Speaking truth to power: Chomksy’s learned subversion of US imperialism
Noan Chomsky’s new book of essays Making the Future “is an ingenious subtext of everything that has been said or done by US politicians and military leaders. He is the antidote to politico babble; an agitator who speaks uncomfortable truths.”
Noam Chomsky is the American linguist, philosopher, historian, activist and professor emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and one of the most quoted of living scholars (a student-waitress eulogised him when she saw his book).
But Chomsky sits uncomfortably with the establishment. None of his 30 books has been reviewed by the journals of American history. His opinions are challenging arguments about genocide, imperialism, social policy and, more recently, finance and the new world order.
Making the Future, a collection of his speeches, is an ingenious subtext of everything that has been said or done by US politicians and military leaders. He is the antidote to politico babble; an agitator who speaks uncomfortable truths. The USA is an empire now and, as one of George W Bush’s advisors said, “... when we act, we create our own reality... we’re history’s actors and you, all of you, will be left to study what we do.”
Chomsky has predicted events. In his column America in Decline, in Aug 2011, he foreshadowed a premise of the Occupy movement. “The resulting concentration of wealth (since the 1970s) yielded greater political power, accelerating a vicious circle that has led to extraordinary wealth for a fraction of one percent of the population, mainly, while for the large majority real incomes have virtually stagnated.”
Chomsky is no friend of ‘financialisation’, as he calls it. During election campaigns, politicians seek funding and the funders are rewarded by the politicians, who put in place some easing of the structures, modify the tax system and remove corporate governance, concentrating the wealth on the same fraction of one percent to feast upon.
Chomsky takes this truth menacingly forward. Since the United States is actively stepping backwards in convincing the public that climate change is a liberal hoax, why not make their nuclear policy available to the highest bidder — and the chance to sponsor the red button, perhaps?
George W Bush’s style of “smoke ’em out of their holes” diplomacy with apparently hostile nations broke the basic codes of interaction that we learn on the playground. “A truism in human and world affairs is that if you threaten people, they will defend themselves. If you reach out to them in good faith, people are likely to reach back.”
In Threats, Talks and a Hoped-for Accord with North Korea, a talk given in Apr 2007, Chomsky cites Bush in 2002 when he provokingly named North Korea a charter member of the ‘Axis of Evil’. The accusation was that North Korea was building a plutonium bomb and that the threat to the world was imminent. The result of this open mal-branding of North Korea who, unlike Iraq, was well able to defend itself with a highly-motivated army and a massed artillery directed at Seoul, in South Korea, was that “the stakes rose harrowingly” as North Korea began amassing its nuclear weapons arsenal in response to Bush’s rhetoric.
In 2007, when multilateral talks were convened in Beijing, which included China, Japan, Russia and South Korea, an apparent compromise was achieved and both countries declared the talks a success. North Korea agreed to dismantle its nuclear-arms facilities in return for “conciliatory offers” and allowed inspectors in. Or so it seemed. What happened above ground suppressed what was going on beneath it. North Korea exploded a bomb in Oct 2006 in the mountains near the Chinese border. The explosion was the nuclear equivalent of a damp cartridge in a shotgun. But the muffled explosion, together with an accompanying missile (“also a fizzle”) had enough firepower to inch the world further towards nuclear Armageddon. The explosion in North Korea and the missile firing “can be added to President Bush’s long list of foreign policy achievements”.
Much of the book concentrates on the conflicts in the Middle East and touches on the Arab spring and its deeper roots “simmering for years ... the first wave of protests began in Western Sahara, the last African colony, invaded by Morocco in 1975, and illegally held since.” Chomsky quotes the Lebanese political analyst, Rami Khouri, with some glee about the ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair being brought in to the rescue as a special envoy for Arab-Israeli peace, “something like appointing the Emperor Nero to be the chief fireman of Rome.” Despite his former cosiness with the Washington administration, President Bush and Condoleeza Rice were at pains to point out that Blair, despite his former statesmanship, particularly in the days that followed 9/11, was only dealing with the problems of institution building and had no political mandate.
One of the reasons Chomsky is quoted among lecturers, but not heralded by the academic hierarchy, is that he is quick to decipher words such as ‘stability’ when it is used to describe broad compliance with US interests in a region. To maintain ‘stability’, the US has placed harsh sanctions on Iran, but outside Europe, and not far outside — and most of the world, in fact — few are paying any attention. Here, we have a new world order where Turkey and Pakistan have no hang-ups about building pipelines with Iran and trade is increasing every year. China is expanding its industrial relationship with Iran and South America and the US State Department has warned us “if China wants to do business around the world, it will also have to protect its own reputation, and if you acquire a reputation as a country that is willing to skirt and evade international responsibilities that will have a long-term impact ... their international responsibilities are clear.”
This means that China is taking over and the USA doesn’t like it at all.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
