Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky

by Noam Chomsky

if things ever really come to a crunch in the United States, this massive part of the population—I think it’s something like a third of the adult population by now—could be the basis for some kind of a fascist movement, readily. For example, if the country sinks deeply into a recession, a depoliticized population could very easily be mobilized into thinking it’s somebody else’s fault: “Why are our lives collapsing? There have to be bad guys out there doing something for things to be going so badly”—and the bad guys can be Jews, or homosexuals, or blacks, or Communists, whatever you pick.

American geopolitical tradition which treats the United States as an island power off the mainland of Europe; it’s a bigger version of British geopolitics, which treats England as an island power off the mainland of Europe. I mean, Britain throughout its whole modern history has tried to prevent Europe from becoming unified—that was the main theme of British history, prevent Europe from being unified, because we’re just this island power off of Europe, and if they ever get unified we’re in trouble. And the United States has the same attitude towards Eurasia: we’ve got to prevent them from becoming unified, because if they are, we become a real second-class power

But the point is, the Japanese-style development model works—in fact, it’s how every country in the world that’s developed has done it: by imposing high levels of protectionism, and by extricating its economy from free-market discipline. And that’s precisely what the Western powers have been preventing the rest of the Third World from doing, right up to this moment.

there is not a single economy in history that developed without extensive state intervention, like high protectionist tariffs and subsidies and so on. In fact, all the things we prevent the Third World from doing have been the prerequisites for development everywhere else—I think that’s without exception.