Call It Evil: Understanding the Trump Era (w/ Susan Neiman) | TCHR

There are many books exploring how and why voters in the United States elected President Donald Trump, but author Susan Neiman argues that “Nobody has really focused on the moral background to this administration and to our acceptance of it.” It was that void she sought to fill in her newest book, “Call It Evil: Understanding the Trump Era.” Neiman joins Hedges in this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to discuss her new book and examine the crises of today: the rise of fascism, the ravages of neoliberalism, and how institutions and individuals have surrendered to them. Ideology, Neiman explains, are assumptions so ingrained in a culture that individuals often see them as “iron laws,” rather than ideas they have about the world. In reality, they are “philosophical ideas which we could question if we wanted to,” as has happened in the past. Most are unable to offer this analysis, Hedges claims, because these assumptions of American hegemony have “infected not just economics but all sorts of disciplines, academic disciplines, including religion.” Our beliefs drive our motivations and actions. People behave differently when they believe that “we exist to perpetuate our own self-interest,” a notion driven by neoliberalism and capitalism, than they do in more socialized nations where social and political rights are recognized and integrated into the body politic.