America, The Farewell Tour - Hardcover

Hedges, Chris

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0735275955 ISBN 13: 9780735275959

Publisher: Knopf Canada, 2018

Synopsis

If you thought you knew Chris Hedges--be surprised. The globally renowned Pulitzer Prize-winner gives us an entirely new view of a nation in crisis in a stunning book that holds both liberals and conservatives to account--as rousingly pertinent for Canada as for the disoriented US. Beautifully written, it clarifies vividly and unforgettably the forces at play in our times.

In astonishing, tough, first-hand reportage, Chris Hedges draws on stories from inside communities across America and reveals how the hurricanes of change have allowed an array of pathologies to arise: the opioid crisis, the retreat into gambling, the corporate coup d'état of government, the pornification of culture, the rise of magical thinking, the emboldening of violence and hate, the plagues of suicides, and the global upheaval caused by catastrophic climate change. These are just some of the physical manifestations of a society unravelling. Such ills presage a frightening reconfiguration of our lives--particularly in the face of our neighbour's degeneration as a world power.

Donald Trump rode this disenchantment to power. Hedges--who was unsurprised by Trump's victory--shows how neither the left nor the right are addressing the systemic problems. Until the corporate coup d'état is reversed, these diseases will grow and ravage the country. A humane cry for a decent future, this remarkable book is our wake-up call to reality.

About this title

About the Author

CHRIS HEDGES spent nearly two decades reporting in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. After fifteen years at the New York Times, he now writes a weekly column for the online magazine Truthdig. His bestselling books include Empire of Illusion, Death of the Liberal Class and his classic War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning. He is married to the Canadian actor Eunice Wong. They live in Princeton.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

It was a sweltering July afternoon when fifty protestors, many dressed in fatigues and wearing shirts that identified them with groups such as Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Bikers for Trump, the Alt Knights and a militia group called American Patriot the III%, gathered in a gravel parking lot in Deposit, New York.  They had come for the “Second Annual Ride for Homeland Security.”  Pick-up trucks, cars and motorcycles were adorned with American flags.  Deposit, a depressed, rural community in upstate New York with a population of 1,577, is located at the confluence of the Oguaga Creek and the West branch of the Delaware River near the border of Pennsylvania.[1] 

The protestors, several driving all night, planned to ride past a small community called Islamberg, an enclave of 200 mostly black Muslims in nearby Hanover, with 70 acres of farmland and woods.[2] The community, with its modest homes of wood and cinder blocks along dirt roads, is a punching bag for right-wing conspiracy theorists.

The protestors milled about in the parking lot under the gaze of nearby State Police.  Three counter protestors stood near a car and filmed the group. The event opened with a short prayer.  A stocky man handed me a flyer titled, “Islam: A religion of peace?”  It read:
 
Koran 2:191 "Slay the unbelievers wherever you find them."
Koran 3:28 "Muslims must not take the infidels as friends."
Koran 3:85 "Any religion other than Islam is not acceptable."
Koran 5:33 "Maim and crucify the infidels if they criticize Islam." 
Koran 8:12 "Terrorize and behead those who believe in scriptures other than the Koran." 
Koran 8:60 "Muslims must muster all weapons to terrorize the infidels."
Koran 8:65 "The unbelievers are stupid; urge the Muslims to fight them." 
Koran 9:5 "When opportunity arises kill the infidels wherever you find them."
Koran 9:30 "The Jews and Christians are perverts, fight them."
Koran 9:123 "Make war on the infidels living in your neighborhood." 
Koran 22:19 "Punish the unbelievers with garments of fire, hooked iron rods, boiling water, melt their skin and bellies."
Koran 47:4 "Do not hanker for peace with the infidels; behead them when you catch them."
 
There are far more calls by the God of the Hebrew Bible and Christian Book of Revelations for holy war, genocide and savage ethnic cleansing than the Koran from the killing of the firstborns in Egypt to the wholesale annihilation of the Canaanites.  God repeatedly demands the Israelites wage wars of annihilation against unbelievers in Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua and the Book of Revelations.

Everyone, including women, children and the elderly, along with their livestock, are to be killed.  Moses ordered the Israelites to carry out the “complete destruction” of all cities in the Promised Land and slaughter all the inhabitants, making sure to show “no mercy.”  From Joshua’s capture of the city of Ai to King Saul’s decimation of the Amalekites—Saul methodically dismembers the Amalekite king—God sanctifies bloodbath after bloodbath.  “You shall not leave alive anything that breathes,” God thunders in the Book of Joshua, “But you shall utterly destroy them.”  Joshua “struck all the land, the hill country and the Negev and the lowland and the slopes and all their kings.  He left no survivor, but he utterly destroyed all who breathed, just as the Lord, the God of Israel had commanded.” (Joshua 10:40, 11:15).  And while the Koran urges believers to fight, it is also emphatic about showing mercy to captured enemies, something almost always scorned in the Bible where, according to Psalm 137, those who smash the heads of Babylonian infants on the rocks are blessed.  Whole books of the Bible celebrate divinely sanctioned genocide. The Koran doesn’t come close.   

Islamberg was founded in 1980 by African-American followers of the Pakistani Sufi cleric Mybarik Ali Shah Gilani.[3] Gilani, who lives in Pakistan, urged his followers to leave urban areas and form religious communities in rural parts of the country.[4] There are about a dozen communities across the United States adhering to Gilani’s teachings.[5] There is no evidence of criminal activity taking place in the community according to local law enforcement.[6] 

This does not prevent Fox News and other right-wing outlets from referring to Islamberg as the center of homegrown American jihadism.[7] Gilani is routinely linked to the murder of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was in Pakistan writing a story about the British national Richard Reid, known as the “shoe bomber,” and his possible links to Al Qaeda. Pearl believed he was being taken to meet Gilani at a restaurant in downtown Karachi on the evening of January 23, 2002 when he was abducted. A radical Islamic group beheaded Pearl in a gruesome video nine days later. Gilani was cleared of all involvement in Pearl’s death.[8]

The Clarion Project posted a YouTube video in 2014 titled, “Guerilla training of women at Islamberg, Hancock, N.Y., headquarters of Muslims of the Americas.” The video showed blurry clips of women wearing fatigues and headscarves doing marching drills along a road and scrambling though underbrush carrying assault rifles.[9]  The .Christian Action Network calls Islamberg “America’s first Islamic government.”[10] It charges that the children in the community are being groomed to be terrorists, that girls are denied an education, and anyone who breaks the community’s rules “are often tied to trees and whipped for disobeying.”[11] 

The demonization of the rural community of Muslims eventually promoted racists to act, illustrating the deadly convergence of the alt-lite and the alt-right. The FBI aborted a firebombing and armed assault on the community planned by Robert Doggart, a former Congressional candidate from Tennessee in 2015.. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison.[12]  On June 2, 2017, Johnson City Police arrested Ramadan Abdullah, forty miles from Islamberg, and seized multiple pistols, assault weapons, and about 10,000 rounds of ammunition ranging from .38-caliber to armor-piercing incendiary rounds.[13] Law enforcement officials did not link Abdullah with Islamberg.  The Clarion Project, however, claimed Abdullah was one of the founders and that his weapons were for the “guerilla training compound.”[14]

Proud Boys, which the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as a “fight-club 'fraternity' of young, white, pro-Trump men to defend free speech rights by ‘alt-right’ leaders and engage in street fighting,”[15] publicized the Clarion Project’s report.

“This past month there was an arms bust in Johnson City, New York down the road from the compound,” the Proud Boys wrote. “It was later confirmed that the man in question was indeed headed to Islamberg, and the weapons were needed to ‘protect themselves’ against an upcoming ‘biker rally’ (that would be us).”[16]

The prospect of a gun battle with radical Muslims may have discouraged members from attending, according to Konstantine Dee from Queens, a 32-year-old Proud Boy at the protest.

Still, the “Second Annual Ride for Homeland Security” managed to attract a larger turnout than the year before, when only five members of the American Bikers United Against Jihad showed up.[17]

These types of rallies and events acculturate and groom white racists to carry out acts of violence. 

Daniel Peters drove nearly four hours to join the ride past Islamberg.  He works six days a week from home in New York City as a computer network manager, starting at 7:00 am and sometimes not finishing until 11:00 pm. 

When Peters joined the Oath Keepers last year, it was a relief to finally “not feel alone.” He called Islam “an evil cult” and denounced the prophet Mohammad as “a very bloodthirsty, sadistic killer.”

“Historically, either they kill you or you kill them,” he said. 

He conceded that the Muslim population in the United States was small but noted that when the Europeans came to America they were also numerically a minority.

“Look,” he said, glancing at the State Police who flanked the road towards Islamberg.  “They're setting aside the traffic for us and everything. I feel like I'm in a Bill Clinton convoy.” 

“History is filled with collapses of civilizations,” he said. “What happens in America, is the price of food will sky-rocket. There's going to be some kind of long-term disaster. For long-term survival after a disaster, it requires a community for security.”

He said the impending collapse was a major reason he joined Oath Keepers.

Much of the drive behind the rise of alt-right and militia groups is the fear of societal collapse.  They contend that once the electric grid goes out it will trigger a race war.  They must be armed and prepared with stockpiles of food, water, supplies and ammunition to fight off the hordes of black and brown people that will descend on them from the chaos of urban areas.

A few months earlier, I had traveled to Logan, Utah to a “prepper” convention where those preparing for the impending collapse to heard talks and purchased survival material, including ammunition.

Suzanne Freeman, a portly grandmother, stood in a livestock pen in the Logan fairgrounds. She held a microphone attached to a portable speaker that rested on a small folding table. I sat in the bleachers with about two-dozen, white, middle-aged men and women.  She said she was the mother of ten children, with three grandchildren. She described her near death experience in 1999 after suffering an ectopic pregnancy.

She said she felt her spirit rise up out of her body during surgery, and hover in the left, upper corner of the hospital room.  She was able to look down on her body and the working surgeons. 

“I thought, ‘I had to get back,’” she said. “I had seven children and three grandchildren.  I thought, ‘I am not going to leave my body. It just isn’t time for me.’ My youngest was a year old. Maybe he was two. I started to go back.  I felt this grip on my arm. It was like a bungee chord. It stopped me cold. I knew exactly what it was.”

“I’ve always wondered, would I recognize Jesus?” she asked. “I knew exactly who he was. I wasn’t exactly thrilled to see him either,” she said smiling. 

“I panicked when I saw Jesus,” she said. “I didn’t want to go with him. I have seven kids, I can’t go. He says ‘Come with me.’ I’m like, ‘No, I have to go back.’”

“I remember I could feel his feelings and hear his thoughts,” she said.  “I felt his love for me. But it didn’t matter. I said, ‘I’m not going with you.’ He says, ‘But there’s people who want to meet you.’”

I look around at those in the bleachers to gauge their reactions.  The onlookers do not move or speak.  The millennialist or Chiliastic belief – the doctrine that Christ will return to earth and rule for a thousand years – has a firm grip on the imaginations of many in Utah.

Jesus, she explained, “busted out laughing. With his laugh, it stopped me cold from the temper tantrum I was having.  It was so wonderful. We always hear the Lord is perfect. He has the perfect laugh. It was so beautiful I stopped what I was doing. I was in awe. He laughed for a while.”

Jesus promised her she would be able to return.  He floated with her up to heaven.  They entered the gates that were adorned with a “cameo” of Jesus.  She saw family members who had died and her ancestors. 

“I saw this man dressed in 1800 clothes,” she said to the audience. “His arms were like this,” she said stretching out her arms, “and he was walking fast. He came up to me. I knew exactly who he was. It was Joseph Smith [the founder of Mormonism]. He shakes my hand really excitedly. He says, ‘I have to shake hands with the lady who actually told Christ no.’ He jumped over and did a back flip. Joseph Smith really did do that in those days. I'm sure he was a hyperactive child. Good thing he lived on a farm. It must have got the wiggles out of him. I distinctly remember thinking his pants doesn’t match his jacket. Later on, two or three years later, David Lindsay’s paintings, he painted a picture of Joseph Smith with blue jacket and brown pants. I told him he got it wrong. He had a brown jacket.”
           
She also saw Brigham Young “behind him with a top hat.”  Brigham, she said, told Smith “Now is not the time!” for back flips.

The audience laughs.  Most are well versed in the histories of Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or Mormons, and Brigham Young, the second president of the church.

Those in heaven lined up to shake her hand. Jesus commanded her to write about her near death experience and her visit to heaven when she returned to earth. She saw angels. She saw Jesus’s life pass before her from his birth to his crucifixion.

“His arm is around my shoulder,” she said. “He loved me so much. I could feel his pure love aiming towards me and I didn’t feel like I deserved it.”

“I was shown the last days,” she said. “At first I did not see any particular areas of the damage. I saw a flood. I saw infant babies floating down the river. We're picking dead bodies up and this infant was alive. I really hope I’ll never be at a flood scene picking dead bodies from a freezing river. I’m hoping it was just to show that there are disasters and Heavenly Father does take people home. There’s always miracles. Some beautiful, wonderful miracles that are meant to happen for people who are meant to survive it. It doesn’t matter where you live, God will protect you if that’s what’s meant to be. In the end you will hear the spirit to be led away. We’re all human. We all need to learn that. It’s vital. I’ll just say this. There’s a lot of miracles in the last days. He has a plan. No one knows the plan but Heavenly Father. We just have to take it step by step.”

“I saw the founding fathers,” she said. “I met with them. Thomas Jefferson really struck me as a really good man...He was the first one to have a church in the White House. They claimed he cut up scriptures but he actually made a scrapbook of what the Lord said. He cut up the Bible and posted it on some other paper only of what the Lord said. I saw him write the Declaration of Independence. I saw Moses standing next to him whispering in his ear.”

“Do you guys have any questions?” she asked when she finished.

A woman raised her hand.

“What did Jesus look like?” she asked.

“His hair was brown with auburn and blonde highlights,” Freeman answered. “He had a Jewish nose and deep blue eyes. Joseph Smith had blue eyes. The blue eyes intrigued me.”

“Did you see the Second Coming?” someone asked.

“It’s not as clear for me,” she answered.

“I do have gifts [for seeing the dead],” she said....

About this edition

• Publisher: Knopf Canada
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 0735275955
• ISBN 13: 9780735275959
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 400