Noam Chomsky Predicted Today’s Youth Culture & The Rise Of Donald Trump

Hello and welcome to this episode of: My Dreams Have Come True.

You might recall way back when Bernie Sanders had lunch with Killer Mike at Busy Bee in Atlanta, I wrote this screed:

The only thing that could make this story better would be if Noam Chomsky was strolling by and he thought to join in on the lunch for a strong discussion. Look, we can’t have everything but we can dream.

WELL NOW MY DREAM HAS COME TRUE.

IN 1985.

IT CAME TRUE IN 1985.

Here is Bernie Sanders introducing the great Noam Chomsky on the 5th of February 1985 on this the day of our Lord and saviour, I don’t know who I love more right now (Chomsky).

But actually the most interesting thing here is how, even then, Noam Chomsky accidentally predicted something about the future for young people, while talking about the current young people of the 60s and 70s. If you make it to the end at roughly around 2 hours and six minutes, (how can you not, it’s so riveting) he speaks about the power of student activism and a PR campaign that tried to squash the idealistic and altruistic youth.

Here is an extract of the Noam Chomsky quote:

“Young people have been subjected to a tremendous propaganda campaign in the 70s and it’s had some effect. What was considered most frightening in the 60s was the fact that young people acted on honest impulses. And that’s scary. So one thing that was done in the 70s was to concoct this narcissism story. One of the big PR jobs in the 1970s was to try and convince everybody that you’re narcissistic, you know, you don’t care about anyone else. Of course, every individual knew it wasn’t true of them personally, each person knew it wasn’t true of myself, but what you’re told is you know the whole culture is narcissistic, you’re only supposed to be interested in yourself, so on and so forth. Therefore everyone feels, well you know, I must be weird, so I better play that game too. And the net effect is that does become a cultural pattern. But I don’t think it’s really deep seated in a sense”.

YOUTH. LAZY. NARCISSISM.

SOUND FAMILIAR?

Holy shit balls. Noam Chomsky is a prophet. You must honour his legacy by fighting back every time someone labels young people narcissistic. Make them watch two hours of Noam Chomsky in this video. Keep protesting and proving them wrong, keep fighting and trying to change the world, in whatever way you can. I believe in you. Chomsky believes in you.

Anyway, if you need further evidence of Noam Chomsky’s endless well of wisdom, look no further than this prediction of the rise of a Trump-like figure, in this Facebook post by Drew Dellinger.

NOAM CHOMSKY PREDICTS TRUMP PHENOMENON IN THE 1990s:

In the book, “Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky,” based on interviews from the nineties, are the following paragraphs in which Chomsky describes the incipient fascist dynamics in Republican party politics at the time, and foretells a scenario with remarkable similarities to the current Trump phenomenon.

Noam Chomsky:

“There are other things to worry about too, like the fact that the United States is such an extremely fundamentalist country–and also such an unusually frightened one…. [There is a lot of] extreme irrationality and fear… in the U.S. population.

And that’s a very dangerous phenomenon–because that kind of deep irrationality can readily be whipped up by demagogues, you know, Newt Gingriches. These guys can whip up fear, hatred, they can appeal to fundamentalist urges–and that’s been scaring the rest of the world for a while… For example, if you recall the Republican National Convention in 1992, it opened with a ‘God and Country’ rally, which was televised and seen around the world. In Europe particularly it really sent chills up people’s spines–because they remember Hitler’s Nuremberg rallies, at least older people do, and it had something of that tone. Well, the Republicans were able to insulate the Convention from it that time around and keep most of that stuff confined to the first night, but in the future they might not be able to do that–in the future those people might take the Convention over, in which case we’d be very close to some American version of fascism; it may not be Hitler Germany, but it’ll be bad enough….

Actually, I think that the United States has been in kind of a pre-fascist mood for years–and we’ve been lucky that every leader who’s come along has been a crook…. But if somebody shows up who’s kind of a Hitler-type–just want power, no corruption, straight, makes it all sound appealing, and says, ‘We want power’–well, then we’ll all be in very bad trouble. Now, we haven’t had the right person yet in the United States, but sooner or later somebody’s going to fill that position–and if so, it will be highly dangerous.”

–Noam Chomsky, “Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky” (2002), based on interviews mostly from 1989–1999.

The revolution…it is eerie.