{"id":312529,"date":"2026-01-26T12:00:59","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T12:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=312529"},"modified":"2026-01-25T18:34:30","modified_gmt":"2026-01-25T18:34:30","slug":"imperial-boomerang","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2026\/01\/imperial-boomerang\/","title":{"rendered":"Imperial Boomerang"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Protesters clash with law enforcement after a federal agent shot and killed a man on Jan. 24 in Minneapolis
(Photo by Arthur Maiorella\/Anadolu via Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

25 Jan 2026 –\u00a0<\/em>The murders of unarmed civilians on the streets of Minneapolis, including the killing<\/a> today of the intensive-care nurse Alex Jeffrey Pretti, would not come as a shock to Iraqis in Fallujah or Afghans in Helmand province. They were terrorized by heavily armed American execution squads for decades.<\/p>\n

It would not come as a shock to any of the students I teach in prison. Militarized police in poor urban neighborhoods kick down doors without warrants and kill with the same impunity and lack of accountability. What the rest of us are facing now, is what Aim\u00e9 C\u00e9saire called imperial boomerang. Empires, when they decay, employ the savage forms of control on those they subjugate abroad, or those demonized by the wider society in the name of law and order, on the homeland.<\/p>\n

The tyranny Athens imposed on others, Thucydides noted, it finally, with the collapse of Athenian democracy, imposed on itself. But before we became the victims of state terror, we were accomplices. Before we expressed moral outrage at the indiscriminate taking of innocent lives, we tolerated, and often celebrated, the same Gestapo tactics, as long as they were directed at those who lived in the nations we occupied or poor people of color.<\/p>\n

We sowed the wind, now we will reap the whirlwind. The machinery of terror, perfected on those we abandoned and betrayed, including the Palestinians in Gaza, is ready for us.<\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize\u2013winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for\u00a0<\/em>The New York Times,\u00a0where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief. He previously worked overseas for\u00a0<\/em>The Dallas Morning News,\u00a0The Christian Science Monitor, and<\/em> NPR. He used to be the host of the Emmy Award-nominated <\/em>RT America show\u00a0<\/em>On Contact.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original – chrishedges.substack.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

25 Jan 2026 –\u00a0The murders of unarmed civilians on the streets of Minneapolis, including the killing today of the intensive-care nurse Alex Jeffrey Pretti, would not come as a shock to Iraqis in Fallujah or Afghans in Helmand province. They were terrorized by heavily armed American execution squads for decades.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":312530,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[3480,2394,542,3455,1660,1979,249,70],"class_list":["post-312529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","tag-anti-immigration","tag-civil-resistance","tag-fascism","tag-gestapo","tag-ice","tag-police-state","tag-trump","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312529"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":312532,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312529\/revisions\/312532"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}