Journalist Chris Hedges put in an appearance at the Occupy Wall Street protest on Sunday morning and engaged in a lengthy interview, during which he described the protest as “really where the hope of America lies.”

Hedges was particularly impressed by the significance of Saturday’s mass arrests on the part of the New York Police Department. He told the interviewer, “The real people who are scared are the power elite. Of course, they’re trying to make you scared and us scared. But I can tell you, having been a reporter for the New York Times, that on the inside they’re very, very frightened. They do not want movements like this to grow, and they understand on some level — whether it’s subconscious or, in other cases, even overt — that the criminal class in this country has seized power.”

ADVERTISEMENT

Hedges went on to say that the protesters should be seen as “conservatives” because “they call for the restoration of the rule of law.”

“The real radicals have seized power,” he asserted, “and they are decimating all impediments to the creation of a neo-feudalistic corporate state, one in which there is a rapacious oligarchic class, a thin managerial elite, and two-thirds of this country live in conditions that increasingly push families to subsistence level.”

According to Hedges, the corporate state wants to “reduce the working class to a status equivalent to serfdom. … They want us to remain passive and to remain frightened. And as long as we remain passive and frightened, entranced with their electronic hallucinations, we are not a threat.”

“The moment people come out and do this [kind of protest],” Hedges concluded, “the corporate state is terrified — and if you doubt me, look around you at the huge numbers of cops, and not only that but the kind of brutality the cops have visited on peaceful protesters.”

These video are from the Occupy Wall Street livestream and were posted at YouTube on September 25, 2011.

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT