Statement on the attempted assassination of Trump

By Chris Hedges / X

Assassination of Trump would not eliminate the yearning of tens of millions of people—many of whom were shaped by the Christian right—for a cult leader. Most leaders of the Christian right have cultivated their own cult followings. These Christian fascists embraced magical thinking, attacked their enemies as agents of Satan, and condemned reality-based science and journalism long before Trump did. Cults are a product of social decay and despair, and our decay and despair are spreading and will soon explode in another financial crisis.

The efforts of the Democratic Party and large swathes of the press, including CNN and the New York Times, to discredit Trump as if he embodies our problems are futile. The smug self-righteousness of this crusade against Trump only adds to the national reality TV show that has replaced journalism and politics. This crusade seeks to reduce a social, economic and political crisis to Trump’s persona. It is accompanied by a refusal to confront and name the corporate forces responsible for our failed democracy. This collaboration with the forces of corporate oppression that have impoverished the working class, promoted endless wars, militarized our police, created the world’s largest prison system, licensed corporations to exploit the most vulnerable and transferred wealth upward into the hands of a billionaire class is emasculating the press, Trump’s critics and the Democratic Party.

Our only hope is to organize the overthrow of the corporate state that produced Trump. Our democratic institutions, including the legislature, the courts, and the media, are hostage to corporate power. They are no longer democratic. We must engage, like resistance movements of the past, in acts of sustained civil disobedience, especially strikes, and noncooperation. By directing our anger at the corporate state rather than Trump, we name the real sources of power and abuse. We expose the absurdity of blaming our downfall on demonized groups like undocumented workers, Muslims, African Americans, Latinos, liberals, feminists, gays, and others. We offer people an alternative to a bankrupt Democratic Party—whose presidential candidate is clearly in cognitive decline—that is a full partner of corporate oppression and cannot be rehabilitated. We enable the restoration of an open society. If we fail to embrace this militancy, which alone has the capacity to destroy cult leaders, we will continue the march toward tyranny.

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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 head of the newspaper’s Middle East and Balkans bureau. Before that, he worked abroad for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitorand NPR. He is the host of the show The Chris Hedges Report.

He was part of the team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting for The New York Times’ coverage of global terrorism and 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 bestselling American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War Against America, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of the Spectacle and was a finalist of the National Book Critics Circle for his book War is a force that gives us meaningHe 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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