Optimism over Despair: On Capitalism, Empire, and Social Change

by Noam Chomsky

We also know that the overwhelming majority of Americans are in support of unions.

In the light of all of this, what’s the best way to understand the relation between media, politics, and the public in contemporary American society?

Ads on TV do not provide information about products; rather, they provide illusion and imagery. The same public relations firms that seek to undermine markets by ensuring that uninformed consumers will make irrational choices (contrary to abstract economic theories) seek to undermine democracy in the same way.

Polls also consistently show that large majorities want a nationalized system, called “single payer,” rather like the existing Medicare system for the elderly, which is far more efficient than the privatized systems or the one introduced by Obama. When any of this is mentioned, which is rare, it is called “politically impossible” or “lacking political support”—meaning that the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, and others who benefit from the current system, object.

When a large sector of concentrated capital favors some program, it becomes “politically possible” and has “political support.” Just as revealing as the facts themselves is that they are not noticed.

The Civil War cemented central authority, and uniformity in other domains as well: national language, cultural patterns, huge state-corporate social engineering projects such as the suburbanization of the society, massive central subsidy of advanced industry by research and development, procurement and other devices, and much else.

But imperial conquest and economic policies (state intervention for the rich, free markets rammed down the throats of the poor) left them in miserable conditions. It is notable that the one country of the global South that developed was Japan, the one country that was not colonized. The correlation is not accidental.

Obama sent many more troops and stepped up bombing on both sides of the Afghan–Pakistan border—the Durand line, an artificial border established by the British, which cuts the Pashtun areas in two and which the people have never accepted. Afghanistan in the past often pressed for obliterating it.

But it has to be overwhelming, and there are probably too many tentacles to wipe out the terrorist monster that was largely created by Reagan and his associates, since nurtured by others. ISIS is the latest one, and a far more brutal organization than al-Qaeda. It is also different in the sense that it has territorial claims. It can be wiped out through massive employment of troops on the

ground, but that won’t end the emergence of similar-minded organizations. Violence begets violence.

Among the great powers, China has been the most reserved in use of force, even military preparations. So much so that leading US strategic analysts (John Steinbrunner and Nancy Gallagher, writing in the journal of the ultra-respectable American Academy of Arts and Sciences) called on China some years ago to lead a coalition of peace-loving nations to confront the US aggressive militarism that they think is leading to “ultimate doom.”

In many circles, there is a widespread impression that the Israel lobby calls the shots in US foreign policy in the Middle East. Is the power of the Israel lobby so strong that it can have sway over a superpower?

My friend Gilbert Achcar, a noted specialist on the Middle East and international affairs generally, describes that idea as “phantasmagoric.”

When the lobby’s goals conform to perceived US strategic and economic interests, it generally gets its way: crushing of Palestinians, for example, a matter

of little concern to US state-corporate power. When goals diverge, as often happens, the lobby quickly disappears, knowing better than to confront authentic power.

I agree totally with your analysis, but I think you would also agree that the Israel lobby is influential enough, and beyond whatever economic and political leverage it carries, that criticisms of Israel still cause hysterical reactions in the United States—and you certainly have been a target of right-wing Zionists for many years. To what do we attri...

That is all true, though much less so than in recent years. It is not really power over public opinion. In numbers, by far the largest support for Israeli actions is independent of the lobby: Christian religious fundamentalists. Briti...

providentialist interpretations of Biblical prophecies. The population at large supports the two-state settlement, doubtless unaware that the United States has been unilaterally blocking it. Among educated sectors, including Jewish intellectuals, there was little interest in Israel before its great military victory in 1967, which really established the US–Isr...

If I count up the death threats I have received over the years, or the diatribes in journals of opinion, Israel is far from the leading factor. The phenomenon is by no means restricted to the United States.

On the Western front, are plans for the eastward expansion of NATO, which go back to the era of Bill Clinton, still in place? One of Clinton’s major crimes in my opinion—and there were many—was to expand NATO to the east, in violation of a firm pledge to Gorbachev by his predecessors after Gorbachev made the astonishing concession to allow a united Germany to join a hostile military alliance. These very serious provocations were carried forward by Bush, along with a posture of aggressive militarism which, as predicted, elicited strong reactions from Russia. But American redlines are already placed on Russia’s borders.

What are your views about the EU? It is still largely a trailblazer for neoliberalism and hardly a bulwark for US aggression. But do you see any signs that it can emerge at some point as a constructive, influential actor on the world stage?

It could. That is a decision for Europeans to make. Some have favored taking an independent stance, notably De Gaulle. But by and large, European elites have preferred passivity,...

The dynamic, which goes back many years, has been studied in an important work by military analyst Andrew Cockburn, in his book Kill Chain. He documents how when you kill one leader without dealing with the roots and causes of the phenomenon, he is typically replaced very quickly by someone younger, more competent, and more vicious.

toll. After all, we had to defend civilization from “one of the more notorious terrorist groups” in the world, Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress. Mandela himself remained on the US terrorist list until 2008.

While this may not be a popular view with many people, Russia, unlike the United States, seems to be restrained when it comes to the use of force. Assuming that you agree with this assumption, why do you think this is the case? They are the weaker party. They don’t have eight hundred military bases throughout the world, couldn’t possibly intervene everywhere the way the United States has done over the years, or carry out anything like Obama’s global assassination campaign. The same was true throughout the Cold War. They could use military force near their borders but couldn’t possibly have carried out anything like the Indochina wars, for example.

France seems to have become a favorite target of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. What’s the explanation for that? Actually, many more Africans are killed by Islamic terrorism. In fact, Boko Haram is ranked higher than ISIS as a global terrorist organization.1 In Europe,

France has been the major target, in large part for reasons going bac...

It’s hard to find a national liberation movement that hasn’t used terror. Hezbollah and Hamas were formed in response to Israeli occupation and aggression. But whatever criteria we use, ISIS is quite different. It is seeking to

carve out territory that it will rule and establish an Islamic caliphate. That’s quite different from others.

be. There are sensible proposals as to how to proceed on this course, for example, the proposal by William Polk, a fine Middle East scholar with rich experience not only in the region but also at the highest levels of US government planning.2

“there’s a tremendous social and economic difference between welfare pump-priming and military pump-priming.” The latter “doesn’t really alter the structure of the economy.” For the businessman, it’s just another order. But welfare and public works spending “does

alter the economy. It makes new channels of its own. It creates new institutions. It redistributes income.” And we can add more. Military spending scarcely involves the public, but social spending does, and has a democratizing effect. For reasons like these, military spending is much preferred.

As respected political analysts of the conservative American Enterprise Institute have observed, the former Republican Party is now a “radical insurgency” that has pretty much abandoned parliamentary politics, for interesting reasons that we can’t go into here. The Democrats have also moved to the right, and their core elements are not unlike moderate Republicans of years past—though some of Eisenhower’s policies would place him about where Sanders is on the political spectrum. Sanders, therefore, would be unlikely to have much congressional support, and would have little at the state level.

C. J. POLYCHRONIOU: US military interventions in the twenty-first century (for example, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria) have proven totally disastrous, yet the terms of the intervention debate have yet to be redrawn among Washington’s warmakers. What’s the explanation for this? NOAM CHOMSKY: In part, the old cliché—when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

If the pronouncements of the current crop of candidates can be taken seriously, the world could be facing deep trouble. Take, for example, the nuclear deal with Iran. Not only are they unanimously opposed to it, but they are competing on how quickly to bomb Iran. It’s a very strange moment in American political history, and in a state with awesome powers of destruction that should cause not a little concern.

It was discussed by Akbar Ahmed, one of the most careful and discerning analysts of radical Islam. He concludes from the available evidence that the perpetrator, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, was probably “not a devout Muslim. He had a criminal record, drank alcohol, ate pork, did drugs, did not fast, pray or regularly attend a mosque and was not religious in any way. He was cruel to his wife, who left him.

Ahmed’s analysis corresponds closely to that of others who have done extensive investigation of recruits to ISIS, notably Scott Atran and his research team.

By now Eastern Congo is the scene of the world’s worst slaughters, assisted by US favorite Rwanda, while warring militias feed the craving of Western multinationals for minerals for cell phones and other high-tech wonders. The picture generalizes too much of Africa, exacerbated by innumerable crimes. For Europe, all of this becomes a refugee crisis.

European Union officials are having an exceedingly difficult time coping with the refugee crisis because many EU member states are unwilling to do their part and accept anything more than just a handful of refugees. What does this say about EU governance and the values of many European societies? EU governance works very efficiently to impose harsh austerity measures that devastate poorer countries and benefit Northern banks. But it has broken down almost completely when addressing a human catastrophe that is in substantial part the result of Western crimes. The burden has fallen on the few who were willing, at least temporarily, to do more than lift a finger, like Sweden and Germany.

Rhetoric is widely used in political campaigns and is frequently abused in a political context. Do you have a theory of political rhetoric? I don’t have any theory of rhetoric, but I try to keep in mind the principle that one should not try to persuade; rather, one should lay out the territory as best

powers to determine for themselves what they think is taking place and what is right or wrong. I also try, particularly in political writing, to make it extremely clear in advance exactly where I stand so that readers can make judgments accordingly. The idea of neutral objectivity is at best misleading and often fraudulent. We cannot help but approach complex and controversial questions—especially those of human significance—with a definite point of view, with an ax to grind if you like, and that ax should be apparent right up front so that those we address can see where we are coming from in our choice and interpretation of the events of history.

religion and politics, it has been argued by quite a few commentators that the Israeli–Palestinian conflict is a war of religion, not territory. Any validity in this? The Zionist movement was initially secular, though religious elements have been gaining a considerably greater role, particularly after the 1967 war and the onset of the occupation, which had a major impact on Israeli society and culture. That’s particularly true in the military, a matter that has deeply concerned analysts of military affairs since the 1980s (Yoram Peri’s warnings at the time were perceptive) and increasingly today. The Palestinian movements

were also largely secular, though religious extremism is also growing—throughout the Muslim world, in fact, as secular initiatives are beaten back and the victims seek something else to grasp. Still, it would be quite misleading, I think, to regard it as a war of religion. Whatever one thinks of it, Zionism has been a settler-colonial movement, with all that that entails.

Washington has never reconciled itself to Cuba’s intolerable arrogance of achieving independence in 1959—partial, since the United States refused to return the valuable Guantanamo Bay region, taken by “treaty” at gunpoint in 1903 and not returned despite the requests of the government of Cuba. In passing, it might be recalled that by far the worst human rights violations in Cuba take place in this stolen territory, to which the United States has a much weaker claim than Russia does to Crimea, also taken by force.

How do you assess and evaluate the historical significance and impact of the Cuban revolution in world affairs and toward the realization of socialism? The impact on world affairs was extraordinary. For one thing, Cuba played a very significant role in the liberation of West and South Africa. Its troops beat back a US-supported South African invasion of Angola and compelled South Africa to abandon its attempt to establish a regional support system and to give up its illegal hold on Namibia. The fact that Black Cuban troops defeated the South Africans had an enormous psychological impact both in white and Black Africa.

The distinguished anthropologist Akbar Ahmed, with long professional and personal experience with the tribal societies that are under attack all over the world, forcefully recounts how these murderous assaults elicit dedication to revenge—not very surprisingly. How would we react?

The FTAs are to a large extent not even about trade; rather, about investor rights, such as the rights of corporations (not, of course, mere people of flesh and blood) to sue governments for actions that might reduce potential profits of foreign investors, like environmental or health and safety regulations. Much of what is called “trade” doesn’t merit that term, for example, production of parts in Indiana, assembly in Mexico, sale in

California, all basically within a command economy, a megacorporation. Flow of capital is free. Flow of labor is anything but, violating what Adam Smith recognized to be a basic principle of free trade: free circulation of labor. And to top it off, the FTAs are not even agreements, at least if people are considered to be members of democratic societies.

To take just one example, President Obama’s drone campaign is by far the most vast and destructive terrorist operation now under way. The United States and its Israeli client violate international law with complete impunity, for example, by threats to attack Iran (“all options are open”) in violation of core principles of the UN Charter. The most recent US Nuclear Posture Review (2010) is more aggressive in tone than its predecessors, a warning not to be ignored. Concentration of power rather generally poses dangers, in this domain as well.

You have said that elite intellectuals are the ones that mainly tick you off. Is this because you fuse politics with morality? Elite intellectuals, by definition, have a good deal of privilege. Privilege provides options and confers responsibility. Those more privileged are in a better position to obtain information and to act in ways that will affect policy decisions. Assessment of their role follows at once. It’s true that I think that people should live up to their elementary moral responsibilities, a position that should need no defense. And the responsibilities of someone in a more free and open society are, again