[Campaignforrealdemocracy] Fwd: [rdwg] Chris Hedges takes up the torch

[Mark Barrett]

* 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<http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/why_im_voting_green_20121029>
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 <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLYcn3PuTTk>,
Hedges noted <http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/10/21>:

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*<http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/10/28>,
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<http://books.google.com/books?id=386Mvoi4PDsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=what+is+anarchism?&hl=en&sa=X&ei=wglsUtDlKtDDiwK7yIGQAg&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=what%20is%20anarchism%3F&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=386Mvoi4PDsC&pg=PA179&lpg=PA179&dq=%22the+slow,+quiet,+and+peaceful+social+evolution+becomes+quick,+militant,+and+violent,%22&source=bl&ots=P9hkpsDXYZ&sig=8_kG3LIfVl_3uT-0KbQF6D5>,
“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”.
An uprising that is devoid of ideas and vision is never a threat

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
30 October 2013

   - Backlash against Brand shows he got it
right<http://www.aworldtowin.net/blog/backlash-against-brand-shows-he-got-it-right.html>

- See more at:
http://www.aworldtowin.net/blog/russell-brands-fire-crosses-atlantic.html#sthash.K8YArzkr.dpuf

**
http://www.aworldtowin.net/blog/russell-brands-fire-crosses-atlantic.html
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