Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky

by Noam Chomsky

Actually, I think that the United States has been in kind of a pre-fascist mood for years—and we’ve been very lucky that every leader who’s come along has been a crook. See, people should always be very much in favor of corruption—I’m not kidding about that. Corruption’s a very good thing, because it undermines power. I mean, if we get some Jim Bakker coming along—you know, this preacher who was caught sleeping with everybody and defrauding his followers—those guys are fine: all they want is money and sex and ripping people off, so they’re never going to cause much trouble. Or take Nixon, say: an obvious crook, he’s ultimately not going to cause that much of a problem. But if somebody shows up who’s kind of a Hitler-type—just wants power, no corruption, straight, makes it all sound appealing, and says, “We want power”—well, then we’ll all be in very bad trouble. Now, we haven’t had the right person yet in the United States, but sooner or later somebody’s going to fill that position—and if so, it will be highly dangerous.