When New York Times reporter Chris Hedges gave his anti-American diatribe as a commencement speech at Rockford College, he was met with a chorus of boos and other expressions of disapproval. The sickening, high-minded smugness of Hedges' speech was of course striking, but most striking to me was its sheer rudeness to the Rockford College graduates and their families. The reaction of his audience hasn't exactly caused any introspection on Hedges' part. Reader Jack Stephens has kindly alerted us to Hedges' May 21 interview with the far-left host of the syndicated program "Democracy Now," Amy Goodman. Here are a couple of choice paragraphs:

"You know, as I looked out on the crowd, that is exactly what my book [War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning] is about. It is about the suspension of individual conscience, and probably consciousness, for the contagion of the crowd for that euphoria that comes with patriotism. The tragedy is that - and I've seen it in conflict after conflict or society after society that plunges into war - with that kind of rabid nationalism comes racism and intolerance and a dehumanization of the other. And it's an emotional response. People find a kind of ecstasy, a kind of belonging, a kind of obliteration of their alienation in that patriotic fervor that always does come in war time.

"As I gave my talk and I looked out on the crowd, I was essentially witnessing things that I had witnessed in the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina or in squares in Belgrade or anywhere else. Crowds, especially crowds that become hunting packs are very frightening. People chanted the kind of clichés and aphorisms and jingoes that are handed to you by the state. 'God Bless America' or people were chanting 'send him to France' - this kind of stuff and that kind of contagion leads ultimately to tyranny, it's very dangerous and it has to be stopped. I've seen it in effect and take over countries. But of course, it breaks my heart when I see it in my country. That's essentially what I was looking at was in some ways a mirror of what I was trying to speak about. And I think I managed to touch upon it somewhat when I talked upon this notion of comradeship as a suppression of self awareness and self-possession to sort of follow along, locked in the embrace of a nation, or of a group, or of a national group unthinkingly, blindly. And there is a kind of undeniable euphoria in that. And that's what I was looking at."

Click here for a full transcript of the interview.

Posted by Scott at 10:52 PM  |    |  

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