Speaker 2

For those keeping score, this is Chomsky's third appearance on Talk Easy. As always, i am grateful for his time, his insight and above all, his unending curiosity, even at age three. I hope you enjoy. Noam Chomsky, thank you for being here. Glad

Speaker 1

to be with you

Speaker 2

this week. In response to the omicron variant, President Biden released a new pandemic strategy that includes hundreds of vaccination sites, boosters for all adults, new testing requirements for international travellers and free at home tests. Most controversially, he implemented a new travel restriction on eight African nations. I wanted to start here with you because in April of this year, you went on the Ezra Cline show and you said, all the problems we face are international. The pandemic is international. We are, in fact, committing suicide right now in the rich countries with eyes open, by monopolizing vaccines. If we don't spread vaccines to Africa, poor countries in Asia, it's going to come back and hit us like a sledgehammer. Are we in the process of being hit by that sledge hammer?

Speaker 1

It's not only monopolizing the vaccines, but protecting the rights of the pharmacutical corporations not to allow others like South Africa, to produce their own vaccines. We have to remember that the current international neoliberal globalization re provides extraordinary protection to corporations, unprecedentedly long patents on not only the product, but also the process. So Moderna, for example, where the basic research was paid for by the tax payer and [...] tax-payer money. South Africa has a pharmacutical industry, could have been producing vaccines. In that case, we wouldn't have had, very likely would not have had an Omicron a mutation. But by withholding actually the actual vaccines and also the processes for producing them, we ere virtually guaranteeing that there will be variant mutations developed, which, of course, will come back right to us. The United States, for once, hasn't been the worst on this issue, to Germany, which has been the most extreme in insisting that the process rights of the pharmacutical corporations be guaranteed. And maybe ironically, Germany is now one of the hotspots.

Speaker 1

You

Speaker 2

said, we haven't had one of the worst responses. But are you surprised by how we've handled the variant thus far? Unfortunately

Speaker 1

not. Take a much more serious case, the survival of the human species. A week ago in Glasgow, countries of the world got together to deal with the existential problem of environmental destruction. We either deal with that very soon, or else, everything else is moot. Doesn't matter. Well, there are actually two events in process in Glasgow. There was one inside the halls, where the gentlemen few is were orating to one another, discussing ways to avoid doing anything, agreeing to meet next year, maybe we'll do something then. But essentially doing very little. There was another event in the streets. Tens of thousands of people, mostly young people, were demonstrating, calling for employing the means that are available are feasible, to overcome the crisis and to move on to a much better world. Well, that's the Omicron crisis is a small copy of that, serious, but much less significant. It's a matter of millions of deaths. May be tens of millions of deaths, [not essentially the destruction of the species].

Speaker 1

On

Speaker 2

the subject of the climate crisis, i want to go back to the wording you just used. All the problems we face are international, but they're also interconnected. And and i think when we talk about this looming crisis, if the pandemic is any indication, there are still many who refuse to wear masks, get vaccinated in the name of personal freedom, what makes us think will respond to the climate crisis in any and any different way?

Speaker 1

This is a very strange concept of personal freedom. So for example, suppose i don't happen to like to stop at red lights. I'd rather go through them if there's no imminent danger, and my personal freedom is infringed by that red light. Or maybe I would like to take my assault rifle and walk around a shopping mall shooting it randomly. The chances are I'll never hit anybody, but infringement on my personal freedom if a police officer stops me. It's a curious notion of freedom, which, incidentally, nobody has ever brought up. It's brought up, in this case, as part of the manufactured hysteria about the Covid vaccine. I mean, for decades in the United States, there have been mandates an schools on children having vaccines. You want send your kid to school without a measles and polio vaccine, you can't. Cause children have a right to a safe space. It's just the Covid vaccine, which has been turned into some sort of special demon mostly by the far right, though there are some left elements who join as well. But it's just a special thing that was developed in connection with the Covid vaccine.

Speaker 1

So we can ask what this specific sociological phenomenon is, but has nothing to do with personal freedom. There is no personal freedom to say, i want to harm people. I'm free to do it.

Speaker 2

What do you make of that specific sociology phenomenon?

Speaker 1

I think it's connected with the breakdown of society in a much broader way. We have been subjected to forty plus years of a neoliberal assault on the general population. And one of the things it's done is exactly that those who proclaimed at first Margaret Thatcher, there is no society, only individuals cast out on the market to somehow survive. Of course, she was lying, and she knew it. There's plenty of society, rich, complex society for the rich and powerful to defend themselves. But the rest of us, aside from the privileged sect that they serve, we have no society. So break down everything. Reagan was the same, or whoever wrote his speeches was the same. He was probably watching cowboy movies. But his inaugural address, as you recall, had the famous lines about how government is the problem, not the solution. We have to get rid of government, which is the one organized form for the general society. Government is mainly responsive to the rich and powerful, but it is somewhat responsive, somewhat accountable to the general population. And is the only national or nation which has that property. So we have to get rid of it. Do you get rid of decisions? When you get rid of government decisions continue to be made. They just are made in the private sector, which dominates government, makes sure that governments work in their interests, but basically is unaccountable to the public. That was made explicit, in this case, by the economic guru of the neoliberal attack, Milton Friedman, who wrote an article in which he explained that the corporations have no responsibility to the public. Their sole responsibility is to self enrichment. That's it. Why put this together? Add something else? Regan and thatcher, or their advisers, the mates, understood exactly what they were doing. They made certain that when you're launching this major attack against the population in which there will be no society, just atomized individuals, you have to make sure that they have no way to defend themselves. So their first act, both Thatcher and Reagan, was to attack unions using what, in fact, were illegal measures like permanent replacement workers, outlawed throughout the world, opening the door for corporations to say, come along. You can do the same thing. We all have to destroy the ways for working people to defend themselves. Clinton picked up and pursued the same thing. And result of this is a huge assault on the population. There are actually some measures of it which are worth keeping in mind. I may have mentioned them before, but again, the highway robbery that's taken place during these forty years. They use a more polite term. They call it transfer of wealth. So what is the transfer of wealth from the working class and the middle class, lower 90 % in income, transfer of wealth from them to the very top? Their estimate is almost 50 trillion dollars in forty ears. Take what's happening in congress. The republican party, which is the party of the super rich, and the corporate sector, have established a couple of red lines. One red line is you cannot touch the trump tax cut. They love to talk about deficits when democrats are creating its to help poor people. But their one legislative achievement was the trump tax cut, a tax cut for the very rich and the corporate sector stabbing everyone else on the back. Second, you cannot fund the internationally internal revenue service because the res goes after tax cheats. And by far the major tax cheating, tens of billions, probably trillions of dollars, is the very rich and the corporate e you couldn't have a clearer indication of what a gang of hypocrites and cowards and slaves of the wealth this party has become.

Speaker 1

This

Speaker 2

idea that the republicans are clearly in the pocket of the wealth. I want to stick with that, because just this week, the new infrastructure law signed by president Biden includes almost 50 billion dollars to protect communities against climate change. Now the primary issue here, as you've probably read, is that historically, wealthy white communities with both higher property values and the resources to apply for competitive programmes, receive the bulk of federal grants. So in this case, to receive a grant, there are two major hurdles for low income communities. If they are awarded a grant, communities are required to pay a share of the project, often 25%, which is unaffordable for most struggling towns and counties. The local governments then have to clear those obstacles, and then have to demonstrate that the value of the property that would be protected is greater than the cost of the project. And so we're in agreement that the republican party is in the pocket of the one percent. And yet this bill passed by president Biden is once, and in favor of that white one-percent community that is more likely to get these environmental grants than communities of color. How do we reckon with that? I

Speaker 1

suspect that the more liberal democrats would have preferred a different formulation. But in order to get anything at all pass the republican opposition, you have to put conditions in the benefit the rich, white community. Otherwise it can't pass. You'll never get a republican vote for it. This is an old story that used to be the democrats back in the days. You go back to the 19 thirties, for when the democratic party was a coalition of northern liberals and southern democrats outspoken bitter racess. If the new deal wanted to get any measures passed that would help people, they had to put in races conditions, otherwise the southern democrats would it. Southern democrats, the races segment. They were democrats until Nixon. Nixon realized that if the republican party is going to be viable, oh, they have to find a voting base. You can't get voters by saying, we work to serve the super rich and the corporate sector. You don't get votes that way. So the republicans had to turn to what are now called cultural issues, while one of them is race. So Nixon's southern strategy was quite openly designed to induce the southern democrats to shift to become republicans. And the way to do it was but to insinuate that republicans would become the races party. So you can join us. What you just described is just another manifestation of it on

Speaker 2

the subject of race.

Speaker 2

As the Kyle Rittenhouse case played out, we were all following the news day after day. What did you make of those proceedings? Technically,

Speaker 1

in a very narrow sense, the jury verdict could be justified. The laws of self-defense are so expansive that if you just say, i feel threatened, that's self-defense. And of course, the gun laws in the United States are so crazy by international standards, you can argue that the is legal within the framework of American law. The more interesting questions are different. What kind of a society is it in which a young, probably disturbed kid can pick up a rifle, can go across state lines and decide that he's going to protect property, meaning protect white property, from alleged black marauders? What kind of a society is it in which that can happen? That's not about Rittenhouse. It's about the society. The second interesting thing is what the republicans are doing, from fox television lake Tucker Carlson to Donald Trump to Marjorie Green, turning to make this disturbed kid a hero. He's almost certain to appear at the republican national convention next night.

Speaker 1

In

Speaker 2

fact, three house congressmen, just is past week, have said that they would hire

Speaker 1

Kyle Rittenhouse as an intern in their office. Oh, i think he's going to go much higher than that. Maybe he'll be appointed attorney general in Trump's next incarnation. I don't blame him. He's a young kid. He brother doesn't even know what he's doing, but he's playing along with it, and they're exploiting him. You know this, you listen to Tucker Carlson and this lovely, sweet white boy, you know, trying to defend the white race. that's just wonderful. They'll turn into something huge. It's not the first time. Take say, Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan was not particularly popular during his term in office. You look at the approval ratings during Reagan's term, they were moderate. In fact, at the time he left office, his approval ratings were not high at all. But after he left office, a huge propaganda campaign was organized, the Reagan legacy campaign, to turn him into a divine creature, which had nothing to do with his hideous record. But it was very successful. Now he's regarded as a semi divinity. They can do the same for Tucker Carlson's. He's a sweet, lovely white boy who has been so badly treated.

Speaker 1

In

Speaker 2

my view, he is neither sweet nor lovely. But you did mention the next incarnation of trump. What do you think that next incarnation looks like? There's

Speaker 1

a good possibility that Trump will be re elected in 2024, even if he loses the electoral vote by many millions. After all, in 2016 he lost the electoral vote by three million. 2020 by seven million. If he came very close to winning. If in 2024, it'll be a lot easier. Republicans are hard at work at the state level to insure that honest elections can't take place. They're working hard to intimidate election advisers, so anybody who's not in their pocket is afraid to even be there. They want to destroy american democracy in order to insure their power, and they'll use whatever means they can. In fact, McConnell says it straight out: we have to make the country ungovernable. We have to harm the country as much as possible so that it'll be blamed on the party in power, on democrats, and then we can come roaring back. Let's organize anti mandate campaigns so as many people as possible will die from the Omicron variant and then they'll blame on the democrats, and we can come back into office. I mean, but what is the word for that?

Speaker 1

I

Speaker 2

I don't have the word. But if you can't sink below that, how [...] do you combat it? The

Speaker 1

only way you can combat it is the only way that's ever existed: popular organization, activism on the go and educational efforts, organizing, finding the right kinds of activities that'll reach people instead of alienating them. Have to reach out to the republican worshippers of Trump. Their people too. They can be reached, specially younger ones. Just has to be done to cut away at this worship of a extreme criminal, may be the worst criminal in human history, literally, who is dedicated to destroying the human species as quickly as possible in the interests of the fossil fuel industry and the big banks that stuff his pockets, in the pockets of his friends. There's been nobody like that before. And I think the people can be reached. If they can't, we're essentially finished.

Speaker 3

Before

Speaker 2

the break. You were talking about this Trump worshipping. But this kind of worship is not new. I want to go back 1741, where David Hume published the first principles of government. In it, he writes, nothing appears more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few, and the implicit submission with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to

Speaker 1

those of their rulers. Yes, the first paragraph, the opening paragraph of what is really, in many ways, the first modern political science text, his first principles of government. It's amazing. It amazed him, should amaze us that they governed who have he goes on to say, the governed have the power if they decide to use it. But they are kept under control, as he says, by consent, its consent. That is the measure, the means by which this magic is achieved, that the small group of rulers can continue to control the mass of the population, harming it, but they consent. Well, yo, have to break that consent. One of the ways to break that consent is by organized activity. That's why the new liberal rulers have tried so hard to destroy unions. Unions are the major way in which people break free of the enforced consent. And the answer is rebuild them, rebuild the means of self-defense and use them to overcome the highway robbery and destruction that's going on in front of our eyes.

Speaker 2

What are some concrete examples of us breaking from that enforced consent? You

Speaker 1

go back 50 years and look at the united states. In the 19 sixties to different country, federal housing was segregated by law. Blacks could not apply for federal housing. There were anti sodomy laws. There were anti-misogyny laws that were so extreme that the noes refused to accept them. Women were, by law, still regarded as property, not as people. Wasn't until 1975, under the pressure of the rising feminist movement, that the supreme court determined that women have the rights of what's called peers. Prior to that, official American law, women were property, not people, property of their father, handed over to their husband. It's a much more civilized country than it used to be. That's why there are such efforts on the part of the right wing to focus on what they call cultural issues, to by to try to beat back this rising civilized character. Take CRT, critical race theory. It's perfectly frank and open among those who wield the weapon that they haven't a clue what it is and don't care. As Christopher Rufo, the main proponent, just said straight out, look, this is a covered term for everything we don't like. And what he means is any attack on white supremacy, on Christian nationalism. And then you try to mobilize parents by inflaming them with fabricated tales about how the come democrats are trying to teach your sweet little white boy that because of his white skin, he's not an oppressor. That's what they're trying to do to your little children, these monsters. So parents get enraged and attack school board meetings and so on and so forth. We should recall that in the 19 thirties there was a serious, very serious problem. The depression was very deep, much worse than anything to day. People really suffered. And basically, there were two ways out. One way out was picked by continental Europe: fascism. The other way out was picked by the united states, social democracy, the new deal, which gave enormous benefits to much of the population. Well, you take a look to day, situation's almost reversed. The united states is moving into a kind of proto-fascism under the republican party leadership. Europe is holding on, more or less to the remnants of social democracy, those that survive the neoliberal assault. That's basically the world to day.

Speaker 2

You were born in 1928. You came of age in the 1930s. By the time this episode airs, you will have turned 93, is that correct?

Speaker 1

Just couple of days.

Speaker 2

How are you thinking about time these days?

Speaker 1

I always act as if it's stretching out infinitely before me. No point thinking about anything else. As much time as there is, I'll use it. And

Speaker 2

you always have. But you've also been grappling with how best to use your time, dating back to the late 1960s. In October of 1968, around the Vietnam war, you sat down for an interview at MIT, where you were also teaching. You said, people come to me and ask: why don't you do ten times as much against the war? Obviously, trying to stop the war is in different order of importance than my work in linguistics. It's vastly more important. So i criticize myself, but i don't know of any ideal solution, other than by feeling guilty most of the time. Do you still feel that guilt day to day?

Speaker 1

I feel there's more that could be done, that I could do, but I think I do what can be done within reason. There are things i can't do any more. Like i used to go to demonstrations, participate in civil disobedience, get arrested, spend a couple of days in jail. That's just not physically possible for me any more. There's a lot of other things i can't do, but do what i can. There's more that could be done. All of us know that, but you have to survive. I should say, i spend a fair amount of time on professional work too. It's intellectually exciting for any one. Things like that keep you alive. Maybe it's writing poetry or listening to music, or playing in a band, or taking hikes, or whatever it is you do, the things that enable you to survive. Even though you could, you know that you could be working on the kinds of problems we're talking about. You can't criticize that. I know of no one who doesn't do that. Now,

Speaker 2

I'm just trying to imagine what kind of band you

Speaker 1

would be. Well, I once played music. There was an MIT Harvard band and there was one professional in the group, student at the New England conservatory, real musician, who she kind of organized it. And once they needed an extra guitar player, and they didn't have a guitar player, so she tried to convince me, she did convince me to play the guitar. But what i had to do, my task was to pluck on one string, which i could do, but to move my fingers as if i was playing the guitar, so it would look like it and she showed me how to do that. And i took part in a concert, plucked on my string and went like this. That's my musical career.

Speaker 2

It was short lived, but I'm glad we have it on record here. Before we go, you mention how you can't go out to social demonstrations any more. You know, you can't protest and and potentially get locked up for a couple nights. But I've been thinking about activism as we head into 2022. Throughout the Vietnam war, you had students protesting. You had them protesting the war, and then civil rights. And you've seen the waves of youth activism. Do you think we are more effective activists now than the late sixties in

Speaker 1

many ways? Yes. For one thing, activism in the 1960s, many people who weren't there have an image of it which is quite misleading. Vietnam war. I was living in Boston at the time. Boston's probably the most liberal city in the country. We could not have a public demonstration against the war until late 1966, because it would be assaulted and broken up violently, often by students. Per war students. That's the most liberal city in the country. As late as march 1966, we tried to have a anti war demonstration in a church, thinking maybe that would be safe. Church was attacked a it wasn't easy in those days. By the late sixties, things had changed. Then you could get a million people coming to Washington. It sort of started off quickly. In the seventies, few things, but not much. That was a brief, very important period. Very well may have prevented Nixon from using nuclear weapons in Vietnam, there's fair evidence for that. It was one of a number of things. In the early sixties, mid-sixties, there were mass demonstrations in the south. Howard's Zinn, my friend Howard Zinn and I, went down to one in Jackson, Mississippi. Very brutal state police attacking people, brutalizing them. That wasn't simple. Wasn't easy. But they did take place. And all these things had an impact. They were part of a developed, a mass movement that did lead to significant change. So these are things you have to protect by constant engagement. Your opponents don't rest. They're relentless. They don't stop. They have plenty of power, plenty of wealth. And they're going to fight for the kind of country that they want. If you want a what we would call a civilized, decent country, you're going to have to work for in fact, if you want to survive at all, you're going to have to work for those tens of thousands of young people in the streets of Glasgow. We're doing what has to be done if the human species is going to survive [...].

Speaker 1

Basically

Speaker 2

what you're saying is the only way to beat back against fatigue is embracing the bicycle theory.

Speaker 1

Yes, that's the only way.

Speaker 3

Can

Speaker 2

you explain to people what that is? Well,

Speaker 1

if you're riding a bicycle, if you keep going fast enough, you don't fall off. And's a good lesson.