
poisonous. The impact of
companies is large: destroying the groundwater,
devaluing property, invading
rural communities, poisoning the air, and
breaking up landscapes. After gas
leaks forced the evacuation of the farm, two of
his wells were destroyed, farm
animals had deformed or stillborn offspring, and
his community had health
issues, Ludwig committed acts of sabotage. The
RCMP and private security firms
investigated, infiltrated, and occupied the farm
several times. The violence
escalated in the 2000s. The sabotage continued
after Ludwig’s death in 2012.
The
battle
with the corporate state will take place not
only in city streets, but also in
the nation’s heartland. The Tar Sands Blockade
is working to stop the northern
leg of the Keystone XL pipeline. If built, this
would move 830,000 barrels a
day of unrefined tar sand fluid from Canada to
the Texas Gulf Coast crossing
2,000 US waterways including the Ogallala
aquifer that irrigates 1/3 of US
farmland. The risk of spill is serious. There is
already a record of spills
from the Keystone 1 pipeline. Moreover, the
extraction process produces large
amounts of greenhouse gases so that the pipeline
has been called the fuse to
the largest carbon bomb on the planet. The
increased production of gases is
typical of newer technologies needed to extract
less available fossil fuels.
The pipeline has attracted both construction
crews and rebels. In 2012 there
were arrests of an actor and the great
grandmother farmer owner of the
Fairchild farm. Reporters including a New
York Times reporter were arrested trying
to cover protests even though they
were on private property and with permission of
the landowners.
Hedges
talks
with activist Weis in Colorado. He is bicycling
up and down the Front Range
passing out an open letter sent to the
President. Indigenous leaders had joined
him at rallies and protests. In Denver, members
of the Occupy Denver community
joined him. Weiss said the XL pipeline was sold
to people as a route to energy
independence and jobs. Yet the process requires
millions of gallons of
chemically treated water and leaves huge ponds
of toxic waste. Large amounts of
energy are needed for marginal returns. He said: “This
is not about energy security; it’s
about securing TransCanada’s profits.” A report
from Cornell says job estimates
put forward are unsubstantiated and the project
could destroy more jobs than it
creates. Weis sees XL as a symbolic crossroads –
one path leads to decay, the
other renewal.
The
chapter
switches to theological, philosophical and
literary thoughts on exploitation
and rebellion. According to Niebuhr those who
defy forces of injustice and
repression are possessed by a “sublime madness”
of the soul that disregards
appearances and emphasizes ultimate unities.
Hedges says that only sublime
madness can defy “radical evil” as defined by
Kant and used by Hannah Arendt to
describe totalitarianism. Sublime madness
requires great sacrifice and likely
death. The rebel knows the power against rebels.
The rebel is misunderstood.
“Those cursed with timidity, fear or blindness …
call for moderation and
patience. They distort the language of religion
…compromise … and compassion to
justify cooperation with systems of power that
are bent on our destruction.”
The rebel hears only his or her inner voice,
which demands steadfast defiance.
Vaclav
Havel
said when he stood up against the Communist
regime in Czechoslovakia that you
don’t choose to become a dissident. It happens
from a personal sense of
responsibility and a complex set of external
circumstances. It begins with an
attempt to do one’s work well and ends being
branded an enemy. There is no
power involved. The dissident offers nothing and
promises nothing.
To
accept
that Barak Obama is, as Camel West says, “a
black mascot for Wall Street” means
“… to give up the comfortable illusion that the
Democratic Party or liberal
institutions or a single elected official can be
instruments of genuine reform.
… The rebel shows us that there is no hope for
correction or reversal by
appealing to power … it is only by overthrowing
traditional systems of power
that we can be liberated.” Denunciation of the
rebel is a matter of self-preservation
for the liberal class. For once the callous
heart of the corporate state is
exposed, so is the callous heart of its liberal
apologists.
There
follows
an account and also quotes about Socrates’m
trial for corruption of youth – his
judges did not understand the sublime madness
driving him to risk his life.
There is reflection too on Martin Luther King
and the Christian notion of
“taking up one’s cross.” To face radical evil is
to face self-sacrifice. The
section ends with WH Auden’s poem September
1 1939.
Hedges
changes
to an interview with Axel von dem Bussche,
wounded and decorated major
from the Wehrmacht and last surviving member of
German army officers who
attempted to assassinate Hitler. He was
converted as a young officer who saw
the SS shoot 2000 Jews in the head near Dubno,
Ukraine. In 1943 he was waiting
to do a suicide bombing of Hitler– but the
opportunity was lost. In 1944 Van
Stauffenberg managed to arm one of two bombs in
his briefcase for a meeting
with Hitler. The bomb went off, but Hitler
survived. Bussche, recovering in
hospital at the time, ate his entire address
book and persuaded another officer
to take his suitcase from under the bed and toss
it into a lake. He was found
out and survived. But he understood the
implications of doing nothing in a time
of radical evil. “I should have taken my uniform
off in the Ukraine and joined
the line of Jews to be shot,” he said.
The
concluding pages return to further reflections
and thoughts from Havel, Martin
Luther King Jr. and Shakespeare. Shakespeare is
cast as showing the tension
between the dying ethic of the pre-modern age
(imagination - Arial in The Tempest)
and the modern age
(Machiavelli - MacBeth in MacBeth).
The
visionary language of the poets and rebels is
the language of sublime
madness says Hedges. Chants, work songs,
spirituals nourish the imagination.
There is reference to Greek oracles and
dreams/visions of Black Elk.
Covering
the
war in El Salvador, Hedges noticed that rebel
units were often accompanied by
musicians and theatre troupes. Culture is
radical and transformative, allowing
us to see and feel what is deep within us.
Hedges makes reference to Black Elk
writing about Crazy Horse in the western wars of
expansion. Then he says “I do
not know if we can build a better society. I do
not even know if we will
survive as a species. But I know that these
corporate forces have us by the
throat. … I do not fight fascists because I will
win. I fight fascists because
they are fascists. … in these acts we make
possible a better world, even if we
cannot see one emerging around us.”