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Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post-9/11 World
In this first collection of interviews since the
bestselling 9-11, our foremost intellectual activist examines crucial new questions of U.S. foreign policy
Timely, urgent, and powerfully elucidating, this important volume of previously unpublished interviews conducted by award-winning radio journalist David Barsamian features Noam Chomsky discussing America’s policies in an increasingly unstable world. With his famous insight, lucidity, and redoubtable grasp of history, Chomsky offers his views on the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the doctrine of “preemptive” strikes against so-called rogue states, and the prospects of the second Bush administration, warning of the growing threat to international peace posed by the U.S. drive for domination. In his inimitable style, Chomsky also dissects the propaganda system that fabricates a mythic past and airbrushes inconvenient facts out of history.
Barsamian, recipient of the ACLU’s Upton Sinclair Award for independent journalism, has conducted more interviews and radio broadcasts with Chomsky than has any other journalist. Enriched by their unique rapport, Imperial Ambitions explores topics Chomsky has never before discussed, among them the 2004 presidential campaign and election, the future of Social Security, and the increasing threat, including devastating weather patterns, of global warming. The result is an illuminating dialogue with one of the leading thinkers of our time—and a startling picture of the turbulent times in which we live.
bestselling 9-11, our foremost intellectual activist examines crucial new questions of U.S. foreign policy
Timely, urgent, and powerfully elucidating, this important volume of previously unpublished interviews conducted by award-winning radio journalist David Barsamian features Noam Chomsky discussing America’s policies in an increasingly unstable world. With his famous insight, lucidity, and redoubtable grasp of history, Chomsky offers his views on the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the doctrine of “preemptive” strikes against so-called rogue states, and the prospects of the second Bush administration, warning of the growing threat to international peace posed by the U.S. drive for domination. In his inimitable style, Chomsky also dissects the propaganda system that fabricates a mythic past and airbrushes inconvenient facts out of history.
Barsamian, recipient of the ACLU’s Upton Sinclair Award for independent journalism, has conducted more interviews and radio broadcasts with Chomsky than has any other journalist. Enriched by their unique rapport, Imperial Ambitions explores topics Chomsky has never before discussed, among them the 2004 presidential campaign and election, the future of Social Security, and the increasing threat, including devastating weather patterns, of global warming. The result is an illuminating dialogue with one of the leading thinkers of our time—and a startling picture of the turbulent times in which we live.
226 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
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About the author
Noam Chomsky
977 books17.4k followersAvram Noam Chomsky is an American professor and public intellectual known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He is a laureate professor of linguistics at the University of Arizona and an institute professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Among the most cited living authors, Chomsky has written more than 150 books on topics such as linguistics, war, and politics. In addition to his work in linguistics, since the 1960s Chomsky has been an influential voice on the American left as a consistent critic of U.S. foreign policy, contemporary capitalism, and corporate influence on political institutions and the media.
Born to Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants (his father was William Chomsky) in Philadelphia, Chomsky developed an early interest in anarchism from alternative bookstores in New York City. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania. During his postgraduate work in the Harvard Society of Fellows, Chomsky developed the theory of transformational grammar for which he earned his doctorate in 1955. That year he began teaching at MIT, and in 1957 emerged as a significant figure in linguistics with his landmark work Syntactic Structures, which played a major role in remodeling the study of language. From 1958 to 1959 Chomsky was a National Science Foundation fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study. He created or co-created the universal grammar theory, the generative grammar theory, the Chomsky hierarchy, and the minimalist program. Chomsky also played a pivotal role in the decline of linguistic behaviorism, and was particularly critical of the work of B.F. Skinner.
An outspoken opponent of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, which he saw as an act of American imperialism, in 1967 Chomsky rose to national attention for his anti-war essay "The Responsibility of Intellectuals". Becoming associated with the New Left, he was arrested multiple times for his activism and placed on President Richard M. Nixon's list of political opponents. While expanding his work in linguistics over subsequent decades, he also became involved in the linguistics wars. In collaboration with Edward S. Herman, Chomsky later articulated the propaganda model of media criticism in Manufacturing Consent, and worked to expose the Indonesian occupation of East Timor. His defense of unconditional freedom of speech, including that of Holocaust denial, generated significant controversy in the Faurisson affair of the 1980s. Chomsky's commentary on the Cambodian genocide and the Bosnian genocide also generated controversy. Since retiring from active teaching at MIT, he has continued his vocal political activism, including opposing the 2003 invasion of Iraq and supporting the Occupy movement. An anti-Zionist, Chomsky considers Israel's treatment of Palestinians to be worse than South African–style apartheid, and criticizes U.S. support for Israel.
Chomsky is widely recognized as having helped to spark the cognitive revolution in the human sciences, contributing to the development of a new cognitivistic framework for the study of language and the mind. Chomsky remains a leading critic of U.S. foreign policy, contemporary capitalism, U.S. involvement and Israel's role in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and mass media. Chomsky and his ideas are highly influential in the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements. Since 2017, he has been Agnese Helms Haury Chair in the Agnese Nelms Haury Program in Environment and Social Justice at the University of Arizona.
Born to Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants (his father was William Chomsky) in Philadelphia, Chomsky developed an early interest in anarchism from alternative bookstores in New York City. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania. During his postgraduate work in the Harvard Society of Fellows, Chomsky developed the theory of transformational grammar for which he earned his doctorate in 1955. That year he began teaching at MIT, and in 1957 emerged as a significant figure in linguistics with his landmark work Syntactic Structures, which played a major role in remodeling the study of language. From 1958 to 1959 Chomsky was a National Science Foundation fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study. He created or co-created the universal grammar theory, the generative grammar theory, the Chomsky hierarchy, and the minimalist program. Chomsky also played a pivotal role in the decline of linguistic behaviorism, and was particularly critical of the work of B.F. Skinner.
An outspoken opponent of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, which he saw as an act of American imperialism, in 1967 Chomsky rose to national attention for his anti-war essay "The Responsibility of Intellectuals". Becoming associated with the New Left, he was arrested multiple times for his activism and placed on President Richard M. Nixon's list of political opponents. While expanding his work in linguistics over subsequent decades, he also became involved in the linguistics wars. In collaboration with Edward S. Herman, Chomsky later articulated the propaganda model of media criticism in Manufacturing Consent, and worked to expose the Indonesian occupation of East Timor. His defense of unconditional freedom of speech, including that of Holocaust denial, generated significant controversy in the Faurisson affair of the 1980s. Chomsky's commentary on the Cambodian genocide and the Bosnian genocide also generated controversy. Since retiring from active teaching at MIT, he has continued his vocal political activism, including opposing the 2003 invasion of Iraq and supporting the Occupy movement. An anti-Zionist, Chomsky considers Israel's treatment of Palestinians to be worse than South African–style apartheid, and criticizes U.S. support for Israel.
Chomsky is widely recognized as having helped to spark the cognitive revolution in the human sciences, contributing to the development of a new cognitivistic framework for the study of language and the mind. Chomsky remains a leading critic of U.S. foreign policy, contemporary capitalism, U.S. involvement and Israel's role in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and mass media. Chomsky and his ideas are highly influential in the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements. Since 2017, he has been Agnese Helms Haury Chair in the Agnese Nelms Haury Program in Environment and Social Justice at the University of Arizona.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 151 reviews
September 5, 2019
This a re-read of a book I read some years ago; still as sharp and provocative.
This is Chomsky in his easy to grasp mode;not the philosopher or linguist. It is a series of interviews and talks and shows off the breadth of Chomsky's knowledge. He is equally happy going into the detail of US imperial history (Grenada, Guatemala 1954, Vietnam, Cuba and so on), quoting Mill, Cobden, Lord Curzon, Robert McNamara. He dissects US foreign policy in relation to Iraq and the middle east, arguing that the invasion of Iraq was the height of folly and a war crime. There are a few swipes at religious fundamentalism, the media, but the main thrust concerns US foreign policy and he argues that the US is a failed state. Chomsky analyses the origins of Al-Qaeda and asserts that it was US foreign policy, specifically the Clinton administration's missile attacks on Afghanistan and Sudan that created Al-Qaeda.
Chomsky also looks at the origins of propaganda, drawing on Taylorism (a doctrine which developed the ideas related to control of workers whilst at work and the production line) and the way it was used to look at how you controlled people outside work. Mein Kampf also drew on the ideas Henry Ford propounded in relation to society and the Jews, but took the use of propaganda to new levels.
There is lots here to ponder on and Chomsky is never dull and always provocative. His political thought can probably be described as anarcho-syndicalist; but of course that is a label and labels are always insidious.
This is Chomsky in his easy to grasp mode;not the philosopher or linguist. It is a series of interviews and talks and shows off the breadth of Chomsky's knowledge. He is equally happy going into the detail of US imperial history (Grenada, Guatemala 1954, Vietnam, Cuba and so on), quoting Mill, Cobden, Lord Curzon, Robert McNamara. He dissects US foreign policy in relation to Iraq and the middle east, arguing that the invasion of Iraq was the height of folly and a war crime. There are a few swipes at religious fundamentalism, the media, but the main thrust concerns US foreign policy and he argues that the US is a failed state. Chomsky analyses the origins of Al-Qaeda and asserts that it was US foreign policy, specifically the Clinton administration's missile attacks on Afghanistan and Sudan that created Al-Qaeda.
Chomsky also looks at the origins of propaganda, drawing on Taylorism (a doctrine which developed the ideas related to control of workers whilst at work and the production line) and the way it was used to look at how you controlled people outside work. Mein Kampf also drew on the ideas Henry Ford propounded in relation to society and the Jews, but took the use of propaganda to new levels.
There is lots here to ponder on and Chomsky is never dull and always provocative. His political thought can probably be described as anarcho-syndicalist; but of course that is a label and labels are always insidious.
September 29, 2020
A thought-provoking book on the USA and its policies towards its own citizens as well as an accurate portrayal of the foreign policy decisions it has made in the second-half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st.
May 6, 2020
Imperial Ambitions - 'Conversations with Noam Chomsky on the post 9/11 world via interviews with David Barsamian. My first reading of anything by this radical intellectual. Chomsky explores some of the world's (ie The USA's) most pressing issues and questions, whilst quoting and presenting his view of the reality of the imperialistic past deeds of the United States, but also the UK, France etc. I enjoyed his clear and insightful points and they gave me a lot to think about, especially his verbal annihilation of Ronald Reagan! 8 out of 12
January 19, 2015
"يختفي اهتمام الغرب بقضايا العدوان والمجازر وانتهاكات حقوق الإنسان ونحو ذلك إذا كان سيجني أرباحًا من ورائها".
نعوم تشومسكي
..
.
نعوم تشومسكي يدعو الأشياء بأسمائها،تشومسكي ومضة في قلب الإعلام والمفكرين المزيفين، يتحدث خارج القطيع، ينتقد سياسة الأمريكية واحتكار الدول الامبريالية ،الكتاب عبارة عن لقاءات مُنفصلة تم تجميعها على مدار السنوات ، يملك نعوم المستوى فريد من الوضوح لتحليل ديناميات القوة الدولية الحديثة والفكر الامبريالي التوسعي، يُجيب على الأسئلة بحيادة مع إضافة الحجج بوثائق سرية مُفرج عنها.
إذا قرأت من قبل لتشومسكي ، فمن المؤكد أنك تعرف ماذا سيقول، النقد النزيه "للحرب على الإرهاب"، والهجوم على السيطرة الإعلام وهندسة الموافقة، حروب دولة الامبريالية "العم سام حفيد الشيطان" كما وصفها هوغو تشافيز، وتدميرها دول أمريكيا لاتينية وبلدان العالم الثالث وإيران .
التوسع الامبريالي لغزو العراق وبنما وهايتي ونيكاراغوا وفيتنام الجنوبية وإلخ، ولعب على الهاوية مع الإتحاد السوفيتي ..
Read
May 10, 2019yeah, ok, I should probably get off my ass and do something
February 4, 2024
As always Noam Chomsky is articulate and thought provoking. The book is a transcript of an interview which makes the lay out very devourable. Noam does not dick around, he gives dates and facts like no other and attacks every question with strong logic. Glad I read this book, was very educational on the US government. Socialism forever.
March 23, 2023
Found this on my dad's bookshelf :D
Chomsky has some very definitive and refreshing things to say about the US and even as someone who is not born and raised or living in America it really opens my eyes to the propaganda model and what ideas about the US we take as fact or find acceptable.
This is my first book from Chomsky and I've heard great things, and he definitely did not disappoint. There is so much to learn from him and he is undoubtedly well-versed in what he talks about. I especially enjoyed what he had to say about activism and change.
Chomsky has some very definitive and refreshing things to say about the US and even as someone who is not born and raised or living in America it really opens my eyes to the propaganda model and what ideas about the US we take as fact or find acceptable.
This is my first book from Chomsky and I've heard great things, and he definitely did not disappoint. There is so much to learn from him and he is undoubtedly well-versed in what he talks about. I especially enjoyed what he had to say about activism and change.
June 13, 2015
Cần phải đọc lại lần nữa. Noam Chomsky đích thị luôn là người nghi ngờ thẩm quyền và có một khả năng tư duy chính trị sắc sảo độc lập đến ngạc nhiên. Cuốn sách cho mình biết thêm một cái nhìn khác về nước mỹ, nhiều màu sắc hơn. Và nó cũng là một dạng tham khảo cơ bản cho những người quan tâm đến chính trị và quan hệ quốc tế.
January 18, 2009
Chomsky is the man. Everyone should read his work.
January 19, 2018
This 2005 volume consists of a wonderfully lucid collection of brief interviews conducted by David Barsamian between the years 2003-2005. The reader will remember the run-up to the Iraq invasion, the expanding bubble prior to the great recession, and various Bush administration policies, that folks may or may not have been aware of, depending on whether the reader was paying attention to politics during those years. I have to admit, I was pre-occupied with work mostly during those years and even though I tried to keep up with political events, elections, and so forth, I usually would watch TV as an escape, fall asleep watching old movies and such. I wasn't absorbed with politics that much in those years - I didn't have that much time to read. I must have been griping about this or that the whole time, but basically was un-involved.
Chomsky has a knack for breaking down complex issues into easy-to-understand sentences, instead of long complex sentences. Thus, the book is a breeze to read and understand and contains so many memorable passages. It's actually a pleasure to read because it's so accessible. You know immediately what he means, no musing over the meaning of sentences is necessary (although the ideas are thought-provoking). Chomsky connects his own life experiences with concepts or ideas, as well as comparing activism of the 60s and 70s and that of the 2000's, which is also interesting. He can make comparisons and draw parallels between various eras. In general, his conclusions are rather gloomy, although the book ends on a hopeful note that "another world is possible." This is an inspirational book as well - being an activist means being optimistic, otherwise no-one would ever try to bring about social change.
There are tons of interesting passages in the book, as follows:
On the connection between Taylorism and public relations/advertising: "Off-job control means turning people into robots in every part of their lives by inducing a "philosophy of futility," focusing peole on "the superficial things of life, like fashionable consumption.""
"The founding of the country was based on the Madisonian principle that the people are just too dangerous: power has to be in the hands of what Madison called "the wealth of the nation," people who respect property and its rights and are willing to "protect" the minority of the opulent against the majority," which has to be fragmented somehow."
"Now private tyrannies -- corporate systems -- play the role of controlling opinions and attitudes."
On the elites' marginalizing and controlling people through propaganda: "...since we're noble, wonderful people, we'll use it for good and to ensure that the stupid, ignorant masses remain marginalized and separated from any decision-making capacity."
"...Hitler was very impressed with Anglo-American propaganda. He argued... that propaganda won the First World War..."
"...the United States remains in the forefront [of the use of propaganda to control and marginalize people] because it's the most free and democratic society, so it's much more important to control attitudes and opinions here."
On the Republican domestic agenda: "That means tax cuts - they say for the economy, but they mean for the rich - and other programs that are designed to benefit an extremely small sector of the ultra-wealthy and privileged and that will have the effect of harming the mass of the population."
"...the long-term [Republican] effort to destroy the institutional basis for social support systems, to eliminate programs such as Social Security that are based on the conception that people have to have some concern for one another."
"...the way to achieve that... is to make people afraid. If peole are frightened that their security is threatened, they will gravitate toward the strong leaders."
"Only in the United States do people fear Iraq. This is a real achievement in propaganda."
"Levels of fear here on almost every issue - crime, immigration, you pick it - are just off the spectrum."
"....during the Reagan yeas and the first Bush administration....They pursued very regressive domestic programs that harmed the population and were very unpopular, and they succeeded in staying in political power by pushing the panic button every year."
"...there is also a background of fear that is exploited. It probably has to do with conquest of the continent, when you had to exterminate the native population, and slavery, when you had to control a population that was regarded as dangerous, because you never knew when the salves might turn on you."
On recognizing propaganda: "...the whole educational system and the whole media system have the opposite goal. You're taught to be a passive, obedient follower. Unless you can break out of those habits you're likely to be a victim of propaganda."
"...Winston Churchill...condemned the use of executive power to imprison peole without charges as the most odious of crimes, found only in Nazi and communist societies."
On the 60s antiwar movement: "You aren't supposed to learn that dedicated, committed effort can bring about significant changes of consciousness and understanding. That's a very dangerous idea, and therefore it's been wiped out of history."
"...one outcome of the 1953 [Iranian] coup was that the United States took over about 40 percent of Britain's share in Iranian oil. ...it was part of the general displacement of British power by U.S. power in that region, and in fact throughout the world."
"...the reason given by U.S. intelligence [during the 60s] for regime change [in Cuba] was that the very existence of the Castro regime "represents a successful defiance of the United States a negation of our whole hemispheric policy of almost a century and a half," meaning the Monroe Doctrine."
"...the way Britain ran...the whole empire. ... [was]to have independent states, but with weak governments that must rely on the imperial power for their survival. ...they have to provide a facade behind which the real power can rule. That's standard imperialism."
"Racism is inherent in imperial rule - it's almost invariable."
"Many factors enter into the ambition for dominaitona dn control, but the drive for resources is a very common one."
"...about 150 years ago....Cotton fueled the industrial revolution in the same way oil now fuels the industrial world. One of the goals [of Jacksonian Democrats, such as James K. Polk] in taking over these [Texas and around half of Mexico] at the time, particularly Texas, was to ensure that the United States could gain a monopoly of cotton and bring the British to their knees - because we would control the resource on which they survived."
"The Northeast Asian region is the most dynamic economic region in the world. It includes two major industrial societies, Japan and South Korea, and China is increasingly becoming an industrial society. It has enormous resources. Siberia has all kinds of resources, including oil. Together the countries in Northeast Asia have close to a third of the world's gross domestic product, way more than the United States, and about half of global foreign exchange. The region has enormous financial resources. And it's growing very fast, much faster than any other region including the United States."
"...the world now has three major economic centers: North America, Northeast Asia, and Europe."
"In international relations theory, this is called "realism." You prevent other powers from grouping together to oppose the hegemonic power."
"...the point of the bombing [of Serbia in 1999] was to maintain credibility. to make clear who's the boss. Serbia was defying the orders of the boss, and you can't let anyone do that. Like Iraq, Serbia was defenseless, so there was no risk. In fact,you can proclaim how you intervened only for humanitarian reasons."
"This logic should be familiar to anyone who watches television programs about the mafia. The don as to make sure that people understand he's the boss. You don't cross him. He sends out goons to beat somebody to pulp - not because he want his resources, but because the guy's standing up to him. It was Castro's successful defiance of the United States that made it necessary to carry out terrorist actions aimed at regime change. You don't defy the master, and everyone has to understand that. If the rumor spreads that you can defy the master and get away with it, he's in trouble."
"Think of Mexico, large parts of which we took over in the 1840s, or Hawaii, which was stolen by force and guile in 1898. In both cases the native population was pretty much replaced, they weren't colonized."
"Somebody's paying the corporations that destroyed Iraq and the corporations that are rebuilding it. In both cases, they're getting paid by the U.S. taxpayer. Those are gifts from U.S. taxpayers to U.s. corporations."
"...first you destroy Iraq, then you rebuild it. It's a transfer of wealth from the general population to narrow sectors of the population."
"The Marshall Plan aid to France just about covered the costs of the French effort to reconquer Indochina. So the U.S. taxpayer wasn't rebuilding France. They were paying the French to buy American weapons to crush the Indo-Chinese. and they were paying Holland to crush the independence movement in Indonesia."
On the British empire: "...for the guys ... running the East India company the empire led to fantastic wealth. For the British troops who were dying out in the wilderness... the costs were serious. To a large extent that's the way empires work. Internal class war is a significant element of empire."
On the moral degradation of empire: "[the moral degradation of empire is]...part of the reason that an imperial system, or any system of domination, even a patriarchal family, always has a cover of benevolence."
"It's hard to find an imperial system in which the intellectual class didn't laud its own benevolence."
"...everything we do is for the benefit of the natives, the barbarians. We want to bring them free markets and honest rule and freedom and all kinds of wonderful things."
"[For]...a respectable intellectual... ...it's faintly absurd even to ask for evidence for praise of those with power. It's just automatic. Of course they're magnificent."
On the documentary "The Fog of War' about Robert McNamara: "...biographical material typically describes him as a kind of a statistician who was working somewhere in the background, but it turns out that he was actually in a planning role, figuring out how to maximize Japanese civilian deaths at minimal cost. Apparently, Tokyo was selected as a target because it was very densely populated and made mostly of wood, so you could start a firestorm that would kill someone hundred thousand people with no difficulty."
"The U.S. and British air forces did much more bombing of urban civilian centers than the did the Germans."
"For the powerful, crimes are those that others commit."
"[In 1989] Noriega was seized from the Vatican embassy and brought back to Florida - all hopelessly illegal - and then, in a ridiculous trial, he was convicted of crimes that he had indeed committed, almost all of them when he was on the CIA payroll."
"...most [international law professionals] have to construct complex arguments to justify crimes of aggression. Their job, basically, is to serve as defense counsels for state power."
"If you want to learn about patriarchal families, you don't ask the father, you ask the mother; then maybe you will learn something."
"The British artificially carved out Iraq in 1920, and set the borders so that Britain, not Turkey, would get control of the oil in the north. And they ensured that Iraq would be a dependency by cutting off its access to the sea. That's the point of the British colony of Kuwait. Then the British declared Iraq to be a free, independent country, running its own affairs."
"...the occupying authorities [in Iraq] have imposed an economic regime that no sovereign state would accept for a moment, which completely opens up Iraq to takeover by foreign corporations."
On nuclear weapons proliferation: "weapons proliferation is increasing, which is an extremely dangerous threat to the world. ....Why? There are many reasons but one of them is that Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons, as well as chemical and biological weapons, which is not only a threat in itself but encourages others to proliferate in response and in self-defense."
"The Reagan years were a period of devastation and disaster in El Salvador. Maybe seventy thousand people were slaughtered."
"...the cult of Reagan worship...was created through a massive propaganda campaign. Reagan's regime was one of murder, brutality, and violence, which devastated a number of countries and probably left two hundred thousand people dead in Latin America, with hundreds of thousands of orphans and widows."
"Reagan was an incredible coward. Somebody who could believe that an air base in Grenada could be used to attack the United States does not even reach the level of a laughingstock. And the same thing happened with Nicaragua."
"...the real reason for the invasion [of Grenada on October 25, 1983] was not obscure. ...a couple of days before, there had been a bombing in Lebanon in which 240 American marines were killed. And they had to cover this up with a grand gesture defending us from destruction by Grenada. After the the invasion, Reagan stood up and said, "Our days of weakness are over. Our military forces are back on their feet and standing tall."
"...the idea that Reagan struck a chord among the American people is simply not true. he was not a popular president. ... By 1992, Reagan had become the most unpopular living former president apart form Richard Nixon. Then came an immense propaganda campaign...to turn him into a semi-divinity..."
"...memory must be repressed. Not only memory but consciousness of what's happening right in front of you must be repressed, because if the public comes to understand what's being done in its name, it probably won't permit it. That's the main reason for propaganda."
"...power systems never tell the truth, if they can get away with it, because they simply don't trust the public."
[Bertrand Russell, in his introduction to the international war crimes tribunal on Vietnam]...said, "It is in the nature of imperialism that citizens of the imperial power are always among the last to know - or care - about circumstances in the colonies."
"In the 1960s, executive power was so extreme that the government could get away with anything. It was just taken for granted that it's our right to massacre and destroy at will. So there was virtually no protest against the Vietnam War for years..."
Re: Declassified government documents: "You look at secret documents... If they [the United States and other countries] are protecting secrets, who are they keeping them from? Mostly the domestic population."
"...these internal documents... ...primarily have to do with ensuring that the major enemy - namely, the domestic population - is kept in the dark about the actions of the powerful."
"... the [1954]U.S. coup overthrowing the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala. ...was not a dark moment in the CIA's history, though. The CIA acted, as it constantly acts, as an agency of the White House to carry out actions with what's called "plausible deniability."
"...in the case of the overthrow of Arbenz, Eisenhower gave the orders. As to Guatemala being a Soviet beachhead, Eisenhower knew perfectly well that his administration had been trying very hard to force Guatemala to accept Eastern European arms. Guatemala had a democratic government, which the U.S. was strongly opposed."
"A real democracy was developing [in Guatemala]... The United States considered this an incredible crime. "
"When the United States threatened the country with attack, Guatemala sought military assistance from Europe, which the United States blocked. Finally, Guatemala, trying to defend itself from an attack by the hemispheric superpower made the tactical mistake of accepting military aid from the only country that would help out, Czechoslovakia. The U.S. government then triumphantly discovered that Czech arms were going to Guatemala, and this fact was trumpeted as a threat to the United States. How can the United States survive if Guatemala has some rifles from Czechoslovakia? This was used as the pretext for the invasion."
"...the Reaganites, who were not conservatives but extreme statist reactionaries, blocked the regular release of archival records that would have shed more light on this period [of the 1954 invasion of Guatemala]. "
"The Reagan administration blocked this [declassification of records] because they didn't want the public to know what had happened in Guatemala in 1954 and Iran in 1953."
"The [New York] Times was a cheerleader for the coup in Guatemala and also applauded the cop in Iran in 1953."
"The point [of Reagan's support for Afghan mujaheddin in the 80s] was not to defend the Afghans but to harm the Russians. The mujaheddin carried out terrorist activities right inside Russia. ...those activities stopped after the Russians pulled out of Afghanistan..."
"The bombing of Sudan [by Clinton in 1998] ...infuriated people thought the Arab world. It's another moment in history that didn't happen because we did it. The United States knew perfectly well that it was targeting a major producer of pharmaceutical and veterinary supplies for a poor African country."
"...you're not allowed even to mention the fact that the United States can just thoughtlessly carry out major crimes."
"[What]...the neoconservatives in the Bush II administration... care about [in invading Iraq] ... is having military bases in a dependent client state right at the heart of the world's largest oil-producing region. ...the United States ...want[s] to control the oil...[because]...control of ...oil is a major lever against your enemies. ...the U.S. enemies are Europe and Asia. Those are the regions of the world that could move toward independence. One of the ways to prevent that is to keep your hand on the spigot."
"The people around Bush... ...want a huge massively intrusive government, but one that works for them. They hate free markets."
"...the leading commentator at the Washington Post David Ignatius.... [says that] This vision of a "democratic future" is led...by the "idealist in chief," Paul Wolfowitz, who has probably the most extreme record of passionate hatred of democracy of anybody in the [Bush II] administration."
"The Russian assault on Grozny [in Chechnya in 1999] was considered a major war crime, rightly. But when we do the same thing to Falluja it's liberation."
"In the case of Vietnam, we literally do not know within millions the real number of civilian casualties."
"How many victims of chemical warfare were there [in Vietnam] after 1962, when Kennedy started to destroy food crops and ground cover so that there wouldn't be any indigenous support for guerrillas, using dioxin, one of the most carcinogenic elements on earth?"
"...the rough estimates are at maybe half a million or a million Vietnamese died just from chemical warfare."
With respect to prosecuting poor, uneducated, soldiers who are scared, for war crimes, such as at My Lai, but allowing nice, educated folks, the planners ordering these crimes, to get away with it: "...Nuremberg worked the other way. The prosecution didn't go after the solders in the field; it went after the civilian commanders."
Chomsky has a knack for breaking down complex issues into easy-to-understand sentences, instead of long complex sentences. Thus, the book is a breeze to read and understand and contains so many memorable passages. It's actually a pleasure to read because it's so accessible. You know immediately what he means, no musing over the meaning of sentences is necessary (although the ideas are thought-provoking). Chomsky connects his own life experiences with concepts or ideas, as well as comparing activism of the 60s and 70s and that of the 2000's, which is also interesting. He can make comparisons and draw parallels between various eras. In general, his conclusions are rather gloomy, although the book ends on a hopeful note that "another world is possible." This is an inspirational book as well - being an activist means being optimistic, otherwise no-one would ever try to bring about social change.
There are tons of interesting passages in the book, as follows:
On the connection between Taylorism and public relations/advertising: "Off-job control means turning people into robots in every part of their lives by inducing a "philosophy of futility," focusing peole on "the superficial things of life, like fashionable consumption.""
"The founding of the country was based on the Madisonian principle that the people are just too dangerous: power has to be in the hands of what Madison called "the wealth of the nation," people who respect property and its rights and are willing to "protect" the minority of the opulent against the majority," which has to be fragmented somehow."
"Now private tyrannies -- corporate systems -- play the role of controlling opinions and attitudes."
On the elites' marginalizing and controlling people through propaganda: "...since we're noble, wonderful people, we'll use it for good and to ensure that the stupid, ignorant masses remain marginalized and separated from any decision-making capacity."
"...Hitler was very impressed with Anglo-American propaganda. He argued... that propaganda won the First World War..."
"...the United States remains in the forefront [of the use of propaganda to control and marginalize people] because it's the most free and democratic society, so it's much more important to control attitudes and opinions here."
On the Republican domestic agenda: "That means tax cuts - they say for the economy, but they mean for the rich - and other programs that are designed to benefit an extremely small sector of the ultra-wealthy and privileged and that will have the effect of harming the mass of the population."
"...the long-term [Republican] effort to destroy the institutional basis for social support systems, to eliminate programs such as Social Security that are based on the conception that people have to have some concern for one another."
"...the way to achieve that... is to make people afraid. If peole are frightened that their security is threatened, they will gravitate toward the strong leaders."
"Only in the United States do people fear Iraq. This is a real achievement in propaganda."
"Levels of fear here on almost every issue - crime, immigration, you pick it - are just off the spectrum."
"....during the Reagan yeas and the first Bush administration....They pursued very regressive domestic programs that harmed the population and were very unpopular, and they succeeded in staying in political power by pushing the panic button every year."
"...there is also a background of fear that is exploited. It probably has to do with conquest of the continent, when you had to exterminate the native population, and slavery, when you had to control a population that was regarded as dangerous, because you never knew when the salves might turn on you."
On recognizing propaganda: "...the whole educational system and the whole media system have the opposite goal. You're taught to be a passive, obedient follower. Unless you can break out of those habits you're likely to be a victim of propaganda."
"...Winston Churchill...condemned the use of executive power to imprison peole without charges as the most odious of crimes, found only in Nazi and communist societies."
On the 60s antiwar movement: "You aren't supposed to learn that dedicated, committed effort can bring about significant changes of consciousness and understanding. That's a very dangerous idea, and therefore it's been wiped out of history."
"...one outcome of the 1953 [Iranian] coup was that the United States took over about 40 percent of Britain's share in Iranian oil. ...it was part of the general displacement of British power by U.S. power in that region, and in fact throughout the world."
"...the reason given by U.S. intelligence [during the 60s] for regime change [in Cuba] was that the very existence of the Castro regime "represents a successful defiance of the United States a negation of our whole hemispheric policy of almost a century and a half," meaning the Monroe Doctrine."
"...the way Britain ran...the whole empire. ... [was]to have independent states, but with weak governments that must rely on the imperial power for their survival. ...they have to provide a facade behind which the real power can rule. That's standard imperialism."
"Racism is inherent in imperial rule - it's almost invariable."
"Many factors enter into the ambition for dominaitona dn control, but the drive for resources is a very common one."
"...about 150 years ago....Cotton fueled the industrial revolution in the same way oil now fuels the industrial world. One of the goals [of Jacksonian Democrats, such as James K. Polk] in taking over these [Texas and around half of Mexico] at the time, particularly Texas, was to ensure that the United States could gain a monopoly of cotton and bring the British to their knees - because we would control the resource on which they survived."
"The Northeast Asian region is the most dynamic economic region in the world. It includes two major industrial societies, Japan and South Korea, and China is increasingly becoming an industrial society. It has enormous resources. Siberia has all kinds of resources, including oil. Together the countries in Northeast Asia have close to a third of the world's gross domestic product, way more than the United States, and about half of global foreign exchange. The region has enormous financial resources. And it's growing very fast, much faster than any other region including the United States."
"...the world now has three major economic centers: North America, Northeast Asia, and Europe."
"In international relations theory, this is called "realism." You prevent other powers from grouping together to oppose the hegemonic power."
"...the point of the bombing [of Serbia in 1999] was to maintain credibility. to make clear who's the boss. Serbia was defying the orders of the boss, and you can't let anyone do that. Like Iraq, Serbia was defenseless, so there was no risk. In fact,you can proclaim how you intervened only for humanitarian reasons."
"This logic should be familiar to anyone who watches television programs about the mafia. The don as to make sure that people understand he's the boss. You don't cross him. He sends out goons to beat somebody to pulp - not because he want his resources, but because the guy's standing up to him. It was Castro's successful defiance of the United States that made it necessary to carry out terrorist actions aimed at regime change. You don't defy the master, and everyone has to understand that. If the rumor spreads that you can defy the master and get away with it, he's in trouble."
"Think of Mexico, large parts of which we took over in the 1840s, or Hawaii, which was stolen by force and guile in 1898. In both cases the native population was pretty much replaced, they weren't colonized."
"Somebody's paying the corporations that destroyed Iraq and the corporations that are rebuilding it. In both cases, they're getting paid by the U.S. taxpayer. Those are gifts from U.S. taxpayers to U.s. corporations."
"...first you destroy Iraq, then you rebuild it. It's a transfer of wealth from the general population to narrow sectors of the population."
"The Marshall Plan aid to France just about covered the costs of the French effort to reconquer Indochina. So the U.S. taxpayer wasn't rebuilding France. They were paying the French to buy American weapons to crush the Indo-Chinese. and they were paying Holland to crush the independence movement in Indonesia."
On the British empire: "...for the guys ... running the East India company the empire led to fantastic wealth. For the British troops who were dying out in the wilderness... the costs were serious. To a large extent that's the way empires work. Internal class war is a significant element of empire."
On the moral degradation of empire: "[the moral degradation of empire is]...part of the reason that an imperial system, or any system of domination, even a patriarchal family, always has a cover of benevolence."
"It's hard to find an imperial system in which the intellectual class didn't laud its own benevolence."
"...everything we do is for the benefit of the natives, the barbarians. We want to bring them free markets and honest rule and freedom and all kinds of wonderful things."
"[For]...a respectable intellectual... ...it's faintly absurd even to ask for evidence for praise of those with power. It's just automatic. Of course they're magnificent."
On the documentary "The Fog of War' about Robert McNamara: "...biographical material typically describes him as a kind of a statistician who was working somewhere in the background, but it turns out that he was actually in a planning role, figuring out how to maximize Japanese civilian deaths at minimal cost. Apparently, Tokyo was selected as a target because it was very densely populated and made mostly of wood, so you could start a firestorm that would kill someone hundred thousand people with no difficulty."
"The U.S. and British air forces did much more bombing of urban civilian centers than the did the Germans."
"For the powerful, crimes are those that others commit."
"[In 1989] Noriega was seized from the Vatican embassy and brought back to Florida - all hopelessly illegal - and then, in a ridiculous trial, he was convicted of crimes that he had indeed committed, almost all of them when he was on the CIA payroll."
"...most [international law professionals] have to construct complex arguments to justify crimes of aggression. Their job, basically, is to serve as defense counsels for state power."
"If you want to learn about patriarchal families, you don't ask the father, you ask the mother; then maybe you will learn something."
"The British artificially carved out Iraq in 1920, and set the borders so that Britain, not Turkey, would get control of the oil in the north. And they ensured that Iraq would be a dependency by cutting off its access to the sea. That's the point of the British colony of Kuwait. Then the British declared Iraq to be a free, independent country, running its own affairs."
"...the occupying authorities [in Iraq] have imposed an economic regime that no sovereign state would accept for a moment, which completely opens up Iraq to takeover by foreign corporations."
On nuclear weapons proliferation: "weapons proliferation is increasing, which is an extremely dangerous threat to the world. ....Why? There are many reasons but one of them is that Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons, as well as chemical and biological weapons, which is not only a threat in itself but encourages others to proliferate in response and in self-defense."
"The Reagan years were a period of devastation and disaster in El Salvador. Maybe seventy thousand people were slaughtered."
"...the cult of Reagan worship...was created through a massive propaganda campaign. Reagan's regime was one of murder, brutality, and violence, which devastated a number of countries and probably left two hundred thousand people dead in Latin America, with hundreds of thousands of orphans and widows."
"Reagan was an incredible coward. Somebody who could believe that an air base in Grenada could be used to attack the United States does not even reach the level of a laughingstock. And the same thing happened with Nicaragua."
"...the real reason for the invasion [of Grenada on October 25, 1983] was not obscure. ...a couple of days before, there had been a bombing in Lebanon in which 240 American marines were killed. And they had to cover this up with a grand gesture defending us from destruction by Grenada. After the the invasion, Reagan stood up and said, "Our days of weakness are over. Our military forces are back on their feet and standing tall."
"...the idea that Reagan struck a chord among the American people is simply not true. he was not a popular president. ... By 1992, Reagan had become the most unpopular living former president apart form Richard Nixon. Then came an immense propaganda campaign...to turn him into a semi-divinity..."
"...memory must be repressed. Not only memory but consciousness of what's happening right in front of you must be repressed, because if the public comes to understand what's being done in its name, it probably won't permit it. That's the main reason for propaganda."
"...power systems never tell the truth, if they can get away with it, because they simply don't trust the public."
[Bertrand Russell, in his introduction to the international war crimes tribunal on Vietnam]...said, "It is in the nature of imperialism that citizens of the imperial power are always among the last to know - or care - about circumstances in the colonies."
"In the 1960s, executive power was so extreme that the government could get away with anything. It was just taken for granted that it's our right to massacre and destroy at will. So there was virtually no protest against the Vietnam War for years..."
Re: Declassified government documents: "You look at secret documents... If they [the United States and other countries] are protecting secrets, who are they keeping them from? Mostly the domestic population."
"...these internal documents... ...primarily have to do with ensuring that the major enemy - namely, the domestic population - is kept in the dark about the actions of the powerful."
"... the [1954]U.S. coup overthrowing the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala. ...was not a dark moment in the CIA's history, though. The CIA acted, as it constantly acts, as an agency of the White House to carry out actions with what's called "plausible deniability."
"...in the case of the overthrow of Arbenz, Eisenhower gave the orders. As to Guatemala being a Soviet beachhead, Eisenhower knew perfectly well that his administration had been trying very hard to force Guatemala to accept Eastern European arms. Guatemala had a democratic government, which the U.S. was strongly opposed."
"A real democracy was developing [in Guatemala]... The United States considered this an incredible crime. "
"When the United States threatened the country with attack, Guatemala sought military assistance from Europe, which the United States blocked. Finally, Guatemala, trying to defend itself from an attack by the hemispheric superpower made the tactical mistake of accepting military aid from the only country that would help out, Czechoslovakia. The U.S. government then triumphantly discovered that Czech arms were going to Guatemala, and this fact was trumpeted as a threat to the United States. How can the United States survive if Guatemala has some rifles from Czechoslovakia? This was used as the pretext for the invasion."
"...the Reaganites, who were not conservatives but extreme statist reactionaries, blocked the regular release of archival records that would have shed more light on this period [of the 1954 invasion of Guatemala]. "
"The Reagan administration blocked this [declassification of records] because they didn't want the public to know what had happened in Guatemala in 1954 and Iran in 1953."
"The [New York] Times was a cheerleader for the coup in Guatemala and also applauded the cop in Iran in 1953."
"The point [of Reagan's support for Afghan mujaheddin in the 80s] was not to defend the Afghans but to harm the Russians. The mujaheddin carried out terrorist activities right inside Russia. ...those activities stopped after the Russians pulled out of Afghanistan..."
"The bombing of Sudan [by Clinton in 1998] ...infuriated people thought the Arab world. It's another moment in history that didn't happen because we did it. The United States knew perfectly well that it was targeting a major producer of pharmaceutical and veterinary supplies for a poor African country."
"...you're not allowed even to mention the fact that the United States can just thoughtlessly carry out major crimes."
"[What]...the neoconservatives in the Bush II administration... care about [in invading Iraq] ... is having military bases in a dependent client state right at the heart of the world's largest oil-producing region. ...the United States ...want[s] to control the oil...[because]...control of ...oil is a major lever against your enemies. ...the U.S. enemies are Europe and Asia. Those are the regions of the world that could move toward independence. One of the ways to prevent that is to keep your hand on the spigot."
"The people around Bush... ...want a huge massively intrusive government, but one that works for them. They hate free markets."
"...the leading commentator at the Washington Post David Ignatius.... [says that] This vision of a "democratic future" is led...by the "idealist in chief," Paul Wolfowitz, who has probably the most extreme record of passionate hatred of democracy of anybody in the [Bush II] administration."
"The Russian assault on Grozny [in Chechnya in 1999] was considered a major war crime, rightly. But when we do the same thing to Falluja it's liberation."
"In the case of Vietnam, we literally do not know within millions the real number of civilian casualties."
"How many victims of chemical warfare were there [in Vietnam] after 1962, when Kennedy started to destroy food crops and ground cover so that there wouldn't be any indigenous support for guerrillas, using dioxin, one of the most carcinogenic elements on earth?"
"...the rough estimates are at maybe half a million or a million Vietnamese died just from chemical warfare."
With respect to prosecuting poor, uneducated, soldiers who are scared, for war crimes, such as at My Lai, but allowing nice, educated folks, the planners ordering these crimes, to get away with it: "...Nuremberg worked the other way. The prosecution didn't go after the solders in the field; it went after the civilian commanders."
January 25, 2018
An example of intellectual self-defense
July 2, 2025
First time engaging with Chomsky content outside of academics and found it to be wonderful. Its interview format makes it easy to read and engage with without sacrificing the strength or impact of the horrors retold. Still as relevant (if not more) as it was when first published. Made me excited to read more of his work (and the endless amount of works he references in his own).
November 17, 2015
An excellent little book, quickly read. Chomsky has been arguing the same points so routinely for so long that, even in these unrehearsed and lightly edited interviews, he is fluent in listing off the detailed evidence on which he builds his arguments. Indeed, because they are interview notes, they read fluently and effectively in a way that more laborious and more academic writing would not match.
Chomsk'y concern is that the USA is an imperfect democracy. "It has democratic institutions but they barely function... The genius of American politics has been to marginalise and isolate people." [p198]It operates for the benefit of a small elite, and of the corporations which the elite have successfully but quite illegitimately made into their selfish empires. Popular institutions that might enable true democratic influence,and especially trades unions, are repressed in the USA.
In order to pull off this stunt, it is essential to control the way people think and what they believe and the mechanisms for this were devised during the First World War, initially in Britain with the Ministry of Information, then in the U.S with the Committee on Public Information; these innovations were later built upon by the early gurus of public relations, not least Edward Bernays and Walter Lippmann. A trip to Wikipedia to read more about Bernays really does repay the effort and reinforce what Chomsky has to say: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_...
and not least this line:
"Bernays felt that the public's democratic judgment was "not to be relied upon" and he feared that "they [the American public] could very easily vote for the wrong man or want the wrong thing, so that they had to be guided from above." This "guidance" was interpreted by" [his daughter] "Anne to mean that her father believed in a sort of "enlightened despotism" ideology"
It is quite important to understand the extent to which the methods of totalitarian government were developed in the western democracies as much as, and before, the more notorious cases of fascist and communist regimes. Chomsky does not pursue this point very far, though he does note that the Nazis modelled their ideas on Britain and the USA. This issue is developed in another book I reviewed this year, War and Revolution: Rethinking the Twentieth Century by Domenico Losurdo. It is a hard idea to accept at first, so I certainly have needed to see it raised in quite a few different places for it to sink home.
The detailed accounts of events in this book, although certainly they belong to their time (2005), bear endless repetition, but the real value of Chomsky's work is to alert readers to the way in which political opinion is manipulated and political power abused. In a telling passage, he observes how easily the American (and the World's) public understood that "Chemical Ali," Iraq's Defence Minister, was prepared to persist in telling outright lies in the face of blatant counter evidence, yet the same behaviour by American and British Governments was allowed to pass with minimal serious challenge within those two great bastions of free speech. Asked how we might protect against being lied to, Chomsky suggests that we try using our common sense more. He makes repeated reference to the amazing claims that some tiny and unimportant little country (Florida under the Spanish, Haiti, Guatamala, Nicaragua, Cuba) has the power to endanger the most astonishing military and economic power on the planet. He points out the absurdity of believing that a country like Iraq would ever be allowed (not only by the USA, but by Israel, by Saudi Arabia) to enjoy democratic government. Such claims are just too incredible to be believed, yet they are the claims used to justify all sorts of American actions.
He is right to argue that it is terribly easy, in the comfortable conditions of our western democracies, for any citizen taking a little trouble to establish a better grasp on reality and there is no excuse for being so routinely seduced by propoganda. He is right to observe that the common people in other countries, supposedly less developed and less democratic, have absolutely no difficulty seeing that they are being lied to. But I think this also highlights the power of propaganda, the ability of the elite to manage popular opinion, and the extent to which people in a democracy will vote for politicians and policies that are utterly harmful to their own interests. It also highlights for me the poverty of leadership in opposition to those politicians and policies and the importance of Chomsky as a voice crying in the wilderness.
Chomsk'y concern is that the USA is an imperfect democracy. "It has democratic institutions but they barely function... The genius of American politics has been to marginalise and isolate people." [p198]It operates for the benefit of a small elite, and of the corporations which the elite have successfully but quite illegitimately made into their selfish empires. Popular institutions that might enable true democratic influence,and especially trades unions, are repressed in the USA.
In order to pull off this stunt, it is essential to control the way people think and what they believe and the mechanisms for this were devised during the First World War, initially in Britain with the Ministry of Information, then in the U.S with the Committee on Public Information; these innovations were later built upon by the early gurus of public relations, not least Edward Bernays and Walter Lippmann. A trip to Wikipedia to read more about Bernays really does repay the effort and reinforce what Chomsky has to say: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_...
and not least this line:
"Bernays felt that the public's democratic judgment was "not to be relied upon" and he feared that "they [the American public] could very easily vote for the wrong man or want the wrong thing, so that they had to be guided from above." This "guidance" was interpreted by" [his daughter] "Anne to mean that her father believed in a sort of "enlightened despotism" ideology"
It is quite important to understand the extent to which the methods of totalitarian government were developed in the western democracies as much as, and before, the more notorious cases of fascist and communist regimes. Chomsky does not pursue this point very far, though he does note that the Nazis modelled their ideas on Britain and the USA. This issue is developed in another book I reviewed this year, War and Revolution: Rethinking the Twentieth Century by Domenico Losurdo. It is a hard idea to accept at first, so I certainly have needed to see it raised in quite a few different places for it to sink home.
The detailed accounts of events in this book, although certainly they belong to their time (2005), bear endless repetition, but the real value of Chomsky's work is to alert readers to the way in which political opinion is manipulated and political power abused. In a telling passage, he observes how easily the American (and the World's) public understood that "Chemical Ali," Iraq's Defence Minister, was prepared to persist in telling outright lies in the face of blatant counter evidence, yet the same behaviour by American and British Governments was allowed to pass with minimal serious challenge within those two great bastions of free speech. Asked how we might protect against being lied to, Chomsky suggests that we try using our common sense more. He makes repeated reference to the amazing claims that some tiny and unimportant little country (Florida under the Spanish, Haiti, Guatamala, Nicaragua, Cuba) has the power to endanger the most astonishing military and economic power on the planet. He points out the absurdity of believing that a country like Iraq would ever be allowed (not only by the USA, but by Israel, by Saudi Arabia) to enjoy democratic government. Such claims are just too incredible to be believed, yet they are the claims used to justify all sorts of American actions.
He is right to argue that it is terribly easy, in the comfortable conditions of our western democracies, for any citizen taking a little trouble to establish a better grasp on reality and there is no excuse for being so routinely seduced by propoganda. He is right to observe that the common people in other countries, supposedly less developed and less democratic, have absolutely no difficulty seeing that they are being lied to. But I think this also highlights the power of propaganda, the ability of the elite to manage popular opinion, and the extent to which people in a democracy will vote for politicians and policies that are utterly harmful to their own interests. It also highlights for me the poverty of leadership in opposition to those politicians and policies and the importance of Chomsky as a voice crying in the wilderness.
December 16, 2020
While a little dated the interview raises lots of relevant questions about US imperialism particularly in regards to the invasion of Iraq.
July 12, 2014
It's all very refreshing and feels enticingly rebellious to enter into Chomsky's world, but one must keep reminding oneself that 1) the material presented here can be approached from a wide spectrum of angles, and 2) righteous indignation has its place, but it also has a dangerously seductive drug-like appeal for egomaniacs and know-it-alls.
Criticism of Chomsky's factual errors usually seems to distort the truth itself, and it misses a bigger point. We can accept that all Chomsky's facts are correct and still have a big problem with this book: his presentation and interpretation pours gas on a fire that's burning the structure of whole civilizations. While emotional extremes are great for getting our blood pumping, the current polarized political environment would benefit from a more balanced and restrained perspective.
I understand the desire to energize people in reaction to the carefully-engineered apathy that paralyzed the left for so long, but surely the answer is to diminish the pendulum's wild swinging - not to push it to even greater extremes. If you seek only to convince your natural allies you risk alienating potential allies and energizing them against you.
Criticism of Chomsky's factual errors usually seems to distort the truth itself, and it misses a bigger point. We can accept that all Chomsky's facts are correct and still have a big problem with this book: his presentation and interpretation pours gas on a fire that's burning the structure of whole civilizations. While emotional extremes are great for getting our blood pumping, the current polarized political environment would benefit from a more balanced and restrained perspective.
I understand the desire to energize people in reaction to the carefully-engineered apathy that paralyzed the left for so long, but surely the answer is to diminish the pendulum's wild swinging - not to push it to even greater extremes. If you seek only to convince your natural allies you risk alienating potential allies and energizing them against you.
October 26, 2007
I'd been hoping that - reputation notwithstanding - Chomsky was an intelligent, well-informed radical. Instead, I discovered he's just short of Lyndon LaRouche. Lots of border-line demagoguery and tinfoil-hat paranoia: sloppy reasoning, more instances of Godwin's Law than I thought possible in a mere 200 pages, and a strange fixation on the militarization of space. Style of the book - a collection of interviews with the sainted Chomsky so fawning that you'd half expect it was a chat on Good Morning America with a presidential candidate - doesn't help.
May 13, 2010
It's a great work. i found it in a bookstore selling it for 1/4 of the price as an outdated book. Although the books is a compilation of interviews in the years 2004 and 2005 I found it really interesting and worthy of reading to our date. Not just it goes as a source of enlightenment of how the US government works, but it tells us how every single ruler on earth manages to sweep the minds of his people and use propaganda material to rule and settle and achieve hidden goals and secrets. Fantastic read, enlightening and lucky me for having such a bargain.
October 25, 2018
From the "elite" (those, who believe that "dumb majority" should be ruled by the higher class of "smart" people) point of view: people are dangerous, therefore they need to be controlled, basically, through media propaganda images, hyperreal, sex, etc. More on this: "Simulacra and Simulation".
The great propaganda achievement - U.S. people are frightened, probably of anything, including aliens, not caring about the real (i.e. statistics).
"Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups." George Carlin
A presidential memorandum of February 7, 2002, authorized U.S. interrogators of prisoners captured during the War in Afghanistan to deny the prisoners basic protections required by the Geneva Conventions, making the U.S. basically the another Nazi or communist country. President's memorandum was a plan to violate the Geneva Convention, and such a plan constitutes a war crime under the Geneva Conventions.
U.S. Won't Let Men Flee Fallujah - "It's universally called genocide. When the Serbs do it. When we do it, we call it - liberation."
"As a US marine who lost close friends in the siege of Fallujah in Iraq seven years ago, I understand that we were the aggressors" src
"I’m a believer in American exceptionalism." secretary of defense David Sedney
American exceptionalism is also fueled by deep religious fanaticism.
Goal of the economics of the empire, as we know from other Chomsky books, is to get rich for "elites", without regards to costs, transfer all costs to the own people (regarding them as mere "dumb slaves"), to the other countries, and to the future generations. As an example, it is why QE was created exceptionally for banks, not own people.
....
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June 29, 2024Cố gắng được chừng nào thì tôi cố đừng động vào chính trị chừng ấy, dù biết rằng rất hi hữu trong đời sống ta mới được thở một hơi không có mùi chính trị. Noam Chomsky là học giả nổi tiếng nhưng đây là tác phẩm đầu tiên tôi tiếp cận, những gì ông nói về nước Mỹ thì người đọc VN này không thể kiếm chứng, cứ xem như đúng thì ông mang lại nhiều thông tin thú vị. Nhưng xem chừng ông có phần không đề cao khả năng tư duy của đại bộ phận dân chúng Mỹ. Đại ý ông không cho rằng người dân Mỹ không quan tâm đến hoàn cảnh của các nước thuộc địa, mà chính bởi họ quan tâm nên bị nhà nước tuyên truyền làm cho thành ra không nhận chân được sự việc. Dẫu tự do ngôn luận chẳng bao giờ thực sự tự do chừng nào còn có nhà nước bá quyền, nhưng ở một đất nước như Mỹ mà để một người dân bình thường tiếp cận thông tin, tư duy độc lập nghe chừng khó khăn vậy, quả thực chỉ nghĩ được đến Triều Tiên.
March 10, 2020
David Barsamian continues to show his mastery at extracting profound information from Chomsky in his interviews. His questions were interesting and timely, and Chomsky's responses were well organized and insightful. These books are like ideological comfort food, which can be good sometimes when politics and the world makes you wanna pull your hair out. Chomsky's low key analysis of current events help make things seem more manageable in a way.
I recommend getting a hold of the audiobook for this one, as it is just a direct recording of the interview and was very enjoyable.
I recommend getting a hold of the audiobook for this one, as it is just a direct recording of the interview and was very enjoyable.
March 28, 2018
A quick read and LOTS to digest. This has been sitting on my shelf for at least a decade, but it turned out to be remarkably attuned to current events.It's eerie how easily you could swap out "Bush" for "Trump" and the criticisms would still be bang on. The interviews leap around from topic to topic, but I think this provides a distillation of his work and thoughts and is a great overview if you've never read Chomsky before (which I hadn't).
December 24, 2024
A very informative group of articulate and concise (but informational) talks about 20th-21st century American foreign policy. Compiled from talks with Prof. Chomsky in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, topics ranging from the Iraq War, to the ineptitude of the Bush administration, and even wealth inequality in the country. Obviously not an in-depth analysis of any particular subject, but it provides a sufficient launchpad off of which one can research deeper.
June 24, 2024
great comparative analysis of US foreign involvement/intervention spanning several decades; interesting to read ~20 years removed from the initial publication. candid interview style makes it easy to digest and clear to see the cause/effect of certain policy decisions.
February 25, 2023
A main obstacle to change is the reproduction by dominant forces of elements of the hegemonic ideology. It's an important and urgent task to develop alternative interpretations of reality.
Paraphrase: Tell the truth.
Paraphrase: Tell the truth.
July 21, 2024
dialectic. beginner-level friendly. rlly makes me wanna read his in-depth works like manufactured consent. this one jumped around
November 14, 2020
Chomsky is one of the more radical and humane thinkers around today. I find him refreshingly helpful as a means of ethically grounding myself as regards the events of the day. Most of my reading about current events is of the establishment press: 'The NY Times', 'The Chicago Tribune', 'The Chicago Sun Times', 'Newsweek', 'Time', 'The London Financial Times', 'The Wall Street Journal' and the like, supplemented by 'The Nation' which usually represents the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, but does occasionally cross the line to the left. Add to this NPR and BBC radio and I am pretty thoroughly indoctrinated. Chomsky is an antidote, causing me to rethink what I unthinking absorb from the regular press.
He's also an realistic anarcho-syndicalist, and proud of it. How refreshing!
He's also an realistic anarcho-syndicalist, and proud of it. How refreshing!
July 31, 2016
I really liked this book, to summarize it in a few words: "the US suxx"
August 21, 2015
This book provides food for thought. It shares areas you may want to explore and given an opportunity discuss with well versed friends.
April 24, 2016
كتاب عظيم وسلس كعادة البروفيسور يأخذك أستاذ اللسانيات بالام اي تي الى الجانب الاخر من تاريخ الولايات المتحدة وأوهام الدفاع عن حقوق الانسان
قرائته اجباري
قرائته اجباري
September 21, 2013
“Laŭvica kontraŭusonaĵo” ekpensis mi post vidi tiun libron en la kongresa librosalono. Mi loĝas en la lando, kie kritikado kaj akuzado de Usono pri io ajn iĝis neforigebla atributo de la socia kaj politika vivo, ĝisnaŭze stultega kaj trudiĝema. Tamen ĉi-kaze temis pri la libro verkita de la usonano mem. Do mi rememoris pri la postsoveta anekdoto: “Bedaŭrinde, kion oni diris al ni pri komunismo okazis esti mensogo. Sed eĉ pli bedaŭrindas, ke ĉio dirita al ni pri kapitalismo evidentiĝis vero”.
Provokema kritikanto
Noam Chomsky estas malmulte konata en Rusio. Eĉ en Moskvo mi ne vidis liajn verkojn sur la bretoj de popularaj librovendejoj kaj neniam renkontis liajn citaĵojn aŭ referencojn al li en amaskomunikiloj. Oni povas nur diveni kial la ŝtata propagandomaŝino preteratentis laŭŝajne tiom allogan kaj utilan ĝiacele personon. Eble tion kaŭzis banala stulteco kaj limigitaj konoj pri la okcidenta intelekta vivo. Sed mi supozas, ke pri tiu forgeso kulpas Chomsky mem – persono plurflanka kaj provoka, kio ĉiam malhelpas al rektomensa propagandaĉo.
“Feĉo!” – tiel karakterizis lin anonima uzanto en la diskutpaĝo de la artikolo pri Chomsky en la ruslingva Vikipedio. Tiom krudan opinion li bazis sur iuj eldiroj de la filozofo, kiuj kvazaŭ pravigis terorismajn agadojn kaj senkulpigis naziojn pri ties reprezalioj en la okupaciita Eŭropo. La akuzoj ambaŭkaze seriozaj, ĉar rilataj al la ĉefaj simboloj de la malbono en la moderna (okcidenta) amaskonscio. Chomsky bonege komprenas ties gravecon kaj aktive uzas la saman armilon, ĉiam denove referencante al la nocio “terorismo” rilate la usonan eksteran politikon kaj komparante kritikatajn de li personojn kaj landojn kun la nazioj. Sed kio kaŭzis tioman diskuton?
Enigmo de Chomsky
Ĉi-libre prezentiĝas naŭ intervjuoj kun Noam Chomsky fare de la usona ĵurnalisto David Barsamian inter 2002 kaj 2005. Ĉiu interparolo havas pli malpli apartan temon, sed foje interparolantoj deflankiĝas kiel tio okazas dum ĉiu normala konversacio. Plejparte ili pridiskutas la usonan politikon, ĉefe eksteran, sed ankaŭ la internan. Sociaj problemoj, kulturo kaj scienco estas tuŝitaj nur tiomgrade kiom ili koncernas la politikon kaj ŝtatajn mekanismojn.
Mi provu resumi la vortojn de Chomsky. Usono estas la ŝtato ege forta, sed iom freneza kaj tute misgvidata de sia elito. En la usona socio, pro historiaj kialoj, enradikiĝis sento de sieĝita fortreso, timo kiun lerte uzas politikistoj por manipuli amaskonscion. Per multaj ekzemploj kaj argumentoj la aŭtoro elmontras senbazecon kaj ofte eĉ ridindecon de la usonaj pretendoj esti viktimo de teroristoj, la lando atakita do sin defendanta kaj kontraŭatakanta. La invadon al Irako li ĉiam nomas agreso, komparas kun atakoj de la nazioj. La samon li diras pri la usona politiko en Afganio, Sudameriko kaj multaj aliaj regionoj. Torturoj en irakaj prizonoj, militkrimoj en okupaciitaj urboj, trompoj kaj insidoj en sudamerikaj landoj – kalejdoskopo de faktoj estas ege bunta.
Ne malpli akre Chomsky kritikas la internan politikon de Usono. Koncentriĝo de povo kaj ekonomia potenco en la manoj de malgranda grupo, kreskanta abismo inter socitavoloj, neglekto de la popolaj interesoj favore al tiuj de elito – ĉion ĉi li pruvas per faktoj kaj (foje) ciferoj. El ĉio dirita neeviteble formiĝas bildo de la grandega terura imperio, kiu senhonte kaj senhalte kreskigas sian potencon, etendas avidajn tentaklojn al plej foraj mondanguloj por elsuĉi ties vivon kaj forton, nutrante malgrandan sed ruzegan manipulantaron, kaŝitan malantaŭ la demokrata fasado. Ĉu tio estas aparte interesa? Apenaŭ.
Kritikado de Usono estas tre populara afero, similaj akuzoj abundas en amaskomunikiloj, virtualaj forumoj kaj sociaj retoj tra la tuta mondo. Ĉiuj faktoj menciitaj de Chomsky estas jam delonge konataj kaj pridiskutitaj. Tamen mi finlegis la libron kaj faris tion dum kelkaj tagoj, unuspire kaj certas, ke mi ne estas sola tiurilate. Certa kialo de tia sukceso laŭ mi estas Chomsky mem.
Li ne nur akuzas kaj kulpigas, kion faras miloj da aliaj aktivuloj, sed ankaŭ klarigas kialojn, fontojn de tiom specifa usona konduto. Chomsky mem apartenas al la du plej forte kritikataj de li nacioj – la usonanoj kaj judoj, do por li tio estas ne ekstera, ne ies, sed lia propra problemo. Pro tio akuzante li ofte diras “ni”. Krome li ne nur priskribas kaj analizas, sed ankaŭ donas konsilojn kiel kontraŭagi, sugestas vojojn por eliri tiun sociopolitikan sakstraton. Oni povas konsenti kun Chomsky aŭ ne, sed liaj proponoj tute ne aspektas ekstremismaj, ofendaj aŭ provokaj. Ili estas sufiĉe normalaj kaj kompreneblaj kadre de la anarkiisma filozofio, liberalaj ideoj ĝenerale. Do antaŭ ni estas ne esktremisma marĝenulo, sed normala universitata profesoro, kiu eldiras tion, kion ni jam plurfoje aŭdis, sed nun aŭskultas pli atente pro liaj fameco, influo en intelektuala medio kaj parollerteco.
Mi ne povus diri, ke tiu libro grave ŝanĝis mian opinion pri rilataj aferoj, sed sendube ĝi pensigis min pri ili pli profunde, instigis iom distanciĝi de la plej disvastiĝinta nun dekstrema pozicio kaj alrigardi de pli maldekstra vidpunkto. Ni tiom alkutimiĝis al niaj stereotipoj, ke foje bezonatas forta puŝo por ŝanĝi tiun vidmanieron. Chomsky vere majstras pri mensopuŝado.
Oratoro kun brilo, sed riproĉo
Ĉu li majstras pri ĉio? Mi ne certas. Mi ne estas fakulo pri plejparto de diskutataj temoj, do povas nur aŭskulti ĉion diritan senkritike. Sed jen Chomsky preterire ekparolis pri la soveta historio kaj mi tuj stumblis ĉe jena eldiro: “La islamismaj batalantoj faris teroristajn agojn rekte interne de Rusujo. Kaj tiuj ĉi samaj fortoj poste ŝanĝis sian formon en tion, kio iĝis Alkaido. Parenteze, tiuj teroristaj agadoj ĉesis post kiam la rusoj foriris el Afganujo…” (p. 80).
Atentigis min ne nur “rusoj” rilate la sovetan armeon, konsistintan el reprezentantoj de dekoj da etnoj, inkluzive tiujn “islamajn” (tataroj, taĝikoj, uzbekoj, ktp). Mi jam alkutimiĝis, ke alilandanoj nomas ĉiujn loĝantojn de mia lando “rusoj”, kvankam en Rusio oni ĉiam distingas la nociojn “rusoj” (etna) kaj “rusianoj” (politika) kaj eĉ ortodoksa eklezio antaŭe nomiĝis ne la Rusa, sed Rusia. Plej miris min mencio de iuj enigmaj teroraj agoj, kiujn laŭ Chomsky okazigis en Sovetunio islamistoj dum la Afgana milito (1979-1989). Kiel historiisto mi certe interesiĝis pri la temo, sed neniam aŭdis pri tiuj aferoj. En Sovetunio okazis dekoj da teroraj atakoj, sed faris tion psikaj malsanuloj, armenaj naciistoj, kontraŭkomunistoj – iuj ajn, sed ne afganaj islamistoj aŭ ties subtenantoj. Mi trarigardis plurajn publikaĵojn, sed neniam vidis informojn pri atakoj de afganaj batalantoj eĉ kontraŭ ĉelimaj sovetaj teritorioj, des pli pri teroraj agoj “rekte interne de Rusjuo”. Mi bone memoras kiel en 1989 lastaj sovetaj taĉmentoj gvidataj de la generalo Gromov trapasis la riveron Amudarjo, forlasinte Afganion. Sed mi ne memoras iun “ĉesigon de la teroraj agoj”, kiu laŭ Chomsky sekvis tiun eventon.
Mi aldonu, ke laŭ mi scio kontraŭ la soveta armeo batalis moĝahedoj, surbaze de kiuj poste formiĝis ne Alkaido, sed Talibano – temas pri la du malsamaj movadoj, sufiĉe antagonismaj. Iel ajn Talibano kiel aparta forto aperis ĉirkaŭ 1994, Alkaido (laŭ Chomsky) ne pli frue ol en 1998 – do ambaŭ kelkajn jarojn post la foriro de Sovetunio el Afganio.
Ĉu malgranda fendeto en la argumentomuro de pensanto? Eble jes. Sed imagu, ke pentristo verkas ies portreton kaj, por atingi iujn estetikajn celojn, iomete ŝanĝas jen nazon, jen orelojn, jen frunton. Ĉiukaze li ŝanĝas malmulton, sed ĉu fine ni ricevos ĝustan bildon? Kiom da tiuj fendetoj troviĝas en faktobazo de Chomsky?
Same ne ĉiam glatas logiko de la aŭtoro, laŭaspekte brila, sed post pli profunda esploro ne tre korekta. Ekzemple, oni demandas lin pri kialoj de la usona invado al Irako. Li tuj respondas, ke kaŭzis tion strebo regi la regionon, riĉan je nafto. Bone. Sed kial oni atakis nome Irakon, sed ne Iranon aŭ Libion, kiuj havis pli akran kontraŭusonan politikon kaj ne malpli da nafto kaj gaso? Chomsky asertas, ke Irako estis plej malforta celo. Sed ĉu iu kredas, ke batalo kontraŭ reĝimoj de la iranaj mulaoj aŭ Muamar Kadafi estus multe pli malfacila? La usona armeo estas nun plej pova en la mondo kaj verdire neniu lando, kiu ne havas atomarmilon, povus efike kontraŭstari ĝin. Tion konfirmis postaj eventoj en Libio, kie loka armeo estis venkita de la ribeluloj eĉ sen rekta alilanda invado.
Sian konvinkon pri marioneteco de la iraka registaro Chomsky konfirmas interalie, dirante ke Usono ne bezonas la vere sendependan demokratan Irakon, ĉar pro la plejparte ŝijaisma loĝantaro ĝi baldaŭ estus influita de Irano, kiu estas malamiko de Usono kaj ties aliancano – Israelo. Tamen nun mi scias, ke nome tio finfine okazis. Porirana konduto de la iraka registaro klare evidentiĝas ekzemple en ĝia persista subpremado de la Organizaĵo de la moĝahedoj de la irana popolo, kiu jam kelkajn jardekojn luktas kontraŭ la mulaa reĝimo kaj eĉ partoprenis la Irana-Irakan militon ĉe la iraka flanko. Tuj post la falo de la reĝimo de Sadam Husejn, novaj irakaj regantoj postulis forpelon de tiu organizaĵo el la lando, ĝian senarmigon kaj likvidon de ĝiaj tendaroj. Post vortoj sekvis rektaj atakoj, dekoj aŭ eĉ centoj da iranaj opoziciuloj estis mortigitaj – kaj ĉio ĉi okazis malgraŭ ardaj protestoj de Usono, kiu lastatempe eĉ ekskludis tiun organizaĵon el la “terorisma listo” kaj evidente esperas uzi ĝin por kontraŭstari Iranon. Ĉu pupoj iĝis malobeemaj?
Same stranga aspektas plurfoje ripetata de Chomsky aserto, ke estas neniu problemo regi okupaciitan landon, do li tute ne komprenas kial Usono malsukcesas pri regado de Irako: “…la nazioj en la okupata Eŭropo havis malmultajn problemojn administri la landojn sub sia regado” diras li (p. 43). Ĉi-kaze mi tute malkonsentas. Eble la nazioj ne alfrontis gravan reziston en la senarbara Nederlando aŭ la malgranda Luksemburgo, sed ilia vivo en la okupaciita parto de Sovetunio estis ege malfacila kaj foje terura. Pri tio atestas ne nur oficialaj sovetaj dokumentoj, sed ankaŭ rememoroj de lokaj loĝantoj kaj postvivintaj nazioj. Eĉ pli – pri tio atestas sperto de la usona milito en Vjetnamio, malgranda lando, kiun Vaŝingtono ne sukcesis regi malgraŭ kruelegaj militrimedoj. Chomsky bonege konas tion, ĉar li estis aktivulo de la tiutempa kontraŭmilita movado kaj plurfoje uzas la militon en Vjetnamio kiel konfirmon de siaj argumentoj.
Ĉu al tiaj logikaj kaj faktaj eraroj aludis slovena filozofo Slavoj Žižek dum sia fama distanca polemiko kun Chomsky?
Finaj konkludoj
La libro estas sendube leginda kaj mi forte rekomendas ĝin al ĉiuj, kiuj interesiĝas pri politiko, historio aŭ ekstera mondo ĝenerale. Oni povas malkonsenti kun Chomsky, sed por tio oni bezonas koni lian vidpunkton kaj argumentojn, kiujn akceptas milionoj da homoj. Krome, ĉu ekzistas pli bona eblo kompreni sian vidpunkton ol diskuti (eĉ distance kaj senresponde) kun oponanto? “Imperiaj ambicioj” donas tiun eblon por ĉiu, do uzu ĝin.
Mi aparte ĝojas, ke tiu libro aperis nun – nur kelkajn jarojn post la usona eldono. Legi en Esperanto ĉefverkojn de la monda literaturo estas ĝujinda afero, sed mi dezirus ankaŭ pli ofte vidi sur niaj librobretoj aktualajn eldonaĵojn – pri politiko, ekonomio kaj socia vivo. Eldonaĵojn pri kiuj oni povus diri al eksteruloj: “Mi sukcesis legi tion danke al Esperanto, ĉar nacilingva eldono ankoraŭ ne aperis” (kiel mi povas diri pri ĉi libro en Rusio). Utileco de la lingvo estas reklamilo multe pli efika ol ĝia facileco kaj neŭtraleco.
La eldonaĵo mem ankaŭ estas laŭdinda. Bela kovrilo, fortike gluitaj folioj, bona tiparo. La teksto estis zorge tradukita kaj redaktita. La lingvaĵo estas facile komprenebla, al kio verŝajne kontribuis bonligvisma vortuzado de la teamo, gvidata de Renato Corsetti. Nenio ĝenis mian legadon, eble nur uzado de “tiu ĉi” ŝajnas tro ofta (plurloke sufiĉus “tiu”) kaj mirigis min la vorto “malsimpla” – supozeble anstataŭigilo de “komplika”. Mi ne engaĝiĝu en lingvaj bataloj, sed ĉu havas sencon trudado de la malkutima (en reala Esperantujo) vorto, kiu nur malhelpas legadon kaj malfaciligas komprenadon?
Fine mi resumu, ke la eldonejo “Bero” prezentis al ni bonegan libron kaj oni povas nur esperi, ke tiu iniciato estos daŭrigota per eldonado de novaj aktualaj libroj, kiuj helpos al ni pli bone orientiĝi en la nuna mondo. Mi persone ŝatus legi verkojn de Slavoj Žižek, verŝajne plej fama el nunaj filozofoj kaj samtempe plej akra kritikanto (kaj kritikato) de Noam Chomsky. Aŭskultu ĉiujn, decidu mem!
Provokema kritikanto
Noam Chomsky estas malmulte konata en Rusio. Eĉ en Moskvo mi ne vidis liajn verkojn sur la bretoj de popularaj librovendejoj kaj neniam renkontis liajn citaĵojn aŭ referencojn al li en amaskomunikiloj. Oni povas nur diveni kial la ŝtata propagandomaŝino preteratentis laŭŝajne tiom allogan kaj utilan ĝiacele personon. Eble tion kaŭzis banala stulteco kaj limigitaj konoj pri la okcidenta intelekta vivo. Sed mi supozas, ke pri tiu forgeso kulpas Chomsky mem – persono plurflanka kaj provoka, kio ĉiam malhelpas al rektomensa propagandaĉo.
“Feĉo!” – tiel karakterizis lin anonima uzanto en la diskutpaĝo de la artikolo pri Chomsky en la ruslingva Vikipedio. Tiom krudan opinion li bazis sur iuj eldiroj de la filozofo, kiuj kvazaŭ pravigis terorismajn agadojn kaj senkulpigis naziojn pri ties reprezalioj en la okupaciita Eŭropo. La akuzoj ambaŭkaze seriozaj, ĉar rilataj al la ĉefaj simboloj de la malbono en la moderna (okcidenta) amaskonscio. Chomsky bonege komprenas ties gravecon kaj aktive uzas la saman armilon, ĉiam denove referencante al la nocio “terorismo” rilate la usonan eksteran politikon kaj komparante kritikatajn de li personojn kaj landojn kun la nazioj. Sed kio kaŭzis tioman diskuton?
Enigmo de Chomsky
Ĉi-libre prezentiĝas naŭ intervjuoj kun Noam Chomsky fare de la usona ĵurnalisto David Barsamian inter 2002 kaj 2005. Ĉiu interparolo havas pli malpli apartan temon, sed foje interparolantoj deflankiĝas kiel tio okazas dum ĉiu normala konversacio. Plejparte ili pridiskutas la usonan politikon, ĉefe eksteran, sed ankaŭ la internan. Sociaj problemoj, kulturo kaj scienco estas tuŝitaj nur tiomgrade kiom ili koncernas la politikon kaj ŝtatajn mekanismojn.
Mi provu resumi la vortojn de Chomsky. Usono estas la ŝtato ege forta, sed iom freneza kaj tute misgvidata de sia elito. En la usona socio, pro historiaj kialoj, enradikiĝis sento de sieĝita fortreso, timo kiun lerte uzas politikistoj por manipuli amaskonscion. Per multaj ekzemploj kaj argumentoj la aŭtoro elmontras senbazecon kaj ofte eĉ ridindecon de la usonaj pretendoj esti viktimo de teroristoj, la lando atakita do sin defendanta kaj kontraŭatakanta. La invadon al Irako li ĉiam nomas agreso, komparas kun atakoj de la nazioj. La samon li diras pri la usona politiko en Afganio, Sudameriko kaj multaj aliaj regionoj. Torturoj en irakaj prizonoj, militkrimoj en okupaciitaj urboj, trompoj kaj insidoj en sudamerikaj landoj – kalejdoskopo de faktoj estas ege bunta.
Ne malpli akre Chomsky kritikas la internan politikon de Usono. Koncentriĝo de povo kaj ekonomia potenco en la manoj de malgranda grupo, kreskanta abismo inter socitavoloj, neglekto de la popolaj interesoj favore al tiuj de elito – ĉion ĉi li pruvas per faktoj kaj (foje) ciferoj. El ĉio dirita neeviteble formiĝas bildo de la grandega terura imperio, kiu senhonte kaj senhalte kreskigas sian potencon, etendas avidajn tentaklojn al plej foraj mondanguloj por elsuĉi ties vivon kaj forton, nutrante malgrandan sed ruzegan manipulantaron, kaŝitan malantaŭ la demokrata fasado. Ĉu tio estas aparte interesa? Apenaŭ.
Kritikado de Usono estas tre populara afero, similaj akuzoj abundas en amaskomunikiloj, virtualaj forumoj kaj sociaj retoj tra la tuta mondo. Ĉiuj faktoj menciitaj de Chomsky estas jam delonge konataj kaj pridiskutitaj. Tamen mi finlegis la libron kaj faris tion dum kelkaj tagoj, unuspire kaj certas, ke mi ne estas sola tiurilate. Certa kialo de tia sukceso laŭ mi estas Chomsky mem.
Li ne nur akuzas kaj kulpigas, kion faras miloj da aliaj aktivuloj, sed ankaŭ klarigas kialojn, fontojn de tiom specifa usona konduto. Chomsky mem apartenas al la du plej forte kritikataj de li nacioj – la usonanoj kaj judoj, do por li tio estas ne ekstera, ne ies, sed lia propra problemo. Pro tio akuzante li ofte diras “ni”. Krome li ne nur priskribas kaj analizas, sed ankaŭ donas konsilojn kiel kontraŭagi, sugestas vojojn por eliri tiun sociopolitikan sakstraton. Oni povas konsenti kun Chomsky aŭ ne, sed liaj proponoj tute ne aspektas ekstremismaj, ofendaj aŭ provokaj. Ili estas sufiĉe normalaj kaj kompreneblaj kadre de la anarkiisma filozofio, liberalaj ideoj ĝenerale. Do antaŭ ni estas ne esktremisma marĝenulo, sed normala universitata profesoro, kiu eldiras tion, kion ni jam plurfoje aŭdis, sed nun aŭskultas pli atente pro liaj fameco, influo en intelektuala medio kaj parollerteco.
Mi ne povus diri, ke tiu libro grave ŝanĝis mian opinion pri rilataj aferoj, sed sendube ĝi pensigis min pri ili pli profunde, instigis iom distanciĝi de la plej disvastiĝinta nun dekstrema pozicio kaj alrigardi de pli maldekstra vidpunkto. Ni tiom alkutimiĝis al niaj stereotipoj, ke foje bezonatas forta puŝo por ŝanĝi tiun vidmanieron. Chomsky vere majstras pri mensopuŝado.
Oratoro kun brilo, sed riproĉo
Ĉu li majstras pri ĉio? Mi ne certas. Mi ne estas fakulo pri plejparto de diskutataj temoj, do povas nur aŭskulti ĉion diritan senkritike. Sed jen Chomsky preterire ekparolis pri la soveta historio kaj mi tuj stumblis ĉe jena eldiro: “La islamismaj batalantoj faris teroristajn agojn rekte interne de Rusujo. Kaj tiuj ĉi samaj fortoj poste ŝanĝis sian formon en tion, kio iĝis Alkaido. Parenteze, tiuj teroristaj agadoj ĉesis post kiam la rusoj foriris el Afganujo…” (p. 80).
Atentigis min ne nur “rusoj” rilate la sovetan armeon, konsistintan el reprezentantoj de dekoj da etnoj, inkluzive tiujn “islamajn” (tataroj, taĝikoj, uzbekoj, ktp). Mi jam alkutimiĝis, ke alilandanoj nomas ĉiujn loĝantojn de mia lando “rusoj”, kvankam en Rusio oni ĉiam distingas la nociojn “rusoj” (etna) kaj “rusianoj” (politika) kaj eĉ ortodoksa eklezio antaŭe nomiĝis ne la Rusa, sed Rusia. Plej miris min mencio de iuj enigmaj teroraj agoj, kiujn laŭ Chomsky okazigis en Sovetunio islamistoj dum la Afgana milito (1979-1989). Kiel historiisto mi certe interesiĝis pri la temo, sed neniam aŭdis pri tiuj aferoj. En Sovetunio okazis dekoj da teroraj atakoj, sed faris tion psikaj malsanuloj, armenaj naciistoj, kontraŭkomunistoj – iuj ajn, sed ne afganaj islamistoj aŭ ties subtenantoj. Mi trarigardis plurajn publikaĵojn, sed neniam vidis informojn pri atakoj de afganaj batalantoj eĉ kontraŭ ĉelimaj sovetaj teritorioj, des pli pri teroraj agoj “rekte interne de Rusjuo”. Mi bone memoras kiel en 1989 lastaj sovetaj taĉmentoj gvidataj de la generalo Gromov trapasis la riveron Amudarjo, forlasinte Afganion. Sed mi ne memoras iun “ĉesigon de la teroraj agoj”, kiu laŭ Chomsky sekvis tiun eventon.
Mi aldonu, ke laŭ mi scio kontraŭ la soveta armeo batalis moĝahedoj, surbaze de kiuj poste formiĝis ne Alkaido, sed Talibano – temas pri la du malsamaj movadoj, sufiĉe antagonismaj. Iel ajn Talibano kiel aparta forto aperis ĉirkaŭ 1994, Alkaido (laŭ Chomsky) ne pli frue ol en 1998 – do ambaŭ kelkajn jarojn post la foriro de Sovetunio el Afganio.
Ĉu malgranda fendeto en la argumentomuro de pensanto? Eble jes. Sed imagu, ke pentristo verkas ies portreton kaj, por atingi iujn estetikajn celojn, iomete ŝanĝas jen nazon, jen orelojn, jen frunton. Ĉiukaze li ŝanĝas malmulton, sed ĉu fine ni ricevos ĝustan bildon? Kiom da tiuj fendetoj troviĝas en faktobazo de Chomsky?
Same ne ĉiam glatas logiko de la aŭtoro, laŭaspekte brila, sed post pli profunda esploro ne tre korekta. Ekzemple, oni demandas lin pri kialoj de la usona invado al Irako. Li tuj respondas, ke kaŭzis tion strebo regi la regionon, riĉan je nafto. Bone. Sed kial oni atakis nome Irakon, sed ne Iranon aŭ Libion, kiuj havis pli akran kontraŭusonan politikon kaj ne malpli da nafto kaj gaso? Chomsky asertas, ke Irako estis plej malforta celo. Sed ĉu iu kredas, ke batalo kontraŭ reĝimoj de la iranaj mulaoj aŭ Muamar Kadafi estus multe pli malfacila? La usona armeo estas nun plej pova en la mondo kaj verdire neniu lando, kiu ne havas atomarmilon, povus efike kontraŭstari ĝin. Tion konfirmis postaj eventoj en Libio, kie loka armeo estis venkita de la ribeluloj eĉ sen rekta alilanda invado.
Sian konvinkon pri marioneteco de la iraka registaro Chomsky konfirmas interalie, dirante ke Usono ne bezonas la vere sendependan demokratan Irakon, ĉar pro la plejparte ŝijaisma loĝantaro ĝi baldaŭ estus influita de Irano, kiu estas malamiko de Usono kaj ties aliancano – Israelo. Tamen nun mi scias, ke nome tio finfine okazis. Porirana konduto de la iraka registaro klare evidentiĝas ekzemple en ĝia persista subpremado de la Organizaĵo de la moĝahedoj de la irana popolo, kiu jam kelkajn jardekojn luktas kontraŭ la mulaa reĝimo kaj eĉ partoprenis la Irana-Irakan militon ĉe la iraka flanko. Tuj post la falo de la reĝimo de Sadam Husejn, novaj irakaj regantoj postulis forpelon de tiu organizaĵo el la lando, ĝian senarmigon kaj likvidon de ĝiaj tendaroj. Post vortoj sekvis rektaj atakoj, dekoj aŭ eĉ centoj da iranaj opoziciuloj estis mortigitaj – kaj ĉio ĉi okazis malgraŭ ardaj protestoj de Usono, kiu lastatempe eĉ ekskludis tiun organizaĵon el la “terorisma listo” kaj evidente esperas uzi ĝin por kontraŭstari Iranon. Ĉu pupoj iĝis malobeemaj?
Same stranga aspektas plurfoje ripetata de Chomsky aserto, ke estas neniu problemo regi okupaciitan landon, do li tute ne komprenas kial Usono malsukcesas pri regado de Irako: “…la nazioj en la okupata Eŭropo havis malmultajn problemojn administri la landojn sub sia regado” diras li (p. 43). Ĉi-kaze mi tute malkonsentas. Eble la nazioj ne alfrontis gravan reziston en la senarbara Nederlando aŭ la malgranda Luksemburgo, sed ilia vivo en la okupaciita parto de Sovetunio estis ege malfacila kaj foje terura. Pri tio atestas ne nur oficialaj sovetaj dokumentoj, sed ankaŭ rememoroj de lokaj loĝantoj kaj postvivintaj nazioj. Eĉ pli – pri tio atestas sperto de la usona milito en Vjetnamio, malgranda lando, kiun Vaŝingtono ne sukcesis regi malgraŭ kruelegaj militrimedoj. Chomsky bonege konas tion, ĉar li estis aktivulo de la tiutempa kontraŭmilita movado kaj plurfoje uzas la militon en Vjetnamio kiel konfirmon de siaj argumentoj.
Ĉu al tiaj logikaj kaj faktaj eraroj aludis slovena filozofo Slavoj Žižek dum sia fama distanca polemiko kun Chomsky?
Finaj konkludoj
La libro estas sendube leginda kaj mi forte rekomendas ĝin al ĉiuj, kiuj interesiĝas pri politiko, historio aŭ ekstera mondo ĝenerale. Oni povas malkonsenti kun Chomsky, sed por tio oni bezonas koni lian vidpunkton kaj argumentojn, kiujn akceptas milionoj da homoj. Krome, ĉu ekzistas pli bona eblo kompreni sian vidpunkton ol diskuti (eĉ distance kaj senresponde) kun oponanto? “Imperiaj ambicioj” donas tiun eblon por ĉiu, do uzu ĝin.
Mi aparte ĝojas, ke tiu libro aperis nun – nur kelkajn jarojn post la usona eldono. Legi en Esperanto ĉefverkojn de la monda literaturo estas ĝujinda afero, sed mi dezirus ankaŭ pli ofte vidi sur niaj librobretoj aktualajn eldonaĵojn – pri politiko, ekonomio kaj socia vivo. Eldonaĵojn pri kiuj oni povus diri al eksteruloj: “Mi sukcesis legi tion danke al Esperanto, ĉar nacilingva eldono ankoraŭ ne aperis” (kiel mi povas diri pri ĉi libro en Rusio). Utileco de la lingvo estas reklamilo multe pli efika ol ĝia facileco kaj neŭtraleco.
La eldonaĵo mem ankaŭ estas laŭdinda. Bela kovrilo, fortike gluitaj folioj, bona tiparo. La teksto estis zorge tradukita kaj redaktita. La lingvaĵo estas facile komprenebla, al kio verŝajne kontribuis bonligvisma vortuzado de la teamo, gvidata de Renato Corsetti. Nenio ĝenis mian legadon, eble nur uzado de “tiu ĉi” ŝajnas tro ofta (plurloke sufiĉus “tiu”) kaj mirigis min la vorto “malsimpla” – supozeble anstataŭigilo de “komplika”. Mi ne engaĝiĝu en lingvaj bataloj, sed ĉu havas sencon trudado de la malkutima (en reala Esperantujo) vorto, kiu nur malhelpas legadon kaj malfaciligas komprenadon?
Fine mi resumu, ke la eldonejo “Bero” prezentis al ni bonegan libron kaj oni povas nur esperi, ke tiu iniciato estos daŭrigota per eldonado de novaj aktualaj libroj, kiuj helpos al ni pli bone orientiĝi en la nuna mondo. Mi persone ŝatus legi verkojn de Slavoj Žižek, verŝajne plej fama el nunaj filozofoj kaj samtempe plej akra kritikanto (kaj kritikato) de Noam Chomsky. Aŭskultu ĉiujn, decidu mem!
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