The Media’s Capitulation to Power (w/ Ahmed Eldin) | The Chris Hedges Report

Chris Hedges and Ahmed Eldin discuss the propagandistic purpose the corporate media serves in the age of the American-Israeli project of genocidal colonialism.

This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.

In a special episode of The Chris Hedges Report live from Rome, Italy, Palestinian Emmy-nominated journalist, producer, and actor Ahmed Eldin joins host Chris Hedges following their involvement in the dockworkers strike and large demonstrations to halt arms shipments to Israel.

Eldin, who has worked in journalism for almost 20 years, explains how crucial storytelling is in a time where Palestinian voices are being killed off in Gaza and silenced elsewhere. “It’s a betrayal of our profession. It’s a betrayal of our human values,” Eldin says of the methods in which mainstream outlets attempt to obscure the realities on the ground of Palestine now and throughout history.

Eldin and Hedges also recount their own experiences of being pejoratively labeled “activists” instead of journalists but Eldin embraces that, saying “if you break down the definition of what an activist is, it’s someone who campaigns for social change. Maybe the way journalists campaign is by holding the powerful to account, by reporting facts and providing context.”

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Host

Chris Hedges

Executive Producer:

Max Jones

Intro:

Diego Ramos

Crew:

Thomas Hedges, Milena Soci, Max Jones

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Transcript

Chris Hedges

So you come out of the journalistic community, went to Columbia Journalism School, they forgive you for that? I want you to talk a little bit about — and you’re Palestinian of course — but talk about how the press has shaped and formed the narrative of the genocide.

Ahmed Eldin

Well, I would say they’ve done it consistently first and foremost. It was not lost on me on October 7th, having witnessed what happened — the breaking of the siege, if you will, in the inverse direction. Of course, a horrific atrocity, but something that I understood was coming sooner or later. And in those early days, I did everything I could to start documenting and applying everything not only I’d learned at Columbia but working for all these media companies ever since.

And the reason I did that, Chris, is the answer to your question. It’s because I knew, having my lived experience working in the mainstream, what was going to come and how deliberate they would manufacture consent. And how do they do it? They do it by casting doubt on any truth or any context that can inform or expand the audience’s understanding, which quite frankly goes against the foundations and the tenets and the purpose of journalism, right?

And so you’ve seen them cast doubt on the numbers of deaths. You’ve also seen them sanitize language. I mean, some of the headlines which you just shared from ABC News, from CBS, from…

Chris Hedges

Well, the New York Times banned words.

Ahmed Eldin

Of course, the style guide that leaked in April, 100%. I mean, and look, when I worked for the New York Times, I was 23 years old. It was during the Iraq War. I’d just graduated from Columbia. I was rewriting headlines and making photo slideshows on the digital side of the international desk. And I was privy to the coverage of Iraq and all this to say, when I would put the word Occupied West Bank, back then, I would get called into an office. And these are facts.

These are things that exist in legal international frameworks. So why this reluctance to just call them what they are? And I think that just answers. I mean, it’s hard to chronicle all the different ways and document all the different ways that they manufacture consent and limit our understanding. But I think the worst part of it for me is how, as you said, they trade access.

They think they can justify their biased coverage under the guise of objectivity in 2025 when people are getting information right from the source. And whether that information is framed in a conventionally journalistic way, which some people would say is like, this view from nowhere where you don’t put your own identity into the story. I mean, look, let’s be real. Journalism is changing for better or worse. Storytelling is changing.

Chris Hedges

I want to talk about objectivity because that is, that’s a trope. Objective truth is not what they print. And objectivity is really, is translated into utter dispassion, i.e. you’re not allowed to feel passionately about any entity that you’re writing about. But it becomes a mechanism to essentially, in the name of balance, equate lies with truth.

So when I covered Gaza, the way they would neuter my story is, Israel would carry out an attack on Jabalia, they bombed Jabalia for instance, and they would say that they had carried out an attack, a surgical strike against a bomb-making factory. Well, I would go there and of course when they drop a 500-pound iron fragmentation bomb, the entire block is gone. I’m seeing the bodies of children and I’m interviewing eyewitnesses, and yet every other paragraph is the IDF.

So by the end of the story, you can believe whatever you want to believe in the name of objectivity, in the name of balance.

Ahmed Eldin

No, and it’s, I’m glad you said that because they not only bury the lead, you know, oftentimes there’ll be an event that happens, and then not only is it that they bury the event — the who, what, where, when, why, I mean, come on, this is the essentials of journalism, of storytelling, not even journalism, just storytelling and that is deliberately done why?

It’s because, as you said, then you can believe whatever you want to believe, but I think even more appalling, they know that when they omit certain things from the lead, people don’t read articles. People share articles before they finish them. So the mental gymnastics and the linguistics and the cartwheels that they use in their headlines, even the AP, even Reuters, as you pointed out, I mean, it’s… one thing is it’s offensive as a Palestinian, as a journalist.

It’s a betrayal of our profession. It’s a betrayal of our human values. But much more alarmingly, like, do they not realize that this is doing long-term damage to the public’s trust, which was already at record lows, with news organizations and media in general? And that’s why people like you, that’s why independent journalists who do go there, who do have context, who do have experience, and who don’t avoid acknowledging and being transparent about their experiences. I mean, it’s not rocket science.

Like, that’s why people gravitate towards you and that’s why people trust you. I can’t tell you how many places I’ve been around the world where I’m speaking to large, large crowds. And I ask them a simple question. Do any of you trust… And I mentioned the mainstream like la Repubblica here in Italy. Nobody trusts them, not just on Gaza, on economic stories.

And it’s because the consolidation in power in corporate media, in mainstream media, it’s not just happening in the West, it’s happening around the world and it’s alarming.

Chris Hedges

I want to talk about the erasure of context. I love Norm Finkelstein, I mean as a friend, but also I think he’s brilliant. And I thought his analogy of the October 7th event to Nat Turner’s slave revolt was brilliant. Because remember, when Nat Turner and the enslaved people revolted, they killed every white they saw. And for somebody who spent, I spent a lot of time in Gaza, you know, you don’t know what’s coming, but you can’t keep treating people like animals.

You can’t inflict this kind of barbarism on them. I mean, even to the point where they’re counting the calories they eat and these cynical terms like “mowing the lawn” and every time they try and do nonviolent demonstration like the March of Return, the snipers kill their medics and their journalists and everything, you can’t keep doing that and not have a reaction.

You mentioned that but I think it’s important because without context what happens is you only see October 7th, you don’t see the slow drip of utter humiliation and degradation and violence that creates October 7th and so because you don’t understand the back story that’s purposely made incomprehensible therefore what people do on October 7th becomes incomprehensible.

It’s a very effective technique in essentially blocking our ability to see.

Ahmed Eldin

Exactly, and it’s not just true in journalism, right? I’m someone who’s been exploring different fields, different modalities of storytelling. I have a small role in Palestine 36, the big epic sweeping drama about Palestine before Israel.

Chris Hedges

This was the movie. I haven’t seen it yet. I heard it’s good. Do you act in it?

Ahmed Eldin

Yeah.

Chris Hedges

Didn’t they like put all the activists in there as actors? Who were you?

Ahmed Eldin

All the journalists, all the actors. I was Mahad, the bourgeoisie Jerusalem friend of one of the leads. But in seriousness, that film alone, even if embellished, not historically, but you know, film is not non-fiction, it provides a context that not just the Israelis, but the empire, the British, the people upholding this colonialism, the origin story. I mean, it immediately, at arrival, destroys and dismantles one of Zionism’s most fundamental lies, which is a land without a people and a people without a land, that there was no Palestine.

Okay, the British mandate, you want to get caught, lost in... There was a people that was indigenous that had been living on the land for hundreds and thousands of years. And this film, you know, shows that. And I guess what I’m trying to say is to link that to this idea of objectivity. I mean, that’s a film, right? And it’s based on truth. It’s not objective in the way that journalism is expected to be.

But that lack of context, Chris, you know better than anyone because, for better or worse, and I mean that flippantly and cheekily, but you’re a white man.

Chris Hedges

Yeah.

Ahmed Eldin

And you know that this guise of objectivity was created at a time by white men at a time when they were the ones that dictated not just what is journalism, but whose story deserves being told and in what way.

Yeah, I mean, I think it’s not surprising that now that the internet was created to be a global village. Of course, now we live in these siloed, walled off identities where what I post is really going just to my community. But all that aside, I mean, there was the Arab Spring, as you know, which was happening at a time when my career was starting.

And this democratization of media, the decentralization of media that was beginning to happen then, it gave us endless possibilities of what could be. Why? Because we know that this is an avenue for which we can start to bring the context that’s so desperately needed in Palestine and Israel and that genocide and that story of ethnic cleansing and reframe that narrative, but so many countless narratives where they rely on us avoiding the context in order to perpetuate the cycle of sort of manipulated language, manipulated truth.

And I’ve seen this time and time again at some of the news organizations that I previously upheld as sort of the barometer and sort of the standards. And it’s just, it’s alarming. And one thing I really appreciate, if I can say, is how clear you are about the fact that the people who are working for these organizations, who are manufacturing consent, they know exactly what’s happening.

Chris Hedges

They’re very cynical.

Ahmed Eldin

They’re very cynical and they’re doing it for a million different reasons. But like, you know, when Clarissa Ward and I’ll just say this, I usually don’t talk about this, but when I criticize some of her coverage, because she has the responsibility and duty with her platform, of at least getting the facts right, at least framing things in a way that will, as I said, inform the public rather than conceal, rather than confuse, rather than, you know… She reached out to me via DMs, sort of like defending herself paragraph after paragraph saying, “You know, I have no issue with you taking offense or disagreeing with my reporting, but you can’t cast me as a propagandist and this,” and I’m like, I mean, should you be saying this to me or to your therapist? And I mean that with respect, no really, because...

Chris Hedges

You should explain what she did. You can tell it briefly.

Ahmed Eldin

Well, I just, I’m talking about several things.

Chris Hedges

Well, she did the big one in Syria, I mean there’s no excuse, I mean, that was staged.

Ahmed Eldin

But look, look, what she, I don’t want to make it about her, even though I guess now it’s useless because I already said that, but there is an element of journalism these days that is so performative, so focused on winning awards, so focused on perception, that they neglect reality.

They neglect, knowingly, the facts on the ground. And if we go back to the origins of journalism, you don’t need to go to Columbia University Journalism School to know that journalism is at its core about informing the public based on facts, based on primary sources. And that’s why your work, when you document for me as a Palestinian, for me as a journalist, I looked at this, this is not me trying to compliment you.

It’s because it’s sad to say that your work is rare in that you go to the source, you do meet with Hamas, you do interview them. Why? Because we want to understand how did they come to be? What are they actually about?

It’s not to glorify them. It’s not to immunize them or protect them or shield them as the mainstream media does for Israel from criticism or accountability. No, let’s hold them accountable. But why not understand them?

Because they don’t want the public to understand what happened on October 7th, what happened in 1967, what happened in 1948… And that’s why the film Palestine 36. I would love, maybe you can join me on on my podcast and tell me about your thoughts on that film, that’s why the film Palestine 36 and so many of the other projects that are coming out from Palestine, from Palestinian artists, is so critical because it forces us to confront the context and the history and that is dismantling the story that they’ve been lying and sharing with the world.

Chris Hedges

And yet at the same time we have this massive campaign of erasure, erasure of cultural institutions, you know, erasure, physical erasure of doctors, journalists, intellectuals, poets, decapitating civil society…

Ahmed Eldin

Well, I wonder what that reveals.

Chris Hedges

Destroying every university and, probably at this point, every school. And it’s this desperate and just the physical ratio of Gaza itself and 90 percent of the buildings are destroyed. Israel’s already seized half of Gaza. When I went about two or three weeks after the genocide, and [Joe] Sacco and I are old, we don’t want to do this stuff anymore. It’s painful. It’s awful.

But Joe, after he did Footnotes in Gaza, which I think is one of the great books on Gaza, he spent six years on that book. And he called me and said, we have to do a book on the genocide. And it’s, I mean, I talk to Joe all the time. He just has to stop. I have to stop. But it’s a way, it’s what you do, it’s what’s motivating us, we won’t let them erase these stories. We can’t. We can’t let them erase the history, the culture, the voices, the experiences, because that’s what all genocidal projects are about.

Ahmed Eldin

Exactly, exactly. No, and that’s why teaching in Italy at the University of Bari, a class about storytelling, I understand very viscerally, very intimately, that it is one thing to let them erase us in physicality, but when we allow them to erase our memories, to erase our culture, they’ve already tried to steal not just our land, but our culture.

And I guess what I’m saying is, I don’t mind when people frame me or say, “he’s not a journalist, he’s an activist,” because I have a point of view. Well, you know, if you break down the definitions of what an activist is, it’s someone who campaigns for social change. Maybe the way journalists campaign is by holding the powerful to account, by reporting facts and providing context.

I guess I bring this up because I think it’s now being used, but ineffectively, to try to discredit me. Or discredit even you.

Chris Hedges

They did that in Australia. I was on an ABC show and they began with that, you know, I was giving the Edward Said lecture, “How can you be sponsored? Are you an activist or a journalist?” But the fact is any journalist is an activist, every single one, because the idea is to affect. If you are a journalist… I covered the war in Bosnia, how can you cover Srebrenica, which I covered, and not want the killers to be held to account? How can you cover the genocide and not want the…

Why, when in many cases, like in my case, is taking tremendous risks to write those stories it’s because we don’t want those who were massacred to be forgotten and we want the killers to be held to account at the same time establishment press are also activists in by empowering the dominant narrative, they are essentially buttressing the system of control.

I mean I know reporters at the New York Times who never left their desk for thirty years, they were just rewrite guys and they’ve won far more awards than you and I have in journalism. So every journalist by nature, because they are affecting perception, are activists, all of us.

Ahmed Eldin

I mean that’s what storytelling is about. That’s what my class is about. You tell stories which journalism is a storytelling profession. That’s the foundation of the profession with an aim, not necessarily a political objective, but as you said, you want to bring about some form of change, a shift, even if it’s something as simple as accountability.

And so to pretend that we as journalists don’t bring in our lived experiences, our skills, you know, if I’m a woman, if you’re a man and we’re going to a crime scene and there was a rape there, we may notice different things simply because of our gender, because of our social conditioning. And that’s okay. Why pretend…

Chris Hedges

So I learned this in Gaza in particular, and I studied Arabic, as you know. And I lived for, in the end, months at a time in Gaza. But what I understood was that as an American, as a white male, and with the privilege that brings it, privilege is blindness. I worked as hard as I could to see, to mitigate that blindness, but I always understood that I could never close that chasm. Because I had a passport, I could walk away, I was with the New York Times.

And if you’re conscious of the blindness and you accept it, then you can build real relationships with those you are covering and you can also allow them to have a kind of auto correction, a constant auto correction. So I can never know what it’s like to be a Palestinian in Gaza as hard as I tried. And I never pretend that I do.

Ahmed Eldin

Nor should you.

Chris Hedges

Nor should I. But at the same time, we have to work to close that blindness as much as we can. I mean, that’s the brilliance of King Lear, is that he can’t see until he’s naked on the heath.

Ahmed Eldin

Yep. Well, I think a lot of people are feeling pretty naked these days, at least I hope so. And honestly, if I can just say, I mean, you speak with humility, as you say what you just said. And the truth is, I’m Palestinian. I grew up in the Arab world. Both my parents left in ‘48 and ‘67, but even I can’t understand what it’s like to be Palestinian in Gaza. So even I have privilege, relative privilege as compared to you.

You know, long ago when I arrived to Columbia, they were hammering objectivity, the view from nowhere into my head. And I guess intuitively because of my privilege, because I was born here and there and I moved from Egypt to Austria at a time when Jörg Haider, a neo-Nazi, was already in power and fascism was alive and well long before Trump came in the scene in the U.S.

And I grew up in California, so was exposed to hippie culture in the 60s and all that, but then I grew up in Egypt, then also Kuwait. So all those lived experiences, they informed my understanding of the world, my ability to shift between…

And so it was not lost on me at a very young age that what journalism needs, what the public needs is transparency and accountability, which you just exemplified brilliantly, the limitations of your ability to report, in fact, being aware of those, as you just said, I’m just translating, makes you more effective, makes your sources more truthful, makes your work more impactful.

And why are we doing journalism if we want to maintain the status quo? Isn’t the whole point to change things?

Chris Hedges

Well, that’s what Amira Hass said. I mean, there’s a wonderful model for you. I love Fisk’s book.

Ahmed Eldin

She’s amazing.

Chris Hedges

Yeah. And Fisk was a friend of mine, and I admire him immensely. I think his book, The Great War for Civilization, is probably the best book on the modern Middle East. But he begins the book by quoting Amira Hass. What is the job of a journalist? It’s to hold power account. That is of a real journalist. And that’s what, of course, our Palestinian colleagues are doing.

Ahmed Eldin

And that’s why they’re so dangerous.

Chris Hedges

And that’s why they’re so dangerous.

Ahmed Eldin

They’re holding power to account in the context of Israel and Palestine. But they’re also because now, as we know, Palestine’s become, sort of taken on as the last frontier of colonialism or whatever you want to say, this litmus test. I mean, they challenge power in its origin and its source.

Because once you see what you... You know, those of us... It’s like when they tried to ban TikTok. It’s like these knee-jerk reactive things. Like what convinces me there may be hope for justice for Palestinians and for all of us who are living under these oppressed systems, you know, is that there is a desperation now where people are trying, people with deep pockets, are trying to buy…

Chris Hedges

CBS! We should be thrilled, Bari Weiss is going to destroy…

Ahmed Eldin

Disney, Hulu, CBS, and did you hear what she said? Who is this woman? Who is this woman who is the head of CBS?

Chris Hedges

Bari Weiss. Sorry. I mean... No, no, you’re right, the news director.

Ahmed Eldin

Yes, you’re right. Bari Weiss was quoted, I think, a few days ago saying she wants to adjust what is considered accepted in American journalism, of what can be criticized and what can’t.

I mean, like, it’s just, even that other woman, [senior speechwriter for President Barack Obama] Sarah Hurwitz, she’s not in journalism, what is being said, what is coming out of these people’s mouths and the way in which it’s not sounding alarms, despite the epic proportions of what this, I mean, the consolidation of power, Disney, Hulu, do people not think that?

Chris Hedges

But it won’t work.

Ahmed Eldin

I hope you’re right.

Chris Hedges

No, I’ll tell you because [Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan tried the same thing in Turkey. Exactly. So I used to work in Turkey and Turkey had a very good press, Hürriyet. I know the editors in exile in Germany. And nobody reads Hürriyet, they all watch the podcasts from the exiles in Germany. I mean, Bari Weiss is not a threat, she’s an idiot, she’s a propagandist, her site is filled with misinformation, conspiracy theories, and nobody has any confidence in CBS and these institutions anyway. But I think you’re right. It shows their utter desperation.

Ahmed Eldin

And you mentioned to me, Mohammed El-Kurd.

Chris Hedges

Yeah, he’s wonderful, amazing.

Ahmed Eldin

I mean, Chris, I will tell you, like, I’ve been reading your work for decades, not to age both of us. But, you know, also when I see people like Mohammed El-Kurd, when he appears on CNN or any of these channels, like back in 2021, he, you know, I always, I didn’t consciously play a game, but I always had to sort of, as you said, access.

Like, I would be banished long ago from the journalism world had I lived up to my integrity and my truth. So I always kind of limited, not limited, but I was strategic about when and where and how I would criticize power in a direct way. And that’s an admission on my part I’m not proud of. But then, you know, when I watched Mohammad sort of dismantle their lazy, lewd, misleading, misguided questioning and the way he did it, you know, this guy is what? He was 22, 21.

He’s been displaced from his home in Sheikh Jarrah. I mean, it’s people like him and people like you, the old guard, the new guard, whatever you want to say, I think it is where we need to move this profession. And it is, I guess, I hope you’re right that it won’t work, but it is telling how desperately they’re trying to, I don’t know what the word is, if you had to describe what’s happening with the U.S. media.

I mean, just like U.S. academic institutions, it’s like, what’s the word starts with a C, when you capitulate. The way they’ve capitulated to power in all of its forms and sources, not just the White House, but I mean, I don’t know who’s calling the shots, but I’m sure you can relate to this.

When I watch Tucker Carlson interview people, I mean, I have a lot of opinions about Tucker Carlson, but when I watch him hold power to account with direct questions based on facts, it’s startling and it’s odd on the issue of Palestine, of course, but on many other issues because I’m like, oh my God, he looks so good because everyone else is so bad. I don’t know if that’s a perception that is unique to me.

Chris Hedges

Well, because the mainstream media no longer reports on power at all. The last national show that actually dealt seriously with the subject of power was Bill Moyers and they cut his show to a half hour, then they stopped funding it and he had to get self-funding and then that was gone.

And so coupled with the refusal to cover the reality of the genocide is a refusal to cover the reality of corporate and oligarchic power, who they depend on for their advertising dollars. And I think that while people may not understand exactly what it is they’re not reporting because the lie of omission is still a lie, they know they’re being lied to. They know that they’re not wrong and the genocide is as part of this.

Ahmed Eldin

And they’re seeking, even in the U.S., people listen to podcasts, but I think part of the reason that Kamala Harris lost, I think there’s many reasons, is also just like podcasts, it’s a whole new world in terms of where people are willing to go but their time and attention with the expectation of gaining information and knowledge.

And I know it’s not the mainstream news organizations. I know a lot of people are following individuals like yourself. And I hope that that will lead us towards a path where change is possible. I mean, if you look at all the, I’m not an economist, but it’s not lost on me that since I was 20, now that I’m 40, America and the middle class and what it means to be a man.

It’s just, you feel it now. It’s not just in the statistics. You feel it in the social fabric and how it’s coming apart. Not just in the close East and West. I feel it when I’m traveling in Tennessee and Idaho and in middle America. And yeah I mean it’s worrying because there’s a convergence of things with this consolidation of power and the sort of fascistic approach to governance and cowering and I mean McCarthyism, I wasn’t alive during that time, but my dad was living in Berkeley at the time.

He was at UC Berkeley as a student and then teaching and he used to teach me about what that was. And before history did, before I learned it in school. And I think it’s a cautionary tale for us all because I think in many ways, the way they’re going after people in the UK and the U.S. is even worse.

Chris Hedges

I mean, yeah, Ellen Schrecker, you know Ellen Schrecker’s work? She’s the great historian on McCarthyism. She’s very good. But she made a point, which I think is correct.

And she said it’s worse than McCarthyism because in McCarthyism they showed up with the blacklists and the deans got rid of everybody including, which I didn’t know until I read her book, in the high schools. And then they couldn’t get work. Now they are seizing the institutions. That’s the difference.

Ahmed Eldin

They’re doing both.

Chris Hedges

They’re doing both. Of course they have a blacklist. But now they’re seizing the institutions and the institutions completely capitulated in advance. It was like, I went to Harvard, you’ve been to Columbia. The idea that these places are bastions of anti-Semitism is absurd, and yet, because they were fifth columns, all the trustee boards, they all wanted to destroy their own institutions, the billionaires who run them.

And so, yes, we have a problem, and it’s ridiculous. You know, I know. And so they handed the bullets to their own executioners.

Ahmed Eldin

And, because you bring up billionaires, let’s talk briefly about Elon Musk. I was just walking to this venue. I was walking here and I saw graffiti multiple times that said, “eat the rich, eat the rich.” Now, I’m not here to advocate for social upheaval and revolution per se, but when people like Elon Musk feel a need to deliberately and repeatedly tell people that empathy is weakness, I don’t know that people realize the damage that can do to a society of males in the U.S.

There is, I think and I hate to frame it as such because it’s a bit simplified, but there’s a crisis with men in America, and you could argue globally. I was in fact going to do a documentary series about this, and what I mean by that is all these traditional norms of what masculinity means, and now that the job market and automation, and there’s some really compelling arguments as to why a lot of these men in America are shifting towards MAGA and sort of this movement, because it gives them something to identify with.

It makes them feel like a man in the absence of them being able to do all these other things that men in America historically used to do. And the reason I’m saying this all is because if that becomes a presiding truth and reality in America, this idea that empathy is weakness, given the way our society is structured, given the way the world is primed to move, the trajectory we’re all headed in, it’s going to be really hard for America to be relevant, to be successful for American families be well, to do well.

I mean, this idea that empathy is weakness, people ask, why is journalism suffering? Well, in my mind, journalism relies on empathy. As a journalist, when I’m reporting, to your point about Gaza, wherever I am, if I’m in Puerto Rico and it’s because of a hurricane rather than the apartheid regime that is causing all this destruction, I need to try to put myself in a person’s shoes. That is empathy 101. If I don’t do that as a journalist, what’s the point? That I’m just gonna describe the scene in a sort of authoritative way that I’m…

Chris Hedges

Yeah, there’s a two volume, you know, [Klaus] Theweleit’s Male Fantasies. It’s a study of fascism and but it’s all… he, I think, makes the argument that the root of fascism is hyper masculinity. And he begins with Weimar and the dispossession of the male working class. And that loss of power which traditionally is part of male identity. And the embrace of a fascist movement, there’s an element, of course, of revenge.

But it also, as you pointed out, inculcates all of the worst aspects of traditional masculinity, violence, lack of empathy, lack of nurturing.

Ahmed Eldin

Exactly. And I feel it and I see it and it’s palpable and my cousins who are American and third culture kids, sure, but especially my young male cousins they follow, who’s that guy, the bald guy in Romania? I forget his name, yeah, Tate, Andrew Tate. Well done. You know, the way they look up to… my students, some of them look up to these guys because they appeal to that you know?

And it’s worrying. I mean, there’s a lot that’s worrying us all, I guess. But I want to believe in the youth. I gave a speech there where I empowered them because they do give me hope. But I do worry how that vulnerability sort of, for lack of a better phrase, the male fragile ego in this moment that you’re describing through that book and how it relates to power and one’s sense of self, I do worry that people like Elon Musk and others can manipulate that part of our community into complacency, into violence, into not just physical violence, but economic violence and supporting it because that’s what’s happening in America.

People are starving. I don’t know if people know this, but I was appalled to find out that, I think it’s 60%, you may have to check this, but 60% of American families when confronted with an unexpected hospital bill of $400.

Chris Hedges

Yeah, that’s correct. They can’t pay it.

Ahmed Eldin

And you’re telling me this is the land of the free, home of the brave, and where opportunity is. What opportunity? These people are working two jobs and they’re like, it’s crazy.

Chris Hedges

So we’re interviewing Ahmed Eldin who’s a journalist, Palestinian and has been writing about, speaking about, documenting the genocide since its inception.

So why are you here? Why is this important? We were both in Genoa, now we’re in Rome.

Ahmed Eldin

On one level, I’m here to just simply feel connected to other people who are like-minded, who are critical thinkers, who refuse to be lied to, who refuse to lie to their families and their friends and themselves. I mean, that’s the real reason I’m here. I need that connection to keep going. Another maybe more important reason is I really believe that when I arrived in Bari to teach, I was surprised at how people, particularly young people who had lived in Puglia their entire life, were connecting the dots.

And we’re connecting the dots not because they’re journalists or they’re connecting the dots because they feel disenfranchised. They feel the dissonance. They feel disconnected. They recognize the patterns of their behavior that do not fulfill them, that do not uplift them, that do not make them feel connected to themselves or their societies.

And then, you add on that and you compound their lived experiences locally with them watching this onslaught on social media because they happen to follow you or follow me or follow someone who follows me. And once you see this, you can’t unsee this. I mean, that sounds just like a catchy phrase, but think about what that means. And so, these are people who are lost, one could argue.

They are looking for direction. They are looking for, I mean, what are human beings doing at the end of the day, Chris? You know more than anyone, in all your war reporting in particular. And so much of war and so much of oppression is about taking away people’s identity and their belonging, erasing their history, erasing their culture, erasing their land. And I think people are in Italy for many reasons, because of the history of fascism, because of the mafia, because of many things, and the economic reality of this moment.

People are willing here to confront the reality in Palestine, in Italy, with unfettered capitalism, with the revolving door, with power, the collusion of all these things that, and even the infringement of our rights are, it’s all connected. And I don’t know if it’s like, if it’s me when I’m in Italy, particularly as compared with other European countries, Spain, of course, in Belgium, but here in Italy, there’s like something I feel palpably` when I’m with the union workers, the camaraderie, it’s almost like maybe they have little to lose and so they’re willing to do more.

They’re willing to believe and dream bigger. And in moments like this, when my people are being erased and when my colleagues in journalism places I’ve worked — HBO, Vice, New York Times, PBS — I’ve not just lost friends, I’ve lost respect for institutions, for entire communities of people I thought I was connected to.

And the beauty is silver linings, like connecting with you in person, someone I’ve long admired, connecting with people here. It gives me hope that like there is hope, there is a future, not just for Palestine, for journalism and for us all.

Chris Hedges

Great, thanks.

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