Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky

by Noam Chomsky

And that’s a very dangerous phenomenon—because that kind of deep irrationality can readily be whipped up by demagogues, you know, Newt Gingriches. These guys can whip up fear, hatred, they can appeal to fundamentalist urges—and that’s been scaring most of the world for a while, I should say. For example, if you recall the Republican National Convention in 1992, it opened with a “God and Country” rally, which was televised and seen around the world. In Europe particularly it really sent chills up people’s spines—because they remember Hitler’s Nuremberg rallies, at least older people do, and it had something of that tone. Well, the Republicans were able to insulate the Convention from it that time around and keep most of that stuff confined to the first night, but in the future they might not be able to do that—in the future those people might take the Convention over, in which case we’d be very close to some American version of fascism; it may not be Hitler Germany, but it’ll be bad enough.