A New World in Our Hearts

by Noam Chomsky, Michael Albert (Editor)

An interview with Noam Chomsky is a bit like throwing batting practice to Babe Ruth. What you lob in, he will hammer out.

This conversational interview by Michael Albert, who has been close to Chomsky for roughly half a century and talked with him many hundreds of times, spans a wide range of topics including journalism, science, religion, the racist foundations of American society, education as indoctrination, issues of class and resistance, colonialism, imperialism, and much more. The thread through it all is that every topic--and the list above takes us just about halfway through this book--reveals how social systems work, what their impact on humanity is, and how they are treated by the elite, mainstream intellectuals, and leftists. It gets personal, theoretical, and observational. The lessons are relevant to all times, so far, and pretty much all places, and Chomsky's logical scalpel, with moral guidance, is relentless.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Philosophy

160 pages, Hardcover

Published April 19, 2022

About the author

Avram Noam Chomsky is an American professor and public intellectual known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He is a laureate professor of linguistics at the University of Arizona and an institute professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Among the most cited living authors, Chomsky has written more than 150 books on topics such as linguistics, war, and politics. In addition to his work in linguistics, since the 1960s Chomsky has been an influential voice on the American left as a consistent critic of U.S. foreign policy, contemporary capitalism, and corporate influence on political institutions and the media.
Born to Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants (his father was William Chomsky) in Philadelphia, Chomsky developed an early interest in anarchism from alternative bookstores in New York City. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania. During his postgraduate work in the Harvard Society of Fellows, Chomsky developed the theory of transformational grammar for which he earned his doctorate in 1955. That year he began teaching at MIT, and in 1957 emerged as a significant figure in linguistics with his landmark work Syntactic Structures, which played a major role in remodeling the study of language. From 1958 to 1959 Chomsky was a National Science Foundation fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study. He created or co-created the universal grammar theory, the generative grammar theory, the Chomsky hierarchy, and the minimalist program. Chomsky also played a pivotal role in the decline of linguistic behaviorism, and was particularly critical of the work of B.F. Skinner.
An outspoken opponent of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, which he saw as an act of American imperialism, in 1967 Chomsky rose to national attention for his anti-war essay "The Responsibility of Intellectuals". Becoming associated with the New Left, he was arrested multiple times for his activism and placed on President Richard M. Nixon's list of political opponents. While expanding his work in linguistics over subsequent decades, he also became involved in the linguistics wars. In collaboration with Edward S. Herman, Chomsky later articulated the propaganda model of media criticism in Manufacturing Consent, and worked to expose the Indonesian occupation of East Timor. His defense of unconditional freedom of speech, including that of Holocaust denial, generated significant controversy in the Faurisson affair of the 1980s. Chomsky's commentary on the Cambodian genocide and the Bosnian genocide also generated controversy. Since retiring from active teaching at MIT, he has continued his vocal political activism, including opposing the 2003 invasion of Iraq and supporting the Occupy movement. An anti-Zionist, Chomsky considers Israel's treatment of Palestinians to be worse than South African–style apartheid, and criticizes U.S. support for Israel.
Chomsky is widely recognized as having helped to spark the cognitive revolution in the human sciences, contributing to the development of a new cognitivistic framework for the study of language and the mind. Chomsky remains a leading critic of U.S. foreign policy, contemporary capitalism, U.S. involvement and Israel's role in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and mass media. Chomsky and his ideas are highly influential in the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements. Since 2017, he has been Agnese Helms Haury Chair in the Agnese Nelms Haury Program in Environment and Social Justice at the University of Arizona.

Reviews

[Wick Welker]

Power is rarely justified.

It's extremely difficult to review Chomsky because his language and logic is often so straight forward that interpreting and reviewing his words is often redundant. The man's reasoning is very difficult (for me at least) to refute because he is both disimpassioned and completely open. The man's analysis is so cutting and so accurate that you simply stand there gob-smacked by the inevitability of his logic and the obviousness of the world's issues. You're just like "oh yeah duh, I should've known."

Chomsky is an "intellectual" but more than that he's just a person who thinks carefully and simply and comes to very rational conclusions with very little assumptions or clouded ideology. In this book he discusses how power structures rarely justify their own existence and are hence illegitimate. He delves into morality, defining totalitarianism, abortion, the intentional obscurity of academic discourse and much more.

If you think you know Chomsky without actually reading Chomsky, you do not know him. Read him. That's it.

[Randall Wallace]

Christians were persecuted in the Fourth Century because they were radical pacifists, and their cross was the symbol for the poor. Emperor Constantine then inverts their religion and uses the cross for empire building, as would the Romans. The cross immediately became the symbol “of the rich and the persecutors”. “For hundreds of years, it had been the church of the rich and the oppressors who were telling the poor, ‘This is your fate. Deal with it’.” In 1962, Pope John XXIII changed the church back with his Vatican II adopting “the preferential option for the poor from the gospels.” The US Wars in Central American were in “large part” “a war against the (Vatican II) church.” The US Army is proud of helping “defeat liberation theology and the Church of the Gospel.” Liberation theology “led, particularly in Latin America, to priests, nuns, and laypeople bringing the message of the gospel to poor peasants, trying to get them to think about their horrid conditions under US-dominated tyrannies and to try to organize against it.” “That set off a US-led war against the church, a brutal and bloody war. Neo-Nazi-style national-security states in Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, Argentina. Finally, they came to Central America in the 1980s. And it basically ended on November 16, 1989, with the murder of the six Jesuits in El Salvador. People in the United States ought to know about it. We’re responsible for it.”

Try not to laugh: A poll by Andrew M. Greeley found that “75 percent of Americans believe in religious miracles.” 0% of course have ever personally seen a religious miracle, yet somehow believe at any moment a Middle Eastern bearded man speaking only Aramaic could suddenly walk on water or rise from the dead. Comedy is picturing exceptionalist white Evangelicals follow ANYONE who doesn’t look white and speaks a different language if “he returned”. Hey Jesus, Speak English! Where’s the real Jesus? This one doesn’t put white Americans first! Hey Christ! ALL people matter, not just your poor!

“French intellectuals were the last group of intellectuals in the world who were dedicated Stalinists and Maoists.” “By the mid-70’s that was getting to be a pretty hard position to uphold”, even for the French.

“The US was founded by religious extremists. Remember the settlers of New England “were following God’s will”. Providentialism. Look closely at the great seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony: out of the Indian’s mouth is a scroll that says, “come over and help us.” Imperialism thinly euphemized as “the responsibility to protect” the native population. Teddy Roosevelt told missionaries that it was good we exterminated Native Americans because it enabled a “superior” race to replace them. PR leaders have long known that if you merely pretend to be a devout Christian, you can pick up 30% of the vote. Bill Clinton needed votes so much he actually went to church to be photographed singing.

Noam doubts the Kennedy assassination conspiracy, saying that after Kennedy was killed US policies didn’t change AT ALL because Kennedy was on the hawkish side and “was carrying out terrorist wars against Cuba right to the day of his assassination.” Noam finds no evidence of the “magnificent things” Kennedy was doing, or about to do. For Noam, dwelling on conspiracies takes away from activist time spent on stopping the next war. Noam believes when you say Israel controls the US, you are “preserving American innocence” as though the US has no agency.

“No Child Left Behind” was about drilling kids to pass the next test, instead of nurturing their creativity. A century ago, it was about turning “independent farmers into disciplined factory workers.”

Obama called bankers “his friends” and coddled them after they threatened to take him down for publicly suggesting greedy bankers didn’t deserve big bonuses. When Obama picked financial advisors, he chose people who had created the crisis – “the ones who put him in power.” Next time you are thinking of cutting a check for the ACLU, remember that the ACLU supported the loathsome Citizens United decision. To the ACLU, if corporations are called people then they deserve protection. Never mind that, as Joel Bakan once wrote in “The Corporation”, the courts never called corporations people in the Santa Clara decision, a stenographer did, and the mistake was NEVER corrected. Never mind that corporations by law have to maximize profit, which demands increasing the bitter class war. Al Gore was denounced as a hypocrite because he takes planes; “defamation is one of the easiest things to do” as the US proves every time it wishes regime change.

If the world overnight became vegan, “the first thing you’d have to do is eliminate almost all domesticated animals because they are raised to eat. They’ll starve to death if you don’t feed them.” So, ethically what do you do? When the US government lost its ability to use force against the US population, it developed propaganda and the modern PR industry. The worst colonialism is settler-colonialism – “like the US, Australia and Israel”. When Mark Twain criticized the US, his essays were “repressed.”

The majority of the US public thinks the UN should have higher power than the US and that the US should give up its veto in the UN and “follow the will of the majority.” We can’t have a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East, because to do so, Israel would have to actually tell the world about its nuclear arsenal; and fat chance of our rogue state telling the rogue state of Israel what to do. Africa becoming a nuclear-free zone was blocked by the US because Africa considers Diego Garcia (stolen by England and then the US) to be part of Africa. US patriots are tickled pink knowing its rightful inhabitants were forced off the island, so the US can continue to launch illegal aggression from there. US activist violence is a gift “to the ultra-hawks”.

The US went to war against Vietnam because of the Mafia principle; “the Godfather does not accept disobedience.” If even one country gets away with it, others will follow. These were blatant wars against nationalism pretending to be first against communism. The Vietnam War was a success for US planners because the US had sadistically destroyed Vietnam so that “it would never be a model for independent development. The surrounding countries were inoculated by vicious dictatorships.” McGeorge Bundy said we should have quit in 1965 because Vietnam was already destroyed. If the US were run by the Mafia, would any of its techniques change? Agribusiness and Big Pharma would love a piece of Cuba today, but the US won’t let them because “we’ve got to keep punishing them (Cubans) for being disobedient.” How dare they remove the US (and Mafia) supported dictator Batista? Resistance to the Vietnam War was really hard to find for years; half of Noam’s tiny audience wanted to kill him rather than listen.

Totalitarian societies and malignant-narcissist gold-digging spouses have something strong in common: they both know that to totally control people you must first isolate them. You can’t have them finding out they are not alone in wanting to resist or challenge the oppressor. You can’t let them think they have a choice like you do, you must cut off all their opportunities. “Leave them only making do with things as they are.” “Keep people isolated (if you are a heartless sociopath or a rogue state) and you can get them to believe anything.”

In Europe, Noam often does talks in a union hall, in the US it usually is in a church.

Bolsheviks had thought they could beat the people into development and industrialization.

“I don’t feel bad if I can’t play the violin like somebody else. You do what you do.”

Islamic fundamentalism is partly because the US financed it so heavily to give Russia its own ‘Vietnam’ in Afghanistan, and partly a reaction to ‘the failure of secular nationalism’ thanks to decades of intentional US foreign policy against nationalism while masquerading as fighting communism.

Yet another great book by Noam.

[counter-hegemonicon]

A lot of these essays were also in understanding power but it’s nice to review and revive the memories

[Grant]

Noam's succinctness is a sight to behold. These short interviews help to compile a lot of what is covered in earlier works but in an easier to consume format.

[Brian Mikołajczyk]

A series of interviews with Michael Albert, Chomsky speaks on a variety of sociopolitical topics.

A very good read!

[Usama Ansar]

I don't remember how I first stumbled upon Chomsky, but I do remember being immediately fascinated by him. He seemed to be a good break from the one dimensional analysis TV shows and social media have accustomed us to.

ANWIOH is a collection of conversations Chomsky had with economist Michael Albert on topics ranging from anti-war movements, the mechanisms of censorship and the social functions of modern education. It was a thoroughly enjoyable read.

I liked most of the critique in the book, but especially interesting was Chomsky’s discussion of censorship; no, not the coercive one but rather the much more "benign" (and pervasive) one.

You probably have seen it if you've ever asked yourself why we never have good politicians, or good CEO's, or why do journalists always tend to avoid taking strong positions even when discussing matters where one side is clearly right (r.e. climate change, Palestine, tax cuts). It's probably not that someone's paying them to toe the line (#lifafay 👀) but probably because their institution's culture only allows people of a particular phenotype - people whose priorities are in line with the institutions and/or those who display deference to the institutions power structures - to progress. This is how most dissent in the world gets censored.

To paraphrase Chomsky's example, just consider law school students hoping to do good in society after becoming lawyers. Then they graduate, in debt, and a Wall Street firm offers them a job so they take it. Perhaps initially to pay off their debts. In the process they grow used to the lavishness and whatever conviction they had to do good takes a back seat. Their souls (my words) get quashed.

For the most part the book was great. What I did not like was Chomsky's reduction of religion as an almost irrational conviction instead of recognizing it as a legitimate framework from where many derive meaning in their lives and their activism. Fortunately that part of Chomsky was featured only briefly in the book so despite some misgivings, I found it a good read - 4/5.

[Derek Frasure]

One wonders if there's a single book Noam wrote, or interview he gave, after 1990 where he does not mention the elite Salvadoran Battalion trained at the JFK Special Forces School in Fort Bragg that killed six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter to stop the spread of liberation theology throughout South America. One imagines he talks about this and other frequented topics in his sleep. You ask Noam a question and fully formed op-eds pop out in perfectly cited paragraphs. The man is a machine; and you can marvel at that machine working just as well, and saying nearly the same things, in a 1993 interview that takes up the latter half of this small book, as that machine does in the 2022 interview that takes up the first half of the text.

While I disagree with Chomsky on a few points–I think he's a pretty bad reader of philosophy–the man is an intellectual powerhouse the likes of which the world may see only once, and you can learn from him even in his dullest moments. His repetitions often are loaded with new minutiae, and therefore still delightful.

I was particularly struck by Chomsky's analysis of Vietnam as successful on the basis of the US as mafia don theory–we were successful insofar as we sent a message that derailed communism throughout the rest of southeast Asia. Moreover, I wonder if he maintains his 2022 faith in the recession of force as a tactic among American political elites; because force feels very much back on the table in 2024.

The composition of this text is strange. I'm not sure why the editor chose to place the interviews in reverse chronological order, nor why his afterword was not an introduction, since that's what it was in substance. Albert was also a worse interviewer in 1993, cutting Chomsky off when I wanted to hear the rest of his statement several times.

[Mlhoganjr]

The first half of "A New World in Our Hearts" consists of several interviews between Michael Albert-- founder of Z Magazine-- and Noam Chomsky that occurred in Z's offices in 2010. In a very general and free-wheeling way, they conducted interviews on "Responsibility of Intellectuals, Scholars, and Journalists," then "Science, Religion, and Human Nature," "Education and Economics," "The Political System," and "International Relations."

The second half contains a long interview but really reads like a long conversation as opposed to the traditional question-and-answer format. It's even called "a rap session" in the book. This was also conducted by Michael Albert, back in 1993.

Chomsky's logic, recall, and amazing ability to retain information is on full display. However, the context, dated material, and almost unedited nature of the interviews (sometimes the free-wheeling nature crosses over into rambling or goes completely off-topic for long periods of time) made me think, "Why now?" Why publish two sets of essays, one over 30 years old, that are mostly just two old friends chatting? While listening to Chomsky talk about nearly any subject can be fascinating, in this case it felt a bit disjointed.

[Sümeyye]

Noam Chomsky hayranı olanlar için sevilebilir bir kitap olabilir ama bana hitap etmedi.Amerika tarihine ilgi duyanlar için de öyle.Ben içinden sadece entelektüel birinden hayata dair vizyon katan bazı cümleler alabilmek adına kitabı bitirdim ve bazı sayfaları çok hızlı bir iki cümlesini okuyarak geçirdim,sosyoloji sevdiğim için satın aldım muhtemelen çünkü ne zaman aldığımı bile hatırlamıyorum ama bundan sonra içeriğine daha da dikkat ederek bakıp alacağım:D yine de bana kattığı bazı fikirler ve vizyon için çok mutluyum,puanım 2/5 ama kitabın kötü olmasından değil bana hitap etmemesinden.

[David]

I didn’t expect much from a collection of interviews in book form, but these were really excellent. I was particularly intrigued by Chomsky’s view that the Left has actually scored many significant cultural victories since the 1960s, with ample evidence to show how attitudes are changing in several realms that were once completely above critique. Really gave some hope for revolutionary optimism. Greatly enjoyed these written interactions!!

[James]

I listened to the audiobook version of this title and wish I had read a print copy. The book contains a series of conversations between Michael Albert and Noam Chomsky. While the content is interesting (and relevant), the format did not lend itself well to audio narration. I suspect I would have given a higher rating to a print copy. Perhaps I'll revisit this title sometime in the future.

[Kanako Okiron]

Last time I read a Noam Chomsky book I could not for the life of me finish it due to the complex sharp vulnerability sending me into a daze. But this book was nice and short and I hope Noam is embraced by Gen Z going forward!

[Muhammad Raza Hayder]

A short and nice interview reflecting on various topics from defining intellectualism as ability to critically see beyond popular spheres, conspiracy theories and perceptions around it, role of US in several criminal discourses around the globe, leftism a hoax and rightism and much more. A small good read, essentially reflects on few important aspects of Mr chomsky’s narrative and provides us with a glimpse of ocean that lies in his rest of the work.

[Clay Burns]

Chomsky is the 🐐.