Chomsky’s Interviews
A collection of my notes from films and interviews from Ralph Nader and Yanis Vanoufakis to Wallace Shawn and Contrapoints!
January 2016 — Requiem for the American Dream film
This is a synopsis of Chomsky’s long-form documentary. I paraphrased/transcribed the 72 minute video liberally with links to further readings below.
It’s about the American Dream: the idea that you can be born poor but work hard enough for a home and car and good schools — that’s all collapsed. We profess to like the values of democracy, so public opinion should have an influence on policy and the government should carry out actions determined by the population, but the privileged sector doesn’t like democracy. We have extreme inequality with a super wealthy group in the top 1/10th of the top one percent. It’s unjust in itself, but it’s got a corrosive effect on democracy.
The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power
Concentration of wealth yields concentration of power, especially as costs of elections skyrocket forcing politicians into the pockets of corporations. This translates into legislation that increases the concentration of wealth through fiscal policy (taxes, deregulation, rules of corporate governance) designed to increase the concentration of wealth and power in a vicious cycle of progress.
Adam Smith described this in 1776 in The Wealth of Nations: England’s principal architects were merchants and manufacturers who will made sure their own interests are well cared for however grievous the impact on citizens. Now financial institutions and multinational corporations are doing the same thing.
“All for ourselves and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind” (Chapter IV).
#1. Reduce Democracy (Also see this Truthout article from 2014).
There’s an ongoing clash between pressure for more freedom and democracy from below, and efforts at greater domination from above. This goes back to James Madison, the main framer of the constitution. The US is designed so power is in the hands of the wealthy — the more responsible men, and it’s seen in the structure of the constitution which originally placed most power in hands of the unelected Senate:
“Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. The senate, therefore, ought to be this body; and to answer these purposes, they ought to have permanency and stability….the longer they continue in office, the better will these views be answered.”
If everyone has a free vote, the poor majority will take the property of the rich, so democracy must be prevented. This goes back to Aristotle’s Politics. He said the best system is a democracy, but the same dilemma exists. But Aristotle had the opposite solution: to reduce inequality so the poor would be more content.
The history of the US is the struggle between these tendencies of democratization and a backlash against it. In the 1960s, people were highly involved. They became organized and actively changed things like minority rights, women’s rights, concern for the environment, opposition to aggression, and concern for other people. They were all civilizing effects, but they caused great fear in the upper class.
#2. Shape Ideology
There was a business offensive in the 1970s. The Powell Memorandum, sent to the Chamber of Commerce and Business Lobby by Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell, warned that business is losing control over society and something has to be done to counter the forces:
“No thoughtful person can question that the American economic system is under broad attack. This varies in scope, intensity, in the techniques employed, and in the level of visibility…. The fundamental premise of this paper, namely, is that business and the enterprise system are in deep trouble, and the hour is late.”
It was a call for business to use control over resources to take control over society. On the liberal side came the first major report from the Trilateral Commission, a group of liberal internationalists that staffed the Carter administration who were appalled by the democratizing tendencies of the 1960s, called “The Crisis of Democracy”:
“The essence of the democratic surge of the 1960s was a general challenge to existing systems of authority, public and private….some of the problems of governance in the United States today stem from an excess of democracy.”
The passive parts of the population — special interest groups — were trying to enter the political arena. It was seen as a failure on the part of the schools to adequately indoctrinate the young. Private business wasn’t seen as a special interest because they affect all of society, so it was okay if they influenced politics, but the rest must be subdued. A major backlash running parallel to all this was a redesigning of the economy.
#3. Redesign the Economy (This bit is reminiscent of Reich’s Inequality for All.)
Since 1970, there’s been an effort on people with power to shift the economy by increasing the role of financial institutions: banks, insurance companies, investment companies. By 2007, financial institutions controlled 40% of corporate profits, far beyond anything prior.
In the 1950s, the economy was based on production and manufacturing. The task of finance was to distribute unused assets to create credit for merchants and citizens. Banks were regulated and no financial crashes happened during periods of regulation. In the 1970s, the increase in the flow of speculative capital allowed more risky and complex investment. Former directors were engineers, but now they’re all from business schools where they learned financial trickery. They make more profit playing with money than by producing anything.
With offshore production, trade was reconstructed, and it put working people in competition with each other worldwide. Americans were pitted against the poorly paid workers in China. The capital was free to move, but the workers weren’t. Adam Smith said that free circulation of labour is the foundation of any trade system, so this was in opposition to his foundational ideas.
The policy was designed to increase security. Alan Greenspan testified to congress about his success:
“Atypical restraint on compensation increases have been evident for a few years now and appears to be mainly the consequence of greater worker insecurity.”
If we keep workers insecure, then they’ll stop asking for better wages. It’s good for the masters, but devastating for the people, and it led to a vicious cycle of concentrated wealth and power.
#4. Shift the Burden
The idea of the American Dream is partly symbolic. The 1950s-60s was the golden age with egalitarian growth in which the lowest fifth improved about as much as the upper fifth. There were some welfare state measures imposed. It was possible for a black worker to get a descent job, home, car, and send his kids to a good school. Manufacturers were concerned with their own consumers, so Henry Ford raised the salary of his workers to enable them to buy cars.
This shifted to a Plutonomy with a small percentage of the population gathering increasing wealth and becoming less concerned with consumers. The goal became profit in the next quarter even if it’s due to financial manipulations. It created another class, the Precariat — precarious proletariat — the working people of the world who live increasingly precarious lives. During great growth, taxes on wealth were far higher. The tax system was redesigned so taxes paid by the wealthy were reduced and tax on the rest increased.
The pretext is that it increases investment and jobs, but there’s no evidence of that. To increase investment and job, give more money to the poor to stimulate purchasing, which stimulates production and investment and leads to job growth and so on. Corporations have shifted the burden of sustaining society on to the rest of the population.
#5. Attack Solidarity (Also see this video of Chomsky from last May).
The new view is that solidarity is dangerous. You must care about yourself and not others. Compare that to Adam Smith who saw sympathy as a fundamental human trait. This was driven out of people’s head. It’s okay for the rich and powerful, but devastating for the rest. It took a lot of effort to drive human emotions out of us.
We see it today in policy formation, like attacks on social security. Social security is based on a principle of solidarity; we pay taxes for the widow across town to buy groceries. But it’s of no use to the rich, so they destroy it by defunding it. Then it won’t work and is fodder for privatized systems. We see this in attacks on public schools: we pay taxes so everyone can go to school. This was a jewel of American society. The golden age was because of free public education. Now most students leave college with debt and are then trapped in crappy jobs unable to actually use their higher education.
In the 1950s, we were a much poorer society, but we could manage free mass education. Now we’re much richer, but claim there’s not enough resources for it. It’s a general attack on principles that are humane and the basis for the prosperity and health of this society.
#6. Run the Regulators (Also see Inside Job for this history lesson.)
Look over the history of regulation — railroad, financial… quite commonly it’s either initiated by economic concentrations being regulated or supported by them. They know sooner or later they can take over regulators in a regulatory capture and become self-regulating with lobbyists writing laws about lobbying. In the 1970s, lobbying expanded enormously as the business world tried to control the population.
Nixon was the last New Deal president advocating for consumer safety, safe workplaces, the EPA… Businesses didn’t like regulations and began coordinated efforts to overcome them through lobbying and deregulation. There was no crash in the 50s and 60s because the regulatory apparatus of the New Deal was still in place. But then it was dismantled by business pressure and financial pressure.
It started in 70s and took off in 80s. Everyone is safe if the government will come to rescue. Reagan bailed out banks and ended his term with the savings and loan crisis. In 1999, regulation was dismantled to separated commercial and investment banks. 2008 brought the Bush bailout. And now we’re building up for the next one. Each time the taxpayer is called on to bail out those who created the crisis. A true capitalist system wouldn’t do that, but the rich and powerful don’t want true capitalism. They want a nanny state so they can get bailed out by citizens when they need to, and they call it “too big to fail.” Economists like Stiglitz and Krugman disagree with the course we’re following, but none were approached.
They went to Robert Rubin and Goldman Sach to fix the problem they created. Neo-liberalism provides one set of rules for the rich and the opposite for the poor. The next crash is so expected that credit agencies are counting the next bailout into their calculations. As wealth gets more and more concentrated this should come as no surprise. It’s what happens when you put power into the hands of a narrow sector of wealth dedicated to increasing power for itself.
#7. Engineer Elections
Concentration of wealth yields concentration of political power particularly as the cost of elections skyrockets which forces political parties into the pockets of major corporations. The Citizens United Supreme Court decision used a 14th Amendment provision: “no person’s rights can be infringed without due process of law.” The intent of that was to protect freed slaves, but it was used for businesses instead so their rights can’t be infringed. Gradually corporations became persons under the law in a legal fiction.
Under the 14th Amendment, no undocumented alien can be deprived of rights if they’re persons. Migrants aren’t counted as persons, but GM is. The perversion of elementary morality and the obvious meaning of the law is quite incredible.
The 1970s courts decided money is a form of speech in the Buckley V. Valeo case. Then the Citizens United trial of 2009–10 read the right of free speech to mean corporations could spend as much money as they want, and that can’t be curtailed. They’re free to buy elections. This is a tremendous attack on the residue of democracy.
#8. Keep the Rabble in Line (Klein was on about this in The Shock Doctrine.)
Organized labour is one force which has traditionally been in the forefront of efforts to improve the lives of the general population and act as a barrier to corporate tyranny. There’s been a fanatic attack on unions because they are a democratizing force; they want popular rights generally, which interferes with prerogatives in power that own and manage society. The fundamental core of labour rights is the right of free association, which means right to form unions, but the US has never ratified that. They’re alone among major societies in that respect. It’s so far out of the spectrum of US politics, it’s never been considered.
We’ve had a long, violent labour history. By the 1920s, labour unions were virtually crushed by police with guns and tear gas. By the mid-30s, it began to reconstruct under Roosevelt who informed labour leaders that, in order to get it passed, they had to force him to do it: to go out and demonstrate, organize, protest. Only when the popular pressure is sufficient, will he be able to put through the legislation they want. In 1934, Roosevelt said:
“I am not for a return to that definition of liberty, under which for many years a free people were being gradually regimented into the service of a privileged few. I prefer that broader definition of liberty.”
The combination of a sympathetic government and popular activism enabled unions to form. Industrial actions and sit-down strikes were one step from saying, “We don’t need bosses; we can run this ourselves.” Business leaders were appalled; this was a hazard that had to be repressed.
After WWII, businesses acted in force with the Taft-Hartley Act, written for only one purpose: to restore justice and equality in labour-management relations. McCarthyism was used as propaganda to stop unions. And during the Reagan era, he made it acceptable to break strikes, suggesting workers forfeit their jobs after 48 hours on strike. It all went through the roof with Bush in the 90s. Now less than 7% of private sector workers have unions. The counterforce has dissolved.
Those in power want to maintain class consciousness for themselves, but eliminate it for everyone else. In the 19th century, working people were very conscious that wage labour wasn’t much different from slavery, just temporary. Now those in power drive that idea out of our heads. We just don’t talk about class. Who gives the orders and who follow them — that basically defines class.
#9. Manufacture Consent (Check out Adam Curtis’ Century of the Self for more on this.)
The public relations industry is a phenomenon developed in the freest countries: Britain and the US. In a free country, it’s not going to be easy to control the population by force, so they had to have other means of controlling people — through control of beliefs and attitudes. The best way to control them according to Thorstein Veblen was to fabricate consumers. [He’s the “conspicuous consumption” guy.] We have to fabricate wants, direct people to the superficial things in life, and the people will be trapped into becoming consumers. This doctrine is found through all progressive intellectual thought including Walter Lippmann, a major progressive intellectual of the 20th century, who said in The Phantom Public (chapter 14):
“A false ideal of democracy can lead only to disillusionment and to meddlesome tyranny. If democracy cannot direct affairs, then a philosophy which expects it to direct them will encourage the people to attempt the impossible; they will fail, but that will interfere outrageously with the productive liberties of the individual. The public must be put in its place, so that it may exercise its own powers, but no less and perhaps even more, so that each of us may live free of the trampling and the roar of a bewildered herd.”
Like Madison and Powell, he thought citizens should be spectators, not participants. The advertising industry exploded with the goal of fabricating consumers. The ideal is what you see today where teenage girls spend free Saturday afternoons in the mall, not the library or park. The idea is to control everyone. The perfect system is based on a dyad — the pair is you and the internet -in which one presents you with the proper life and you spend your time and effort gaining those things. Currently that’s the measure of a decent life.
Markets are supposed to be based on informed consumers making rational courses. If we had a system like that, a true market system, then a television ad would consist on GM putting up information saying what they have for sale. That’s not what an ad is. The point is to create uninformed consumes who will make uninformed choices. That’s what advertising is all about. When the PR system runs elections, they do it the same way. They want to create an uninformed electorate who will make uninformed choices against their own desires.
Obama didn’t really promise anything; that’s mostly an illusion. There was very little discussion of policy because public opinion on policy is sharply disconnected from what leaders want. Policy is focused on private interests that fund the campaigns with the public being marginalized.
#10. Marginalize the Population
A leading political scientist, Martin Gilens, determined that 70% of the population has no way of influencing policy, and the population knows it. It’s led to a population that’s angry, frustrated, and hates institutions. They’re not acting constructively to respond to this but are very self-destructive with unfocused anger: attacks on one another and on vulnerable targets. It’s corrosive of social relations in order to get people to hate and fear each other and look out only for themselves and don’t do anything for anyone else.
April 15th is that day we pay taxes. It’s a measure of democracy that it should be a day of celebration as the population decides to fund the programs they agreed on, but instead it’s a day of mourning — a day in which some alien power is coming down to steal your hard-earned money.
The tendencies described in the US, unless they’re reversed, will create an extremely ugly society based on Adam Smith’s warning of a vile maxim, “All for myself, nothing for anyone else.” A society in which normal human instinct and emotions of sympathy, solidarity, and mutual support are driven out — that’s a society so ugly I don’t even know who’d live in it.
If the society is based on the control of private life, it will reflect those values — of greed, and the desire to maximize personal gain at the expense of others. Now, any society, a small society based on that principle is ugly, but it can survive. A global society based on that principle is headed for massive destruction.
I don’t think we’re smart enough to design, in any detail, what a perfectly just and free society would be like. I think we can give some guidelines. And more significant, we can ask how we can progress in that direction.
John Dewey, a leading social philosopher in late 20th century [who responded to Lippmann in The Public and Its Problems], — argued that until all institutions, production, commerce, media, unless they’re all under participatory democratic control, then we will not have a functioning democratic society: “As long as politics is the shadow cast on society by big business, the attenuation of the shadow will not change the substance.”
Where there are structures of authority, domination, hierarchy, somebody gives the order, somebody takes them, they are not self-justifying. They have to justify themselves. They have a burden of prof to meet. Well fi you — usually they can’t justify themselves. If they can’t then we should be dismantling them. Progress over the years has been just that. The way things change is because lots of people are working all the time — in their communities, workplace, or wherever they happen to be, building up the basis for popular movements, which are going to make changes. That’s the way everything has ever happened in history
For example, freedom of speech isn’t in the Bill of Rights or the Constitution. It began in the 1960s through the civil rights movement, which demanded rights and refused to back down. They established a high standard of free speech. The same thing happened with women’s rights. That’s how rights are won. Flaws in institutions have to be corrected by operating outside the framework that is commonly accepted.
Activists are people who have created the rights that we enjoy; they carry out the policies and contribute to the understanding. We have to try to do things, learn about what the world is like, and that feeds back to the understanding. In a free society, the government has limited capacity to coerce, so lots can be done if people struggle for their rights.
As Howard Zinn said, “What matters is the countless small deeds of unknown people who lay the basis for the significant events that enter history.” They’re the ones who have done things int eh past. They’re the ones who will do things in the future.
May 2017 — Ralph Nader Interview
Ralph Nader interviewed Noam Chomsky about Chomsky’s book Requiem for the American Dream and film of the same title. He’s trying every type of media to spread this understanding of history, to “throw fact against myth.”
I just summarize the key points here as succinctly as possible. The following is all made of direct or close to direct quotations from Chomsky with bits of Nader included. Check out the transcript if you want the whole thing verbatim to mine for quotes. This is just the idea.
After the uprisings of the 60s, both the political elites of the left and right were affected by the notorious Powell Memorandum of 1971, Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell’s memo to the Chamber of Commerce. Powell leaned to the right and saw an attack beginning from left-wing extremists like Herbert Marcuse and Ralph Nader who were out to undermine the free-enterprise system. His conclusion was that businessmen really own the country and should fight back. But the liberals at the same time, affected by Samuel Huntington’s Crisis of Democracy, came to a similar conclusion, albeit more muted: There’s too much democracy, and passive parts of the public are starting to enter the political arena. It’s creating too much pressure on the state; the pressure from the corporate sector is never mentioned, though. That’s comparing national interests to special interests: the young, old, farmers, workers, women, etc. Those special interest groups need to be made to go back to being passive. Huntington called on schools and churches to better indoctrinate the young.
Coming from both sides, it couldn’t avoid having an effect, and neo-liberal policies were formed starting late in the Carter administration but peaking during Reagan’s time. In an effort to reduce the role of the public, they reduced the role of government and transferred it all to the market where the public doesn’t have any power. The de-regulated industries and banks grew dramatically and, instead of just loaning money as needed, they started to get into predatory activities, like speculating with other people’s money. The worldwide effect was a sharp increase in the concentration of wealth in the hands of the few, which led to more power, which led to more concentration until we have a fraction of the 1% in charge of almost everything. This marked a sharp decline in democracy as 70% of the population is disenfranchised since their own representatives will pay no attention to their opinions. Now, under Trump, the people appointed to head the departments of state are the very people whose record has been to stifle those very agencies they’ve been appointed to run. These cabinet appointments would be comical if their effects weren’t so awful.
We see all this is the trend towards populism: a framework of the people set against the elite. There’s tremendous anger and contempt for institutions now, and some are collapsing. We could see it in the last election with Sanders rising up despite no support from the wealthy or media, and Trump becoming unstoppable. And in France we just saw an election in which the two major parties were wiped out, and two from the edges, a neo-fascist and a neo-liberal, were the popular choices. Worldwide there’s disillusionment reflecting the fact that policies are in place with the explicit objective of undermining democratic participation.
The more savage fringe of the Republican Party, Paul Ryan, is undermining workers’ rights, safety rights, and health programs, and increasing big tax cuts for the rich at the expense of the most vulnerable parts of the population. Industry is subsidized by the public at $80 billion per year, which is nothing compare to the subsidies to energy and agribusiness. All talk of a free market is a joke. Tax payers are forced to subsidize their own oppression.
The focus on the people’s problems is a ruse to atomize society — to pit factions against one another so they’ll all be more easily controlled. It’s divide and rule: people turn against one another rather than focus on the government: they argue about reproductive rights, gun control, and same-sex marriage, instead of cracking down on corporate crime. This is how it worked with Senator Inhofe who believes climate change is a hoax. He was asked how to win elections: “God, gays, and guns.” Divide and rule distracts people from the most frightening issues.
Manufactured consent has a media system that deceives the people. People undermined by political decisions are voting in favour of candidates undermining them, like was explained in Strangers in Their Own Land. They have been turned against their own interests through an offer of narrow choices. Courts have persuaded the majority that there are too many frivolous lawsuits clogging up the system, but less than 2% of wrongful injuries get into the courts in the first place.
The image that comes up is of people standing in a line. Behind us are our parents and grandparents who worked hard to get the American dream. They got ahead, so they moved along in the line, but now the line has stalled or declined. Ahead of us, people are flying into the stratosphere. That doesn’t bother us, though, because that’s the American dream. What worries them is the people behind them. This is where scapegoating occurs. Reagan talked about welfare mothers driving in limos to the welfare office. That story. People behind us are worthless and lazy. The federal government role is to help the worthless behind us to get ahead of us with food stamps, affirmative actions, etc. So we end up hating the government for helping the poor instead of hating corporate interests. It’s a very effective way to control people. Trump’s promises, to bring jobs back, etc., won’t be realized. The working class, many who voted for Obama before but were disillusioned, then voted for the enemy. What happens when they realize the promises’ delusion again? The ruling powers will be forced to turn to more extreme scapegoating. Who’s the someone else? The most vulnerable parts: foreigners, etc. It could turn out to be pretty ugly.
This is the moment to act constructively. Sanders was remarkable. Thanks to Fox News, the most popular political figure in the country right now is Sanders. This indicates available opportunities to turn the tide.
Historically, labour unions provided the means where people could get together, act in concert, and carry forward progressive steps towards freedom and democracy. The strikes of the 1930s ushered in the New Deal, which had a beneficial effect into the 1950s. So unions are being attacked for their ability to build solidarity. People are the enemy of concentrated power, so we have to marginalize them somehow, and break up any institution that joins them together. Common beliefs are essential. Raising taxes on the rich has been a popular demand for forty year. At the polls, there’s general support for having national health care. It’s horrible, a pay or die situation. Drugs are more expensive in the U.S. than anywhere in the world. That goes back to the end of Reagan when 70% of people thought the right to health care should be in the constitution. The government is forbidden by law to negotiate drug prices. A poll found 85% are opposed to that, but it doesn’t enter debate in congress.
Many Trump and Sanders voters have similar concerns. There’s a real possibility of putting together a progressive coalition around jobs, health care, and taxing the rich, but there’s an enormous struggle to prevent it from happening. By fostering extreme consumerism to drive into their heads the only thing that matters is the number of commodities they have — it takes a huge effort to create this imagery. But there are huge areas of support for civil liberties, changing the war on drugs, the corporate tax system, wars of aggression, climate change. Everyone wants their own children to have access to a good school, water, air, food — that’s what we need a cutting age movement for. If it hits 75% of people, it will be politically unstoppable.
The effectiveness of a protest, like a hunger strike, is measured by the moral and cultural level of the outside population. If it’s ignored (because the culture and morals are low), then it’s ineffective. If it’s high, and people can appreciate the reasons for the action, then it can have a huge effect. It’s effective if the population appreciates the reasons and comes to support and perceive it. But, for example, there’s very little reported on the current Palestinian hunger strike. The U.S. has a large share of responsibility of deprivation and suffering: We provide aid and ideological support for the pursuit of Israeli policies in occupied areas, which are brutal. The hunger strike is directed at us. The question is, do we perceive it and do we react. This is the fourth week, and it’s still not in the mass media. There’s a black out.
So far, Trump has been a kind of a charade at two levels. Trump makes one outrageous claim after another, then the media go after him, after the latest crazy thing. Meanwhile he uses that to strengthen his base by saying the liberals are attacking him. Support for him increases as the people see themselves attacked by the liberal elites. Meanwhile, at another level, Paul Ryan is pushing through legislation of the most extreme. But attention is focused on other things, and the Democrats are to blame for that. Maybe that outrageousness will implode on him, but so far it’s working very well.
I just takes 1% in each district to be connected in order to take back congress. “We the people” is what begins the constitution. If we can band together to turn the situation around, an emerging left-right alliance would be unstoppable.
August 2017 — Wallace Shawn’s Dinner with Chomsky
Wallace Shawn sat down for a chat with Noam Chomsky (video link here), and here’s what they talked about — slightly abridged and loosely quoted (for clarification purposes) with links. It’s a great recharge for activists!
Shawn — Many people are shocked to see the president is now a cruel, brutal, greedy type of a man, and this is now the face of America, but I’m not shocked because this has been the face of the United States for decades. What do you think is not new, and what do you think actually IS new? [For more on this, check out Cenk Uygur’s interview with John Cusack. It’s pre-election, and the president he’s criticizing at the beginning is Obama.]
Chomsky — My wife is from Brazil, and she predicted the Trump win before the primaries. From the outside, there’s much that is not new. Recently the U.S. demanded that Cambodia pay back a debt incurred when the U.S. was destroying their country. There was secret bombing. It seems probably hundreds of thousands were killed. The Khmer Rouge was a small group, but ended up become a mass army of peasants starving and driven off the land by American bombing. The U.S. offered aid to get them to purchase American agricultural produce, and now they want payback. The American ambassador to Cambodia couldn’t understand why Cambodians often make anti-American comments, but that’s the America plenty of people see all over the world.
What is new, and dramatically new, is the U.S. withdrawal from the rest of the world on the issue of greatest significance for the prospect of human survival: climate change. The Washington Post had images of receding glaciers that will raise sea levels by many feet and pretty much drive tens of millions off land. A good part of organized life in coastal cities will be devastated. Every country in the world with the exception of the United States is committed to at least some actions on this issue. The US alone is not only refusing to participate, but is actually moving in a dedicated fashion in the opposite direction: trying to maximize the damage.
In early November, COP 22 in Morocco was a follow up to the Paris negotiations. In Paris, the intention was to reach a verifiable treaty, but that couldn’t be done because of the Republican Party. This follow up conference was intended to put teeth in the agreement. The conference ended with, “Is there any point in continuing?” This departure from the rest of the world is pretty striking. It’s a case of enormous significance.
The other crucial issue is nuclear weapons. Trump’s positions on this are all over the map, but some are frightening. With Putin, they’ve indicating they’re opposed to the START Treaty, which would reduce weapons. This is another departure from the world on a critical issue.
Shawn — Do you think the people who deny climate change are sincere, or do you think they simply want oil drilling profits to continue so they pretend they don’t believe the scientists?
Chomsky — You said an obscene word that I can’t even say because there might be children present: it’s spelled- p-r-o-f-i-t-s. The way you should pronouns the word is ‘jobs’. Short term profits for tomorrow outweigh the question of whether human beings survive. Who believes it, who doesn’t believe it, probably varies. The leading senate figure dealing with the environment, James Inhofe [with the snowball to prove climate change isn’t real], is an evangelical Christian running what’s left of the EPA. His position is that if God has decided to warm the earth, then it would be sacrilegious to do anything about it, and that resonates with a good part of the population. A pew poll indicated that 40% of Americans do not regard climate change as important to act on because they’re waiting for the second coming. The Koch brothers and rational people know what’s happening, but they want jobs tomorrow.
Shawn- For all of my lifetime, and probably before it, there’s been an enormous amount of denial on the part of both the elites and ordinary people about what the role of the U.S. has been. A lot of what you have written has dealt with the different ways we whitewash or minimize or outright deny or forget the things that we’ve done. You would think, with a history like ours with genocide of indigenous, slavery, killing tw million Vietnamese, we would think we’re the worst country that’s ever been. But most of the people I don’t know still think America is the greatest country that ever lived. But a lot of people that I know, think it’s really not so bad, and it’s just on the brink of being a model for other countries. This is in enormous contrast to at least one country, Germany, where everybody you meet is very well-aware of the crimes of Germany. What do you think the consequences of living in a country where the list of things we deny increases every day in a big pile — bombing in Yemen or Iraq that we’re responsible for, and that’s just thrown on the pile of things that are minimized. What are the consequences of living in a place where everything that’s happened in the past is denied?
Chomsky — There’s a big differences between the US and Germany in that Germany lost the war, and in losing were compelled to recognize what happened. The US has never been defeated, so they don’t have to recognize it. The term “American exceptionalism” is a very bad term. It’s not in the least exceptional. Every great power during its day in the sun had the same point of view. The French were carrying out a “civilizing mission” while the French minister of war was calling for the extermination of Algerians. Japanese fascists were carrying out horrendous massacres in the 30s and 40s, and we have the internal documents and discussions that describe their dedication for creating an earthly paradise despite their benign attentions going unrecognized.
Some of the most distinguished people you can think of believe this, like John Stuart Mill. He wrote an essay on intervention which is worth remembering. In 1859, Mill was writing about the question of should we become involved in affairs of the ugly world out there or not. It’s regarded as an anti-intervention essay, but that’s because it’s not read very carefully. What he says is, England is a unique country, an angelic country, that acts only in the interest of others, but we’re so benevolent that others can’t believe it, so they ascribe base motives to us. So if we intervene, they’re going to believe we’re doing it for some motive of our own. Nevertheless, despite the fact that we’ll be condemned for these actions, it’s still necessary for us to intervene to save the barbarians (India) from their own horrendous acts. He advocated an extended British conquest of India in order to try to gain control of the opium trade and to break into China. This is when India talked about free trade, but China didn’t want British manufacturers because they had their own. They could only do it by turning the Chinese into opium addicts, so they’d accept British manufacturers. This was 1859, and then immediately after, there were horrifying British atrocities in India, a mutiny put down with extreme brutality. It’s well known and discussed openly, and this was a distinguished, well respected writer writing about this.
To what extend is this an elite intellectual phenomenon, and to what extent is it the attitude of the population? There’s some interesting evidence that’s not been well investigated. Take the Vietnamese war, the worst crime of the post WWII period: pure aggression, millions were killed. It ended in 1975. Look at the record. The U.S. had two views: it was a noble effort but we didn’t try hard enough; and the other view, the left, is illustrated by Anthony Lewis who wrote the war began with blundering efforts to do good — by definition everything we do is an effort to do good, but by 1969 it had become clear the U.S. couldn’t bring democracy to Viet Nam, so it became a disaster. As for the general population, polls were taken at the time with one question: What do you think of the war in Viet Nam? 70% said the war was fundamentally wrong and immoral. This was interpreted as Americans thought it was immoral because too many Americans were killed, which is possible, but another possibility is that they thought it was wrong and immoral. This is so contrary to environment at the time that it couldn’t be raised. The understanding of these issues aren’t far below the surface. Take two founding crimes: extermination of natives and slavery. In the 1960s they weren’t crimes, but activism had a significant civilizing effect on the country. It showed a substantial recognition of the nature of theses crimes and produced big change.
What kind of country it is? A mixture. Many are admirable. One of the fundamental human rights, freedom of speech, is protected in the United States, but it’s not in the bill of rights or in the constitution. It was not established until the 1960s because of the will of the people. There are many respects in which there are awful crimes, but there’s a good streak too. At one point Arkansas tried to ban Howard Zinn’s A People’s History, but that was defeated, and now it’s read in schools.
Shawn — You’ve always had a suspicion of authority, an unwillingness to grant powerful people the right to make decisions on everyone else’s behalf, and you’ve criticized people who worry about an excess of democracy: Madison to Walter Lipmann and de Toqueville. You’re critical of those that worry if you give the ordinary too much influence, they might make wrong decisions and go in the wrong direction. Today, you have a situation where an enormous amount of people get their news from Fox News, and we’ve seen a lot of people voted for Trump; a lot are coming out of the woodwork expressing racists attitudes. What do you say to people who say that these people (Madison, etc.) were right? How can you be enthusiastic about giving power to people who are controlled by Fox News?
Chomsky — Well, let’s take James Madison, who like Mill, was a distinguished, respected figure in European enlightenment, a slave owner like all the others — I think Adams was the only one who wasn’t. Virginia was the centre of power in the colonies, so presidents came from there for thirty years or so. It wasn’t just a slave-owning state; it produced slaves as a commodity. When Britain banned trafficking in slavery in 1808, Virginia applauded it because it stopped competition. That’s the elite. Take a look at factors behind the American Revolution. We talk of taxation without representation, but more significant factors are coming out. One of them was a decision by the British courts, Lord Mansfield, 1772, in which he declared that slavery is so odious that it cannot be tolerated in Britain. American elites saw the writing on the wall, and that was a factor in their concern to liberate themselves from a country that might impose that here. Another issue was that Britain was trying to ban expansion across the Appalachians to protect Indian nations for their own reasons, not noble reasons. That’s elites. The Viet Nam war and Iraq invasion were elites. Today’s Republican leadership is trying to carry out some of the most savage attacks on people in history. The budget proposals, which is from Paul Ryan, not Trump, that’s elites. If you ask why people voted for Trump, there are a lot of reasons that are quite understandable. Among American white working class males, something remarkable is happening: an increase in mortality that doesn’t happen in advanced societies. It’s a condition of despair after 30–40 years of neoliberal policies have led to stagnation or decline for the majority of the population. Take a look at the figures. In 2007, right at the peak of euphoria, the real wages for American workers were lower than they were in 1979. Reagan, and later Clinton’s policies were harmful to much of population. Many people who voted for Trump, voted for Obama and believed in his propaganda of hope and change, but didn’t get either. If there were serious progressive alternatives, they would reach these people. A Fox News poll asked “Who’s your favourite political figure,” and one person was way ahead of the rest: Bernie Sanders.
Look at people’s attitudes towards issues, not Paul Ryan’s proposals. Take health care being discussed right now. It’s an international scandal with twice the cost and the worse outcomes because it’s privatized which leads to inefficiencies and bureaucracies and profit producing institutions. It’s a disaster. Right now, of the options for health care, the majority want a public option. This goes way back to the Reagan years. 70% wanted health care written into the constitution, and 40% thought it already was in the constitution. For forty years, polls on people show the majority thinks we need higher taxes on the rich, but taxes go down because of elites. When national heath care is discussed as an option, it’s considered politically impossible because financial and corporate institutions don’t want it.
There’s racism, xenophobia, and fear. The attitudes of people who voted for Trump are interesting. In Appalachia, people recognize that policies are cutting funding that enables them to live in their house, but they think it’s worth it because bad people are coming over the border, and we have to protect ourselves from them. This is the safest country but also the most frightened, and this shows up in decisions and choices, which could be changed. There are real opportunities, like Sanders. Look at the success of his campaign, which was pretty instructive. Go back well over 100 years: American elections are pretty much bought. We can predict the results by looking at campaign funding. Her’s a guy with no corporate funding or private wealth, using the word ‘socialist’, and he probably would have won without all the shenanigans. The media dismissed him, nevertheless he broke records.
Shawn — I’ve been thinking about something you wrote which gets to this question of democracy: teenaged girls, if they have a free Saturday afternoon, they like to walk around in the shopping mall rather than going to the library. I found that thought-provoking. I think many people believe that deep down, what we all really want is material comfort for ourselves more than anything else. We may make an effort and go to the library, or vote or go to work or visit a sick friend, but what we really would like to do is sit on a comfortable sofa and watch an entertaining program, and maybe have somebody bring us bonbons while we’re watching the program. This is what I’m really like, what everyone is: selfish and really seeking material comfort, and that is human nature. A lot of political attitudes come from the fact that we think we can never get away from that. Do you share that view?
Chomsky — Not in the least. There has been a massive effort over the past hundred years to try to convince people that’s who we are; it’s called ‘advertising.’ It’s a huge industry dedicated explicitly to try to direct people to the superficial things in life. Get them out of our hair by getting them involved in consumption. 20–30 years ago, they realized a sector not reaching — children — and they figured they can get around this with direct TV programs for children to induce nagging: “Get me this thing or I’m going to die.” Every aspect of life is devoted to this. Baseball stadiums and taxi cabs have every inch covered with ads. Human nature? I don’t think so.
Look at Trump voters in rural towns. These are people who want to work in coal mines rather than take a government hand-out. They don’t want to sit on the couch because that undermines their dignity and self-worth. That’s what people are. Go back further to a study of reading habits of the British working class late 19th century by Jonathan Rose. It turns out they’re better educated than aristocrats. An Irish blacksmith would hire a boy to read to him while he was working. I remember this from my childhood. It’s taken huge efforts to drive this out of people’s heads. It’s in our nature to want to be independent and creative. People want dignity and a sense of doing something important. It’s taken enormous efforts and a huge part of economy to make you think you want more commodities.
Studies of working class press during the industrial revolution in England written by factory girls — material indicate they wanted dignity. They hated the industrial system which was destroying rights as independent people. They attacked the slogan “gain wealth forgetting all but self” and taught that we are condemned. They regarded wage labour as not much diff from slavery; it’s selling yourself. If you take what you create and sell it, you’re not selling yourself. If you sell labour for someone else to sell the product, then you’re selling yourself. Human nature has been constructed and contrived with enormous effort. Look at the TV industry: they have content and fill — the content is the ads, the fill is the car chase you pull off the shelf to keep people watching the ads. See that the funding is going into the ads. The newspapers have the news hole: they lay out the paper with ads, then there’s a hole that you put stuff to keep people reading.
Anyone who took a course in economics knows the market economy is supposed to be based on informed consumers making rational choices. That’s what we’re taught our economy is. Turn on the TV, and take a look at the content: are they trying to create informed consumers? If we had a market economy, the ads would be announcement with characteristics of car and consumer reviews on them. but that’s not what you see. There have been huge efforts to create uninformed consumers to make irrational decisions.
Shawn — You’ve been opposed to each of the wars that the U.S. has been involved in, and you quote Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein who said, in 1955, “Shall we put an end to human race, or shall mankind renounce war?”. Is it just a coincidence that you opposed these wars, or do you share the view of Einstein and Russell? And how could mankind renounce war?
Chomsky — Take a look at the wars. The worst crime of post WWII is the Indo-China war. Did we have to fight it? Look at the history of the nuclear age; it’s a miracle that we’ve survived. Time after time, we’ve come close to a political leader making a decision within minutes of destruction. Look at the Doomsday Clock; it’s very revealing. It started in 1947 at 7 minutes to midnight. In 1953, when Russia and the U.S. both tested hydrogen bombs, we were at 2 minutes to midnight — very close to total destruction, which probably could have been prevented. It tells us something about elites culture worth thinking about. Go back to 1950: the U.S. had levels of security unmatched in human history — 40% of the world’s wealth, control over the hemisphere, oceans, industry quadrupled over WWII. It had enormous security, and one potential threat: intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), which didn’t exist but were being developed.
A major study of nuclear strategy by George Bundy, describes security situation in the 1950s, about the time the us developed ICBMs. He was unable to find any discussion, proposal, hint in the entire record that maybe we ought to negotiate an end to this before it develops. There’s good reason to believe Russians would have been interested in negotiation because they were way behind weaponry, so it’s reasonable that they’d want to terminate the sole program that could have threatened us. It was not only not proposed, but apparently it never even occurred to anybody.
Go back to the Doomsday Clock: two years ago it was pushed forward to 3 minutes to midnight. A week into Trump, and it’s at 2.5 minutes: the closest since 1953. That’s the world we live in. These are human choices. That’s what Russell and Einstein were talking about. Humans are faced with a choice that is stark and unavoidable. We’ll either renounce war or destroy the human species. If you look at the record of near accidents, adventurous acts by political leaders, it’s literally miraculous that we’ve escaped. Now that’s combined with global warming.
We’re ignoring the two most crucial issues in human history. It wasn’t discussed in the last election, not by participant, media, or commentators. Think about what happened November 8th: here’s a meeting of 200 countries trying to deal with problems of existential significance — Will the human species survive into coming generations? — and a major country pulls out. Now we’re looking for China to save us from disaster when our own country is racing towards the precipices. And there’s no comment on it. It’s so astonishing we can’t find words to describe it. That’s elite opinion here. Einstein died, but Russell lived on and was asked will there ever be peace? He said, when everything has been destroyed and all that’s left is bacteria and mollusks. That’s how we’re running the world.
An interesting debate happened 20–30 years ago between Carl Sagan and Ernst Mayr, an American biologist, on will we find extraterrestrial intelligence. Sagan calculated the number of planets like us to show the possibility. But Mayr took the opposite view. He said, we have one instance, Earth, and there have been 50 billion species on earth. We have a record of survival that shows which species are better at survival is inversely related to intelligence. The species that really do well are those that mutate quickly, like bacteria, or have a fixed niche and stick there, like beetles, do well. As you go up the scale, there’s less and less survival. We have very few primates. It’s just a blip that there are a lot of them now. The history of life on earth refutes the claim that it’s better to be smart than stupid. I think we’re trying to prove that right now.
Questions from the Audience
1. You have confidence that the populace supports sensible solutions, but half who bothered to vote, were sold by insensible promises. Given our history, isn’t it inconceivable that people will pivot towards sensible solutions to societies ills?
Chomsky — Look at the last election: the outcome is optimistic because of the remarkable success of Sander’s campaign. It shows a sharp break from 100 years of political history. In the 1890s, Mark Hanna, said there are two things necessary to run as successful campaign: The first is money, and I’ve forgotten the second one. Now there’s lots of political science research that shows literally the direct prediction of electability. Sanders totally broke with that. Now he’s most popular candidate in the country. If someone could approach people with policies that mean something — people who voted for Obama and were disillusioned don’t have to be disillusioned. It’s not hopeless, but a dysfunctional economic system which CAN be changed. It’s not in stone. The fact that it IS a free country gives us the opportunities; we just have to grasp them.
2. With respect to Syria, do you believe it was a failed regime change, and is the relationship with Russian and the U.S. at the position of the Cold War Era?
Chomsky — There’s potential for conflict developing between Russian and the U.S. that will be worse. William Perry, a nuclear strategist, has a history of saying that he can’t believe the fact that people aren’t concerned that we’re approaching potential conflict. The reason for this is not Syria, but the Russian border where both sides are engaged in highly provocative activities. NATO is hundreds of yards away from border. Russian planes are buzzing American planes. Obama expanded military. at the Russian border, not Mexico. It’s the border through which Russia was invaded by Germany, and now it has NATO, a more powerful force, on the border and expanding since the cold war. Provocative actions there could easily explode, but it doesn’t have to happen.
The one ray of light in the Trump proposals is the indication that he might have been inclined to reduce tensions with Russian. That’s what democrats focus on. They’re trying to extinguish the one ray of light. instead of focusing on the budget, climate, etc., they’re going after the fact that maybe they talked to Russians, but talking to Russia might reduce tensions. Syria is horrible. Russia and Assad are monstrous with forces supported by Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The U.S. doesn’t have a great role there either. Something could go wrong there, but the real threat is at the Russian border.
3. What can we do?
Chomsky- I get mail every day asking exactly that. Just about anything you want to! There are a lot of opportunities. We are very free. There are many options: electoral process, or take climate change, which is a monstrous problem. The federal government is in the hands of a wrecking ball. It sounds outrageous, but it’s true. The Republican Party is the most dangerous organization in human history. It’s racing towards destruction openly. Look at the decision of Trump’s admin so far: the EPA is virtually dismantled, major government operations on energy slashed and commenting on it is prohibited. But don’t give up; there’s plenty to be done at state and local levels for instance. San Diego is looking at reaching 100% renewable energy. Individuals can do things as simple as changing to LED bulbs and reducing consumption of industrial meat. All sorts of things can be done, from the electoral scene where government can be changed to direct action on all kinds of issues. There’s simply no shortage of things we can do. What there’s a shortage of is the will to do them.
June 2021 — Natalie Wynn Interview
I stumbled across a video of Natalie Wynn in conversation with flippin’ Noam Chomsky. They are two of my favourite thinkers, but I never, in my wildest imagination, would have expected to find them chatting together.
Noam seems to be everywhere these days, doing one talk after another, and Natalie is an excellent guide through his version of optimism. It’s a video that actually left me feeling hopeful about the world and energized to keep working for change. But the question I wanted asked throughout is, What does this type of necessary work look like, and how do we begin??
Here’s the video and a slightly paraphrased and abridged summary for easy skimming.
NATALIE: How do we influence Democrats to be more left-leaning? How do we get Biden to be more like Bernie?
NOAM: Biden is the best we’ve seen in a long time. His climate program is the most important thing. It’s not ideal, but it’s the best we’ve seen. The change is due to the Sunrise Movement and AOC and Edward Markey’s congressional resolution. It’s feasible for what must be done to divert disaster. It’s the same as the International Energy Agency. It’s a good resolution. Can it become legislation? That depends on people. Activist pressure is needed for it to move on. It’s the same as on every other issue. Paul Krugman, a liberal, says it’s a good policy but too radical for most. [Michael Mann has the same criticism.]
The left, by US standards, is Bernie Sanders. But over in Europe, if Bernie was run as Conservative in Germany, he could be a candidate. His policies are already accepted by the right in Germany: universal medical care, free college tuition; they have that everywhere in Germany, France, Brazil, Finland. It’s a conservative position, but it’s left only in the U.S. It wasn’t always like that.
The 1930s had a lot of similarities to today: vast inequality, labour was crushed, lots of resentment. There were two ways out: fascism or social democracy. The U.S. brought in the New Deal. The U.S. was in the lead in developing social democratic programs. Now we don’t have fascism in the 1930s sense, but something like it. We have the option of social democracy with Biden. He has New Deal flavour with his jobs program and environment. They’re the kind of programs that could have been in the New Deal. He’s running into an iron wall of opposition. The republican party won’t permit any of it. The supreme court is reactionary and struck down initiatives until the labour movement was revived. It had been destroyed by violence, worst than today. It got to point where labour was getting as far as sit down strikes in the mid-30s. That puts real fear in mainstream establishment because it’s one step before saying, “We don’t need you — get lost.” At that point, the reactionary court shifted to accommodate the Wagner Act. They started organizing New Deal measures which were the rudiments of a social democracy framework. It lasted until the reversal in the late 70s and early 80s. Business offensives have been working hard to roll back the progress. The future of left depends on what people like you will do. People became engaged, committed, worked on it, and it changed.
NATALIE: We have a self defeating pessimism as if it’s never been this bad.
NOAM: The 30s was far worse, and the country made lots of progress since. The activism of the 1960s really civilized the country in many ways. Things we considered normal at that time are unspeakable today. Right now we have a housing crisis. What should happen is what happened in the 1930s. The federal government got involved in affordable housing. What went on through 1960s would be intolerable today because it had to be segregated. They had to block African Americans through the 60s. We’ve come forward in that respect, not by magic, but by plenty of hard work that pushed us beyond that. Women’s rights’ barely existed in the 1960s. We’re in a much better situation now and the conditions were nowhere near as awful. Fascism mean real fascism: brown shirts marching in the streets and concentration camps with a powerful state run by totalitarian party running businesses as well. Popular activism and engagement can make a difference between a move to proto-fascism and a move to social democracy and beyond.
NATALIE: It seems easier to make progress in identity politics areas (feminism, gay right, trans issues) because so much work can be done through conscious-raising. I’m not an activist, but an entertainer with a conscience. I can shift things by talking. It seems more difficult to move to social democracy. It seems harder to break through the power of corporate money and politics. To a lot of people, it seems like an unbreakable wall of money and politics.
NOAM: It was the same in 1930s: the unbreakable wall of money, power. Talking is not just consciousness raising, but it leads to action. There are changes that happened: the expansion of civil rights is real for women and LGBTQ. The control of the corporate sector is dramatically different. There are the beginnings of worker-owned enterprising and flourishing collectives. It begins with changing people’s beliefs and understanding, then that turns into action. Critical issues and AOC and Markey’s resolution can be pushed to legislation like the New Deal measures were. Right now the supreme court might block it like they did in early 30s, but something changed. Popular power changed, and the court reluctantly went along. That alone changed the decisions of the court markedly. They could see the writing on the wall; they can’t get away with it anymore. There’s always the “vulgar Marxists” committed to unremitting class war, but there’s a limit to what they can get away with. Power is in the hands of the population if they exercise it, but have to exercise it: persuasion, education, organization, action, and persistent activism.
NATALIE: It’s difficult to see the long term power of incremental changes. If we start with a philosophical approach to politics — “What should society look like?” — then anything that’s not producing that is seen as a morally corrupting compromise. Some people are cynical that this isn’t real socialism so it’s not worth doing. They’re holding out for a revolutionary moment where suddenly everything will change.
NOAM: The difference between now and the 1930s is they had a left political party with long tradition of activist working in them. There was no illusions of instant gratification. They knew they’d have hard, longterm work, which will suffer regression. When things go bad, work harder. Take a lot of young people’s attitude towards Sander’s campaign. They described as failure, but it was a smashing success! It broke with over a century of American political history where electability was determined by funding. Look back to Mark Hanna, the campaign organizer [in 1896] who said, “What do you need to have successful campaign? Two things: money, and I forget the second one.” Sanders broke with that. He had no corporate funding, the media was against him. He would have won without the democratic political mechanism, and he still has an influential position, and others came in on Sander’s wave having big effect, like AOC. That’s not failure.
NATALIE: Sanders transformed my idea of what’s possible. The visibility of this changes people’s capacity to imagine what’s possible in the future.
NOAM: Go back 50 years to the 1960s. One of the great moments of the left was with the SDS. In 1968–69, the president of SDS, Paul Potter said, “It’s come time to name the system, Capitalism.” That’s what it was like. You couldn’t say the word ‘capitalism’! An interesting fact about the US is that it’s the only country outside of a dictatorship where socialism is considered a four-letter word. That’s a breakthrough that now you can say socialism, social democracy — not just say it but implement some of the policies — not just the words, but the actions right on the table. Take the climate issue, which is most important, but 10s of millions don’t have food; they’re being thrown out on the streets. There are programs that could deal with these things. Biden’s programs have a new deal flavour. If they could get through, it will make a dent in these. It’s not a revolution, but we won’t have revolution tomorrow. It will help these people, but there’s 100% republican opposition. Biden was criticized sharply for making a terrible mistake to say, “I’ll accept limited terms that Republicans permitted but will continue to press for broader conditions.” McConnell denounced him, but even liberal press condemned it. We have to create an environment where he’s not blamed for that but supported. He should try to press to get broader action through. There’s a Republican red line that ways we can’t do anything that harms ultra wealth and corporate power. We can’t touch Trump’s tax scam, which was a huge giveaway to the very rich and corporate. The tax bill of 2017, we can’t touch that. Should we accept that? Of course not.
NATALIE: What do we do about the Republican party? It seems like future of right is Trumpism. 40% of the country has checked out of public rationalist itself. They’re not doing reasoning in any sense: Q-Anon, pedophile cabals… It undercuts the ability to communicate with people. There’s an attack on normal concepts of reality. Some have to be ignored; we’re never going to have everyone agree, but it’s an obstructionist Republican party. It’s alarming how many are still supporting this.
NOAM: True, it’s about 40%, but look more closely. It’s age-related, and younger republicans are more open to discussion and thinking about these issues. That’s where you work. It’s not fixed. Many who voted for Trump, voted for Obama. One of the many reasons why Republicans are dead set against allowing progressive legislation is that if it does it will peel off large part of their voting base if Democrats succeed in alleviating harsh conditions. Republicans have a strong reason to make the country ungovernable; they ensure their own power by ensuring no legislation will improve people’s lives. We need to work to make people understand that. Think of the 1930s with the same kind of ultra-right groups. In 1932–33, there was close to a coup to overthrow the government. It was broken up by Smedley Butler who blocked the coup. There were fascists all over England and Germany. Germany in the 1920s was the peak of western civilization in the sciences, arts, literature. It was a model of democracy. It had a huge labour movement. One reason Nazi got in is because the left was split. Stalin was followed religiously by the Communist Party. The social democracy counterpart was seen as social fascism. Trotsky tried to urge the two parts of the left to unite and was condemned by communists as the worst in history for being willing to cooperate with social fascists who are worse than Nazis. We can find counterparts today.
NATALIE: So don’t let the left be split! Like in 2016 when Trump was running and attracting emerging anti-semitism and race science. He was able to recruit by targeting dissatisfaction with extreme leftist activism, like male resentment of feminism or white people not understanding BLM. That’s where he can bring people over. How do we stop young people who tend to be more pliable. They’re starting to flirt with right-wing ideology, and we can intervene. Far right rhetoric is targeting conflict between left and centrist groups.
NOAM: Their job is to cause conflict and antagonisms inside the left. The job of the left is to do the same to them, to strip off parts of the far right. We need to bring them around to understand that obstruction of the environment is no joke. It will destroy their lives and children’s lives. They can come to understand that, among younger republicans there’s more appreciation of facts like that. Look at Vietnam. The anti-war movement didn’t come out of nothing. In the early 60s, it was impossible to talk about it. In Boston, a liberal city, we couldn’t meet against the war until 1966 or it would have been broken up by pro-war students. It takes work and doesn’t just happen by itself. It’s the same with civil rights. People faced extreme hostility all over. When MLK moved activity to the north and started working for poor people’s movement, he was bitterly attacked by the liberal community. He was practically destroyed before being assassinated. There are things he talked about then that you can talk about now. BLM has way more support.
NATALIE: One advantage from the internet is genuine freedom of information, which can be misused too, but free speech is not negligible. We have the opportunity to say all this.
NOAM: We have lots of opportunity and problems. Nothing’s going to be easy. It was harder before and people didn’t give up. They went ahead to work courageously and effectively. There are still plenty of rotten things, but compared to decades ago, it’s a big improvement.
The Republican party is no longer a normal political party. Go back 20–30s year, and it was a political party. In the 1960s, if I was trying to prevent state troopers from beating people, I called a Republican because they’re most likely to give help. Eisenhower is similar to Sanders. They both have pro-union statements. They were a legitimate party. It all changed in the last 20 years. Even mainstream commentaries are a radical insurgency that’s abandoned politics. It started under Gingrich. Under Obama, McConnell said, “Our goal is to make sure he cannot accomplish anything.” They represent the super rich and corporate system. McConnell and Trump put the finishing touches on what’s being going on for a while. It doesn’t mean it’s permanent. Some Republican legislators are amenable to discussion: Collins, McCuskey. We need to change the party, and younger people can do that. I won’t like their policies, but at least they’ll be within the framework of political politics.
How do you convince them to get rid of the filibuster? It’s not simple. McConnell has ways of reacting. He can use maneuvers to close down the Senate, if you want to destroy the country, which he will do to keep power. It’s a difficult job when left commentators are condemning Biden because he didn’t get medicare for all and minimum wage. How do you do it?? Not by sitting at your desk on Twitter. That doesn’t work. So get to work and start creating the conditions in which it can be done. That’s always the answer.
The right-wing has always argued that media is weighted to the left. Even at the end of the Vietnam War, the liberal Freedom House launched an attack on media for being so patriotic that they lost the war. The last quarter of Manufacturing Consent is a defense of media against this attack. They’re just lying through their teeth. All the evidence is the opposite. It’s an amazing example of fanatic lying by liberals, attacking media of being too left. If you go to Right, in the 1950s McCarthy era, the right will always claim that media was destroying the country. It’s part of their schtick. The response is to tell the truth about it. A defense of media pointed out reporters were honourable, courageous, telling truth, but within a framework of support for US doctrines. They’re undermining a longterm commitment to democracy and freedom; it’s honest work within a framework of conformity to a propagandist line. Look at the right-wing hysteria about CRT. They haven’t a clue what it is and don’t care; it’s a demonic thing run by the radical left to make white kids feel guilty for anything happen. We need to respond by exposing the truth.
NATALIE: And that can backfire for them. Previously a lot of people had no idea about CRT. Now we have an opportunity to step in to teach about CRT.
NOAM: We’re presented with an opportunity to point out what CRT really is and why we should take it seriously. It’s not an attack on children or school, but an effort to bring about an understanding of our history and the legacy it has left. It’s not just history, but it has a legacy: racist housing programs have a legacy. It’s a large part of the reason for large wealth disparity. White workers could buy a house in the 1950s and 60s, and black workers couldn’t. It’s had a major impact on today. The same is true of extermination of indigenous populations. Go back to the 60s and see how far we’ve come. In the 1960s leading left liberals were writing that when English colonists came, there was nobody here — just a million people. They were off by 80 million which made possible an attack that led to extermination and expulsion of an incomparable scale. This was unknown in the 60s, but that’s broken through and we know about it and can do something about it. Those are major changes that came about in the same way — by hard unremitting work. Nothing happens easily against extreme antagonism. When the New York Times ran the 1619 series, it was a real breakthrough. It would have been impossible a couple years earlier. But there was an extreme backlash to ban it — liberal scholars started carping about footnotes — and a backlash across the board that don’t want to be exposed to that stuff. But it’s part of the change that led to the extraordinary uprising after the George Floyd assassination. Things change, but it takes work.
NATALIE: Obviously all media has a bias, but the fight is about what the media says: pro-democracy is a bias, but we argue that’s the bias they should have against fascism. There’s no totally neutral feed of info that can be curated. It can’t exist. Of course the right-wing notion of the far left agenda is not true, but there’s always some kind of an agenda that isn’t in itself a problem. Is consent always manufactured by media that sets the terms of a conversation?
NOAM: It’s true that media are institutions bound by institutional structure. They are major corporations selling a product (readers) to other corporations (advertisers). We’ve got major corporations selling people like you to other corporations. They going to closely link to government. That’s embedded in the general hegemonic culture which is in the universities about American innocence. That’s the framework but doesn’t mean there’s no good reporting. The first thing I do is every morning is read the NYT and the Washington Post. We have to compensate for inherent distortions that are part of institution, but there are things said today inconceivable just a few years ago in the NYT, things columnists never admitted years ago. That’s part of a change that’s taken place in our general culture. It affects institutions as well. That’s the way you make progress.
NATALIE: It’s been helpful to have a conversation about optimism. It’s a relief to hear these things. It can feel crazy to think it’s good when Democrats are able to pass some reforms rather than nothing’s ever good enough. That’s the height of self-sabotage.
December 2021 — Yanis Varoufakis Interview
Yanis Varoufakis spoke to Noam Chomsky, at DiEM25, about what 2021 has taught us. In a nutshell: the wealthy puts profits over people to their own detriment (e.g. patent rights over vaccines, which provoked mutations) and will only help with climate change if they can profit without taking risks. We have climate policies that could help, but we need more protesting to force this change. The U.S. citizens have been convinced of lies around climate change and world politics. Europe needs to stand up to lead instead of following the US, and we need to negotiate better with China or we’ll end up in a terminal war. We must focus on what we might actually influence — i.e. our own country’s acts of atrocity. Don’t seek protection from ideas you don’t like, but meet them head on with intellectual rigour (abridged quotations below).
Chomsky said, we learned more forcefully things we already knew.
Rich countries have monopolized vaccines for themselves and have insisted on preserving the outlandish property rights agreements, patent rights assigned to pharmaceutical corporations and mislabeled free trade agreements. For example, Moderna was able to use extensive government funding to develop an effective vaccine, but they will not permit South Africa to produce their vaccines. It means South Africa could not vaccinate the population sufficiently to withhold ongoing mutations.
The wealthy and the powerful, who recognize all this, place profits of major pharmaceutical corporations and prerogatives given in trade agreements over the lives of many millions of people including the lives of their own populations. It generalizes to something more important: global warming. We just saw the outcome of the COP 26 fiasco. There were two events taking place inside the halls of the great buildings. John Kerry was euphoric that market are now onside with climate change, so how can we lose now that investors are working on the cause? He’s referring to comments by Larry Fink that the investment community is ready to commit $130 trillion to solving the climate crises but there are conditions attached. The investment must be guaranteed to be risk-free by the IMF. They’ll help only if they make money with no risk involved. That’s the way the market works, the market structured by the rich and powerful. While these meetings were going on, there was another event outside. Tens of thousands of demonstrators were outside asking for a decent world for themselves and their children, asking them to lead the way to open the door to a much better world. Which of these forces is going to prevail?
The same is happening with covid. It’s a serious problems, but not on the same scale as global warming. Covid is deadly and destructive, but it’s not total destruction the way climate change is.
Varoufakis: “Concentrated corporate power knows how to take advantage of a humanitarian crisis and how to make use of the state. There’s no conflict between the state and the market. They’re both undermining humanity’s collective interest. Are the protests winning at all?
Chomsky:
It’s not a perpetual defeat. We’re making slow steps forwards. Protests have had an effect. They’ve compelled the rich and powerful to recognize they have to do something to indicate they’re on the side of the public. They do it rhetorically or by greenwashing or by saying ‘yes, net zero emissions,’ but that means “no elimination only innovation” — that’s the phrase out of the Exxon mobile playbook repeated by Joe Manchin, the Democratic senator working with fossil fuel companies to ensure nothing happens. They want net zero while making profits, which means it’s finished. That’s class war: find ways to achieve aims by whatever method you can. But you don’t always win. There are steps forward, but they’re not enough.
The Biden administration put forth a climate program, which is inadequate but well beyond anything that preceded it. Right now in Congress it’s being cut back to virtually nothing by 100% Republican opposition and right-wing Democrats, like Joe Manchin, who’s a coal baron and leading recipient in congress of fossil fuel funding. But at least something is there: a resolution in congress from AOC, which does spell out in some detail the well known feasible means to overcome the crisis. It’s reached the level of resolution. We need to increase the pressure until it becomes a legislative option. It’s a step, but not enough of a step. Without demonstrations, we’d still be in the Trump era. Neither is good, but one is worse than the other. The activism has fended off the worse, but left plenty of room for class war to continue.
What is happening to the most powerful, wealthy state in world history? It’s going off the precipice. The attitude of republican voters, comparing with European parties, ranks with right-wing fascist parties. It’s the party likely to take power in 2024, because of various manipulations. If the FD party won in Germany, we’d be concerned, but it’s much more dangerous when it’s taking power in the most powerful state. Look at attitude changes: global warming declined by 20% after four years of propaganda. There are ominous signs of worship of a semi-deity. It will be tricky to overcome them. Massive protests are necessary.
Another lesson: Europe is unwilling or incapable of taking the role in the world it could play. Look at Germany: it was in the lead of protecting the rights of Big Pharma to keep patents for itself. It’s the most civilized country; it shouldn’t be happening. Iran negotiations are collapsing because Europe refuses to play an independent role in world affairs. When the US pulled out from the agreement, in violation of international laws if anyone cares, Europe strongly protested and opposed extra sanctions, but will obey the US. As long as they legitimize that external power, it looks quite grim.
There’s the China threat, but what is it? The former PM of Australia, Bob Hawke, had a good definition in an article in the Australian Press about claims on China: The threat is real, but it’s China’s existence, a power that will not be intimidated by the United States the way Europe is. The reason for the threat is that it’s there and refusing to be intimidated, and continuing to expand soft power politics with the intention of reaching central Europe, Africa, Afghanistan, and establish schools around the world to teach Chinese technology, which the US is trying hard to refuse from accepting. They’ll bring in large parts of the world. For the US, that’s intolerable. That’s a threat to survival, leading to provocative action that could lead to a terminal war.
It’s similar in the Ukraine. There are ways to deal with these things; diplomatic options are open. Negotiations won’t go the way the US want, but they can lead to a viable world. It’s like in 1991: there were two options on the table, Gorbachev’s vision of a unified Eurasia with no military organization, and the US vision of expansion of hostile military alliance as far East as possible with moves to invite even Ukraine into NATO. It’s one of the factors leading to what could be a highly dangerous crisis. These things can be overcome. And independent forces, like Progressive International, can play a major role in mobilizing public opinion. There have been some successes, but it’s been a long haul.
Varoufakis: “I’m struggling to maintain a balance between warning progressives against falling prey to US warriors and looking forward to incite longterm simmering conflicts with Russia and Eastern Europe. How to not demonize China — understanding Paul Keating — while at the same time maintaining vigilance and critical stance on China’s treatment of Uighurs and the brutal authoritarianism of Putin. It’s a difficult balance as provocative acts against China only increase the authoritarianism. We can cooperate with elements within China that do exist to the extent we can. We can do everything within our reach. Other things we can do which we’re not doing is focus on Gaza. In China, one million people have been sent to concentration camps; in Gaza one million children are living in unsurvivable situations: water’s poisoned, constant attacks, sewage and power systems destroyed with US weapons. We can do a lot about that. We can end it. So that should be our priority. We understand that well with enemies. Weiwei criticizes US policies; his roles it to be concerned with China.”
Chomsky: “Our priority always is one should do what you can hope to change and influence. I can’t change the crimes of Genghis Khan; I can protest them, but not change them. I can protest the authoritarianism and cruelty of the Chinese government, but I can’t do much about the persecution of Uighurs in concentration camps. When we can do things to help others under stress and oppression, we should certainly do it. The decision of any moral person is “What can I influence?” That’s elemental morality. The moral position is the one you can effect somehow, even if it’s worse elsewhere.”
Varousfakis: “Like in Kashmir. What Modi’s government is doing today is conspicuous by its absence. The category of fashionable victims depends on our leaders. To look to another setting: remember back in the 1970s and 80s in Britain, encountering the term “safe space.” It meant a place where you bring supporters of the IRA and unionist in a room where they had an opportunity to make each other uncomfortable in their arguments. Now it means the opposite, which causes a great deal of concern.”
Chomsky:
It should cause concern. Universities should not protect students from views they don’t want to hear. I don’t want to go to lecture supporting racism, but don’t want to ban it. Use it as an educational opportunity and create an educational forum. If you set it up as a debate, they don’t come or they leave defeated and students have learned something. Pressure for safe spaces is understandable, but what is the right way to deal with it. Also recognize that universities have been safe spaces — safe from the left — keeping the university clean from the subversion of people like us. We’re tolerated, but kept at the margins. Look at economics departments in the US and ask how many Marxists economists can be found there, like Paul Sweezy, a left economists who kept his views silent until he got tenure. That’s keeping safe spaces in the worst way. The former Harvard dean McGeorge Bundy, he thought people he called “wild men in the wings” have to keep out of universities: those who go beyond criticizing US power for tactical errors and talk abut deeper crimes. He wrote in the 1960s when people were daring, for the first time, to criticize the worst crimes since the second word war as not mistakes, but crimes.
The reaction in the 60s, was revealing. In the early 70s came the important publication of the Trilateral Commission — liberal internationalists from Europe, Japan and the US, who were very concerned about activism of the 60s pressing too far. People were asking for too much democracy, and we need more moderation in democracy. There was a concern for universities failing in their responsibility in indoctrination of the young, instead letting people out there opposing war and getting women’s rights and Black rights. Those are the safe spaces that have reigned as long back as we want to go. Universities are now an issue because young students are asking for spaces safe from racism, misogyny, anti-semitism, violence, aggression, and so on. This was wrong then when it was the official doctrine’ it’s wrong now when it’s at the margins. But it’s tactically ridiculous when the left takes over divisive tactics of the powerful. It’s a gift to the far right. Now the Republican party is running to it as their main campaign. The winning issue is CRT. It’s a cover term for everything they don’t like: women ‘s rights, opposition to white supremacy… They demonize it, mobilize parents, tell them schools are forcing children to believe they are oppressors because of their skin colour, and it’s working.
Remember Hitler in Germany in the 1920. Germany was the peak of western civilization and democracy at the time. Ten years later, Germans were enthralled to a maniac who convinced them they had to subject themselves to his ideological commitments to carry out the worst atrocities in history. The same human beings in 10 years. Now it’s happening again in the United States. It can happen in Europe. It’s happening right now in the Republican party; it’s concentrating on that to regain virtually perpetual power. That’s not an exaggeration, but can be read in respectable journals. Martin Wolf, in the Financial Times, warned recently that the US in danger of collapsing as democracy and falling under authoritarianism, really proto-fascism.
Going back to safe spaces, it’s helping that when they go overboard. It’s picked up and turned into propaganda weapons. Tactical choices aren’t trivial matters; human life depends on them, and have to be considered thoughtfully. Almost always the motive may be decent and honest, but you have to be careful what you do and not act in ways that provide weapons to the oppressors.
My message for 2022 is the same line made famous by Gramsci: keep pessimism of the intellect, and optimism of the will. There’s reason for optimism: things look grim, but there are ways out. We have to reach enough people and get them energized enough to take over.
Varoufakis: “Struggling and not ending up compromised is more fun than submitting!”
