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Title: Optimism Over Despair
Author: Noam Chomsky
Date: 2017
Language: en
Topics: interview, Noam Chomsky, capitalism, Empire, social change
Source: Retrieved on 7th November 2020 from http://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=0D443789DED94582FD48C195695511EB

Noam Chomsky

Optimism Over Despair

Introduction

The interviews in this volume present the views of the world’s leading

public intellectual on the consequences of capitalist globalization, and

much more, as recorded in conversations with the undersigned over the

course of the last four years—from late 2013 to early 2017, to be

exact—and originally published in Truthout.

Noam Chomsky has been “America’s moral conscience” for more than half a

century (even if he remains unknown to the majority of Americans) as

well as the world’s most recognized public intellectual, consistently

speaking out against US aggression and defending the rights of the weak

and the oppressed throughout the world from the time of the Vietnam War

to the present. His analyses are always grounded in indisputable facts

and are also guided by deeply held moral considerations about freedom,

democracy, human rights, and human decency.

Chomsky’s voice remains almost singularly a beacon of hope and optimism

in these dark times—an age of unparalleled economic inequality, growing

authoritarianism, and social Darwinism, with a left that has turned its

back on the class struggle.

For quite some time now, there have been clear and strong indications

across the entire political and socioeconomic spectrum in advanced

Western societies that the contradictions of capitalist globalization

and the neoliberal policies associated with them threaten to unleash

powerful forces with the capacity to produce not only highly destructive

outcomes for growth and prosperity, justice, and social peace, but also

concomitant consequences for democracy, the environment, and human

civilization on the whole.

Still, according to Chomsky, despair is not an option. No matter how

horrendous the current world situation appears to be, resistance to

oppression and exploitation has never been a fruitless undertaking, even

in darker times than our own. Indeed, the Trump “counterrevolution” in

the United States has already brought to the surface a plethora of

social forces determined to stand up to the aspiring autocrat, and the

future of resistance in the world’s most powerful country appears more

promising than in many other parts of the advanced industrialized world.

In this context, the interviews assembled here are, we believe, of

critical import. These were originally commissioned and edited by Maya

Schenwar, Alana Yu-lan Price, and Leslie Thatcher for publication as

stand-alone articles in Truthout. Our hope in anthologizing them is that

they will assist to introduce the views and ideas of Noam Chomsky to a

new generation of readers, while maintaining faith among the rest in the

human ability to provide tenacious resistance to the forces of political

darkness and ultimately change the course of history for the better.

—C. J. Polychroniou, March 2017

Part I

The Breakdown of American Society and a World in Transition

C. J. POLYCHRONIOU: Noam, you have said that the rise of Donald Trump is

largely due to the breakdown of American society. What exactly do you

mean by this?

NOAM CHOMSKY: The state-corporate programs of the past thirty-five or so

years have had devastating effects on the majority of the population,

with stagnation, decline, and sharply enhanced inequality being the most

direct outcomes. This has created fear and has left people feeling

isolated, helpless—victims of powerful forces they can neither

understand nor influence. The breakdown is not caused by economic laws.

They are policies, a kind of class war initiated by the rich and

powerful against the working population and the poor. This is what

defines the neoliberalism period, not only in the United States but in

Europe and elsewhere. Trump is appealing to those who sense and

experience the breakdown of American society—to deep feelings of anger,

fear, frustration, hopelessness, probably among sectors of the

population that are seeing an increase in mortality, something unheard

of apart from war.

Class warfare remains as vicious and one-sided as ever. Neoliberal

governance over the last thirty years, regardless if there was a

Republican or a Democratic administration in place, has intensified

immensely the processes of exploitation and induced ever-larger gaps

between haves and have-nots in American society. Moreover, I don’t see

neoliberal class politics being on retreat in spite of the opportunities

that opened up because of the last financial crisis and by having a

centrist Democrat in the White House.

The business classes, which largely run the country, are highly class

conscious. It is not a distortion to describe them as vulgar Marxists,

with values and commitments reversed. It was not until thirty years ago

that the head of the most powerful union recognized and criticized the

“one-sided class war” that is relentlessly waged by the business world.

It has succeeded in achieving the results you describe. However,

neoliberal policies are in shambles. They have come to harm the most

powerful and privileged (who only partially accepted them for themselves

in the first place), so they cannot be sustained.

It is rather striking to observe that the policies that the rich and

powerful adopt for themselves are the precise opposite of those they

dictate to the weak and poor. Thus, when Indonesia has a deep financial

crisis, the instructions from the US Treasury Department (via the

International Monetary Fund, IMF) are to pay off the debt (to the West),

to raise interest rates and thus slow the economy, to privatize (so that

Western corporations can buy up their assets), and the rest of the

neoliberal dogma. For ourselves, the policies are to forget about debt,

to reduce interest rates to zero, to nationalize (but not to use the

word), and to pour public funds into the pockets of the financial

institutions, and so on. It is also striking that the dramatic contrast

passes unnoticed, along with the fact that this conforms to the record

of the economic history of the past several centuries, a primary reason

for the separation of the first and third worlds.

Class politics is so far only marginally under attack. The Obama

administration has avoided even minimal steps to end and reverse the

attack on unions. Obama has even indirectly indicated his support for

this attack, in interesting ways. It is worth recalling that his first

trip to show his solidarity with working people (called “the middle

class,” in US rhetoric) was to the Caterpillar plant in Illinois. He

went there in defiance of pleas by church and human rights organizations

because of Caterpillar’s grotesque role in the Israeli occupied

territories, where it is a prime instrument in devastating the land and

villages of “the wrong people.” But it seems not even to have been

noticed that, adopting Reagan’s antilabor policies, Caterpillar became

the first industrial corporation in generations to break a powerful

union by employing strike-breakers, in radical violation of

international labor conventions. That left the United States alone in

the industrial world, along with apartheid South Africa, in tolerating

such means of undermining workers’ rights and democracy—and now I

presume the United States is alone. It is hard to believe that the

choice was accidental.

There is a widespread belief, at least among some well-known political

strategists, that issues do not define American elections—even if the

rhetoric is that candidates need to understand public opinion in order

to woo voters—and we do know, of course, that media provide a wealth of

false information on critical issues (take the mass media’s role before

and during the launching of the Iraq War) or fail to provide any

information at all (on labor issues, for example). Yet, there is strong

evidence indicating that the American public cares about the great

social, economic, and foreign policy issues facing the country. For

example, according to a research study released some years ago by the

University of Minnesota, Americans ranked health care among the most

important problems facing the country. We also know that the

overwhelming majority of Americans are in support of unions. Or that

they judged the “war against terror” to be a total failure. In the light

of all of this, what’s the best way to understand the relation between

media, politics, and the public in contemporary American society?

It is well established that electoral campaigns are designed so as to

marginalize issues and focus on personalities, rhetorical style, body

language, and the like. And there are good reasons. Party managers read

polls and are well aware that on a host of major issues, both parties

are well to the right of the population—not surprisingly; they are,

after all, business parties. Polls show that a large majority of voters

object, but those are the only choices offered to them in the

business-managed electoral system, in which the most heavily funded

candidate almost always wins.

Similarly, consumers might prefer decent mass transportation to a choice

between two automobiles, but that option is not provided by

advertisers—nor, indeed, by markets. Ads on TV do not provide

information about products; rather, they provide illusion and imagery.

The same public relations firms that seek to undermine markets by

ensuring that uninformed consumers will make irrational choices

(contrary to abstract economic theories) seek to undermine democracy in

the same way. And the managers of the industry are well aware of all of

this. Leading figures in the industry have exulted in the business press

that they have been marketing candidates like commodities ever since

Reagan, and this is their greatest success yet, which they predict will

provide a model for corporate executives and the marketing industry in

the future.

You mentioned the Minnesota poll on health care. It is typical. For

decades, polls have shown that health care is at or near the top of

public concerns—not surprisingly, given the disastrous failure of the

health care system, with per capita costs twice as high as comparable

societies and some of the worst outcomes. Polls also consistently show

that large majorities want a nationalized system, called “single payer,”

rather like the existing Medicare system for the elderly, which is far

more efficient than the privatized systems or the one introduced by

Obama. When any of this is mentioned, which is rare, it is called

“politically impossible” or “lacking political support”—meaning that the

insurance and pharmaceutical industries, and others who benefit from the

current system, object. We gained an interesting insight into the

workings of American democracy from the fact that in 2008, unlike in

2004, the Democratic candidates—first Edwards, then Clinton and

Obama—came forward with proposals that at least began to approach what

the public has wanted for decades. Why? Not because of a shift in public

attitudes, which have remained steady. Rather, the manufacturing

industry has been suffering from the costly and inefficient privatized

health care system, and the enormous privileges granted, by law, to the

pharmaceutical industries. When a large sector of concentrated capital

favors some program, it becomes “politically possible” and has

“political support.” Just as revealing as the facts themselves is that

they are not noticed.

Much the same is true on many other issues, domestic and international.

The US economy is facing myriad problems, although profits for the rich

and corporations returned long ago to the levels they were prior to the

eruption of the 2008 financial crisis. But the one single problem that

most academic and financial analysts seem to focus on as being of most

critical nature is that of government debt. According to mainstream

analysts, US debt is already out of control, which is why they have been

arguing consistently against big economic stimulus packages to boost

growth, contending that such measures will only push the United States

deeper into debt. What is the likely impact that a ballooning debt will

have on the American economy and on international investors’ confidence

in the event of a new financial crisis?

No one really knows. Debt has been far higher in the past, particularly

after World War II. But that was overcome thanks to the remarkable

economic growth under the wartime semi–command economy. So we know that

if government stimulus spurs sustained economic growth, the debt can be

controlled. And there are other devices, such as inflation. But the rest

is very much guesswork. The main funders—primarily China, Japan, oil

producers—might decide to shift their funds elsewhere for higher

profits. But there are few signs of such developments, and they are not

too likely. The funders have a considerable stake in sustaining the US

economy for their own exports. There is no way to make confident

predictions, but it seems clear that the entire world is in a tenuous

situation, to say the least.

You seem to believe, in contrast to so many others, that the United

States remains a global economic, political, and of course military

superpower even after the latest crisis—and I do have the same

impression, as well, as the rest of the world economies are not only not

in any shape to challenge America’s hegemony but are looking toward the

United States as a savior of the global economy. What do you see as the

competitive advantages that US capitalism has over the EU economy and

the newly emerging economies in Asia?

The 2007–2008 financial crisis in large measure originated in the United

States, but its major competitors—Europe and Japan—ended up suffering

more severely, and the United States remained the choice location for

investors who are looking for security in a time of crisis. The

advantages of the United States are substantial. It has extensive

internal resources. It is unified, an important fact. Until the Civil

War in the 1860s, the phrase “United States” was plural (as it still is

in European languages). But since then, the phrase has been singular, in

standard English. Policies designed in Washington by state power and

concentrated capital apply to the whole country. That is far harder in

Europe. A couple of years after the eruption of the latest global

financial crisis, the European Commission task force issued a report

saying, “Europe needs new bodies to monitor systemic risk and coordinate

oversight of financial institutions across the region’s patchwork of

supervision,” though the task force, headed then by a former French

central banker, “stopped well short of suggesting a single European

watchdog”—which the United States can have any time it wants. For

Europe, it would be “an almost impossible mission,” the task force

leader said. [Several] analysts, including the Financial Times, have

described such a goal as politically impossible, “a step too far for

many member states reluctant to cede authority in this area.” There are

many other advantages to unity. Some of the harmful effects of European

inability to coordinate reactions to the crisis have been widely

discussed by European economists.

The historical roots of these differences between Europe and the United

States are familiar. Centuries of conflict imposed a nation-state system

in Europe, and the experience of World War II convinced Europeans that

they must abandon their traditional sport of slaughtering one another,

because the next try would be the last. So we have what political

scientists like to call “a democratic peace,” though it is far from

clear that democracy has much to do with it. In contrast, the United

States is a settler-colonial state, which murdered the indigenous

population and consigned the remnants to “reservations,” while

conquering half of Mexico, then expanding beyond. Far more than in

Europe, the rich internal diversity was destroyed. The Civil War

cemented central authority, and uniformity in other domains as well:

national language, cultural patterns, huge state-corporate social

engineering projects such as the suburbanization of the society, massive

central subsidy of advanced industry by research and development,

procurement and other devices, and much else.

The new emerging economies in Asia have incredible internal problems

unknown in the West. We know more about India than China, because it is

a more open society. There are reasons why it ranks 130^(th) in the

Human Development Index (about where it was before the partial

neoliberal reforms); China ranks 90^(th), and the rank could be worse if

more were known about it. That only scratches the surface. In the

eighteenth century, China and India were the commercial and industrial

centers of the world, with sophisticated market systems, advanced health

levels by comparative standards, and so on. But imperial conquest and

economic policies (state intervention for the rich, free markets rammed

down the throats of the poor) left them in miserable conditions. It is

notable that the one country of the global South that developed was

Japan, the one country that was not colonized. The correlation is not

accidental.

Is the United States still dictating IMF policies?

It’s opaque, but my understanding is that IMF’s economists are supposed

to be, maybe are, somewhat independent of the political people. In the

case of Greece, and austerity generally, the economists have come out

with some strongly critical papers on the Brussels programs, but the

political people seem to be ignoring them.

On the foreign policy front, the “war on terror” seems to be a

never-ending enterprise and, as with the Hydra monster, two new heads

pop up when one is cut off. Can massive interventions of force wipe out

terrorist organizations like ISIS (also known as Daesh or ISIL)?

Upon taking office, Obama expanded intervention forces and stepped up

the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, just as he had promised he would

do. There were peaceful options, some recommended right in the

mainstream: in Foreign Affairs, for example. But these did not fall

under consideration. Afghan president Hamid Karzai’s first message to

Obama, which went unanswered, was a request to stop bombing civilians.

Karzai also informed a UN delegation that he wanted a timetable for

withdrawal of foreign (meaning US) troops. Immediately he fell out of

favor in Washington, and accordingly shifted from a media favorite to

“unreliable,” “corrupt,” and so on—which was no more true than when he

was feted as our “our man” in Kabul. Obama sent many more troops and

stepped up bombing on both sides of the Afghan–Pakistan border—the

Durand line, an artificial border established by the British, which cuts

the Pashtun areas in two and which the people have never accepted.

Afghanistan in the past often pressed for obliterating it.

That is the central component of the “war on terror.” It was certain to

stimulate terror, just as the invasion of Iraq did, and as resort to

force does quite generally. Force can succeed. The existence of the

United States is one illustration. The Russians in Chechnya is another.

But it has to be overwhelming, and there are probably too many tentacles

to wipe out the terrorist monster that was largely created by Reagan and

his associates, since nurtured by others. ISIS is the latest one, and a

far more brutal organization than al-Qaeda. It is also different in the

sense that it has territorial claims. It can be wiped out through

massive employment of troops on the ground, but that won’t end the

emergence of similar-minded organizations. Violence begets violence.

US relations with China have gone through different phases over the past

few decades, and it is hard to get a handle on where things stand today.

Do you anticipate future US–Sino relations to improve or deteriorate?

The US has a love-hate relation with China. China’s abysmal wages,

working conditions, and lack of environmental constraints are a great

boon to US and other Western manufacturers who transfer operations

there, and to the huge retail industry, which can obtain cheap goods.

And the United States now relies on China, Japan, and others to sustain

its own economy. But China poses problems as well. It does not

intimidate easily. When the United States shakes its fist at Europe and

tells Europeans to stop doing business with Iran, they mostly comply.

China doesn’t pay much attention. That’s frightening. There is a long

history of conjuring up imaginary Chinese threats. It continues.

Do you see China being in a position any time soon to pose a threat to

US global interests?

Among the great powers, China has been the most reserved in use of

force, even military preparations. So much so that leading US strategic

analysts (John Steinbrunner and Nancy Gallagher, writing in the journal

of the ultra-respectable American Academy of Arts and Sciences) called

on China some years ago to lead a coalition of peace-loving nations to

confront the US aggressive militarism that they think is leading to

“ultimate doom.” There is little indication of any significant change in

that respect. But China does not follow orders and is taking steps to

gain access to energy and other resources around the world. That

constitutes a threat.

Indian–Pakistani relations pose clearly a major challenge in US foreign

policy. Is this a situation the United States can actually have under

control?

To a limited extent. And the situation is highly volatile. There is

constant ongoing violence in Kashmir—state terror by India,

Pakistan-based terrorists. And much more, as the recent Mumbai bombings

revealed. There are also possible ways to reduce tensions. One is a

planned pipeline to India through Pakistan from Iran, the natural source

of energy for India. Presumably, Washington’s decision to undermine the

nonproliferation treaty by granting India access to nuclear technology

was in part motivated by the hope of undercutting this option and

bringing India to join in Washington’s campaign against Iran. It also

may be a related issue in Afghanistan, where there has long been

discussion of a pipeline (TAPI) from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to

Pakistan and then India. It is probably not a very live issue, but quite

possibly is in the background. The “great game” of the nineteenth

century is alive and well.

In many circles, there is a widespread impression that the Israel lobby

calls the shots in US foreign policy in the Middle East. Is the power of

the Israel lobby so strong that it can have sway over a superpower?

My friend Gilbert Achcar, a noted specialist on the Middle East and

international affairs generally, describes that idea as

“phantasmagoric.” Rightly. It is not the lobby that intimidates US

high-tech industry to expand its investments in Israel, or that twists

the arm of the US government so that it will pre-position supplies there

for later US military operations and intensify close military and

intelligence relations.

When the lobby’s goals conform to perceived US strategic and economic

interests, it generally gets its way: crushing of Palestinians, for

example, a matter of little concern to US state-corporate power. When

goals diverge, as often happens, the lobby quickly disappears, knowing

better than to confront authentic power.

I agree totally with your analysis, but I think you would also agree

that the Israel lobby is influential enough, and beyond whatever

economic and political leverage it carries, that criticisms of Israel

still cause hysterical reactions in the United States—and you certainly

have been a target of right-wing Zionists for many years. To what do we

attribute this intangible influence on the part of the Israel lobby over

American public opinion?

That is all true, though much less so than in recent years. It is not

really power over public opinion. In numbers, by far the largest support

for Israeli actions is independent of the lobby: Christian religious

fundamentalists. British and American Zionism preceded the Zionist

movement, based on providentialist interpretations of Biblical

prophecies. The population at large supports the two-state settlement,

doubtless unaware that the United States has been unilaterally blocking

it. Among educated sectors, including Jewish intellectuals, there was

little interest in Israel before its great military victory in 1967,

which really established the US–Israeli alliance. That led to a major

love affair with Israel on the part of the educated classes. Israel’s

military prowess and the US-Israeli alliance provided an irresistible

temptation to combine support for Washington with worship of power and

humanitarian pretexts. But to put it in perspective, reactions to

criticism of US crimes are at least as severe, often more so. If I count

up the death threats I have received over the years, or the diatribes in

journals of opinion, Israel is far from the leading factor. The

phenomenon is by no means restricted to the United States. Despite much

self-delusion, Western Europe is not very different—though, of course,

it is more open to criticism of US actions. The crimes of others usually

tend to be welcome, offering opportunities to posture about one’s

profound moral commitments.

Under Erdoğan, Turkey has been in a process of unfolding a neo-Ottoman

strategy towards the Middle East and Central Asia. Is the unfolding of

this grand strategy taking place with the collaboration or the

opposition of the United States?

Turkey, of course, has been a very significant US ally, so much so that

under Clinton it became the leading recipient of US arms (after Israel

and Egypt, in a separate category). Clinton poured arms into Turkey to

help it carry out a vast campaign of murder, destruction, and terror

against its Kurdish minority. Turkey has also been a major ally of

Israel since 1958, part of a general alliance of non-Arab states, under

the US aegis, with the task of ensuring control over the world’s major

energy sources by protecting the ruling dictators against what is called

“radical nationalism”—a euphemism for the populations. US–Turkish

relations have sometimes been strained. That was particularly true in

the buildup to the US invasion of Iraq, when the Turkish government,

bowing to the will of 95 percent of the population, refused to join.

That caused fury in the United States. Paul Wolfowitz was dispatched to

order the disobedient government to mend its evil ways, to apologize to

the United States, and to recognize that its duty is to help the United

States. These well-publicized events in no way undermined Wolfowitz’s

reputation in the liberal media as the “idealist in chief” of the Bush

administration, utterly dedicated to promoting democracy. Relations are

somewhat tense today too, though the alliance is in place. Turkey has

quite natural potential relations with Iran and Central Asia and might

be inclined to pursue them, perhaps raising tensions with Washington

again. But it does not look too likely right now.

On the Western front, are plans for the eastward expansion of NATO,

which go back to the era of Bill Clinton, still in place?

One of Clinton’s major crimes in my opinion—and there were many—was to

expand NATO to the east, in violation of a firm pledge to Gorbachev by

his predecessors after Gorbachev made the astonishing concession to

allow a united Germany to join a hostile military alliance. These very

serious provocations were carried forward by Bush, along with a posture

of aggressive militarism which, as predicted, elicited strong reactions

from Russia. But American redlines are already placed on Russia’s

borders.

What are your views about the EU? It is still largely a trailblazer for

neoliberalism and hardly a bulwark for US aggression. But do you see any

signs that it can emerge at some point as a constructive, influential

actor on the world stage?

It could. That is a decision for Europeans to make. Some have favored

taking an independent stance, notably De Gaulle. But by and large,

European elites have preferred passivity, following pretty much in

Washington’s footsteps.

Horror Beyond Description: The Latest Phase of the “War on Terror”

C. J. POLYCHRONIOU: I would like to start by hearing your thoughts on

the latest developments on the war against terrorism, a policy that

dates back to the Reagan years and was subsequently turned into a

doctrine of Islamophobic “crusade” by George W. Bush, with simply

inestimable cost to innocent human lives and astonishingly profound

effects for international law and world peace. The war against terrorism

is seemingly entering a new and perhaps more dangerous phase as other

countries have jumped into the fray, with different policy agendas and

interests than those of the United States and some of its allies. First,

do you agree with the above assessment on the evolution of the war

against terrorism, and, if so, what are likely to be the economic,

social, and political consequences of a permanent global war on terror,

for Western societies in particular?

NOAM CHOMSKY: The two phases of the “war on terror” are quite different,

except in one crucial respect. Reagan’s war very quickly turned into

murderous terrorist wars, presumably the reason why it has been

“disappeared.” His terrorist wars had hideous consequences for Central

America, southern Africa, and the Middle East. Central America, the most

direct target, has yet to recover, one of the primary reasons—rarely

mentioned—for the current refugee crisis. The same is true of the second

phase, redeclared by George W. Bush twenty years later, in 2001. Direct

aggression has devastated large regions, and terror has taken new forms,

notably Obama’s global assassination (drone) campaign, which breaks new

records in the annals of terrorism, and, like other such exercises,

probably generates dedicated terrorists more quickly than it kills

suspects.

The target of Bush’s war was al-Qaeda. One hammer blow after

another—Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and beyond—has succeeded in spreading

jihadi terror from a small tribal area in Afghanistan to virtually the

whole world, from West Africa through the Levant and on to Southeast

Asia. One of history’s great policy triumphs. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda has

been displaced by much more vicious and destructive elements. Currently,

ISIS holds the record for monstrous brutality, but other claimants for

the title are not far behind. The dynamic, which goes back many years,

has been studied in an important work by military analyst Andrew

Cockburn, in his book Kill Chain. He documents how when you kill one

leader without dealing with the roots and causes of the phenomenon, he

is typically replaced very quickly by someone younger, more competent,

and more vicious.

One consequence of these achievements is that world opinion regards the

United States as the greatest threat to peace by a large margin. Far

behind, in second place, is Pakistan, presumably inflated by the Indian

vote. Further successes of the kind already registered might even create

a broader war with an inflamed Muslim world while the Western societies

subject themselves to internal repression and curtailing of civil rights

and groan under the burden of huge expenses, realizing Osama bin Laden’s

wildest dreams, and those of ISIS today.

In US policy discussions revolving around the “war on terror,” the

difference between overt and covert operations has all but disappeared.

Meanwhile the identification of terrorist groups and the selection of

actors or states supporting terrorism not only appear to be totally

arbitrary, but also in some cases the culprits identified have raised

questions about whether the “war on terror” is in fact a real war

against terrorism or whether it is a smokescreen to justify policies of

global conquest. For example, while al-Qaeda and ISIS are undeniable

terrorist and murderous organizations, the fact that US allies such as

Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and even NATO member countries such as Turkey,

have actively supported ISIS is either ignored or seriously downplayed

by both US policy makers and the mainstream media. Do you have any

comments on this matter?

The same was true of the Reagan and Bush versions of the “war on

terror.” For Reagan, it was a pretext to intervene in Central America,

in what Salvadoran Bishop Rivera y Damas, who succeeded the assassinated

Archbishop Oscar Romero, described as “a war of extermination and

genocide against a defenseless civilian population.” It was even worse

in Guatemala and pretty awful in Honduras. Nicaragua was the one country

that had an army to defend it from Reagan’s terrorists; in the other

countries, the security forces were the terrorists.

In southern Africa, the “war on terror” provided the pretext to support

South African crimes at home and in the region, with a horrendous toll.

After all, we had to defend civilization from “one of the more notorious

terrorist groups” in the world, Nelson Mandela’s African National

Congress. Mandela himself remained on the US terrorist list until 2008.

In the Middle East, the “war on terror” construct led to support for

Israel’s murderous invasion of Lebanon, and much else. With Bush, it

provided a pretext for invading Iraq. And so it continues.

What’s happening in the Syrian horror story defies description. The main

ground forces opposing ISIS seem to be the Kurds, just as in Iraq, where

they are on the US terrorist list. In both countries, they are the prime

target of the assault of our NATO ally Turkey, which is also supporting

the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, al-Nusra Front. The latter seems hardly

different from ISIS, though they are having a turf battle. Turkish

support for al-Nusra is so extreme that when the Pentagon sent in

several dozen fighters it had trained, Turkey apparently alerted

al-Nusra, which instantly wiped them out. Al-Nusra and the closely

allied Ahrar al-Sham are also supported by US allies Saudi Arabia and

Qatar, and, it seems, may be getting advanced weapons from the CIA. It’s

been reported that they used TOW (theater of war) antitank weapons

supplied by the CIA to inflict serious defeats on the Assad army,

possibly impelling the Russians to intervene. Turkey seems to be

continuing to allow jihadis to flow across the border to ISIS.

Saudi Arabia in particular has been a major supporter of the extremist

jihadi movements for years, not only with financing but also by

spreading its radical Islamist Wahhabi doctrines with Koranic schools,

mosques, and clerics. With no little justice, Middle East correspondent

Patrick Cockburn describes the “Wahhabization” of Sunni Islam as one of

the most dangerous developments of the era. Saudi Arabia and the

Emirates have huge, advanced military forces, but they are barely

engaged in the war against ISIS. They do operate in Yemen, where they

are creating a major humanitarian catastrophe and very likely, as

before, generating future terrorists for us to target in our “war on

terror.” Meanwhile, the region and its people are being devastated.

For Syria, the only slim hope seems to be negotiations among the many

elements involved, excluding ISIS. That includes really awful people,

like Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, who are not going to willingly

commit suicide and so will have to be involved in negotiations if the

spiral to national suicide is not to continue. There are, finally,

halting steps in this direction at Vienna. There is more that can be

done on the ground, but a shift to diplomacy is essential.

Turkey’s role in the so-called global war against terrorism has to be

seen as one of the most hypocritical gestures in the modern annals of

diplomacy, and Vladimir Putin did not mince his words following the

downing of the Russian jet fighter by labeling Turkey “accomplices of

terrorists.” Oil is the reason why the United States and its Western

allies knowingly overlook certain Gulf nations’ support for terrorist

organizations like ISIS, but what is the reason for neglecting to

question Turkey’s support of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism?

Turkey has always been an important NATO ally of great geostrategic

significance. Through the 1990s, when Turkey was carrying out some of

the worst atrocities anywhere in its war against its Kurdish population,

it became the leading recipient of US arms (outside Israel and Egypt, a

separate category). The relationship has occasionally been under stress,

most notably in 2003, when the government adopted the position of 95

percent of the population and refused to join the US attack on Iraq.

Turkey was bitterly condemned for this failure to understand the meaning

of “democracy.” But generally the relationship has remained quite close.

Recently, the United States and Turkey reached an agreement on the war

against ISIS: Turkey granted the United States access to the Turkish

bases close to Syria and in return pledged to attack ISIS—but instead

attacked its Kurdish enemies.

While this may not be a popular view with many people, Russia, unlike

the United States, seems to be restrained when it comes to the use of

force. Assuming that you agree with this assumption, why do you think

this is the case?

They are the weaker party. They don’t have eight hundred military bases

throughout the world, couldn’t possibly intervene everywhere the way the

United States has done over the years, or carry out anything like

Obama’s global assassination campaign. The same was true throughout the

Cold War. They could use military force near their borders but couldn’t

possibly have carried out anything like the Indochina wars, for example.

France seems to have become a favorite target of Islamic fundamentalist

terrorists. What’s the explanation for that?

Actually, many more Africans are killed by Islamic terrorism. In fact,

Boko Haram is ranked higher than ISIS as a global terrorist

organization.[1] In Europe, France has been the major target, in large

part for reasons going back to the Algerian war.

Islamic fundamentalist terrorism of the kind promoted by ISIS has been

condemned by organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah. What differentiates

ISIS from other so-called terrorist organizations, and what does ISIS

really want?

We have to be careful about what we call “terrorist organizations.”

Anti-Nazi partisans used terror. So did George Washington’s army, so

much so that a large part of the population fled in fear of his

terror—not to speak of the Indigenous community, for whom he was “the

town destroyer.” It’s hard to find a national liberation movement that

hasn’t used terror. Hezbollah and Hamas were formed in response to

Israeli occupation and aggression. But whatever criteria we use, ISIS is

quite different. It is seeking to carve out territory that it will rule

and establish an Islamic caliphate. That’s quite different from others.

Following the Paris massacre of November 2015, Obama stated in a joint

news conference with French President Hollande that “ISIS must be

destroyed.” Do you think this is possible? If yes, how? If not, why not?

The West does of course have the capacity to slaughter everyone in the

ISIS-controlled areas, but even that wouldn’t destroy ISIS—or, very

likely, some more vicious movement that would develop in its place by

the dynamic I mentioned earlier. One goal of ISIS is to draw the

“crusaders” into a war with all Muslims. We can contribute to that

catastrophe, or we can try to address the roots of the problem and help

establish conditions under which the ISIS monstrosity will be overcome

by forces within the region.

Foreign intervention has been a curse for a long time, and is likely to

continue to be. There are sensible proposals as to how to proceed on

this course, for example, the proposal by William Polk, a fine Middle

East scholar with rich experience not only in the region but also at the

highest levels of US government planning.[2] It receives substantial

support from most careful investigations of the appeal of ISIS, notably

those of Scott Atran. Unfortunately, the chances that the advice will be

heeded are slight.

The political economy of US warfare seems to be structured in such a way

that wars appear to be almost inevitable, something which President

Dwight Eisenhower was apparently aware of when he warned us in his

farewell speech of the dangers of a military-industrial complex. In your

view, what will it take to move the United States away from militaristic

jingoism?

It is quite true that sectors of the economy benefit from “militaristic

jingoism,” but I do not think that is its main cause. There are

geostrategic and international economic considerations of great import.

The economic benefits—only one factor—were discussed in the business

press in interesting ways in the early post–World War II period. They

understood that massive government spending had rescued the country from

the Depression, and there was much concern that if it were curtailed,

the country would sink back into depression. One informative discussion,

in Business Week (February 12, 1949), recognized that social spending

could have the same “pump-priming” effect as military spending, but

pointed out that for businessmen, “there’s a tremendous social and

economic difference between welfare pump-priming and military

pump-priming.” The latter “doesn’t really alter the structure of the

economy.” For the businessman, it’s just another order. But welfare and

public works spending “does alter the economy. It makes new channels of

its own. It creates new institutions. It redistributes income.” And we

can add more. Military spending scarcely involves the public, but social

spending does, and has a democratizing effect. For reasons like these,

military spending is much preferred.

Pursuing this question about the link between US political culture and

militarism a bit further, is the apparent decline of US supremacy on the

global arena more or less likely to turn future US presidents into

warmongers?

The United States reached the peak of its power after World War II, but

decline set in very soon, first with the “loss of China” and later with

the revival of other industrial powers and the agonizing course of

decolonization, and in more recent years with other forms of

diversification of power. Reactions could take various forms. One is

Bush-style triumphalism and aggressiveness. Another is Obama-style

reticence to use ground forces. And there are many other possibilities.

The popular mood is no slight consideration, and one that we can hope to

influence.

Should the left support Bernie Sanders when he caucuses with the

Democratic Party?

I think so. His campaign has had a salutary effect. It’s raised

important issues that are otherwise sidestepped and has moved the

Democrats slightly in a progressive direction. Chances that he could be

elected in our system of bought elections are not high, and, if he were,

it would be extremely difficult for him to effect any significant change

of policies. The Republicans won’t disappear, and thanks to

gerrymandering and other tactics they are likely at least to control the

House, as they have done with a minority of votes for some years, and

they are likely to have a strong voice in the Senate. The Republicans

can be counted on to block even small steps in a progressive—or for that

matter even rational—direction. It’s important to recognize that they

are no longer a normal political party.

As respected political analysts of the conservative American Enterprise

Institute have observed, the former Republican Party is now a “radical

insurgency” that has pretty much abandoned parliamentary politics, for

interesting reasons that we can’t go into here. The Democrats have also

moved to the right, and their core elements are not unlike moderate

Republicans of years past—though some of Eisenhower’s policies would

place him about where Sanders is on the political spectrum. Sanders,

therefore, would be unlikely to have much congressional support, and

would have little at the state level.

Needless to say, the hordes of lobbyists and wealthy donors would hardly

be allies. Even Obama’s occasional steps in a progressive direction were

mostly blocked, though there may be other factors involved, perhaps

racism; it’s not easy to account for the ferocity of the hatred he has

evoked in other terms. But in general, in the unlikely event that

Sanders were elected, his hands would be tied—unless, unless, what

always matters in the end: unless mass popular movements would develop,

creating a wave that he could ride and that might (and should) impel him

farther than he might otherwise go.

That brings us, I think, to the most important part of the Sanders

candidacy. It has mobilized a huge number of people. If those forces can

be sustained beyond the election, instead of fading away once the

extravaganza is over, they could become the kind of popular force that

the country badly needs if it is to deal in a constructive way with the

enormous challenges that lie ahead.

The comments above relate to domestic policies, the areas he has

concentrated on. His foreign policy conceptions and proposals seem to me

to be pretty conventional liberal Democrat. Nothing particularly novel

is proposed, as far as I can see, including some assumptions that I

think should be seriously questioned.

One final question. What do you say to those who maintain the view that

ending the “war on terror” is naïve and misguided?

Simple: Why? And a more important question: Why do you think that the

United States should continue to make major contributions to global

terrorism, under the guise of a “war on terror”?

Originally published in Truthout, December 3, 2015

The Empire of Chaos

C. J. POLYCHRONIOU: US military interventions in the twenty-first

century (for example, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria) have proven

totally disastrous, yet the terms of the intervention debate have yet to

be redrawn among Washington’s warmakers. What’s the explanation for

this?

NOAM CHOMSKY: In part, the old cliché—when all you have is a hammer,

everything looks like a nail. The comparative advantage of the United

States is in military force. When one form of intervention fails,

doctrine and practice can be revised with new technologies, devices, and

the like. There are possible alternatives, such as supporting

democratization (in reality, not rhetoric). But these have likely

consequences that the United States would not favor. That is why when

the United States supports “democracy”; it is “top-down” forms of

democracy, in which traditional elites linked to the United States

remain in power, to quote the leading scholar of “democracy promotion,”

Thomas Carothers, a former Reagan official, who is a strong advocate of

the process but who recognizes the reality, unhappily.

Some have argued that Obama’s wars are quite different in both style and

essence from those of his predecessor, George W. Bush. Is there any

validity behind these claims?

Bush relied on shock-and-awe military violence, which proved disastrous

for the victims and led to serious defeats for the United States. Obama

is relying on different tactics, primarily the drone global

assassination campaign, which breaks new records in international

terrorism, and Special Forces operations, by now over much of the globe.

Nick Turse, the leading researcher on the topic, recently reported that

US elite forces were “deployed to a record-shattering 147 countries in

2015.”[3]

Destabilization and what I call the “creation of black holes” is the

principal aim of the Empire of Chaos in the Middle East and elsewhere,

but it is also clear that the United States is sailing in a turbulent

sea with no sense of direction and is, in fact, quite clueless in terms

of what needs to be done once the task of destruction has been

completed. How much of this is due to the decline of the United States

as a global hegemon?

The chaos and destabilization are real, but I don’t think that’s the

aim. Rather, it is a consequence of hitting fragile systems that one

does not understand with the sledgehammer that is the main tool, as in

Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. As for the continuing decline

of US hegemonic power (actually, from 1945, with some ups and downs),

there are consequences in the current world scene. Take, for example,

the fate of Edward Snowden. Four Latin American countries are reported

to have offered him asylum, no longer fearing the lash of Washington.

Not a single European power is willing to face US anger. That is a

consequence of very significant decline of US power in the Western

Hemisphere.

However, I doubt that the chaos in the Middle East traces substantially

to this factor. One consequence of the US invasion of Iraq was to incite

sectarian conflicts that are destroying Iraq and are now tearing the

region to shreds. The Europe-initiated bombing of Libya created a

disaster there, which has spread far beyond with weapons flow and

stimulation of jihadi crimes. And there are many other effects of

foreign violence. There are also many internal factors. I think that

Middle East correspondent Patrick Cockburn is correct in his observation

that the “Wahhabization” of Sunni Islam is one of the most dangerous

developments of the modern era. By now many of the most horrible

problems look virtually insoluble, like the Syrian catastrophe, where

the only slim hopes lie in some kind of negotiated settlement toward

which the powers involved seem to be slowly inching.

Russia is also raining down destruction in Syria. To what end; and does

Russia pose a threat to US interests in the region?

Russian strategy evidently is to sustain the Assad regime, and it is

indeed “raining down destruction,” primarily attacking the jihadi-led

forces supported by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, and to an extent

the United States. A recent article in the Washington Post suggested

that the high-tech weapons provided by the CIA to these forces

(including TOW antitank missiles) had shifted the military balance

against Assad and were a factor in drawing the Russians in. On “US

interest,” we have to be careful. The interests of US power and of the

people of the United States are often quite different, as is commonly

the case elsewhere as well. The official US interest is to eliminate

Assad, and naturally Russian support for Assad poses a threat to that.

And the confrontation not only is harmful, if not catastrophic, for

Syria, but also carries a threat of accidental escalation that could be

catastrophic far beyond.

Is ISIS a US-created monster?

A recent interview with the prominent Middle East analyst Graham Fuller

is headlined, “Former CIA officer says US policies helped create IS.”

What Fuller says, correctly I think, is that

I think the United States is one of the key creators of this

organization. The United States did not plan the formation of ISIS, but

its destructive interventions in the Middle East and the war in Iraq

were the basic causes of the birth of ISIS. You will remember that that

the starting point of this organization was to protest the US invasion

of Iraq. In those days it was supported by many non-Islamist Sunnis as

well because of their opposition to Iraq’s occupation. I think even

today ISIS [now the Islamic State] is supported by many Sunnis who feel

isolated by the Shiite government in Baghdad.

Establishment of Shiite dominance was one direct consequence of the US

invasion, a victory for Iran and one element of the remarkable US defeat

in Iraq. So in answer to your question, US aggression was a factor in

the rise of ISIS, but there is no merit to conspiracy theories

circulating in the region that hold that the United States planned the

rise of this extraordinary monstrosity.

How do you explain the fascination that a completely barbaric and savage

organization like the Islamic State holds for many young Muslim people

living in Europe?

There has been a good deal of careful study of the phenomenon, by Scott

Atran among others. The appeal seems to be primarily among young people

who live under conditions of repression and humiliation, with little

hope and little opportunity, and who seek some goal in life that offers

dignity and self-realization; in this case, establishing a utopian

Islamic state rising in opposition to centuries of subjugation and

destruction by Western imperial power. In addition, there appears to be

a good deal of peer pressure—members of the same soccer club, and so on.

The sharply sectarian nature of the regional conflicts no doubt is also

a factor—not just “defending Islam” but defending it from Shiite

apostates. It’s a very ugly and dangerous scene.

The Obama administration has shown little interest in reevaluating the

US relationship with authoritarian and fundamentalist regimes in places

like Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Is democracy promotion a completely sham

element of US foreign policy?

There doubtless are people like Thomas Carothers, mentioned above, who

really are dedicated to democracy promotion, and are within the

government; he was involved in “democracy promotion” in the Reagan State

Department. But the record shows quite clearly that it is scarcely an

element in policy, and quite often democracy is considered a threat—for

good reasons, when we look at popular opinion. To mention only one

obvious example, polls of international opinion by the leading US

polling agency (WIN/ Gallup) show that the United States is regarded as

the greatest threat to world peace by a huge margin, Pakistan far behind

in second place (presumably inflated by the Indian vote). Polls taken in

Egypt on the eve of the Arab Spring revealed considerable support for

Iranian nuclear weapons to counterbalance Israeli and US power. Public

opinion often favors social reform of the kind that would harm US-based

multinationals. And much else. These are hardly policies that the US

government would like to see instituted, but authentic democracy would

give a significant voice to public opinion. For similar reasons,

democracy is feared at home.

Do you anticipate any major changes in US foreign policy in the near

future, either under a Democratic or Republican administration?

Not under a Democratic administration, but the situation with a

Republican administration is much less clear. The party has drifted far

off the spectrum of parliamentary politics. If the pronouncements of the

current crop of candidates can be taken seriously, the world could be

facing deep trouble. Take, for example, the nuclear deal with Iran. Not

only are they unanimously opposed to it, but they are competing on how

quickly to bomb Iran. It’s a very strange moment in American political

history, and in a state with awesome powers of destruction that should

cause not a little concern.

Originally published in Truthout, November 5, 2015

Global Struggles for Dominance: ISIS, NATO, and Russia

C. J. POLYCHRONIOU: The rise of ISIS is a direct consequence of the US

invasion and occupation of Iraq and represents today, by far, the most

brutal and dangerous terrorist organization we have seen in recent

memory. It also appears that its tentacles have reached beyond the

“black holes” created by the United States in Syria, Libya, Iraq, and

Afghanistan and have now taken hold inside Europe, a fact acknowledged

recently by German chancellor Angela Merkel. In fact, it has been

estimated that attacks organized or inspired by ISIS have taken place

every forty-eight hours in cities outside the above-mentioned countries

since early June 2016. Why have countries like Germany and France become

the targets of ISIS?

NOAM CHOMSKY: I think we have to be cautious in interpreting ISIS claims

of responsibility for terrorist attacks. Take the worst of the recent

ones, in Nice. It was discussed by Akbar Ahmed, one of the most careful

and discerning analysts of radical Islam. He concludes from the

available evidence that the perpetrator, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, was

probably “not a devout Muslim. He had a criminal record, drank alcohol,

ate pork, did drugs, did not fast, pray or regularly attend a mosque and

was not religious in any way. He was cruel to his wife, who left him.

This is not what many Muslims would typically consider reflective of

their faith, particularly those who consider themselves religiously

devout.” ISIS did (belatedly) “take credit” for the attack, as they

routinely do, whatever the facts, but Ahmed regards the claim as highly

dubious in this case. On this and similar attacks, he concludes that

the reality is that while ISIS may influence these Muslims in a general

way, their animus is coming from their position as unwanted immigrants

in Europe, especially in France, where they are still not treated [as]

French, even if they are born there. The community as a whole has a

disproportionate population of unemployed youth with poor education and

housing and is constantly the butt of cultural humiliation. It is not an

integrated community, barring some honorable exceptions. From it come

the young men like Lahouaiej Bouhlel. The pattern of [the] petty

criminal may be observed in the other recent terrorist attacks in

Europe, including those in Paris and Brussels.

Ahmed’s analysis corresponds closely to that of others who have done

extensive investigation of recruits to ISIS, notably Scott Atran and his

research team. And it should, I think, be taken seriously, along with

his prescriptions, which also are close to those of other knowledgeable

analysts: to “provide the Muslim community educational and employment

opportunities, youth programs, and promote acceptance, diversity and

understanding. There is much that governments can do to provide

language, cultural and religious training for the community, which will

help resolve, for example, the problem of foreign imams having

difficulty transferring their roles of leadership into local society.”

Merely to take one illustration of the problem to be faced, Atran points

out that “only 7 to 8 percent of France’s population is Muslim, whereas

60 to 70 percent of France’s prison population is Muslim.” It’s also

worth taking note of a recent National Research Council report, which

found that “with respect to political context, terrorism and its

supporting audiences appear to be fostered by policies of extreme

political repression and discouraged by policies of incorporating both

dissident and moderate groups responsibly into civil society and the

political process.”

It’s easy to say, “Let’s strike back with violence”—police repression,

carpet-bomb them to oblivion (Ted Cruz), and so on—very much what

al-Qaeda and ISIS have hoped for, and very likely to intensify the

problems, as, indeed, has been happening until now.

What is ISIS’s aim when targeting innocent civilians, such as the attack

on the seaside town of Nice in France in which eighty-four people were

killed?

As I mentioned, we should, I think, be cautious about the claims and

charges of ISIS initiative, or even involvement. But when they are

involved in such atrocities, the strategy is clear enough. Careful and

expert analysts of ISIS and violent insurgencies (Scott Atran, William

Polk, and others) generally tend to take ISIS at its word. Sometimes

they cite the “playbook” in which the core strategy used by ISIS is laid

out, written a decade ago by the Mesopotamian wing of the al-Qaeda

affiliate that morphed into ISIS. Here are the first two axioms (quoting

an article by Atran):

[Axiom 1:] Hit soft targets: “Diversify and widen the vexation strikes

against the Crusader-Zionist enemy in every place in the Islamic world,

and even outside of it if possible, so as to disperse the efforts of the

alliance of the enemy and thus drain it to the greatest extent

possible.” [Axiom 2:] Strike when potential victims have their guard

down to maximise fear in general populations and drain their economies:

“If a tourist resort that the Crusaders patronise … is hit, all of the

tourist resorts in all of the states of the world will have to be

secured by the work of additional forces, which are double the ordinary

amount, and a huge increase in spending.”

And the strategy has been quite successful, both in spreading terrorism

and imposing great costs on the “Crusaders” with slight expenditure.

It has been reported that tourists in France will be protected by armed

forces and soldiers at holiday sites, including beaches. How much of

this development is linked to the refugee crisis in Europe, where

millions have been arriving in the last couple of years from war-torn

regions around the world?

Hard to judge. The crimes in France have not been traced to recent

refugees, as far as I have seen. Rather, it seems to be more like the

Lahouaiej Bouhlel case. But there is great fear of refugees, far beyond

any evidence relating them to crime. Much the same appears to be true in

the United States, where Trump-style rhetoric about Mexico sending

criminals and rapists doubtless frightens people, even though the

limited statistical evidence indicates that “first-generation immigrants

are predisposed to lower crime rates than native-born Americans,” as

reported by Michelle Ye Hee Lee in the Washington Post.

To what extent would you say that Brexit was being driven by xenophobia

and the massive inflow of immigrants into Europe?

There has been plenty of reporting giving that impression, but I haven’t

seen any hard data. And it’s worth recalling that the inflow of

immigrants is from the EU, not those fleeing from conflict. It’s also

worth recalling that Britain has had a nontrivial role in generating

refugees. The invasion of Iraq, to give one example. Many others, if we

consider greater historical depth. The burden of dealing with the

consequences of US-UK crimes falls mainly on countries that had no

responsibility for them, like Lebanon, where about 40 percent of the

population is estimated to be refugees.

Are the United States and the major Western powers really involved in a

war against ISIS? This would seem doubtful to an outside observer, given

the growing influence of ISIS and the continuing ability of the

organization to recruit soldiers for its cause from inside Europe.

Speculations to that effect are rampant in the Middle East, but I don’t

think they have any credibility. The United States is powerful, but not

all-powerful. There is a tendency to attribute everything that happens

in the world to the CIA or some diabolical Western plan. There is plenty

to condemn, sharply. And the United States is indeed powerful. But it’s

nothing like what is often believed.

There seems to be a geopolitical shift underway in Turkey’s regional

political role, which may have been the ultimate cause behind the failed

coup of July 2016. Do you detect such a shift under way?

There certainly has been a shift in regional policy from former Turkish

Prime Minister Davutoğlu’s “Zero Problems Policy,” but that’s because

problems abound. The goal of becoming a regional power, sometimes

described as neo-Ottoman, seems to be continuing, if not accelerating.

Relations with the West are becoming more tense as Erdoğan’s government

continues its strong drift toward authoritarian rule, with quite extreme

repressive measures. That naturally impels Turkey to seek alliances

elsewhere, particularly with Russia. Erdoğan’s first post-coup visit was

to Moscow, in order to restore “the Moscow-Ankara friendship axis” (in

his words) to what it was before Turkey shot down a Russian jet in

November 2015 when it allegedly passed across the Turkish border for a

few seconds while on a bombing mission in Syria. Very unfortunately,

there is very little Western opposition to Erdoğan’s violent and vicious

escalation of atrocities against the Kurdish population in the

southeast, which some observers now describe as approaching the horrors

of the 1990s. As for the coup, its background remains obscure, for the

time being. I don’t know of evidence that shifts in regional policy

played a role.

The coup against Erdoğan ensured the consolidation of a highly

authoritarian regime in Turkey: Erdoğan arrested thousands of people and

closed down media outlets, schools, and universities following the coup.

The effects of the coup may, in fact, even strengthen the role of the

military in political affairs as it will come under the direct control

of the president himself, a move that Erdoğan has already initiated. How

will this affect Turkey’s relations with the United States and European

powers, given the alleged concerns of the latter about human rights and

democracy inside Turkey and about Erdoğan’s pursuit of closer ties with

Putin?

The correct word is “alleged.” During the 1990s, the Turkish government

was carrying out horrifying atrocities, targeting its Kurdish

population—tens of thousands killed, thousands of villages and towns

destroyed, hundreds of thousands (maybe millions) driven from their

homes, every imaginable form of torture. Eighty percent of the arms were

coming from Washington, increasing as atrocities increased. In the

single year 1997, when atrocities were peaking, Clinton sent more arms

than the sum total sent to Turkey throughout the entire postwar era

until the onset of the counterinsurgency campaign. The media virtually

ignored all of this. The New York Times has a bureau in Ankara, but it

reported almost nothing. The facts were, of course, widely known in

Turkey—and elsewhere, to those who took the trouble to look. Now that

atrocities are peaking again, as I mentioned, the West prefers to look

elsewhere.

Nevertheless, relations between Erdoğan’s regime and the West are

becoming more tense, and there is great anger against the West among

Erdoğan supporters because of Western attitudes toward the coup (mildly

critical, but not enough for the regime) and toward the increased

authoritarianism and sharp repression (mild criticism, but too much for

the regime). In fact, it is widely believed that the United States

initiated the coup.

The United States is also condemned for asking for evidence before

extraditing Gulen, whom Erdoğan blames for the coup. Not a little irony

here. One may recall that the United States bombed Afghanistan because

the Taliban refused to turn Osama bin Laden over without evidence. Or

take the case of Emmanuel “Toto” Constant, the leader of the terrorist

force FRAPH (Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti) that ran

wild in Haiti under the military dictatorship of the early ’90s. When

the junta was overthrown by a Marine invasion, he escaped to New York,

where he was living comfortably. Haiti wanted him extradited and had

more than enough evidence. But Clinton refused, very likely because he

would have exposed Clinton’s ties to the murderous military junta.

The recent migration deal between Turkey and the EU seems to be falling

apart, with Erdoğan having gone so far as to say publicly that “European

leaders are not being honest.” What could be the consequences for

Turkey–EU relations, and for the refugees themselves, if the deal were

to fall apart?

Basically, Europe bribed Turkey to keep the miserable refugees—many

fleeing from crimes for which the West bears no slight

responsibility—from reaching Europe. It is similar to Obama’s efforts to

enlist Mexican support in keeping Central American refugees—often very

definitely victims of US policies, including those of the Obama

administration—from reaching the US border. Morally grotesque, but

better than letting them drown in the Mediterranean. The deterioration

of relations will probably make their travail even worse.

NATO, still a US-dominated military alliance, has increased its presence

in Eastern Europe lately, as it is bent on stopping Russia’s revival by

creating divisions between Europe and Russia. Is the United States

looking for a military conflict with Russia, or are such moves driven by

the need to keep the military-industrial complex intact in a post–Cold

War world?

NATO is surely a US-dominated military alliance. As the USSR collapsed,

Russia’s Mikhail Gorbachev proposed a continent-wide security system,

which the United States rejected, insisting on preserving NATO—and

expanding it. Gorbachev agreed to allow a unified Germany to join NATO,

a remarkable concession in the light of history. There was, however, a

quid pro quo: that NATO not expand “one inch to the east,” meaning to

East Germany. That was promised by President Bush I and secretary of

state James Baker, but not on paper; it was a verbal commitment, and the

United States later claimed that means it was not binding.

Careful archival research by Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson, published

last spring in the prestigious Harvard-MIT journal International

Security, reveals very plausibly that this was intentional deceit, a

very significant discovery that substantially resolves, I think,

scholarly dispute about the matter. NATO did expand to East Germany; in

later years, to the Russian border. Those plans were sharply condemned

by George Kennan and other highly respected commentators because they

were very likely to lead to a new Cold War, as Russia naturally felt

threatened. The threat became more severe when NATO invited Ukraine to

join in 2008 and 2013. As Western analysts recognize, that extends the

threat to the core of Russian strategic concerns, a matter discussed,

for example, by John Mearsheimer in the lead article in the major

establishment journal Foreign Affairs.

However, I do not think the goal is to stop Russia’s revival or to keep

the military-industrial complex intact. And the United States certainly

doesn’t want a military conflict, which would destroy both sides (and

the world). Rather, I think it’s the normal effort of a great power to

extend its global dominance. But it does increase the threat of war, if

only by accident, as Kennan and others presciently warned.

In your view, does a nuclear war between the United States and Russia

remain a very real possibility in today’s world?

A very real possibility, and in fact, an increasing one. That’s not just

my judgment. It’s also the judgment of the experts who set the Doomsday

Clock of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists; of former defense secretary

William Perry, one of the most experienced and respected experts on

these matters; and of numerous others who are by no means scaremongers.

The record of near accidents, which could have been terminal, is

shocking, not to speak of very dangerous adventurism. It is almost

miraculous that we have survived the nuclear weapons era, and playing

with fire is irresponsible in the extreme. In fact, these weapons should

be removed from the Earth, as even many of the most conservative

analysts recognize—Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, and others.

Originally published in Truthout, August 17, 2016

Is European Integration Unraveling?

C. J. POLYCHRONIOU: Noam, thanks for doing this interview on current

developments in Europe. I would like to start by asking you this

question: Why do you think Europe’s refugee crisis is happening now?

NOAM CHOMSKY: The crisis has been building up for a long time. It is

hitting Europe now because it has burst the bounds, from the Middle East

and from Africa. Two Western sledgehammer blows had a dramatic effect.

The first was the US-UK invasion of Iraq, which dealt a nearly lethal

blow to a country that had already been devastated by a massive military

attack twenty years earlier, followed by virtually genocidal US-UK

sanctions. Apart from the slaughter and destruction, the brutal

occupation ignited a sectarian conflict that is now tearing the country

and the entire region apart. The invasion displaced millions of people,

many of whom fled and were absorbed in the neighboring countries, poor

countries that are left to deal somehow with the detritus of our crimes.

One outgrowth of the invasion is the ISIS/Daesh monstrosity, which is

contributing to the horrifying Syrian catastrophe. Again, the

neighboring countries have been absorbing the flow of refugees. Turkey

alone has over 2 million Syrian refugees. At the same time it is

contributing to the flow by its policies in Syria: supporting the

extremist al-Nusra Front and other radical Islamists and attacking the

Kurds who are the main ground force opposing ISIS—which has also

benefited from not-so-tacit Turkish support. But the flood can no longer

be contained within the region.

The second sledgehammer blow destroyed Libya, now a chaos of warring

groups, an ISIS base, a rich source of jihadis and weapons from West

Africa to the Middle East, and a funnel for the flow of refugees from

Africa. That at once brings up longer-term factors. For centuries,

Europe has been torturing Africa—or, to put it more mildly—exploiting

Africa for Europe’s own development, to adopt the recommendation of the

top US planner, George Kennan, after World War II.

The history, which should be familiar, is beyond grotesque. To take just

a single case, consider Belgium, now groaning under a refugee crisis.

Its wealth derived in no small measure from “exploiting” the Congo with

brutality that exceeded even that of its European competitors. Congo

finally won its freedom in 1960. It could have become a rich and

advanced country once freed from Belgium’s clutches, spurring Africa’s

development as well. There were real prospects, under the leadership of

Patrice Lumumba, one of the most promising figures in Africa. He was

targeted for assassination by the CIA, but the Belgians got there first.

His body was cut to pieces and dissolved in sulfuric acid. The United

States and its allies supported the murderous kleptomaniac Mobutu. By

now Eastern Congo is the scene of the world’s worst slaughters, assisted

by US favorite Rwanda, while warring militias feed the craving of

Western multinationals for minerals for cell phones and other high-tech

wonders. The picture generalizes too much of Africa, exacerbated by

innumerable crimes. For Europe, all of this becomes a refugee crisis.

Do the waves of immigrants (obviously many of them are immigrants, not

simply refugees from war-torn regions) penetrating the heart of Europe

represent some kind of a “natural disaster,” or is it purely the result

of politics?

There is an element of natural disaster. The terrible drought in Syria

that shattered the society was presumably the effect of global warming,

which is not exactly natural. The Darfur crisis was in part the result

of desertification that drove nomadic populations to settled areas. The

awful Central African famines today may also be in part due to the

assault on the environment during the Anthropocene, the new geological

era when human activities, mainly industrialization, have been

destroying the prospects for decent survival, and will do so, unless

curbed.

European Union officials are having an exceedingly difficult time coping

with the refugee crisis because many EU member states are unwilling to

do their part and accept anything more than just a handful of refugees.

What does this say about EU governance and the values of many European

societies?

EU governance works very efficiently to impose harsh austerity measures

that devastate poorer countries and benefit Northern banks. But it has

broken down almost completely when addressing a human catastrophe that

is in substantial part the result of Western crimes. The burden has

fallen on the few who were willing, at least temporarily, to do more

than lift a finger, like Sweden and Germany. Many others have just

closed their borders. Europe is trying to induce Turkey to keep the

miserable wrecks away from its borders, just as the United States is

doing, pressuring Mexico to prevent those trying to escape the ruins of

US crimes in Central America from reaching US borders. This is even

described as a humane policy that reduces “illegal immigration.”

What does all of this tell us about prevailing values? It is hard even

to use the word “values,” let alone to comment. That’s particularly when

writing in the United States, probably the safest country in the world,

now consumed by a debate over whether to allow Syrians in at all because

one might be a terrorist pretending to be a doctor, or, at the extremes,

which unfortunately is in the US mainstream, whether to allow any

Muslims in at all, while a huge wall protects us from immigrants fleeing

from the wreckage south of the border.

What about the argument that it is simply impossible for many European

countries to accommodate so many immigrants and refugees?

Germany has done the most, absorbing about 1 million refugees in a very

rich country of over 80 million people. Compare Lebanon, a poor country

with severe internal problems. Its population is now about 25 percent

Syrian, in addition to the descendants of those who were expelled from

the former Palestine. Furthermore, unlike Lebanon, Germany badly needs

immigrants to maintain its population with the declining fertility that

has tended to result from education of women, worldwide. Kenneth Roth,

the head of Human Rights Watch, is surely right to observe that “this

‘wave of people’ is more like a trickle when considered against the pool

that must absorb it. Considering the EU’s wealth and advanced economy,

it is hard to argue that Europe lacks the means to absorb these

newcomers,” particularly in countries that need immigrants for their

economic health.

Many of the refugees trying to get to Europe never make the journey,

with many dead washing up on Greece’s and Italy’s shores. In fact,

according to the UN refugee agency, the UN High Commissioner for

Refugees (UNHCR), more than 2,500 people have died this past summer

[2015] alone trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe, with the

southwestern coast of Turkey having become the departure point for

thousands of refugees who are lured into crumbling boats by Turkish

migrant smugglers. Why isn’t Europe putting more pressure on the Turkish

government of president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to do something about this

horrible situation?

The primary European efforts, as noted, have been to pressure Turkey to

keep the misery and suffering far from us. Much like the United States

and Mexico. Their fate, once we are safe from the contagion, is of much

lesser concern.

Just recently, you accused Erdoğan of double standards on terrorism when

he singled you out for a petition signed by hundreds of academicians

protesting Turkey’s actions against the Kurdish population, calling you,

in fact, a terrorist. Can you say a few things about this matter, since

it evolved into an international incident?

It is fairly straightforward. A group of Turkish academics initiated a

petition protesting the government’s severe and mounting repression of

its Kurdish population. I was one of several foreigners invited to sign.

Immediately after a murderous terrorist attack in Istanbul, Erdoğan

launched a tirade bitterly attacking the signers of the declaration,

declaring Bush-style that you are either with us or with the terrorists.

Since he singled me out for a stream of invective, I was asked by

Turkish media and friends to respond. I did so, briefly, as follows:

“Turkey blamed ISIS, which Erdoğan has been aiding in many ways, while

also supporting the al-Nusra Front, which is hardly different. He then

launched a tirade against those who condemn his crimes against Kurds—who

happen to be the main ground force opposing ISIS in both Syria and Iraq.

Is there any need for further comment?”

Turkish academics who signed the petition were detained and threatened;

others were physically attacked. Meanwhile state repression continues to

escalate. The dark days of the 1990s have hardly faded from memory. As

before, Turkish academics and others have demonstrated remarkable

courage and integrity in vigorously opposing crimes of state, in a

manner rarely to be found elsewhere, risking and sometimes enduring

severe punishment for their honorable stance. There is, fortunately,

growing international support for them, though it still falls far short

of what is merited.

In a correspondence we had, you referred to Erdoğan as “the dictator of

his dreams.” What do you mean by this?

For several years, Erdoğan has been taking steps to consolidate his

power, reversing the encouraging steps toward democracy and freedom in

Turkey in earlier years. He shows every sign of seeking to become an

extreme authoritarian ruler, approaching dictatorship, and a harsh and

repressive one.

The Greek crisis continues unabated, and the country’s international

creditors are demanding constantly additional reforms of the kind that

no democratic government anywhere else in Europe would be able to

implement. In some cases, in fact, their demands for more reforms are

not accompanied by specific measures, giving one the impression that

what is going on is nothing more than a display of brutal sadism toward

the Greek people. What are your views on this matter?

The conditions imposed on Greece in the interests of creditors have

devastated the country. The proclaimed goal was to reduce the debt

burden, which has increased under these measures. As the economy has

been undermined, GDP has naturally declined, and the debt-to-GDP ratio

has increased despite radical slashing of state expenditures. Greece has

been provided with debt relief, theoretically. In reality, it has become

a funnel through which European aid flows to the Northern banks that

made risky loans that failed and want to be bailed out by European

taxpayers, a familiar feature of financial institutions in the

neoliberal age.

When the Greek government suggested asking the people of Greece to

express their opinions on their fate, the reaction of European elites

was utter horror at the impudence. How can Greeks dare to regard

democracy as a value to be respected in the country of its origin? The

ruling Eurocrats reacted with utter sadism, imposing even harsher

demands to reduce Greece to ruins, meanwhile, no doubt, appropriating

what they can for themselves. The target of the sadism is not the Greek

people specifically, but anyone who dares to imagine that people might

have rights that begin to compare with those of financial institutions

and investors. Quite generally, the measures of austerity during

recession made no economic sense, as recognized even by the economists

of the IMF (though not its political actors). It is difficult to regard

them as anything other than class war, seeking to undo the social

democratic gains that have been one of Europe’s major contributions to

modern civilization.

And your views on the Syriza-led government, which has reneged on its

pre-election promises and ended up signing a new bailout agreement,

thereby becoming yet another Greek government enforcing austerity and

antipopular measures?

I do not feel close enough to the situation to comment on Syriza’s

specific choices or to evaluate alternative paths that it might have

pursued. Their options would have been considerably enhanced had they

received meaningful support from popular forces elsewhere in Europe, as

I think could have been possible.

The former Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, is about to launch

a new party whose aim is to carry out, as he said, “a simple but radical

idea: to democratize Europe.” I have two questions for you on this

matter: First, why is social democracy becoming increasingly a thing of

the past in many European societies? And, second how far can one

“democratize” capitalism?

Social democracy, not just its European variant but others as well, has

been under severe attack through the neoliberal period of the past

generation, which has been harmful to the general population almost

everywhere while benefiting tiny elites. One illustration of the

obscenity of these doctrines is revealed in the study, just released by

Oxfam, finding that the richest 1 percent of the world’s population will

soon hold more than half of the world’s wealth. Meanwhile, in the United

States, the richest of the world’s major societies and with incomparable

advantages, millions of children live in households that try to survive

on two dollars a day. Even that pittance is under attack by so-called

conservatives.

How far reforms can proceed under the existing varieties of state

capitalism, one can debate. But that they can go far beyond what now

exists is not at all in doubt. Nor is it in doubt that every effort

should be made to press them to their limits. That should be a goal even

for those committed to radical social revolution, which would only lead

to worse horrors if it were not to arise from the dedication of the

great mass of the population who come to realize that that the centers

of power will block further steps forward.

Europe’s refugee crisis has forced several EU member states, including

Austria, Sweden, Denmark, and the Netherlands, to suspend the Schengen

Agreement. Do you think we are in the midst of witnessing the unraveling

of the EU integration project, including perhaps the single currency?

I think we should distinguish between the single currency, for which

circumstances were not appropriate, and the EU integration project,

which, I think, has been a major advance. It is enough to recall that

for hundreds of years Europe was devoted to mutual slaughter on a

horrific scale. Overcoming of national hostilities and erosion of

borders is a substantial achievement. It would be a great shame if the

Schengen Agreement collapses under a perceived threat that should not be

difficult to manage in a humane way, and might indeed contribute to the

economic and cultural health of European society.

Originally published in Truthout, January 25, 2016

Burkini Bans, New Atheism, and State Worship: Religion in Politics

C. J. POLYCHRONIOU: In the course of human history, religion has

provided relief from pain and suffering to poor and oppressed people

around the world, which is probably what Marx meant when he said,

“Religion is the opium of the people.” But, at the same time,

unspeakable atrocities have been committed in the name of God, and

religious institutions often function as the guardians of tradition.

What are your own views on the role of religion in human affairs?

NOAM CHOMSKY: The general picture is quite ugly and too familiar to

recount. But it is worth remembering that there are some exceptions. One

striking example is what happened in Latin America after Vatican II in

1962, called at the initiative of Pope John XXIII. The proceedings took

significant steps toward restoring the radical pacifist message of the

Gospels that had been largely abandoned when the Emperor Constantine, in

the fourth century, adopted Christianity as the official doctrine of the

Roman Empire—turning the church of the persecuted into the church of the

persecutors, as historian of Christianity Hans Küng described the

transformation. The message of Vatican II was taken up in Latin America

by bishops, priests, lay persons who devoted themselves to helping poor

and bitterly oppressed people to organize to gain and defend their

rights—what came to be called “liberation theology.”

There were, of course, earlier roots and counterparts in many Protestant

denominations, including evangelical Christians. These groups formed a

core part of a remarkable development in the United States in the 1980s

when, for the first time ever to my knowledge, a great many people not

only protested the terrible crimes that their government was committing

but went to join and help the victims to survive the onslaught.

The United States launched a virtual war against the church, most

dramatically in Central America in the 1980s. The decade was framed by

two crucial events in El Salvador: the assassination in 1980 of

Archbishop Oscar Romero, the “voice for the voiceless,” and the

assassination of six leading Latin American intellectuals, Jesuit

priests, in 1989. Romero was assassinated a few days after he sent an

eloquent letter to President Carter pleading with him not to send aid to

the murderous military junta, who would use it “to destroy the people’s

organizations fighting to defend their fundamental human rights,” in

Romero’s words. So the security forces did, in the US-dominated states

of the region, leaving many religious martyrs along with tens of

thousands of the usual victims: poor peasants, human rights activists,

and others seeking “to defend their fundamental human rights.”

The US military takes pride in helping to destroy the dangerous heresy

that adopted “the preferential option for the poor,” the message of the

Gospels. The School of the Americas (renamed The Western Hemisphere

Institute for Security Cooperation), famous for training of Latin

American killers, announces proudly that liberation theology was

“defeated with the assistance of the US army.”

Do you believe in the spiritual factor behind religion or find something

useful in it?

For me, personally, no. I think irrational belief is a dangerous

phenomenon and I try to avoid it. On the other hand, I recognize that

it’s a significant part of the lives of others, with mixed effects.

What are your views on the rise of “new atheism,” which seems to have

come about in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks? Who are this

movement’s target audiences, and does it have a distinguishable

political agenda around which the progressive and left forces should

rally?

It’s often not very clear who the target audiences are, and agendas no

doubt vary. It’s fine to carry out educational initiatives aimed at

encouraging people to question baseless and irrational beliefs, which

can often be quite dangerous. And perhaps, sometimes such efforts have

positive effects. But questions arise.

Take, for example, George W. Bush, who invoked his fundamentalist

Christian beliefs in justifying his invasion of Iraq, the worst crime of

the century. Is he part of the intended audience, or his variety of

evangelical Christians? Or the prominent rabbis in Israel who call for

visiting the judgment of Amalek on all Palestinians (total destruction,

down to their animals)? Or the radical Islamic fundamentalists in Saudi

Arabia who have been Washington’s highly valued allies in the Middle

East for seventy-five years, while they have been implementing the

Wahhabization of Sunni Islam? If groups like these are the intended

audiences of “new atheism,” the effort is not very promising, to say the

least. Is it people with no particular religious beliefs who attend

religious ceremonies regularly and celebrate holidays so that they can

become part of a community of mutual support and solidarity, and

together with others enjoy a tradition and reinforce values that help

overcome the isolation of an atomized world lacking social bonds? Is it

the grieving mother who consoles herself by thinking that she will see

her dying child again in heaven? No one would deliver solemn lectures on

epistemology to her. There may indeed be an audience, but its

composition and bounds raise questions.

Furthermore, to be serious, the “new atheism” should target the virulent

secular religions of state worship, often disguised in the rhetoric of

exceptionalism and noble intent, the source of crimes so frequent and

immense that recounting them is hardly necessary.

Without going on, I have reservations. Though, again, efforts to

overcome false and often extremely dangerous beliefs are always

appropriate.

One could make the argument that the United States is in reality a

deeply fundamentalist country when it comes to the issue of religion. Is

there a hope for true progressive change in this country when the

overwhelming bulk of the population seems to be in the grip of religious

fervor?

The United States has been a deeply fundamentalist country since its

origins, with repeated Great Awakenings and outbursts of religious

fervor. It stands out today among the industrial societies in the power

of religion. Nevertheless, also from its origins there has been

significant progressive change, and it has not necessarily been in

conflict with religious commitments.

One thinks, for example, of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker

movement. Or of the powerful role of religion in African American

communities in the great civil rights movement—and as a personal aside,

it was deeply moving to be able to take part in meetings of

demonstrators in churches in the South after a day of brutal beatings

and savagery, where the participants were reinforcing bonds of

solidarity, singing hymns, gathering strength to go on the next day.

This is, of course, by no means the norm, and commonly the impact of

fundamentalist religious commitment on social policy has been harmful,

if not pernicious.

As usual, there are no simple answers, just the old familiar ones:

sympathetic concern, efforts to bring out what is constructive and

worthwhile and to overcome harmful tendencies, and to continue to

develop the forces of secular humanism and far-reaching and radical

commitments that are urgently needed to deal with the pressing and

urgent problems we all face.

So many political speeches in the United States end with, “God bless

you, and God bless America.” Do linguistic expressions like these

influence politics, culture, and social reality?

I presume the causal relation is substantially in the opposite

direction, though there may well be feedback. A drumbeat of propaganda

on how “we are good” and “they are evil,” with constant exercises of

self-admiration and abuse of others, can hardly fail to have an impact

on perception of the world.

Examples abound, but merely to illustrate the common pattern, take a

current example from the peak of the intellectual culture: Samantha

Power’s August 18, 2016, article in the New York Review of Books.

Without any relevant qualification or comment, the author presents Henry

Kissinger’s sage reflections on “America’s tragic flaw”: namely,

“believing that our principles are universal principles, and seeking to

extend human rights far beyond our nation’s borders….‘No nation … has

ever imposed the moral demands on itself that America has. And no

country has so tormented itself over the gap between its moral values,

which are by definition absolute, and the imperfection inherent in the

concrete situations to which they must be applied.’”

For anyone with the slightest familiarity with contemporary history,

such fatuous musings are simply an embarrassment—or to be more accurate,

a horror. And this is not talk radio, but a leading journal of

left-liberal intellectuals. People bombarded with patriotic drivel from

all corners are likely to have a view of themselves and the world that

poses major threats to humanity.

Rhetoric is widely used in political campaigns and is frequently abused

in a political context. Do you have a theory of political rhetoric?

I don’t have any theory of rhetoric, but I try to keep in mind the

principle that one should not try to persuade; rather, one should lay

out the territory as best one can so that others can use their own

intellectual powers to determine for themselves what they think is

taking place and what is right or wrong. I also try, particularly in

political writing, to make it extremely clear in advance exactly where I

stand so that readers can make judgments accordingly. The idea of

neutral objectivity is at best misleading and often fraudulent. We

cannot help but approach complex and controversial questions—especially

those of human significance—with a definite point of view, with an ax to

grind if you like, and that ax should be apparent right up front so that

those we address can see where we are coming from in our choice and

interpretation of the events of history.

To the extent that I can monitor my own rhetorical activities, which is

probably not a lot, I try to refrain from efforts to bring people to

reach my conclusions without thinking the matter through on their own.

Similarly, any good teacher knows that conveying information is of far

less importance than helping students gain the ability to inquire and

create on their own.

It has become popular over the years to think of knowledge as something

that is socially constructed, and proponents of the idea that knowledge

is simply the outcome of a consensus on any subject matter requiring

research and analysis say the same goes for reality itself. Do you agree

with this relativistic view of knowledge and reality?

I think it is mostly far off track, though there is an element of truth

hidden within. No doubt the pursuit of knowledge is guided by prior

conceptions, and no doubt it is often, not always, but typically, a

communal activity. That’s substantially true of organized knowledge, say

research in the natural sciences. For example, a graduate student will

come in and inform me I was wrong about what I said in a lecture

yesterday for this or that reason, and we’ll discuss it, and we’ll agree

or disagree, and maybe another set of problems will come out. Well,

that’s normal inquiry, and whatever results is some form of knowledge or

understanding, which is, in part, socially determined by the nature of

these interactions.

There is a great deal that we don’t understand much about, like how

scientific knowledge is acquired and develops. If we look more deeply at

the domains where we do understand something, we discover that the

development of cognitive systems, including systems of knowledge and

understanding, is substantially directed by our biological nature. In

the case of knowledge of language, we have clear evidence and

substantial results about this. Part of my own personal interest in the

study of language is that it’s a domain in which these questions can be

studied fairly clearly, much more so than in many others. Also, it’s a

domain that is intrinsic to human nature and human functions, not a

marginal case. Here, I think, we have very powerful evidence of the

directive effect of biological nature on the form of the system of

knowledge that arises.

In other domains like, for example, the internal construction of our

moral code, we just know less, though there is quite interesting and

revealing current research into the topic. I think the qualitative

nature of the problem faced strongly suggests a very similar conclusion:

a highly directive effect of biological nature. When you turn to

scientific inquiry, again, so little is known about how it proceeds—how

discoveries are made—that we are reduced to speculation and review of

historical examples. But I think the qualitative nature of the process

of acquiring scientific knowledge again suggests a highly directive

effect of biological nature. The reasoning behind this is basically

Plato’s, which I think is essentially valid. That’s why it’s sometimes

called “Plato’s problem.” The reasoning in the Platonic dialogues is

that the richness and specificity and commonality of the knowledge we

attain is far beyond anything that can be accounted for by the

experience available, which includes interpersonal interactions. And,

apart from acts of God, that leaves only the possibility that it’s

inner-determined in essential ways, ultimately by biological endowment.

That’s the same logic that’s routinely used by natural scientists

studying organic systems. So, for example, when we study physical

growth—metaphorically speaking, “below the neck,” everything but the

mind—we take this reasoning for granted. Let’s say I were to suggest to

you that undergoing puberty is a matter of social interaction and people

do it because they see other people do it, that it’s peer pressure.

Well, you would laugh. Why? There is nothing in the environment that

could direct these highly specific changes in the organism. Accordingly,

we all take for granted that it is biologically determined, that growing

children are somehow programmed to undergo puberty at a certain stage of

development. Are social factors irrelevant to puberty? No, not at all.

Social interaction is certainly going to be relevant. Under certain

conditions of social isolation, it might not even take place. The same

logic holds when inquiry proceeds “above the neck.”

Returning to the subject of the link between religion and politics, it

has been argued by quite a few commentators that the Israeli–Palestinian

conflict is a war of religion, not territory. Any validity in this?

The Zionist movement was initially secular, though religious elements

have been gaining a considerably greater role, particularly after the

1967 war and the onset of the occupation, which had a major impact on

Israeli society and culture. That’s particularly true in the military, a

matter that has deeply concerned analysts of military affairs since the

1980s (Yoram Peri’s warnings at the time were perceptive) and

increasingly today. The Palestinian movements were also largely secular,

though religious extremism is also growing—throughout the Muslim world,

in fact, as secular initiatives are beaten back and the victims seek

something else to grasp. Still, it would be quite misleading, I think,

to regard it as a war of religion. Whatever one thinks of it, Zionism

has been a settler-colonial movement, with all that that entails.

What do you think of the French law on secularity and conspicuous

religious symbols? A step forward or backward on progress and

universalism?

I don’t think there should be laws forcing women to remove veils or

preferred clothes when swimming. Secular values should, I think, be

honored; among them, respect for individual choice, as long as it does

not harm others. Secular values that should be respected are undermined

when state power intrudes in areas that should be matters of personal

choice. If Hasidic Jews choose to dress in black cloaks, white shirts,

and black hats, with hair in orthodox style and with religious garb,

that’s not the state’s business. Same when a Muslim woman decides to

wear a scarf or go swimming in a “burkini.”

Coauthored with Lily Sage; originally published in Truthout, August 31,

2016

Constructing Visions of “Perpetual Peace”

C. J. POLYCHRONIOU: Noam, the decline of democracy as a reflection of

political apathy is evident in both the United States and in Europe, and

the explanation provided in Who Rules the World? is that this phenomenon

is linked to the fact that most people throughout Western societies are

“convinced that a few big interests control policy.”[4] This is

obviously true, but wasn’t this always the case? I mean, people always

knew that policy making was in the hands of the elite, but this did not

stop them in the past from seeking to influence political outcomes

through the ballot box and other means. So, what specific factors might

explain political apathy in our own age?

NOAM CHOMSKY: “Resignation” may be a better term than “apathy,” and even

that goes too far, I think.

Since the early 1980s, polls in the United States have shown that most

people believe that the government is run by a few big interests looking

out for themselves. I do not know of earlier polls, or polls in other

countries, but it would not be surprising if the results are similar.

The important question is: Are people motivated to do something about

it? That depends on many factors, crucially including the means that

they perceive to be available. It’s the task of serious activists to

help develop those means and encourage people to understand that they

are available. Two hundred and fifty years ago, in one of the first

modern works of political theory, David Hume observed that “power is in

the hands of the governed,” if they only choose to exercise it, and

ultimately, it is “by opinion only”—that is, by doctrine and

propaganda—that they are prevented from exercising power. That can be

overcome, and often has been.

Thirty-five years ago, political scientist Walter Dean Burnham

identified “the total absence of a socialist or laborite mass party as

an organized competitor in the electoral market” as a primary cause of

the high rate of abstention in US elections. Traditionally, the labor

movement and labor-based parties have played a leading role in offering

ways to “influence political outcomes” within the electoral system and

on the streets and shop floor. That capacity has declined significantly

under neoliberal assault, which enhanced the bitter war waged against

unions by the business classes throughout the postwar period.

In 1978, before Reagan’s escalation of the attack against labor, United

Auto Workers president Doug Fraser recognized what was happening—far too

late—and criticized the “leaders of the business community” for having

“chosen to wage a one-sided class war in this country—a war against

working people, the unemployed, the poor, minorities, the very young and

the very old, and even many in the middle class of our society,” and for

having “broken and discarded the fragile, unwritten compact previously

existing during a period of growth and progress.” The union leadership

had placed their faith—partly for their own benefit as a labor

bureaucracy—in a compact with owners and managers during the postwar

growth and high profits period that had come to an end by the 1970s. By

then, the powerful attack on labor had already taken a severe toll and

it has gotten much more extreme since, particularly since the radically

antilabor Reagan administration.

The Democrats, meanwhile, pretty much abandoned the working class.

Independent political parties have been very marginal, and political

activism, while widespread, has often sidelined class issues and offered

little to the white working class, which is now drifting into the hands

of their class enemy. In Europe, functioning democracy has steadily

declined as major policy decisions are transferred to the Brussels

bureaucracy of the EU, operating under the shadow of Northern banks. But

there are many popular reactions, some self-destructive (racing into the

hands of the class enemy) and others quite promising and productive, as

we see in current political campaigns in the United States and Europe.

In your book, you refer to the “invisible hands of power.” What is the

exact meaning of this, and to what situations and circumstances can it

be applied in order to understand domestic and global political

developments?

I was using the phrase to refer to the guiding doctrines of policy

formation, sometimes spelled out in the documentary record, sometimes

easily detectable in ongoing events. There are many examples in

international and domestic affairs. Sometimes the clouds are lifted by

high-level disclosures or by significant historical events. The real

nature of the Cold War, for example, was considerably illuminated when

the Soviet Union collapsed and it was no longer possible to proclaim

simply that the Russians are coming. That provided an interesting test

of the real motives of policy formation, hidden by Cold War pretexts

that were suddenly gone.

We learn from Bush I administration documents, for example, that we must

keep intervention forces aimed at the Middle East, where the serious

threats to our interests “could not be laid at the Kremlin’s door,”

contrary to long deceit. Rather, the serious problems trace to “radical

nationalism,” the term regularly used for independent nationalism that

is under control. That is actually a major theme of the Cold War, masked

by posturing about the Great Enemy.

The fate of NATO is also revealing. It was constructed and maintained in

alleged defense against the Russian hordes. By 1991, there were no more

Russian hordes, no Warsaw Pact, and Mikhail Gorbachev was proposing a

broad security system with no military pacts. What happened to NATO? It

expanded to the East in violation of commitments to Gorbachev by

President Bush I and secretary of state James Baker that appear to have

been consciously intended to deceive him and to gain his acquiescence to

a unified Germany within NATO, so recent archival work persuasively

indicates.

To move to another domain, the free-market capitalism extolled in

doctrine was illustrated by an IMF study of major banks, which showed

that their profits derived mostly from an implicit taxpayer insurance

policy.

Examples abound, and are highly instructive.

Since the end of World War II, capitalism throughout the West—and in

fact throughout the globe—has managed to maintain and expand its

domination not merely through political and psychological means but also

through the use of the repressive apparatus of the state, including the

military. Can you talk a little bit about this in connection with the

theme of “who rules the world”?

The “mailed fist” (the threat of armed or overbearing force) is not

lacking even within the most free societies. In the postwar United

States, the most striking example is COINTELPRO, a program run by the

national political police (FBI) to stamp out dissidence and activism

over a broad range, reaching as far as political assassination (Black

Panther organizer Fred Hampton). Massive incarceration of populations

deemed superfluous for profit-making (largely African American, for

obvious historical reasons) is yet another means.

Abroad, the fist is constantly wielded, directly or through clients. The

Indochina wars are the most extreme case, the worst postwar

twentieth-century crime, criticized in the mainstream as a “blunder,”

like the invasion of Iraq, the worst crime of the new century. One

highly significant postwar example is the plague of violent repression

that spread through Latin America after John F. Kennedy effectively

shifted the mission of the Latin American military from “hemispheric

defense” to “internal security,” a euphemism for war against the

population. There were horrendous effects throughout the hemisphere,

reaching Central America with Reagan’s murderous wars, mostly relying on

the terrorist forces of client states.

While still the world’s predominant power, there is no doubt that the

United States is in decline. What are the causes and consequences of

American decline?

US power peaked, at a historically unprecedented level, at the end of

World War II. That couldn’t possibly be sustained. It began to erode

very soon with what is called, interestingly, “the loss of China” (the

transformation of China into a communist nation in 1949). And the

process continued with the reconstruction of industrial societies from

wartime devastation and decolonization. One reflection of the decline is

the shift of attitudes toward the UN. It was greatly admired when it was

hardly more than an instrument of US power in the early postwar years,

but increasingly came under attack as “anti-American” as it fell out of

control—so far out of control that the United States has held the record

in vetoes after 1970, when it joined Britain in support of the racist

regime of Southern Rhodesia. By then, the global economy was tripartite:

German-based Europe, Japan-based East Asia, and US-based North America.

In the military dimension, the United States has remained supreme. There

are many consequences. One is resort to “coalitions of the willing” when

international opinion overwhelmingly opposes US resort to violence, even

among allies, as in the case of the invasion of Iraq. Another is “soft

coups,” as right now in Brazil, rather than support for neo-Nazi

national security states, as was true in the not-distant past.

If the United States is still the world’s first superpower, what country

or entity do you consider to be the second superpower?

There is much talk of China as the emerging superpower. According to

many analysts, it is poised to overtake the United States. There is no

doubt of China’s emerging significance in the world scene, already

surpassing the United States economically by some measures (though far

below per capita). Militarily, China is far weaker; confrontations are

taking place in coastal waters near China, not in the Caribbean or off

the coast of California. But China faces very serious internal

problems—labor repression and protest, severe ecological threats,

demographic decline in work force, and others. And the economy, while

booming, is still highly dependent on the more advanced industrial

economies at its periphery and the West, though that is changing. In

some high-tech domains, such as design and development of solar panels,

China seems to have the world lead. As China is hemmed in from the sea,

it is compensating by extending westward, reconstructing something like

the old silk roads in a Eurasian system largely under Chinese influence

and soon to reach Europe.

You have been arguing for a long time now that nuclear weapons pose one

of the two greatest threats to humankind. Why are the major powers so

reluctant to abolish nuclear weapons? Doesn’t the very existence of

these weapons pose a threat to the existence of the “masters of the

universe” themselves?

It is quite remarkable to see how little concern top planners show for

the prospects of their own destruction—not a novelty in world affairs

(those who initiated wars often ended up devastated) but now on a hugely

different scale. We see that from the earliest days of the atomic age.

The United States at first was virtually invulnerable, though there was

one serious threat on the horizon: ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic

missiles) with hydrogen bomb warheads. Archival research has now

confirmed what was surmised earlier: there was no plan, not even a

thought, of reaching a treaty agreement that would have banned these

weapons, though there is good reason to believe that it might have been

feasible. The same attitudes prevail right to the present, where the

vast buildup of forces right at the traditional invasion route into

Russia is posing a serious threat of nuclear war.

Planners explain quite lucidly why it is so important to keep these

weapons. One of the clearest explanations is in a partially declassified

Clinton-era document issued by the Strategic Command (STRATCOM), which

is in charge of nuclear weapons policy and use. The document is called

Essentials of Post–Cold War Deterrence; the term “deterrence,” like

“defense,” is a familiar Orwellism referring to coercion and attack. The

document explains that “nuclear weapons always cast a shadow over any

crisis or conflict,” and must therefore be available, at the ready. If

the adversary knows we have them, and might use them, they may back

down—a regular feature of Kissingerian diplomacy. In that sense, nuclear

weapons are constantly being used, a point that Dan Ellsberg has

insistently made, just as we are using a gun when we rob a store but

don’t actually shoot. One section of the report is headed “Maintaining

Ambiguity.” It advises that “planners should not be too rational about

determining … what the opponent values the most,” which must be

targeted.

“That the US may become irrational and vindictive if its vital interests

are attacked should be a part of the national persona we project,” the

report says, adding that it is “beneficial” for our strategic posture if

“some elements may appear to be potentially ‘out of control.’” Nixon’s

madman theory, except this time clearly articulated in an internal

planning document, not merely a recollection by an adviser (Haldeman, in

the Nixon case).

Like other early post–Cold War documents, this one has been virtually

ignored. (I’ve referred to it a number of times, eliciting no notice

that I’m aware of.) The neglect is quite interesting. Simple logic

suffices to show that the documentary record after the alleged Russian

threat disappeared would be highly illuminating as to what was actually

going on before.

The Obama administration has made some openings toward Cuba. Do you

anticipate an end to the embargo any time soon?

The embargo has long been opposed by the entire world, as the annual

votes on the embargo at the UN General Assembly reveal. By now the

United States is supported only by Israel. Before, it could sometimes

count on a Pacific island or some other dependency. Of course Latin

America is completely opposed. More interestingly, major sectors of US

capital have long been in favor of normalization of relations, as public

opinion has been: agribusiness, pharmaceuticals, energy, tourism, and

others. It is normal for public opinion to be ignored, but dismissing

powerful concentrations of the business world tells us that really

significant “reasons of state” are involved. We have a good sense from

the internal record about what these interests are.

From the Kennedy years until today there has been outrage over Cuba’s

“successful defiance” of US policies going back to the Monroe Doctrine,

which signaled the intention to control the hemisphere. The goal was not

realizable because of relative weakness, just as the British deterrent

prevented the United States from attaining its first “foreign policy”

objective, the conquest of Cuba, in the 1820s (here the term “foreign

policy” is used in the conventional sense, which adheres to what

historian of imperialism Bernard Porter calls “the salt water fallacy”:

conquest becomes imperial only when it crosses salt water, so the

destruction of the Indian nations and the conquest of half of Mexico

were not “imperialism”). The United States did achieve its objective in

1898, intervening to prevent Cuba’s liberation from Spain and converting

it into a virtual colony.

Washington has never reconciled itself to Cuba’s intolerable arrogance

of achieving independence in 1959—partial, since the United States

refused to return the valuable Guantanamo Bay region, taken by “treaty”

at gunpoint in 1903 and not returned despite the requests of the

government of Cuba. In passing, it might be recalled that by far the

worst human rights violations in Cuba take place in this stolen

territory, to which the United States has a much weaker claim than

Russia does to Crimea, also taken by force.

But to return to the question, it is hard to predict whether the United

States will agree to end the embargo short of some kind of Cuban

capitulation to US demands going back almost two hundred years.

How do you assess and evaluate the historical significance and impact of

the Cuban revolution in world affairs and toward the realization of

socialism?

The impact on world affairs was extraordinary. For one thing, Cuba

played a very significant role in the liberation of West and South

Africa. Its troops beat back a US-supported South African invasion of

Angola and compelled South Africa to abandon its attempt to establish a

regional support system and to give up its illegal hold on Namibia. The

fact that Black Cuban troops defeated the South Africans had an enormous

psychological impact both in white and Black Africa. A remarkable

exercise of dedicated internationalism, undertaken at great risk from

the reigning superpower, which was the last supporter of apartheid South

Africa, and entirely selfless. Small wonder that when Nelson Mandela was

released from prison, one of his first acts was to declare:

During all my years in prison, Cuba was an inspiration and Fidel Castro

a tower of strength… . [Cuban victories] destroyed the myth of the

invincibility of the white oppressor [and] inspired the fighting masses

of South Africa … a turning point for the liberation of our

continent—and of my people—from the scourge of apartheid … What other

country can point to a record of greater selflessness than Cuba has

displayed in its relations to Africa?

Cuban medical assistance in poor and suffering areas is also quite

unique.

Domestically, there were very significant achievements, among them

simply survival in the face of US efforts to bring “the terrors of the

earth” to Cuba (historian Arthur Schlesinger’s phrase, in his biography

of Robert Kennedy, who was assigned this task as his highest priority)

and the fierce embargo. Literacy campaigns were highly successful, and

the health system is justly renowned. There are serious human rights

violations and restrictions of political and personal freedoms. How much

is attributable to the external attack and how much to independent

policy choices, one can debate—but for Americans to condemn violations

without full recognition of their own massive responsibility gives

hypocrisy a new meaning.

Does the United States remain the world’s leading supporter of

terrorism?

A review of several recent books on Obama’s global assassination (drone)

campaign in the American Journal of International Law concludes that

there is a “persuasive case” that the campaign is “unlawful”: “U.S.

drone attacks generally violate international law, worsen the problem of

terrorism, and transgress fundamental moral principles”—a judicious

assessment, I believe. The details of the cold and calculated

presidential killing machine are harrowing, as is the attempt at legal

justification, such as the stand of Obama’s Justice Department on

“presumption of innocence,” a foundation stone of modern law tracing

back to the Magna Carta eight hundred years ago. As the stand was

explained in the New York Times, “Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method

for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It, in

effect, counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants,

according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit

intelligence posthumously proving them innocent”—post-assassination. In

large areas of tribal Pakistan and Yemen, and elsewhere, populations are

traumatized by the fear of sudden murder from the skies at any moment.

The distinguished anthropologist Akbar Ahmed, with long professional and

personal experience with the tribal societies that are under attack all

over the world, forcefully recounts how these murderous assaults elicit

dedication to revenge—not very surprisingly. How would we react?

These campaigns alone, I think, secure the trophy for the United States.

Historically, under capitalism, plundering the poor and the natural

resources of weak nations has been the favorite hobby of both the rich

and of imperial states. In the past, the plundering was done mostly

through outright physical exploitation means and military conquest. How

have the means of exploitation changed under financial capitalism?

Secretary of state John Foster Dulles once complained to President

Eisenhower that the Communists have an unfair advantage. They can

“appeal directly to the masses” and “get control of mass movements,

something we have no capacity to duplicate. The poor people are the ones

they appeal to and they have always wanted to plunder the rich.” It’s

not easy to sell the principle that the rich have a right to plunder the

poor.

It’s true that the means have changed. The international “free trade

agreements” (FTAs) are a good example, including those now being

negotiated—mostly in secret from populations, but not from the corporate

lawyers and lobbyists who are writing the details. The FTAs reject “free

trade”: they are highly protectionist, with onerous patent regulations

to guarantee exorbitant profits for the pharmaceutical industry, media

conglomerates, and others, as well as protection for affluent

professionals, unlike working people, who are placed in competition with

all of the world, with obvious consequences. The FTAs are to a large

extent not even about trade; rather, about investor rights, such as the

rights of corporations (not, of course, mere people of flesh and blood)

to sue governments for actions that might reduce potential profits of

foreign investors, like environmental or health and safety regulations.

Much of what is called “trade” doesn’t merit that term, for example,

production of parts in Indiana, assembly in Mexico, sale in California,

all basically within a command economy, a megacorporation. Flow of

capital is free. Flow of labor is anything but, violating what Adam

Smith recognized to be a basic principle of free trade: free circulation

of labor. And to top it off, the FTAs are not even agreements, at least

if people are considered to be members of democratic societies.

Is this to say that we now live in a postimperialist age?

Seems to me just a question of terminology. Domination and coercion take

many and varied forms, as the world changes.

We have seen in recent years several so-called progressive leaders march

to power through the ballot box only to betray their vows to the people

the moment they took office. What means or mechanisms should be

introduced in truly democratic systems to ensure that elected officials

do not betray the trust of the voters? For example, the ancient

Athenians had conceived of something called “the right to recall,” which

in the nineteenth century became a critical although little-known

element in the political project for future social and political order

of certain socialist movements. Are you in favor of reviving this

mechanism as a critical component of real, sustainable democracy?

I think a strong case can be made for right of recall in some form,

buttressed by capacities for free and independent inquiry to monitor

what elected representatives are doing. The great achievement of Chelsea

Manning, Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, and other contemporary

“whistleblowers” is to serve and advance these fundamental rights of

citizens. The reaction by state authorities is instructive. As is well

known, the Obama administration has broken all records in punishment of

whistleblowers. It is also remarkable to see how intimidated Europe is.

We saw that dramatically when Bolivian president Evo Morales’s plane

flew home from a visit to Moscow, and European countries were in such

terror of Washington that they would not let the plane cross their

airspace, in case it might be carrying Edward Snowden, and when the

plane landed in Austria it was searched by police in violation of

diplomatic protocol.

Could an act of terrorism against leaders who blatantly betrayed the

trust of voters ever be justified?

“Ever” is a strong word. It is hard to conjure up realistic

circumstances. The burden of proof for any resort to violence should be

very heavy, and this case would seem extremely hard to justify.

With human nature being what it is, and individuals clearly having

different skills, abilities, drives, and aspirations, is a truly

egalitarian society feasible and/or desirable?

Human nature encompasses saints and sinners, and each of us has all of

these capacities. I see no conflict at all between an egalitarian vision

and human variety. One could, perhaps, argue that those with greater

skills and talents are already rewarded by the ability to exercise them,

so they merit less external reward—though I don’t argue this. As for the

feasibility of more just and free social institutions and practices, we

can never be certain in advance, and can only keep trying to press the

limits as much as possible, with no clear reason that I can see to

anticipate failure.

In your view, what would constitute a decent society and what form of a

world order would be needed to eliminate completely questions about who

rules the world?

We can construct visions of “perpetual peace,” carrying forward the

Kantian project, and of a society of free and creative individuals not

subjected to hierarchy, domination, arbitrary rule and decision. In my

own view—respected friends and comrades in struggle disagree—we do not

know enough to spell out details with much confidence, and can

anticipate that considerable experimentation will be necessary along the

way. There are very urgent immediate tasks, not least dealing with

literal questions of survival of organized human societies, questions

that have never risen before in human history but are inescapable right

now. And there are many other tasks that demand immediate and dedicated

work. It makes good sense to keep in mind longer-term aspirations as

guidelines for immediate choices, recognizing as well that the

guidelines are not immutable. That leaves us plenty to do.

Originally published in Truthout, June 19, 2016

It Is All Working Quite Well for the Rich, Powerful

C. J. POLYCHRONIOU: Neoliberal ideology claims that the government is a

problem, society does not exist, and individuals are responsible for

their own fate. Yet, big business and the rich rely, as ever, on state

intervention to maintain their hold over the economy and to enjoy a

bigger slice of the economic pie. Is neoliberalism a myth, merely an

ideological construct?

NOAM CHOMSKY: The term “neoliberal” is a bit misleading. The doctrines

are neither new nor liberal. As you say, big business and the rich rely

extensively on what economist Dean Baker calls “the conservative nanny

state” that they nourish. That is dramatically true of financial

institutions. A recent IMF study attributes the profits of the big banks

almost entirely to the implicit government insurance policy (“too big to

fail”), not just the widely publicized bailouts but access to cheap

credit, favorable ratings because of the state guarantee, and much else.

The same is true of the productive economy. The IT revolution, now its

driving force, relied very heavily on state-based R&D, procurement, and

other devices. That pattern goes back to early English

industrialization.

However, neither “neoliberalism,” nor its earlier versions as

“liberalism,” have been myths, certainly not for their victims. Economic

historian Paul Bairoch is only one of many who have shown that “the

Third World’s compulsory economic liberalism in the nineteenth century

is a major element in explaining the delay in its industrialization,” in

fact, its “deindustrialization,” a story that continues to the present

under various guises.

In brief, the doctrines are, to a substantial extent, a “myth” for the

rich and powerful, who craft many ways to protect themselves from market

forces, but not for the poor and weak, who are subjected to their

ravages.

What explains the supremacy of market-centric rule and predatory finance

in an era that has experienced the most destructive crisis of capitalism

since the Great Depression?

The basic explanation is the usual one: it is all working quite well for

the rich and powerful. In the United States, for example, tens of

millions are unemployed, unknown millions have dropped out of the

workforce in despair, and incomes as well as conditions of life have

largely stagnated or declined. But the big banks, which were responsible

for the latest crisis, are bigger and richer than ever. Corporate

profits are breaking records, wealth beyond the dreams of avarice is

accumulating among those who count, and labor is severely weakened by

union busting and “growing worker insecurity,” to borrow the term Alan

Greenspan used in explaining the grand success of the economy he

managed, when he was still “St. Alan”—perhaps the greatest economist

since Adam Smith, before the collapse of the structure he had

administered, along with its intellectual foundations. So what is there

to complain about?

The growth of financial capital is related to the decline in the rate of

profit in industry and the new opportunities to distribute production

more widely to places where labor is more readily exploited and

constraints on capital are weakest—while profits are distributed to

places with lowest tax rates (“globalization”). The process has been

abetted by technological developments that facilitate the growth of an

“out-of-control financial sector,” which “is eating out the modern

market economy [that is, the productive economy] from inside, just as

the larva of the spider wasp eats out the host in which it has been

laid,” to borrow the evocative phrase of Martin Wolf of the Financial

Times, probably the most respected financial correspondent in the

English-speaking world.

That aside, as noted, the “market-centric rule” imposes harsh discipline

on the many, but the few who count protect themselves from it

effectively.

What do you make of the argument about the dominance of a transnational

elite and the end of the nation-state, especially since its proponents

claim that this New World Order is already upon us?

There’s something to it, but it shouldn’t be exaggerated. Multinationals

continue to rely on the home state for protection, economic and

military, and substantially for innovation as well. The international

institutions remain largely under the control of the most powerful

states, and in general the state-centric global order remains reasonably

stable.

Europe is moving ever closer to the end of the “social contract.” Is

this a surprising development for you?

In an interview, Mario Draghi informed the Wall Street Journal that “the

Continent’s traditional social contract”—perhaps its major contribution

to contemporary civilization—“is obsolete” and must be dismantled. And

he is one of the international bureaucrats who is doing most to protect

its remnants. Business has always disliked the social contract. Recall

the euphoria in the business press when the fall of “communism” offered

a new work force—educated, trained, healthy, and even blond and

blue-eyed—that could be used to undercut the “luxurious lifestyle” of

Western workers. It is not the result of inexorable forces, economic or

other, but a policy design based on the interests of the designers, who

are rather more likely to be bankers and CEOs than the janitors who

clean their offices.

One of the biggest problems facing many parts of the advanced capitalist

world today is the debt burden, public and private. In the peripheral

nations of the Eurozone, in particular, debt is having catastrophic

social effects as the “people always pay,” as you have pointedly argued

in the past. For the benefit of today’s activists, would you explain in

what sense debt is “a social and ideological construct?”

There are many reasons. One was captured well by a phrase of the US

executive director of the IMF, Karen Lissakers, who described the

institution as “the credit community’s enforcer.” In a capitalist

economy, if you lend me money and I can’t pay you back, it’s your

problem: you cannot demand that my neighbors pay the debt. But since the

rich and powerful protect themselves from market discipline, matters

work differently when a big bank lends money to risky borrowers, hence

at high interest and profit, and at some point they cannot pay. Then the

“the credit community’s enforcer” rides to the rescue, ensuring that the

debt is paid, with liability transferred to the general public by

structural adjustment programs, austerity, and the like. When the rich

don’t like to pay such debts, they can declare them to be “odious,”

hence invalid: imposed on the weak by unfair means. A huge amount of

debt is “odious” in this sense, but few can appeal to powerful

institutions to rescue them from the rigors of capitalism.

There are plenty of other devices. J. P. Morgan Chase has just been

fined $13 billion (half of it tax-deductible) for what should be

regarded as criminal behavior in fraudulent mortgage schemes, from which

the usual victims suffer under hopeless burdens of debt.

The inspector-general of the US government bailout program, Neil

Barofsky, pointed out that it was officially a legislative bargain: the

banks that were the culprits were to be bailed out, and their victims,

people losing their homes, were to be given some limited protection and

support. As he explains, only the first part of the bargain was

seriously honored, and the plan became a “giveaway to Wall Street

executives”—to the surprise of no one who understands “really existing

capitalism.”

The list goes on.

In the course of the crisis, Greeks have been portrayed around the globe

as lazy and corrupt tax evaders who merely like to demonstrate. This

view has become mainstream. What are the mechanisms used to persuade

public opinion? Can they be tackled?

The portrayals are presented by those with the wealth and power to frame

the prevailing discourse. The distortion and deceit can be confronted

only by undermining their power and creating organs of popular power, as

in all other cases of oppression and domination.

What is your view about what is happening in Greece, particularly with

regard to the constant demands by the “troika” and Germany’s unyielding

desire to advance the cause of austerity?

It appears that the ultimate aim of the German demands from Athens,

under the management of the debt crisis, is the capture of whatever is

of value in Greece. Some people in Germany appear to be intent on

imposing conditions of virtual economic slavery on the Greeks.

It is rather likely that the next government in Greece will be a

government of the Coalition of the Radical Left. What should be its

approach toward the European Union and Greece’s creditors? Also, should

a left government be reassuring toward the most productive sectors of

the capitalist class, or should it adopt the core components of a

traditional workerist-populist ideology?

These are hard practical questions. It would be easy for me to sketch

what I would like to happen, but given existing realities, any course

followed has risks and costs. Even if I were in a position to assess

them properly—I am not—it would be irresponsible to urge policy without

serious analysis and evidence.

Capitalism’s appetite for destruction was never in doubt, but in your

recent writings you pay increasing attention to environmental

destruction. Do you really think human civilization is at stake?

I think decent human survival is at stake. The earliest victims are, as

usual, the weakest and most vulnerable. That much has been evident even

in the global summit on climate change that just concluded in Warsaw,

with little outcome. And there is every reason to expect that to

continue. A future historian—if there is one—will observe the current

spectacle with amazement. In the lead in trying to avert likely

catastrophe are the so-called primitive societies: First Nations in

Canada, Indigenous people in South America, and so on, throughout the

world. We see the struggle for environmental salvage and protection

taking place today in Greece, where the residents of Skouries in

Chalkidiki are putting up a heroic resistance both against the predatory

aims of Eldorado Gold and the police forces that have been mobilized by

the Greek state in support of the multinational company.

Those enthusiastically leading the race to fall off the cliff are the

richest and most powerful societies, with incomparable advantages, like

the United States and Canada. Just the opposite of what rationality

would predict—apart from the lunatic rationality of “really existing

capitalist democracy.”

The United States remains a world empire and, by your account, operates

under the “Mafia principle,” meaning that the godfather does not

tolerate “successful defiance.” Is the American empire in decline, and,

if so, does it pose yet a greater threat to global peace and security?

US global hegemony reached a historically unparalleled peak in 1945, and

has been declining steadily since. Though it still remains very great

and though power is becoming more diversified, there is no single

competitor in sight. The traditional Mafia principle is constantly

invoked, but ability to implement it is more constrained. The threat to

peace and security is very real. To take just one example, President

Obama’s drone campaign is by far the most vast and destructive terrorist

operation now under way. The United States and its Israeli client

violate international law with complete impunity, for example, by

threats to attack Iran (“all options are open”) in violation of core

principles of the UN Charter. The most recent US Nuclear Posture Review

(2010) is more aggressive in tone than its predecessors, a warning not

to be ignored. Concentration of power rather generally poses dangers, in

this domain as well.

Regarding the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, you have said all along that

the one-state/two-state debate is irrelevant.

The one-state/two-state debate is irrelevant because one state is not an

option. It is worse than irrelevant: it is a distraction from the

reality.

The actual options are either (1) two states or (2) a continuation of

what Israel is now doing with US support: keeping Gaza under a crushing

siege, separated from the West Bank; systematically taking over what it

finds of value in the West Bank while integrating it more closely to

Israel, taking over areas with not many Palestinians; and quietly

expelling those who are there. The contours are quite clear from the

development and expulsion programs.

Given option (2), there’s no reason why Israel or the United States

should agree to the one-state proposal, which also has no international

support anywhere else. Unless the reality of the evolving situation is

recognized, talk about one state (civil rights/antiapartheid struggle,

“demographic problem,” and so on) is just a diversion, implicitly

lending support to option (2). That’s the essential logic of the

situation, like it or not.

You have said that elite intellectuals are the ones that mainly tick you

off. Is this because you fuse politics with morality?

Elite intellectuals, by definition, have a good deal of privilege.

Privilege provides options and confers responsibility. Those more

privileged are in a better position to obtain information and to act in

ways that will affect policy decisions. Assessment of their role follows

at once.

It’s true that I think that people should live up to their elementary

moral responsibilities, a position that should need no defense. And the

responsibilities of someone in a more free and open society are, again

obviously, greater than those who may pay some cost for honesty and

integrity. If commissars in Soviet Russia agreed to subordinate

themselves to state power, they could at least plead fear in

extenuation. Their counterparts in more free and open societies can

plead only cowardice.

Michel Gondry’s animated documentary Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy? has

just been released in selected theaters in New York City and other major

cities in the United States after having received rave reviews. Did you

see the movie? Were you pleased with it? [Ed. Note: Is the Man Who Is

Tall Happy? is based on a series of interviews featuring Noam Chomsky.]

I saw it. Gondry is really a great artist. The movie is delicately and

cleverly done and manages to capture some important ideas (often not

understood even in the field) in a very simple and clear way, also with

personal touches that seemed to me very sensitive and thoughtful.

Coauthored with Anastasia Giamali; originally published in Truthout,

December 8, 2013

Can Civilization Survive “Really Existing Capitalism”?

C. J. POLYCHRONIOU: In a nationally televised address on the eve of the

thirteenth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United

States, Obama announced to the American people and the rest of the world

that the United States is going back to war in Iraq, this time against

the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Is Iraq an

unfinished business of the US invasion of 2003, or is the situation

there merely the inevitable outcome of the strategic agenda of the

Empire of Chaos?

NOAM CHOMSKY: “Inevitable” is a strong word, but the appearance of ISIS

and the general spread of radical jihadism is a fairly natural outgrowth

of Washington wielding its sledgehammer at the fragile society of Iraq,

which was barely hanging together after a decade of US-UK sanctions so

onerous that the respected international diplomats who administered them

via the UN both resigned in protest, charging that they were

“genocidal.”

One of the most respected mainstream US Middle East analysts, former CIA

operative Graham Fuller, recently wrote: “I think the United States is

one of the key creators of [ISIS]. The United States did not plan the

formation of ISIS, but its destructive interventions in the Middle East

and the war in Iraq were the basic causes of the birth of ISIS.”

He is correct, I think. The situation is a disaster for the United

States but is a natural result of its invasion. One of the grim

consequences of US-UK aggression was to inflame sectarian conflicts that

are now tearing Iraq to shreds, and have spread over the whole region,

with awful consequences.

ISIS seems to represent a new jihadist movement, with greater inherent

tendencies toward barbarity in the pursuit of its mission to reestablish

an Islamic caliphate, yet apparently more able to recruit young radical

Muslims from the heart of Europe, and even as far as Australia, than

al-Qaeda itself. In your view, why has religious fanaticism become the

driving force behind so many Muslim movements around the world?

Like Britain before it, the United States has tended to support radical

Islam and to oppose secular nationalism, which both imperial states have

regarded as more threatening to their goals of domination and control.

When secular options are crushed, religious extremism often fills the

vacuum. Furthermore, the primary US ally over the years, Saudi Arabia,

is the most radical Islamist state in the world and also a missionary

state, which uses its vast oil resources to promulgate its extremist

Wahhabi/Salafi doctrines by establishing schools, mosques, and in other

ways, and has also been the primary source for the funding of radical

Islamist groups, along with Gulf Emirates—all US allies.

It’s worth noting that religious fanaticism is spreading in the West as

well, as democracy erodes. The United States is a striking example.

There are not many countries in the world where the large majority of

the population believes that God’s hand guides evolution, and almost

half of these think that the world was created a few thousand years ago.

And as the Republican Party has become so extreme in serving wealth and

corporate power that it cannot appeal to the public on its actual

policies, it has been compelled to rely on these sectors as a voting

base, giving them substantial influence on policy.

The United States committed major war crimes in Iraq, but the acts of

violence committed these days against civilians in the country,

particularly against children and people from various ethnic and

religious communities, is also simply appalling. Given that Iraq

exhibited its longest stretch of political stability under Saddam

Hussein, what didactic lessons should one draw from today’s extremely

messy situation in that part of the world?

The most elementary lesson is that it is wise to adhere to civilized

norms and international law. The criminal violence of rogue states like

the United States and UK is not guaranteed to have catastrophic

consequences, but we can hardly claim to be surprised when it does.

US attacks against ISIS’s bases in Syria without the approval and

collaboration of the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad would constitute a

violation of international law, claimed Damascus, Moscow, and Tehran

before the start of bombing. However, isn’t it the case that the

destruction of ISIS’s forces in Syria would further strengthen the

Syrian regime? Or is it that the Assad regime is afraid it will be next

in line?

The Assad regime has been rather quiet. It has not, for example,

appealed to the Security Council to act to terminate the attack, which

is, undoubtedly, in violation of the UN Charter, the foundation of

modern international law (and if anyone cares, part of the “supreme law

of the land” in the United States, under the Constitution). Assad’s

murderous regime doubtless can see what the rest of the world does: the

US attack on ISIS weakens its main enemy.

In addition to some Western nations, Arab states have also offered

military support to US attacks against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Is this a

case of one form of Islamic fundamentalism (Saudi Arabia, for example)

exhibiting fear of another form of Islamic fundamentalism (ISIS)?

As the New York Times accurately reported, the support is “tepid.” The

regimes surely fear ISIS, but it apparently continues to draw financial

support from wealthy donors in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, and its

ideological roots, as I mentioned, are in Saudi radical Islamic

extremism, which has not abated.

Life in Gaza has returned to normalcy after Hamas and Israel agreed to a

cease-fire. For how long?

I would hesitate to use the term “normalcy.” The latest onslaught was

even more vicious than its predecessors, and its impact is horrendous.

The Egyptian military dictatorship, which is bitterly anti-Hamas, is

also adding to the tragedy.

What will happen next? There has been a regular pattern since the first

such agreement was reached between Israel and the Palestinian Authority

in November 2005. It called for “a crossing between Gaza and Egypt at

Rafah for the export of goods and the transit of people, continuous

operation of crossings between Israel and Gaza for the import/export of

goods, and the transit of people, reduction of obstacles to movement

within the West Bank, bus and truck convoys between the West Bank and

Gaza, the building of a seaport in Gaza, [and the] re-opening of the

airport in Gaza” that Israeli bombing had demolished.

Later agreements have been variants on the same themes, the current one

as well. Each time, Israel has disregarded the agreements while Hamas

has lived up to them (as Israel concedes) until some Israeli escalation

elicits a Hamas response, which gives Israel another opportunity to “mow

the lawn,” in its elegant phrase. The interim periods of “quiet”

(meaning one-way quiet) allow Israel to carry forward its policies of

taking over whatever it values in the West Bank, leaving Palestinians in

dismembered cantons. All, of course, with crucial US support: military,

economic, diplomatic, and ideological, in framing the issues in accord

with Israel’s basic perspective.

That, indeed, was the purpose of Israel’s “disengagement” from Gaza in

2005—while remaining the occupying power, as recognized by the world

(apart from Israel), even the United States. The purpose was outlined

candidly by the architect and chief negotiator of the “disengagement,”

Prime Minister Sharon’s close associate, Dov Weissglass. He informed the

press:

The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace

process. And when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment

of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees,

the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package called the

Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed

indefinitely from our agenda. And all this with authority and

permission. All with a [US] presidential blessing and the ratification

of both houses of Congress.

That pattern has been reiterated over and over, and it seems that it is

being reenacted today. However, some knowledgeable Israeli commentators

have suggested that Israel might finally relax its torture of Gaza. Its

illegal takeover of much of the West Bank (including Greater Jerusalem)

has proceeded so far that Israeli authorities might anticipate that it

is irreversible. And they now have a cooperative ally in the brutal

military dictatorship in Egypt. Furthermore, the rise of ISIS and the

general shattering of the region have improved the tacit alliance with

the Saudi dictatorship and possibly others. Conceivably, Israel might

depart from its extreme rejectionism, though for now, the signs do not

look auspicious.

The latest Israeli carnage in Gaza stirred public sentiment around the

world increasingly against the state of Israel. To what extent is the

unconditional support rendered by the United States toward Israel the

outplay of domestic political factors, and under what conditions do you

see a shift in Washington’s policy toward Tel Aviv?

There are very powerful domestic factors. One illustration was given

right in the midst of the latest Israeli assault. At one point, Israeli

weapons seemed to be running low, and the United States kindly supplied

Israel with more advanced weapons, which enabled it to carry the

onslaught further. These weapons were taken from the stocks that the

United States pre-positions in Israel, for eventual use by US forces,

one of many indications of the very close military connections that go

back many years. Intelligence interactions are even better established.

Israel is also a favored location for US investors, not just in its

advanced military economy. There is a huge voting bloc of evangelical

Christians that is fanatically pro-Israel. There is also an effective

Israel lobby, which is often pushing an open door—and which quickly

backs down when it confronts US power, not surprisingly.

There are, however, shifts in popular sentiments, particularly among

younger people, including the Jewish community. I experience that

personally, as do others. Not long ago I literally had to have police

protection when I spoke on these topics on college campuses, even my own

university. That has greatly changed. By now Palestine solidarity is a

major commitment on many campuses. Over time, these changes could

combine with some other factors to lead to a change of US policy. It’s

happened before. But it will take hard, serious, dedicated work.

What are the aims and the objectives of US policy in Ukraine, other than

stirring up trouble and then letting other forces do the dirty work?

Immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent

collapse of the USSR, the United States began seeking to extend its

dominance, including NATO membership, over the regions released from

Russian control—in violation of verbal promises to Gorbachev, whose

protests were dismissed. Ukraine is surely the next ripe fruit that the

United States hopes to pluck from the tree.

Doesn’t Russia have a legitimate concern over Ukraine’s potential

alliance with NATO?

A very legitimate concern, over the expansion of NATO generally. This is

so obvious that it is even the topic of the lead article in the current

issue of the major establishment journal, Foreign Affairs, by

international relations scholar John Mearsheimer. He observes that the

United States is at the root of the current Ukraine crisis.

Looking at the current situation in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Nigeria,

Ukraine, the China Sea, and even in parts of Europe, Zbigniew

Brzezinski’s recent comment on MSNBC, “We are facing a kind of

dynamically spreading chaos in parts of the world,” seems rather

apropos. How much of this development is related to the decline of a

global hegemon and to the balance of power that existed in the era of

the Cold War?

US power reached its peak in 1945 and has been rather steadily declining

ever since. There have been many changes in recent years. One is the

rise of China as a major power. Another is Latin America’s breaking free

of imperial control (for the last century, US control) for the first

time in five hundred years. Related to these developments is the rise of

the BRICS bloc (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) and the

Shanghai Cooperation Organization, based in China and including India,

Pakistan, the Central Asian states, and others.

But the United States remains the dominant global power, by a large

measure.

Last month marked the sixty-ninth anniversary of the US atomic bombing

of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, yet nuclear

disarmament remains a chimera. In a recent article of yours, you

underscored the point that we are merely lucky to have avoided a nuclear

war so far. Do you think, then, that it’s a matter of time before

nuclear weapons fall into the hands of terrorist groups?

Nuclear weapons are already in the hands of terrorist groups: state

terrorists, the United States primary among them. It’s conceivable that

weapons of mass destruction might also fall into the hands of “retail

terrorists,” greatly enhancing the enormous dangers to survival.

Since the late 1970s, most advanced economies have returned to predatory

capitalism. As a result, income and wealth inequality have reached

spectacular heights, poverty is becoming entrenched, unemployment is

skyrocketing and standards of living are declining. In addition, “really

existing capitalism” is causing mass environmental damage and

destruction, which, along with the population explosion, is leading us

to an unmitigated global disaster. Can civilization survive really

existing capitalism?

First, let me say that what I have in mind by the term “really existing

capitalism” is what really exists and what is called “capitalism.” The

United States is the most important case, for obvious reasons. The term

“capitalism” is vague enough to cover many possibilities. It is commonly

used to refer to the US economic system, which receives substantial

state intervention, ranging from creative innovation to the

“too-big-to-fail” government insurance policy for banks, and which is

highly monopolized, further limiting market reliance.

It’s worth bearing in mind the scale of the departures of “really

existing capitalism” from official “free-market capitalism.” To mention

only a few examples, in the past twenty years, the share of profits of

the two hundred largest enterprises has risen sharply, carrying forward

the oligopolistic character of the US economy. This directly undermines

markets, avoiding price wars through efforts at often meaningless

product differentiation through massive advertising, which is itself

dedicated to undermining markets in the official sense, based on

informed consumers making rational choices. Computers and the Internet,

along with other basic components of the IT revolution, were largely in

the state sector (R&D, subsidy, procurement, and other devices) for

decades before they were handed over to private enterprise for

adaptation to commercial markets and profit. The government insurance

policy, which provides big banks with enormous advantages, has been

roughly estimated by economists and the business press to be perhaps on

the order of as much as $80 billion a year. However, a recent study by

the IMF indicates—to quote the business press—that perhaps “the largest

US banks aren’t really profitable at all,” adding that “the billions of

dollars they allegedly earn for their shareholders were almost entirely

a gift from US taxpayers.”

In a way, all of this explains the economic devastation produced by

contemporary capitalism that you underscore in your question above.

Really existing capitalist democracy—RECD for short (pronounced

“wrecked”)—is radically incompatible with democracy. It seems to me

unlikely that civilization can survive really existing capitalism and

the sharply attenuated democracy that goes along with it. Could

functioning democracy make a difference? Consideration of nonexistent

systems can only be speculative, but I think there’s some reason to

think so. Really existing capitalism is a human creation, and can be

changed or replaced.

Your book Masters of Mankind, which came out in September 2014 from

Haymarket Books, is a collection of essays written between 1969 and

2013. The world has changed a great deal during this period, so my

question is this: Has your understanding of the world changed over time,

and, if so, what have been the most catalytic events in altering your

perspective about politics?

My understanding of the world has changed over time as I’ve learned a

lot more about the past, and ongoing events regularly add new critical

materials. I can’t really identify single events or people. It’s

cumulative, a constant process of rethinking in the light of new

information and more consideration of what I hadn’t properly understood.

However, hierarchical and arbitrary power remains at the core of

politics in our world and the source of all evils.

In a recent exchange we had, I expressed my pessimism about the future

of our species. You replied by saying “I share your conviction, but keep

remembering the line I’ve occasionally quoted from the Analects,

defining the ‘exemplary person’—presumably the master himself: ‘the one

who keeps trying, though he knows there is no hope.’” Is the situation

as dire as that?

We cannot know for sure. What we do know, however, is that if we succumb

to despair we will help ensure that the worst will happen. And if we

grasp the hopes that exist and work to make the best use of them, there

might be a better world.

Not much of a choice.

Originally published in Truthout, October 1, 2014

Part II

America in the Trump Era

C. J. POLYCHRONIOU: Noam, I want to start by asking you to reflect on

the following: Trump won the presidential election even though he lost

the popular vote. In this context, if “one person, one vote” is a

fundamental principle behind every legitimate model of democracy, what

type of a democracy prevails in the United States, and what will it take

to undo the anachronism of the Electoral College?

NOAM CHOMSKY: The Electoral College was originally supposed to be a

deliberative body drawn from educated and privileged elites. It would

not necessarily respond to public opinion, which was not highly regarded

by the founders, to put it mildly. “The mass of people … seldom judge or

determine right,” as Alexander Hamilton put it during the framing of the

Constitution, expressing a common elite view. Furthermore, the infamous

three-fifths clause ensured the slave states an extra boost, a very

significant issue considering their prominent role in the political and

economic institutions. As the party system took shape in the nineteenth

century, the Electoral College became a mirror of the state votes, which

can give a result quite different from the popular vote because of the

first-past-the-post rule—as it did once again in this election.

Eliminating the Electoral College would be a good idea, but it’s

virtually impossible as the political system is now constituted. It is

only one of many factors that contribute to the regressive character of

the American political system, which, as Seth Ackerman observes in an

interesting article in Jacobin magazine, would not pass muster by

European standards.

Ackerman focuses on one severe flaw in the US system: the dominance of

organizations that are not genuine political parties with public

participation but rather elite-run candidate-selection institutions,

often described not unrealistically as the two factions of the single

business party that dominates the political system. They have protected

themselves from competition by many devices that bar genuine political

parties that grow out of free association of participants, as would be

the case in a properly functioning democracy. Beyond that there is the

overwhelming role of concentrated private and corporate wealth, not just

in the presidential campaigns, as has been well documented particularly

by Thomas Ferguson, but also in Congress. A recent study by Ferguson,

Paul Jorgensen, and Jie Chen reveals a remarkably close correlation

between campaign expenditures and electoral outcomes in Congress over

decades. And extensive work in academic political science—particularly

by Martin Gilens, Benjamin Page, and Larry Bartlett—reveals that most of

the population is effectively unrepresented in that their attitudes and

opinions have little or no effect on decisions of the people they vote

for, which are pretty much determined by the very top of the

income-wealth scale. In light of such factors as these, the defects of

the Electoral College, while real, are of lesser significance.

To what extent is this presidential election a watershed moment for

Republicans and Democrats alike?

For the eight years of the Obama presidency, the Republican organization

has hardly qualified as a political party. A more accurate description

was given by the respected political analysts Thomas Mann and Norman

Ornstein of the conservative American Enterprise Institute: the party

became an “insurgent outlier—ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the

inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise;

unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and

science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”

Its guiding principle was, whatever Obama tries to do, we have to block

it, but without providing some sensible alternative. The goal was to

make the country ungovernable, so that the insurgency could take power.

Its infantile antics on the Affordable Care Act are a good illustration:

endless votes to repeal it in favor of—nothing. Meanwhile the party has

become split between the wealthy and privileged “establishment,” devoted

to the interests of their class, and the popular base that was mobilized

when the establishment commitments to wealth and privilege became so

extreme that it would be impossible to garner votes by presenting them

accurately. It was therefore necessary to mobilize sectors that had

always existed, but not as an organized political force: a strange

amalgam of Christian evangelicals—a huge sector of the American

population—nativists, white supremacists, white working- and

lower-middle-class victims of the neoliberal policies of the past

generation, and others who are fearful and angry, cast aside in the

neoliberal economy while they perceive their traditional culture as

being under attack. In past primaries, the candidates who rose from the

base—Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Rick Santorum, and the rest—were so

extreme that they were anathema to the establishment, who were able to

use their ample resources to rid themselves of the plague and choose

their favored candidate. The difference in 2016 is that they were unable

to do it.

Now the party faces the task of formulating policies other than “No.” It

must find a way to craft policies that will somehow pacify or

marginalize the popular base while serving the real constituency of the

establishment. It is from this sector that Trump is picking his close

associates and cabinet members: not exactly coal miners, iron and steel

workers, small-business owners, or representatives of the concerns and

demands of his voting base.

Democrats have to face the fact that for forty years they have pretty

much abandoned whatever commitment they had to working people. It’s

quite shocking that Democrats have drifted so far from their modern New

Deal origins that workers are now voting for their class enemy, not for

the party of FDR. A return to some form of social democracy should not

be impossible, as indicated by the remarkable success of the Sanders

campaign, which departed radically from the norm of elections

effectively bought by wealth and corporate power. It is important to

bear in mind that his “political revolution,” while quite appropriate

for the times, would not have much surprised Dwight Eisenhower, another

indication of the shift to the right during the neoliberal years.

If the Democratic Party is going to be a constructive force, it will

have to develop and commit itself credibly to programs that address the

valid concerns of the kind of people who voted for Obama, attracted by

his message of “hope and change,” and, when disillusioned by the

disappearance of hope and the lack of change, switched to the con man

who declared that he will bring back what they have lost. It will be

necessary to face honestly the malaise of much of the country, including

people like those in the Louisiana bayous whom Arlie Hochschild studied

with such sensitivity and insight, and surely including the former

working-class constituency of the Democrats. The malaise is revealed in

many ways, not least by the astonishing fact that mortality has

increased in the country, something unknown in modern industrial

democracies apart from catastrophic events. That’s particularly true

among middle-aged whites, mainly traceable it seems to what are

sometimes called “diseases of despair” (opioids, alcohol, suicide, and

so on). A statistical analysis reported by the Economist found that

these health metrics correlate with a remarkable 43 percent of the

Republican Party’s gains over the Democrats in the 2016 election and

remain significant and predictive even when controlling for race,

education, age, gender, income, marital status, immigration, and

employment. These are all signs of severe collapse of much of the

society, particularly in rural and working-class areas. Furthermore,

such initiatives have to be undertaken alongside of firm dedication to

the rights and needs of those sectors of the population that have

historically been denied rights and repressed, often in harsh and brutal

ways.

No small task, but not beyond reach, if not by the Democrats, then by

some political party replacing them, drawing from popular movements—and

through the constant activism of these movements, quite apart from

electoral politics. Beyond that, those who perceive, rightly in my view,

that the whole social and political system needs radical change, even if

we are to survive, have their work cut out for them too.

Trump’s cabinet is being filled by financial and corporate bigwigs and

military leaders. Such selections hardly reconcile with his pre-election

promises to “drain the swamp,” so what should we expect from this

megalomaniac and phony populist insofar as the future of the Washington

establishment is concerned and the future of American democracy itself?

In this respect—note the qualification—Time magazine put it fairly well

(December 26, 2016): “While some supporters may balk, Trump’s decision

to embrace those who have wallowed in the Washington muck has spread a

sense of relief among the capital’s political class. ‘It shows,’ says

one GOP consultant close to the president-elect’s transition, ‘that he’s

going to govern like a normal Republican.’”

There surely is some truth to this. Business and investors plainly think

so. The stock market boomed right after the election, led by the

financial companies that Trump denounced during his campaign,

particularly the leading demon of his rhetoric, Goldman Sachs. According

to Bloomberg News, “The firm’s surging stock price,” up 30 percent in

the month after the election, “has been the largest driver behind the

Dow Jones Industrial Average’s climb toward 20,000.” The stellar market

performance of Goldman Sachs is based largely on Trump’s reliance on the

demon to run the economy, buttressed by the promised roll-back in

regulations, setting the stage for the next financial crisis (and

taxpayer bailout). Other big gainers are energy corporations, health

insurers, and construction firms, all expecting huge profits from the

administration’s announced plans. These include a Paul Ryan–style fiscal

program of tax cuts for the rich and corporations, increased military

spending, turning the health system over even more to insurance

companies with predictable consequences, taxpayer largesse for a

privatized form of credit-based infrastructure development, and other

“normal Republican” gifts to wealth and privilege at taxpayer expense.

Rather plausibly, economist Larry Summers describes the fiscal program

as “the most misguided set of tax changes in US history [which] will

massively favor the top 1 percent of income earners, threaten an

explosive rise in federal debt, complicate the tax code and do little if

anything to spur growth.”

But great news for those who matter.

There are, however, some losers in the corporate system. Since November

8, gun sales, which more than doubled under Obama, have been dropping

sharply, perhaps because of lessened fears that the government will take

away the assault rifles and other armaments we need to protect ourselves

from the feds. Sales rose through the year as polls showed Clinton in

the lead, but after the election, the Financial Times reported, “shares

in gunmakers such as Smith & Wesson and Sturm Ruger plunged.” By

mid-December, “the two companies had fallen 24 per cent and 17 per cent

since the election, respectively.” But all is not lost for the industry.

As a spokesman explains, “To put it in perspective, US consumer sales of

firearms are greater than the rest of the world combined. It’s a pretty

big market.”

Normal Republicans cheer Trump’s choice for Office of Management and

Budget, Mick Mulvaney, one of the most extreme fiscal hawks, though a

problem does arise: How will a fiscal hawk manage a budget designed to

massively escalate the deficit? In a post-fact world, maybe that doesn’t

matter.

Also cheering to “normal Republicans” is the choice of the radically

antilabor Andy Puzder for secretary of labor, though here, too, a

contradiction may lurk in the background. As the ultra-rich CEO of

restaurant chains, he relies on the most easily exploited nonunion labor

for the dirty work, typically immigrants, which doesn’t comport well

with the plans to deport them en masse. The same problem arises for the

infrastructure programs; the private firms that are set to profit from

these initiatives rely heavily on the same labor source, though perhaps

that problem can be finessed by redesigning the “beautiful wall” so that

it will only keep out Muslims.

Is this to say then that Trump will be a “normal” Republican as

America’s forty-fifth president?

In such respects as the ones mentioned above, Trump proved himself very

quickly to be a normal Republican, if to the extremist side. But in

other respects he may not be a normal Republican, if that means

something like a mainstream establishment Republican—people like Mitt

Romney, who Trump went out of his way to humiliate in his familiar

style, just as he did McCain and others of this category. But it’s not

only his style that causes offense and concern. His actions as well.

Take just the two most significant issues that we face, the most

significant that humans have ever faced in their brief history on earth,

issues that bear on species survival: nuclear war and global warming.

Shivers went up the spine of many “normal Republicans,” as of others who

care about the fate of the species, when Trump tweeted that “The United

States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until

such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.” Expanding

nuclear capability means casting to the winds the treaties that have

sharply reduced nuclear arsenals and that sane analysts hope may reduce

them much further, in fact to zero, as advocated by such normal

Republicans as Henry Kissinger and Reagan’s secretary of state, George

Shultz, and by Reagan in some of his moments. Concerns did not abate

when Trump went on to tell the cohost of TV show Morning Joe, “Let it be

an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass.” And it wasn’t too

comforting even when his White House team tried to explain that the

Donald didn’t say what he said.

Nor do concerns abate because Trump was presumably reacting to Putin’s

statement: “We need to strengthen the military potential of strategic

nuclear forces, especially with missile complexes that can reliably

penetrate any existing and prospective missile defense systems. We must

carefully monitor any changes in the balance of power and in the

political-military situation in the world, especially along Russian

borders, and quickly adapt plans for neutralizing threats to our

country.”

Whatever one thinks of these words, they have a defensive cast, and, as

Putin has stressed, they are in large part a reaction to the highly

provocative installation of a missile defense system on Russia’s border

on the pretext of defense against nonexistent Iranian weapons. Trump’s

tweet intensifies fears about how he might react when crossed, for

example, by unwillingness of some adversary to bow to his vaunted

negotiating skills. If the past is any guide, he might, after all, find

himself in a situation where he must decide within a few minutes whether

to blow up the world.

The other crucial issue is environmental catastrophe. It cannot be

stressed too strongly that Trump won two victories on November 8: the

lesser one in the Electoral College, and the greater one in Marrakech,

where some two hundred countries were seeking to put teeth in the

promises of the Paris negotiations on climate change. On Election Day,

the conference heard a dire report on the state of the Anthropocene from

the World Meteorological Organization. As the results of the election

came in, the stunned participants virtually abandoned the proceedings,

wondering if anything could survive the withdrawal of the most powerful

state in world history. Nor can one stress too often the astonishing

spectacle of the world placing its hopes for salvation in China, while

the leader of the free world stands alone as a wrecking machine.

Although—amazingly—most ignored these astounding events, establishment

circles did have some response. In Foreign Affairs, Varun Sivaram and

Sagatom Saha warned of the costs to the United States of “ceding climate

leadership to China,” and the dangers to the world because China “would

lead on climate-change issues only insofar as doing so would advance its

national interests”—unlike the altruistic United States, which labors

selflessly only for the benefit of mankind.

How intent Trump is on driving the world to the precipice was revealed

by his appointments, including two militant climate change deniers,

Myron Ebell and Scott Pruitt, to take charge of dismantling the

Environmental Protection Agency that was established under Richard

Nixon, with another denier slated to head the Department of the

Interior.

But that’s only the beginning. The cabinet appointments would be comical

if the implications were not so serious. For Department of Energy, a man

who said it should be eliminated (when he could remember its name) and

is perhaps unaware that its main concern is nuclear weapons. For

Department of Education, another billionaire, Betsy DeVos, who is

dedicated to undermining and perhaps eliminating the public school

system and who, as Lawrence Krause reminds us in the New Yorker, is a

fundamentalist Christian member of a Protestant denomination holding

that “all scientific theories be subject to Scripture” and that

“Humanity is created in the image of God; all theorizing that minimizes

this fact and all theories of evolution that deny the creative activity

of God are rejected.” Perhaps the department should request funding from

Saudi sponsors of Wahhabi madrassas to help the process along.

DeVos’s appointment is no doubt attractive to the evangelicals who

flocked to Trump’s standard and constitute a large part of the base of

today’s Republican Party. She should also be able to work amicably with

vice president Mike Pence, one of the “prized warriors [of] a cabal of

vicious zealots who have long craved an extremist Christian theocracy,”

as Jeremy Scahill details in the Intercept, reviewing his shocking

record on other matters as well.

And so it continues, case by case. But not to worry. As James Madison

assured his colleagues as they were framing the Constitution, a national

republic would “extract from the mass of the Society the purest and

noblest characters which it contains.”

What about the choice of Rex Tillerson as secretary of state?

One partial exception to the above is choice of ExxonMobil CEO Rex

Tillerson for secretary of state, which has aroused some hope among

those across the spectrum who are rightly concerned with the rising and

extremely hazardous tensions with Russia. Tillerson, like Trump in some

of his pronouncements, has called for diplomacy rather than

confrontation, which is all to the good—until we remember the sable

lining of the beam of sunshine. The motive is to allow ExxonMobil to

exploit vast Siberian oil fields and so to accelerate the race to

disaster to which Trump and associates, and the Republican Party rather

generally, are committed.

And how about Trump’s national security staff—do they fit the mold of

“normal” Republicans, or are they also part of the extreme right?

Normal Republicans might be somewhat ambivalent about Trump’s national

security staff. It is led by national security adviser General Michael

Flynn, a radical Islamophobe who declares that Islam is not a religion

but rather a political ideology, like fascism, which is at war with us

so we must defend ourselves, presumably against the whole Muslim world—a

fine recipe for generating terrorists, not to speak of far worse

consequences. Like the Red menace of earlier years, this Islamic

ideology is penetrating deep into American society, Flynn declaims. They

are, naturally, being helped by Democrats, who have voted to impose

Sharia law in Florida, much as their predecessors served the Commies, as

Joe McCarthy famously demonstrated. Indeed, there are “over 100 cases

around the country,” including Texas, Flynn warned in a speech in San

Antonio. To ward off the imminent threat, Flynn is a board member of

ACT!, which pushes state laws banning Sharia law, plainly an imminent

threat in states like Oklahoma, where 70 percent of voters approved

legislation to prevent the courts from applying this grim menace to the

judicial system.

Second to Flynn in the national security apparatus is secretary of

defense General James “Mad Dog” Mattis, considered a relative moderate.

Mad Dog has explained that “It’s fun to shoot some people.” He achieved

his fame by leading the assault on Fallujah in November 2004, one of the

most vicious crimes of the Iraq invasion. A man who is “just great,”

according to the president-elect: “the closest thing we have to Gen.

George Patton.”

In your view, is Trump bent on a collision course with China?

It’s hard to say. Concerns were voiced about Trump’s attitudes toward

China, again full of contradictions, particularly his pronouncements on

trade, which are almost meaningless in the current system of corporate

globalization and complex international supply chains. Eyebrows were

raised over his sharp departure from long-standing policy in his phone

call with Taiwan’s president, but even more by his implying that the

United States might reject China’s concerns over Taiwan unless China

accepts his trade proposals, thus linking trade policy “to an issue of

great-power politics over which China may be willing to go to war,” the

business press warned.

And what of Trump’s views and stance on the Middle East? They seem to be

in line with those of “normal” Republicans, right?

Unlike with China, normal Republicans did not seem dismayed by Trump’s

tweet foray into Middle East diplomacy, again breaking with standard

protocol, demanding that Obama veto UN Security Council Resolution 2334,

which reaffirmed

that the policy and practices of Israel in establishing settlements in

the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967 have no

legal validity and constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a

comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East [and] Calls

once more upon Israel, as the occupying Power, to abide scrupulously by

the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, to rescind its previous measures and

to desist from taking any action which would result in changing the

legal status and geographical nature and materially affecting the

demographic composition of the Arab territories occupied since 1967,

including Jerusalem, and, in particular, not to transfer parts of its

own civilian population into the occupied Arab territories. [Emphasis in

original]

Nor did they object when he informed Israel that it can ignore the lame

duck administration and just wait until January 20, when all will be in

order. What kind of order? That remains to be seen. Trump’s

unpredictability serves as a word of caution.

What we know so far is Trump’s enthusiasm for the religious ultra-right

in Israel and the settler movement generally. Among his largest

charitable contributions are gifts to the West Bank settlement of Beth

El in honor of David Friedman, his choice as ambassador to Israel.

Friedman is president of American Friends of Beth El Institutions. The

settlement, which is at the religious ultranationalist extreme of the

settler movement, is also a favorite of the family of Jared Kushner,

Trump’s son-in-law, reported to be one of Trump’s closest advisers. A

lead beneficiary of the Kushner family’s contributions, the Israeli

press reports, “is a yeshiva headed by a militant rabbi who has urged

Israeli soldiers to disobey orders to evacuate settlements and who has

argued that homosexual tendencies arise from eating certain foods.”

Other beneficiaries include “a radical yeshiva in Yitzhar that has

served as a base for violent attacks against Palestinians’ villages and

Israeli security forces.”

In isolation from the world, Friedman does not regard Israeli settlement

activity as illegal and opposes a ban on construction for Jewish

settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. In fact, he appears to

favor Israel’s annexation of the West Bank. That would not pose a

problem for the Jewish state, Friedman explains, since the number of

Palestinians living in the West Bank is exaggerated, and therefore a

large Jewish majority would remain after annexation. In a post-fact

world, such pronouncements are legitimate, though they might become

accurate in the boring world of fact after another mass expulsion. Jews

who support the international consensus on a two-state settlement are

not just wrong, Friedman explains. They are “worse than kapos,” the Jews

who were controlling other inmates in service to their Nazi masters in

the concentration camps, the ultimate insult.

On receiving the report of his nomination, Friedman said he looked

forward to moving the US embassy to “Israel’s eternal capital,

Jerusalem,” in accord with Trump’s announced plans. In the past, such

proposals were withdrawn, but today they might actually be fulfilled,

perhaps advancing the prospects of a war with the Muslim world, as

Trump’s national security adviser appears to recommend.

Returning to UNSC 2334 and its interesting aftermath, it is important to

recognize that the resolution is nothing new. The quote given above was

not from UNSC 2334 but from UNSC 446, March 12, 1979, reiterated in

essence in 2334. UNSC 446 passed 12–0 with the United States abstaining,

joined by the UK and Norway. Several resolutions followed reaffirming

446. One resolution of particular interest was even stronger than

446/2334, calling on Israel “to dismantle the existing settlements”

(UNSC Resolution 465, March 1980). This resolution passed unanimously,

no abstentions.

The government of Israel did not have to wait for the UN Security

Council (and, more recently, the World Court) to learn that its

settlements are in gross violation of international law. In September

1967, only weeks after Israel’s conquest of the occupied territories, in

a top-secret document the government was informed by the legal adviser

to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the distinguished international

lawyer Theodor Meron, that “civilian settlement in the administered

territories [Israel’s term for the occupied territories] contravenes

explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention.” Meron explained

further that the prohibition against transfer of settlers to the

occupied territories “is categorical and not conditional upon the

motives for the transfer or its objectives. Its purpose is to prevent

settlement in occupied territory of citizens of the occupying state.”

Meron therefore advised, “If it is decided to go ahead with Jewish

settlement in the administered territories, it seems to me vital,

therefore, that settlement is carried out by military and not civilian

entities. It is also important, in my view, that such settlement is in

the framework of camps and is, on the face of it, of a temporary rather

than permanent nature.”

Meron’s advice was followed. Settlement has often been disguised by the

subterfuge suggested, the “temporary military entities” turning out

later to be civilian settlements. The device of military settlement also

has the advantage of providing a means to expel Palestinians from their

lands on the pretext that a military zone is being established. Deceit

was scrupulously planned, beginning as soon as Meron’s authoritative

report was delivered to the government. As documented by Israeli scholar

Avi Raz, in September 1967,

on the day a second civilian settlement came into being in the West

Bank, the government decided that “as a ‘cover’ for the purpose of

[Israel’s] diplomatic campaign” the new settlements should be presented

as army settlements and the settlers should be given the necessary

instructions in case they were asked about the nature of their

settlement. The Foreign Ministry directed Israel’s diplomatic missions

to present the settlements in the occupied territories as military

“strongpoints” and to emphasize their alleged security importance.

Similar practices continue to the present.

In response to the Security Council orders of 1979–80 to dismantle

existing settlements and to establish no new ones, Israel undertook a

rapid expansion of settlements with the cooperation of both of the major

Israeli political blocs, Labor and Likud, always with lavish US material

support.

The primary differences today are that the United States is now alone

against the whole world, and that it is a different world. Israel’s

flagrant violations of Security Council orders, and of international

law, are by now far more extreme than they were thirty-five years ago

and are arousing far greater condemnation in much of the world. The

contents of Resolutions 446 and 2334 are therefore taken more seriously.

Hence the revealing reactions to 2334, and to secretary of state John

Kerry’s explanation of the US vote. In the Arab world, the reactions

seem to have been muted: We’ve been here before. In Europe they were

generally supportive. In the United States and Israel, in contrast,

coverage and commentary were extensive, and there was considerable

hysteria. These are further indications of the increasing isolation of

the United States on the world stage. Under Obama, that is. Under Trump

US isolation will likely increase further, and indeed already did, even

before he took office, as we have seen.

Why did Obama choose abstention at this juncture, that is, only a month

or so before the end of his presidency?

Just why Obama chose abstention rather than veto is an open question: we

do not have direct evidence. But there are some plausible guesses. There

had been some ripples of surprise (and ridicule) after Obama’s February

2011 veto of a UNSC resolution calling for implementation of official US

policy, and he may have felt that it would be too much to repeat it if

he is to salvage anything of his tattered legacy among sectors of the

population that have some concern for international law and human

rights. It is also worth remembering that among liberal Democrats, if

not Congress, and particularly among the young, opinion about

Israel-Palestine has been moving toward criticism of Israeli policies in

recent years, so much so that “60% of Democrats support imposing

sanctions or more serious action” in reaction to Israeli settlements,

according to a December 2016 Brookings Institute poll. By now the core

of support for Israeli policies in the United States has shifted to the

far right, including the evangelical base of the Republican Party.

Perhaps these were factors in Obama’s decision, with his legacy in mind.

The 2016 abstention aroused furor in Israel and in the US Congress as

well, both Republicans and leading Democrats, including proposals to

defund the UN in retaliation for the world’s crime. Israeli Prime

Minister Netanyahu denounced Obama for his “underhanded, anti-Israel”

actions. His office accused Obama of “colluding” behind the scenes with

this “gang-up” by the Security Council, producing particles of

“evidence” that hardly rise to the level of sick humor. A senior Israeli

official added that the abstention “revealed the true face of the Obama

administration,” adding that “now we can understand what we have been

dealing with for the past eight years.”

Reality is rather different. Obama has in fact broken all records in

support for Israel, both diplomatic and financial. The reality is

described accurately by Middle East specialist of the Financial Times’s

David Gardner:

Mr Obama’s personal dealings with Mr Netanyahu may often have been

poisonous, but he has been the most pro-Israel of presidents: the most

prodigal with military aid and reliable in wielding the US veto at the

Security Council… . The election of Donald Trump has so far brought

little more than turbo-frothed tweets to bear on this and other

geopolitical knots. But the auguries are ominous. An irredentist

government in Israel tilted towards the ultra-right is now joined by a

national populist administration in Washington fire-breathing

Islamophobia.

Public commentary on Obama’s decision and Kerry’s justification was

split. Supporters generally agreed with Thomas Friedman that “Israel is

clearly now on a path toward absorbing the West Bank’s 2.8 million

Palestinians … posing a demographic and democratic challenge.” In a New

York Times review of the state of the two-state solution defended by

Obama-Kerry and threatened with extinction by Israeli policies, Max

Fisher asks, “Are there other solutions?” He then turns to the possible

alternatives, all of them “multiple versions of the so-called one-state

solution” that poses a “demographic and democratic challenge”: too many

Arabs—perhaps soon a majority—in a “Jewish and democratic state.”

In the conventional fashion, commentators assume that there are two

alternatives: the two-state solution advocated by the world, or some

version of the “one-state solution.” Ignored consistently is a third

alternative, the one that Israel has been implementing quite

systematically since shortly after the 1967 war and that is now very

clearly taking shape before our eyes: a Greater Israel, sooner or later

incorporated into Israel proper, including a vastly expanded Jerusalem

(already annexed in violation of Security Council orders) and any other

territories that Israel finds valuable, while excluding areas of heavy

Palestinian population concentration and slowly removing Palestinians

within the areas scheduled for incorporation within Greater Israel. As

in neocolonies generally, Palestinian elites will be able to enjoy

Western standards in Ramallah, with “90 per cent of the population of

the West Bank living in 165 separate ‘islands,’ ostensibly under the

control of the [Palestinian Authority]” but actual Israeli control, as

reported by Nathan Thrall, senior analyst with the International Crisis

Group. Gaza will remain under crushing siege, separated from the West

Bank in violation of the Oslo Accords.

The third alternative is another piece of the “reality” described by

David Gardner.

In an interesting and revealing comment, Netanyahu denounced the

“gang-up” of the world as proof of “old-world bias against Israel,” a

phrase reminiscent of Donald Rumsfeld’s Old Europe–New Europe

distinction in 2003.

It will be recalled that the states of Old Europe were the bad guys, the

major states of Europe, which dared to respect the opinions of the

overwhelming majority of their populations and thus refused to join the

United States in the crime of the century, the invasion of Iraq. The

states of New Europe were the good guys, which overruled an even larger

majority and obeyed the master. The most honorable of the good guys was

Spain’s José María Aznar, who rejected virtually unanimous opposition to

the war in Spain and was rewarded by being invited to join Bush and

Blair in announcing the invasion.

This quite illuminating display of utter contempt for democracy, along

with others like it at the same time, passed virtually unnoticed,

understandably. The task at the time was to praise Washington for its

passionate dedication to democracy, as illustrated by “democracy

promotion” in Iraq, which suddenly became the party line after the

“single question” (will Saddam give up his WMD?) was answered the wrong

way.

Netanyahu is adopting much the same stance. The old world that is biased

against Israel is the entire UN Security Council—more specifically,

anyone in the world who has some lingering commitment to international

law and human rights. Luckily for the Israeli far right, that excludes

the US Congress and—very forcefully—the president-elect and his

associates.

The Israeli government is of course cognizant of these developments. It

is therefore seeking to shift its base of support to authoritarian

states such as Singapore, China, and Modi’s right-wing Hindu nationalist

India, now becoming a very natural ally with its drift toward

ultranationalism, reactionary internal policies, and hatred of Islam.

The reasons for Israel’s looking in this direction for support are

outlined by Mark Heller, principal research associate at Tel Aviv’s

Institution for National Security Studies. “Over the long term,” he

explains, “there are problems for Israel in its relations with western

Europe and with the U.S.,” while in contrast, the important Asian

countries “don’t seem to indicate much interest about how Israel gets

along with the Palestinians, Arabs, or anyone else.” In short, China,

India, Singapore, and other favored allies are less influenced by the

kinds of liberal and humane concerns that pose increasing threats to

Israel.

The tendencies developing in world order merit some attention. As noted,

the United States is becoming even more isolated than it has been in

recent years, when US-run polls—unreported in the United States but

surely known in Washington—revealed that world opinion regarded the

United States as by far the leading threat to world peace, no one else

even close. Under Obama, the United States is now alone in abstention on

the illegal Israel settlements, against an otherwise unanimous Security

Council. With President Trump joining his bipartisan congressional

supporters on this issue, the United States will be even more isolated

in the world in support of Israeli crimes. Since November 8, the United

States is isolated on the much more crucial matter of global warming, a

threat to the survival of organized human life in anything like its

present form. If Trump makes good on his promise to exit from the Iran

deal, it is likely that the other participants will persist, leaving the

United States still more isolated from Europe. The United States is also

much more isolated from its Latin American “backyard” than in the past

and will be even more isolated if Trump backs off from Obama’s halting

steps to normalize relations with Cuba, undertaken to ward off the

likelihood that the United States would be pretty much excluded from

hemispheric organizations because of its continuing assault on Cuba, in

international isolation.

Much the same is happening in Asia, as even close US allies (apart from

Japan), even the UK, flock to the China-based Asian Infrastructure

Development Bank and the China-based Regional Comprehensive Economic

Partnership (in this case, including Japan). The China-based Shanghai

Cooperation Organization (SCO) incorporates the Central Asian states:

Siberia, with its rich resources; India; Pakistan; and soon, probably

Iran; and perhaps Turkey. The SCO has rejected the US request for

observer status and demanded that the United States remove all military

bases from the region.

Immediately after the Trump election, we witnessed the intriguing

spectacle of German chancellor Angela Merkel taking the lead in

lecturing Washington on liberal values and human rights. Meanwhile,

since November 8, the world looks to China for leadership in saving the

world from environmental catastrophe, while the United States, in

splendid isolation once again, devotes itself to undermining these

efforts.

US isolation is not complete, of course. As was made very clear in the

reaction to Trump’s electoral victory, the United States has the

enthusiastic support of the xenophobic ultra-right in Europe, including

its neofascist elements. The return of the right in parts of Latin

America offers the United States opportunities for alliances there as

well. And the United States retains its close alliance with the

dictatorship of the Gulf and Egypt, and with Israel, which is also

separating itself from more liberal and democratic sectors in Europe and

linking with authoritarian regimes that are not concerned with Israel’s

violations of international law and harsh attacks on elementary human

rights.

The developing picture suggests the emergence of a New World Order, one

that is rather different from the usual portrayals within the doctrinal

system.

Originally published in Truthout, January 6, 2017

The Republican Base Is “Out of Control”

C. J. POLYCHRONIOU: Noam, perhaps because more outrageous political

characters are drawn into US politics than at any other time in the

recent past, we have become witnesses of some strange developments, such

as GOP candidates attacking “free trade” agreements and even someone

like Donald Trump having turned against his fellow billionaires. Are we

witnessing the end of the old economic establishment in American

politics?

NOAM CHOMSKY: There is something new in the 2016 election, but it is not

the appearance of candidates who frighten the old establishment. That

has been happening regularly. It traces back to the shift of both

parties to the right during the neoliberal years, the Republicans so far

to the right that they are unable to get votes with their actual

policies: dedication to the welfare of the very rich and the corporate

sector. The Republican leadership has accordingly been compelled to

mobilize a popular base on issues that are peripheral to their core

concerns: the Second Coming, “open carry” in schools, Obama as a Muslim,

lashing out at the weak and victimized, and the rest of the familiar

fare. The base that they’ve put together has regularly produced

candidates unacceptable to the establishment: Bachmann, Cain, Santorum,

Huckabee. But the establishment has always been able to beat them down

in the usual ways and get their own man (Mitt Romney). What is different

this time is that the base is out of control, and the establishment is

almost going berserk.

Analogies should not be pressed too far, but the phenomenon is not

unfamiliar. The German industrialists and financiers were happy to use

the Nazis as a weapon against the working class and the left, assuming

that they could be kept under control. Didn’t quite work out that way.

All of this aside, the United States is not immune to the general

decline of the mainstream political parties of the West, and the growth

of political insurgencies on the right and left (though “left” means

moderate social democracy, in practice)—one of the predictable

consequences of the neoliberal policies that have undermined democracy

and caused substantial harm to most of the population, the less

privileged sectors. All familiar.

It appears that big-ticket conservative donors, like the Koch brothers,

are turning their back on the Republican Party. If this is actually

true, what might possibly be the explanation for this development?

The reason, I think, is that they are having a problem controlling the

base they have mobilized, and are seeking some way to avoid a serious

blow to their interests. It wouldn’t entirely surprise me if they manage

somehow to control the Republican National Convention and possibly even

bring in someone like Paul Ryan. Not a prospect to welcome, in my

opinion.

Stories about wealthy individuals financing politicians are as old as

the country itself. So, in what ways has money reshaped American

politics in our own era?

Nothing that is completely new. The standard scholarly work on this

topic—Thomas Ferguson’s outstanding studies in his book Golden Rule and

more recent publications—traces the practices and the consequences back

to the late nineteenth century, with particularly interesting results on

the New Deal years, continuing to the present.

There are always new twists. One, which Ferguson has discussed, dates to

Newt Gingrich’s machinations in the 1990s. Prestigious and influential

positions in Congress used to be granted on the basis of seniority and

perceived achievement. Now, they are basically bought, which drives

congressional representatives even deeper into the pockets of the rich.

And Supreme Court decisions have accelerated the process.

In the past, the candidate with the most money won almost all the time.

But Donald Trump seems to have changed the rules about politics in money

as he has actually spent less money than his rivals. Has the power of

money suddenly shrunk in an election year dominated by extreme voices?

Don’t know the exact figures, but Trump seems to be putting plenty of

money into the campaign. However, it is striking how huge money chests

have failed. Jeb Bush is the clearest case. There is a very interesting

article by Andrew Cockburn about this in the April 2016 issue of

Harper’s, reviewing studies that show that an enormous amount of the

money poured into political campaigns with TV ads, and the like, serves

primarily to enrich the networks and the professional consultants but

with little effect on voting.[5] In contrast, face-to-face contact and

direct canvasing, which are inexpensive—but require a lot of often

volunteer labor—do have a measurable impact. Note that a separate matter

is the question of the influence of the campaign spending by wealth and

power on policy decisions, the kind of question that Ferguson has

investigated.

What specific economic interests would you say are best represented by

GOP candidates in the 2016 election?

The super-rich and the corporate sector, even more so than usual.

One of the great myths in American political culture revolves around

“free-market” capitalism. The US economy is not a “free-market” economy,

as most libertarians would point out, but the question is whether there

can be a system of “free-market” capitalism, let alone whether it would

be desirable to have one.

There have been examples of something like free-market capitalism. The

distinguished economic historian Paul Bairoch points out that “there is

no doubt that the Third World’s compulsory economic liberalism in the

nineteenth century is a major element in explaining the delay in its

industrialization,” or even “deindustrialization.” There are many

well-studied illustrations. Meanwhile, Europe and the regions that

managed to stay free of its control developed, as Europe itself did, by

radical violation of these principles. England and the United States are

prime examples, as is the one area of the global South that resisted

colonization and developed: Japan.

Like many other economic historians, Bairoch concludes from a broad

survey that “it is difficult to find another case where the facts so

contradict a dominant theory” as the doctrine that free markets were the

engine of growth, a harsh lesson that the global South has learned over

the years, again in the recent neoliberal period. There are classic

studies of some of the inherent problems in “free market” development,

like Karl Polyani’s The Great Transformation, Rajani Kanth’s Political

Economy and Laissez-Faire, and a substantial literature in economic

history and history of technology.

There are also fundamental problems of unregulated markets, such as the

restriction of choice that they impose (excluding public goods, like

mass transportation) and their ignoring of externalities, which by now

spells virtual doom to the species.

A recent poll showed that more than nine in ten Americans said they

would vote for a qualified presidential candidate who is Catholic, a

woman, Black, Hispanic, or Jewish, but less than half said they would

vote for a candidate who is a socialist. Why is socialism still a taboo

in this country (although one must admit that socialism seems to be dead

virtually everywhere else today in the Western world)?

A difficult question to discuss, because the word “socialism” (like most

terms of political discourse) has been so vulgarized and politicized

that it is not very useful. The essence of traditional socialism was

workers’ control over production, along with popular democratic control

of other components of social, economic, and political life. There was

hardly a society in the world more remote from socialism than Soviet

Russia, which is presented as the leading “socialist” society. If that’s

what “socialism” is, then we ought to oppose it. In other uses, the post

office, national health programs, and others are called “socialist,” but

they are not opposed by the public—including national health, supported,

often by large majorities, for many years in the United States, and

still today. The term “socialist” became taboo for reasons of Cold War

ideology, which divorced the term from any useful meaning.

There are significant elements of something like authentic socialism in

the Western world, notably worker-owned (and sometimes managed)

enterprises, cooperatives with real participation, and much else. I

think they can be thought of in Bakunin’s terms, as creating the

institutions of a more free and just society within the present one.

These days the United States seems to have a comparative advantage over

other “developed” countries around the world only in military

technology. In fact, the United States is beginning to resemble more and

more a “third world” country, at least with regard to its infrastructure

and the extent of the poverty and homelessness among a significant and

constantly rising portion of the population. In your view, what factors

have led to this dreadful state of affairs in what still remains a very

rich country?

The United States is, to an unusual extent, a business-run society,

without roots in traditional societies in which, with all their severe

flaws, people had some kind of place. Its history as a settler-colonial

and slave society has left its social and cultural legacy, along with

other factors, such as the unusual role of religious fundamentalism.

There have been large-scale, radical democratic movements in American

history, like the agrarian populist and militant labor movements, but

they were mostly crushed, often with considerable violence.

One consequence is what Walter Dean Burnham calls a “crucial comparative

peculiarity of the American political system: the total absence of a

socialist or laborite mass party as an organized competitor in the

electoral market.” He showed that this accounts for much of the

“class-skewed abstention rates” that he demonstrated for the United

States, and the downplaying of class-related issues in the largely

business-run political system. In some ways the system is a legacy of

the Civil War, which has never really been overcome. Today’s “red

states” are solidly based in the Confederacy, which was solidly

Democratic before the civil rights movement and Nixon’s “Southern

strategy” shifted party labels.

In many ways the United States is a very free society—also in social

practices, such as lack of the kind of relations of deference that one

often finds elsewhere. But one consequence of the complex amalgam is the

sad state of social justice. Although an extremely rich society, with

incomparable advantages, the United States ranks very low in measures of

social justice among the richer Organization for Economic Cooperation

and Development (OECD) societies, alongside of Turkey, Mexico, and

Greece. Infrastructure is a disaster. One can take a high-speed train in

other developed societies, or from China to Kazakhstan, but not from

Boston to Washington—maybe the most traveled corridor—where there hasn’t

been much of an improvement since I took the train sixty-five years ago.

Traditional Marxists speak of human society as consisting of two parts:

base and superstructure. Would you say that the base dictates the

superstructure in US society?

Don’t have much to say. I don’t find the framework particularly useful.

Who holds dominant decision-making power in US society is not very

obscure at a general level: concentrated economic power, mostly in the

corporate system. When we look more closely, it is of course more

complex, and the population is by no means powerless when it is

organized and dedicated and liberated from illusions.

Originally published in Truthout, March 29, 2016

2016 Election Puts United States at Risk of “Utter Disaster”

C. J. POLYCHRONIOU: Noam, let’s start with a reflective look at how the

US 2016 presidential elections shape up in terms of the state of the

country and its role in global affairs and the ideological viewpoints

expressed by some of the leading candidates of both parties.

NOAM CHOMSKY: It cannot be overlooked that we have arrived at a unique

moment in human history. For the first time, decisions have to be made

right now that will literally determine the prospects for decent human

survival, and not in the distant future. We have already made that

decision for a huge number of species. Species destruction is at the

level of 65 million years ago, the fifth extinction, ending the age of

the dinosaurs. That also opened the way for small mammals, ultimately

us, a species with unique capacities, including unfortunately the

capacity for cold and savage destruction.

The nineteenth-century reactionary opponent of the Enlightenment, Joseph

de Maistre, criticized Thomas Hobbes for adopting the Roman phrase, “Man

is a wolf to man,” observing that it is unfair to wolves, who do not

kill for pleasure. The capacity extends to self-destruction, as we are

now witnessing. It is presumed that the fifth extinction was caused by a

huge asteroid that hit the earth. Now we are the asteroid. The impact on

humans is already significant and will soon become incomparably worse

unless decisive action is taken right now. Furthermore, the risk of

nuclear war, always a grim shadow, is increasing. That would end any

further discussion. We may recall Einstein’s response to a question

about the weapons that would be used in the next war. He said that he

didn’t know, but the war after that would be fought with stone axes.

Inspection of the shocking record reveals that it’s a near miracle that

disaster has been avoided this far, and miracles do not go on forever.

And that the risk is increasing is unfortunately all too evident.

Fortunately, these destructive and suicidal capacities of human nature

are balanced by others. There is good reason to believe that such

Enlightenment figures as David Hume and Adam Smith, and the anarchist

activist-thinker Peter Kropotkin, were correct in regarding sympathy and

mutual aid as core properties of human nature. We’ll soon find out which

characteristics are in the ascendant.

Turning to your question, we can ask how these awesome problems are

being addressed in the quadrennial electoral extravaganza. The most

striking fact is that they are barely being addressed at all, by either

party.

There’s no need to review the spectacle of the Republican primaries.

Commentators can barely conceal their disgust and concern for what it

tells us about the country and contemporary civilization. The candidates

have, however, answered the crucial questions. They either deny global

warming or insist that nothing should be done about it, demanding, in

effect, that we race even more rapidly to the precipice. Insofar as they

have detectable policies, they seem to be intent to escalate military

confrontation and threats. For these reasons alone, the Republican

organization—one hesitates to call it a political party in any

traditional sense—poses a threat of a novel and truly horrifying kind to

the human species and to the others who are “collateral damage” as

higher intelligence proceeds on its suicidal course.

On the Democratic side, there is at least some recognition of the danger

of environmental catastrophe, but precious little in the way of

substantive policy proposals. On Obama’s programs of upgrading the

nuclear arsenal, or such critical matters as the rapid (and mutual)

military buildup on Russia’s borders, I haven’t been able to find any

clear positions.

In general, the ideological positions of the Republican candidates seem

to be more of the usual: stuff the pockets of the rich and kick the rest

in the face. The two Democratic candidates range from the New Deal style

of Sanders’s programs to the “New Democrat/moderate Republican” Clinton

version, driven a bit to the left under the impact of the Sanders

challenge. On international affairs, and the awesome tasks we face, it

seems at best “more of the same.”

In your view, what has led to Donald Trump’s rise, and is he simply

another case of those typical right-wing, populist characters who

frequently surface in the course of history whenever nations face severe

economic crises or are on a national decline?

Insofar as the United States is facing “national decline,” it’s largely

self-inflicted. True, the United States could not possibly maintain the

extraordinary hegemonic power of the early post–World War II period, but

it remains the potentially richest country in the world, with

incomparable advantages and security, and in the military dimension,

virtually matches the rest of the world combined and is technologically

far more advanced than any collection of rivals.

Trump’s appeal seems based largely on perceptions of loss and fear. The

neoliberal assault on the world’s populations, almost always harmful to

them, and often severely so, has not left the United States untouched,

even though it has been somewhat more resilient than others. The

majority of the population has endured stagnation or decline while

extraordinary and ostentatious wealth has accumulated in very few

pockets. The formal democratic system has suffered the usual

consequences of neoliberal socioeconomic policies, drifting toward

plutocracy.

No need to review again the grim details—for example, the stagnation of

real male wages for forty years and the fact that since the last crash

some 90 percent of wealth created has found its way to 1 percent of the

population. Or the fact that the majority of the population—those lower

on the income scale—are effectively disenfranchised in that their

representatives ignore their opinions and preferences, heeding the

super-rich funders and power brokers.

In part, Trump supporters—predominantly, it seems, lower-middle class,

working class, less educated—are reacting to the perception, largely

accurate, that they have simply been left by the wayside. It’s

instructive to compare the current scene with the Great Depression.

Objectively, conditions in the ’30s were far worse, and, of course, the

United States was a much poorer country then. Subjectively, however,

conditions then were far better. Among working-class Americans, despite

very high unemployment and suffering, there was a sense of hopefulness,

a belief that we will somehow come out of this working together. It was

fostered by the successes of militant labor activism, often interacting

with lively left political parties and other organizations. A fairly

sympathetic administration responded with constructive measures, though

always constrained by the enormous power of Southern Democrats, who were

willing to tolerate welfare state measures as long as the despised Black

population was marginalized. Importantly, there was a feeling that the

country was on the road to a better future. All of this is lacking

today, not least because of the successes of the bitter attacks on labor

organization that took off as soon as the war ended.

In addition, Trump draws substantial support from nativists and

racists—it’s worth remembering that the United States has been at the

extreme, even beyond South Africa, in the strength of white supremacy,

as comparative studies by George Frederickson convincingly showed. The

United States has never really transcended the Civil War and the

horrendous legacy of oppression of African Americans for five hundred

years. There is also a long history of illusions about Anglo-Saxon

purity, threatened by waves of immigrants (and freedom for Blacks, and

indeed for women, no small matter among patriarchal sectors). Trump’s

predominantly white supporters can see that their image of a white-run

(and, for many, male-run) society is dissolving before their eyes. It is

also worth remembering that although the United States is unusually safe

and secure, it is also perhaps the most frightened country in the world,

another feature of the culture with a long history.

Such factors such as these mix in a dangerous brew. Just thinking back

over recent years, in a book over a decade ago I quoted the

distinguished scholar of German history Fritz Stern, writing in the

establishment journal Foreign Affairs, on “the descent in Germany from

decency to Nazi barbarism.” He added, pointedly, “Today, I worry about

the immediate future of the United States, the country that gave haven

to German-speaking refugees in the 1930s,” himself included. With

implications for here and now that no careful reader could miss, Stern

reviewed Hitler’s demonic appeal to his “divine mission” as “Germany’s

savior” in a “pseudoreligious transfiguration of politics” adapted to

“traditional Christian forms,” ruling a government dedicated to “the

basic principles” of the nation, with “Christianity as the foundation of

our national morality and the family as the basis of national life.”

Further, Hitler’s hostility toward the “liberal secular state,” shared

by much of the Protestant clergy, drove forward “a historic process in

which resentment against a disenchanted secular world found deliverance

in the ecstatic escape of unreason.”

The contemporary resonance is unmistakable.

Such reasons to “worry about the future of the United States” have not

been lacking since. We might recall, for example, the eloquent and

poignant manifesto left by Joseph Stack when he crashed his small plane

into an office building in Austin, Texas, hitting an IRS office,

committing suicide. In it he traced his bitter life story as a worker

who was doing everything according to the rules, and being crushed, step

by step, by the corruption and brutality of the corporate system and the

state authorities. He was speaking for many people like him. His

manifesto was mostly ridiculed or ignored, but it should have been taken

very seriously, along with many other clear signs of what has been

taking place.

Nonetheless, Cruz and Rubio appear to me to be both far more dangerous

than Trump. I see them as the real monsters, while Trump reminds me a

bit of Silvio Berlusconi. Do you agree with any of these views?

I agree—and, as you know, the Trump-Berlusconi comparison is current in

Europe. I would also add Paul Ryan to the list. He is portrayed as the

deep thinker of the Republicans, the serious policy wonk, with

spreadsheets and the other apparatus of the thoughtful analyst. The few

attempts to analyze his programs, after dispensing with the magic that

is regularly introduced, conclude that his actual policies are to

virtually destroy every part of the federal government that serves the

interests of the general population, while expanding the military and

ensuring that the rich and the corporate sector will be well attended

to—the core Republican ideology when the rhetorical trappings are drawn

aside.

America’s youth seems to be captivated by Bernie Sanders’s message. Are

you surprised by how well he is holding up?

I am surprised. I didn’t anticipate the success of his campaign. It is,

however, important to bear in mind that his policy proposals would not

have surprised President Eisenhower, and that they are pretty much in

tune with popular sentiments over a long period, often considerable

majorities. For example, his much-maligned call for a national health

care system of the kind familiar in similar societies is supported right

now by about 60 percent of the population, a very high figure

considering the fact that it is subject to constant condemnation and has

very limited articulate advocacy. And that popular support goes far

back. In the late Reagan years, about 70 percent of the population

thought that there should be a constitutional guarantee of health care,

and 40 percent thought there already was such a guarantee—meaning that

it is such an obvious desideratum that it must be in this sacred

document.

When Obama abandoned a public option without consideration, it was

supported by almost two-thirds of the population. And there is every

reason to believe that there would be enormous savings if the United

States adopted the far more efficient national health care programs of

other countries, which have about half the health care expenditures of

the United States and generally better outcomes. The same is true of his

proposals for higher taxes on the rich, free higher education, and other

parts of his domestic programs, mostly reflecting New Deal commitments

and similar to policy choices during the most successful growth periods

of the post–World War II period.

Under what scenario can Sanders possibly win the Democratic nomination?

Evidently, it would require very substantial educational and

organizational activities. But my own feeling, frankly, is that these

should be directed substantially toward developing a popular movement

that will not fade away after the election, but will join with others to

form the kind of activist force that has been instrumental in initiating

and carrying forward needed changes and reforms in the past.

Is America still a democracy and, if not, do elections really matter?

With all its flaws, America is still a very free and open society, by

comparative standards. Elections surely matter. It would, in my opinion,

be an utter disaster for the country, the world, and future generations

if any of the viable Republican candidates were to reach the White

House, and if they continue to control Congress. Consideration of the

overwhelmingly important questions we discussed earlier suffices to

reach that conclusion, and it’s not all. For such reasons as those I

alluded to earlier, American democracy, always limited, has been

drifting substantially toward plutocracy. But these tendencies are not

graven in stone. We enjoy an unusual legacy of freedom and rights left

to us by predecessors who did not give up, often under far harsher

conditions than we face now. And it provides ample opportunities for

work that is badly needed, in many ways, in direct activism and

pressures in support of significant policy choices, in building viable

and effective community organizations, revitalizing the labor movement,

and also in the political arena, from school boards to state

legislatures and much more.

Originally published in Truthout, March 9, 2016

Trump in the White House

C. J. POLYCHRONIOU: Noam, the unthinkable has happened. In contrast to

all forecasts, Donald Trump scored a decisive victory over Hillary

Clinton, and the man that Michael Moore described as a “wretched,

ignorant, dangerous part-time clown and full-time sociopath” will be the

next president of the United States. In your view, what were the

deciding factors that led American voters to produce the biggest upset

in the history of US politics?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Before turning to this question, I think it is important

to spend a few moments pondering just what happened on November 8, a

date that might turn out to be one of the most important in human

history, depending on how we react.

No exaggeration.

The most important news of November 8 was barely noted, a fact of some

significance in itself.

On November 8, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) delivered a

report at the international conference on climate change in Morocco

(COP22), which was called in order to carry forward the Paris agreement

of COP21. The WMO reported that the past five years were the hottest on

record. It reported rising sea levels, soon to increase as a result of

the unexpectedly rapid melting of polar ice, most ominously the huge

Antarctic glaciers. Already, Arctic sea ice over the past five years is

28 percent below the average of the previous twenty-nine years, not only

raising sea levels but also reducing the cooling effect of polar ice

reflection of solar rays, thereby accelerating the grim effects of

global warming. The WMO reported further that temperatures are

approaching dangerously close to the goal established by COP21, along

with other dire reports and forecasts.

Another event took place on November 8, which also may turn out to be of

unusual historical significance for reasons that, once again, were

barely noted.

On November 8, the most powerful country in world history, which will

set its stamp on what comes next, had an election. The outcome placed

total control of the government—executive, Congress, the Supreme

Court—in the hands of the Republican Party, which has become the most

dangerous organization in world history.

Apart from the last phrase, all of this is uncontroversial. The last

phrase may seem outlandish, even outrageous. But is it? The facts

suggest otherwise. The party is dedicated to racing as rapidly as

possible to destruction of organized human life. There is no historical

precedent for such a stand.

Is this an exaggeration? Consider what we have just been witnessing.

During the Republican primaries, every candidate denied that what is

happening is happening—with the exception of the sensible moderates,

like Jeb Bush, who said it’s all uncertain, but we don’t have to do

anything because we’re producing more natural gas, thanks to fracking.

Or John Kasich, who agreed that global warming is taking place, but

added that “we are going to burn [coal] in Ohio and we are not going to

apologize for it.”

The winning candidate, now the president-elect, calls for rapid increase

in use of fossil fuels, including coal; dismantling of regulations;

rejection of help to developing countries that are seeking to move to

sustainable energy; and, in general, racing to the cliff as fast as

possible.

Trump has already taken steps to dismantle the Environmental Protection

Agency (EPA) by placing in charge of the EPA transition a notorious (and

proud) climate change denier, Myron Ebell. Trump’s top adviser on

energy, billionaire oil executive Harold Hamm, announced his

expectations, which were predictable: dismantling regulations, tax cuts

for the industry (and the wealthy and corporate sector generally), more

fossil fuel production, lifting Obama’s temporary block on the Dakota

Access Pipeline. The market reacted quickly. Shares in energy

corporations boomed, including the world’s largest coal miner, Peabody

Energy, which had filed for bankruptcy, but after Trump’s victory

registered a 50 percent gain.

The effects of Republican denialism had already been felt. There had

been hopes that the COP21 Paris agreement would lead to a verifiable

treaty, but any such thoughts were abandoned because the Republican

Congress would not accept any binding commitments, so what emerged was a

voluntary agreement, evidently much weaker.

Effects may soon become even more vividly apparent than they already

are. In Bangladesh alone, tens of millions are expected to have to flee

from low-lying plains in coming years because of sea level rise and more

severe weather, creating a migrant crisis that will make today’s pale in

significance. With considerable justice, Bangladesh’s leading climate

scientist says that “These migrants should have the right to move to the

countries from which all these greenhouse gases are coming. Millions

should be able to go to the United States.” And to the other rich

countries that have grown wealthy while bringing about a new geological

era, the Anthropocene, marked by radical human transformation of the

environment. These catastrophic consequences can only increase, not just

in Bangladesh, but in all of South Asia as temperatures, already

intolerable for the poor, inexorably rise and the Himalayan glaciers

melt, threatening the entire water supply. Already in India, some 300

million people are reported to lack adequate drinking water. And the

effects will reach far beyond.

It is hard to find words to capture the fact that humans are facing the

most important question in their history—whether organized human life

will survive in anything like the form we know—and are answering it by

accelerating the race to disaster.

Similar observations hold for the other huge issue concerning human

survival: the threat of nuclear destruction, which has been looming over

our heads for seventy years and is now increasing.

It is no less difficult to find words to capture the utterly astonishing

fact that in all of the massive coverage of the electoral extravaganza,

none of this receives more than passing mention. At least I am at a loss

to find appropriate words.

Turning finally to the question raised, to be precise, it appears that

Clinton received a slight majority of the vote. The apparent decisive

victory has to do with curious features of American politics: among

other factors, the Electoral College residue of the founding of the

country as an alliance of separate states; the winner-take-all system in

each state; the arrangement of congressional districts (sometimes by

gerrymandering) to provide greater weight to rural votes (in past

elections, and probably this one too, Democrats have had a comfortable

margin of victory in the popular vote for the House but hold a minority

of seats); the very high rate of abstention (usually close to half in

presidential elections, this one included). Of some significance for the

future is the fact that in the age eighteen-to-twenty-five range,

Clinton won handily, and Sanders had an even higher level of support.

How much this matters depends on what kind of future humanity will face.

According to current information, Trump broke all records in the support

he received from white voters, working class and lower middle class,

particularly in the $50,000 to $90,000 income range, rural and suburban,

primarily those without college education. These groups share the anger

throughout the West at the centrist establishment, revealed as well in

the unanticipated Brexit vote and the collapse of centrist parties in

continental Europe. Many of the angry and disaffected are victims of the

neoliberal policies of the past generation, the policies described in

congressional testimony by Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan—“St.

Alan,” as he was called reverentially by the economics profession and

other admirers until the miraculous economy he was supervising crashed

in 2007–2008, threatening to bring the whole world economy down with it.

As Greenspan explained during his glory days, his successes in economic

management were based substantially on “growing worker insecurity.”

Intimidated working people would not ask for higher wages, benefits, and

security but would be satisfied with the stagnating wages and reduced

benefits that signal a healthy economy by neoliberal standards.

Working people, who have been the subjects of these experiments in

economic theory, are not particularly happy about the outcome. They are

not, for example, overjoyed at the fact that in 2007, at the peak of the

neoliberal miracle, real wages for nonsupervisory workers were lower

than they had been years earlier, or that real wages for male workers

are about at 1960s levels while spectacular gains have gone to the

pockets of a very few at the top, disproportionately a fraction of 1

percent. Not the result of market forces, achievement, or merit, but

rather of definite policy decisions, matters reviewed carefully by

economist Dean Baker in recently published work.[6]

The fate of the minimum wage illustrates what has been happening.

Through the periods of high and egalitarian growth in the ’50s and ’60s,

the minimum wage—which sets a floor for other wages—tracked

productivity. That ended with the onset of neoliberal doctrine. Since

then, the minimum wage has stagnated (in real value). Had it continued

as before, it would probably be close to $20 per hour. Today, it is

considered a political revolution to raise it to $15.

With all the talk of near-full employment today, labor force

participation remains below the earlier norm. And for working people,

there is a great difference between a steady job in manufacturing with

union wages and benefits, as in earlier years, and a temporary job with

little security in some service profession. Apart from wages, benefits,

and security, there is a loss of dignity, of hope for the future, of a

sense that this is a world in which I belong and play a worthwhile role.

The impact is captured well in Arlie Hochschild’s sensitive and

illuminating portrayal of a Trump stronghold in Louisiana, where she

lived and worked for many years.[7] She uses the image of a line in

which residents are standing, expecting to move forward steadily as they

work hard and keep to all the conventional values. But their position in

the line has stalled. Ahead of them, they see people leaping forward,

but that does not cause much distress, because it is “the American way”

for (alleged) merit to be rewarded. What does cause real distress is

what is happening behind them. They believe that “undeserving people”

who do not “follow the rules” are being moved in front of them by

federal government programs they erroneously see as designed to benefit

African Americans, immigrants, and others they often regard with

contempt. All of this is exacerbated by Ronald Reagan’s racist

fabrications about “welfare queens” (by implication Black) stealing

white people’s hard-earned money and other fantasies.

Sometimes failure to explain, itself a form of contempt, plays a role in

fostering hatred of government. I once met a house painter in Boston who

had turned bitterly against the “evil” government after a Washington

bureaucrat who knew nothing about painting organized a meeting of

painting contractors to inform them that they could no longer use lead

paint—“the only kind that works,” as they all knew, but the suit didn’t

understand. That destroyed his small business, compelling him to paint

houses on his own with substandard stuff forced on him by government

elites.

Sometimes there are also some real reasons for these attitudes toward

government bureaucracies. Hochschild describes a man whose family and

friends are suffering bitterly from the lethal effects of chemical

pollution but who despises the government and the “liberal elites,”

because for him, the EPA means some ignorant guy who tells him he can’t

fish but does nothing about the chemical plants.

These are just samples of the real lives of Trump supporters, who are

led to believe that Trump will do something to remedy their plight,

though the merest look at his fiscal and other proposals demonstrates

the opposite—posing a task for activists who hope to fend off the worst

and to advance desperately needed changes.

Exit polls reveal that the passionate support for Trump was inspired

primarily by the belief that he represented change, while Clinton was

perceived as the candidate who would perpetuate their distress. The

“change” that Trump is likely to bring will be harmful or worse, but it

is understandable that the consequences are not clear to isolated people

in an atomized society lacking the kinds of associations (like unions)

that can educate and organize. That is a crucial difference between

today’s despair and the generally hopeful attitudes of many working

people under much greater economic duress during the Great Depression of

the 1930s.

There are other factors in Trump’s success. Comparative studies show

that doctrines of white supremacy have had an even more powerful grip on

American culture than in South Africa, and it’s no secret that the white

population is declining. In a decade or two, whites are projected to be

a minority of the work force, and not too much later, a minority of the

population. The traditional conservative culture is also perceived as

under attack by the successes of identity politics, regarded as the

province of elites who have only contempt for the “hard-working,

patriotic, church-going [white] Americans with real family values’” who

see their familiar country as disappearing before their eyes.

One of the difficulties in raising public concern over the very severe

threats of global warming is that 40 percent of the US population does

not see why it is a problem, since Christ is returning in a few decades.

About the same percentage believe that the world was created a few

thousand years ago. If science conflicts with the Bible, so much the

worse for science. It would be hard to find an analogue in other

societies.

The Democratic Party abandoned any real concern for working people by

the 1970s, and they have therefore been drawn to the ranks of their

bitter class enemies, who at least pretend to speak their

language—Reagan’s folksy style of making little jokes while eating jelly

beans, George W. Bush’s carefully cultivated image of a regular guy you

could meet in a bar who loved to cut brush on the ranch in 100-degree

heat and his probably faked mispronunciations (it’s unlikely that he

talked like that at Yale), and now Trump, who gives voice to people with

legitimate grievances—people who have lost not just jobs but also a

sense of personal self-worth—and who rails against the government that

they perceive as having undermined their lives (not without reason).

One of the great achievements of the doctrinal system has been to divert

anger from the corporate sector to the government that implements the

programs that the corporate sector designs, such as the highly

protectionist corporate/investor rights agreements that are uniformly

misdescribed as “free trade agreements” in the media and commentary.

With all its flaws, the government is, to some extent, under popular

influence and control, unlike the corporate sector. It is highly

advantageous for the business world to foster hatred for pointy-headed

government bureaucrats and to drive out of people’s minds the subversive

idea that the government might become an instrument of popular will, a

government of, by, and for the people.

Is Trump representing a new movement in American politics, or was the

outcome of this election primarily a rejection of Hillary Clinton by

voters who hate the Clintons and are fed up with “politics as usual”?

It’s by no means new. Both political parties have moved to the right

during the neoliberal period. Today’s New Democrats are pretty much what

used to be called “moderate Republicans.” The Republicans have moved so

far toward a dedication to the wealthy and the corporate sector that

they cannot hope to get votes on their actual programs, and have turned

to mobilizing sectors of the population that have always been there, but

not as an organized coalitional political force: evangelicals,

nativists, racists, and the victims of the current forms of

globalization. This version of globalization is designed to set working

people around the world in competition with one another while protecting

the privileged. It is furthermore designed to undermine the legal and

other measures that provided working people with some protection and

with ways to influence decision-making in the closely linked public and

private sectors, notably with effective labor unions. None of this is

intrinsic to globalization; rather, it is a specific form of

investor-friendly globalization, a mixture of protectionism, investor

rights, and some limited provisions about authentic trade.

The consequences have been evident in recent Republican primaries. Every

candidate that has emerged from the base has been so extreme that the

Republican establishment had to use its ample resources to beat them

down. The difference in 2016 is that the establishment failed, much to

its chagrin, as we have seen.

Deservedly or not, Clinton represented the policies that were feared and

hated, while Trump was seen as the symbol of “change”—change of what

kind requires a careful look at his actual proposals, something largely

missing in what reached the public. The campaign itself was remarkable

in its avoidance of issues, and media commentary generally complied,

keeping to the concept that true “objectivity” means reporting

accurately what is “within the beltway” but not venturing beyond.

Trump said, following the outcome of the election, that he “will

represent all Americans.” How is he going to do that when the nation is

so divided and he has already expressed deep hatred for many groups in

the United States, including women and minorities? Do you see any

resemblance between Brexit and Donald Trump’s victory?

There are definite similarities to Brexit, and also to the rise of the

ultranationalist far-right parties in Europe—whose leaders were quick to

congratulate Trump on his victory, perceiving him as one of their own:

Nigel Farage, Marine Le Pen, Viktor Orban, and others like them. And

these developments are quite frightening. A look at the polls in Austria

and Germany—Austria and Germany—cannot fail to evoke unpleasant memories

for those familiar with the 1930s, even more so for those who watched

directly, as I did as a child. I can still recall listening to Hitler’s

speeches, not understanding the words, though the tone and audience

reaction were chilling enough. The first article that I remember writing

was in February 1939, after the fall of Barcelona, on the seemingly

inexorable spread of the fascist plague. And by strange coincidence, it

was from Barcelona that my wife and I watched the results of the 2016 US

presidential election unfold.

As to how Trump will handle what he has brought forth—not created, but

brought forth—we cannot say. Perhaps his most striking characteristic is

unpredictability. A lot will depend on the reactions of those appalled

by his performance and the visions he has projected, such as they are.

Trump has no identifiable political ideology guiding his stance on

economic, social, and political issues, yet there are clear

authoritarian tendencies in his behavior. Therefore, do you find any

validity behind the claims that Trump may represent the emergence of

“fascism with a friendly face” in the United States?

For many years, I have been writing and speaking about the danger of the

rise of an honest and charismatic ideologue in the United States,

someone who could exploit the fear and anger that has long been boiling

in much of the society, and who could direct it away from the actual

agents of malaise to vulnerable targets. That could indeed lead to what

sociologist Bertram Gross called “friendly fascism” in a perceptive

study thirty-five years ago. But that requires an honest ideologue, a

Hitler type, not someone whose only detectable ideology is Me. The

dangers, however, have been real for many years, perhaps even more so in

the light of the forces that Trump has unleashed.

With the Republicans in the White House, but also controlling both

houses and the future shape of the Supreme Court, what will the United

States look like for at least the next four years?

A good deal depends on his appointments and circle of advisers. Early

indications are unattractive, to put it mildly.

The Supreme Court will be in the hands of reactionaries for many years,

with predictable consequences. If Trump follows through on his Paul

Ryan–style fiscal programs, there will be huge benefits for the very

rich—estimated by the Tax Policy Center as a tax cut of over 14 percent

for the top 0.1 percent and a substantial cut more generally at the

upper end of the income scale, but with virtually no tax relief for

others, who will also face major new burdens. The respected economics

correspondent of the Financial Times, Martin Wolf, writes: “The tax

proposals would shower huge benefits on already rich Americans such as

Mr. Trump,” while leaving others in the lurch, including, of course, his

constituency. The immediate reaction of the business world reveals that

Big Pharma, Wall Street, the military industry, energy industries, and

other such wonderful institutions expect a very bright future.

One positive development might be the infrastructure program that Trump

has promised while (along with much reporting and commentary) concealing

the fact that it is essentially the Obama stimulus program that would

have been of great benefit to the economy, and to the society generally,

but was killed by the Republican Congress on the pretext that it would

explode the deficit. While that charge was spurious at the time, given

the very low interest rates, it holds in spades for Trump’s program, now

accompanied by radical tax cuts for the rich and corporate sector and

increased Pentagon spending.

There is, however, an escape, provided by Dick Cheney when he explained

to Bush’s treasury secretary Paul O’Neill that “Reagan proved that

deficits don’t matter”—meaning deficits that we Republicans create in

order to gain popular support, leaving it to someone else, preferably

Democrats, to somehow clean up the mess. The technique might work, for a

while at least.

There are also many questions about foreign policy consequences, mostly

unanswered.

There is mutual admiration between Trump and Putin. How likely is it

therefore that we may see a new era in US–Russia relations?

One hopeful prospect is that there might be reduction of the very

dangerous and mounting tensions at the Russian border: note “the Russian

border,” not the Mexican border. Thereby lies a tale that we cannot go

into here. It is also possible that Europe might distance itself from

Trump’s America, as already suggested by German chancellor Angela Merkel

and other European leaders—and from the British voice of American power,

after Brexit. That might possibly lead to European efforts to defuse the

tensions, and perhaps even efforts to move toward something like Mikhail

Gorbachev’s vision of an integrated Eurasian security system without

military alliances, rejected by the United States in favor of NATO

expansion, a vision revived recently by Putin, whether seriously or not,

we do not know, since the gesture was dismissed.

Is US foreign policy under a Trump administration likely to be more or

less militaristic than what we have seen under the Obama administration

or even the George W. Bush administration?

I don’t think one can answer with any confidence. Trump is too

unpredictable. There are too many open questions. What we can say is

that popular mobilization and activism, properly organized and

conducted, can make a large difference.

And we should bear in mind that the stakes are very large.

Originally published in Truthout, November 14, 2016

Global Warming and the Future of Humanity

C. J. POLYCHRONIOU: A consensus seems to be emerging among scientists

and even political and social analysts that global warming and climate

change represent the greatest threat to the planet. Do you concur with

this view, and why?

NOAM CHOMSKY: I agree with the conclusion of the experts who set the

Doomsday Clock for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. They have moved

the clock two minutes closer to midnight—three minutes to

midnight—because of the increasing threats of nuclear war and global

warming. That seems to me a credible judgment. Review of the record

shows that it’s a near miracle that we have survived the nuclear age.

There have been repeated cases when nuclear war came ominously close,

often a result of malfunctioning of early-warning systems and other

accidents, sometimes as a result of highly adventurist acts of political

leaders. It has been known for some time that a major nuclear war might

lead to nuclear winter that would destroy the attacker as well as the

target. And threats are now mounting, particularly at the Russian

border, confirming the prediction of George Kennan and other prominent

figures that NATO expansion, particularly the way it was undertaken,

would prove to be a “tragic mistake,” a “policy error of historic

proportions.”

As for climate change, it’s by now widely accepted by the scientific

community that we have entered a new geological era, the Anthropocene,

in which the Earth’s climate is being radically modified by human

action, creating a very different planet, one that may not be able to

sustain organized human life in anything like a form we would want to

tolerate. There is good reason to believe that we have already entered

the Sixth Extinction, a period of destruction of species on a massive

scale, comparable to the Fifth Extinction 65 million years ago, when

three-quarters of the species on earth were destroyed, apparently by a

huge asteroid. Atmospheric carbon dioxide is rising at a rate

unprecedented in the geological record since 55 million years ago. There

is concern—to quote a statement by 150 distinguished scientists—that

“global warming, amplified by feedbacks from polar ice melt, methane

release from permafrost, and extensive fires, may become irreversible,”

with catastrophic consequences for life on Earth, humans included—and

not in the distant future. Sea level rise—and destruction of water

resources as glaciers melt—alone may have horrendous human consequences.

Virtually all scientific studies point to increased temperatures since

1975, and a recent story in the New York Times confirms that

decades-long warnings by scientists on global warming are no longer

theoretical, as land ice melts and sea levels rise.[8] Yet, there are

still people out there who not only question the widely accepted

scientific view that current climate change is mostly caused by human

activities but also cast a doubt on the reliability of surface

temperatures. Do you think this is all politically driven, or also

caused by ignorance and perhaps even fear of change?

It is an astonishing fact about the current era that in the most

powerful country in world history, with a high level of education and

privilege, one of the two political parties virtually denies the

well-established facts about anthropogenic climate change. In the

primary debates for the 2016 election, every single Republican candidate

was a climate change denier, with one exception, John Kasich—the

“rational moderate”—who said it may be happening but we shouldn’t do

anything about it. For a long time, the media have downplayed the issue.

The euphoric reports on US fossil fuel production, energy independence,

and so on, rarely even mention the fact that these triumphs accelerate

the race to disaster. There are other factors too, but under these

circumstances, it hardly seems surprising that a considerable part of

the population either joins the deniers or regards the problem as not

very significant.

In global surveys, Americans are more skeptical than other people around

the world over climate change.[9] Why is that? And what does it tell us

about American political culture?

The United States is to an unusual extent a business-run society, where

short-term concerns of profit and market share displace rational

planning. The United States is also unusual in the enormous scale of

religious fundamentalism. The impact on understanding of the world is

extraordinary. In national polls almost half of those surveyed have

reported that they believe that God created humans in their present form

ten thousand years ago (or less) and that man shares no common ancestor

with the ape. There are similar beliefs about the Second Coming. Senator

James Inhofe, who headed the Senate Committee on the Environment, speaks

for many when he assures us that “God’s still up there and there’s a

reason for this to happen,” so it is sacrilegious for mere humans to

interfere.

Recent data related to global emissions of heat-treating gases suggest

that we may have left behind us the period of constantly increased

emissions.[10] Is there room here for optimism about the future of the

environment?

There is always room for Gramsci’s “optimism of the will.” There are

still many options, but they are diminishing. Options range from simple

initiatives that are easily undertaken like weatherizing homes (which

could also create many jobs), to entirely new forms of energy, perhaps

fusion, perhaps new means of exploiting solar energy outside the Earth’s

atmosphere (which has been seriously suggested), to methods of

decarbonization that might, conceivably, even reverse some of the

enormous damage already inflicted on the planet. And much else.

Given that change in human behavior happens slowly and that it will take

many decades before the world economy makes a shift to new, clean(er)

forms of energy, should we look toward a technological solution to

climate change?

Anything feasible and potentially effective should be explored. There is

little doubt that a significant part of any serious solution will

require advances of technology, but that can only be part of the

solution. Other major changes are necessary. Industrial production of

meat makes a huge contribution to global warming. The entire

socioeconomic system is based on production for profit and a growth

imperative that cannot be sustained.

There are also fundamental issues of value: What is a decent life?

Should the master-servant relation be tolerated? Should one’s goals

really be maximization of commodities—Veblen’s “conspicuous

consumption”? Surely there are higher and more fulfilling aspirations.

Many in the progressive and radical community, including the Union of

Concerned Scientists (UCS), are quite skeptical and even opposed to

so-called geoengineering solutions. Is this the flip side of the coin to

climate change deniers?

That does not seem to me a fair assessment. UCS and others like them may

be right or wrong, but they offer serious reasons. That is also true of

the very small group of serious scientists who question the overwhelming

consensus, but the mass climate denier movements—like the leadership of

the Republican Party and those they represent—are a different phenomenon

altogether. As for geoengineering, there have been serious general

critiques that I think cannot be ignored, like Clive Hamilton’s, along

with many positive assessments. It is not a matter for subjective

judgment based on guesswork and intuition. Rather, these are matters

that have to be considered seriously, relying on the best scientific

understanding available, without abandoning sensible precautionary

principles.

What immediate but realistic and enforceable actions could or should be

taken to tackle the climate change threat?

Rapid ending of use of fossil fuels, sharp increase in renewable energy,

research into new options for sustainable energy, significant steps

toward conservation, and, not least, a far-reaching critique of the

capitalist model of human and resource exploitation; even apart from its

ignoring of externalities, the latter is a virtual death knell for the

species.

Is there a way to predict how the world will look like fifty years from

now if humans fail to tackle and reverse global warming and climate

change?

If current tendencies persist, the outcome will be disastrous before too

long. Large parts of the world will become barely habitable, affecting

hundreds of millions of people, along with other disasters that we can

barely contemplate.

Originally published in Truthout, September 17, 2016

The Long History of US Meddling in Foreign Elections

C. J. POLYCHRONIOU: Noam, the US intelligence agencies have accused

Russia of interference in the US presidential election in order to boost

Trump’s chances, and some leading Democrats have actually gone on record

saying that the Kremlin’s canny operatives changed the election outcome.

What’s your reaction to all this talk in Washington and among media

pundits about Russian cyber- and propaganda efforts to influence the

outcome of the presidential election in Donald Trump’s favor?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Much of the world must be astonished—if they are not

collapsing in laughter—while watching the performances in high places

and in media concerning Russian efforts to influence an American

election, a familiar US government specialty as far back as we choose to

trace the practice. There is, however, merit in the claim that this case

is different in character: by US standards, the Russian efforts are so

meager as to barely elicit notice.

Let’s talk about the long history of US meddling in foreign political

affairs, which has always been morally and politically justified as the

spread of American-style democracy throughout the world.

The history of US foreign policy, especially after World War II, is

pretty much defined by the subversion and overthrow of foreign regimes,

including parliamentary regimes, and the resort to violence to destroy

popular organizations that might offer the majority of the population an

opportunity to enter the political arena.

Following World War II, the United States was committed to restoring the

traditional conservative order. To achieve this aim, it was necessary to

destroy the antifascist resistance, often in favor of Nazi and fascist

collaborators, to weaken unions and other popular organizations, and to

block the threat of radical democracy and social reform, which were live

options under the conditions of the time. These policies were pursued

worldwide: in Asia, including South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand,

Indochina, and, crucially, Japan; in Europe, including Greece, Italy,

France, and crucially, Germany; in Latin America, including what the CIA

took to be the most severe threats at the time, “radical nationalism” in

Guatemala and Bolivia.

Sometimes the task required considerable brutality. In South Korea,

about 100,000 people were killed in the late 1940s by security forces

installed and directed by the United States. This was before the Korean

War, which Jon Halliday and Bruce Cumings describe as “in essence” a

phase—marked by massive outside intervention—in “a civil war fought

between two domestic forces: a revolutionary nationalist movement, which

had its roots in tough anti-colonial struggle, and a conservative

movement tied to the status quo, especially to an unequal land system,”

restored to power under the US occupation. In Greece in the same years,

hundreds of thousands were killed, tortured, imprisoned, or expelled in

the course of a counter-insurgency operation, organized and directed by

the United States, which restored traditional elites to power, including

Nazi collaborators, and suppressed the peasant- and worker-based

communist-led forces that had fought the Nazis. In the industrial

societies, the same essential goals were realized, but by less violent

means.

Yet it is true that there have been cases where the United States was

directly involved in organizing coups even in advanced industrial

democracies, such as in Australia and Italy in the mid-1970s. Correct?

Yes, there is evidence of CIA involvement in a virtual coup that

overturned the Whitlam Labor government in Australia in 1975, when it

was feared that Whitlam might interfere with Washington’s military and

intelligence bases in Australia. Large-scale CIA interference in Italian

politics has been public knowledge since the congressional Pike Report

was leaked in 1976, citing a figure of over $65 million to approved

political parties and affiliates from 1948 through the early 1970s. In

1976, the Aldo Moro government fell in Italy after revelations that the

CIA had spent $6 million to support anti-communist candidates. At the

time, the European communist parties were moving toward independence of

action with pluralistic and democratic tendencies (Eurocommunism), a

development that in fact pleased neither Washington nor Moscow. For such

reasons, both superpowers opposed the legalization of the Communist

Party of Spain and the rising influence of the Communist Party in Italy,

and both preferred center-right governments in France. Secretary of

state Henry Kissinger described the “major problem” in the Western

alliance as “the domestic evolution in many European countries,” which

might make Western communist parties more attractive to the public,

nurturing moves toward independence and threatening the NATO alliance.

US interventions in the political affairs of other nations have always

been morally and politically justified as part of the faith in the

doctrine of spreading American-style democracy, but the actual reason

was of course the spread of capitalism and the dominance of business

rule. Was faith in the spread of democracy ever tenable?

No belief concerning US foreign policy is more deeply entrenched than

the one regarding the spread of American-style democracy. The thesis is

commonly not even expressed, merely presupposed as the basis for

reasonable discourse on the US role in the world.

The faith in this doctrine may seem surprising. Nevertheless, there is a

sense in which the conventional doctrine is tenable. If by

“American-style democracy,” we mean a political system with regular

elections but no serious challenge to business rule, then US

policy-makers doubtless yearn to see it established throughout the

world. The doctrine is therefore not undermined by the fact that it is

consistently violated under a different interpretation of the concept of

democracy: as a system in which citizens may play some meaningful part

in the management of public affairs.

So, what lessons can be drawn from all this about the concept of

democracy as understood by US policy planners in their effort to create

a new world order?

One problem that arose as areas were liberated from fascism after World

War II was that traditional elites had been discredited, while prestige

and influence had been gained by the resistance movement, based largely

on groups responsive to the working class and poor, and often committed

to some version of radical democracy. The basic quandary was articulated

by Churchill’s trusted adviser, South African prime minister Jan

Christiaan Smuts, in 1943, with regard to Southern Europe: “With

politics let loose among those peoples,” he said, “we might have a wave

of disorder and wholesale communism.” Here the term “disorder” is

understood as threat to the interests of the privileged, and

“communism,” in accordance with usual convention, refers to failure to

interpret “democracy” as elite dominance, whatever the other commitments

of the “communists” may be. With politics let loose, we face a “crisis

of democracy,” as privileged sectors have always understood.

In brief, at that moment in history, the United States faced the classic

dilemma of third-world intervention in large parts of the industrial

world as well. The US position was “politically weak” though militarily

and economically strong. Tactical choices are determined by an

assessment of strengths and weaknesses. The preference has, quite

naturally, been for the arena of force and for measures of economic

warfare and strangulation, where the United States has ruled supreme.

Wasn’t the Marshall Plan a tool for consolidating capitalism and

spreading business rule throughout Europe after World War II?

Very much so. For example, the extension of Marshall Plan aid in

countries like France and Italy was strictly contingent on exclusion of

communists—including major elements of the antifascist resistance and

labor—from the government, “democracy,” in the usual sense. US aid was

critically important in early years for suffering people in Europe and

was therefore a powerful lever of control, a matter of much significance

for US business interests and longer-term planning. The fear in

Washington was that the communist left would emerge victorious in Italy

and France without massive financial assistance.

On the eve of the announcement of the Marshall Plan, ambassador to

France Jefferson Caffery warned Secretary of State Marshall of grim

consequences if the communists won the elections in France: “Soviet

penetration of Western Europe, Africa, the Mediterranean, and the Middle

East would be greatly facilitated” (May 12, 1947). The dominoes were

ready to fall. During May, the United States pressured political leaders

in France and Italy to form coalition governments excluding the

communists. It was made clear and explicit that aid was contingent on

preventing an open political competition, in which left and labor might

dominate. Through 1948, Secretary of State Marshall and others publicly

emphasized that if communists were voted into power, US aid would be

terminated; no small threat, given the state of Europe at the time.

In France, the postwar destitution was exploited to undermine the French

labor movement, along with direct violence. Desperately needed food

supplies were withheld to coerce obedience, and gangsters were organized

to provide goon squads and strike breakers, a matter that is described

with some pride in semiofficial US labor histories, which praise the AFL

(American Federation of Labor) for its achievements in helping to save

Europe by splitting and weakening the labor movement (thus frustrating

alleged Soviet designs) and safeguarding the flow of arms to Indochina

for the French war of re-conquest, another prime goal of the US labor

bureaucracy. The CIA reconstituted the Mafia for these purposes, in one

of its early operations. The quid pro quo was restoration of the heroin

trade. The US government connection to the drug boom continued for many

decades.

US policies toward Italy basically picked up where they had been broken

off by World War II. The United States had supported Mussolini’s fascism

from the 1922 takeover through the 1930s. Mussolini’s wartime alliance

with Hitler terminated these friendly relations, but they were

reconstituted as US forces liberated southern Italy in 1943,

establishing the rule of field marshall Pietro Badoglio and the royal

family that had collaborated with the Fascist government. As Allied

forces drove toward the north, they dispersed the antifascist resistance

along with local governing bodies it had formed in its attempt to

establish a new democratic state in the zones it had liberated from

Germany. Eventually, a center-right government was established with

neofascist participation and the left soon excluded.

Here too, the plan was for the working classes and the poor to bear the

burden of reconstruction, with lowered wages and extensive firing. Aid

was contingent on removing communists and left socialists from office,

because they defended workers’ interests and thus posed a barrier to the

intended style of recovery, in the view of the State Department. The

Communist Party was collaborationist; its position “fundamentally meant

the subordination of all reforms to the liberation of Italy and

effectively discouraged any attempt in northern areas to introduce

irreversible political changes as well as changes in the ownership of

the industrial companies … disavowing and discouraging those workers’

groups that wanted to expropriate some factories,” as Gianfranco

Pasquino put it. But the party did try to defend jobs, wages, and living

standards for the poor and thus “constituted a political and

psychological barrier to a potential European recovery program,”

historian John Harper comments, reviewing the insistence of Kennan and

others that communists be excluded from government though agreeing that

it would be “desirable” to include representatives of what Harper calls

“the democratic working class.” The recovery, it was understood, was to

be at the expense of the working class and the poor.

Because of its responsiveness to the needs of these social sectors, the

Communist Party was labeled “extremist” and “undemocratic” by US

propaganda, which also skillfully manipulated the alleged Soviet threat.

Under US pressure, the Christian Democrats abandoned wartime promises

about workplace democracy, and the police, sometimes under the control

of exfascists, were encouraged to suppress labor activities. The Vatican

announced that anyone who voted for the Communists in the 1948 election

would be denied sacraments, and backed the conservative Christian

Democrats under the slogan O con Cristo o contro Cristo (Either with

Christ or against Christ). A year later, Pope Pius excommunicated all

Italian Communists.

A combination of violence, manipulation of aid and other threats, and a

huge propaganda campaign sufficed to determine the outcome of the

critical 1948 election, essentially bought by US intervention and

pressures.

The CIA operations to control the Italian elections, authorized by the

National Security Council in December 1947, were the first major

clandestine operation of the newly formed agency. CIA operations to

subvert Italian democracy continued into the 1970s at a substantial

scale.

In Italy, as well as elsewhere, US labor leaders, primarily from the

AFL, played an active role in splitting and weakening the labor movement

and inducing workers to accept austerity measures while employers reaped

rich profits. In France, the AFL had broken dock strikes by importing

Italian scab labor paid by US businesses. The State Department called on

the federation’s leadership to exercise their talents in union-busting

in Italy as well, and they were happy to oblige. The business sector,

formerly discredited by its association with Italian fascism, undertook

a vigorous class war with renewed confidence. The end result was the

subordination of the working class and the poor to the traditional

rulers.

Later commentators tend to see the US subversion of democracy in France

and Italy as a defense of democracy. In a highly regarded study of the

CIA and American democracy, Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones describes “the CIA’s

Italian venture,” along with its similar efforts in France, as “a

democracy-propping operation,” though he concedes that “the selection of

Italy for special attention … was by no means a matter of democratic

principle alone”; our passion for democracy was reinforced by the

strategic importance of the country. But it was a commitment to

“democratic principle” that inspired the US government to impose the

social and political regimes of its choice, using the enormous power at

its command and exploiting the privation and distress of the victims of

the war, who must be taught not to raise their heads if we are to have

true democracy.

A more nuanced position is taken by James Miller in his monograph on US

policies toward Italy. Summarizing the record, he concludes:

In retrospect, American involvement in the stabilization of Italy was a

significant, if troubling, achievement. American power assured Italians

the right to choose their future form of government and also was

employed to ensure that they chose democracy. In defense of that

democracy against real but probably overestimated foreign and domestic

threats, the United States used undemocratic tactics that tended to

undermine the legitimacy of the Italian state.

The “foreign threats,” as he had already discussed, were hardly real;

the Soviet Union watched from a distance as the United States subverted

the 1948 election and restored the traditional conservative order,

keeping to its wartime agreement with Churchill that left Italy in the

Western zone. The “domestic threat” was the threat of democracy.

The idea that US intervention provided Italians with freedom of choice

while ensuring that they chose “democracy” (in our special sense of the

term) is reminiscent of the attitude of the extreme doves toward Latin

America: that its people should choose freely and independently—as long

as doing so did not impact US interests adversely.

The democratic ideal, at home and abroad, is simple and straightforward:

you are free to do what you want, as long as it is what we want you to

do.

Originally published in Truthout, January 19, 2017. Some of the material

for this interview was adapted from excerpts from Deterring Democracy

(Verso Books, 1991).

The Legacy of the Obama Administration

C. J. POLYCHRONIOU: Barack Obama was elected in 2008 as president of the

United States in a wave of optimism, but at a time when the country was

in the full grip of the financial crisis brought about, according to

Obama himself, by “the reckless behavior of a lot of financial

institutions around the world” and “the folks on Wall Street.” Obama’s

rise to power has been well documented, including the funding of his

Illinois political career by the well-known Chicago real estate

developer and power peddler Tony Rezko, but the legacy of his presidency

has yet to be written. First, in your view, did Obama rescue the US

economy from a meltdown, and, second, did he initiate policies to ensure

that “reckless financial behavior” would be kept at bay?

NOAM CHOMSKY: On the first question, the matter is debated. Some

economists argue that the bank rescues were not necessary to avoid a

serious depression, and that the system would have recovered, probably

with some of the big banks broken up. Dean Baker for one. I don’t trust

my own judgment enough to take a strong position.

On the second question, Dodd-Frank takes some steps forward—making the

system more transparent, greater reserve requirements, and so on—but

congressional intervention has cut back some of the regulation, for

example, of derivative transactions, leading to strong protests of

Dodd-Frank. Some commentators, Matt Taibbi for one, have argued that the

Wall Street–Congress conniving undermined much of the force of the

reform from the start.

What do you think were the real factors behind the 2008 financial

crisis?

The immediate cause of the crisis was the housing bubble, based

substantially on very risky subprime mortgage loans along with exotic

financial instruments devised to distribute risk, reaching such

complexity that few understand who owes what to whom. The more

fundamental reasons have to do with basic market inefficiencies. If you

and I agree on some transaction (say, you sell me a car), we may make a

good bargain for ourselves, but we do not take into account the effect

on others (pollution, traffic congestion, increase in price of gas, and

more). These externalities, so called, can be very large. In the case of

financial institutions, the effect is to underprice risk by ignoring

“systemic risk.” Thus if Goldman Sachs lends money, it will, if well

managed, take into account the potential risk to itself if the borrower

cannot pay, but not the risk to the financial system as a whole. The

result is that risk is underpriced. There is too much risk for a sound

economy. That can, in principle, be controlled by sound regulation, but

financialization of the economy has been accompanied by deregulation

mania, based on theological notions of “efficient markets” and “rational

choice.” Interestingly enough, several of the people who had primary

responsibility for these destructive policies were chosen as Obama’s

leading economic policy advisers (Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, Tim

Geithner, and others) during his first term in the White House. Alan

Greenspan, the great hero of a few years ago, eventually conceded

quietly that he did not understand how markets work—which is quite

remarkable.

There are also other devices that lead to underpricing risk. Government

rules on corporate governance provide perverse incentives: CEOs are

highly rewarded for taking short-term risks, and can leave the ruins to

someone else, floating away on their “golden parachutes,” when collapse

comes. And there is much more.

Didn’t the 2008 financial crisis reveal once again that capitalism is a

parasitic system?

It is worth bearing in mind that “really existing capitalism” is remote

from capitalism—at least in the rich and powerful countries. Thus in the

United States, the advanced economy relies crucially on the dynamic

state sector to socialize cost and risk while privatizing eventual

profit—and “eventual” can be a long time: in the case of the core of the

modern high-tech economy, computers and the Internet, it was decades.

There is much more mythology that has to be dismantled if the questions

are to be seriously posed.

Existing state-capitalist economies are indeed “parasitic” on the

public, in the manner indicated, and others: bailouts (which are very

common, in the industrial system as well), highly protectionist “trade”

measures that guarantee monopoly pricing rights to state-subsidized

corporations, and many other devices.

During his first term as president, you admitted that Obama faced an

exceptionally hostile crowd on Capitol Hill, which of course remained

hostile throughout his two terms. Be that as it may, was Obama ever a

real reformer or was he more of a public manipulator who used popular

political rhetoric to sideline the progressive mood of the country in an

era of great inequality and mass discontent over the future of the

United States?

Obama had congressional support for his first two years in office, the

time when most presidential initiatives are introduced. I never saw any

indication that he intended substantive progressive steps. I wrote about

him before the 2008 primaries, relying on the Web page in which he

presented himself as a candidate. I was singularly unimpressed, to put

it very mildly. Actually, I was shocked, for the reasons I discussed.

Consider what Obama and his supporters regard as his signature

achievement, the Affordable Care Act. At first, a public option

(effectively, national health care) was dangled. It had almost

two-thirds popular support. It was dropped without apparent

consideration. The outlandish legislation barring the government from

negotiating drug prices was opposed by some 85 percent of the

population, but was kept with little discussion. The act is an

improvement on the existing international scandal, but not by much, and

with fundamental flaws.

Consider nuclear weapons. Obama had some nice things to say—nice enough

to win the Nobel Peace Prize. There has been some progress, but it has

been slight, and current moves are in the wrong direction.

In general: much smooth rhetoric, some positive steps, some regression,

overall not a very impressive record. That seems to me a fair

assessment, even putting aside the quite extraordinary stance of the

Republican Party, which made it clear right after Obama’s election that

they were, substantially, a one-issue party: prevent the president from

doing anything, no matter what happens to the country and the world. It

is difficult to find analogues among industrial democracies. Small

wonder that the most respected conservative political analysts (such as

Thomas Mann or Norman Ornstein of the conservative American Enterprise

Institute) refer to the party as a “radical insurgency” that has

abandoned normal parliamentary politics.

In the foreign policy realm, Obama claimed to strive for a new era in

the United States, away from the militarism of his predecessor and

toward respect for international law and active diplomacy. How would you

judge US foreign and military strategy under the Obama administration?

He has been more reluctant to engage troops on the ground than some of

his predecessors and advisers, and instead has rapidly escalated special

operations and his global assassination (drone) campaign, a moral

disaster and arguably illegal as well.[11] On other fronts, it is a

mixed story. Obama has continued to bar a nuclear weapons–free

(technically, WMD-free) zone in the Middle East, evidently motivated by

the need to protect Israeli nuclear weapons from scrutiny. By so doing,

he is endangering the Nonproliferation Treaty, the most important

disarmament treaty, which is contingent on establishing such a zone. He

is dangerously escalating tensions along the Russian border, extending

earlier policies. His trillion-dollar program for modernizing the

nuclear weapons system is the opposite of what should be done. The

investor-rights agreements (called “free trade agreements”) are likely

to be generally harmful to populations and beneficial to the corporate

sector. Sensibly, he bowed to strong hemispheric pressures and took

steps toward normalization of relations with Cuba. These and other moves

amount to a mixed story, ranging from criminal to moderate improvement.

Looking at the state of the US economy, one can easily argue that the

effects of the financial crisis of 2007–2008 are not only still around

but that we have in place a set of policies that continue to suppress

the standard of living for the working population and produce immense

economic insecurity. Is this because of neoliberalism and the

peculiarities of the nature of the US economy, or are there global and

systemic forces at play such as the free movement of capital,

automation, and the end of industrialization?

The neoliberal assault on the population remains intact, though less so

in the United States than in Europe. Automation is not a major factor,

and industrialization isn’t ending, just being offshored.

Financialization has of course exploded during the neoliberal period,

and the general policies, pretty much global in character, are designed

to enhance private and corporate power. That sets off a vicious cycle in

which concentration of wealth leads to concentration of political power,

which in turn yields legislation and administrative practices that carry

the process forward. There are countervailing forces, and they might

become more powerful. The potential is there, as we can see from the

Sanders campaign and even the Trump campaign, if the white working class

to which Trump appeals can become organized to focus on their real

interests instead of being in thrall to their class enemy.

To the extent that Trump’s programs are coherent, they fall into the

same general category of those of Paul Ryan, who has granted us the

kindness of spelling them out: increase spending on the military

(already more than half of discretionary spending and almost as much as

the rest of the world combined), and cut back taxes, mainly on the rich,

with no new revenue sources. In brief, nothing much is left for any

government program that might be of benefit to the general population

and the world. Trump produces so many arbitrary and often

self-contradictory pronouncements that it isn’t easy to attribute to him

a program, but he regularly keeps within this range—which, incidentally,

means that his claims about supporting Social Security and Medicare are

worthless.

Since the white working class cannot be mobilized to support the class

enemy on the basis of their actual programs, the “radical insurgency”

called “the Republican Party” appeals to its constituency on what are

called “social-cultural issues”: religion, fear, racism, nationalism.

The appeals are facilitated by the abandonment of the white working

class by the Democratic Party, which offers them very little but “more

of the same.” It is then facile for the liberal professional classes to

accuse the white working class of racism and other such sins, though a

closer look often reveals that the manifestations of this deep-rooted

sickness of the society are simply taking different forms among various

sectors.

Obama’s charisma and undoubtedly unique rhetorical skills were critical

elements in his struggle to rise to power, while Donald Trump is an

extrovert who seeks to project the image of a powerful personality who

knows how to get things done even if he relies on the use of banalities

to create the image he wants to create about himself as a future leader

of a country. Do personalities really matter in politics, especially in

our own era?

I am very much down on charismatic leaders, and as for strong ones, it

depends on what they are working for. The best, in our own kind of

societies, I think, are the FDR types, who react to, are sympathetic to,

and encourage popular movements for significant reform. Sometimes, at

least.

And politicians to be elected to a national office have to be pretty

good actors, right?

Electoral campaigns, especially in the United States, are being run by

the advertising industry. The 2008 political campaign of Barack Obama

was voted by the advertising industry as the best marketing campaign of

the year.

Obama’s last State of the Union address had all the rhetoric of someone

running for president, not someone who has been in office for more than

seven years. What do you make of this—Obama’s vision of how the country

should be and function eight to ten years from now?

He spoke as if he had not been elected eight years ago. Obama had plenty

of opportunities to change the course of the country. Even his

“signature” achievement, the reform of the health care system, is a

watered-down version, as I pointed out earlier. Despite the huge

propaganda assault denouncing government involvement in health care, and

the extremely limited articulate response, a majority of the population

(and a huge majority of Democrats) still favor national health care,

Obama didn’t even try, even when he had congressional support.

You have argued that nuclear weapons and climate change represent the

two biggest threats facing humankind. In your view, is climate change a

direct effect of capitalism, the view taken by someone like Naomi Klein,

or related to humanity and progress in general, a view embraced by the

British philosopher John Gray?

Geologists divide planetary history into eras. The Pleistocene lasted

millions of years, followed by the Holocene, which began at about the

time of the agricultural revolution ten thousand years ago, and recently

the Anthropocene, corresponding to the era of industrialization. What we

call “capitalism”—in practice, various varieties of

state-capitalism—tends in part to keep to market principles that ignore

nonmarket factors in transactions: so-called externalities, the cost to

Tom if Bill and Harry make a transaction. That is always a serious

problem, like systemic risk in the financial system, in which case the

taxpayer is called upon to patch up the “market failures.” Another

externality is destruction of the environment—but in this case the

taxpayer cannot step in to restore the system. It’s not a matter of

“humanity and progress,” but rather of a particular form of social and

economic development, which need not be specifically capitalist; the

authoritarian Russian statist (not socialist) system was even worse.

There are important steps that can be taken within existing systems

(carbon tax, alternative energy, conservation, and so on), and they

should be pursued as much as possible, along with efforts to reconstruct

society and culture to serve human needs rather than power and profit.

What do you think of certain geoengineering undertakings to clean up the

environment, such as the use of carbon negative technologies to suck

carbon from the air?

These undertakings have to be evaluated with great care, paying

attention to issues ranging from narrowly technical ones to large-scale

societal and environmental impacts that could be quite complex and

poorly understood. Sucking carbon from the air is done all the

time—planting forests—and can presumably be carried considerably further

to good effect, but I don’t have the special knowledge required to

provide definite answers. Other more exotic proposals have to be

considered on their own merits—and with due caution.

Some major oil-producing countries, such as Saudi Arabia, are in the

process of diversifying their economies, apparently fully aware of the

fact that the fossil fuel era will soon be over. In the light of this

development, wouldn’t US foreign policy toward the Middle East take a

radically new turn once oil has ceased being the precious commodity that

it has been up to now?

Saudi Arabian leaders are talking about this much too late. These plans

should have been undertaken seriously decades ago. Saudi Arabia and the

Gulf states may become uninhabitable in the not very distant future if

current tendencies persist. In the bitterest of ironies, they have been

surviving on the poison they produce that will destroy them—a comment

that holds for all of us, even if less directly. How serious the plans

are is not very clear. There are many skeptics. One Twitter comment is

that they split the electricity ministry and the water ministries for

fear of electrocution. That captures much of the general sentiment. It

would be good to be surprised.

Originally published in Truthout, June 2, 2016

Socialism for the Rich, Capitalism for the Poor

C. J. POLYCHRONIOU: Noam, in several of your writings you question the

usual view of the United States as an archetypical capitalist economy.

Please explain.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Consider this: Every time there is a crisis, the taxpayer

is called on to bail out the banks and the major financial institutions.

If you had a real capitalist economy in place, that would not be

happening. Capitalists who made risky investments and failed would be

wiped out. But the rich and powerful do not want a capitalist system.

They want to be able to run the nanny state so when they are in trouble

the taxpayer will bail them out. The conventional phrase is “too big to

fail.”

The IMF did an interesting study a few years ago on profits of the big

US banks. It attributed most of them to the many advantages that come

from the implicit government insurance policy—not just the featured

bailouts, but access to cheap credit and much else—including things the

IMF researchers didn’t consider, like the incentive to undertake risky

transactions, hence highly profitable in the short term, and if anything

goes wrong, there’s always the taxpayer. Bloomberg Businessweek

estimated the implicit taxpayer subsidy at over $80 billion per year.

Much has been said and written about economic inequality. Is economic

inequality in the contemporary capitalist era very different from what

it was in other post-slavery periods of American history?

The inequality in the contemporary period is almost unprecedented. If

you look at total inequality, it ranks among the worse periods of

American history. However, if you look at inequality more closely, you

see that it comes from wealth that is in the hands of a tiny sector of

the population. There were periods of American history, such as during

the Gilded Age in the 1920s and the roaring 1990s, when something

similar was going on. But the current period is extreme because

inequality comes from super-wealth. Literally, the top one-tenth of a

percent are just super wealthy. This is not only extremely unjust in

itself but represents a development that has corrosive effects on

democracy and on the vision of a decent society.

What does all this mean in terms of the American Dream? Is it dead?

The “American Dream” was all about class mobility. You were born poor

but could get out of poverty through hard work and provide a better

future for your children. It was possible for some workers to find a

decent-paying job, buy a home, a car, and pay for a kid’s education.

It’s all collapsed—and we shouldn’t have too many illusions about when

it was partially real. Today social mobility in the United States is

below other rich societies.

Is the United States then a democracy in name only?

The United States professes to be a democracy, but it has clearly become

something of a plutocracy, although it is still an open and free society

by comparative standards. But let’s be clear about what democracy means.

In a democracy, the public influences policy and then the government

carries out actions determined by the public. For the most part, the US

government carries out actions that benefit corporate and financial

interests. It is also important to understand that privileged and

powerful sectors in society have never liked democracy, for good

reasons. Democracy places power in the hands of the population and takes

it away from them. In fact, the privileged and powerful classes of this

country have always sought to find ways to limit power from being placed

in the hands of the general population—and they are breaking no new

ground in this regard.

Concentration of wealth yields to concentration of power. I think this

is an undeniable fact. And since capitalism always leads in the end to

concentration of wealth, doesn’t it follow that capitalism is

antithetical to democracy?

Concentration of wealth leads naturally to concentration of power, which

in turn translates to legislation favoring the interests of the rich and

powerful and thereby increasing even further the concentration of power

and wealth. Various political measures, such as fiscal policy,

deregulation, and rules for corporate governance, are designed to

increase the concentration of wealth and power. And that’s what we’ve

been seeing during the neoliberal era. It is a vicious cycle in constant

progress. The state is there to provide security and support to the

interests of the privileged and powerful sectors in society, while the

rest of the population is left to experience the brutal reality of

capitalism. Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor.

So, yes, in that sense capitalism actually works to undermine democracy.

But what has just been described—that is, the vicious cycle of

concentration of power and wealth—is so traditional that it is even

described by Adam Smith in 1776. He says in his famous Wealth of Nations

that, in England, the people who own society, in his days the merchants

and the manufacturers, are “the principal architects of policy.” And

they make sure that their interests are very well cared for, however

grievous the impact of the policies they advocate and implement through

government is on the people of England or others.

Now, it’s not merchants and manufacturers who own society and dictate

policy. It is financial institutions and multinational corporations.

Today they are the groups that Adam Smith called the masters of mankind.

And they are following the same vile maxim that he formulated: All for

ourselves and nothing for anyone else. They will pursue policies that

benefit them and harm everyone else because capitalist interests dictate

that they do so. It’s in the nature of the system. And in the absence of

a general, popular reaction, that’s pretty much all you will get.

Let’s return to the idea of the American Dream and talk about the

origins of the American political system. I mean, it was never intended

to be a democracy (actually the term always used to describe the

architecture of the American political system was “republic,” which is

very different from a democracy, as the ancient Romans well understood),

and there had always been a struggle for freedom and democracy from

below, which continues to this day. In this context, wasn’t the American

Dream built at least partly on a myth?

Sure. Right through American history, there’s been an ongoing clash

between pressure for more freedom and democracy coming from below and

efforts at elite control and domination from above. It goes back to the

founding of the country, as you pointed out. The “founding fathers,”

even James Madison, the main framer, who was as much a believer in

democracy as any other leading political figure in those days, felt that

the United States’ political system should be in the hands of the

wealthy because the wealthy are the “more responsible set of men.” And,

thus, the structure of the formal constitutional system placed more

power in the hands of the Senate, which was not elected in those days.

It was selected from the wealthy men who, as Madison put it, had

sympathy for the owners of wealth and private property.

This is clear when you read the debates of the Constitutional

Convention. As Madison said, a major concern of the political order has

to be “to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.” And

he had arguments. If everyone had a vote freely, he said, the majority

of the poor would get together and they would organize to take away the

property of the rich. That, he added, would be obviously unjust, so the

constitutional system had to be set up to prevent democracy.

Recall that Aristotle had said something similar in his Politics. Of all

political systems, he felt that democracy was the best. But he saw the

same problem that Madison saw in a true democracy, which is that the

poor might organize to take away the property of the rich. The solution

that he proposed, however, was something like a welfare state with the

aim of reducing economic inequality. The other alternative, pursued by

the “founding fathers,” is to reduce democracy.

Now, the so-called American Dream was always based partly in myth and

partly in reality. From the early nineteenth century onward and up until

fairly recently, working-class people, including immigrants, had

expectations that their lives would improve in American society through

hard work. And that was partly true, although it did not apply for the

most part to African Americans and women until much later. This no

longer seems to be the case. Stagnating incomes, declining living

standards, outrageous student debt levels, and hard-to-come-by

decent-paying jobs have created a sense of hopelessness among many

Americans, who are beginning to look with certain nostalgia toward the

past. This explains, to a great extent, the rise of the likes of Donald

Trump and the appeal among the youth of the political message of someone

like Bernie Sanders.

After World War II, and pretty much up until the mid-1970s, there was a

movement in the United States in the direction of a more egalitarian

society and toward greater freedom, in spite of great resistance and

oppression from the elite and various government agencies. What happened

afterward that rolled back the economic progress of the postwar era,

creating in the process a new socioeconomic order that has come to be

identified as that of neoliberalism?

Beginning in the 1970s, partly because of the economic crisis that

erupted in the early years of that decade and the decline in the rate of

profit, but also partly because of the view that democracy had become

too widespread, an enormous, concentrated, coordinated business

offensive was begun to try to beat back the egalitarian efforts of the

postwar era, which only intensified as time went on. The economy itself

shifted to financialization. Financial institutions expanded enormously.

By 2007, right before the crash for which they had considerable

responsibility, financial institutions accounted for a stunning 40

percent of corporate profit. A vicious cycle between concentrated

capital and politics accelerated, while increasingly wealth concentrated

in the financial sector. Politicians, faced with the rising cost of

campaigns, were driven ever deeper into the pockets of wealthy backers.

And politicians rewarded them by pushing policies favorable to Wall

Street and other powerful business interests. Throughout this period, we

have a renewed form of class warfare directed by the business class

against the working people and the poor, along with a conscious attempt

to roll back the gains of the previous decades.

Now that Trump is the president-elect, is the Bernie Sanders political

revolution over?

That’s up to us and others to determine. The Sanders “political

revolution” was quite a remarkable phenomenon. I was certainly

surprised, and pleased. But we should remember that the term

“revolution” is somewhat misleading. Sanders is an honest and committed

New Dealer. The fact that he’s considered “radical” tells us how far the

elite political spectrum has shifted to the right during the neoliberal

period. There have been some promising offshoots of the Sanders

mobilization, like the Brand New Congress movement and several others.

There could, and should, also be efforts to develop a genuine

independent left party, one that doesn’t just show up every four years

but is working constantly at the grassroots, both at the electoral level

(everything from school boards to town meetings to state legislatures

and on up) and in all the other ways that can be pursued. There are

plenty of opportunities—and the stakes are substantial, particularly

when we turn attention to the two enormous shadows that hover over

everything: nuclear war and environmental catastrophe, both ominous,

demanding urgent action.

Originally published in Truthout, December 10, 2016

The US Health System Is an International Scandal—and ACA Repeal Will

Make It Worse

C. J. POLYCHRONIOU: Trump and the Republicans are bent on doing away

with Obamacare. Doesn’t the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care

Act (ACA) represent an improvement over what existed before? And, what

would the Republicans replace it with?

NOAM CHOMSKY: I perhaps should say, to begin, that I have always felt a

little uncomfortable about the term “Obamacare.” Did anyone call

Medicare “Johnsoncare?” Maybe wrongly, but it has seemed to me to have a

tinge of Republican-style vulgar disparagement, maybe even of racism.

But put that aside. Yes, the ACA is a definite improvement over what

came before—which is not a great compliment. The US health care system

has long been an international scandal, with about twice the per capita

expenses of other wealthy (OECD) countries and relatively poor outcomes.

The ACA did, however, bring improvements, including insurance for tens

of millions of people who lacked it, banning of refusal of insurance for

people with prior disabilities, and other gains—and also, it appears to

have led to a reduction in the increase of health care costs, though

that is hard to determine precisely.

The House of Representatives, dominated by Republicans (with a minority

of voters), has voted over fifty times in the past six years to repeal

or weaken Obamacare, but they have yet to come up with anything like a

coherent alternative. That is not too surprising. Since Obama’s

election, the Republicans have been pretty much the party of NO. Chances

are that they will now adopt a cynical, Paul Ryan–style evasion, repeal

and delay, to pretend to be honoring their fervent pledges while

avoiding at least for a time the consequences of a possible major

collapse of the health system and ballooning costs. It’s far from

certain. It’s conceivable that they might patch together some kind of

plan, or that the ultra-right and quite passionate “Freedom Caucus” may

insist on instant repeal without a plan, damn the consequence for the

budget, or, of course, for people.

One part of the health system that is likely to suffer is Medicaid,

probably through block grants to states, which gives the Republican-run

states opportunities to gut it. Medicaid only helps poor people who

“don’t matter” and don’t vote Republican anyway. So, according to

Republican logic, why should the rich pay taxes to maintain it?

Article 25 of the UN Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR) states

that the right to health care is indeed a human right. Yet, it is

estimated that close to 30 million Americans remain uninsured even with

the ACA in place. What are some of the key cultural, economic, and

political factors that make the United States an outlier in the

provision of free health care?

First, it is important to remember that the United States does not

accept the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—though in fact the UDHR

was largely the initiative of Eleanor Roosevelt, who chaired the

commission that drafted its articles, with quite broad international

participation.

The UDHR has three components, which are of equal status:

civil-political, socioeconomic, and cultural rights. The United States

formally accepts the first of the three, though it has often violated

its provisions. The United States pretty much disregards the third. And

to the point here, the United States has officially and strongly

condemned the second component, socioeconomic rights, including Article

25.

Opposition to Article 25 was particularly vehement in the Reagan and

Bush I years. Paula Dobriansky, deputy assistant secretary of state for

human rights and humanitarian affairs in these administrations,

dismissed the “myth” that “economic and social rights constitute human

rights,” as the UDHR declares. She was following the lead of Reagan’s UN

ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, who ridiculed the myth as “little more

than an empty vessel into which vague hopes and inchoate expectations

can be poured.” Kirkpatrick thus joined Soviet Ambassador Andrei

Vyshinsky, who agreed that it was a mere “collection of pious phrases.”

The concepts of Article 25 are “preposterous” and even a “dangerous

incitement,” according to ambassador Morris Abram, the distinguished

civil rights attorney who was US Representative to the UN Commission on

Human Rights under Bush I, casting the sole veto of the UN Right to

Development, which closely paraphrased Article 25 of the UDHR. The Bush

II administration maintained the tradition by voting alone to reject a

UN resolution on the right to food and the right to the highest

attainable standard of physical and mental health (the resolution passed

52–1).

Rejection of Article 25, then, is a matter of principle. And also a

matter of practice. In the OECD ranking of social justice, the United

States is in twenty-seventh place out of thirty-one, right above Greece,

Chile, Mexico, and Turkey.[12] This is happening in the richest country

in world history, with incomparable advantages. It was quite possibly

already the richest region in the world in the eighteenth century.

In extenuation of the Reagan-Bush-Vyshinsky alliance on this matter, we

should recognize that formal support for the UDHR is all too often

divorced from practice.

US dismissal of the UDHR in principle and practice extends to other

areas. Take labor rights. The United States has failed to ratify the

first principle of the International Labour Organization Convention,

which endorses “Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to

Organise.” An editorial comment in the American Journal of International

Law refers to this provision of the International Labour Organization

Convention as “the untouchable treaty in American politics.” US

rejection is guarded with such fervor, the report continues, that there

has never even been any debate about the matter. The rejection of the

International Labour Organization Convention contrasts dramatically with

the fervor of Washington’s dedication to the highly protectionist

elements of the misnamed “free trade agreements,” designed to guarantee

monopoly pricing rights for corporations (“intellectual property

rights”), on spurious grounds. In general, it would be more accurate to

call these “investor rights agreements.”

Comparison of the attitude toward elementary rights of labor and

extraordinary rights of private power tells us a good deal about the

nature of American society.

Furthermore, US labor history is unusually violent. Hundreds of US

workers were being killed by private and state security forces in strike

actions, practices unknown in similar countries. In her history of

American labor, Patricia Sexton—noting that there are no serious

studies—reports an estimate of seven hundred strikers killed and

thousands injured from 1877 to 1968, a figure which, she concludes, may

“grossly understate the total casualties.” In comparison, one British

striker was killed since 1911.

As struggles for freedom gained victories and violent means became less

available, business turned to softer measures, such as the “scientific

methods of strike breaking” that have become a leading industry. In much

the same way, the overthrow of reformist governments by violence, once

routine, has been displaced by “soft coups” such as the recent coup in

Brazil, though the former options are still pursued when possible, as in

Obama’s support for the Honduran military coup in 2009, in near

isolation. Labor remains relatively weak in the United States in

comparison to similar societies. It is constantly battling even for

survival as a significant organized force in the society, under

particularly harsh attack since the Reagan years.

All of this is part of the background for the US departure in health

care from the norm of the OECD, and even less privileged societies. But

there are deeper reasons why the United States is an “outlier” in health

care and social justice generally. These trace back to unusual features

of American history. Unlike other developed state capitalist industrial

democracies, the political economy and social structure of the United

States developed in a kind of tabula rasa. The expulsion or mass killing

of Indigenous nations cleared the ground for the invading settlers, who

had enormous resources and ample fertile lands at their disposal, and

extraordinary security for reasons of geography and power. That led to

the rise of a society of individual farmers, and also, thanks to

slavery, substantial control of the product that fueled the industrial

revolution: cotton, the foundation of manufacturing, banking, commerce,

retail for both the United States and Britain and, less directly, for

other European societies. Also relevant is the fact that the country has

actually been at war for five hundred years with little respite, a

history that has created “the richest, most powerful and ultimately most

militarized nation in world history,” as scholar Walter Hixson has

documented.[13]

For similar reasons, American society lacked the traditional social

stratification and autocratic political structure of Europe, and the

various measures of social support that developed unevenly and

erratically. There has been ample state intervention in the economy from

the outset—dramatically in recent years—but without general support

systems.

As a result, US society is, to an unusual extent, business-run, with a

highly class-conscious business community dedicated to “the everlasting

battle for the minds of men.” The business community is also set on

containing or demolishing the “political power of the masses,” which it

deems as a serious “hazard to industrialists” (to sample some of the

rhetoric of the business press during the New Deal years, when the

threat to the overwhelming dominance of business power seemed real).

Here is yet another anomaly about US health care: according to data by

the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the

United States spends far more on health care than most other advanced

nations, yet Americans have poor health outcomes and are plagued by

chronic illnesses at higher rates than the citizens of other advanced

nations. Why is that?

US health care costs are estimated to be about twice the OECD average,

with rather poor outcomes by comparative standards. Infant mortality,

for example, is higher in the United States than in Cuba, Greece, and

the EU generally, according to CIA figures.

As for reasons, we can return to the more general question of social

justice comparisons, but there are special reasons in the health care

domain. To an unusual extent, the US health care system is privatized

and unregulated. Insurance companies are in the business of making

money, not providing health care, and when they undertake the latter, it

is likely not to be in the best interests of patients or to be

efficient. Administrative costs are far greater in the private component

of the health care system than in Medicare, which itself suffers by

having to work through the private system.

Comparisons with other countries reveal much more bureaucracy and higher

administrative costs in the US privatized system than elsewhere. One

study of the United States and Canada a decade ago, by medical

researcher Steffie Woolhandler and associates, found enormous

disparities and concluded: “Reducing U.S. administrative costs to

Canadian levels would save at least $209 billion annually, enough to

fund universal coverage.” Another anomalous feature of the US system is

the law banning the government from negotiating drug prices, which leads

to highly inflated prices in the United States as compared with other

countries. That effect is magnified considerably by the extreme patent

rights accorded to the pharmaceutical industry in “trade agreements,”

enabling monopoly profits. In a profit-driven system, there are also

incentives for expensive treatments rather than preventive care, as

strikingly in Cuba, with remarkably efficient and effective health care.

Why aren’t Americans demanding—not simply expressing a preference for in

survey polls—access to a universal health care system?

They are indeed expressing a preference, over a long period. Just to

give one telling illustration, in the late Reagan years 70 percent of

the adult population thought that health care should be a constitutional

guarantee, and 40 percent thought it already was in the Constitution

since it is such an obviously legitimate right. Poll results depend on

wording and nuance, but they have quite consistently, over the years,

shown strong and often large majority support for universal health

care—often called “Canadian-style,” not because Canada necessarily has

the best system, but because it is close by and observable. The early

ACA proposals called for a “public option.” It was supported by almost

two-thirds of the population, but was dropped without serious

consideration, presumably as part of a compact with financial

institutions. The legislative bar to government negotiation of drug

prices was opposed by 85 percent, also disregarded—again, presumably, to

prevent opposition by the pharmaceutical giants. The preference for

universal health care is particularly remarkable in light of the fact

that there is almost no support or advocacy in sources that reach the

general public and virtually no discussion in the public domain.

The facts about public support for universal health care receive

occasional comment, in an interesting way. When running for president in

2004, Democrat John Kerry, the New York Times reported, “took pains … to

say that his plan for expanding access to health insurance would not

create a new government program,” because “there is so little political

support for government intervention in the health care market in the

United States.” At the same time, polls in the Wall Street Journal,

Businessweek, the Washington Post, and other media found overwhelming

public support for government guarantees to everyone of “the best and

most advanced health care that technology can supply.”

But that is only public support. The press reported correctly that there

was little “political support” and that what the public wants is

“politically impossible”—a polite way of saying that the financial and

pharmaceutical industries will not tolerate it, and in American

democracy, that’s what counts.

Returning to your question, it raises a crucial question about American

democracy: Why isn’t the population “demanding” what it strongly

prefers? Why is it allowing concentrated private capital to undermine

necessities of life in the interests of profit and power? The “demands”

are hardly utopian. They are commonly satisfied elsewhere, even in

sectors of the US system. Furthermore, the demands could readily be

implemented even without significant legislative breakthroughs. For

example, by steadily reducing the age for entry to Medicare.

The question directs our attention to a profound democratic deficit in

an atomized society, lacking the kind of popular associations and

organizations that enable the public to participate in a meaningful way

in determining the course of political, social, and economic affairs.

These would crucially include a strong and participatory labor movement

and actual political parties growing from public deliberation and

participation instead of the elite-run candidate-producing groups that

pass for political parties. What remains is a depoliticized society in

which a majority of voters (barely half the population even in the

super-hyped presidential elections, much less in others) are literally

disenfranchised, in that their representatives disregard their

preferences while effective decision-making lies largely in the hands of

tiny concentrations of wealth and corporate power, as study after study

reveals.

The prevailing situation reminds us of the words of America’s leading

twentieth-century social philosopher, John Dewey, much of whose work

focused on democracy and its failures and promise. Dewey deplored the

domination by “business for private profit through private control of

banking, land, industry, reinforced by command of the press, press

agents and other means of publicity and propaganda” and recognized that

“power today resides in control of the means of production, exchange,

publicity, transportation and communication. Whoever owns them rules the

life of the country,” even if democratic forms remain. Until those

institutions are in the hands of the public, he continued, politics will

remain “the shadow cast on society by big business.”

This was not a voice from the marginalized far left, but from the

mainstream of liberal thought.

Turning finally to your question again, a rather general answer, which

applies in its specific way to contemporary western democracies, was

provided by David Hume over 250 years ago, in his classic study Of the

First Principles of Government. Hume found

nothing more surprising than to see the easiness with which the many are

governed by the few; and to observe the implicit submission with which

men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers.

When we enquire by what means this wonder is brought about, we shall

find, that as Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors

have nothing to support them but opinion. ’Tis therefore, on opinion

only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most

despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and

most popular.

Implicit submission is not imposed by laws of nature or political

theory. It is a choice, at least in societies such as ours, which enjoys

the legacy provided by the struggles of those who came before us. Here

power is indeed “on the side of the governed,” if they organize and act

to gain and exercise it. That holds for health care and for much else.

Originally published in Truthout, January 12, 2017

The Perils of Market-Driven Education

C. J. POLYCHRONIOU: At least since the Enlightenment, education has been

seen as one of the few opportunities for humanity to lift the veil of

ignorance and create a better world. What are the actual connections

between democracy and education, or are those links based mainly on a

myth, as Neil Postman argued in The End of Education?

NOAM CHOMSKY: I don’t think there is a simple answer. The actual state

of education has both positive and negative elements, in this regard. An

educated public is surely a prerequisite for a functioning

democracy—where “educated” means not just informed but enabled to

inquire freely and productively, the primary end of education. That goal

is sometimes advanced, sometimes impeded, in actual practice, and to

shift the balance in the right direction is a major task—a task of

unusual importance in the United States, in part because of its unique

power, in part because of ways in which it differs from other developed

societies.

It is important to remember that although the richest country in the

world for a long time, until World War II, the United States was

something of a cultural backwater. If one wanted to study advanced

science or math, or to become a writer and artist, one would often be

attracted to Europe. That changed with World War II for obvious reasons,

but only for part of the population. To take what is arguably the most

important question in human history, how to deal with climate change,

one impediment is that in the United States, 40 percent of the

population sees it as no problem because Christ will return within the

next few decades—symptomatic of many other pre-modern features of the

society and culture.

Much of what prevails in today’s world is market-driven education, which

is actually destroying public values and undermining the culture of

democracy with its emphasis on competition, privatization, and

profit-making. As such, what model of education do you think holds the

best promise for a better and peaceful world?

In the early days of the modern educational system, two models were

sometimes counterposed. Education could be conceived as a vessel into

which one pours water—and a very leaky vessel, as we all know. Or it

could be thought of as a thread, laid out by the instructor, along which

students proceed in their own ways, developing their capacities to

“inquire and create”—the model advocated by Wilhelm von Humboldt, the

founder of the modern university system.

The educational philosophies of John Dewey, Paulo Freire, and other

advocates of progressive and critical pedagogy can, I think, be regarded

as further developments of the Humboldtian conception—which is often

implemented as a matter of course in research universities, because it

is so essential to advanced teaching and research, particularly in the

sciences. A famous MIT physicist was known for telling his freshman

courses that it doesn’t matter what we cover, it matters what you

discover.

The same ideas have been quite imaginatively developed down to the

kindergarten level, and they are quite appropriate everywhere in the

educational system, and of course not just in the sciences. I was

personally lucky to have been in an experimental Deweyite school until I

was twelve, a highly rewarding experience, quite different from the

academic high school I attended, which tended toward the

water-in-a-vessel model, as do currently fashionable programs of

teach-to-test. The alternative ones are the kinds of models that should

be pursued if there is to be some hope that a truly educated population,

in all of the dimensions of the term, can face the very critical

questions that are right now on the agenda.

The market-driven education tendencies that you mention are

unfortunately very real, and harmful. They should, I think, be regarded

as part of the general neoliberal assault on the public. The business

model seeks “efficiency,” which means imposing “flexibility of labor”

and what Alan Greenspan hailed as “growing worker insecurity” when he

was praising the great economy he was running (before it crashed). That

translates into such measures as undermining longer-term commitments to

faculty and relying on cheap and easily exploitable temporary labor

(adjuncts, graduate students). The consequences are harmful to the work

force, the students, research and inquiry, in fact all the goals that

higher education should seek to achieve.

Sometimes such attempts to drive the higher education system toward

service to the private sector take forms that are almost comical. In the

state of Wisconsin, for example, governor Scott Walker and other

reactionaries have been attempting to undermine what was once the great

University of Wisconsin, changing it to an institution that will serve

the needs of the business community of Wisconsin, while also cutting the

budget and increasing reliance on temporary staff (“flexibility”). At

one point the state government even wanted to change the traditional

mission of the university, deleting the commitment to “seeking truth”—a

waste of time for an institution producing people who will be useful for

Wisconsin businesses. That was so outrageous that it hit the newspapers,

and they had to claim it was a clerical error and withdraw it.

It is, however, illustrative of what is happening, not only in the

United States but also in many other places. Commenting on these

developments in the UK, Stefan Collini concluded all too plausibly that

the Tory government is attempting to turn first-class universities into

third-class commercial institutions. So, for example, the classics

department at Oxford will have to prove that it can sell itself on the

market. If there is no market demand, why should people study and

investigate classical Greek literature? That’s the ultimate

vulgarization that can result from imposing the state capitalist

principles of the business classes on the whole of society.

What needs to be done in order to provide a system of free higher

education in the United States and, by extension, divert funding from

the military-industrial complex and the prison-industrial complex into

education? Would this require a national identity crisis on the part of

a historically expansionist, interventionist, and racist nation?

I don’t feel that the issue runs that deep. The United States was no

less expansionist, interventionist, racist in earlier years, but it

nevertheless was in the forefront of developing mass public education.

And though the motives were sometimes cynical—turning independent

farmers into cogs in mass production industry, something they bitterly

resented—nevertheless there were many positive aspects to these

developments. In more recent years, higher education was virtually free.

After World War II, the GI Bill provided tuition and even subsidies to

millions of people who would probably never have gone to college, which

was highly beneficial to them and contributed to the great postwar

growth period. Even private colleges had very low fees by contemporary

standards. And the country then was far poorer than it is today.

Elsewhere higher education is free or close to it in rich countries like

Germany (the most respected country in the world, according to polls)

and Finland (which consistently ranks high in achievement) and much

poorer countries like Mexico, which has a high-quality higher education

system. Free higher education could be instituted without major economic

or cultural difficulties, it seems. The same is true of a rational

public health system like that of comparable countries.

During the industrial era, many working-class people throughout the

capitalist world immersed themselves in the study of politics, history,

and political economy through a process of informal education as part of

their effort to understand and change the world through the class

struggle. Today, the situation looks vastly different, with much of the

working-class population having embraced empty consumerism and political

indifference, or, worse, often enough supporting political parties and

candidates who are in fact staunch supporters of corporate and financial

capitalism and advance an anti–working class agenda. How do we explain

this radical shift in working-class consciousness?

The change is as clear as it is unfortunate. Quite commonly these

efforts were based in unions and other working-class organizations, with

participation of intellectuals in left parties—all victims of Cold War

repression and propaganda and the bitter class conflict waged by the

business classes against labor and popular organization, mounting

particularly during the neoliberal period.

It is worth remembering the early years of the Industrial Revolution.

The working-class culture of the time was alive and flourishing. There’s

a great book about the topic by Jonathan Rose, called The Intellectual

Life of the British Working Class. It’s a monumental study of the

reading habits of the working class of the day. He contrasts “the

passionate pursuit of knowledge by proletarian autodidacts” with the

“pervasive philistinism of the British aristocracy.” Pretty much the

same was true in the new working-class towns in the United States, like

eastern Massachusetts, where an Irish blacksmith might hire a young boy

to read the classics to him while he was working. Factory girls were

reading the best contemporary literature of the day, what we study as

classics. They condemned the industrial system for depriving them of

their freedom and culture. This went on for a long time.

I am old enough to remember the atmosphere of the 1930s. A large part of

my family came from the unemployed working class. Many had barely gone

to school. But they participated in the high culture of the day. They

would discuss the latest plays, concerts of the Budapest String Quartet,

different varieties of psychoanalysis, and every conceivable political

movement. There was also a very lively workers’ education system with

which leading scientists and mathematicians were directly involved. A

lot of this has been lost … but it can be recovered and it is not lost

forever.

Coauthored with Lily Sage; originally published in Truthout, October 22,

2016

Part III

Anarchism, Communism, and Revolutions

C. J. POLYCHRONIOU: Noam, from the late nineteenth century to the mid-

or even late twentieth century, anarchism and communism represented live

and vital movements throughout the Western world but also in Latin

America and certain parts of Asia and Africa. However, the political and

ideological landscape seems to have shifted radically by the early to

late 1980s to the point that, while resistance to capitalism remains

ever present, it is largely localized and devoid of a vision about

strategies for the founding of a new socioeconomic order. Why did

anarchism and communism flourish at the time they did, and what are the

key factors for their transformation from major ideologies to

marginalized belief systems?

NOAM CHOMSKY: If we look more closely, I think we find that there are

live and vital movements of radical democracy, often with elements of

anarchist and communist ideas and participation, during periods of

upheaval and turbulence, when—to paraphrase Gramsci—the old is tottering

and the new is unborn but is offering tantalizing prospects. Thus, in

late nineteenth-century America, when industrial capitalism was driving

independent farmers and artisans to become an industrial proletariat,

evoking plenty of bitter resistance, a powerful and militant labor

movement arose dedicated to the principle that “those who work in the

mills should own them” alongside a mass radical farmers’ movement that

sought to free farmers from the clutches of banks and merchants. The

dramatic era of decolonization also gave rise to radical movements of

many kinds, and there are many other cases, including the 1960s. The

neoliberal period since the ’80s has been one of regression and

marginalization for much of the world’s population, but Karl Marx’s old

mole is never far from the surface and appears in unexpected places. The

spread of worker-owned enterprises and cooperatives in the United

States, while not literally anarchist or communist, carries seeds of

far-reaching radical transformation, and it is not alone.

Anarchism and communism share close affinities but have also been mortal

enemies since the time of Marx and Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin.

Are their differences purely strategic about the transition from

capitalism to socialism, or do they also reflect different perspectives

about human nature and economic and social relations?

My feeling is that the picture is more nuanced. Thus left anti-Bolshevik

Marxism often was quite close to anarchosyndicalism. Prominent left

Marxists, like Karl Korsch, were quite sympathetic to the Spanish

anarchist revolution. Daniel Guerin’s book Anarchism verges on left

Marxism. During his left period in mid-1917, Lenin’s writings, notably

State and Revolution, had a kind of anarchist tinge. There surely were

conflicts over tactics and much more fundamental matters. Engels’s

critique of anarchism is a famous illustration. Marx had very little to

say about postcapitalist society, but the basic thrust of his thinking

about long-term goals seems quite compatible with major strains of

anarchist thinking and practice.

Certain anarchist traditions, influenced by Bakunin, advocate violence

as a means of bringing about social change, while others, influenced by

Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin, seem to regard violence not only

politically ineffective in securing a just social order but morally

indefensible. The communist tradition has also been divided over the use

of violence even in situations where the conditions seem to have been

ripe for revolutions. Can social revolutions take place without

violence?

I don’t see how there can be a general answer. Struggles to overcome

class power and privilege are sure to be resisted, sometimes by force.

Perhaps a point will come where violence in defense against forceful

efforts to maintain power is warranted. Surely it is a last resort.

In your writings, you have maintained the view that the Soviet Union was

never a socialist state. Do you accept the view that it was a “deformed

workers state” or do you believe that it was a form of state capitalism?

The terms of political discourse are not models of precision. By the

time the soviets and factory councils were eliminated—quite early

on—there was hardly a trace of a “workers state.” [Factory councils were

forms of political and economic organization in which the place of work

is controlled collectively by the workers.] The system had wage labor

and other features of capitalism, so I suppose one could call it a kind

of tyrannical state capitalism in some respects.

In certain communist circles, a distinction has been drawn between

Leninism and Stalinism, while the more orthodox communists have argued

that the Soviet Union began a gradual abandonment of socialism with the

rise of Nikita Khrushchev to power. Can you comment on these two points

of contention, with special emphasis in the alleged differences between

Leninism and Stalinism?

I would place the abandonment of socialism much earlier, under Lenin and

Trotsky, at least if socialism is understood to mean at a minimum

control by working people over production. The seeds of Stalinism were

present in the early Bolshevik years, partly attributable to the

exigencies of the civil war and foreign invasion, partly to Leninist

ideology. Under Stalin it became a monstrosity.

Faced with the challenges and threats (both internal and external) that

it did face following the takeover of power, did the Bolsheviks have any

other option than centralizing power, creating an army, and defending

the October Revolution by any means necessary?

It is more appropriate, I think, to ask whether the Bolsheviks had any

other option for defending their power. By adopting the means they

chose, they destroyed the achievements of the popular revolution. Were

there alternatives? I think so, but the question takes us into difficult

and contested territory. It’s possible, for example, that instead of

ignoring Marx’s ideas in his later years about the revolutionary

potential of the Russian peasantry, they might have pursued them and

offered support for peasant organizing and activism instead of

marginalizing it (or worse). And they could have energized rather than

undermined the soviets and factory councils. But all that raises many

questions, both of fact and of speculation about possibilities—for

example, about creating a disciplined and effective Red Army, choice of

guerrilla versus conventional military tactics, political versus

military warfare, and much else.

Would you accept the view that the labor concentration camps and the

other horrible crimes that took place under Stalin’s reign are unlikely

to have taken place if either Lenin or Trotsky were in power instead?

I strongly doubt that Lenin or Trotsky would have carried out crimes

anything like these.

And how do you see the Maoist revolution? Was China at any point a

socialist state?

The “Maoist revolution” was a complex affair. There was a strong popular

element in early Chinese Marxism, discussed in illuminating work by

Maurice Meisner. William Hinton’s remarkable study Fanshen captures

vividly a moment of profound revolutionary change, not just in social

practices but in the mentality and consciousness of the peasants, with

party cadres often submitting to popular control, according to his

account. Later the totalitarian system was responsible for horrendous

crimes, notably the “Great Leap Forward,” with its huge death toll in

the tens of millions. Despite these crimes, as economists Amartya Sen

and Jean Dreze demonstrate, from independence until 1979, when the Deng

reforms began, Chinese programs of rural health and development saved

the lives of 100 million people in comparison to India in the same

years. What any of this has to do with socialism depends on how one

interprets that battered term.

Cuba under Castro?

In assessing developments in Cuba since it achieved independence under

Castro in January 1959, one cannot overlook the fact that from almost

the first moment, Cuba was subjected to vicious attack by the global

superpower. By late 1959, planes based in Florida were bombing Cuba. By

March, a secret decision was made to overthrow the government. The

incoming Kennedy administration carried out the Bay of Pigs invasion.

Its failure led to near hysteria in Washington, and Kennedy launched a

war to bring “the terrors of the earth” to Cuba, in the words of his

close associate, historian Arthur Schlesinger, in his semiofficial

biography of Robert Kennedy, who was placed in charge of the operation

as his highest priority. It was no small affair, and was one of the

factors that led to the missile crisis, which Schlesinger rightly

described as the most dangerous moment in history. After the crisis, the

terrorist war resumed. Meanwhile, a crushing embargo was imposed, which

took a huge toll on Cuba. It continues to this day, opposed by virtually

the entire world.

When Russian aid ended, Clinton made the embargo harsher, and a few

years later, the Helms-Burton Act made it harsher still. The effects

have of course been very severe. They are reviewed in a comprehensive

study by Salim Lamrani. Particularly onerous has been the impact on the

health system, deprived of essential medical supplies. Despite the

attack, Cuba has developed a remarkable health system, and has an

unmatched record of medical internationalism—as well as playing a

crucial role in the liberation of Black Africa and ending the apartheid

regime in South Africa. There have also been severe human rights

violations, though nothing like what has been standard in the

US-dominated countries of the region or the US-backed national security

states of South America. And, of course, the worst human rights

violations in Cuba in recent years have been in Guantanamo, which the

United States took from Cuba at gunpoint in the early twentieth century

and refuses to return. Overall, a mixed story, and not easy to evaluate,

given the complex circumstances.

Overall, do you regard the collapse of so-called actually existing

socialism as a positive outcome, and, if so, why? In what ways has this

development been beneficial to the socialist vision?

When the Soviet Union collapsed I wrote an article describing the events

as a small victory for socialism, not only because of the fall of one of

the most antisocialist states in the world, where working people had

fewer rights than in the West, but also because it freed the term

“socialism” from the burden of being associated in the propaganda

systems of East and West with Soviet tyranny—for the East, in order to

benefit from the aura of authentic socialism, for the West, in order to

demonize the concept.

My argument on what came to be known as “actually existing socialism”

has been that the Soviet state attempted since its origins to harness

the energies of its own population and oppressed people elsewhere in the

service of the men who took advantage of the popular ferment in Russia

in 1917 to seize state power.

Since its origins, socialism has meant the liberation of working people

from exploitation. As the Marxist theoretician Anton Pannekoek observed,

“This goal is not reached and cannot be reached by a new directing and

governing class substituting itself for the bourgeoisie,” but can only

be “realized by the workers themselves being master over production.”

Mastery over production by the producers is the essence of socialism,

and means to achieve this end have regularly been devised in periods of

revolutionary struggle, against the bitter opposition of the traditional

ruling classes and the “revolutionary intellectuals” guided by the

common principles of Leninism and Western managerialism, as adapted to

changing circumstances. But the essential element of the socialist ideal

remains: to convert the means of production into the property of freely

associated producers and thus the social property of people who have

liberated themselves from exploitation by their master, as a fundamental

step toward a broader realm of human freedom.

The Leninist intelligentsia had a different agenda. They fit Marx’s

description of the “conspirators” who “preempt the developing

revolutionary process” and distort it to their ends of domination.

“Hence their deepest disdain for the more theoretical enlightenment of

the workers about their class interests,” which included the overthrow

of the Red Bureaucracy of which Bakunin warned, and the creation of

mechanisms of democratic control over production and social life. For

the Leninist, the masses must be strictly disciplined, while the

socialist will struggle to achieve a social order in which discipline

“will become superfluous” as the freely associated producers “work for

their own accord” (Marx). Libertarian socialism, furthermore, does not

limit its aims to democratic control by producers over production, but

seeks to abolish all forms of domination and hierarchy in every aspect

of social and personal life—an unending struggle, since progress in

achieving a more just society will lead to new insight and understanding

of forms of oppression that may be concealed in traditional practice and

consciousness.

The Leninist antagonism to the most essential features of socialism was

evident from the very start. In revolutionary Russia, soviets and

factory committees developed as instruments of struggle and liberation,

with many flaws but with a rich potential. Lenin and Trotsky, upon

assuming power, immediately devoted themselves to destroying the

liberatory potential of these instruments, establishing the rule of the

Communist Party—in practice, its Central Committee and its Maximal

Leaders—exactly as Trotsky had predicted years earlier, as Rosa

Luxemburg and other left Marxists warned at the time, and as the

anarchists had always understood. Not only the masses but even the party

must be subject to “vigilant control from above,” so Trotsky held as he

made the transition from revolutionary intellectual to state priest.

Before seizing state power, the Bolshevik leadership adopted much of the

rhetoric of people who were engaged in the revolutionary struggle from

below, but their true commitments were quite different. This was evident

before and became crystal clear as they assumed state power in October

1917.

A historian sympathetic to the Bolsheviks, E. H. Carr, writes that “the

spontaneous inclination of the workers to organize factory committees

and to intervene in the management of the factories was inevitably

encouraged by a revolution which led the workers to believe that the

productive machinery of the country belonged to them and could be

operated by them at their own discretion and to their own advantage” [my

emphasis]. For the workers, as one anarchist delegate said, “The factory

committees were cells of the future… . They, not the state, should now

administer.”

But the state priests knew better, and moved at once to destroy the

factory committees and to reduce the soviets to organs of their rule. On

November 3, Lenin announced in a “Draft Decree on Workers’ Control” that

delegates elected to exercise such control were to be “answerable to the

state for the maintenance of the strictest order and discipline and for

the protection of property.” As the year ended, Lenin noted that “we

passed from workers’ control to the creation of the Supreme Council of

National Economy,” which was to “replace, absorb and supersede the

machinery of workers’ control” (Carr). “The very idea of socialism is

embodied in the concept of workers’ control,” one Menshevik trade

unionist lamented. The Bolshevik leadership expressed the same lament in

action, by demolishing the very idea of socialism.

Originally published in Truthout, July 17, 2016

Is the United States Ready for Socialism?

C. J. POLYCHRONIOU: Noam, the rise of the likes of Donald Trump and

Bernie Sanders seems to indicate that US society is at the present

moment in the midst of a major ideological readjustment brought about by

the deteriorating state of the standard of living, the explosive growth

of income inequality, and myriad other economic and social ills facing

the country in the New Gilded Era. In your view, and given the

peculiarities of US political culture, how significant are the 2016

presidential elections?

NOAM CHOMSKY: The elections are quite significant, whatever the outcome,

in revealing the growing discontent and anger about the impact of the

neoliberal programs of the past generation, which, as elsewhere quite

generally, have had a harsh impact on the mass of the population while

undermining functioning democracy and enriching and empowering a tiny

minority, largely in financial industries that have a dubious, if not

harmful, role in the economy. Similar developments are taking place, for

similar reasons, in Europe. The tendencies have been clear for some

time, but, in this election, the party establishments have lost control

for the first time.

On the Republican side, in previous primaries they were able to

eliminate candidates that arose from the base and to nominate their own

man. But not this time, and they are desperate about the failure. On the

Democratic side, the Sanders challenge and its success are no less

unanticipated than the Trump triumph and reflect similar disillusionment

and concerns, very differently expressed but with some common elements.

Trump supporters include much of the white working class. One can

understand their anger and frustration, and why Trump’s rhetoric might

appeal to them. But they are betting on the wrong horse. His policy

proposals—to the limited extent that they are coherent—not only do not

seriously address their legitimate concerns but would be quite harmful

to them. And not just to them.

Following somewhat on the footsteps of the Occupy Wall Street movement,

Bernie Sanders has made economic inequality and social rights themes of

his campaign. Is this trend likely to continue after the election, or

will the momentum for reform fade away?

That’s up to us, and, specifically, up to those who have been mobilized

by the campaign, and to Sanders himself. The energy and commitment could

fade away, like the Rainbow Coalition. Or it could become a continuing

and growing force that is not focused on electoral extravaganzas even

though it may use them to carry its concerns forward. That will be a

critical choice in the coming months.

Is Bernie Sanders merely a New Dealer, or perhaps a European social

democrat, or something further to the left?

He seems to me a decent and honest New Dealer—which is not so different

from European social democracy (actually, both terms cover a pretty

broad range).

In your view, are Keynesianism and social democracy still relevant and

applicable in today’s global economic environment, or simply defunct?

I think they are quite relevant, to restore some degree of sanity and

decency to social and economic life—but not sufficient. We should aim

well beyond.

Should the left in the United States fight for reforms along the lines

of those articulated by Bernie Sanders, or should it devote itself to

promoting a more radical version of social and economic change?

I don’t think this has to be a choice, though of course the degree of

emphasis on one or the other is a choice. Both can be pursued

simultaneously, and can be mutually reinforcing. Take a venerable

anarchist journal like Freedom, founded by Russian activist and

philosopher Peter Kropotkin. Its pages are often devoted to ongoing

social struggles with reformist aims, which would improve people’s lives

and create the basis for moving on. These concerns are guided by far

more radical long-term objectives.

While supporting valuable reforms and efforts to protect and extend

rights, there is no reason not to follow Russian anarchist Mikhail

Bakunin’s advice to create the germs of a future society within the

present one, at the very same time. For example, we can support health

and safety standards in the capitalist workplace while at the same time

establishing enterprises owned and managed by the workforce. And even

support for the reformist measures can (and should be) designed so as to

highlight the roots of the problems in the existing institutions,

encouraging the recognition that defending and expanding rights is just

a step toward eliminating those roots.

Historically, one of the major challenges facing the labor movement in

the United States is the absence of a national class-based political

organization. Do you see this changing any time soon on account of the

ideas of socialism beginning to establish roots among certain segments

of the American population, particularly among the youth?

US political history is rather unusual among the developed state

capitalist societies. The political parties have not been class-based to

the same extent as elsewhere. They have been regional in large part, a

residue of the Civil War, which has still not ended. In the last

election, for example, the red (Republican) states looked remarkably

like the Confederacy—party names switched after the civil rights

movement opened the way for Nixon’s racist “Southern strategy.” The

parties have also been based on rather ad hoc coalitions, which blur any

possible class lines further, leaving the two parties as basically

factions of the ruling business party, in the familiar phrase.

There is no indication of that changing, and in the US system of “first

past the post” and massive campaign expenditures, it is very hard to

break the lock of the two political parties, which are not membership or

participatory parties, but more candidate-producing and fundraising

organizations, with somewhat different policy orientations (within a

fairly narrow range). It is rather striking, for example, to see how

easily the Democratic Party almost openly abandons the white working

class, which drifts to the hands of their most bitter class enemy, the

leadership and power base of the Republican Party.

On socialism establishing roots among the young, one has to be cautious.

It’s not clear that “socialism” in the current context means something

different from New Deal–style welfare-state capitalism—which would, in

fact, be a very healthy development in today’s ugly context.

How should we define socialism in the twenty-first century?

Like other terms of political discourse, “socialism” is quite vague and

broad in application. How we should define it depends on our values and

goals. A good start, fitting well into the American context, would be

the recommendations of America’s leading twentieth-century social

philosopher, John Dewey, who called for democratization of all aspects

of political, economic, and social life. He held that workers should be

“the masters of their own industrial fate,” and that “the means of

production, exchange, publicity, transportation and communication”

should be under public control. Otherwise, politics will remain “the

shadow cast on society by big business” and social policy will be geared

to the interests of the masters. That’s a good start. And is deeply

rooted in significant strands of the society and its complex history.

A problem facing today’s left is that, whenever it came to power, it

capitulated in no time to capitalist forces and became immersed itself

in the practices of corruption and the pursuit of power for the sake of

power and material gains. We have seen it in Brazil, in Greece, in

Venezuela, and elsewhere. How do you explain this?

That’s been a very sad development. The causes vary, but the results are

highly destructive. In Brazil, for example, the PT (Workers’ Party) had

enormous opportunities and could have been a force for transforming

Brazil and leading the way for the whole continent, given Brazil’s

unique position. Though there were some achievements, the opportunities

were squandered as the party leadership joined the rest of the elite in

sinking into the abyss of corruption.

Although it was clear that Bernie Sanders could not win the Democratic

nomination, he sought to stick around as a candidate until the

convention. What was his aim in doing so?

The intention, I presume, was pretty much what he has been saying: to

have a significant role in formulating the party platform at the

convention. That doesn’t seem to me to matter much; platforms are mostly

rhetoric. What could be quite significant is something different: using

the opportunity of the electoral enthusiasm, largely fostered by

propaganda, to organize an ongoing and growing popular movement, not

geared to the electoral cycle, which will be devoted to bringing about

badly needed changes by direct action and other appropriate means.

If the American Dream is dead, as Donald Trump says it is, why do

surveys continue to show that the majority of those interviewed say they

still believe and even live the American Dream? Was the American Dream

ever reality, or just a myth?

The “American Dream” was a very mixed story. It traces back to the

nineteenth century, when free people could obtain land and pursue other

opportunities in an expanding economy—thanks to annihilation of the

Indigenous nations who populated the country and the huge contribution

to the economy of the most vicious form of slavery that has yet existed.

In later years the “dream” took other forms, for some, and sometimes.

Until European immigration was sharply cut in 1924 in order to block

undesirables (mainly Italians and Jews), immigrants could hope to work

their way into a rich society, with incomparable advantages. In the

1950s and 1960s, the great growth years of state capitalism, working

people, including African Americans for a rare moment in the past

half-millennium of bitter repression, could hope to get a decently

paying union job with benefits, buy a house and a car, send their kids

to college. That dream pretty much ended with the shift of the economy

toward financialization and neoliberalism from the 1970s, accelerating

under Reagan and since. But there is no reason to suppose that the

traditional “dream,” such as it was, is over, or that something much

better, much more humane and just, is beyond our reach.

Originally published in Truthout, May 18, 2016

Why I Choose Optimism over Despair

C. J. POLYCHRONIOU: Noam, your book What Kind of Creatures Are We?

(Columbia University Press, 2015) brings together your investigation

into language and the mind and long-held views of yours on society and

politics. Let me start by asking you as to whether you feel that the

biolinguistic approach to language that you have developed in the course

of the past fifty years or so is still open to further exploration and,

if so, what sort of questions remain unanswered about the acquisition of

language.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Not just me, by any means. Quite a few people. One of the

real pioneers was the late Eric Lenneberg, a close friend from the early

1950s when these ideas were brewing. His book Biological Foundations of

Language is an enduring classic.

The program is very much open to further exploration. There are

unanswered questions right at the borders of inquiry, the kinds that are

crucial for advancing what Tom Kuhn called “normal science.” And

questions that lie beyond are traditional and tantalizing.

One topic that is beginning to be open to serious investigation is the

realization of the capacity for language and its use in the brain.

That’s very hard to study. Similar questions are extremely difficult

even in the case of insects, and for humans, they are incomparably

harder, not only because of the vastly greater complexity of the brain.

We know a good deal about the human visual system, but that is because

it is much the same as the visual systems of cats and monkeys, and

(rightly or not) we permit invasive experimentation with these animals.

That is impossible for humans because the human language capacity is so

isolated biologically. There are no relevant analogues elsewhere in the

biological world—a fascinating topic in itself.

Nevertheless, new noninvasive technologies are beginning to provide

important evidence, which sometimes even is beginning to bear on open

questions about the nature of language in interesting ways. These are

among the topics at the borders of inquiry, along with a huge and

challenging mass of problems about the properties of language and the

principles that explain them. Lying far, far beyond—maybe even beyond

human reach—are the kinds of questions that animated traditional thought

(and wonder) about the nature of language, including such great figures

as Galileo, Descartes, von Humboldt, and others: primary among them,

what has been called “the creative aspect of language use,” the ability

of every human to construct in the mind and comprehend an unbounded

number of new expressions expressing their thoughts, and to use them in

ways appropriate to but not caused by circumstances, a crucial

distinction.

We are “incited and inclined” but not “compelled,” in Cartesian

terminology. These are not matters restricted to language, by any means.

The issue is put graphically by two leading neuroscientists who study

voluntary motion, Emilio Bizzi and Robert Ajemian. Reviewing the current

state of the art, they observe that we are beginning to understand

something about the puppet and the strings, but the puppeteer remains a

total mystery. Because of its centrality to our lives, and its critical

role in constructing, expressing, and interpreting thought, the normal

use of language illustrates these mysterious capacities in a

particularly dramatic and compelling way. That is why normal language

use, for Descartes, was a primary distinction between humans and any

animal or machine, and a basis for his mind-body dualism—which, contrary

to what is often believed, was a legitimate and sensible scientific

hypothesis in his day, with an interesting fate.

What would you say is the philosophical relevance of language?

The comments above begin to deal with that question. It has been

traditionally recognized that human language is a species property,

common to humans apart from severe pathology, and unique to humans in

essentials. One of Lenneberg’s contributions was to begin to ground this

radical discontinuity in sound modern biology, and the conclusion has

only been strengthened by subsequent work (a matter that is hotly

contested, but mistakenly so, I believe). Furthermore, work that

Lenneberg also initiated reveals that the human language capacity

appears to be dissociated quite sharply from other cognitive capacities.

It is, furthermore, not only the vehicle of thought, but also probably

the generative source of substantial parts of our thinking.

The close study of language also provides much insight into classical

philosophical problems about the nature of concepts and their relation

to mind-external entities, a matter much more intricate than often

assumed. And more generally, it suggests ways to investigate the nature

of human knowledge and judgment. In another domain, important recent

work by John Mikhail and others has provided substantial support for

some neglected ideas of John Rawls on relations of our intuitive moral

theories to language structure. And much more. There is good reason why

study of language has always been a central part of philosophical

discourse and analysis, and new discoveries and insights, I think, bear

directly on many of the traditional concerns.

The well-known University College London linguist Neil Smith argued in

his book Chomsky: Ideas and Ideals (Cambridge University Press, 1999)

that you put to rest the mind-body problematic not by showing that we

have a limited understanding of the mind but that we cannot define what

the body is. What can he possibly mean by this?

I wasn’t the person who put it to rest. Far from it. Isaac Newton did.

Early modern science, from Galileo and his contemporaries, was based on

the principle that the world is a machine, a much more complex version

of the remarkable automata then being constructed by skilled craftsmen,

which excited the scientific imagination of the day, much as computers

and information processing do today. The great scientists of the time,

including Newton, accepted this “mechanical philosophy” (meaning the

science of mechanics) as the foundation of their enterprise. Descartes

believed he had pretty much established the mechanical philosophy,

including all the phenomena of body, though he recognized that some

phenomena lay beyond its reach, including, crucially, the “creative

aspect of language use” described above. He therefore, plausibly,

postulated a new principle—in the metaphysics of the day, a new

substance, res cogitans, “thinking substance, mind.” His followers

devised experimental techniques to try to determine whether other

creatures had this property, and, like Descartes, were concerned to

discover how the two substances interacted.

Newton demolished the picture. He demonstrated that the Cartesian

account of body was incorrect and, furthermore, that there could be no

mechanical account of the physical world: the world is not a machine.

Newton regarded this conclusion as so “absurd” that no one of sound

scientific understanding could possibly entertain it—though it was true.

Accordingly, Newton demolished the concept of body (material, physical,

and so on), in the form that it was then understood, and there really is

nothing to replace it, beyond “whatever we more or less understand.” The

Cartesian concept of mind remained unaffected. It has become

conventional to say that we have rid ourselves of the mysticism of “the

ghost in the machine.” Quite the contrary: Newton exorcised the machine

while leaving the ghost intact, a consequence understood very well by

the great philosophers of the period, like John Locke.

Locke went on to speculate (in the accepted theological idiom) that just

as God had added to matter properties of attraction and repulsion that

are inconceivable to us (as demonstrated by “the judicious Mr. Newton”),

so he might have “superadded” to matter the capacity of thought. The

suggestion (known as “Locke’s suggestion” in the history of philosophy)

was pursued extensively in the eighteenth century, particularly by

philosopher and chemist Joseph Priestley, adopted by Darwin, and

rediscovered (apparently without awareness of the earlier origins) in

contemporary neuroscience and philosophy.

There is much more to say about these matters, but that, in essence, is

what Smith was referring to. Newton eliminated the mind-body problem in

its classic Cartesian form (it is not clear that there is any other

coherent version), by eliminating body, leaving mind intact. And in

doing so, as David Hume concluded, “While Newton seemed to draw the veil

from some of the mysteries of nature, he showed at the same time the

imperfections of the mechanical philosophy … and thereby restored

[nature’s] ultimate secrets to that obscurity, in which they ever did

and ever will remain.”

When you made your breakthrough into the study of linguistics, B. F.

Skinner’s verbal behavior approach dominated the field and was widely

employed in the field of marketing and promotions. Your critique of

Skinner’s approach not only overthrew the prevailing paradigm at the

time but also established a new approach to linguistics. Yet, it seems

that behavioralism still dominates the public realm when it comes to

marketing and consumer behavior. Your explanation for this apparent

antinomy?

Behavioral methods (though not exactly Skinner’s) may work reasonably

well in shaping and controlling thought and attitudes, hence some

behavior, at least at the superficial level of marketing and inducing

consumerism. The need to control thought is a leading doctrine of the

huge PR industry, which developed in the freest countries in the world,

Britain and the United States, motivated by the recognition that people

had won too many rights to be controlled by force, so it was necessary

to turn to other means: what one of the founders of the industry, Edward

Bernays, called “the engineering of consent.”

In his book Propaganda, a founding document of the industry, Bernays

explained that engineering consent and “regimentation” were necessary in

democratic societies so as to ensure that the “intelligent minority”

will be able to act (of course, for the benefit of all) without the

interference of the annoying public, who must be kept passive, obedient,

and diverted; passionate consumerism is the obvious device, based on

“creating wants” by various means.

As explained by his contemporary and fellow liberal intellectual Walter

Lippmann, the leading public intellectual of the day, the “ignorant

meddlesome outsiders”—the general public—must be “put in their place” as

“spectators,” not “participants,” while “the responsible men” must be

protected from “the trampling and the roar of a bewildered herd.” This

is an essential principle of prevailing democratic theory. Marketing to

engineer consent by control of thought, attitudes, and behavior is a

crucial lever to achieve these ends—and (incidentally) to keep profits

flowing.

Many maintain the view that, as humans, we have a propensity for

aggression and violence, which in actuality explains the rise of

oppressive and repressive institutions that have defined much of human

civilization throughout the world. How do you respond to this dark view

of human nature?

Since oppression and repression exist, they are reflections of human

nature. The same is true of sympathy, solidarity, kindness, and concern

for others—and for some great figures, like Adam Smith, these were the

essential properties of humans. The task for social policy is to design

the ways we live and the institutional and cultural structure of our

lives so as to favor the benign and to suppress the harsh and

destructive aspects of our fundamental nature.

While it is true that humans are social beings and thus our behavior

depends on the social and political arrangements in our lives, is there

such a thing as a common good for all human beings that goes beyond

basic aspirations like the need for food, shelter, and protection from

external threats?

These are what Marx once called our “animal needs,” which, he hoped,

would be provided by realization of communism, freeing us to turn

productively to our “human needs,” which far transcend these in

significance—though we cannot forget Brecht’s admonition: “First, feed

the face.”

All in all, how would you define human nature—or, alternatively, what

kind of creatures are we?

I open the book by saying that “I am not deluded enough to think I can

provide a satisfactory answer” to this question—going on to say that “it

seems reasonable to believe that in some domains at least, particularly

with regard to our cognitive nature, there are insights of some interest

and significance, some new, and that it should be possible to clear away

some of the obstacles that hamper further inquiry, including some widely

accepted doctrines with foundations that are much less stable than often

assumed.” I haven’t become less deluded since.

You have defined your political philosophy as libertarian

socialism/anarchism, but refuse to accept the view that anarchism as a

vision of social order flows naturally from your views on language. Is

the link then purely coincidental?

It’s more than coincidental but much less than deductive. At a

sufficient level of abstraction, there is a common element—which was

sometimes recognized, or at least glimpsed, in the Enlightenment and

Romantic eras. In both domains, we can perceive, or at least hope, that

at the core of human nature is what Bakunin called “an instinct for

freedom,” which reveals itself both in the creative aspect of normal

language use and in the recognition that no form of domination,

authority, hierarchy is self-justifying: each must justify itself, and

if it cannot, which is usually the case, then it should be dismantled in

favor of greater freedom and justice. That seems to me the core idea of

anarchism, deriving from its classical liberal roots and deeper

perceptions—or beliefs, or hopes—about essential human nature.

Libertarian socialism moves further to bring in ideas about sympathy,

solidarity, mutual aid, also with Enlightenment roots and conceptions of

human nature.

Both the anarchist and the Marxist visions have failed to gain ground in

our own time, and in fact it could be argued that the prospects for the

historical overcoming of capitalism appear to have been brighter in the

past than they do today. If you do agree with this assessment, what

factors can explain the frustrating setback for the realization of an

alternative social order, that is, one beyond capitalism and

exploitation?

Prevailing systems are particular forms of state capitalism. In the past

generation, these have been distorted by neoliberal doctrines into an

assault on human dignity and even the “animal needs” of ordinary human

life. More ominously, unless reversed, implementation of these doctrines

will destroy the possibility of decent human existence, and not in the

distant future. But there is no reason to suppose that these dangerous

tendencies are graven in stone. They are the product of particular

circumstances and specific human decisions that have been well studied

elsewhere and that I cannot review here. These can be reversed, and

there is ample evidence of resistance to them, which can grow, and

indeed must grow to a powerful force if there is to be hope for our

species and the world that it largely rules.

While economic inequality, lack of growth and new jobs, and declining

standards of living have become key features of contemporary advanced

societies, the climate change challenge appears to pose a real threat to

the planet on the whole. Are you optimistic that we can find the right

formula to address economic problems while averting an environmental

catastrophe?

There are two grim shadows that loom over everything that we consider:

environmental catastrophe and nuclear war, the latter threat much

underestimated, in my view. In the case of nuclear weapons, we at least

know the answer: get rid of them, like smallpox, with adequate measures,

which are technically feasible, to ensure that this curse does not arise

again. In the case of environmental catastrophe, there still appears to

be time to avert the worst consequences, but that will require measures

well beyond those being undertaken now, and there are serious

impediments to overcome, not least in the most powerful state in the

world, the one power with a claim to be hegemonic.

In the extensive reporting of the recent Paris conference on the

climate, the most important sentences were those pointing out that the

binding treaty that negotiators hoped to achieve was off the agenda,

because it would be “dead on arrival” when it reached the

Republican-controlled US Congress. It is a shocking fact that every

Republican presidential contender is either an outright climate denier

or a skeptic who opposes government action. Congress celebrated the

Paris conference by cutting back President Obama’s limited efforts to

avert disaster.

The Republican majority (with a minority of the popular vote) proudly

announced funding cuts for the Environmental Protection Agency in order

to rein in what House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers

called an “unnecessary, job-killing regulatory agenda”—or, in plain

English, one of the few brakes on destruction. It should be borne in

mind that in contemporary newspeak, the word “jobs” is a euphemism for

the unpronounceable seven-letter word “pr---ts.”

Are you overall optimistic about the future of humanity, given the kind

of creatures we are?

We have two choices. We can be pessimistic, give up, and help ensure

that the worst will happen. Or we can be optimistic, grasp the

opportunities that surely exist, and maybe help make the world a better

place. Not much of a choice.

Originally published in Truthout, February 14, 2016

[1] Katie Pisa and Time Hume, “Boko Haram Overtakes ISIS as World’s

Deadliest Terror Group, Report Says,” CNN, November 19, 2015,

www.cnn.com/2015/11/17/world/global-terror-report

.

[2] William Polk, “Falling into the ISIS Trap,” Consortium News,

November 17, 2015,

https://consortiumnews.com/2015/11/17/falling-into-the-isis-trap

.

[3] Nick Turse, “Tomgram: Nick Turse, Success, Failure, and the ‘Finest

Warriors Who Ever Went into Combat,’” TomDispatch, October 25, 2015,

www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176060

.

[4] Noam Chomsky, Who Rules the World (Hamish Hamilton Ltd, 2016).

[5] Andrew Cockburn, “Down the Tube,” Harper’s, April 2016,

https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/down-the-tube

.

[6] Dean Baker, Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern

Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer (Center for Economic and

Policy Research, 2016),

deanbaker.net/books/rigged.htm

.

[7] Kristian Haug, “A Divided US: Sociologist Arlie Hochschild on the

2016 Presidential Election,” Truthout, November 2, 2016,

www.truth-out-org/opinion/item/38217-a-divided-us-sociologist-arlie-hochschild-on-the-2016-presidential-election

.

[8] Justin Gillis, “Flooding of Coast, Caused by Global Warming, Has

Already Begun,” New York Times, September 3, 2016,

www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/science/flooding-of-coast-caused-by-global-warming-has-already-begun.html

.

[9] Joby Warrick, “Why Are So Many Americans Skeptical About Climate

Change? A Study Offers a Surprising Answer,” Washington Post, November

23, 2015,

www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/111/23/why-are-so-many-americans-skeptical-about-climate-change-a-study-offers-a-surprising-answer/?utm_term=.b9bd6860dfe2

; Michael Roppolo, “Americans More Skeptical of Climate Change Than

Others in Global Survey,” CBS News, July 23, 2014,

www.cbsnews.com/news/americans-more-skeptical-of-climate-change-than-others-in-global-survey

.

[10] Justin Gillis and Chris Buckley, “Period of Soaring Emissions May

Be Ending, New Data Suggest,” New York Times, December 7, 2015,

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/12/08/science/carbon-emissions-decline-peak-climate-change.html

.

[11] On the latter matter, see Mary Ellen O’Connell, “Game of Drones,”

American Journal of International Law 109, no. 4 (2015): 889f.

[12] Daniel Schraad-Tischler, Social Justice in the OECD—How Do the

Member States Compare? Sustainable Governance Indicators 2011

(Gütersloh, Germany: Bertelsmann, 2011),

news.sgi-network.org/uploads/tx_amsgistudies/SGI11_Social_Justice_OECD.pdf

.

[13] Walter L. Hixson, American Settler Colonialism: A History (Palgrave

Macmillan, 2013), 2.