[D66] Northites vallen Chris Hedges af | The End of the Western Mythology | Gaza

[René Oudeweg]

https://youtu.be/GkujET0ajAQ

Chris Hedges' Speech on Gaza: The End of the Western Mythology
The Chris Hedges YouTube Channel
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On 5/23/25 14:54, René Oudeweg wrote:
> [Hedges heeft gelijk, er is geen morele vooruitgang en het is hopeloos.]
> 
> wsws.org
> The demoralized pessimism of Chris Hedges’ “New Dark Age”
> 5–6 minutes
> 
> This article is an edited version of a tweet that was initially posted 
> on X.
> 
> Last year, Chris Hedges advocated self-immolation as a way to protest 
> the Gaza genocide. In his latest demoralized screed, he transfers blame 
> for the crimes of the Israeli-Zionist state and capitalist imperialism 
> to the entire human race. Gaza, he proclaims, proves the futility of any 
> belief in the possibility of human progress.
> 
> In support of his insistence of the hopeless state of humanity, he 
> counterpoises what Hedges claims were the pessimistic views of Auguste 
> Blanqui to those of Hegel and Marx.
> 
> Hedges writes: “The 19th century socialist Louis-Auguste Blanqui, unlike 
> nearly all of his contemporaries, dismissed the belief central to Georg 
> Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx, that human history is a linear 
> progression toward equality and greater morality.”
> 
> As so often in his previous writings, Hedges demonstrates once again 
> that he understands nothing of the philosophical foundations of Marxism 
> and the materialist conception of history. Neither Hegel or Marx claimed 
> that history is “a linear progression” toward paradise.
> 
> Hegel (1770-1831), who witnessed the complex and tragic fate of the 
> French Revolution, famously described history as a “slaughter bench at 
> which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of States, and the virtue of 
> individuals have been victimized.” He explained, albeit in an idealist 
> manner, that the historic development of humanity proceeds through 
> contradiction and conflict.
> 
> As for Marx and Engels, they wrote in the Communist Manifesto (1847) 
> that the class struggle leads to “the revolutionary reconstitution of 
> society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.” They 
> rejected any form of simplistic determinism. Marx and Engels explained 
> that the contradictions of the capitalist system created the objective 
> possibility of socialism. But its realization and the fate of humanity 
> would be decided in struggle.
> Louis Auguste Blanqui (1805-1881)
> 
> August Blanqui did not reject the possibility of progress and devoted 
> his entire life to the cause of revolution. But this great fighter had 
> no understanding of the socioeconomic basis of revolution and the 
> objectively revolutionary role of the working class. Blanqui conceived 
> of the overthrow of capitalism as the outcome of a coup d’état organized 
> by a small group of conspirators.
> 
> Engels wrote in 1874 that Blanqui 'has neither a socialist theory nor 
> any definite practical suggestions for social remedies. In his political 
> activity he was mainly a 'man of action'...” Three years earlier, in 
> 1871, the Marxist conception of revolution as a mass movement of the 
> working class had been substantiated in the uprising of the Parisian 
> working class and the creation of the Commune.
> 
> All the great Marxists of the 20th century warned that the crisis of 
> capitalism led to one of two outcomes. They were, as stated by Rosa 
> Luxemburg, “socialism or barbarism.” The scientifically grounded 
> understanding of the nature of the capitalist epoch underlay Lenin’s 
> conception of the decisive role of the revolutionary party.
> 
> In 1938, responding to the rise of fascism, the defeats of the European 
> working class as a consequence of the betrayals of Stalinism and Social 
> Democracy, Trotsky wrote in the founding document of the Fourth 
> International, the crisis of mankind is the crisis of revolutionary 
> leadership.
> 
> Hedges writes: “Campaigns of mass killing unleash the feral qualities 
> that lie latent in all humans ... It is a testament to our hypocrisy, 
> cruelty and racism.” This is a libel against humanity. To blame humanity 
> in general for the genocide is to obfuscate the specific responsibility 
> of the imperialist leaders and the system they represent for the crimes 
> committed against the people of Gaza. However incorrect his politics, 
> Chris Hedges himself bears no responsibility whatsoever for the 
> genocide. He is a politically disoriented journalist who is overwhelmed 
> by the ongoing atrocities. But Netanyahu and his cohorts, and their 
> imperialist enablers, are mass murderers. This is not a minor difference.
> 
> Hedges claims that mankind is entering a “New Dark Age,” from which 
> there is no escape. In reality, mankind is entering a new era of 
> revolutionary struggle. The imperialist-backed Gaza genocide has been 
> met by protests involving millions across the globe. The crimes of 
> imperialism—the desperate attempt of the ruling class to resolve its 
> crisis through fascism and war—is setting into motion a mass movement 
> against capitalism. The historic task of this era is to resolve the 
> crisis of revolutionary leadership by building the World Party of 
> Socialist Revolution.