Hi I'm Laura Flanders - this week on the show, none other than professor, author, intellectual extraordinaire Noam Chomsky
on everything from Iraq, to Ferguson, to China and trade.
And a sneak peak at a documentary on a workers' struggle that won.
It's all coming up, right here, welcome to the show
[music playing]
It's hard to find anyone on the U.S. left who hasn't been influenced by our next guest -
he's an accomplished linguist who's work has transformed his field,
he's a political theorist and the author of more than 100 books, the subject of many movies,
and he's not just a committed public intellectual, he's an activist - he shows up on campuses where the action is
and draws a crowd. Noam Chomsky is our guest in this special interview recorded in New York
Noam - welcome to the program glad to have you
President Obama picked the 10th anniversary of the U.S. battle of Fallujah
to announce the doubling of the U.S. troop
presence in Iraq. Some of those troops are
going back to Anbar Province where Fallujah
is situated. People talk about the crisis
posed by ISIS, and [the West’s] lack of
good options. Is this how you see it?
Noam Chomsky: It’s interesting to look at
it carefully. Fallujah, first of all, was
one of the worst atrocities of the 21st century.
The Iraq war itself was the worst crime of
the 21st century, easily. Fallujah was probably
the worst war crime carried out during that
war.
Seven thousand Marines attacked Fallujah,
probably killed everyone who was there. They
called them insurgents - whatever that means.
On the first day of the invasion of Fallujah,
the New York Times had a front page photograph
of Marines breaking into the general hospital,
which is a war crime, and throwing all the
patients and doctors on the floor and shackling
them. It was hailed as a triumph.
When the High Command was asked why they broke
into the hospital, they said it was a propaganda
center for the insurgents. [They said that
the hospital] was releasing casualty figures,
and therefore it’s legitimate to carry out
a major war crime.
Apparently pretty exotic weapons were used
there, and there’s evidence, which international
agencies don’t want to look at, of high
levels of cancer and other effects of maybe
depleted uranium, maybe something else.
It’s a major atrocity, but it’s hailed
here as a victory. The only way it is referred
to now is as a tragedy because the Marines
fought so hard to liberate Fallujah, and now
ISIS is in control of it.
LF: So what would you do if you were president?
Noam Chomsky: First of all ISIS is a monstrosity.
There isn’t a conceivable way of dealing
with it. It’s kind of hard to imagine following
the law (I say that cautiously because it’s
such an outrageous idea), but there are laws,
and we’re bound by them. The Constitution
requires that we adhere to them, of course
we never do.
One of them is the U.N. Charter. A way of
dealing with ISIS following the law would
be to approach the U.N. Security Council and
request that they declare a threat to peace,
which of course they would do, and organize
a way to respond to it. And then follow the
will of the international community. Out of
that there might come a reasonable response.
The unilateral U.S. response -- mainly to
hit everything with a sledgehammer -- makes
absolutely no sense. The correspondent who’s
followed this most closely and has been right
all along, Patrick Cockburn, simply describes
it as an Alice in Wonderland strategy.
The major ground forces that are fighting
ISIS are apparently the [Kurdistan Workers’
Party] PKK and its allies in Syria. They’re
barred because we call them a terrorist group,
so they’re under attack. Our ally, Turkey,
attacks them and we bar them support.
But they’re apparently the ones who saved
the Yazidis and blocked the ISIS attack on
Iraqi Kurdistan. They’re out. The major
regional state that could confront ISIS is
Iran. In fact they could probably wipe them
out. And they’re influential in Iraq. In
fact, [they’re] the victors of the Iraq
war. They’re out for ideological reasons.
A more complex case, which Patrick Cockburn
has actually talked about, is what to do with
Assad. That has all kinds of complexities,
but anyway they’re out.
And the sledgehammer has its usual effect.
The U.S. bombings, are, in the usual and predictable
way, eliciting anger from the civilians that
were under attack. They don’t like ISIS.
They hate it, but they don’t want to be
attacked by American bombs.
There was very interesting insight into this
in the New York Times, maybe a week ago. The
lead article should have had the headline:
“The United States declares itself to be
the world’s leading terrorist state and
is proud of it.” That was the content of
the article, but of course it didn’t have
that headline. But it was very revealing.
Also the lack of response to it.
The lead story was a report of a CIA study
that had just come out of U.S. intervention
and the study was concerned with when they
worked and when they didn’t work and why.
They quoted Obama saying that he commissioned
some such studies. He was kind of disappointed
they didn’t work so much. Then you take
a look at the examples, first paragraph of
the story, three examples: Cuba, Angola, Nicaragua.
Each one a major terrorist war carried out
by the United States, not even ambiguous.
So here we take three major terrorist wars
with horrible consequences, we investigate:
did they work? Didn’t they work? We’re
disappointed that they didn’t work. And
the president says we have better ways. Again,
the headline should be: “Yes, we declare
ourselves to be the world’s leading terrorist
state. We’re proud of it.”
LF: It goes to a much bigger question. You
talk often about the conventional wisdom being
reality on it’s head. That goes back to
the founding story of the United States.
Noam Chomsky: It sure does.
LF: Can you talk about the principles on which
this country is supposedly founded versus
the ones you think it might actually be founded
on. I’ve been reading Edward Baptist’s
extraordinary book, The Half Has Never Been
Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism.
Noam Chomsky: Well, take Baptist’s book
and compare it with the New York Times this
morning. There’s a description in the New
York Times of the horrible treatment of the
Yazidi by ISIS. Now go back to Baptist’s
book. That’s what he’s describing. He’s
describing the treatment of the slaves for
half of American history, and in fact it continues.
And it’s almost identical. That’s the
way they were treated.
It’s not just kind of bad people in Georgia,
Boston financiers were involved in it. They
didn’t say they were in favor of slavery
but they were happy to become wealthy by exporting
commodities that were produced by the leading
resource of the 19th century, which was cotton.
Cotton was kind of like oil.
So, the oil--the cotton gets exported and
they make a ton of money and the banks, they
have enough money to import. The country grows
and becomes rich, and in fact as Baptist says,
the economy was built on the backs of African
slaves.
LF: So is capitalism- RECD as you call it
- real existing capitalist democracy - in
the United States. Is it redeemable, reformable?
Chomsky: Well, this is a good illustration
of how remote our system is from capitalism.
It’s hard to think of any greater violation
of capitalist and market principles than slavery.
But the country was based on two basic commitments:
one, slavery, which was as Baptist points
out was all the source, pretty much the source
of the growing economy, including the industrial
economy. The other is the extermination of
the indigenous population by state power.
What’’s that got to do with capitalism?
In effect, it goes right to the present. If
you have an iPhone and you take a look at
the components in it, practically all of them
were developed through the state sector, government
funding, research and development, often for
decades.
LF: Public sector. We paid for it.
Noam Chomsky: Yea, we paid for it. And notice
there is a principle of capitalism. Say we
imagine we’re in a capitalist society. And
you invest money in something, and it’s
a risky investment, and you keep investing
in it for decades. And finally, something
comes out that makes a profit--well, in a
capitalist society you’re supposed to get
the profit. That’s not what happens here.
LF: If I’m the U.S. taxpayer…
Noam Chomsky: You pay for decades, usually
under the pretext that the Russians are coming
or something. You’re paying for the kind
of research and development and creative work
that yields the IT revolution, computers,
the Internet, your iPhone, all the rest of
it. Do you get anything back?
LF: I haven’t noticed it.
Noam Chomsky: It goes to Steve Jobs and Bill
Gates.
LF: But, we work a lot with people these days
who are interested in trying to develop work
around co-ops and cooperative regions of solidarity
economics. Is that hopeless?
Noam Chomsky: No, I think that makes sense.
In fact, there are interesting things happening.
The person who’s done the most writing about
this is Gar Alperovitz, and it’s interesting
work. Throughout the Northern middle west,
like in Northern Ohio, there is a spread of
worker-owned enterprises -- not huge but not
small either -- which could be the basis of
a different kind of society. And notice that
these could be substantial if there was enough
popular support.
So, go back a couple of years--Obama virtually
nationalized the auto industry. It was collapsing,
so it had to be kind of built up by the taxpayers.
So he took over most of the auto industry.
There were a few possibilities. One possibility,
of course, was the one that was followed.
Bail out the owners, bail out the banks, give
it back to the same people, or other people
with different faces but essentially the same
roles in society, and have it continue to
produce what it had always been producing--automobiles.
There was another possibility.
Give it to the work force. Subsidize them
to develop and have it produce what we need.
What do we need? I can give you a personal
example.
My wife and I came to New York by train from
Boston. The train took only an hour and a
half longer than when I took it in 1950 for
the first time. Either it was standing still
or it was going slower than the trucks on
the Connecticut Turnpike.
There isn’t a country in the world where
this happens. And that’s just a symbol of
the country. This is the richest country in
the world that has incomparable advantages
and it’s just falling apart.
LF: Were you encouraged by the news that was
hailed as a breakthrough of the U.S.-China
accord around emissions, for the first time
China committing to cap emissions?
Noam Chomsky: Look, it’s better than nothing,
but it doesn’t really amount to much. And
it had potential dangers that we’d better
keep our eye on. Notice that this a U.S.-China
agreement. It could turn out that this is
going to undercut the international agreements,
and it’s not impossible that that was the
purpose.
When we talk about Chinese emissions, remember
they’re our emissions. China manufactures,
say, your iPad, and there is pollution, but
that’s for the American markets. So, it’s
a mixed story.
LF: Well, so that goes to the questions that
we received from our Facebook friends. We
invited them to pose questions for Professor
Chomsky and they posed very many. They fell
into several camps: How did we get into this
mess? How would you describe this mess? And
how to we get out of this mess? I think at
the “how do you describe this mess?” situation.
One quick question in particular, was “How
do you assess the strengths and weaknesses
of the U.S. movements for social justice,
and how would you advise we try to maximize
the strengths and minimize the weaknesses?”
Noam Chomsky: The labor movement has traditionally
been in the forefront of progressive social
change, and for that reason and others it’s
under severe attack. Partly it’s the fault
of labor bureaucrats, but partly it’s just
fierce attack from the business world, which
pretty much runs the country.
And by now the labor movement is a shadow
of what it once was. It could come back. There
have been earlier periods of American history
when the labor movement was destroyed--1920s,
it was partially wiped out, 1930s it rose
again, so it could happen.
But with the labor movement seriously weakened
and an independent political parties almost
gone, there’s a lack of, a fundamental lack
of, continuity in activist politics.
So everything starts from--as if nothing ever
happened before. So, if you take Occupy, which
was important but it came out of nowhere,
no institutional memory, no recollection of
the history. Not even remembering how to run
a demonstration. You know, all of this kind
of institutional memory is gone. There’s
a lot of activism, but it’s very separated.
One of the things that I spend a lot of time
doing is just giving talks around the country.
And one of the major positive contributions
is it just brings people together in the same
community. People may be doing the same thing
in different neighborhoods and don’t know
each other. And that extends across the country.
What’s happening here nobody knows about
there. That’s a serious weakness.
LF: One of the other questions we had from
our Facebook page was from people asking about
the prospects for a movement growing out of
the conflict in Ferguson and the role of police
and the militarization of police in our society.
Do you see any prospects for a broad anti-racist
social justice movement coming out of that
mobilization?
Chomsky: There are prospects, but it’s going
to be very hard. This is a very racist society.
I mean it’s pretty shocking. What has happened
in the last, roughly 30 years, with regard
to African Americans, actually is very similar
to what Baptist describes in the late 19th
century. Remember what happened--the Constitutional
amendments during and after the Civil War
were supposed to free African American slaves.
It did something for about 10 years then there
was a North-South compact, which essentially
granted the former slave-owning states the
right to do whatever they wanted. And what
they did was criminalize black life in all
kinds of ways. That created a kind of a slave
force.
In fact, one of the most interesting books
on it, Douglas Blackmon’s Slavery by Another
Name. It threw mostly black males, but also
women, into jail where they become a perfect
labor force, much better than slaves. If you’re
a slave owner you have keep your capital alive.
If the state does it for you, it’s terrific.
No strikes, no disobedience, the perfect labor
force.
A lot of the American Industrial Revolution
in the late 19th, early 20th century, is based
on that. And that actually pretty much lasted
until the World War II when there was a need
for what’s called free labor in the war
industry. After that come about two decades
in which African Americans had kind of a shot
at entering this society. A black worker could
get a job at an auto plant, the unions were
still functioning, maybe he could buy a small
house and send his kid to college or something.
By the 1970s or 80s, it’s going back to
criminalization of black life. It’s called
the Drug War, which is a racist war. Ronald
Reagan was an extreme racist and denied it.
And the whole Drug War is designed, from policing
up to eventual release from prison to make
it impossible, for the black male community,
and more and more women and more and more
Hispanics, to be part of the society.
If you look at American history, the first
slaves came in 1619, and that’s half a millennium.
There have been about three or four decades
in which African Americans had a limited degree
of freedom, not entirely, but at least some.
And of course, for black elites there are
some privileges, but I’m talking about the
mass of the population, which has been re-criminalized
and also turned into a slave labor force (prison
labor for example). This is American history.
To break out of that is no small trick.
If you take a look
at the elections, say the last election, in
many ways it’s a civil war. The red states
are the confederacy. That extent
is little bit beyond, but that’s pretty
much what it is. This is a real battle. These
two founding crimes, slavery and extermination
of the 
indigenous population, are very much with
us. Take a look at Indian reservations today.
It’s not a pretty sight.
