Noam Chomsky on the rise of extremism and and a society that has set itself to destruct

25  2017-06-16 by [deleted]

Every charismatic figure is such an obvious crook that he destroys himself, like McCarthy or Nixon or the evangelist preachers. If somebody comes along who is charismatic and honest this country is in real trouble because of the frustration, disillusionment, the justified anger and the absence of any coherent response. What are people supposed to think if someone says ‘I have got an answer, we have an enemy’? There it was the Jews. Here it will be the illegal immigrants and the blacks. We will be told that white males are a persecuted minority. We will be told we have to defend ourselves and the honor of the nation. Military force will be exalted. People will be beaten up. This could become an overwhelming force. And if it happens it will be more dangerous than Germany. The United States is the world power. Germany was powerful but had more powerful antagonists. I don’t think all this is very far away. If the polls are accurate it is not the Republicans but the right-wing Republicans, the crazed Republicans, who will sweep the next election.”

“I have never seen anything like this in my lifetime,” Chomsky added. “I am old enough to remember the 1930s. My whole family was unemployed. There were far more desperate conditions than today. But it was hopeful. People had hope. The CIO was organizing. No one wants to say it anymore but the Communist Party was the spearhead for labor and civil rights organizing. Even things like giving my unemployed seamstress aunt a week in the country. It was a life. There is nothing like that now. The mood of the country is frightening. The level of anger, frustration and hatred of institutions is not organized in a constructive way. It is going off into self-destructive fantasies.”

“I don’t bother writing about Fox News,” Chomsky said. “It is too easy. What I talk about are the liberal intellectuals, the ones who portray themselves and perceive themselves as challenging power, as courageous, as standing up for truth and justice. They are basically the guardians of the faith. They set the limits. They tell us how far we can go. They say, ‘Look how courageous I am.’ But do not go one millimeter beyond that. At least for the educated sectors, they are the most dangerous in supporting power.”

source

He said this in 2010. Sound familiar?

20 comments

n/a  HomieBhaBha 2017-06-16

I would like to point out in last paragraph that he shits right on liberals, too. He knows they are phony. But he knows the extremists are phony, too. Bunch of phonies.

n/a  groman32 2017-06-16

If you actually want to springboard off Chomsky and have real discourse, then it's time to start questioning Capitalism.

n/a  HomieBhaBha 2017-06-16

I don't even question it. I attempt to denounce it as much as possible.

n/a  groman32 2017-06-16

Heck yes

n/a  immense_and_terrible 2017-06-16

then it's time to start aggressively questioning Capitalism.

fuckin spot on, comrade.

I wish the conspiracy community spent more time talking about how capitalism is the main "tool" of the elites that people around here are so keen to despise.

n/a  WTFppl 2017-06-16

r/conflictofinterest; r/TheUSLobby

No one is talking.

n/a  sweetholymosiah 2017-06-16

Amazing quote. My partner asked me recently, why do you focus on criticizing the democrats so much? My response: Trump is too easy. We have to organize outside the controlled 'opposition' of the corporate democrats. "Guardians of the Faith" - Chomsky is a god damn genius.

n/a  HomieBhaBha 2017-06-16

I have a Utah Jazz jersey with Chomsky on the back.

n/a  An-arkos 2017-06-16

The funny part is Chomsky considers himself a Anarchist, a phenomena that manifests it self on both the far right and the far left.

n/a  HomieBhaBha 2017-06-16

Wouldn't that make him neutral then? Or, for man?

n/a  groman32 2017-06-16

No, he's an actual anarchist, which can only be left-wing. Right winger pretenders use words they don't actually understand the meaning of.

n/a  An-arkos 2017-06-16

In my experience on the far right they are at least open for debate, comments like yours shut down any possibility of debate since you just claimed the term anarchist without even giving a definition and then closed with borderline ad hominem.

http://www.ozarkia.net/bill/anarchism/TypesOfAnarchism.html

Educate yourself, lets not pretend ignorance is limited to the right or left

n/a  An-arkos 2017-06-16

I dunno, id have to talk to Chomsky and ask him why he still seems attached to the right/left paradigm as a anarchist.

n/a  WTFppl 2017-06-16

He points it out to us at every angle. He is not attached, he is familiar and educated on it..

n/a  groman32 2017-06-16

The far right aren't anarchists though, they just call themselves that because they think it just means "against the government"

n/a  immense_and_terrible 2017-06-16

I have actually spent a lot of time pondering the similarities between anarchism and libertarianism.

Horse-shoe thoery plays into I think, but I also believe the main differences are in social theory and in "personal values."

anarchists tend to be collectivists, and libertarians tend to individualists.

but beyond that, they are very very similar.

n/a  An-arkos 2017-06-16

I am glad someone sees that the way i do, now if we could figure out a way for these ideologies/groups to shelve their differences in favour of a common enemy we would have it made.

n/a  Fat_Dumb_American 2017-06-16

Chomsky considers himself a Anarchist

He considers himself a libertarian socialist, or an anarcho-syndicalist, not an anarchist.

n/a  Outofmany 2017-06-16

Chomsky is absolutely nuts. What about JFK or MLK weren't they were charismatic? And to compare the US to Nazi Germany is absolutely absurd because Germany was facing real threats on all sides, hence the rise of Hitler. People's standard of living has risen enormously since the 1930s, even since the 1970s. People are not aware of the heavy Marxist ideology being thrown around here. Chomsky himself supported genocidal Communist regimes and I guess we need another genocide to prove this isn't the right approach.

n/a  polkadotgirl 2017-06-16

They are trying to radicalize the left.

n/a  ziplock9000 2017-06-16

Chomsky and most other philosophers are up their own arses.

n/a  williamsates 2017-06-16

It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction.

A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. ~is eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.

Philosopher Harry Frankfurt. Taken from 'On Bullshit', pg 55-56.