💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › noam-chomsky-on-1968.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 12:58:27. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Title: On 1968
Author: Noam Chomsky
Date: May 8, 2008
Language: en
Topics: 1968
Source: Retrieved on 19th February 2022 from https://chomsky.info/20080508/
Notes: Published in the New Statesman.

Noam Chomsky

On 1968

Nineteen sixty-eight was one exciting moment in a much larger movement.

It spawned a whole range of movements. There wouldn’t have been an

international global solidarity movement, for instance, without the

events of 1968. It was enormous, in terms of human rights, ethnic

rights, a concern for the environment, too.

The Pentagon Papers (the 7,000-page, top-secret US government report

into the Vietnam War) are proof of this: right after the Tet Offensive,

the business world turned against the war, because they thought it was

too costly, even though there were proposals within the government – and

we know this now – to send in more American troops. Then LBJ announced

he wouldn’t be sending any more troops to Vietnam.

The Pentagon Papers tell us that, because of the fear of growing unrest

in the cities, the government had to end the war – it wasn’t sure that

it was going to have enough troops to send to Vietnam and enough troops

on the domestic front to quell the riots.

One of the most interesting reactions to come out of 1968 was in the

first publication of the Trilateral Commission, which believed there was

a “crisis of democracy” from too much participation of the masses. In

the late 1960s, the masses were supposed to be passive, not entering

into the public arena and having their voices heard. When they did, it

was called an “excess of democracy” and people feared it put too much

pressure on the system. The only group that never expressed its opinions

too much was the corporate group, because that was the group whose

involvement in politics was acceptable.

The commission called for more moderation in democracy and a return to

passivity. It said the “institutions of indoctrination” – schools,

churches – were not doing their job, and these had to be harsher.

The more reactionary standard was much harsher in its reaction to the

events of 1968, in that it tried to repress democracy, which has

succeeded to an extent – but not really, because these social and

activist movements have now grown. For example, it was unimaginable in

1968 that there would be an international Solidarity group in 1980.

But democracy is even stronger now than it was in 1968. You have to

remember that, during Vietnam, there was no opposition at the beginning

of the war. It did develop, but only six years after John F Kennedy

attacked South Vietnam and troop casualties were mounting. However, with

the Iraq War, opposition was there from the very beginning, before an

attack was even initiated. The Iraq War was the first conflict in

western history in which an imperialist war was massively protested

against before it had even been launched.

There are other differences, too. In 1968, it was way out in the margins

of society to even discuss the possibility of withdrawal from Vietnam.

Now, every presidential candidate mentions withdrawal from Iraq as a

real policy choice.

There is also far greater opposition to oppression now than there was

before. For example, the US used routinely to support or initiate

military coups in Latin America. But the last time the US supported a

military coup was in 2002 in Venezuela, and even then they had to back

off very quickly because there was public opposition. They just can’t do

the kinds of things they used to.

So, I think the impact of 1968 was long-lasting and, overall, positive.