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AUDIENCE: I think with
the past election--
so Donald Trump is, obviously,
one of the 1%, right?
So why do you think there's
such different views on
whether or not he's
representative of America,
whether being the American
dream or being or being one
of the "crooks" in the top 1%?
NOAM CHOMSKY: For one
thing, there's no America.
There's many splits.
And some of the splits
are quite sharp.
In fact, this country has become
polarized in the last 50 years
to an extent that's
never happened before.
In fact, just take a look at
the two political parties.
Up until the 1960s, the parties
weren't all that different.
You couldn't distinguish
a moderate Republican
from a liberal democrat.
They're more or less alike.
By now, the parties are so
differentiated that literally
people don't intermarry
across parties.
And it's become--
literally, there
are some good studies of it.
And what actually happened
is it's connected with race.
Up until the 1960s,
the Democrats
were kind of a coalition
of Southern Democrats,
all extreme racists,
and people who
were very powerful because
they stayed in office forever
since the South was
a one-party region.
Take a look at "The New
York Times" this morning.
There's a headline
about one-party Alabama.
Everybody is a Republican,
as if that's something new.
That goes back to the
Civil War, except now they
call them Republicans.
They used to call
them Democrats.
But same system, basically.
But the Southern Democrats
were extremely powerful
because the senators
had senior positions.
They'd been there forever.
There was a big block.
They had a big effect
on legislation.
So if you look at the
New Deal legislation,
there was a lot of progress.
But it was straight racist.
So Social Security, for example.
The Southern Democrats
were willing to permit
it to go through as long
as it excluded blacks.
And it did.
So Social Security was
designed to exclude
the majority of the workforce,
agricultural and domestic
workers.
Namely, African Americans.
The GI Bill gave--
it was a segregated army.
So it didn't go to blacks.
All the way through,
the Southern Democrats
were willing to tolerate
reformist measures
as long as it maintained the
Southern system of deep racism.
And what amounted to
new kinds of slavery.
Well, what happened in the
1960s was the civil rights
movement broke through this.
The Democrats began to pick
up civil rights legislation.
And the Southern Democrats
simply pulled out.
That's Nixon's famous
Southern strategy,
let's appeal to the South and
turn them into Republicans
on straight racist grounds.
So the parties realigned.
And a large part
of rural America
went along with it, too.
That's quite separate
from urban America.
The lines became sharper during
the neoliberal years, when
rural America was just smashed.
Rural America meant working
class, industrial America.
Small towns with those
industries and so on.
That was all smashed.
Urban America, that's
where the 1% is.
That's where we come from--
the people who prosper, the
more educated, and so on.
So these splits became
extremely sharp.
It's increased with new media.
So the cable television,
social media, and so on.
One of their effects is
to intensify the split.
So one part of America lives
in talk radio and Fox News.
I don't know if you
listen to talk radio here,
but you should.
I often listen to
it when I'm driving.
It's very interesting.
And what's interesting is not
Rush Limbaugh and those guys.
They're predictable.
But the people who call
in are what's interesting.
And that's a slice of Boston.
We're not talking
about Mississippi.
We're talking about Boston.
It's a slice of Boston which
is in some other universe.
The things they
believe, the things they
hear, the things they read.
That's why, I forget
the exact number.
But maybe half-- some large
percentage of Republicans
think that Obama is a
Muslim and that he wasn't
born in the United States.
You hear that drummed into
your head all the time.
OK.
And of course, the hatred of
Obama was substantially racist.
I mean, why is the Affordable
Care Act called Obamacare
by Democrats, by liberals?
Was Medicare called Johnsoncare?
Of course not.
We just accept the racism.
It's part of us.
So sure, it's Obamacare.
This black guy
pushed it through.
And that's liberal
Democrats call it that.
We don't even think about it.
But it's because it's
all deeply ingrained.
And when you get to
parts of the culture
where that's all they hear--
talk radio, Rush Limbaugh,
Loren McLaughlin,
or whatever her name is.
You really have to hear
this stuff to believe it.
And for large parts of
rural, lower middle-class,
small businessmen, the kind
of people who vote for Trump,
that's what they live with.
And by now, with
the reconstruction
of the political parties--
the Republicans are
an interesting party.
They are slavishly dedicated to
the welfare of the super-rich
and the corporations.
Take a look at their
legislative programs.
Paul Ryan is the
extreme example.
The most savage, brutal
programs you can think of.
So that's the actual
Republican Party.
But their constituency
is people who are
being harmed by these programs.
It's the kind of paradox
that Arlie Hochschild
wanted to understand.
And I think when you read
through what she found,
you can understand it.
But even true of things
like environmental issues.
So in the Bayou area where
she was working and living,
there's an extremely
high rate of cancer.
In fact, it's
called Cancer Alley.
And the reasons for it are
the petrochemical corporations
who just pour poisonous
chemicals into the Bayou.
And these are people who
live in the environment.
They hunt.
They fish.
Quite apart from the
fact that their children
are dying of cancer.
These people are
environmentalists.
And the people they
vote for are the ones
who want to destroy the EPA.
And when you look into it, it
turns out there's a reason.
For them, what the
EPA means is some guy
in a suit who comes from
Washington and tells us,
you can't fish here.
That's the EPA.
But that guy does nothing
about the petrochemical plants.
So why shouldn't they want
to get rid of the EPA?
That's their lives.
That's the kind of lives
that these people are living.
And when you see it firsthand--
and even you can see it right
here if you want to--
you can understand
the attitudes.
They're not as
paradoxical as they sound.
It's leading to a very strange
situation in the country.
Very dangerous one.
Incidentally, most
of the Trump voters
were not working class and poor.
They're mostly kind of lower
middle-class or very rich.
Those two groups.
But there were working
people who voted for Trump,
or who voted for
Scott Brown here.
And many of those
people voted for Obama.
They believed his rhetoric
about hope and change.
And when they saw very quickly
that hope and change means
money for bankers
and nothing for us,
they became deeply
disillusioned.
And so they're now trusting
the word of a con man who
also says hope and change.
But it's not that different
from the 2008 election
in some respects.
Just a different con man.
AUDIENCE: How do
you think we could
go about trying to change
the attitudes of like, what
people think that the EPA does?
Or like, that idea
of being in a line?
How do you think we
could change that?
NOAM CHOMSKY: By
interacting with people.
It's the only way.
That's what organizing
and activism are about.
You have to be in touch with the
people who have these beliefs.
Sympathetically, figure out--
come to understand why they
have the beliefs and interact--
show them.
Try to lead them to
understand that there's
another way of looking at it.
That's what education is about.
That's what organizing is about.
You can do it right in Boston.
That's why activists
live in communities,
work with communities.
MICHEL DEGRAFF: Any
questions on that side?
AUDIENCE: Speaking to
what we've been discussing
these last few minutes,
I think there's
a tendency in a lot of--
not only in politics,
but just in general
to not be as willing to try and
understand the point of view
of somebody who opposes you.
I don't know-- speaking
now to politics
specifically-- if that's
something that's kind of arisen
the last couple decades,
or that has some sort
of historical precedence.
And given the
polarization I've seen
in media that's now trickling
into various political
constituencies, have you
seen any similar effects
in any, maybe historical
elections or any sort
of prior settings?
NOAM CHOMSKY: This inability
to hear the other person?
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Sometimes, it
takes really extreme forms.
Take Clinton.
I think maybe the low
point of the last election
was her mocking of
the deplorables, which
had a big effect.
Here is this rich,
elite woman who goes--
talks to Wall Street.
Gets huge honoraria talking
to Wall Street bankers.
She's calling us deplorable.
Why are we deplorable?
We're hardworking and honest,
religious, conservative,
traditional people.
What makes us deplorable?
But that's an extreme
example of what
we see around us all the time.
This contempt for the,
say, Trump voters.
How can they be so stupid?
How can they be so ridiculous?
They're not humans.
And they feel the same way
towards the people walking
around Harvard Square.
There's plenty of
that all the back.
Like Benjamin Franklin
saying we shouldn't
admit Swedes and Germans.
Not very different.
