27 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful but inside are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of uncleanness. 28 So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. [Matthew 23:27-28, NRSV]
Woe unto You, Scribes and Pharisees, James Tissot, 1886-94
Chris Hedges gives you the true face of the West.
In his professional life, Chris Hedges has seen first-hand the ruination of the earth, the wanton decimation of human lives, and the heartless creation of inhumane suffering across the globe. All this has flowed from the hideous character of Western hegemonic power. Chris Hedges finds this Western culture of violence intolerable. He is sick of the Western hypocrisy that wreaks havoc across the surface of the earth while presuming a high moral ground. He sees the pathological side of the Western civilization which cleverly places manufactured blames on others. He often speaks with furious criticism of this deranged and murderous West.
The West’s selective, enemy-specific, and insidious categorization of others as “terrorists” has been going on for way too long. Who, in reality, have actually been terrorizing the world since the Second World War? Historical records do not lie. The truth is right before our very eyes.
A civilised country is not the one at the cutting edge of technology but one that respects life, protects the earth as our common home, and promotes harmony, co-operation, and wellbeing of all peoples.
Back in 2003, as he fiercely criticized the profoundly insane American invasion of Iraq at a commencement speech, Christ Hedges had his mic turned off and was booed off the stage. Now, twenty years later, he is again on the right side of history, exposing the truth in powerful words what the rest of the world again sees daily – the continuing decades-long oppression of the Palestinian people in their homeland by migrant Jews, with the active connivance of the American-led West.
On December 6, 2023, Chris Hedges, a renowned author, foreign correspondent, and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, spoke in a lecture titled “The Genocide in Gaza” at The Sanctuary for Independent Media in North Troy, NY. As a former Middle East Bureau Chief for The New York Times, he covered the news in Israel and Palestine and for seven years lived in the Gaza siege. He knows what he is talking about. The talk was co-sponsored by Jewish Voice for Peace, Albany Chapter; Muslim Solidarity Committee and Project SALAM; Bethlehem Neighbors for Peace; Palestinian Rights Committee-Upper Hudson Peace Action; RPI Muslim Student Association; UAlbany Muslim Student Association; Women Against War.
In this most accurate description of western civilization, one may rightly wonder whether he isn’t summarising the entire history of the US, UK and Europe! Since the West took control of the world with military superiority, humanity has experienced the most horrible and cruel massacres, genocides, wars and colonisation. Colonialist and imperialist mentalities persist to this day, even though their forms may have morphed and cleverly camouflaged. For geostrategical interests, anything and everything is justified.
Chris Hedges’ full speech on “The Genocide in Gaza” may be viewed online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ly6lfhOxTe0&t=1004s.
Reproduced below is an excerpt from that impressive speech. This excerpted section is conveniently shown at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFylOIoLTI8&t=2s.
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When those who are occupied refuse to submit, when they continue to resist, we drop all pretense of our civilizing mission and unleash as in Gaza an orgy of slaughter and destruction.
We become drunk on violence.
We kill with reckless ferocity.
We become the beasts we accuse the oppressed of being.
We expose the LIE of our vaunted moral superiority.
We expose the fundamental truth about Western civilization.
We are the most ruthless and efficient killers on the planet.
This alone is why we dominate the wretched of the earth.
It has nothing to do with democracy or freedom or liberty. These are rights we never intend to grant to the oppressed.
Honor, justice, compassion and freedom are ideas that have no converts.
Joseph Conrad reminds us there are only people without knowing, understanding or feelings who intoxicate themselves with words, repeat words, shout them out imagining they believe them, without believing in anything else but profit, personal advantage and their own satisfaction.
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Chris Hedges nails it. As Samuel P. Huntington said in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order: “The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion […] but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” Martin Luther King Jr. advocated standing for what’s right: “A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true.” At the annual General Assembly of the UN last September, the Barbadian Prime Minister, Mia Mottley noted the ‘poly-crises’ with which the world is confronted and called for an urgent reset against the logic of hatred in the world.
These, and more, remind us of the chilling words the Gospel of Matthew (23:27-28) cites from the One who is the Way and the Truth and the Life (John 14:6). World leaders may make nefarious deals and barter human lives for profit. Their war planes may bomb indiscriminately the innocent and the displaced who have nowhere to turn save to cry to God for justice. How will they weigh on God’s ultimate scales of justice?
For his 2025 World Day of Peace message, Pope Francis’ chooses the theme of hope and forgiveness: “Forgive us our trespasses: grant us your peace”.
Copyright © Dr. Jeffrey & Angie Goh, January 2025. All rights reserved.
To comment, email jeffangiegoh@gmail.com.
