AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org,
The War and Peace Report.
I’m Amy Goodman, as we return to our public
conversation with the acclaimed linguist and
dissident Noam Chomsky.
It was recorded in April at the First Parish
Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
AMY GOODMAN: Speaking of entities that President
Trump doesn’t like, he calls the press the
enemy of the American people, the enemy of
the people.
Can you assess, as the media assesses President
Trump in his first a hundred days, the media’s
behavior?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, I think the media has
fallen over backwards to try to give him some
protection and leeway.
I mean, you know, there are things that are
so ludicrous and outrageous that a reporter
simply can’t keep from saying something
about them, like there’s one ridiculous
claim after another that comes out of the
tweets—you know, 3 million illegal undocumented
refugees voted for Clinton, Obama wiretapped
the Trump Tower, you know, one after another.
My sense is—this is just a guess—that
this is a media strategy, that it’s the
Bannon-Trump-Spicer strategy to try to keep
attention focused on one or another form of
lunacy, but not look at what’s actually
happening.
And what’s actually happening is that Paul
Ryan and his associates behind the scenes
are systematically and carefully dismantling
every element of government that is of any
benefit to people and that doesn’t maximize
corporate power and profit.
I mean, the dedication of the Republican leadership,
especially the Ryan-type leadership, their
dedication to slavish servility to corporate
power and wealth is just phenomenal.
I mean, read this morning’s business pages.
Their latest step is to try to prevent exposure
of complaints against banks that carry out
improper activities.
It is possible now, thanks to the Consumer
Protection Act, for people to criticize when
they think a bank has carried out some improper
activity.
But we’ve got to keep that silent, you know,
because we have to protect corporations from
any exposure of criminal activities they might
carry out.
I mean down to that level, in fact, everywhere
you look.
I mean, the healthcare proposal was so shocking
that, I mean, it was a proposal basically
to cut taxes for the rich and to ensure that
poor and middle-class people—the people
who voted for Trump, in fact—don’t get
medical aid.
As you saw, of course, the Congressional Budget
Office estimated 24 million additional people
uninsured.
There was an analysis of that by Steffie Woolhandler
and David Himmelstein, two health specialists,
just studying the relationship between lack
of insurance and deaths.
There’s plenty of evidence about that.
And it turns out that would have meant about
45,000 additional deaths a year.
Well, that’s OK, as long as you cut taxes
for the rich.
And step by step, that’s what’s happening
behind the façade of Trumpisms and, you know,
Spicer antics before the press.
And the press is pretty much falling for it.
That’s what they focus on, not what’s
being carried out.
There is, of course, criticism—mild criticism—of
outrageous lies, but I think that just plays
the game.
That’s what the lies are for.
Then you can yell about the liberal press
that is trying to undermine us.
It’s all a kind of a desperate effort to
keep a con game going.
Trump does have a base, a voter base.
He’s kicking them in the face with abandon.
And the idea is: How do you hold onto them
while you’re doing this?
Not an easy trick.
And this, I think, is part of the con.
And there are people in the press who are
pointing it out—Paul Krugman, for one—but
nothing like it should be.
AMY GOODMAN: Which takes us to your latest
book, Requiem for the American Dream, where
you talk about the 10 principles of the concentration
of power and wealth, how it’s happening,
what to watch out for.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, credit for the 10 principles
should go to the producers of the film.
What they did was take a lot of interviews
and discussions about all sorts of things
and put them in a coherent and, I think, pretty
effective form, including formulating 10 principles—that’s
their contribution—and including material
that discusses them.
And you can look at the film and see, or the
book, but my feeling is they did a really
good job.
I’m impressed by it.
AMY GOODMAN: So the book is accompanying this
film that is now out on Netflix.
But you talk about, for example, principle
one, reducing democracy; principle two, shaping
ideology; and principle three, redesigning
the economy.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, all of those fall together,
and they’re part of a pretty remarkable
development that’s taking place in—actually,
in human history.
Humans, in the last 60 or 70 years, have succeeded
in creating a kind of a perfect storm, literally.
Two—there’s a kind of a pincers movement
that we’ve created, two major attacks on
the prospects for survival: global—global
warming, nuclear weapons, the Anthropocene,
the nuclear age.
And the third is a set of socioeconomic policies
designed to undermine the possibility of dealing
with the problems.
The problems could be dealt with only in a
functioning democracy of engaged, informed
people, who could make decisions, who would
be informed and could make decisions to deal
with the crises.
But the so-called neoliberal programs of the
past generation, the sort of somewhat market-oriented
programs, designed to undermine the institutions,
the governmental and popular institutions,
that might deal with these issues, it’s
all a unit.
One result is a very significant decline in
democracy.
You can see it in the—which is almost built
into the policies.
It’s perfectly built—you can’t carry
out economic policies of the type that have
been—that have been implemented in the past
generation in a functioning democracy.
That’s impossible.
I mean, just take a look at the numbers.
So, the neoliberal programs were basically
taking off right around 1980.
It escalated—started a little with the late
Carter, escalated under Reagan, went on more
under Clinton and so on.
2007 was the peak of supposed success.
This is right before the crash.
A lot of euphoria among economists, political
analysts about the great achievements of neoclassical
economics, of the great moderation, you know,
the neoliberal programs, a dismantling of
regulations—all these great successes, 2007.
What was happening to American working people
at that time?
In 2007, wages, real wages, were lower than
they had been in 1979 when the experiment
took off.
In fact, for the majority of the population,
it’s a period of stagnation or decline.
Benefits have declined.
People had been—some of the reasons were
explained by Alan Greenspan, head of the Federal
Reserve, who was in charge pretty much of
managing the economy.
He testified to Congress that part of the
success of the economy, the low inflation
and so on, was due to what he called growing
worker insecurity.
Working people were insecure.
They were intimidated.
They knew that they were in a dangerous situation,
precarious situation.
As a result, they didn’t press for increase
in wages and—for decent wages and benefits.
They were willing to accept, in fact, an effective
decline in their living standards.
And Greenspan, who was a close observer of
the economy, pointed out that this continued,
even when jobs were increasing in the late
Clinton period.
It was deeply embedded in the nature of the
policies being carried out, that working people
are intimidated, they’re living precarious
lives, many of them are part-time, they’re
losing security, their unions are being destroyed,
and their wages are declining.
So it’s all great.
The economy is wonderfully healthy.
Can you carry out policies like that in a
democracy?
I mean, are people going to vote for it?
Same in Europe, even worse in many ways.
The so-called austerity programs, even the
economists of the International—the IMF,
International Monetary Fund, their own economists
say—report that these policies make no economic
sense.
But the IMF bureaucrats, the ones who are
part of the decision-making apparatus, they
vote for them.
How do you—and the effect on Europe is the
same thing, as far as democracy is concerned.
Just like in the United States, there’s
anger, contempt for major—for centrist—you
know, for the major governing institutions.
Here, it’s Congress; there, it’s the political
parties.
You just saw it in France yesterday: The two
major parties were barely visible in the election.
And it’s happening all over Europe, same
kind of thing that’s happening here.
I mean, here, it’s happening in a way which
is almost farcical because of the—you know,
the kind of actions carried out by the leadership.
In Europe, it’s being—it’s being pursued
in a way which is really ominous.
I mean, you don’t have to look far back
to find a time when fascist parties actually
had power in Europe.
And we know what happened.
And now there are neofascist parties, with
fascist roots often, which are pretty close
to power, even in places like Austria and
Germany, which have some memories about.
France, as well, was—under the Nazis, was
a very pro-Nazi country, the Vichy government.
It was rounding up Jews faster than the Germans
wanted them.
A really ugly record.
And seeing these things come back, or just
seeing a situation in which, according to
recent polls, a majority of Europeans think
there should be no more Muslims in Europe,
I mean, that evokes some memories, not nice
ones.
And a lot of—you can’t attribute it all
to the neoliberal economic policies, but a
lot of it does follow from that.
When you impose on people circumstances of
this kind, you have to make sure that they
have no way of responding politically.
In Europe, it’s done pretty straightforwardly.
The main decisions about socioeconomic policies
are made by the so-called troika—IMF, European
Central Bank and the European Commission,
which is unelected.
So three unelected bodies, they make the decisions.
They do listen to voices, the voices of the
northern banks, mostly German banks.
And the people suffer.
And they get—they are angry, frightened,
often reacting in dangerous ways.
We see similar phenomena here.
So, to go back to the pincers movement, what’s
happened is we’ve created two huge threats
to survival.
We have systematically—not you and me, but
the leadership has systematically created
socioeconomic policies, which have as a consequence,
almost immediate consequence, the undermining
of functioning democracy—the one thing that
might deal with the disasters.
Like I said, it’s a kind of perfect storm.
Real credit to the human species to have contrived
something like this.
AMY GOODMAN: Principle four is shift the burden
onto the poor and the middle classes.
Principle five, attack the solidarity of the
people.
Six, let special interests run the regulators.
Seven, engineer election results.
Eight, use fear and power of the state to
keep the rabble in line.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Is it necessary to comment?
I think you’re all familiar with it.
AMY GOODMAN: Nine is manufacture consent,
and principle 10 is marginalize the population.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, in fact, that’s exactly
what’s happening.
And it’s the—and there’s a reason for
it.
You cannot carry out the kinds of policies
that have been developed in the last generation,
and have the population function democratically.
In Europe, you can’t get people to vote
for policies which are undermining their lives;
which are leaving especially younger people
without any hopes of decent employment; which
are driving people to precarious existences;
which are undermining wages, reducing benefits;
in England right now, undermining, threatening
what had been the world’s most—by far,
the world’s most effective and efficient
national health system.
You can’t get people to vote for things
like this.
So what you have to do is marginalize them
in one way or another, turn them against each
other, aim—turn their anger against vulnerable
people—that’s standard technique—get
people to—don’t look at the people who
are really doing this to you.
Look at the ones who are more vulnerable:
immigrants, the poor, you know, Muslims, blacks—anybody.
We’re familiar with that, too.
There’s not a slight history about it.
So, sure, that just—it’s like—it’s
like an almost logical consequence of the
socioeconomic policies, which have been imposed
and lauded, in fact, by elites, including
liberal elites.
A lot of this was done by—say, by the Clinton
administration.
It was hailed, the deregulation, for example,
which very quickly led to one after another
financial crisis.
That was initiated by liberal economists,
who were telling us how wonderful it is.
And there’s actually, you know, a theory,
neoclassical economic theory, which says,
"Yeah, it’s fine."
Actually, there were people who warned against
it.
There were people who knew, a lot of left
independent economists, but even people right
out of the mainstream, like Joseph Stiglitz,
Nobel laureate.
Back around 1995 or so, he wrote an article,
actually in a World Bank research journal,
in which he warned against what he called
the "religion that the market knows best."
He says that’s the religion, as he put it,
that’s being followed by economists.
And he says you’ve got to take a look at
that religion.
Like a lot of religions, it just doesn’t
work.
Economic history and even logic show us lots
of things that are wrong about it.
But that was pursued with abandon on the basis
of theories of efficient markets, you know,
rational behavior, rational expectations and
so on—none of which had any empirical basis
or founding.
But they were the—the doctrines were accepted
for the very simple reason that they were
highly beneficial to wealth and power.
That makes them acceptable.
And you get the results that you have: the
undermining of the only means possible to
try to deal with the existential crises that
we have created.
So, again, it’s a kind of perfect storm,
part—all sorts of sources, including just
socioeconomic policies of a bipartisan nature.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, speaking April
24th at the First Parish Church in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, professor emeritus at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.
His latest book, Requiem for the American
Dream.
