Bad Hasbara - The World's Most Moral Podcast - 154: The Dingo Ate Your Integrity, with Chris Hedges

Episode Date: October 28, 2025

Matt and Daniel are joined by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Chris Hedges, to cover his unceremonious cancellation by the National Press Club of Australia, the unforgivably slanted press coverage of Israel's decimation of Gaza, and America's rush to consolidate all media into the (allegedly) heavily plastic surgerized hands of superannuated billionaire Larry Ellison.Please donate to the Palestine Red Crescent Society: https://www.palestinercs.org/enJoin the patreon at https://www.patreon.com/badhasbaraThe Chris Hedges Report: https://chrishedges.substack.com/Chris' planned speech to the National Press Club of Australia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Z59N0vsDp8Bad Hasbara Merch Store:https://estoymerchandise.com/collections/bad-hasbara-podcastGet tickets for Fancesca Fiorentini and Matt Lieb November 1 at the Ice House in Pasadena: https://www.showclix.com/event/new-world-disorder-11-01-25-7-pmSubscribe to the Patreon https://www.patreon.com/badhasbaraWhat’s The Spin playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/50JoIqCvlxL3QSNj2BsdURSkad Skasbarska playlist: http://bit.ly/skadskasbarskaSubscribe/listen to Bad Hasbara wherever you get  your podcasts.Spotify https://spoti.fi/3HgpxDmApple Podcasts https://apple.co/4kizajtSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/bad-hasbara/donationsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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palace nine rc s dot org uh the link is in the description daniel what's the spin well i don't willingly every day talk about all matters australian sure but since it will be on the docket today i wanted to select some australian artists off my shelf number one i've got aha take on me take me on i did not know they were australian they are australian i am almost certain they are australian ACDC, back in black. 100% Australian. Although there were members who were from England, but they were from Australia.

Man, I'm learning a lot about Australia today. I think there's singer Brian Johnson. Their second singer was Scottish. But anyway, the Avalanches, since I left you, sample-based album, Australian group. Yes, yes. Rick Springfield, working class dog. Jesse's girl, containing one of my favorite pop lyrics ever.

I want to tell her that I love her, but the point is probably moot. Oh, yeah. And finally, Tam Impala, who I didn't know was Australian until recently. This is lonerism. Tim Palla has a new album out, which I hear is shit. But this album is not. It's great.

They are a great Australian band. And we, of course, are going to be talking a little bit about Australia today because we have a great guest. He's not from Australia, but he was recently in Australian. We have a lot of questions about the National Press Club of Australia. Apparently journalism goes the other way on that down on the hemisphere. Just like the toilets. Just like the toilets.

Very excited to bring in our guest. He is someone who said, I don't care how you introduce me. So I said, okay, I'm going to start with Pulitzer Prize. He is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist ladies and gentlemen and everyone else. Please welcome to Bad Hasbara, Chris Hedges. Thanks, Matt. Great to see you, Chris. So good to see you.

Listen, I've seen a few different guest spots that you've done on podcasts, and I feel like this is the first time you've had someone introduce you as if they were introducing a professional wrestler at the WWE, you know? Yeah, that might be a first. Well, there should be a lot of firsts on this. Chris, how jet lagged are you at this moment? You got back pretty recently, yeah? Yeah, it's pretty awful.

I'm sorry. You wake up at 4.30 and like want to eat dinner. Yeah. Oh, man. Well, you just got back from Australia. And you told us before we started recording something that I think is an honor for us, which is that you turned down another interview to do this show today. Yeah, Piers Morgan.

They've come at me three or four times in the last couple weeks. But I can't go on Piers Morgan. because I know as soon as I do it, he's going to, somebody like Alan Dershowitz is going to pop up on the screen, and I'm supposed to do a shout fest with him. And I'm just, I'm not interested. I can't believe you're turning down the opportunity to condemn Hamas in front of the whole world. That's right.

And Israel's right to defend itself. Yeah, it's vaudeville. It's not, you know, it gets a lot of hits. Do you buy his perplexed schick? Like, he's just, he always seems to, he wants to present like he's struggling to understand something, and yet he's had it explained to him a thousand times by now. He might not, he might not be that smart, so it might not be a schick, I don't know. It's possible.

He just has the memory of a goldfish. Now, these people are entertainers, and they're very astute entertainers, but we can't confuse them with journalists. They kind of present themselves as journalists, but they're entertainers. Like Joe Rogan, like all these guys. They're very, very good at what they do. But they shift like the sands, you know, wherever, you know, they read the zeitgeist really well, but they're not, it's not journalism. Well, at least Rogan doesn't pretend to be anything other than a dumb guy. I mean, he may play dumber than he is or play smarter than he is.

But you recently had a run in with someone who does present as a journalist and who apparently takes that designation and that, that, job description extremely seriously and took quite a bit of umbrage with you making a systemic critique of that industry we're going to get to that but first we need to set the table with why you were on that program to begin with matt do you want to lead us in yeah so you were recently scheduled to give a talk at the national press club of australia and you were going to uh i guess give a a speech or, you know, you're going to speak there, and you were going to give a talk called the betrayal of Palestinian journalists. Can you tell us what that talk was about? Yeah, I mean, let me just give you a little background, which you probably know,

but I was a war correspondent for 20 years, starting in El Salvador. I was there for five years, seven years in the Middle East, covered the war in the former Yugoslavia. And most of the journalists don't want to go anywhere near combat. So they stay very close to the hotel and they get fed by the embassy. It's a tiny minority that goes out. The photographers are actually more honest because they have to go out. And not only that, but once the shooting starts, they have to stand up. I don't stand up. So that's how I look at the divide between the reporting on the genocide in Gaza. You have the Palestinian journalists, what the numbers are what? 273, I think they're 240, but have been killed. Many of them targeted. There's no question

they've been targeted. Well, they receive threats and then their homes are blown up and their families are killed and they're assassinated often while they're in the press tent or as soon as they leave air or etc. But they do the real reporting. And then you have the Western press esconsed in the hotels in Jerusalem being fed garbage. And let me tell you, having been there and having covered the Middle East, they know it's garbage. But their news organizations prized two things, and that's access and the ability to protect themselves from the very well-organized attacks that the Israel lobby always uses to discredit journalists who attempt to tell the truth. and it's very cynical

and they have amplified for the two years of the genocide one is really lie after another I mean you know them as well as I do you have a show on it you know whether it's what was that screams without words New York Times I mean I

Screeds without evidence is what we call it yeah it was appalling I mean I've taught journalism at Columbia I've had a student had given me that I would have failed them. It just wasn't even sourced. I mean, it was appalling. And then, of course, the one family they tried to use as an example said she wasn't raped. I mean, it was just a pathetic. And well, plus, they hired some two people who'd never been journalists to work with them, one of whom had been an intelligence officer in the ID. I mean, it was just a travesty. But that's just

one of, and what they're really doing by constantly pumping out this is really garbage. beheaded babies, babies burned in ovens, human shields. I mean, there was a leak. What was it, plus 972, I think, published this internal Israeli army study that admitted that 83% of the people killed were civilians. And of course, the other thing about human shields is that the army or the force that uses human shields constantly as Israel. They are taking Palestinian captives, putting them in Israeli army uniforms, often handcuffing them, and then pushing them into buildings or tunnels that they

think are booby-trapped first. Right. There's video evidence of literal tied-up Palestinian captives who are marched in front of tanks and in front of different. And you are literally seeing a human shield right in front of your face. And it's, of course, the reverse situation. that they report. To say nothing of the fact that Israeli Army headquarters are ensconced under and among Israeli civilians in Tel Aviv. Yes, of course. I mean, so the Israeli Army has this, they call it the legitimization cell.

What it does is it's all about pumping out black propaganda against the journalists. You know, they're Hamas operatives. They are in charge of firing rockets on it. I mean, just, and that is a way to delegitimize their work, which is amplified by the Western press, and then they're killed. And so that was really what I wanted to speak about, of course, especially having worked in Gaza. So I cover the Middle East for seven years. I'm an Arabic speaker, so I was constantly sent into Gaza. I lived in Gaza for months at a time. I have all sorts of Palestinian colleagues, some of whom I know are dead, but the others have just disappeared.

We heard from them periodically, and then we just don't hear from them anymore. So, that was what I wanted to speak. I wanted to call out the complicity of the Western press in discrediting the work of our colleagues in Gaza, the Palestinian journalists in Gaza, and doing the bidding of Israeli propaganda. And that was, that address was supposed to be, most of those addresses at the National Press Club of Australia televised nationally. And that was just something that the Israel lobby was not going to allow to happen. They had confirmed. I have a confirmation letter. They had confirmed the date and the time and my presence. And then when they disinvited me, they very disingenuously, which I thought was kind of stupid. They could have slees out of being dishonest. But they said that it was never confirmed. Well, I have a confirmation letter. And it was never post. it on the website, well, somebody had taken a screenshot of it before they took it down.

How far out from the event was the cancellation? Very, it was very close to the event. So it had been planned for weeks, well, if not months, and the organizers in Australia had set it up. And then I'm guessing like one or two weeks before they canceled it. Yeah. Now, I'm remembering one of my first members, memories of, what can I say, being cognizant of how ruthless and relentless mainstream Zionist institutions will be in shutting down any debate was when I was a teenager. My dad was speaking out during the first Intifada in Vancouver, and he was invited on a national CBC, which is sort of the Canadian version of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, which will be getting into

soon, to be on a panel discussion, him, two Palestinians, and three members of the mainstream Jewish community. My father said to them, when they booked him, you know, you're going to get a lot of pressure to take me off, and it's happened before. So I don't want to say yes unless you're sure. And they said, absolutely, sir, Dr. Matta, it'll be fine. And then with two or three days to go, of course, they kicked him off, put him in the audience, and replaced him with an Arab Canadian, sort of a moderate. Did you have any premonition that this might happen? Did, you know, when you got the invitation, did it feel like a secure thing, or did you... Well, it's happened before.

Has this happened before, yeah. Well, of course, it's happened many times. I mean, I'm disinvited from college campuses regularly, University of Pennsylvania, unfortunately Oberlin College, and many others, or I just gave a talk on the genocide a little while ago a few months ago at USC Santa Barbara, and the administration forbade all publicity, even the department that had invited me. So I was completely ghosted as if I wasn't there. And I got to, they had this like five, 600-seat auditorium,

and there were like 40 people there because no one knew I was on campus. I mean, they filmed it. So I think 150,000 people watched it on YouTube. So the Israel lobby, you know, works pretty hard to shut down all voices that hold up the rights of Palestinians and critique Israel for its apartheid state. state. And I've been doing this for many, many, many years long before October 7th. So it's been a relentless campaign. So I didn't expect it, but at the same time, I wasn't surprised. Right. And, you know, they released a statement, the National Press Club of Australia,

Australia released a statement about this particular cancellation in which I'll just read it right here. It says, the National Press Club wishes to respond to the article published by journalist Chris Hedges about his proposed address at the club. The club was approached by representatives of Mr. Hedges to make an address and tentatively agreed to a date given his stature and expertise on the matter of Gaza. The club is constantly reviewing its address schedule, and when more details of the address were made available, we decided to pursue other speakers on the matter. Do you have any idea what they're talking about when they say after reviewing its address schedule? Are they saying that they realize, oh, we don't have enough time for you? Or what are they trying to say

there? No, I think they found out, you know, the kinds of things that I said. That's what it sounds like to me. Yeah, of course. That's what happened. I mean, all they'd read before is New York Times Pulitzer Prize, so they thought I was another horror like the rest of the New York Times in the press. I think what they mean by schedule is the way, you know, certain drugs are scheduled

and outlawed and forbidden, you know? I see it. Your views are actually... You're a schedule, too. That's exactly right. It can only be prescribed by leftist podcasters on YouTube. Well, according to a source in the club, they had reached out to the Israeli ambassador to Australia, former lieutenant colonel and the paratroopers who was in Lebanon.

I'm sure his hands are very clean and who's been spewing Israeli garbage, you know, from the embassy. And I don't know that he was scheduled. I don't have any evidence that he was scheduled to replace me. They talk about the need for quote-unquote balance, and, look, I'm all for balance. I mean, as a lieutenant colonel, he could tell us lots of things. He could tell us about Lavender, the AI program that's next targets. He could tell us about the quota system whereby you're allowed to murder 10 or, it's either 10 or 20. I can't remember civilians to kill a Hamas fighter and hundreds, if you are,

targeting a Hamas commander. He could tell us about the human shields that Israel uses. But, of course, he's not going to give us, he's not going to. And of course, as a reporter, I'm on the outside of that system. So I attempt to report it. He on the inside has far more information should he decide to be honest. Well, true balance would be get a, get a Hamas spokesperson up there. You know, like get the Hamas ambassador to Australia to get up there. Well, or at least get an Israeli who's willing to speak the truth about the genocide. Sure. And that closes the circle.

I mean, that is a kind of balance in the sense that I'm not on the inside of the IDF. But balancing lies with truth is not balance. It's just, and this is part of the problem of the Western media and the dissemination of Israeli propaganda. It obscures, if not discredits, the truth. And that's part of my anger towards what the Western press. is done to my colleagues in Gaza. Yeah. And Matt, can you put the statement back up on the screen? Because something else strikes me about it.

The second paragraph here, Chris Sidoti, who is the guy who had that great response to a questioner at the UN where you said, come on. Can't the Israelis get some new lies, some new material? And Ben Saul addressed the club this week. And this is, so them this is saying, look, we're not, you know, we didn't just cancel Chris Hedges and we're not outlying pro-Palestine points. of view. They addressed the club this week on the case for Palestinian recognition

parentheses with Chris being of the view that recognition in and of itself is not enough. Okay, hold on a second. The case for Palestinian recognition, they're trying to say that's qualitatively not different than Chris Hedges speaking about the Western Press's betrayal of Palestinian journalists. They're going to try and use some kind of soft

advocacy for recognition of a non-existent, non-contiguous, non-self-defensive, non-sovere and Palestinian state as some sort of replacement for what they pull, the rug they pulled out from underneath you? I mean, are you freaking kidding me? Yeah. And then they have Navi, Judge Navi-Palae covering the war who will be speaking in the coming weeks. I mean, who do they think they're fooling? I mean, I feel like they're showing their hand with this parenthetical, with Chris being of the view that recognition of itself is not enough, which I guess is supposed to imply that that's somehow an extremist view or an ultra-left view. Well, maybe they're saying they should, it's not enough.

Maybe they should stop killing them. Right, exactly. It's like, geez. Can we say that on television? Yeah, that's a little bit extreme to stop killing. Well, the recognition, I feel like, is good enough. I mean, if you don't recognize them, how are you going to shoot them? How can you even shoot?

But the UK recognizes them. They've only cut 10% of arm shipments. I mean, it's a total subterfuge that we'll recognize the Palestinian state, Australia, of course, being another one, but we'll continue to ship weapon systems. F-35 parts are made in Australia. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Although I think recently someone in the Australian government said they only make non-lethal F-35 parts. You know, the ones that just, you know, they send care bears over to different countries in mass.

They go on, speaking of weapons manufacturers, it is important to state that the board and its CEO, Maurice Riley, make decisions on speakers independently. there has been no pressure from anyone outside of the board either directly or indirectly regarding our speakers on the war in Gaza. So this to me is interesting

because listed as one of their corporate sponsors of this event is Lockheed Martin, which to me, I feel like it is hard.

Famously, one of the most hands-on sponsors in history. They're the most laissez-faire funder of press-related things. Just because we do an anti-war. And also fails and BA systems and Amazon, which does all the cloud work for the Israeli military, they're all sponsors the press club. Right. Yeah. And so it's just, it's interesting to me kind of this, you know, refutation, if that's a word. A refutation. this idea that there was some sort of outside pressure when they clearly you can see okay

then it was inside pressure you know if your if your own corporate sponsors are are you know making weapons for the Israeli government it's hard to see how that doesn't conflict with a program that's filled with people calling them genocidal yeah we didn't get any pressure from Lockheed Martin. We got pressure from Lockheed Martin's mole who lives in our boardroom. In our boardroom. He's one of us. Yeah. It's, I mean, you know, the statement is just interesting in and of itself because they seem to be offended at the idea that they, that you would expose them for canceling this event so closely to the date. And, you know, you went on to speak to someone in Australia who I hadn't heard of until this interview that you gave with him. His name is David Mar, who, as far as I can tell, is just, you know, we have a Mar here in the United States called Bill. Seems like they have one called David. I'm not sure.

I think England has the best Mar, Johnny Marr. Johnny Marr, sure. There's lots of Mars out there. but this one's Australian and you went on this interview and it was clearly an ambush and I've actually never seen such a I guess dedicated advocate for the media's last two years of complicity in the genocide someone who was basically was saying you're far too hard on the mainstream media Can you tell us more about... Well, it wasn't even too hard.

He said there was no evidence. Right. I mean, look, the whole 20 minutes, you can listen to it, was just, he was attempting to discredit me from the start. Yeah. Because Palestinian groups had invited. I'd go on to give the annual Edward Said lecture. Right.

At a university in Australia, and it was sponsored by Palestinian groups. So he started by attempting to discredit what I was saying because the groups had invited me. and I had cited a bunch of headlines, which are pretty appalling, you know, as evidence or as examples of how we have betrayed Palestinian journalists. Right. And he just, he wasn't buying it. He was, you know, he was, it was really, the whole thing was just, well, look, I walked out of the studio, I turned to him and I said, you're a piece of shit.

That's great. And then the next thing I said in the business, we call you a throat. That's all you are. A throat. Throats are people who sit in front of cameras or microphones, and that's all we do. And they're usually idiots and will spew back anything that's on the teleprompter or anything that's good for their career, which is what he did. Well, he's the perfect Commonwealth national media twit.

He's the quintessence of a genre of alleged, ostensible, apparent journalist that I've seen in Canada many times. You see it in England, too, but especially Commonwealth countries. And they're straight out of the manufacturing consent documentary. They're straight out of Tromsky's propaganda model because there are these reasonable, concerned sounding, sincerely upset. It's deplorable how many Palestinian journalists have. died. But, but, but, but the journalists in the West, you're denigrating their, their sincere efforts. And he can't see or he won't see or he's paid to obscure and run interference for the very system that he is a part of. And his, his, his, his, his, his fetishization of neutrality

and objectivity. I mean, he thinks you being invited to Australia by the Edward Saeed Foundation, uh, casts your objectivity in negative light. That's how he opens the interview. He works for ABC. He basically opens it with like, you know, aren't you sort of a pro-Palestinian chill because of the fact that you are going to give this speech sponsored by this? Like, I've never seen an interview start off that way before. Well, because the whole interview was he was just taking one tact after another to discredit me.

That's all. But what made me angry is, that, you know, I don't care what he thinks of me, but what he was really attempting to is trying to discredit my message, which is that we have terribly, terribly betrayed our Palestinian colleagues. Right, right. And, you know, let me just give you a few examples, which, so, and this is from the article that I wrote, which you can read on my substack, the betrayal of Palestinian journalists.

And we'll have that in this show notes. Some of the examples that he attempted to pick apart. So you had, this is when Muhammad Salama and Ahmed Abouaziz, along with the Reuters photojournalist, Hussein, al-Masori, and the other journalist, Mawaz Abu Taha, and Mariam Daga. They all worked with several media outlets, including the Associated Press. So they were killed in a double-tap strike. What does that mean at Nasser Medical Complex? That Israel has this charming habit of carrying out a hit and then waiting a little bit

till the first responders come to deal with a wound and killing all of them. Right. So this is the way, and they were filming. And let's be clear, the Reuters, which admitted a few days later, said that they had given the coordinates of where they were filming to the IDF.

Right. And so how did Associated Press report it? Israeli military says strikes on Gaza Hospital targeted what it says was a Hamas camera. Then this is CNN. IDF claims hospital strike was aimed at Hamas camera. AFP. Israel Army says six terrorists killed in Monday strikes on Gaza Hospital. They're all wearing press flack jackets.

Initial inquiry says Hamas camera was target of Israeli strike that killed journalists. Initial inquiry by who? Yeah, exactly. And then Sky News, Israel claims troops saw Hamas camera before deadly hospital strike. Now, the camera belonged to Reuters. Right. And Reuters finally admitted later that Israel was fully aware that they were filming from the hospital. And this is, you remember, Honest Al-Sharif, this amazing.

reporter who had received death threats. He was killed with three other journalists. This was last August in their media tent in El Shifa. And how did Reuters, I mean, so IAS had been on the 2024 team that had won the Pulitzer for Reuters. And Reuters headline was Israel kills Al Jazeera journalist, it says, was Hamas leader. And the German newspaper, which wins the prize, billed, on the front page, said, terrorist disguised as journalists killed in Gaza. Now, these were the headlines that I had just pulled. I mean, I could pull, I could write endless, I have endless examples, just to show how distorted the media coverage, even of the killing of our own colleagues, has been.

Yeah. And Marr tried to take you to task by saying, listen to all those Israel says. says IDF claims in those headlines. Doesn't the presence of that caveat indicate that the journalists and the publications are doing exactly what they're supposed to do? Well, yeah, he said, isn't that our job? And I said, no, our job's to tell the truth. I'm sure it came as a big surprise to him.

I was told in J-School that our job was to just print out what the IDF said. And Jen, don't question it for a week. And let's be clear. Many, many journalists make very good livings at it. I worked for the New York Times. I knew people who hadn't left their desk for 30 years, and they'd won all sorts of a word retyping press releases from corporations and the IDF. But I don't look at that as journalism. These people are stenographers to power. And, of course, establishment, the establishment and established media organizations, shower them with all sorts of encomiums

and tell them how great they are because they serve those centers of power. Right. I think one of the things that's easy for those of us who aren't tapped into Arab media to miss is that a huge proportion of these journalists killed are not anonymous, you know, field reporters.

These are among some of the luminaries, the stars of, you know, it would be akin to, I don't know, name some Western journalists that people can name by face and organization. And just one after the other, after the other, they're being picked off because they have that kind of following. Right. Honest al-Sharif was a good example. Shreene Abelaklu was killed in the West Bank, assassining.

That's right. These people have huge followings throughout the Arab world, and rightly so. They're great journalists. And that's a good point. I mean, what can explain the way in which Reuters knowing full well exactly that they gave the coordinates of their camera to the IDF, that the IDF killed their cameraman? What can explain them actually, I mean, essentially throwing their own journalists under the bus for the sake of carrying out a two-day PR campaign that, you know, explains away this thing before eventually going, okay, now we'll tell the truth.

What is there, what's the explanation for that? Access, access, access. They don't want to be shut out. They don't want to be disinvited to the briefings. They want to have their correspondent put in the pool and a little dog and pony show that the IDF carries out this choreographed show when they get to go into Gaza for a few hours in play, soldier.

Look, Reuters sold out the journal. who were killed in Baghdad in the collateral murder video, and Dean Yates, who was the Reuters Bureau Chief, has explained this in detail. I actually interviewed him about it if you want to watch it. So just type in Chris Hedges, Dean Yates. Hopefully it'll come up. But, yeah, these big media organizations are quite happy

to sell out their own. Because, I used to say when I worked for the New York Times, the motto is technically all the news that fits to print. No. The real motto is don't destroy our access. and the funding by which we depend on from advertisers. I mean, that's the real model, and they're willing on occasion to challenge those centers of power,

but never to alienate them. And Israel is quite draconian. If you don't dance to the tune they play, as is the Israel lobby. And so these news, look, and I just can't stress enough, having been, you know, I was in the Middle East seven years, all of those journalists know that Israel lies like it breathes, and that's the cynicism of it. Maybe on the outside, maybe, you know, people reporting this garbage don't. Maybe they really believe it, I don't know. But there, you know. And they do it anyway. They do it, you know, for really nefarious reasons to sustain or to advance their own, the interests of the corporation.

they work for. But my anger with this is that by doing that, they've really betrayed the real journalists doing the job. Well, fair enough. I think I'm Palestinian journalists in Gaza. It's fair enough, Chris, but I think you're maybe being a little hard on the New York Times because they're just a scrappy mom and pop operation, by which I mean that all of their reporters are the moms and pops of IDF soldiers. Well, no, that's not. Every day is take your son's propaganda at a work day. No, no. I mean, also, that's. That's actually a really good point, Daniel, because there are bureau chiefs out of there, Ian Brunner and Kirchner, I think her name is...

Isabel Kirchner, yeah. Isabelle, yeah, they're in the IDF. Ficklestein once called her in it. An insufferable cow many times. That was his sober cat for her. Yeah, I mean, imagine that. Imagine they're in the IDF. It's crazy.

Yeah. One of my favorite moments in this David Marr interview, I think, I just want to play for everyone because it's again it's watching this man's struggle to um confront you um about you know your the entire point of the this the talk you're going to give is it's just it's a lot of fun because you realize you there's so few moments where you see someone actively selling out their own morals uh and this is just this like that it's like that simpson's moment where you look you can actually see the moment where his heart rips into you can actually see the moment where his heart rips into you can actually see the moment where his integrity

is shredded. Right. And it's regarding, I believe, you were talking about Chris Sidora in this, but let's listen to it. The report's about the genocide. None of us are carrying out screeds against

the state of Israel. We're attempting to explain what the state of Israel is doing in its genocidal campaign in Gaza. Sure, but, you know, Chris Sidoti is one the commissioners of the UN who decided that a genocide was being committed in Gaza. Because it is.

Yes, but... Because it is. Just a yes, but, after a genocide is being committed is, I mean, it's truly fascinating to watch someone be put in that position in which, essentially, he's trying to argue that your cancellation was okay because we've got, you know, Chris Adota, but then he's also at the same time calling the label of a genocide somehow an extremist view. How is it, you know, that you've got, at this point, I've never seen so many institutions. Now, you know, I'm just someone who's been following this for the last, you know, a decade or so. But in all my time following it, I've never

seen so many institutions, human rights groups, you know, outside of Israel, but even inside of Israel, all in sort of a general consensus that, number one, that Israel's an apartheid state, but now, number two, that Israel is committing a genocide. How is it that you can have so much institutional backing? And still you have people like, you know, this David Margui and the rest of the corporate media, kind of looking at these views as extremists. Is it just, have we come to the point where we have taken, we just decided that all of international law and all international human rights groups are somehow insane leftist communist revolutionaries? Or what's going on?

Well, no, these people are careerists. They, you know, they serve. Their goal is not to do journalism or convey the truth, their goal is to advance their career. And they don't really want to run into problems with powerful entities like the Israel lobby. And I'm sure he's going to be,

the next time he shows up in Canberra at the press club, they'll all buy him a drink. Their careerists, that's it. That is, and they will twist and spin and lie and prevaricate to protect their career. That's what I want.

I mean, I smelled it almost immediately. And, I mean, I just said, I spoke that night at a big gathering. And I said, you know, Australia has produced some of the greatest journalists of our era. Julian Assange, John Pilger, and they've produced some of the worst. I was actually thinking of Murdoch. And also Marr. I mean, they're just scum these people. And I fought them my whole career.

They're the kind of people who, whenever, whatever war I covered, I mean, he isn't, I don't think he's ever left a studio his whole life. He's a comment, he's not really a journalist. But, you know, he's the kind of reporter that would just, we call them handout men. You know, couldn't, you know, get themselves to the embassy fast enough. And it does a tremendous damage for those of us who are out in the field. I mean, that's why I empathize so much for the Palestinians. So when I covered the war in El Salvador, I did not work for the the New York Times, and the woman who did work for the New York Times never went out in the field. I mean, she was awful. And so her reporting had the effect of discrediting or questioning the reporting of those of us who actually went out, it was dangerous, of course, into the countryside to document what was happening. And we were, when I got to El Salvador in the early 80s, the death squads were killing between 700,000 people a month. So my anger, look, I don't have any problem with somebody deciding not that they don't want to take the risks of going into a war zone. That's quite a rational normal. I mean, we all, those of us who do this kind of stuff,

have obvious character defects. But they shouldn't be there because what they're doing is essentially blunting, if not obscuring completely the truth. And that's, and that's the world he comes out of. You spoke about the rank and often conscious cynicism of the journalists covering Israel. They know full well Israel is lying to them. What interests me is the level of self-delusion about oneself that David Marr evinces. The seeming dogged, sincere belief in the neutrality and objectivity of the press exactly as Jomsky laid out you know if you didn't believe this you wouldn't be here i'm not saying you're lying you wouldn't be in the position you're in right right you know now many decades have have passed since manufacturing consent and necessary illusions

and those analyses and the media landscape has gotten even more craven more obviously profit driven the careerism is is i mean the corruption is has seeped much deeper do you think someone like David Marr actually believes that he's part of a noble, intrepid, you know, confrontational, oppositional profession? Or what's the, I mean, how much cognitive dissonance are you dealing with when you're dealing with someone like that? Yeah, I know, you know, look at the way he questioned me. So it was very condescending. Yes. Very patronizing. Yes. And he was going to school me on what it meant to be a journalist. I mean, he has no concept of what it means to be a journalist. And I think that that kind of arrogance was something I constantly ran into in the New York Times. So it just seemed to, the more

mendacious they were, the more arrogant they were. And I think they do, because remember, these people run in these closed circles of power, where they are lauded, where, you know, the Washington Bureau of any paper, but particularly the New York Times, they, you know, have private dinners, and maybe not with Trump, but before, with Biden at the White House. So Tom Friedman and Nick Christoff, and they love it. They love power. They love being stroked by power. Power tells them they're important. I mean, Netanyahu does this. I've heard him do it to Friedman. And of course they're being used by power, and I think probably behind their back, you know, power doesn't view them with much respect, but these people get off on being close to the

centers of power, and they're not going to do anything to alienate those centers of power because that's what they like. So, you know, when I was overseas, I always was fighting two entities. One was whatever government it was, whether it was the Salvadoran military or the Israeli government or Bosnian Serbs, wherever I was. you're fighting those centers, but you're also fighting your Washington Bureau. You're fighting those reporters. All they ever do, you know, we call it the, all they do is do lunch. That's it. And they were being, they're leaked all sorts of garbage. I have Stone said these reporters no more than I do, but most of it is wrong. And so, to neutralize the kind of reporting that I was

doing out of Gaza would be a good example, they'd run something out of the Jerusalem Bureau. And the Jerusalem reporters never wanted to go to Gaza. In fact, if they ever went to Gaza, they would get up early in the morning and drive across the era's checkpoint and stay for two hours to get the dateline with a cook story they already had and rushed back. I lived in Gaza. Gaza's not that big. It's only 20 miles long. But if you want to go down to Rafa or Hannaunis in the south, because of the congestion and time, you can't get back to Jerusalem in time to have dinner at the King David Hotel. or wherever the LA had dinner.

So I already saw that. And then the Washington Bureau, so that was one way they, in the name of objectivity, they would neutralize the reporting we were doing on the ground. The other way, and it was the only time this happened

in any conflict I covered, was, let's say Israel and I was in Gaza when it was bombed by Israeli warplanes. So I would go to Jabalya where they bombed and always they were bombing usually Israel would say

they had carried out a strike against a surgical strike against a bomb-making factory and I would count the bodies including children and then what the New York Times often had a habit of doing is every other paragraph they would insert what the IDF was saying

so by the end of that story you can just believe whatever you want to believe I'm surprised they didn't insert the IDF's comments about you into your byline Chris Hedges whom the IDF says is a lying anti-semit and there you go yeah I mean it is it's interesting you know just talking about the way in which the media you know continues of course to hold water for you know Israel and of course you know you talk about the you know every other

sentence being like and here's the Hezbara to refute that and here's the Hezbarra to refute that And, you know, over the last two years, I think people who maybe didn't have an interest or, you know, didn't know what was going on were seeing in real time the way in which the media, you know, is hand in hand with the Israeli military in terms of the headlines would just be the lie. And, you know, printing out the lie up top is, you know, is not journalism. And it is, it was, you know, just amazing watching this guy, David Marr, talk to you as if journalism is when you have one story that is a lie, and then two days later, you tell the truth in the rest of the story. I've just never seen this level of corruption. That was an important point.

So the initial story is reported just the way Israel wants it. So, for instance, when Shrine Ablaakla was assassinated by an Israeli soldier, how was it presented. She was killed by Palestinian militants in a crossfire. And then I think it was Bates Selim, many days, a few days later, and the IDF released footage of the supposed militants who killed her. And Bid Selim, I think it was Bade Selim, checked the video, and those militants were nowhere near where she was killed. In the same way that early on in the genocide, there was a big explosion. It wasn't Shifa, it may have been Nasser. I don't remember which hospital. And Israel claimed that it was errant Palestinian rockets.

But when, I think, it may have been the New York Times in a rare moment of honesty. Check the timestamp, it didn't correlate with when the rockets were fired. So in the initial, the problem is that with Shereen, you know, finally months, I think it was a few months. Later, Israel admitted that she was killed by an IDF soldier. But by then, the stories moved on. That's the game. Right. That's the tactic. And that always happens. And so these initial reports are the ones that stick. They're the ones that define it. Remember that tragic incident, it was, I think, in Gaza at the Netsreem Junction, several years ago with a father protecting his son who was killed, the young boy who was killed. I mean, the lies that Israel spewed out, including that he was still alive, that it would make footage. I mean, it's just shameless.

And we all know it's not true, but we also know, I'm speaking generally as a member of the press, we also know the cost. We know the cost of challenging the lie. And it's a cost most media organizations and most journalists do not want to pay. David Maher thinks that real journalism is reporting the lies verbatim with a mildly quizzical tone or even just a look on your face. Like, is it true who can know? And my favorite part actually of the interview, whereas he tried to get you at a certain moment. He's like, Chris, when was the last time you were in Gaza? And you said, well, 20 years ago before the closure, before the siege. And he's like, well, don't you think we should be listening to people who have

been on the ground more recently? And you're like, yes, that's who I'm saying is being murdered and that our colleagues in the media are enabling and sometimes outright calling for, baying for their blood. And he just, it was unbelievable the, the density of this, uh, this aesthetic, this, what can I say? He has, he has an aesthetic patina of intelligence, but he's a total twit. Right. And a total tool. What I always find, you know, interesting about the way in which the mainstream media and, you know, mainstream journalists at big journalistic institutions, like the New York Times, talk about Palestinian journalists. They do it in a way in which it's clearly coded in racism, this idea that a Palestinian journalist can never be an unbiased

journalist due to the fact that they are Palestinian. They're inherently biased. You, having worked in, you know, actual newsrooms, was this kind of... of racism or bigotry or whatever you want to call it. Was this something that was ever spoken out loud? Did you have conversations with people and go, wow, this is someone who does not believe Palestinians are capable of honesty? Or is this just sort of implied? And you just kind of, it's almost like a reflex, like an unconscious or subconscious reflex to

be racist towards these people. No, it's completely assumed. So you had John Simpson of the BBC, and I'm quoting, the world needs honest, unbiased, eyewitness reporting to help people make up their minds about major issues of our time. This has so far been impossible in Gaza. Yeah.

So the whole assumption that Western reporters, that if Western reporters in Gaza would improve, is ridiculous, because trust me, it wouldn't. They, unlike the Palestinian journalists, would fill their broadcasts or their print publications with all sorts of Israeli garbage. It would be better, obviously, to have Western reporters there. But the idea that Western reporters are somehow, you know, more honest, more reliable, that's what's, and I think that quote illustrates precisely that point.

It is completely racist. Look, I've been on, I was on the ground in Gaza. I was on the receiving end of this stuff. I work with my Palestinian colleagues, who I have tremendous respect for. Not only that, in every war that I covered, I worked with reporters, really courageous reporters who were Salvadoran or were Bosnian or whatever. And I just, and took tremendous risks, did not have the resources that I had, especially as a New York Times correspondent, and were really courageous, honest reporters with

tremendous integrity, and just see them dismissed with the arrogance of their Western colleagues. And it is racist to the core. If there were Western journalists allowed into Gaza, Israel would, I'm very sure, create a whole cell of media collaborators. They would train Palestinians in Gaza who have been being blackmailed for this or that to be the go-to interview subjects about how much they hate Hamas. about how much they envy Tel Aviv's LGBTQ nightlife, you know. Right. Yeah, just a press corps filled with the Nasdailies, you know.

Yeah, and Mosab, whatever his name is. Yeah, Mosab, Hassan Yusuf. Yeah, it is, you know, it's really interesting talking about the media landscape, especially, because it's only gotten more dire in terms of what we can and cannot talk about. And there is sort of this, I don't know, optimistic hope that I think a lot of people have had for the last two years, which is that you can only sustain this sort of like alternate reality that the mainstream media is trying to create for so long before people, you know, it's like when people say, we don't know what's going on in Gaza because we have no Western journalists.

And it's like, there are journalists in Gaza and they're showing you what's going on. So the people are seeing it and the mainstream institutions are ignoring it or calling it somehow, you know, propaganda. A lot of people have assumed that, well, eventually what this means is that the truth will get out and all of these institutions will accept the realities of what Zionism is, what Israel is, you know, perpetrating. And instead, what we're actually seeing is the degradation of sort of liberal media, you know, which of course has been degraded for a long time, and the rise of a right-wing Zionist media that is Trump aligned and seems to now be just buying up everything in sight. But at least it's free, Matt. The press? The press is free. The press is free.

Free, free, the press. From the river to the sea. So I actually, the free press. And Barry Weiss, of course, is one of those people who were baying for the blood of Palestinian journalists and was not so indirectly connected to the death of not a journalist, but a scholar and poet, Rafat Alar here. Are we going to talk about the free press, Matt? And if so, should we take a break? Yes. And we will.

And we should. So everyone, please stick around. There's going to be a break, but don't worry. We'll be right back. And we're back. This is about as Barra, World's Most Moral Podcasts here with Chris Hedges. How you doing, Chris? I'm good, I'm good.

Good, good, good. Like we were talking about before the break, I want to talk about the recent, just rampant consolidation of right wing and specifically Zionist. you know, media companies or media billionaires becoming even more consolidated. We're going to talk about this recent report by the New York Post, which, I mean, this is crazy given the last few weeks of media merger news. But according to the posts, the Trump administration likes Paramount Skydance in race to buy Warner Brothers discovery. And then, in quotes, points to the Ellison's. I do have to say this recent report by the New York Post is a phrase I find difficult to say, a report by the post.

But I guess they do some reporting. Well, it's a post. It's a post by the New York Post. Yeah. So, yeah, this is reported, first of all, that Warner Brothers Discovery is up for sale. They are trying to sell it this week, which is I don't understand the urgency, but it is something they're trying to do. It's probably related to this. The Trump administration favors Paramount Skydance to buy Warner Brothers Discovery and a number of rival bidders are likely to face stiff hurdles from U.S. regulators in the blockbuster auction on the money has learned, on the money as it gets New York Post.

That puts Paramount Skydance, the newly formed media giant headed by CEO David Ellison, the son of Software Magnate, and longtime Trumpbacker Larry Ellison, clearly in the Catbird seat as Warner Brothers Seat as Warner Brothers Discovery kicks off a process to sell itself this week, according to a government official with direct knowledge of the matter. Quote, who owns Warner Brothers Discovery

is very important to the administration, a senior Trump administration official told on the money. The Warner Board needs to think very seriously, not just on the price competition, but which player in the suitor pool has been successful getting a deal done? And that points to the Ellison's, the senior administration official said.

I, like, this is coming off of the recent acquisition of, I mean, the Ellison's at this point. This would make Larry Ellison and David Ellison. Their media holdings would include Paramount, MTV, Comedy Central, TikTok, and CBS, which just recently bought the free press and put Barry Weiss in the driver's seat over there. Looking at this kind of media landscape, it's very, it leaves me, I guess, a little bit kind of confused at how to feel because on the one hand

mainstream media institutions like CBS News have been doing nothing but degrading their coverage and doing nothing but carrying water for empire for a long time and then you see hostile takeovers essentially like this where Barry Weiss is put in there

and is saying why do people think we're biased and like how how does this, how is one supposed to feel about this? Because on the one hand, you know, I don't like institutional media. On the other hand, this feels worse. Yeah, well, it's a bunch of fanatics saying you haven't been obsequious enough. Right. And that's, so, you know, the mainstream media has approval ratings, you know, about as low as Congress with good reason. But you don't

worry about Barry Weiss. She and Allison are going to destroy what's left of CBS. Right. She's a total nut case. She has no journalistic experience. Go back and look at the free press. It's just one conspiracy theory and, you know, highly inaccurate, if not completely false narratives that, of course, assiduously serve the Zionist narrative. No, she, they will, they'll bring it down. They don't have any answer left, the Israel lobby and the Zionists. And so they're attempting to seize media. organizations. Isn't CNN on the list that Allison may grab to? Yeah. Yeah. I think so. If they get Warner Brothers Discovery, then they get CNN and they get HBO. I mean, it's all of the streaming services that aren't Disney. Yeah. So, and what are they going to do? It's just naked censorship. I mean, because they don't, they can't, it's not an issue that can debate anymore. Right. It's, you know, everybody's watched the genocide for two years.

And so they'll just shut it down. Right. But what they'll do is, and they'll create a kind of echo chamber for their right-wing kind of proto-fascist groups, but they will essentially sever themselves from the vast majority of the population, which is already kind of tired of the crap that these media organizations, are spewing out. Right. And, you know, it's for those who need background on Ellison, who we've discovered, or sorry, who we've talked about before on this podcast, both Larry and David are very prominent Zionists and Israeli and Israel donors. So, I mean,

well, to friends of the IDF, millions of dollars. Yes. So, you know, these billionaires subsidized the Israeli military through a U.S. nonprofit. And in this piece, it says, the largest donation to F-I-D-F may have come in 2017 when Larry Ellison, the co-founder and chairman of Oracle, who was worth over $200 billion, gave the group $16.6 million. Ellison also donated $10 million in 2004. F-F to the IDF, am I right? Yeah. Friends, friend.

If you give $26.6 million, how many children does that kill? Right, exactly. I mean, I'm sure they have someone doing that math. Meanwhile, here's a video of Larry Ellison at the 2014 Friends of the IDF Gala talking about, you know, his view of Israel. What is your connection to this book? Well, the renewal of the Jewish state is something that I think touches all. all of us. For 2,000 years, we were stateless people.

It touches some of us in different ways than others. Yeah, is a good touch or bad touch, Larry? Yeah, yeah. I would like to know. Yeah, sometimes it double taps some of us. Right. Now we have a country of our own defended by all the brave men and women of the ID. Some move there, fucker.

So anything we can do to support them who, you know, devote their lives for preserving the state of Israel. keeping the people safe and allowing our state to continue in in very sometimes in very difficult situations so the guy has a Botox related speech impediment right isn't he like in his 80s yeah yeah yeah yeah I mean that guys had a little little work done yeah I mean listen this is uh this is why you know you donate to the friends of the IDF a few of those IDF soldiers become plastic surgeons and then you get free plastic surgery for us IDF stands for I do faces. I do faces.

And his son, David Ellison, is the same, is no different. So, you know, there was recently a letter signed by 5,000 entertainment industry workers. They signed the Film Workers for Palestine letter that called for a boycott to Israeli film festivals and institutions complicit in the genocide. Paramount was the one company that actually publicly condemned it. Ellison personally defended, you know, his decision to go public in condemning this letter. Alison, David Ellison, was also in a leaked email in 2025, shows between him and the Israeli Foreign Minister, Defense Minister, Benjamin Gantz, actually recruited David Ellison in 2015 to

support a covert Israeli government program called the, quote, Counter BDS Initiative. And the program was trying to get Black Cube to spy and disrupt pro-Palestine activists. Ah, good. Benny Gantz, stalwart of the anti-Nat-Nat-Nehou, alternative to Israeli right-wing fascism. God, I love the liberal cohort in the Knesset. But, yeah, it's so, it's, you know, this is a very public, you know, pro-Israel. Zionist takeover of a lot of media in a media landscape that has always felt very pro-Israel. Do we get to the point now where people are going to tune out?

Or do you think that this consent manufacturing machine is just, like, how invincible is this? No, I think people will tune out. But that doesn't mean the censorship will stop. Right. So the media landscape, I love Chomsky's book, but the media landscape's different from when Chomsky analyzed it, he and Ed Herman, because now it's silo. So the New York Times is siloed, NPR is siloed, Fox is siloed. What do you mean by siloed?

Siloed, it caters to a particular demographic. It doesn't seek to reach a broad audience the way, when I began, you had three major networks, you had a paper like the New York Times, they were trying to cross the political spectrum and reach everyone. That's over. Now they're trying to, the figures are, you know, in 90-something percent of the readers of the Times identify as Democrats. That's true for NPR. I think it's 87 percent or something. Fox is the opposite with the, you know, most of their people identifying as Republicans. And the problem with that is that, and you see it, like with the New York Times. So they know, and then of course they've lost advertising, print advertising.

Right. Digital subscribers don't pay as much. They're also very fickle. They will, they're more apt to cancel their subscription. So when Trump was first elected, the digital subscriptions to the Times rocketed it upwards. And they did all sorts of surveys that said most of those people signed on because they hated Trump. So what did you get? You got two years of the fantasy of Russiagate. Trump is a Russian asset. That's not why Trump was elected. Trump was elected because the Democratic Party and the liberals sold out the working class. Right. If you want to kind of do it with 30 million mass layoffs. I mean, it really doesn't take – I mean, that's political science 101, not that you're going to get it at most universities.

Right. But they slogged it. They did this thing called – they did this podcast on – on a – it was all done with – he was from Canada, actually, a hoaxter who said he was a member of ISIS. Oh, yes, yes. That's right. They had crucified people on crosses. I mean, people, those of us have come out of the Middle East realized immediately. This was garbage. There was no price to pay for that because it's what their readers, it caters to the prejudices and the opinions of their readers. And that makes commercial sense, but that has really eroded journalistic and

within these organizations. I mean, Fox has always done this. And then you have had, you know, the reporting since October 7th is been appalling in the Times. Right. Oh, massive, 5,000-word pieces that are just fiction and spun by Israel. Yeah. I don't think the Times, as far as I know, Because in the Israeli press, which ironically has been more honest, it's been clear that probably several hundred Israelis were killed on October 7th by the IDF. I mean, they bombed eras, I think with hellfire missiles because militants had taken it over or a moss fighters had taken it. But there were dozens of soldiers in there. Any car that was headed back to Gaza, many with Israelis were bombed. You know, and in the kibbutzs, and they were giving these tours, there were giant whole walls were blasted away in houses from tank, obviously, from tank shells or from explosive devices that these fighters did not have. I don't think that's ever been, as far as I know, the Times has never, never bothered to report that.

So, you know, probably the last mention of Hannibal in that paper had something to do with the Silence of the Lambs franchise. There you go. That's right. You know, you talk about the sort of, you know, giving the readers what they want. It's almost like it's an understandable impulse of any, like, profit-making organization, right? You know, it is not to excuse it for journalists because they are not, you know, these are supposed to be independent institutions that do journalism. But what I find fascinating about the last two years is watching, you know, the New York Times

and a lot of other, like, liberal news outlets, not giving anyone what they want. In fact, the only people they're giving what they want are the Israeli government and the billionaires. And I guess, you know, that to me signals something sort of even more frightening. You know, it's one thing to have audience capture where it's just like, my audience wants anti-Trump stuff, we're going to print anti-Trump stuff. it's another thing entirely to to be completely funded um by ideological Zionist extremists who are going to continue pumping out this propaganda whether or not their your readership wants it and that you know i'm not sure how to feel about it because on the one hand i think people do you know look at media very cynically now and understand that

they're being lied to. On the other hand, a lot of people just believe what they read if it's got a New York Times, you know, Mastead over it. So I, you know, it concerns me the fact that we've got people like, you know, Larry Ellison and David Ellison, who are now going to be actively pumping propaganda into the, into the streaming services. Yeah, but it was a really interesting, I can remember where I read it, and it was probably, I think it was, may have been the Israeli press, because I read R had some other Israeli papers. But they fully understand they've lost that battle of trying to hold up the myth of the Zionist state and all that kind of stuff. And I think they were referring to TikTok.

And they said that the way in is not to essentially try and defend Israel, but demonize Muslims. Right. So I think that when you look at the propaganda, that's probably how they'll go. I think they realize they can't salvage themselves, but they are going to spend a lot of energy. humanizing Muslims and those of us who support. I mean, of course, Palestinians, I think, are 12% Christians, but those of us who attempted to cry what's being done in the Muslim world, which for seven years, I attempted to report that reality.

So I think that's what we'll see. We'll see really dirty black propaganda attempting less in terms of defending Israel, because I think Israel's cachet is gone, but really demonizing, and we're seeing it with the Trump administration. So they are, you know, these homegrown domestic terrorists. It doesn't just include Antifa. It includes people who challenge these attacks by ICE goons, and it includes people who defend Palestine. I mean, they're just deported. I hear it's going to include New York City City Hall.

I mean, the demonization. The demonization of Mamdani's Muslim identity is, I think, once he, inshallah, gets in. Well, you'll have the twin forces of the billionaire class doing everything to destroy him, the way the wealthy corporations destroyed Allende in Chile, and the demonization of him as a Muslim, without question. Look what they did did Jeremy Corbin. I mean, that was the Zionist lobby. Unfortunately, Jeremy Corbyn's too nice a guy. And, well, no, he kept saying I'm not an anti-semite. Oh, this person, I'll fire him.

You know, he didn't realize that this was not a discussion in good faith. But you'll see that kind of campaign against Mom Donnie without question. Well, yeah, he made that mistake. You give them a centimeter. They'll take a kilometer. Yeah. But fortunately, I hear actually the future of New York City that all of the billionaires who live in L.A. and London are going to leave New York. Oh?

And, you know, like, all these people, there's been all these accounts being like, if Mamdani wins, I'm out. And you look at their actual bio and, like, they do not live here. They just live in L.A. Well, no, who knows where they live? I went through Belgrave Square, you know, where they buy up the property. And it was a night, like, all the lights were off. Nobody was there.

Somebody owns them, but they don't live there. Yeah. Well, it certainly takes a rare kind of courage to stand up for what's right in time. like these. And Matt, I think we have a poem that captures, that really, I think, speaks to the necessity for telling unpopular truths, especially when truth is threatened. Absolutely. This was screenshoted by a friend of the podcast, Matt Bernstein, of the A Bit Fruitie podcast. And he found this on his Instagram feed, a famous poem reimagined. Daniel, do you want to read this for everyone?

I will. Can you hum the main theme from Schindler's List as I do so? Because that was the music. They literally, at the top, you can see there. It's like Coralman and John William. The Instagram post had that as its soundtrack. I don't know if you know it off the end. I'm trying to remember how the main theme of that went.

Maybe Adam can add it in post. Yeah. Well, we'll get copyright struck. Let me just hum Jerusalem of gold. I know that one. Thank you. That's great. Excellent. Okay.

First, they came for A-PAC donors, and I did not speak out because I was not an A-PAC donor. Then they came for ADL and A-G-C donors, and I did not speak out because I was not an ADL and A-JC donor. Then they came for Federation donors, and I did not speak out because I was not a Federation donor. Then they came for synagogue donors, and I did not speak out because I was not a synagogue donor. they came for me because of my Jewish last name and there was no one left to speak out for me time to speak up before it's too late

I love it when a poem has a moral at the end of it Martin Niemöller eat your heart out right just Dulce et decorum est ends with war as hell war bad

yeah that is that is really a beautiful I mean, you know, first they came for A-PAC. Next, they'll come for any of the other lobbies that we don't talk about while we're busy talking about A-PAC. What can you tell us about the original poem, Chris, and what? I mean, this is, it's such a, they're making a mockery of it. Yeah, well, this was the Niemöller. You know, first they came for the Jews, but I wasn't a Jew kind of thing.

Neymour led the Confessing Church, which was the underground anti-Nazi church. which, my mentor at Harvard Divinity School, James Luther Adams, who was at the University of Heidelberg in 35 and 36, joined. He dropped out. He joined it. He was part of that for a year until he was arrested by the Gestapo and expelled. But this is, of course, a complete inversion as if centers of power are those who are being targeted, when in fact, of course, it's all of us who are attempting to speak up.

up for the vulnerable and especially the Palestinians who are being silenced. Are you the world's first ordained journalist? No, Bill Moyers was ordained. Was he? He hit it a little better than I did. I mean, I don't wear it on my sleeve. I don't talk about it. You have the cadence.

When you speak, though, you have the cadence. I know. I've been criticized for that, but people should give me a great. I was trained. It's called homiletics. That's how I was trained. to speak. Bill was a Baptist minister. I love Bill, and his show on PBS was the last show that dealt seriously with power. But he was an ordained Baptist minister. But like me, he didn't talk about it

much. Yeah. I mean, I think it's great. The way you speak when you're giving a speech is fantastic. And luckily, even though you were not able to speak at the National Press Club of Australia, a copy of what you were going to say, the copy of the betrayal of Palestinian journalists on your substack, which we will link to, as well as a wonderful speech that you gave later, this was the Edward Said Awards? I actually gave that before. So I gave the Saeed lecture, and then they organized an event for me in Sydney, where I was allowed to give the address. that I would have given at the press club.

Yes, and we'll have that in the links in the show description so that everyone can see. And as if further consolation was needed, you've also, as a result of this cancellation from this piddling press organization, this alleged press organization, I loved your statement. You said you should at least take the word press out of your club. But now you've had the chance to be on the Bad Hasbara podcast, which any, any, you know, intrepid, serious stuff. you know, a practitioner of the craft and art of journalism. Of course.

Salivate that. So, congratulations. A lifelong dream. Ever since you heard about it a couple of weeks ago. Ever since an Australian told you. Hey, you guys got fans in Australia. Come on,

they kept saying, you got to go on Bad Oursboro. I don't want to say. Yeah, I don't do with the exit. All right, you got to buy a bit age, boring, yay. Sorry. Australians, you can do my voice. anytime. Hey, look, I had two hours free and I saw a kangaroo, so the trip was a success.

It all worked out. That's all you really need. Chris Hedges, thank you so much for coming on the Bad Hasbarra podcast. Where can people find your work? Everything is on chrishedges.substack.com, including the stuff that's on the YouTube channel. All right. So check that out. It will be in the show description. Chris, please come back. Next time, you know, Pierce tries to invite you, take that as a cue to go back on this podcast. Okay. And thank you to everyone out there for watching, for listening. Please subscribe.

Please go to patreon.com slash bad hasbara. And please email at us with questions, comments, concerns, badasbara, gmail.com. All right, everyone. Thanks again so much for listening. And until next time, from the river to the sea. I reckon we need to throw David Marr on the bobby. That's pretty close. That has a pretty good accent.

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