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In a stark warning about the collapse of organized dissent, Chris Hedges argues that the U.S. has entered an age of authoritarian consolidation, where meaningful resistance must be rebuilt from the ground up.
In this vital speech journalist and author Chris Hedges examines why mass movements in the United States have become so difficult to sustain—and why rebuilding them is now a matter of survival. He describes a society fractured by division, distraction, economic precarity, and an omnipresent surveillance state enforced by militarized police. These conditions, he argues, have hollowed out the capacity for collective action just as authoritarian power accelerates.
Hedges traces the historic rise and fall of the American left, noting its strength before World War I and again during the 1930s collapse of capitalism. While the 1960s produced powerful movements—civil rights, anti-war, feminism, Indigenous and gay liberation—he argues they largely severed ties with organized labor. Since the early 1970s, particularly following the Powell Memo, corporate power has methodically dismantled these movements, leaving the left defenseless in the face of oligarchic rule. Today, Hedges says, the Democratic Party is nonfunctional, while the Republican Party has become “a cult around the demagogue Trump.”
He warns that the current assault on civil liberties is a preview of what lies ahead under climate breakdown—what he calls a coming “rule of barbarity.” Climate collapse, he argues, will drive mass migration from the Global South to the North, met not with humanitarian response but with a “climate fortress” mentality: militarized borders, resource hoarding, and the dehumanization of migrants. The message from power, he says, is clear—some lives are expendable.
Hedges stresses that effective resistance is neither spontaneous nor symbolic. It requires disciplined, long-term organizing—much like union-building—rather than fleeting “flash mobs.” He points to examples that genuinely threatened power and were therefore met with brutal repression: Italian dockworkers refusing to load weapons, climate activists shutting down Britain’s M25 motorway, and groups like Palestine Action disrupting arms manufacturers and facing criminalization as a result.
The true source of power, Hedges concludes, is the ability to strike. That is why organized labor has been systematically crushed, leaving fewer than 10 percent of U.S. workers unionized and many legally unable to withhold their labor. With expanded ICE funding, detention centers, visa revocations, and the branding of “Antifa” as a terrorist organization, the state is laying the groundwork to criminalize all radical dissent. There will be no rescue from the Democratic Party, he argues. The task ahead is to “begin at zero”—to rebuild mass movements under conditions more hostile than at any point in modern American history.
(Transcript – Edited for Readability)
This is from William Astor: Forces within U.S. society work to keep people divided along partisan—blue/red—lines. People are distracted: screens everywhere, fluff and “stuff” news, and a population that is economically downtrodden—low wages, expensive healthcare, and so on.
So the question becomes: Is it possible to mobilize a mass movement under such conditions—especially with militarized police forces and an increasingly intrusive surveillance state?
It’s extremely difficult, which is why I’m so worried.
The left in this country was once very robust—especially on the eve of World War I, and again with the breakdown of capitalism in the 1930s. But the left took on a different shape during the 1960s, one that unfortunately divorced itself largely from labor.
Even so, those movements—the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement (both of which my father was a part of), the gay rights movement, AIM, the Indigenous rights movement, the feminist movement—all of these created blowback or pushback against the dominant forces in society. And since the early 1970s, particularly following the Powell Memo—which I’ve written and spoken about before—there has been a steady war to destroy all of them.
So we are very weakened at a time of rising authoritarianism. We now have corporate and oligarchic control over the two major parties. The Democratic Party doesn’t function as a party. The Republican Party is a cult around the demagogue Trump.
Yes, this is a very perilous moment. That’s why I took the time to go to Italy—and brought a film crew—because I think the Italians have shown us the only mechanism we have left to protect our rapidly eroding civil liberties and to halt what I would call genocide.
That genocide is a template for what’s coming with climate breakdown. It is a rule of barbarity. It is the evisceration of the rule of law. And it’s a message that the Global South understands.
As the climate crisis exacerbates, you will have tens—hundreds—of millions of people attempting to migrate to save themselves from ecocide. And I think the climate fortresses of the North—through Gaza—have delivered a message: We will stop at nothing to eradicate you, destroy you, and protect our hold over resources and wealth—our disproportionate control of resources and wealth. Your lives don’t matter.
So yes, we have to develop a kind of militancy and mass organization. But you’re right—there are many mechanisms working against this: wholesale surveillance, militarized police, all of the tools of control that were once confined to the outer reaches of empire are now being used against us.
If you look at the border with Mexico, or in Greece or other places, all of the technologies that were “battle-tested” on Palestinians are now being used against migrants—and increasingly against dissidents. You saw Sikh farmers protesting in India, and suddenly overhead were Israeli drones dropping tear gas.
Question:
What are your specific prescriptions for mass demonstrations against Trump that have more effect than the walks with signs that seem fruitless?
Response:
Effective resistance—or effective mass mobilization, as any effective union will tell you—requires months and months of preparation.
You can create flash mobs, but the state doesn’t care about flash mobs. It cares about the kind of resistance that took place in Italy, where dock workers refused to load weapons onto ships bound for Israel. That requires education. It requires continuity. It’s not just one action—it’s about mobilizing to disrupt the machinery, in this case of genocide, but ultimately the machinery of the state and the machinery of commerce.
A good example of this is Just Stop Oil. They shut down the M25 motorway. This provoked a very harsh response from the UK government. Roger Hallam—one of the founders of Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil—was given a five-year prison sentence, even though he wasn’t physically on the motorway.
You also see the criminalization of Palestine Action, which disrupted Elbit Systems—UK-based weapons manufacturers producing arms for Israel. When resistance is effective, the state responds very harshly. That’s how you know it’s effective.
But we have to build those kinds of movements.
The only power we have is the power of the strike—the ability to strike. That’s why oligarchs and corporations have worked so assiduously to break organized labor. Less than 10 percent of the American workforce is unionized, and many of those are public-sector workers who can’t even strike.
So we have to step outside the system. The Democratic Party—as I’ve said repeatedly, year after year—is not going to save us.
In many ways, we’re beginning at zero, which is terrifying given the rapid consolidation of control by the authoritarian state: massive funding of ICE, the construction of detention centers, stripping green-card holders and student visa holders of their rights, declaring Antifa a terrorist organization—which is ridiculous.
Most of the Antifa people I know are white kids living in their mother’s basement in Eugene. The idea that they’re terrorists is absurd. Yes, they may throw a trash can through a window, but calling them a terrorist organization is a way to demonize the so-called radical left.
We saw this rhetoric after the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Antifa is just the first step. Any form of political resistance will be criminalized—just as Palestine Action has been criminalized in the UK.
Chris Hedges
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor, and NPR. He is the host of show The Chris Hedges Report.
He was a member of the team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for The New York Times coverage of global terrorism, and he received the 2002 Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism. Hedges, who holds a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School, is the author of the bestsellers American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle and was a National Book Critics Circle finalist for his book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. He writes an online column for the website ScheerPost. He has taught at Columbia University, New York University, Princeton University and the University of Toronto.
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