Fariba Amini 05/15/2026
A New World Order
“For a colonized people the most essential value, because the most concrete, is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and, above all, dignity.”
― Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
Fariba Amini writes: “Adam Hochschild is an American journalist and author who is best known for his book, King Leopold’s Ghost, which is the horrifying story of the Congo under the Belgians. His many other books include Spain in our Hearts, about the Spanish Civil war, and To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914–1918.
A professor emeritus at the UC Berkeley School of Journalism, he is married to the well-known sociologist Arlee Russell Hochschild, whose book Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, was a NYTimes bestseller.
Adam was one of the co-founders of the literary journal, Mother Jones. He has been a regular contributor to several publications, among them, the New Yorker, The Nation, The Atlantic and the New York Times.
His books have been translated into seventeen languages.
In 2015, when I visited Berkeley, Adam signed his moving book of memoirs for me. Here is the interview I just conducted with him.”
Fariba Amini: Since the last time I interviewed you, which was ages ago, the world has changed in a far worse situation. Trump is now in power again and project 2025 is in full force. How do you see this period? Why are we at this point in history?
Adam Hochschild: It’s the grimmest moment in my political lifetime. Not only do we have a president devoting to enriching his friends and starting a brutal, mad war––we’ve had those before––but he’s one who doesn’t even pay lip service to democracy. Why did we get here? Because people voted for him. Why did they vote for him? Because he brilliantly and falsely convinced them he would address their grievances.
Fariba Amini: You were born into a mine owner family, yet you chose to take a different route. What made you decide to become a journalist and writer?
Adam Hochschild: It took me a full book to answer those questions: Half the Way Home: A Memoir of Father and Son. There were many reasons, but coming of age in the 1960s certainly helped.
Fariba Amini: We have witnessed the genocide in Gaza, the invasion of Lebanon and the attack on Iran. Thousands of lives have been lost. The Israeli government is now the dominant military force in the Middle East without having to answer to anyone. Do you see these illegal attacks because of October 7 as the Israelis claim or for its own defense?
Adam Hochschild: The October 7 attack, which killed or kidnapped so many civilian men, women, and children, was a crime and should be condemned. But it emphatically does not justify Israel waging a vastly greater crime––in terms of the number of people killed and wounded—in response. And the mass murder in Gaza has little to do with the “defense” of Israel.
Fariba Amini: Are the aims of the Trump administration the same as that of Benjamin Netanhyahu?
Adam Hochschild: One thing the two men share is that they are both autocrats who have good reason to fear going to jail if they were to fall out of power. They both share the aim of staying in power at all costs. And they certainly resemble each other in wanting to conquer and dominate nearby territories: the West Bank and Gaza; Cuba and Venezuela.
Fariba Amini: You have written extensively on Congo. It looks like ICE is attempting to deport Afghan refugees to DRC. Many of them had helped the U.S. military in Afghanistan. The Congo is a world away from Afghanistan. It is a totally different culture. Why Congo? What is the situation in the Congo today?
Adam Hochschild: Almost all the countries who have agreed to accept “third country deportees” from the United States do so because, in one way or another—either cash grants or trade deals—they have been paid for doing so. Congo’s prisons are horrible, and no one deserves to be placed in them. A good part of the country is in a state of civil war, part of the northeast is, in effect, under Rwandan occupation, and the central government is largely dysfunctional, although evidently not too dysfunctional to make this shameful deal with Trump about accepting prisoners.
Fariba Amini: Are we facing a new U.S. empire as designed by the Trump administration? It seems that Cuba and Venezuela in this hemisphere are the target. Why now? What is the endgame of this administration?
Adam Hochschild: Trump’s aims are to get revenge on his enemies, to make himself, his family and his friends even richer, and to remain the center of attention. That’s his endgame. There is no action he takes that doesn’t fulfill one of those aims.
Fariba Amini: Is this going back to the Monroe Doctrine?
Adam Hochschild: It’s going beyond the Monroe Doctrine, which was mainly about keeping the Europeans out of Latin America. Trump would actually like to control what happens in parts of Latin American where he can do that, such as Venezuela and Cuba. And he wants greater influence over regimes elsewhere on the continent as well.
Fariba Amini: Do you find similarities between King Leopold and King Trump?
Adam Hochschild: Yes. Both share immense greed.
Fariba Amini: Many scholars and progressive thinkers have left this country. It seems that the universities are under attack and students are being arrested and deported. What is going on?
Adam Hochschild: The deportations are shocking and are depriving us of many good people. But in the case of American citizens who can’t be deported, I’m for people staying here. Here is where the fight needs to be. I’m sorry to see talented scholars move to Europe or Canada.
Fariba Amini: The U.S. and Israel are both quite isolated worldwide. But it looks as if they don’t even care about world public opinion and Trump certainly doesn’t care about his own base. Are we witnessing a different world order?
Adam Hochschild: Yes, both countries are acting as if they can go it on their own. And they’ve both certainly squandered whatever goodwill other nations have towards them. And Trump’s USA is certainly acting like it can dispense with NATO. In that sense, we are indeed in a different world order.
Fariba Amini: In the West Bank, the settlers are viciously attacking Palestinians. Stealing their sheep, their olive trees, their homes and lands. How is this even justified under the Jewish faith? Who are these settlers and why have they been given carte blanche by the government?
Adam Hochschild: Millions of Jews—like me—are appalled by all of this. None of it can be justified under the Jewish faith or under any humane and rational standard of ethics. But of course, those in control in Israel feel they are entitled to all of Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, regardless of the fact that roughly half the people who live in all this territory are Palestinian. This is conquest and domination, something history has seen too much of.
Fariba Amini: Drop Site News reported that a Palestinian family was forced to exhume the body of their father and bury him elsewhere. Isn’t this the most outrageous kind of crime? How can this be happening?
Adam Hochschild: Yes, it is an outrageous crime.
Fariba Amini: The media does very little to report on the events in the Middle East. Only the war with Iran is still in the news. What is your opinion of the role of mainstream U.S. media?
Adam Hochschild. Thumbnail via Democracy Now!
Adam Hochschild: Actually, I think some of the mainstream media does a decent job. Although I sometimes disagree with the emphasis they put on different stories, I feel you can get a pretty clear picture of what’s going on in the world from reading the New York Times carefully. There are plenty of other good news sources as well. Lack of information is not our problem, although of course there is a firehose of disinformation from Fox News and the like.
Fariba Amini: What is your opinion on the war on Iran?
Adam Hochschild: Iran has a horribly oppressive government, but that in no way gives the U.S. the right to make war on it. If that justified a war, we’d be at war with half the countries on earth.
Fariba Amini: Is there any hope for the future? What is the role of progressive people? Can we survive this?
Adam Hochschild: Yes, but it will be tough. We have to speak out, vote, organize in every way possible. I take hope from the resistance in Minneapolis. I take hope from the fact that 40 Democratic senators recently voted—unsuccessfully—to ban certain arms sales to Israel. I take hope from the fact that people are organizing throughout the country to make sure the 2026 and 2028 elections happen as they are legally supposed to. But we can’t let down our vigilance for a moment.