Activist walks a lonely path

Activist walks a lonely path

Anti-war liberal finds common cause with tea parties

By Ambreen Ali
Congress.org

Chris Hedges is a man of contradictions.

A former New York Times reporter who dodged bullets in El Salvador, Iraq and Bosnia, he's now a noted anti-war activist. And a longtime liberal, he now sympathizes with the tea-party movement.

It can be a lonely path, but it's not unusual for an intellectually driven activist to end up with strange bedfellows.

That's in part because they tend to divide the American public up along different lines than the standard conservative and liberal camps.

In his latest book , "Empire of Illusion," Hedges argues that the dividing line is literacy and awareness. For him, the problem is Americans who ignore injustice in favor of popular culture and consumerism.

"Our only hope is to build some kind of movement in the opposition," he said. "I don't see it happening [on the left]. I see it happening on the right."

Although he's an Ivy League graduate who lived overseas for years, Hedges said he can relate to the working class background of conservative activists because his relatives have lost manufacturing jobs in the mill towns of Maine.

He sees in the tea partyers the potential for a movement to "unlock the death grip that corporations have on the political system."

"The working class is beginning to realize that they are in a cul de sac," he said. "They believe the corporate state is utterly indifferent to their pain — and they're right."

But the tea parties have a different view of who to blame. Many of them are ardent believers in free markets and believe it's government that needs to be controlled.

Hedges dismissed that as rhetoric, saying that tea party activists don't actually want to cut programs like social security, Medicare, and unemployment.

"These people are easily manipulated because they don't understand the systems of power," he said.

Tea party activists take exception to allegations that their movement is controlled. They cite their decentralized, organic growth as proof that their frustration with the government is truly grassroots.

Mark Meckler, a Tea Party Patriots national coordinator, lives in California and often debates his liberal friends on this very issue. He questioned Hedges' classification of tea partyers as working class.

"That's leftist language that would never resonate with the tea parties," he said. "I don't see this as a holy war against corporations."

Meckler said he agrees that corporate control of government is bad, but the "first step always has to be control the government."

Meantime, Hedges' rhetoric has cost him friends on the left.

His frequent criticism of his liberal peers as ineffective don't always sit well. He accused the left of abandoning the working class, leaving them to find common cause with the tea parties.

After attending an antiwar teach-in on Capitol Hill last month, Hedges wrote a column describing the crowd of peace activists as "a motley collection of conspiracy theorists."

"The gathering, held in the Rayburn building, was a sober reminder of our insignificance," Hedges wrote, noting that few Congressional staffers or lawmakers came. Later, he said that the antiwar movement has been nonexistent for years.

Hedges has a bit in common with Christopher Hitchens, a prominent liberal whose views on religion and foreign policy have led him to agree with the far right at moments.

Hitchens' complex political views have put him in the awkward position of correcting a reporter on live television when she introduced him as a conservative.

But while they walk similar paths as activists, Hedges and Hitchens have sparred publicly . Their discussions over religion resulted in Hedges' book, "I Don't Believe in Atheists," which takes on secular liberals who are hardline critics of religion.

From the outside, it may seem like Hedges recently left his journalism career behind to focus on activism. But the way he sees it, he has always been an activist.

"You can't walk into war in El Salvador and be neutral," he said, referring to his first foreign correspondent stint in 1983. "That doesn't mean I took sides in terms of ideologies or groups. But I certainly saw it as my role to give voice to those who were the victims."

When Hedges returned to the U.S. permanently in 2003, it was after witnessing some of the most gruesome conflicts of the past decade. He never felt conflicted about sharing his opinions on who to blame in Israel, Bosnia, and Kosovo.

That approach didn't go over so well when he tried to opine on the Iraq war. He was booed during a graduation speech at Rockford College in Illinois when he tried to speak up against the conflict.

He also butted heads with editors at the New York Times and ultimately left the newspaper.

"My goal was never to build a career within a institution, and that gave me a freedom," he said. "I wasn't about to sell myself out."

Since leaving the Times, Hedges has spent his time writing a handful of books, teaching at Princeton University, writing for national magazines, and serving as a senior fellow at the Nation Institute. He also speaks at rallies and on college campuses.

"When I speak, and I speak a lot, I usually wear a suit. I am willing to at least appear as conventional as possible because I'm trying to get people to hear my message," he said.

These days, those speeches focus on the failings of the left to successfully protest under President Obama.

On this point, Hedges is not alone. Many liberals criticize their moderate flank for not speaking up against the continuing wars and economic problems.

"Our failing was that we got seduced by power," Hedges said. "The true correctives in American democracy ... never achieved political power."