SponsorBlock, Timestamps, and Generated Summary below:
SponsorBlock Timestamp:
- 0:00.000 - 0:10.022 Intermission
- 45:40.000 - 45:59.850 Endcards/Credits
Video Description:
Timestamps:
- (0:00) Intro
- (2:16) The Silent Feud Between Israel and Kirk
- (12:52) Netanyahu and Kirk
- (19:54) Netanyahu’s courting of alt media
- (23:19) The coming crackdown
- (30:57) Years of Lead
- (35:38) Rittenhouse
- (39:30) McCarthyism
- (45:22) Outro
Generated Summary:
Israel, Charlie Kirk, and the Weaponization of Murder: A Discussion with Max Blumenthal
This video features Chris Hedges interviewing Max Blumenthal about the assassination of Charlie Kirk and its implications for the United States, focusing on Kirk's relationship with the Zionist lobby and the potential weaponization of his murder.
Key Points:
- Charlie Kirk's evolving stance on Israel: Initially supported by the Israel lobby, Kirk later faced pressure from his grassroots base due to Israel's actions in Gaza. This led to Kirk inviting figures like Tucker Carlson, who criticized Israeli influence, to his events.
- Netanyahu's alleged attempts to influence Kirk: Blumenthal reports that Netanyahu personally offered to re-fund Kirk's organization with a massive infusion of Zionist money, which Kirk refused. This refusal reportedly left Kirk feeling frightened.
- Netanyahu's courting of alt-media: Netanyahu has been increasingly engaging with alternative media outlets, particularly right-wing podcasters, to bypass mainstream media and directly influence American public opinion.
- Weaponization of Kirk's murder: The Zionist lobby is allegedly using Kirk's assassination to target critics of Israel and the left in general, pushing for measures like revoking passports of those accused of supporting terrorism.
- The Red-Green Alliance: Netanyahu views the "marriage of radical leftism and Islam" as a significant threat in the U.S., using this narrative to justify crackdowns on dissent.
- Agenda of Mass Repression: Blumenthal argues that Kirk's death is being exploited to push an agenda of mass repression, criminalizing anti-Israel activity and expanding the powers of secret police.
- The influence of Zionist figures in US Politics: Blumenthal highlights the influence of Zionist figures like Stephen Miller in shaping US policy and the pressure exerted on politicians to align with Israeli interests.
- The chilling effect on free speech: Blumenthal describes a "dystopian scenario" where individuals are being doxxed and losing their jobs for expressing critical views of Israel or minimizing Kirk's death.
- Netanyahu's overcompensation: Netanyahu's repeated declarations of Charlie Kirk being a true friend of Israel felt like overcompensation and fear of the truth getting out.
- Listening Devices: Allegedly, listening devices were planted by Israeli agents on Secret Service emergency response vehicles during one of Netanyahu's visits to the US.
About Channel:
Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, author and commentator provides compelling story telling, archive interviews & show content covering US foreign policy, economic realities and civil liberties in American society.
Background:
The parameters of acceptable journalist inquiry has dramatically narrowed over the nearly four decades I have been a reporter and author. Newspapers, where I began my career, have atrophied or died. The electronic media is in the hands of a half dozen corporations that impose a uniformity of opinion and ban the views of us who decry the crimes of empire, the permanent war economy, the apartheid state of Israel, our money saturated political process and social inequality. Whistleblowers, the life blood of investigative journalism, have been virtually silenced through a combination of wholesale government surveillance—the reason Edward Snowden immediately left the country after revealing that we were all being watched, tracked and monitored by the government—and the misuse of the Espionage Act to prosecute those who reveal government malfeasance and crimes. Julian Assange, who never committed a crime, is on the verge of being extradited to the United States and spending the rest of his life in prison, setting a dangerous legal precedent that criminalizes anyone who possesses or publishes government secrets, as other investigative reporters and I did at The New York Times. Algorithms imposed by digital media platforms such as Google, Facebook and Twitter, shadow ban critics or, as in the case of the New York Post, which was locked out of its own account so it could not disseminate the contents found on Hunter Biden’s laptop, censor them. America’s premier investigative journalist, Sy Hersh, who exposed the war crimes at My Lai and Abu Ghraib, has difficulty publishing in the United States.
My television show on TeleSur, which was later broadcast on RT America, went off the air when these two media outlets where shut down. The staff of Truthdig and I were fired by the wealthy publisher when we went on strike to protest her attempt to fire the legendary Editor-in-Chief Bob Scheer and demand a union. Bob, who had been a columnist for The Los Angeles Times, had been fired from the paper for opposing the Iraq war, similar to my own experience at The New York Times.
Substack is the last best hope for me to retain my independence and do the journalism and writing I find meaningful and impactful. The great investigative journalism, I.F. Stone, a victim of the McCarthyite witch hunts of the 1960s, unable to get a job even at The Nation magazine, founded I.F. Stone’s Weekly, which he printed in his basement. This Substack is an updated version of his weekly, begun for the same reasons and determined to replicate Stone’s fierce honesty and independence.
Corporations will not fund us. The model of relying on the wealthy does not work. The commercial press, along with National Public Radio and PBS, also heavily dependent on corporate funds, has been largely neutered.^[[1] https://chrishedges.substack.com/about]
Edit:
- Added missing SponserBlock Timestamps; added source to About Channel section
- Fixed about channel section naming
