*On Being Disappeared*
/The entire archive of six years of my show On Contact has been
disappeared from YouTube./
Chris Hedges
The entire archive of On Contact, the Emmy-nominated show I hosted for
six years for RT America and RT International, has been disappeared from
YouTube. Gone is the interview with Nathaniel Philbrick on his book
about George Washington. Gone is the discussion with Kai Bird on his
biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Gone is my exploration with
Professor Sam Slote from Trinity College Dublin of James Joyce’s
“Ulysses.” Gone is the show with Benjamin Moser on his biography of
Susan Sontag. Gone is the show with Stephen Kinzer on his book on John
Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles. Gone are the interviews with the social
critics Cornel West, Tariq Ali, Noam Chomsky, Gerald Horne, Wendy Brown,
Paul Street, Gabriel Rockwell, Naomi Wolff and Slavoj Zizek. Gone are
the interviews with the novelists Russell Banks and Salar Abdoh. Gone is
the interview with Kevin Sharp, a former federal judge, on the case of
Leonard Peltier. Gone are the interviews with economists David Harvey
and Richard Wolff. Gone are the interviews with the combat veterans and
West Point graduates Danny Sjursen and Eric Edstrom about our wars in
the Middle East. Gone are the discussions with the journalists Glenn
Greenwald and Matt Taibbi. Gone are the voices of those who are being
persecuted and marginalized, including the human rights attorney Steven
Donziger and the political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal. None of the shows I
did on mass incarceration, where I interviewed those released from our
prisons, are any longer on YouTube. Gone are the shows with the
cartoonists Joe Sacco and Dwayne Booth. Melted into thin air, leaving
not a rack behind.
I received no inquiry or notice from YouTube. I vanished.
In totalitarian systems you exist, then you don’t. I suppose this was
done in the name of censoring Russian propaganda, although I have a hard
time seeing how a detailed discussion of “Ulysses” or the biographies of
Susan Sontag and J. Robert Oppenheimer had any connection in the eyes of
the most obtuse censors in Silicon Valley with Vladimir Putin. Indeed,
there is not one show that dealt with Russia. I was on RT because, as a
critic of US imperialism, militarism, the corporate control of the two
ruling parties, and especially because I support the Boycott, Divestment
and Sanctions movement against Israel, I was blacklisted. I was on RT
for the same reason the dissident Vaclav Havel, who I knew, was on Voice
of America during the communist regime in Czechoslovakia. It was that or
not be heard. Havel had no more love for the policies of Washington than
I have for those of Moscow.
[...]
continua qui: https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/on-being-disappeared
_______________________________________________
nexa mailing list
[email protected]
https://server-nexa.polito.it/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nexa
