Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Addicted to Nonsense — Chris Hedges Condemns Our Vapid Celebrity Culture

Posted by Will Moredock on Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 10:57 PM

In this Truthdig essay, Chris Hedges offers a ferocious critique
of our materialistic, celebrity-obsessed culture and says it needs
a major infusion of reality and social justice. With millions of
people losing their jobs and their homes, they can only live on
their celebrity magazines and TV reality shows for so long. Hedges
is a fierce writer and is at his best here:
www.truthdig.com/report/page2/addicted_to_nonsense_20091129/


I spent two years traveling the country to write a book on the Christian right called “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.” I visited former manufacturing towns where for many the end of the world is no longer an abstraction. Many have lost hope. Fear and instability have plunged the working class into profound personal and economic despair, and, not surprisingly, into the arms of demagogues and charlatans of the radical Christian right who offer a belief in magic, miracles and the fiction of a utopian Christian nation. Unless we rapidly re-enfranchise these dispossessed workers, insert them back into the economy, unless we give them hope, these demagogues will rise up to take power. Time is running out. The poor can dine out only so long on illusions. Once they grasp that they have been betrayed, once they match the bleak reality of their future with the fantasies they are fed, once their homes are foreclosed and they realize that the jobs they lost are never coming back, they will react with a fury and vengeance that will snuff out the remains of our anemic democracy and usher in a new dark age.

Topics: National Politics

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Hedges' use of the word "fascist" in relation to religious conservatives is actually not that far-fetched.

In 2004, Laurence Britt published a study that identified the social and political agendas common to fascist regimes. His comparisons of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia), and Pinochet (Chile) yielded this list of 14 identifying characteristics of fascism:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
4. Supremacy of the Military
5. Rampant Sexism
6. Controlled Mass Media
7. Obsession with National Security
8. Religion and Government are Intertwined
9. Corporate Power is Protected
10. Labor Power is Suppressed
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
14. Fraudulent Elections

report   
Posted by Brad Bailey on December 11, 2009 at 1:56 AM
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