Jeremy Hammond on ideology and the post-9/11 WMD lie

When I first started on the path that led me to doing journalism, it was after 9/11, and I was speaking out against the coming Iraq war, warning people how the government was lying about WMD.  My own parents and older brother refused to listen to me and supported the war effort, even though I was providing them with all the information I had so they could see the truth that there was no evidence Iraq still had WMD.  My brother at one point at least conceded that I’d refuted all the claims and that no credible evidence was publicly available, but then his argument became: "well, I’m sure the government has classified intelligence that Iraq really is a threat and just can’t publicly release it." 

For a long time, I just couldn’t understand it.  I just assumed that facts and logic matter to people.  But the truth is that beliefs often matter more, so that reason is suspended if necessary to maintain a belief system.  The idea that the government would lie to start a war was just so incompatible with their view of the government as “the greatest on Earth”, and even though there are bad actors within it, the system itself is fundamentally benevolent, a beacon of light shining democracy and freedom on the world.  It’s a belief system, a matter of faith.  The state religion.

~ Jeremy Hammond

 

Jeremy Hammond on Donald Trump's plans to rebuild Gaza

If Trump believed that the Palestinians would agree to be dislocated from Gaza because of Israel’s destruction, and that Israel’s Arab neighbors would be delighted to assist in the plan to complete the ethnic cleansing that Israel started in 1948, he sorely miscalculated.

~ Jeremy R. Hammond, "David Hearst Explains Trump's Plan to Ethnically Cleanse Gaza," Jeremy R. Hammond, February 10, 2025

Jeremy Hammond on the left-right political spectrum

People like to think that there's a free press.  People like to think that this is a free country.  But you're not free if your mind is being controlled.  And that's really what I aim to do with my work is to free peoples' minds from mental slavery so that they can see the real world around them because people are really deluded into believing fictional narratives and outright falsehoods.  So people have this worldview that is outright delusional and I want to do what I can to help free minds and to help people see what is really happening.

What really shocks me, in this day and age, when we have the internet at our fingertips, how so many Americans are so trapped in this mindset of viewing everything through this lens, this narrow political spectrum, of left vs. right, liberal vs. conservative, Democrat vs. Republican.  If you can't even escape that narrow framework of thinking - that shouldn't be too challenging - I think that's how most Americans view anything political, through that narrow linear spectrum.

My point of view is completely off that linear chart.  It doesn't fall anywhere along that narrow linear line.  I'm not left or right or center; it doesn't even apply to me in the way that I think.  So people just need to escape this mental box that they've been trapped in and that's really what I aim to do with my work.

The state religion is how I often refer to it.  We're indoctrinated from early childhood into the state religion.  What I mean by that is this belief - religious-like, cult-like faith - that the government is good, it's this benevolent force and we need the government to take care of us, and we need the government to be intervening in every aspect of our lives.  There are so many people who really fervently belief that as a matter of faith because they've been so deeply indoctrinated into that state religion.  And so we need to free people from that mental slavery.

~ Jeremy Hammond, "Interview: Assange Freed + Palestine's Ancient History," jeremyrhammond.com, 14:40 mark, July 10, 2024

(For 2 minute clip of the actual quote, click here.)

Jeremy Hammond on protesters using "from the river to the sea" as a slogan

This reminds me of the whole "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" slogan that they've been chanting and the media keep hammering on how the U.S. Congress and House keep passing resolutions defining that as antisemitic.  Well, that's just so utterly stupid.  Not to say that there aren't people who chant that who [are] antisemitic, but most of these kids on college campuses who are chanting the slogan "from the river to the sea," they're not advocating the slaughter of Jews in Israel.  They're advocating a single-state solution in which all people have equal rights.  They're opposing the apartheid regime.  And that's what they mean when they say "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free."  

The other thing that renders that accusation that that's "antisemitic" so stupid is that if you look at the charter of Likud, the party of current Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, they use essentially the same slogan saying "from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, there will be only Israeli sovereignty."  Evidently Hamas plagiarized from Likud.

~ Jeremy Hammond, "Scott Horton and I Explain How Israel Supported Hamas," Jeremy R. Hammond Blog, 8:40 mark, May 17, 2024

Jeremy Hammond: "Zionism itself is a racist ideology"

Zionism itself is a racist ideology, the whole concept being, going back to the Mandate era again, and looking at what they wanted and what the movement was and what the Zionist project was, [it] was a settler colonial project aimed at displacing the Arab population and subjecting the Arabs to Jewish domination.  And Israel exists today in accordance with the original Zionist movement and its original aims.  It exists today as an unashamedly as a Jewish supremacist state.  

And we need look no further to establish that, uncontroversially, we need look no further than the Jewish Nation State Law passed in 2018, which is part of its Basic Law, which is Israel doesn't have a constitution, but they have what's called a Basic Law, which is - you can think of it as their constitutional law - it's basically their supreme law of the land, which literally defines self-determination in the territory under Israel's control as a right exclusive to Jews.  So it's a Jewish supremacist state, openly.

~ Jeremy R. Hammond, video clip on Twitter/X, May 23, 2024

Jeremy Hammond on Israel's war on terror

That the real threat to Israel has been that of peace achieved through implementation of the two-state solution is well evidenced by its policies and their predictable consequences.  This is oftentimes the only rational explanation for Israel’s actions.  Its continued occupation, oppression, and violence toward the Palestinians have served to escalate the threat of terrorism against Israeli civilians, but this is a price Israeli leaders are willing to pay.  Indeed, the threat of terrorism has often served as a necessary pretext to further goals that would not be politically feasible absent such a threat.

This was recognized within the Israeli government itself.  In October 2003, for example, Moshe Ya’alon, the Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), criticized the policies of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon because they served to increase hatred of Israel and strengthen terrorist organizations.

~ Jeremy R. Hammond, Obstacle to Peace: The US Role in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

2016

Jeremy Hammond: Biden's concerns for humanitarian situation in Gaza is a cynical PR ploy

Under the administration of President Joseph R. Biden, the US government has been portraying itself as being seriously concerned about the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, where Israel has been waging a devastating military assault that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on January 26 judged to be a plausible genocide...  Biden also said that his administration had been “working non-stop to establish an immediate ceasefire” that would “ease the intolerable humanitarian crisis”. 

“We have been very, very clear about our concerns over the humanitarian situation there and how unacceptable it is that so many people are in such dire need,” White House National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby told reporters.

But the reality is that the US government has been fully supporting Israel’s military assault on the civilian population of Gaza, including by arming Israel and repeatedly blocking ceasefire resolutions in the United Nations (UN) Security Council aimed at enabling the delivery of urgently required humanitarian aid.  Transparently, the Biden administration’s proclaimed desire to help the people of Gaza is a cynical public relations effort aimed at trying to create an illusion that the US government is not complicit in Israel’s ongoing crimes against humanity.

The Biden administration is seeking to distance itself from responsibility for the humanitarian catastrophe because of the support he has been losing among members of his own Democratic party, and with the ICJ already having judged the situation to be a plausible genocide, US government officials are undoubtedly motivated by a desire to avoid potential future charges of complicity and failing in its own moral and legal obligation under the 1948 Genocide Convention to act to prevent genocide.

[...] 

The objections to the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s months-long assault on the civilian population of Gaza coming from within his own political party have created a public relations problem for the White House during an election year, but American voters should not delude themselves into the belief that the US government is a part of the solution rather than a part of the problem. The American people have the power to change the course of history for the better, but they have to actually use it. A simple first step would be to recognize that there are certain positions that ought to automatically disqualify a presidential candidate from consideration—and supporting a genocide is certainly one of them. 

If upholding basic moral values this way rules out all three of the top contenders in the presidential race—Joe Biden, Donald Trump, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.—then so be it. 

~ Jeremy R. Hammond, "US Humanitarian Aid to Gaza Is a Cynical PR Ploy," Foreign Policy, March 20, 2024