Noam Chomsky on Jordan Peterson, Post-Modernism, Foucault and Ali G

the establishment left has just dropped entirely so the Democratic Party whatever that is abandoned the working-class generation okay let's get straight into the question is that all right oh yeah okay so Peter you can mute your mic if you don't mind okay okay so what I wanted to know is the first I wanted to define the left and essentially the way that I'm going to do that is by asking you what are the traits in the left the left political left in the past century that have changed and what's remained the same as far as you can tell well of course the left has moved consistently to new issues that weren't even noticed before so if you go back a century well there were elements of the left that controls a feminist it's nothing like the dominant the dominant element in lift politics that exists today you go back 20 years ago it's very little concern about the environment now on the Left recognizes that it's an existential problem the on the other hand and said there many cases in which there's been progress in understanding and dedicated work there are other cases in which there's regression so go back not very far a couple of decades a Labour Organisation was a major issue for the left it was recognized understood that the driving force in any social and political economic change it's going to be an organized working class that's been well depends which call the left but the establishment left has just dropped it entirely so the Democratic Party whatever that is abandoned the working-class generation ago hand it over their class enemy activists on the Left have become engaged justifiably with issues that are sometimes called identity politics those are real issues have to be dealt with but class issues have been subordinated of marginalized and they're very real that's a deficiency that has to be overcome all of these things interact when people talk about intersectionality it's right but it's in more of a slogan and a an actual achievement so I think if you look at course the board there's progress regression what is your opinion on identity politics the issues are significant they have to they enter they cannot each type of identity politics cannot dominate a a commitment of an organized lift that hopes to achieve things they have to interact be mutually supportive and they have to crucially bring in the class issues that have been subordinated actually the most active extreme form of identity politics is white nationalism something I'm trying to determine with my research is when does the left to go too far and when does the right to go too far politically speaking and I wanted to know what your opinion is on that just to pick the issues I mean the right at this point is simply suicidal it's not a question of going too far the right is committed to destruction of organized human society is that an extreme statement maybe but it's correct I'll just take a look at the Republican Party what is the Republican Party committed to it's committed to destroying human life and not in the long term the Paris agreements a couple of years ago they weren't fabulous but they were something at least their original effort intent was to create a treaty in which there would be verifiable commitments to some measures to avert the huge threat of global warming couldn't get a treaty it had to be a voluntary agreement why Republican senators wouldn't accept it I think the Republican primary in 2016 every single candidate without exception either denied that global warming is taking place or L said maybe it is but we don't care we're gonna John Kasich it was throwing of Ohio who's considered the real moderate of the group said yeah we recognize that global warming is taking place in it's serious but we intricate in Ohio are going to use our cold and we're not more apologize for it that's the moderate Republican then you go over to the White House yes total maniacs and people who say we don't care I said we'll destroy the world but we'll have profit tomorrow and are leading the way towards destruction consciously aware of what they're doing the most secret about easy to demonstrate no far too late is this on there's no words for and what am i one question what about the left when does the left go too far it's not a matter of going too far as a matter of making tactical decisions that are incorrect you have to if you may there's a it may be that some of the goals go debatable talk about that but insofar as there are the kinds of goals that say we think we can support you have to ask whether the tactics that are used or well designed to meet those goals or else undermine the goals so let's take concrete cases as you know I was very active in the anti-war movement resistance movement during the nineteen sixties contact with Vietnamese the Vietnamese were appalled but some of the tactics that were being used I remember meetings with Vietnamese would plead with American activists not to do things like what the withum men are doing I'm the Weathermen a lot of young people who many of them I knew that were perfectly sincere they thought that the way to end the war is to smash up the windows on Main Street it's not the way to end the war and that was the way to enrage construction workers and others so they'd be more aware than they were before the Vietnamese that didn't care or whether Americans felt good they cared whether they could survive so what they advocated were measures so mild that a lot of the war movement were just laughing but that's the kind of choice that has to be made all the time and get PA examples today so going too far I think we we should rephrase that as taking tactics that are going to undermine the perhaps the perhaps the German in just goals that you say you're advocating on the discussion of the left and the right in terms of their differences in their similarities oftentimes the they're characterized as being pro-government and the rightest characterized as I'd be pro corporation and you've written about the revolving door between the two between regulators and the regulated in your book like manufacturing consent now does this blur the line of what it means to be a left winger and a right winger do the left and the right still exist did they have urgent I mean let's take being proud or any government that's not a a general position of the left that's a tactical choice in particular circumstances so when you have a state like the United States that's largely dominated by private tyrannies with very little of public voice in that particular circumstance the option available to you to overcome this is governmental action which at least to some extent is responsive to public opinion in other circumstances when you're trying to construct a really libertarian left participatory society you might want to dissolve both governmental structures as legitimate Authority there's no right or left right or wrong answer to that so for example let's take takes a media okay the United States is unusual it's just different from other developed societies in many respects at one respect is it doesn't have public fairly as public media okay Meteor private oh I just overwhelming is a kind of a little tiny fringe on the Left mother bleep on the Gulf the friend Jim says like nothing like the BBC or anything like that we can look at why this happened certainly not implicit in US history like the founders of the conjuring the framers believed they interpreted the First Amendment very differently than the way we do they thought it meant that's the government ought to take an act if rule in sponsoring a free and independent Chris that's why we have the post office for example it's early years the post office was almost totally devoted to providing a cheap free basically subsidies to the Boyd variety of journals and newspapers to encourage varied free independent press over the years the power of private power in the United States which is quite unusual managed to privatize a radio television and more recently the Internet but that's and yes in those circumstances it would make sense to call for a public voice under other circumstances you might want to have local local based you know worker based community-based media and there's many other such questions your self-described anarchist and I'd like to know what is the difference between your beliefs and contemporary libertarianism well first of all woods called libertarian in the United States is some ultra-right advocacy as private tyrannies nothing nothing like anything that was libertarian traditionally but if you're talking about less libertarian it's you know covers quite a range but just as the term anarchism does but there is a kind of a core and the center of it I think the core running through the whole tradition with many variations is the recognition that there are certain structures in social political life economic life that are that have to justify their own legitimacy there are coercive authoritarian there is a hierarchy domination somebody gives you or somebody takes them all of those structures have to be or none of those structures are self-justifying they have a burden of justification if they can't meet it it's almost always the case that should be dismantled I think that's the core principle and land view is that once you get to the basics almost every normal person it's in this sense but that's then you have to ask how it applies so do you have a job somewhere well if you have a job in a business corporation let's say you're living in a tyranny so extreme that no totalitarian dictator ever dreamed of it so for example Stalin didn't tell people look they have ten minutes to go to the bathroom every couple of hours you have to wear these clothes not some other clothes if you're not allowed to stop to talk to a friend for a minute your your monitor say it or an Amazon warehouse so that if you don't pick up enough things fast I know if you like you maybe you stopped it Bree there's nothing you get a demerit there was no totalitarian dictatorship like that that's most of people's lives well is that a legitimate structure is the labor contract legitimate every traditional classical liberals didn't think so Abraham Lincoln didn't think so the Republican Party didn't think Republican Party slogan in the mid 19th century early Industrial Revolution was that wage labor is indistinguishable from slavery except that it's was emperor until you become a free person well okay that's that those ideas have been driven out of people's heads but I don't think they're very far below the surface they can emerge and that would be authentic left libertarian it just one aspect so it seems like you overlap with regards to free exchange of speech and ideas and I remember a while ago you helped you defended a Holocaust denier and I wanted to know if you still stand by that defending a Holocaust I mean defending his freedom is sure I'm in this it's just standard classical liberalism you there's two choices either some form of power or an authority typically the state of other determines what's true and punishes any deviation from what he claims is true or else you will of used to be expressed that you know like in fact if you really believe in freedom of speech the only issues are do I allow speech that I don't like Hitler and Stalin had nothing against speech they like nowadays there's this trans rights versus free speech late and I want to know what you think about that where do you lie on that list of Holocaust denial for another minute the Holocaust denial is the norm in Western society so but for just take an example a couple of years ago an article appeared in The New York Review the major journal full of lift liberalism in which the author good decent left liberals was reviewing a book by a major American historian who said that he said in his review he was struck it was interested to learn that when the early explorers came to the Western Hemisphere there were only about a million people from the tropical forests to the frozen north he was off by about 60 or 70 million who were wiped out said Holocaust and did anybody say he should be imprisoned I did anybody even notice I mean these things happen all the time it's a particular form that we don't like that somebody doesn't like that's considered it has to be suppressed and that's worth keeping in mind when you talk about all I gots denial so it seems like you have some similarities with Jordan Peterson on this issue and I know that you haven't talked too much about Jordan Peterson and I wanted to know if you had any disagreements with what he says frankly I just love tension but if you want to know about Jordan Peters and I think the best thing I can refer you to is a article boy Nathan Robin Robinson very sharp acute critic and his journal current affairs it's called something like the intellectual we deserve or something like that I think that that's basically my answers other than that I don't pay anything I mean there's some issues and which I probably agree with Hitler no doesn't mean much on that subject I think it's Aristotle right who says that people get the governments they deserve is this kind of the light of Aristotle said that people get the governments they deserve is this kind of what you're implying but for intellectual no I don't think people get the government they deserve they get the government at power systems imposed that's quite different on the systems of power you had mentioned in manufacturing consent the idea of the principle of bureaucratic affinity the idea that large-scale bureaucracies will ally with other large guild bureaucracies to sort of maintain the status quo and to hate each other and that when a company like when a media company for example tries true journalism these large bureaucracies be either the government or corporations will give the media company flak and sort of cease to work with them my question for you question for you is just the principle of bureaucratic affinity apply to educational institutions like large universities to a varying extent but depends on the university it depends on the time and the era you know there's in our current situation current circumstances with all their flaws that universities are one of the last mansions bastions of the relative freedom of expression of research even of worker self-government to a certain extent faculty at a university has a degree of control over their working lives which is very rare in the existing socio-political system so I don't think you can answer a simple yes-or-no by comparative standards they're really free they have flaws so for example if you take a look at the American University System LaBella just a few years ago you couldn't find a Marxist professor anywhere in any other country in the world they'd be all over the place out here I asked what do you attribute that to in your in past comments you had mentioned how academics maintain a sort of status quo as opposed to being the sort of radicals that they display themselves as do you find that still true or do you find that academics are changing well okay and there's a kind of an ebb and flow I think it's less true than it was fifty or sixty years ago but it's more true than it oughta be and it's not just academics its intellectuals generally that look over the whole history of intellectuals for a couple of thousand years in fact and you find that overwhelmingly have a tentative support power assistance there are a few who don't want and they usually treated pretty harshly in fact just take the the term intellectual in its modern sense was first used at the time of the Dreyfus trial in France late nineteenth century most of the intellectuals the prestigious intellectuals the ones of the you know French Academy and so on bitterly condemned the Dreyfus or how dare are these writers and artists questioned the majesty of our Army States and so on there were a few like Emile Zola a couple of others who stood up against it they were persecuted and we may honor them today but not at the time ambles all had to flee France that's the record in one form or another all through history so the fact shortly after after this first world war came alone it was very dramatic to see what happened to the intellectual classes a dream this is including the left during the first world war in every single country Germany France England the United States the intellectuals lined up almost a hundred percent and passionate support of their own country the ones who didn't many of them ended up in jail that Bertrand Russell Rosa Luxemburg Eugene Debs that's the pattern we're back we're back computer do you want to repeat the question super quick there's my wife hi thank you thank you hello professor Noam Chomsky's wife okay the question in some rooms in manufacturing consent you teach us that big media is allied with the government corporate elites and as a result the framework of big medias discussion fits comfortably in a propaganda model an acceptable framework on how to analyze problems and talk about issues well if if academia itself is allied with government and corporate elites then wouldn't they also fit a propaganda model and if not what makes them so unique for one thing there's several things that are to some extent it's true but notice that the relation of media to say corporate elites is very different from the relation of universities to corporate elites in the case of media it's just that's what they are the media are major corporations parts of bigger corporations flow in and out of government very heavily subject to government to edicts and so on the universities have the same influences but much less the relation of a university to corporations is kind of get a grant you know I will I get a will to be a donor will be willing to that's very different from being a part of the corporate system which already allows a little flexibility also there is we should not underestimate the fact that there is a sense of professionalism and intellectual responsibility that's true in the media too there are serious journalists who many of them understand the system very well they didn't have to hear it from us to try to find ways to combat it and it happens now in the media they tend to be marginalized and eliminated you know sent to the police desk you're not really ready for big guy work when it's risen and that kind of thing happens in the universe is - but probably to a slightly lesser extent and it depends also on the field so many fields in the university are almost totally free from outside pressures physics department forces some people have suggested that they should that we should remove universities but and this is Raymond Norton Peterson for example said suggest students don't go to universities anymore because of the bias because of the unitary point of views and this is reminiscent of anarchists ivanovitch's desire to eliminate listen to what jordan Peterson is saying he's saying universities are dominated by the lifts for him the lift is anybody - the lift is Attila the Hun in fact universities are dominated by the right he's so far on the right that that looks like the left in but does it make sense to tell students not to go to universities it's crazy it's one of the places where you can lots of things wrong but there are resources and opportunities that simply don't exist anywhere else so you can't there are opportunities to become free independent creative individuals working with others they just don't have elsewhere sorry I miss sorry I misspoke I didn't mean that to suggest that he suggested to eliminate the universities I mean I'm more trying to convey the decentralization of universities so for example an online school there's a lot omission in online school your peers one of the big parts of education is the students you're with that those kinds of interactions are gone online and they're very important for educating oneself anybody who's been in a through a school or university situation knows how you can learn more from interaction with your peers than from sitting in on a lecture even interaction with the faculty so it's one thing to sit in a lecture class or watch a television screen and it's another thing to be in an actual class where you're interacting with other students and with the faculty so yes there are good things I mean I think it's good to try to extend the resources of a university elsewhere but there's nothing to replace the direct at face to face interaction not just when you're in class but when you're when you're doing something else from here I'm sitting in a McDonald's and having a hamburger looking friends talking what are your thoughts on the Christian anarchists Yvonne it'll äj-- and his rise in popularity among social activists yeah an anarchist who believed in d.school in society is popular work and sort of understand some of the motivation for it but the d.school in society is taking away from people some of their major opportunities for individual growth and social interaction and even even general activism I mean it's not just pure accident that over the years student activism has been one at the forefront of many of the most important social movements partly it's just because young people are period of their life when they're relatively free but it's also the fact that they're together they can talk with one another they can interact that's something's pretty much missing an atomized capitalist society then I'm running into a little bit of a confusion here on the one hand the history of intellectuals in academia sort of lines up with the status quo in the sense of we were talking about Nazism things before but on the other hand they're on forefront of social change how are these views compatible their participants are in the forefront of social change the mainstream may be status quo and conservative which it is take a look at student activism it's usually opposed by the administration and most of the faculty but nevertheless it takes place because this is a relatively free institution which means that there are opportunities to break out of the doctrinaire sister system of attempted Ridge rotation you know we're not living in totalitarian dictatorships where if you say the wrong thing you get sent to the to the concentration camp we're living in societies with a relative degree of freedom often infringed by authoritarian structures but they don't have the kind of force they do if the SS troops are standing behind you we shouldn't compare ourselves with that in that case what is an anarcho-syndicalist s-- take on education on what it should look like and what needs to change from how it is now to how it should be actually the anarchist movement not just an affair syndicalists we're in the forefront of developing progressive education systems so for example in Spain where the 1936 revolution was the leading of the most successful so for example of an anarchist revolution I was preceded by the decades of educational efforts and villages and towns everywhere trying to create a free Liberatore environment in which students could find their own ways their creativity would be sponsored they would work jointly with one another very similar to progressive education tendencies John Dewey's those which I had benefit from as a trial effect familiar with taught that way as well so yes anarchist education progessive that there's also people like pilot ferry or he that should be an interactive process where the teachers learning from the students not just students having freedom that's what I think that's the kind of direction that education should take the course that should follow and does in the better places do you feel that if education is too centralized these alternative platforms will be sidelined neglected in the public sphere or for example in universities that student participation would get minimalized I don't think there's a simple answer you could have a public education system which Foster's individual creativity the freedom student initiative and so on you could have a scattered system of charter schools which are business run and we can pose discipline it depends on the educational program not whether it's central depends okay I have a question that either you would think it's our completely polar opposite or core that they completely overlap what were you thinking during your interview your conversation with Foucault and what were you thinking during your conversation with Ali G with I didn't hear the first one with Foucault and with Ali G well it was quite different in the case of Ali G there had been a I was not particularly interested in the interview but the I think was the BBC whoever was behind it gave me a big song and dance about how this might be very sheer senator I finally agreed soon as he walked in I realized this is joke tried to be polite but I had a hard time but I didn't take it seriously no you mean to say you realized that it was a joke or you felt like the whole interview was a joke and you thought he was for real the whole thing was obviously some kind of effort at comedy which I didn't want to be part of and ice perfectly I mean was on the tip of my tongue saying look this is enough let's terminate it but being polite I went along with it for a while because it's quite different actually we had bent Foucault and I had spent a large part of the day together the interview was a debate wasn't evening I was just walking around the Dutch countryside partly because we wanted to have a chance to talk but partly to see if we could get by with him - looking French and be talking English would we be able to understand each other especially we had the translator we finally figured we could carry it off I don't know much French there's no much English but it worked and the debate was about issues that are fairly serious issues so nothing we disagreed about a lot of things I was appalled by something pretty serious but it was within the domain of rational discourse okay I know you're a busy oh sorry I know you're a busy person I only have two more questions and they're super quick one is what are your thoughts on post-modernism what do you agree with and what do you disagree with well for about couple of decades I've had a very simple question that I've been posing to my postmodern friends can you find something in post-modernism which is not either a triviality cloaked in policy levels or is false and nobody's inserted yet so that's federal incident okay and then my last question was you're extremely prolific you've written I think over a hundred books at least on politics and then many more in other subjects how do you structure your day what's your productivity look like your routine right now since my wife and I moved to Arizona I'm not living in Cambridge anymore my routine is to get up early in the morning take our dogs out play with them for a while read the newspaper start looking at the huge quantity of email would piled up if I get rid of that but the word them serious things topic did you clean your room just get it I said out but did you clean your room clean join Peterson reference there's very little oxygen in the room mostly books and papers much clean thank you so much professor and thank you what's your wife's name Valeria valaria hi hi thank you so much thank you yeah I'll send you a link to this interview as well give you a copy of the interview sure thank you I appreciate it have a great day go back to playing with your dogs and make sure you clean up your room because I think that's the most important I think that's more important than writing books

Channel: Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal

Views: 1,106,371

Rating: 4.1706495 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: XeWWz4y1coU

Length: 36min 56sec (2216 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 26 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/lnconvenience]

We can always admire Chomsky intellectual vigor

[u/Vertoog]

God, that interview was beyond awkward, especially when they asked Chomsky whether he had ‘’cleaned his room’’. Bunch of Peterson fanboys.

[u/DopeLikeAPNP]

The interviewers like the smell of their own farts

[u/dragonfly-blues]

Chomsky had some great points here and he’s always such a nice person to talk to but the interviewer was beyond awkward with their stupid “did you clean your room?” comment, TWICE. Ffs you’re not talking to your online followers, have some goddamn respect holyy shit..

[u/Ahnarcho]

Not really all that surprising. Claiming there’s a vast left wing conspiracy on campus? Chomsky’s gonna call bullshit

[u/[deleted]]

Timestamp on him vs. JBP? Can't with these interviewers altho he does look epically old/wise in this

[u/octave0820]

God that was a painful interview to watch. Why waste his time like that asking stupid and trivial questions?

[u/Hoontah050601]

Not promoting the channel nor the interviewers, I don't know there political views.