Best maxjones Podcasts (2025)

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The Shared Mythological History of Israel and the US (w/ Joan Scott) | The Chris Hedges Report 51:19

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5d ago51:19

51:19

The narratives surrounding Israel and their genocidal campaign against the Palestinians took decades to create and embed into the West’s psyche. The Holocaust, decades after its end, became a central part of the Jewish and Israeli identity. Enemies of the Israeli state were conflated with Nazis. The physical location of Israel became essential to C…

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Facing the Climate Crisis and Human Mortality (w/ Eiren Caffall) | The Chris Hedges Report 46:52

12d ago46:52

46:52

In a world gripped by daily catastrophes, there is one that affects all but lacks the attention it deserves. The climate crisis — pervaded by ecological collapse, war, endless resource accumulation fueled by capitalism — is the issue of our time. The warning signs are there but as author Eiren Caffall tells host Chris Hedges, people are not able to…

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The Dark Money Game (w/ Alex Gibney) | The Chris Hedges Report 48:33

26d ago48:33

48:33

On this episode of The Chris Hedges Report, Chris Hedges speaks with filmmaker Alex Gibney about Gibney’s documentary series The Dark Money Game, which examines the “labyrinth of mirrors” that facilitates untraceable corruption through the American political system. Although both the Democratic and Republican parties have served the interests of th…

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The West Serves as Israel's Police (w/ Richard Medhurst) | The Chris Hedges Report 42:21

1M ago42:21

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Richard Barnard, Sarah Wilkinson, Asa Winstanley and Richard Medhurst. These are some of the canaries in the coal mine for what is to come in the West as the region’s elite quickly becomes Israel’s international police. Medhurst joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to talk about his own experiences in the United Kingdo…

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Israel’s Eradication of Gaza’s Healthcare System (w/ Dr. Feroze Sidhwa) | The Chris Hedges Report 1:04:58

1M ago1:04:58

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If anyone can witness the genocide in Gaza with utmost clarity, it would be medical professionals working there. Their accounts continue to be as harrowing as those of journalists and Gazans themselves, stripped of rhetoric and left with only raw truth. Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a general, trauma and critical care surgeon in California, has been to Gaza t…

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Emptying Gaza (w/ Norman Finkelstein) | The Chris Hedges Report 58:06

2M ago58:06

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Israel, both materially and rhetorically, has made their intent to destroy the Palestinian people clear. One of the most renowned and courageous Middle East scholars, Norman Finkelstein, has assiduously documented the Palestinian plight for decades and he joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report. Finkelstein and Hedges ass…

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The Economics of a Dying Empire (w/ Richard Wolff) | The Chris Hedges Report 48:54

2M ago48:54

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“These are levels of craziness that are part of the decline I suspect of all empires when they consume themselves,” Professor Richard Wolff says of America’s current situation in the outset of Donald Trump’s second term. He joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to discuss the history and rationale behind the decisions m…

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The Secret Military History of the Internet (w/ Yasha Levine) | The Chris Hedges Report 58:27

2M ago58:27

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The internet, from its inception, was created to be a tool of mass surveillance. It was developed first as a counterinsurgency tool for the Vietnam War and the rest of the Global South, but like many devices of foreign policy naturally it made its way back to U.S. soil. Yasha Levine, in his book Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of t…

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Erasing History: How Fascism Works (w/ Jason Stanley) 59:09

2M ago59:09

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Ever since the first Donald Trump administration, the word “fascism” has dominated discussion around Trump’s policies and ambitions to the extent of semantic satiation. Liberals and leftists often use fascism as a blanket term for anything right-wing politicians represent and Republicans equally use “communism” to denote Democratic or left-wing pol…

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America’s Constitutional Crisis (w/ Katherine Franke) | The Chris Hedges Report 43:18

2M ago43:18

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Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest and detention in a Louisiana ICE facility is a harbinger for a new authoritarian era of the United States. Khalil’s arrest, the capitulation of Columbia University against dissent and protest by its own students and the Trump administration’s threat of stripping the university of $400 million in grants if it does not meet it…

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Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal (w/ Mohammed el-Kurd) | The Chris Hedges Report 50:25

3M ago50:25

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Any account of the decades-long occupation of Palestine from a Palestinian is immediately expected to be refined within a specific lens to appeal to the pathos of Western society. Well meaning activists, journalists and politicians may intend to share the stories of Palestinians, but end up curating them into a digestible format, one adjacent to th…

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How the Media Walked us into Autocracy (w/ Ralph Nader) | The Chris Hedges Report 57:27

3M ago57:27

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The American corporate coup d'état is almost complete as the first weeks of the Trump administration exemplify. If there has been one person who saw this coming, and has taken courageous action over the years to prevent it, it would be Ralph Nader. The former presidential candidate, consumer advocate and corporate critic joins host Chris Hedges on …

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Chris Hedges: The World After Gaza (w/ Chris Hedges) | The Chris Hedges Report 51:38

3M ago51:38

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The Holocaust is the quintessential example of human evil for people in the West. In the rest of the world, especially in the Global South, the atrocity of the Holocaust — genocide — has had a closer proximity both in time and place. Colonialism in Africa, destructive wars in Asia and most recently, genocide in the Middle East, have shaped the live…

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One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This (w/ Omar El Akkad) | The Chris Hedges Report 52:53

3M ago52:53

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To the West, the concept of the rules-based order functions either as a list on paper to be ignored, or a strict set of laws to be weaponized. Omar El Akkad, Egyptian-Canadian novelist and journalist, has witnessed many instances, both in the West and in the Middle East, where banners of virtue are used to justify hypocritical behavior. El Akkad wr…

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Virtue Hoarders and the Rejection of Liberalism (w/ Catherine Liu) | The Chris Hedges Report 55:32

4M ago55:32

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The material needs of working class people in America continue to be obscured and co-opted by politicians and people claiming to know what’s best on both sides of the political aisle. While Republicans and right-wingers address some of these needs head on, they do so by luring people through empty rhetoric and culture war distractions. On the other…

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The ‘Diseased Body’ of the Middle East (w/ Farah El-Sharif) | The Chris Hedges Report 45:08

4M ago45:08

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Farah El Sherif, writer, academic and Visiting Scholar at Stanford, is uncompromisingly blunt in her assessment of the Middle East. The decades of repression faced by an entire people have produced a fragmented society—culturally and through colonially imposed borders. To help understand why the Muslim world is so broken, corrupt and full of contra…

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Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism (w/ Yanis Varoufakis) | The Chris Hedges Report 59:40

4M ago59:40

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The year 2008 signaled to many the weak foundations of modern capitalism in the hands of the greedy, untethered financial sector—the “vampire squid” investment banks as journalist Matt Taibbi called them. Rising from the ashes of the crash, these banks used government money—”socialism for the bankers”—to enrich themselves and Big Business. This mon…

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War on Gaza (w/ Joe Sacco) | The Chris Hedges Report 52:10

4M ago52:10

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Mary Shelley, in the preface to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein, writes, “Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos.” In the chaos of war and inequity, cartoonist Joe Sacco pioneered the first graphic illustration journalism. Sacco has covered some of the most devastating warzones such as in …

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America's Academic Gulag (w/ MIT Student Activists) | The Chris Hedges Report 58:31

5M ago58:31

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“You can't just sit there and build drones and not talk about who it's serving and who does it help,” says Richard Solomon, PhD student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and member of the Coalition for Palestine at MIT. On this episode of The Chris Hedges Report, Solomon and fellow MIT PhD student Prahlad Iyengar detail their battle agai…

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The Zionists Kill Doctors in Gaza and Silence Them Here (w/ Rupa Marya) | The Chris Hedges Report 37:04

5M ago37:04

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UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said, “The protection of hospitals during warfare is paramount and must be respected by all sides, at all times.” International law enshrines medical facilities as sanctuaries for those in direst need but as Dr. Rupa Marya tells host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report, Israel’s …

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Exposing Big Tech’s Complicity in Genocide | The Chris Hedges Report 49:19

5M ago49:19

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The vast censorship and suppression campaign launched by American tech companies since October 7, 2023 has been both systemic and deliberate. Instagram, Facebook, X as well as other tech platforms and companies like Google, Microsoft and Apple have actively worked to stifle information regarding the genocide in Gaza. Dissent against policies or ind…

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The Meaning of Christmas (w/ Rev. Munther Isaac) | The Chris Hedges Report 1:10:49

5M ago1:10:49

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In a case of tragic coincidence, the place most closely associated with the uplifting story of Jesus Christ, Christmas and the teachings of the Bible is now being subject to some of the most sustained and severe death and destruction that modern society has seen. Rev. Munther Isaac, the pastor at the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethleh…

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Enduring the Trauma of Genocide (w/ Gabor Maté) | The Chris Hedges Report 54:22

6M ago54:22

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While the trauma that Palestinians continue to face in Gaza is sustained, brutal and seemingly never-ending, the way people experience the effects of trauma has the potential to unite humanity as much as it divides the self. Dr. Gabor Maté, renowned physician and expert in trauma and childhood development, illustrates this point articulately and be…

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The Fall of Assad & What it Means for The Mid East (w/ Alastair Crooke) | The Chris Hedges Report 1:10:46

6M ago1:10:46

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The fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, ending a 55-year dynasty begun by his father, dramatically shifts the pieces on the chessboard of the Middle East. The rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), led by Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, is armed and backed by Turkey and was once allied with Al Qaeda. It is sanctioned as a terrorist group. Turkey’s p…

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A Rogue Reporter vs. The American Empire (w/ Matt Kennard) | The Chris Hedges Report 59:37

6M ago59:37

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The American material life is taken for granted. Things just appear. There is no consideration for what country the Empire destroyed to fuel their cars, which people are earning pennies inside sweatshops for their clothes or how many children’s hands touched the lithium in their phone batteries fresh out of the mine. The U.S. Empire makes sure thes…

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Stories from the Center of the World (w/ Jordan Elgrably) | The Chris Hedges Report 38:57

6M ago38:57

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The years of war and terror imposed upon the Middle East have left its people, as Jordan Elgrably tells host Chris Hedges, “tired of saying that [they’re] human too.” In this episode of The Chris Hedges Report, Elgrably discusses the stories that remind English-speaking Western readers of the humanity behind those from this often misunderstood and …

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Surveillance Education (w/ Nolan Higdon & Allison Butler) | The Chris Hedges Report 49:00

6M ago49:00

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Any technology created by the US military industrial complex and adopted by the general public was always bound to come with a caveat. To most, the internet, GPS, touch screen and other ubiquitous technologies are ordinary tools of the modern world. Yet in reality, these technologies serve “dual-uses”; while they convenience typical people, they al…

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Israel’s War on the Foreign Press (w/ Jeremy Loffredo) | The Chris Hedges Report 1:01:18

7M ago1:01:18

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Reporting from Israel in the aftermath of October 7th demands guts and courage. Censorship, rouge military personnel and an entire state hellbent on their goals of national security and ethnic cleansing spells a nightmare for journalists seeking to expose the truth. This nightmare became a reality for Grayzone reporter Jeremy Loffredo, who was deta…

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Do Not Vote for those Who Support Genocide (w/ Kshama Sawant) | The Chris Hedges Report 1:03:56

7M ago1:03:56

1:03:56

A truly representative and honest voice for the working class—one that takes part in the struggle, resists cozying up to the centers of power, makes tangible, material commitments rather than settling for empty rhetoric—is hard to find in the United States. Kshama Sawant, the socialist and former Seattle City Council member who won the battle for a…

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The World According to Trump (w/ Col. Lawrence Wilkerson) | The Chris Hedges Report 53:34

7M ago53:34

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Donald Trump will become the 47th president of the United States and given the host of global debacles the US has its hands in—ranging from the genocide in Gaza, to Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and Iran to the Ukraine war—nobody is quite certain what direction the country will take with the former president at the helm again. Joining host Chris Hedg…

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Genocide as Colonial Erasure (w/ Francesca Albanese) | The Chris Hedges Report 1:18:06

7M ago1:18:06

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“The crime of all crimes.” That is how the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda declared genocide in the final judgment of Prosecutor v. Akayesu, the case against the mayor of Taba, Rwanda for crimes against humanity. Today, that crime repeats itself as UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese painfully…

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The Escalating Crisis in the Middle East (w/ John Mearsheimer) | The Chris Hedges Report 49:47

7M ago49:47

49:47

Decades of Islamophobia, relentless propaganda campaigns and heavily financed lobbying efforts have made it difficult to understand the political realities of the Middle East. John Mearsheimer, prominent political scientist, University of Chicago professor and self-proclaimed realist, has consistently demonstrated the courage and ability to bypass …

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Dismantling the American Empire (w/ Cornel West) | The Chris Hedges Report 1:00:28

7M ago1:00:28

1:00:28

It is rare to hear a United States presidential candidate clearly and eloquently spell out the realities of the country — whether it’s the genocide in Gaza, rising economic inequality or the horrors of mass incarceration. Dr. Cornel West, renowned political activist, philosopher, public intellectual, author and now independent presidential candidat…

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Robert Fisk and the Great War for Civilization (w/ Lara Marlowe) | The Chris Hedges Report 58:55

8M ago58:55

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There is a careful art to good journalism. It involves not only seeing and writing what happens but also understanding the reason why, and the precedent that came before it. Empathy, combined with a cunning understanding of one’s environment and ability to talk to people are crucial instruments for a reporter hoping to get the whole story — not jus…

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The Secret History of Neoliberalism (w/ George Monbiot) | The Chris Hedges Report 49:40

8M ago49:40

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Watch this interview at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=see5c5Sgi14 The current world order is designed to be complex and confusing. Its function enshrines the power of our rulers, who purposely obscure its origins and underlying philosophy. Politicians, the media, so-called intellectuals at think tanks — along with the inertia of systemic falseho…

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Where Olive Trees Weep: Processing the Trauma of Occupation | The Chris Hedges Report 44:08

8M ago44:08

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The world has failed Palestine. The United States and European Union pay lip service to principles of human rights and democracy while providing limitless support to Israel’s genocidal project of ethnic cleansing and apartheid. Western media outlets censor reporting of Israeli atrocities, and international humanitarian organizations require that Pa…

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The Looming Catastrophe in the Middle East (w/ Gideon Levy) | The Chris Hedges Report 54:15

8M ago54:15

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Video and transcript available at: https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-looming-catastrophe-in-the-middle It has become quite rare to hear any meaningful accountability for Israel’s actions from Israeli citizens themselves. Israeli journalist Gideon Levy is an anomaly in Israel by today’s standards, as for his entire career he has challenged the …

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How Wokeness Kills Class Politics and Empowers Empire (w/ Christian Parenti) | The Chris Hedges Report 54:54

8M ago54:54

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Watch this interview, or read the transcript, at: Oftentimes the idea of “wokeness” or “woke” ideology, whether calling it as such or acknowledging its existence, can be thought of as coinage of the right wing. Christian Parenti, professor at John Jay College, journalist and author, joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report…

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The Systemic Roots of Western Islamophobia (w/ Peter Oborne) | The Chris Hedges Report 47:53

9M ago47:53

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Since the turn of the 21st century, the world has become deeply familiar with the global “war on terror.” Framed by the West’s ostensibly patriotic and “civilized” political narrative that conveniently expands their national security power and geopolitical interests, it also pins Muslims as savage, and Islam as a barbaric religion of people that wa…

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The Liberal Class’s Ultimate Betrayal (w/ Jimmy Dore) | The Chris Hedges Report 52:12

9M ago52:12

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Support my independent journalism at Substack: https://chrishedges.substack.com/ Follow me on social media: https://linktr.ee/chrishedges In his 2010 book, Death of the Liberal Class, Chris Hedges wrote “The fate of the liberal class is tragic. It has been annihilated by the corporate state it supported, while it willingly silenced radical thinkers…

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Campaigning Against Genocide (w/ Dr. Jill Stein & Butch Ware) | The Chris Hedges Report 47:34

9M ago47:34

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“Genocide is the moral imperative of our era,” declares Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein in this episode of The Chris Hedges Reports as she continues her campaign for the U.S. presidency. Joined by running mate, Professor Butch Ware, the two make their case as to why they should earn the vote of every disenfranchised American, stuck in…

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The Middle East's Roots Lie In the Fall of the Ottomans w/ Eugene Rogan | The Chris Hedges Report 1:07:18

9M ago1:07:18

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Modern borders represent mere lines in the sand when understanding the deep history behind the forces that drew them. In the contemporary Middle East, nations such as Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, and most notably Palestine, cannot be fully understood without delving into the region's intricate past—especially the pivotal role of the Ottoman Empire’…

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The Rise and Coming Demise of the Israel Lobby w/ Ilan Pappé | The Chris Hedges Report 1:19:52

10M ago1:19:52

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The Israel lobby wields some of the most influence over American politics than any lobbying group in Washington. As Ilan Pappé, the Israeli historian, professor and author, and host Chris Hedges detail in this latest episode of The Chris Hedges Report, the lobby’s rise to power consisted of diverging ideological factions uniting in pursuit of their…

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The Arab Jew Experience Exposes the Myths of Middle Eastern Antisemitism | The Chris Hedges Report 1:05:47

10M ago1:05:47

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A significant justification for Israel’s existence relies on the narrative that, because of the inherent and rabid antisemitism of Arabs and Islam, the Jews of the Middle East never had a home. Without Israel, it is said, these Jews would be left on the fringes of Middle Eastern societies, marginalized for an irrational prejudice against their reli…

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Israel's Mask Is Slipping (w/ David Hearst) 1:08:06

10M ago1:08:06

1:08:06

The latest chapter of Israel's occupation of Palestine has raged on for nearly the last year, marking a significant shift in the decades-long clash that has already initiated the demystification of the mythology behind Israel. Truth continues to be the first casualty of war in this particular struggle, as it has been massacred, through the killings…

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A Diary of Genocide w/ Atef Abu Saif | The Chris Hedges Report 1:04:17

10M ago1:04:17

1:04:17

In this first episode of the new and independent iteration of The Chris Hedges Report, Palestinian novelist Atef Abu Saif and Hedges explore Saif's experiences under siege by the Israelis in Gaza, and the meaning behind them, in a substantive and powerful conversation. Through it, the texture of the genocide and the damage it inflicts on its victim…

Maxjones Podcasts