Noam Chomsky and Susan Neiman: Black Lives Matter, Universalism and Hopes for the Left

welcome to the Einstein forum my name is Thomas mean iam a former fellow at the forum today our discussion will last about an hour Noam Chomsky is a philosopher a linguist and an activist since his early youth for several decades he has been a leading critic of American power and capitalist exploitation Susan diamond is a philosopher director of the Einstein forum and author most recently of learning from the Germans race and the memory of evil and I can only share terms welcome and also thanks to both of our fellows Tom Meany and Chum wobbler II who's organized this conversation from his quarantine in India so you're now connecting with at least three continents I have a very long list of questions that I would like to ask you know I want to start by noting that you have recently said we are living at the most dangerous moment in history and nevertheless I have perceived and looking at some of the things you've said in the last month or so I perceived a strong note of hope I know that I'm feeling it although one of the things that I like very much is your striking a Conte a note about hope hope is not a feeling it's a moral obligation if we stop hoping the world will fall apart if we keep hoping we have a chance that it won't and as you said this is not a serious decision appreciate that very much I wonder what you think about this take I am getting my hope right now from this very extraordinary global anti racism movement and it's the first time that I can remember personal is larger than anything I can remember from the 60s but it's the first time that I can remember a combination of genuine universalism solidarity and cultural diversity and it has seemed for quite some time that the clash between universalism which usually gets described as fake universalism you know Eurocentrism disguised as fake universalism the clash between that and tribal identities has threatened to split the left and it seems to me that that is changing right now I wonder if you share that few or if you disagree I think that's a very important point it's quite remarkable and unprecedented to see the outpouring of concern and engagement that was ignited by the George Floyd murder that was plainly latent there have been all too many the killings horrible beatings of blacks by police case after case and there have been reactions but nothing remotely like this the one case that was more or less like this was almost twenty years ago in Los Angeles the Rodney King which did lead to about a week of series demonstrations about fifty or sixty people were killed and George Bush the first who was president called in federal troops to quiet things down but it was Los Angeles where it took place little elsewhere some support demonstrations but really nothing this time ends almost instantly all over the country and it wasn't just police killing it was probing into the deeper elements of structural racism of discrimination of the background for both police violence in a very violent society and the hideous legacy of 400 years of vicious repression it's actually not the first case interestingly about a year ago sure you saw the New York Times ran a series 1619 they called it the year of the first slaves brought to the United States and it was a a pretty eloquent series of exposures of much of what happened during this 400 years and nothing like that had ever happened before that was also a sign of one of many signs of a kind of a rising consciousness of awareness I would this event happened it's as if a spark it's a Kindle II was all ready to blow up than it did in remarkable ways the level of one thing that striking is not learning the scale but the Solidarity there's a lot of white black solidarity just coming straight from the grassroots it's not from organized activists of course there are people organizing the demonstrations but people are coming from everywhere and it has remarkable public support the demonstrations never get big public support now this is like 2/3 of the population way beyond what Martin Luther King achieved at the peak of his popularity 63 I have a dream speech was not like this and as he said it so it started all over the world and also looking at not just racism in the United States but the British Empire let's take a look at that let's tear that apart looking at their horrors that were perpetrated French atrocities and oh no no everywhere so it's somehow a global reaction to maybe a counter reaction to the move towards what I called a liberal democracies is you know phobia racism that's been happening now there's a counter develop and it's even has a chance of becoming institutionalized hasn't been much publicity but there's a interesting and promising development taking place of the what's called the progressive International which at its first announcement public announcement a couple of weeks ago having its first general meeting in September in Iceland the prime minister of Iceland is one of the members of the directing group that's an effort was initiated by the Bernie Sanders movement in the United States by Yanis varoufakis and his diem25 movement in Europe which has been organizing transnationally in Europe tried to salvage the parts of the European Union that makes some sense and to overcome the very serious flaws that are threatening to tear it apart so it's been working in Europe Sanders in the United States know trying to expand globally bringing in voices from the global South from India from Africa and elsewhere to see if a major international organization can be created to bring together the kind of struggles that are clearly international at this moment of extreme crisis and you started by mentioning that and it is an extreme crisis and we're facing a confluence of crises coming together at a remarkable moment that one of them is the racism as the pandemic that other is the extraordinary threat of global warming all of these international another one is the increasing sharply increasing threat of nuclear war as the United States is tearing to shreds the last remnants of the arms control regime and another is simply the deterioration of democracy and it's worth looking back to January as you all know every January the bulletin of Atomic Scientists it brings together group of distinguished scientists political analysts try to give an assessment of the world security situation they encapsulate this you know in the Doomsday Clock setting the minute hand a certain number of minutes away from midnight midnight means termination of termination finished first set in 1947 right after the atom bombings been seven minutes to midnight at that time it's been oscillating since the soonest Trump was nominated it was moved towards midnight every year he's been in office it's moved closer to midnight two years ago it reached the closest it had ever been two minutes to midnight this January the analysts gave up minutes they moved a second it's a hundred seconds to midnight they had raised three issues this before the pandemic was known the three were the ones they've brought up before that one was the dire and growing threat of nuclear war second is the increasing and equally dire threat of environmental catastrophe and the third was deterioration of democracy sounds a little out of place and still you start to think about it it's only true a vibrant democracy of engaged informed citizens participating in determining the fate of the world it's only that way that the two existential crises can be dealt with by no means want to ignore the warnings but what I'd like to focus on just for a moment longer is the fact that we seem to be living in a very vibrant lis democratic moment at which there is a bigger chance to turn things around then you know I had feared for quite a while I wonder just one point of information I was reading about the Progressive International just very recently can you say a word to those of us who might be interested in supporting or joining that movement should we go to a website what can we do there is a website which is a method for joining individuals can join organizations can join and if it reaches a significant scale especially by September when the first meeting will take place put the powder to the reactionary International which is being forged quietly before our eyes and you're right that this is a moment of hope but we should remember that there's a major struggle taking place all over the world as to what will the outcome be of the pandemic it's pretty awful it's having a terrible toll but it will be overcome the terrible cost and the question is what world will emerge from it well there's one organized dedicated force that is working very hard relentlessly every moment to ensure that what emerges will be essentially what created the crisis but a harsher and more authoritarian version of greater surveillance made of control greater domination by the forces that have brought this neoliberal catastrophe that is at the basis of a lot of the crises that we're seeing they're working hard question is will there be a counter force well the moment of hope that you describe is one hope for the emergence of the counter force Progressive International is another and this is this is a major conflict kind of international class war and his nips which will determine the fate of the world so here's a question about neoliberalism one of the things I think we've learned from since the 60s is the incredible power of capitalism and its ability to commodify everything and of course one of the things that's happening in these anti-racist movements is that various companies of course are coming out with slogans and in some cases even money and things that are a little more than symbols although it's easier to retire Aunt Jemima than it is to change the police structures what what are ways in which we can use the force of this system that we're still embedded in to make sure to hold their feet to the fire so this doesn't just become another excuse for rebranding I'll give you an example I spent half a year in Mississippi when I was researching my book you know what Bob Moses the great community organizer called the heart of the iceberg and I was just a couple of years ago there was no end of debates about the flag I knew students had been beaten up by Klan members when they tried to take the fly out of the University of Mississippi it just seemed it was gonna be the last state to go last Saturday whenever that was three days ago the legislature voted to take down the flag and it wasn't even a close vote but what clearly played a role is Mississippi's second religion after Christianity is football and when the sports the college sports industry said we could take away your hosting privileges you know suddenly the legislature felt it was bad for business you know and my own view and in when I talked about the Germans as as an example that other nations have to learn from it's not that I think the Germans did everything right on the contrary nor do I think because I know too much about the history that they you know fell down on their knees asking for atonement they made steps in the right direction for a mixture of motives may which weren't particularly good but they got to a better place and my question that I keep having is we can't dismantle neoliberalism all at once can we use it in ways that it doesn't use us sure first of all we have to understand what's happening and not be tempted to join into the co-optation and then use whatever measures we have if they're offered by corporations were trying to rebrand use it if you can but understanding exactly what they're up to in fact if you want to see a very clear example of this prior to the races any races and demonstrations was back last January a very striking example of what's going on every January with the people who refer to themselves as the Masters in the universe gathered in Davos January Switzerland that a fancy Swiss reason that a ski resort so they can go skiing talk to each other about a wonderful layer and so on CEOs of major corporations top media executives and famous personalities and so on that's the kind of dazzling Davis show this last January was different strikingly different there was a new theme the theme was look the peasants are coming with their pitchforks we've got to do something we have to recognize that we've been done things that are wrong in the past we're gonna we recognize that we're gonna change direction we're not gonna just work on the basis of greed and profit for the rich and the corporate sector we're gonna be concerned with the stakeholders of working people communities all you people out there so you can put down your pitchforks we're we've become humanistic we have a pleasant pretty face you can trust us to take care of the world we'll make sure that everything's fine no they were concerned with what they called reputational risks so they're they're causing trouble for us they're making banks look bad because they fuel they fund fossil fuel industries so we'll give some money to the Sierra Club and we'll show you how wonderful we are of course nothing changes this is an old story those of us who have some are old enough before the sixties can remember in the 1950s there was a campaign to advertise what was called then the soulful corporation if the corporations are no longer merely the aiming at profit and greed they're gonna be soulful and humane you can trust us that was the 1950 we say it constantly that's the rebranding you're talking about there was a group of about 150 top executives in the United States who issued a manifesto about that time it was essentially the same message we realized we've done the wrong things we no understand put your faith in us a very dramatic moment at the Davos meeting was the keynote address of course Donald Trump they had to invite Trump to be of the keynote address they don't like him his vulgarity his obscenity as addicts they conflict with the image they're trying to project of humanistic concern so they don't like him at all they gave him a rousing applause why because he understands something they understand which pockets to fill with dollars and as long as he understands that they'll tolerate the vulgarity and the addicts and so on that's the bottom line for the soulful Corporation for the new humanistic corporation for the branding if we understand it then we're not mislead by it we'd recognize its roots we see the nature of the system however it tries to disguise itself we use what tools it provides to undermine it but mainly our own which is coming with the pitchforks that changes things that's brought about the changes it's bringing about changes right now I sort of take say well glad sorry well I just wonder if you can answer a question that I have been wondering about for a while I've never been to Davos but I know some people strangely enough who organized you know involved in the organization and I have asked them and I know they're worried about speech books they talk about it well I've asked them you know there are not enough mountains in the world for rich people to build compounds for their grandchildren on why in the world are they not taking the climate crisis seriously sure self-interested forget about or you know let the rest of the world die there's not enough room to save the people that they would like to save do you understand me it's an interesting psychological phenomena so take somebody like Jamie Dimon the CEO of JPMorgan Chase biggest US bank I've never met him but I'm sure he knows as much about global warming as you and I do he knows it's a disaster and another couple of generations human life will organize human life will be impossible nobody's gonna live in any compound if the tens of millions of people are fleeing from places sea levels rising tolled going he knows that he's pouring money into fossil fuel industries no how do you account for the psychological phenomena you can sort of see the reasoning and there is some reasoning behind it I've never asked him but sure this is it he has two choices he could go along with trying to maximize profit for JPMorgan Chase pouring money into destroying the world for his grandchildren that's one choice the other choice is to refuse to do it to be thrown out somebody else comes in who will do the same thing these are institutional structures the system is based on maximization of profit for short-term gain I mean take the pandemic in we're now facing right now a situation very much like 2003 2003 there was a SARS epidemic it was contained it was a corona virus epidemic scientists told loud clear you got to prepare for another pandemic a real pandemic more serious than this one another coronavirus we know what to do yes prepare study the the viruses investigate the range study their genome be prepared to recreate vaccines set up a pandemic that's a preparation system from when it comes do all these things we'll be able to condemn and do it nothing happened the main reason is just capitalist logic the drug companies have the resources have huge laboratories but you don't make profit by preparing for a catastrophe five or six years from now you make profit by something you can sell tomorrow pills from depression body creams and cancer heart remedies and so on that's what you make money so they're out what about government I'm in government actually that has huge wonderful laboratories endless resources that government actually does most of the risky creative work for vaccines and drugs anyway then they hand it over to private corporations for adaptation to the morning profits so what is in government step in here we have the neoliberal enamor government is the problem not the solution Reagan's famous state meaning we have to turn we have to get reduce the role of government which has a very severe flaw it's partially influenced by the population so we have to get rid of that transfer decisions over to completely unaccountable private tyrannies which are dedicated solely to greed then everything will be fine so government is hell it's just asking for a catastrophe we're facing the same thing right now scientists are saying the same thing sooner or later will emerge some hell from the pandemic others are coming they'll be worse so far we've been lucky the coronaviruses have been some of them like this one Kovac 19 have been highly contagious but not terribly lethal others like Ebola were terribly lethal but not highly contagious what if one comes along which is both well there are ways to prepare for that we have to add to the logic of capitalism which is lethal the neoliberal plague which intensifies it by removing the role of government we have to add to that the malevolence of particular groups and individuals like take just take the United States most important country right now it's the epicenter of the pandemic worst of anywhere and you take a look at the statistics in late March Europe and the United States were virtually identical in the number of cases and deaths since then if you look at the graphs europe has sharply declined United States has stayed stable it's now about five times the level of your four percent of the world's population twenty five percent of the cases probably undercounted that's malevolence it's not the logic of capitalism and that helped bring us to the situation although government was pretty much excluded by the neoliberal plague nevertheless there were some things that could be done and in fact in East Asia they were done they were pretty much ready for it of the situation we'll in control he station oceana even in the United States there was a presidential scientific advisory board set up by first George Bush Obama called it into session first couple of days he was in office he asked them to prepare a pandemic preparation program about a month later they came back with it was implemented something was in place quesa benda came four years later Donald Trump was late first day in first couple days in office dismantled the whole thing science doesn't exist his guru rush limbaugh says science is one of the four corners is deceit based totally on deceit let's get rid of it that was dismantled there were programs with US scientists working in China with Chinese scientists on the very dangerous work of trying to identify to run a virus observe mostly deep in caves with bats and so on what they're working on to try to there's a major Institute of biology human Institute in China the main study so they're all working together trying to prepare for it Trump canceled them all although in fact during the pandemic he cancelled an ongoing program of scientists working with Chinese scientists because they were daring to work with the Wuhan Institute and part of I mean since he is clearly responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans you can't let that be public so he's flailing around desperately to find somebody to blame the World Health Organization China big yellow peril of campaign and just the fact that they were working with the main Institute of biology to try to understand what's going on was enough to cancel the program this is a unique form of malevolence that the world has not seen in the past really I have a question I want to ask you about Trump but before we get to that you've had a lot to say about the logic of capitalism I'm wondering if we could talk for a little bit about socialism which Bernie Sanders has succeeded and I agree with you that his movement has not been a failure he's succeeded in removing the stigma from the world word socialism at least for that proportion of the American population that's under about 40 but you've also said that you don't consider him a socialist and I find myself in many situations trying to explain buzz to Americans and to Germans actually Bernie Sanders programs to the right among other mammals if you look at actually what he's calling for no Christian Democrat in this country would accept the bare minimum of social rights that you know he's demanding that we have in the world's fourth largest economy this is not little Denmark or Finland it's a serious capitalist country with income inequality and all those good things but we basically have a social democratic conception of Rights which is very different from benefits nevertheless what I find so interesting is that Sanders who I've never met I don't know what his you know what this is it it strikes me as a kind of touching loyalty that he continues to talk as if he were a socialist and I would even bet that one of the mistakes that he made in the campaign when he was running ahead of Biden was to defend Cuba which I thought he did beautifully somebody dug up an old quote he had on Cuba and he said well I don't support any authoritarian countries neither Cuban or Saudi Arabia nor China but they have a great health care system and a great literacy system as well and he dug down on it and that was too much for an American public that's my take right now but I wonder what yours is I wonder if you have an idea of socialism that you think if not immediately maybe in neither of our lifetimes might be a goal that would take us out of neoliberalism let's take a look at the United States they're very curious country it's the only country in the world outside of ultra-right dictatorships where the word socialism is an anthem in every other country in the world it's like I'm a Democrat the United States is totally different it's a curse way let's take Cuba there's a vote every year in the UN General Assembly on the u.s. economic strangulation of Cuba it's unanimously opposed the only country that goes along with the United States is Israel because they have to go along with the United States if they don't they're finished they decided years ago - long story what they decided to put all their marbles in the same that will support the United States so they're stuck but aside from Israel unanimous vote against Cuba is the National hideous story they take what's happening right now has to do with Germany as well Germany delayed in dealing with pandemic wasn't as fast as the East Asian countries or Oceania but it did finally sort of get its act together unlike the United States Germany had not run the health system totally out of business model United States liberal the hospitals are run like a assembly plant for a normal view you can't have any spare capacity that we waste money so no extra beds and no diagnostic capacity anything goes wrong total catastrophe the Germany had extra beds diagnostic capacity he was able to deal with the matter a miracle took a pretty reasonable position the Germany managed to cut the deaths very low there's a country not far to the south of Germany and Austria called Italy which had a terrible pandemic in the north there's something called the European Union Union did northern Italy get any help from Germany in Austria virtually nothing but they did get help from Cuba the one genuine internationalist country in the world which sent thousands of doctors they've done it many times before this occasionally gets reported in the United States as a denunciation of Cuba because Cuba uses slave labor to force them to go to places like Italy and then steals their wages meaning a portion of the wages go back into the Cuban health system so therefore we have to demonize Cuba as a hideous totalitarian state what's going on with Cuba the United States a very free country phrased in the world many ways we have internal documents to an extent that no other country does we know what the planning was what the reasoning was for 60 years almost instantly after Cuba gained its independence the United States has been attacking Cuba a major terrorist war under Kennedy economic strangulation to destroy it and the reasons are very explicit early sixties read the internal documents cubed B cannot tolerate Cuba's successful defiance of US policies going back to the Monroe Doctrine in the 1820s which determined that the u.s. is going to dominate the hemisphere couldn't do it at that time Britain was too strong but over time gradually happened we cannot tolerate successful defiance of this it may stimulate others to pursue the same course so we have to as Henry Kissinger put it we have to destroy the virus before it spreads contagion he was happened to be talking about a yen DS Chile but the same thing here so that's the reason for the and very interestingly this is done even in opposition to major centers of American capital which is unusual they usually determine policy but this is one of the case cases where state interest overwhelms even centers of private power the biotechnology industry and the medical industry would very much like to have better relations with Cuba which has a flourishing biotechnology industries they would like to be involved in it no you can't we have to destroy Cuba agribusiness would like to get in sorry great market for them sorry you can't we have to destroy this virus it's a very striking example of how foreign policy actually works a lot of it works that way but we have to demonize Cuba when it is the one genuine internationalist country in the world doing in Italy what the European Union didn't do has done many other places I am going to interrupt you because I'm seeing people raising hands and I have couple of quick questions I want to get in before I turn but Sanders is socialism yeah you wanted to say something about that or because I have another one minute take a look at his major programs there are two major programs one is universal health care can you think of another country that has okay the other is free higher education can you think of a country that has free higher education okay those are the main programs in the United States that's called radical too radical for the American people we can't show that for well that tells you something you look at the OECD measures of social justice the u.s. is down at the bottom with the turkey in Greece super liberal business run society very free a lot of virtues but as far as the socio-economic order is concerned overwhelmingly business run what Sanders is doing is saying let's become a normal mildly associate social democratic society that's called radical it has nothing to do with socialism in any of its early interpretations like worker controls production zone I certainly agree and I agree with you about cube I had the good fortune to go to Cuba and it was enlightening I want to ask you briefly about another socialist lead place that you've spoken about recently Kerala and I found it extremely interesting that first the first report I read about the fact that Kerala has done so much better dealing with the pandemic was of course in New York Times style it was all about the Minister of Health has been nicknamed the Corolla Slayer I'm sure she's an impressive woman but it was all about her personally they looked at The Guardian The Guardian actually did note that Kerala has for years been run by a coalition of left-wing parties led by the Communists and that their health care and literacy is higher than anywhere else in India and that the minister in question was happy to be interviewed but she wanted to talk about policy and not not about her personality can you just say a little bit about what you know about that situation because I'm further away from it probably than you were it's a very interesting case actually spent some time there about must have been 15 years ago when you I spent a fair amount of time in India the poverty is hideous I mean the combination of extreme affluence and miserable poverty is just shattering not in Kerala you drive in Kerala it's not a rich country it's a relatively poor state of India but you see people sitting in front of coffee houses reading newspapers something there's a cooperative mutual support system which is beyond anything India you go to Tamil Nadu to the next state right above a radically different this has been going on for a long time and as the Guardian reported it's it's been led for decades by either the Communist Party or other left oriented parties and it's created a situation in which when the pandemic strike strike struck was possible to deal with it the support systems were in place and the minister who is indeed a very impressive person was able to take command but also with support it's not enough to pass rules people have to be ready to accept them to act with them have trust to support each other and so on takes a Britain 350 years it's democracy you take a look at the Constitution and it gets about a dozen workers it's based on trust and good faith and take that away the whole system collapses as I began to happen in England under Boris Johnson 24 Road the Parliament to ram through his version of brexit but in and it's happening in the United States dramatically but in Kerala it was sitting there that's it's kind of like other things that have taken place like take the the anarchist revolution in Spain in 1936 it's very impressive it was crushed by the Communists and the fascists by force but it was very successful was going on it didn't spring up out of nowhere sprung up out of 50 years of Education activism effort trials successes failures it was in people's heads when the opportunity came put it into operation that and I think coming back to the black lives matter demonstrations I think this is beginning to put things into people's heads about how we can create a different world you look at the explicit demands they're mostly about changing the police which is important but they go much deeper than that so why is it that say when Trump recently eliminated regulations on air pollution so let's have more air pollution this is in the midst of a respiratory lung disease which is amplified by air pollution who suffers from the people who are so poor that they have to live near the polluting plants who are they blacks and Puerto Ricans every aspect so they'll be the one so died from the increased pollution which as I say exacerbates the effect of finding every area of the society you look at diseases and this is coming to be recognized it's not just race its class it's structural violence lots of issues that have to be dealt know maybe cut consciousness willings freaking indeed become able and willing to press on all fronts so the Davis guys will have to be a little more frightened about the reputational risks and maybe they'll be forced to do things and can take advantage of that dismantle a pathological system before I relinquish the microphone which Tom I promise I'm about to do I have two brief questions that will be of interest both to German and American listeners but presumably also to everyone else who's on this conversation you have said that you think Trump is worse than Hitler this breaks a major German taboo I wonder if you could just elaborate briefly let's take the worst declaration that ever came out of Germany the Von's a declaration let's kill all the Jews which killed three million Slavs intervention and so on did it say let's destroy organized human life on earth well there's a trump administration document that does say that to get more publicity one of the Trump bureaucracy is the National Transportation administration did an extensive environmental study a couple hundred pages of a detailed and competent they conclude that on the course that we're advocating by the end of the century none of this century temperatures will have risen four degrees ethically that's Columbus and then they make a recommendation let's eliminate the regulations that restrict emissions from cars and trucks why well we're destroying everything in any way so let's enjoy ourselves I compare that with Avon's a declaration furthermore this is not just a declaration this is policy so let's take February of this year pandemic is raged Trump comes out with his budget proposal February for the next year defund the Center for Disease Control and every health related aspect of government as he's been doing every year so let's do it more increase funding for fossil fuel industries and for the military so in other words let's race the disaster even faster and furthermore this is happening encouraging an opening of more fossil fuel production eliminate regulations which somewhat mitigate the catastrophe and offer some time to deal with it compare this with Hitler maybe the worst monster in history but did he was he dedicated to destroying the organized human life on Earth with his party be my name incidentally it may sound like whenever I say this I say this is gonna sound like an outrageous comment and then I make the comment and then look into the evidence I don't find it outrageous at all I've said similar things very very last question for those American voters who like me voted for Sanders in the primary but unlike me are considering not voting in November I know you have some words for them would you well there is no choice of not participating on the election if you decide not to vote for the Democrats you're giving an extra vote to Trump that's just arithmetic you can argue about a lot of things but not arithmetic if Biden has one less word that's the same as from having one more vote so you have a choice you have 15 minutes if you're serious about politics politics is what's happening on the streets in the United States politics is activism it's what's making the men in Davos cringe it's the reputational risk or fortune it's what's forcing the Democratic Party program farther to the left and it's been a living memory because of the young kids who were banging away at the doors but on the Sanders movement and so on that's politics so take 15 minutes away decide if there's significant difference between the candidates this time there's a chasm and then take a few minutes to push a lever and then go back to politics the less rarely vote for anyone they vote against some this time the person to vote against the obvious it's a real threat to the survival of organized human life on earth plus what he's doing to American democracy but just take a look at what recently happened the most reason to act was to fire the attorney of the Southern District of New York why because he was investigating the swamp the Trump created in Washington a couple of weeks earlier Trump fired all of the inspectors general the officials designated by Congress to look over the department's of the executive for corruption and malfeasance all fire because they were looking into Trump's swamp this is these are the actions of a tin-pot dictator of a small neo-colonial country somewhere which has a coup every three years that's very serious meanwhile the mcconnell mitch mcconnell who runs the senate with an iron hand is has turned the senate used to be a legislative in the liberty of body that's gone does not make two things for the let recent years passes laws to enrich the very rich in the corporate sector and staffs the judiciary top to bottom with ultra-right mostly incompetent young judges who will be able to block any progressive legislation for a generation no matter what the population wants this is part of the campaign one part to create a world post pandemic world which will be much like the one that creating the crises but harsher more brutal and more authoritarian and unless that's countered by popular activism it's going to be a very ugly world and one that won't last long thank you very much I'm gonna turn this over to Tom and say we have a rapt audience so as long as you have energy numb we could go slightly over our original plan it's your show you get to say I know had some very interesting questions that he wanted to ask as well maybe Tommy want to begin with one or I can just have to say I have plenty of energy but I have another interview coming up so I can go a little over but not much okay Tom you wanna well the first question is is an amalgam from an anonymous attendee and and and trunk coaster and the question is how do you think about the ideology of growth what is the best stream of counter thought steady-state economics of Herman Daly the participatory economics of your friend Michael Albert does the pandemic make for new opportunities what do you think it's the most promising counter thought to the ideology of economic growth well with regard to growth we have to be cautious you can't continue with the kind of growth that we have that's suicidal but does that mean you have to end growth I suppose we want to move to a renewable energy which we must and we have to get rid of co2 emissions within a couple of decades but that means solar panels that wind turbines weatherization rebuilding homes reflecting service surfaces all sorts of things masteren efficient mass transportation all of that is growth it's the right kind of growth it's the kind of growth that offers a more livable and sustainable society so I think the issue is not growth or D growth the issue is what kind of development takes place now actually this kind of growth does lead the D growth once you have large-scale vulnerable panels and wind turbines installed they don't take much servicing to keep them up so you begin to have declining growth decline in destruction of the mineral resources and the hideous conditions under which students extracted and so on what kind of society are we aiming for well I have my own view I think there's a much the value in the ideas of participatory economics but my own view is we're not smart enough at least I'm not to sketch out the details of an ideal society I think we can give general guidelines they should be based on eliminating illegitimate structures of authority and domination that one of the core illegitimate structures is wage labor the idea that a person in order to survive has to people have to rent themselves to a tyranny from so that most of their waking lives there under totalitarian control of a kind that Stalin couldn't dream of like Stalin's couldn't say here's when you can go to the bathroom or here's when you can talk to a friend or here's the path that you have to take between picking something up and going back to your desk that's life for most people for most of their waking hours in the early Industrial Revolution workers fought bitterly to block and prevent that regarded as a fundamental attack on their dignity and rights that should be recovered it's recovered to a limited extent when you have co-determination they're working people on management boards but that's a very limited extent to go well beyond that there should be worker control of production community control of all community institutions interaction between them you can think of many free association of voluntary Association of self governed self-rule groups of both production consumption survival of policing everything you can sketch out that kind of structure how exactly you could reach it and be implemented my feeling is a lot of experimentation since I don't think anyone is smart enough to design it in detail I think Karl Marx went too far and refusing to say anything about future society they just said you take a look at all of his works there's a couple of sentences scattered around about a post-capitalist society says we'll leave it to the liberated working class that goes too far I think but at the other extreme like my own feeling is it also goes too far to try to spell it out and too much detail I just think there's too much we don't understand about human beings in society so let's try try many ways to approach these goals it's being done and in many ways even in the midst of the pandemic so one of the striking things about the pandemic has been the way in which mutual support and self-help groups spontaneously developed all over the world often in the poorest communities where the governments are doing nothing I think one of the most spectacular examples is in Brazil puts in the hands of a trump clone maniac is destroying the society doing nothing in Rio the favelas the slums are hideous places I've been there people crammed together and open the water or no jobs terrorized by crime gangs the government refuses to do anything about the pandemic but a group took over the crime gangs that had been terrorizing the favelas moved into organized to try to distribute food and water to impose some kind of social distancing in other areas groups of people in the community just started to do it there's some elderly guy stuck in his apartment with no food let's help it know it's things like this are developing the massive demonstrations in the United States in the world that we started with or another example of it I think how do this can come the kinds of institutions in which people will learn how to live together in a mutually supportive fashion where your society is organized to deal with people's rights and needs and not with the obscene profit of the tiny group you can move towards that and we'll learn how to proceed on the way our second question is from US firms do successful protests in America have to take a specifically identitarian shape it seems to the Occupy Wall Street movement which specifically targeted neoliberalism has not achieved the same scale as the black lives matters protest which at least nominally at this early stage are about black lives and please well occupy remember was tactic not a movement you can't carry out a tactic indefinitely so the tactic of occupying which has a terminal point was very successful in its own terms it's kind of like the standards movement Susan said before it changed the structure the area of discourse what's sometimes called the Overton Window the red V ranked the arena of discourse and thinking and consciousness and policy formation shifted occupy did the same for the first time put the issue of radical inequality right at the center of thought and action which had many consequences so it was a substantial success in its own terms though the occupy activists tried to go forth to move into community organizing to some extent that succeeded but it kind of dissolved the movement it wasn't quite ready for it then maybe it's ready for it now you make progress okay both occupy made progress the the Sanders movement did progressive international money we're not gonna achieve utopia by snapping our fingers we can make moves towards a better world our next question is from Nita Kumar you were once relatively favored by America's left liberal intelligentsia you were a leading writer for the New York Review of Books and other mainstays of the less liberal establishment how do you account for your relative fall from domestic favor while finding more favorite Broadway Terr for the New York Review of Books from 1967 until the early 1970s that was a few years there with the New York Review following the popular feeling of its basic audience young intellectuals moves to the left that was an opening for lots of people not just me lots of writers then their community shifted back toward the center all of this ended no more less writers the New York Review is very important Journal and read of all the time its policy is to be a little to the more dissonant side of the center of mainstream intellectual life you said you read that the first thing every day which sort of comforted me I saw an interview with you and you said that's the first thing you read it's best newspaper in the world you got to read it with care you have to understand what they're doing how far they can go I mean let's take just one example because it happens to be the headlines right now huge Fuhrer now about reports unconfirmed reports that the Russians paid Taliban to target American soldiers what a crime there's no evidence for it but is it it's a hideous crime let's nuke them in the 1980's the u.s. publicly openly right that its support for radical Islamist Mujahideen was for the purpose of killing Russians that was the announcement of the CIA station chief in Islamabad who was running it Brzezinski and others were saying we're giving them their Vietnam a lot of killing of Russians did anybody complain about suppose these charges are true there's no evidence for them but some maybe they're true it's that by our standards totally outrageous I interrupted you were in the middle of answering another question when I get excited I said please forgive me you were you an evolution from you know a good liberal leftist to something like a pariah in a lot of circles good liberal leftist during the brief period when liberalism was tolerated by the early seventies a major reaction city very strikingly you can see it in two major documents that appears both quite influential in the early seventies one is the Powell memorandum how old was a corporate lawyer later became just as the Supreme Court issued a memorandum to the Chamber of Commerce to the business community it was private but it surfaced I was exposed it was a call to the business community to take up arms to stop this heresy that was taking over the world destroying the business world taking over the media and the universities we have the resources of namely the mild reformism of the 60s we gotta stop that we have the resources we have the power let's beat it back that helped created the large part of the background for the neoliberal assault there was another one that was more interesting on what's called the left the first publication of the trilateral commission that liberal internationalists from Europe the United States and Japan the Carter Administration was drawn almost completely from their ranks now that gives you indication of their politics liberal internationalists pretty much the same as a pal memorandum different rhetoric you know more polite but the same message it's called the crisis of democracy there's too much democracy all kind of people are demanding democratic rights women blacks young people old people of working people farmers just too much pressure on the state I can't meet all of that we have to have more moderation and democracy they have to go back to passivity and moderation so that democracy can function we know who it's run but that's the Liberals they were particularly concerned about the universities what they called I'm quoting the institutions responsible for the indoctrination of the young they're not doing their job that's why you have these kids running around on the streets we have to have better indoctrination of the young okay that's the liberal side of the spectrum that it's that leads to the shift towards the neoliberal takeover both in policy and in the intellectual climate now the left didn't die it just went off in other directions so for example during the 80s this doesn't get reported it's too dangerous but the most powerful anti-imperialist movement in history developed in the United States in the 1980s there were a lot of it in rural America evangelical churches small towns the first time in history that a major popular movement developed which not only opposed Imperial atrocities but went to live with the victims to live with them to help them to try to protect them from the atrocities their own government was carried out that's what happened in Central America tens of thousands of people right from mainstream America I would be talking rural churches in Kansas where people knew more about Central America than academic experts because they'd lived there and work with the people to try to protect them against the terrorists wars that the United States was carrying out well this doesn't get reported for obvious reasons you don't want people to understand things like that but it happened and it's it does it's part of the general change of consciousness which we now see erupting on the streets these things happen stage by stage a little bit here a little bit there occupy Central American activism anti racism lots of things that's the way we can hope for a better world unfortunately it's a beautiful ending to the conversation thank you so much for joining us okay can I save one's a small thing before you leave for us to Chomsky yeah it's been a wonderful pleasure to have you and thank you everything for thank you for everything that you have done for this world on a lighter remark I know that apart your dear wife Valeria you also own a parrot would you like to say something about if you have a parrot as a pet yes right out there he's a bilingual parrot my wife hilarious Brazilian so she's teaching him Portuguese and if we could get him to perform he could say in Portuguese I won't try to repeat it sovereignty to all the people of the world it's perfect Portuguese you can say down just telling my dog to get down and stop beautiful ending thank you for joining us okay

Channel: undefined

Views: 38,882

Rating: 4.6486487 out of 5

Keywords: Noam Chomsky, Susan Neiman, Einstein Forum, Black Lives Matter

Id: efRsPcDuHmE

Length: 73min 35sec (4415 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 30 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/shopcat]

JFC, what the hell happened to Chomsky?