He is the most widely quoted scholar in the English-speaking world, and has frequently been described as the most formidable intellectual on the planet. (No, I’m not talking about Gazza or Liam Gallagher).
Avram Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has changed lives and minds through the force of his work. As a linguistics specialist, his academic achievements are legion: Chomsky is credited with creating the theory of generative grammar, and with indirectly sparking the ‘cognitive revolution’ in psychology.
His academic record notwithstanding, Chomsky is undoubtedly better known in most households for his political activism. In his essays, books and speeches, he has relentlessly, with rigorous logic and astonishing clarity, demolished the stated justifications for the United States’ exercise of military coercion in various corners of the globe, usually quoting extensively from official documentation. He deals in facts, not opinions, although he describes himself as a ‘libertarian socialist’ and has proclaimed his affinity with the tenets of anarchism.
In accordance with the first anarchist principle – ‘There is no authority but yourself’ – Chomsky’s work amounts to a plea for caution and vigilance against the exercise of all state power, anywhere. Though often misrepresented by his opponents as a Soviet sympathiser, he saluted the East European popular revolutions of 1989 as ‘a historic achievement in the unending struggle for freedom and democracy throughout the world’. He is undoubtedly an advocate of democracy ‘as a system in which citizens may play a meaningful part in the management of public affairs’, but fiercely opposes its Western incarnation as ‘a system with regular elections between approved candidates but no serious challenge to business rule’.
Of course, as Jesus Christ or Karl Marx could have testified, one of the problems with being a brilliant thinker is the way people attach undue reverence to your every word and deed. Chomsky’s two lectures in Dublin the other week were greeted with rapturous applause by an audience whose uncritical adoration appeared to border on hero-worship. The standing ovations which ensued might have embarrassed Nicolae Ceaucescu or Kim Il-Sung. Few rock stars or footballers have ever inspired such levels of devotion. Despite his insanely busy schedule, Chomsky managed to find time – well, 24 minutes – to discuss events of the day with Ireland’s leading left-field periodical, your beloved hotpress. Here’s the transcript:
CF Your RDS lecture the other night was greeted with a standing ovation of Stalinist proportions. Do you find such hero-worship embarrassing?
NC Oh, I don’t think it’s hero worship. I think people read me, or listen to me, for the content of what I’m saying.
Onto the content, then. You‘ve said before that despite its external belligerence, the USA itself is the freest society in the world. Do you still hold this view?
Yes. Things that the Blair government get away with would be inconceivable in the United States. The Labour government proposed legislation to make it a crime to glorify terror. It went to the House of Lords, which is a deal more liberal than the Labour government, and they refused to support it. But they proposed a bill to ban ‘indirect support for terror’, which could include just telling the truth about why US and British policy are encouraging terror. There is no way you could get support for such legislation in the US. There would be uproar. The corporate news networks may be ridiculously unbalanced, but the general level of free speech is significantly higher.
In most Western societies, the importance of religion has seemed to decline over recent decades. In America, it seems to be on the increase all the time. Why is that?
You must bear in mind that the United States has always been a deeply fundamentalist society, right from the moment of its origins. The original settlers were English Protestant fundamentalist fanatics, who were waving the Holy Book, and there’s always been a very powerful wave of religious fanaticism, still is. If you look at cross-cultural studies, typically, the commitment to religious extremism declines along with industrialisation. The exceptions have been the USA, which is off the scale, and Ireland, which is almost off the scale, though that may be changing. That’s been true for a long time. What’s been striking in the last twenty-five years is that the political managers have realised that they can exploit this as a political force, and there are millions of votes to be gained from it.
In what way do you say they exploit it?
This is very significant, because in fact, it’s been a uniquely bleak period in US economic history. It had been a non-stop success story until then, but in the last twenty-five years, real wages have stagnated or declined for the majority of the population. Government neo-liberal policies have been kicking people in the face, and if you want to control people while you’re kicking them in the face, you need to find something else to distract them. Cultural issues fit the bill perfectly – so you shift the topic to abortion, or gay rights. Then you can mobilise this constituency to allow themselves to be kicked in the face. Cynical party managers, both Republican and Democrat, understand this very well. In the US, prior to Carter, little was known about the President’s religion, or whether he went to church on a Sunday. But since then, every candidate has had to at least pretend to be a religious extremist. Take Bill Clinton – privately, he’s probably about as religious as I am. But they made sure that every week, he was pictured in a Baptist church. It’s a political imperative.
Are you an atheist or an agnostic?
I don’t understand the distinction.
An atheist operates on the 100% certainty that no deity or deities exist.
I don’t think you can ever be 100% certain about anything. But in this case, I’d be close. Are we discussing the deities of the Native Americans, or Allah, or Buddha? I’ve never met any of them. I think religion often has very toxic consequences. But I wouldn’t ban religious belief, I don’t think I’d even like to see it wiped out totally. I’m sure it has a legitimate place for many people and plays a very important role in their lives, and they’ve every right to those beliefs, once they don’t try to impose them on me.
You’ve described Presidential and parliamentary elections as largely a meaningless charade, but do you take an interest in who wins them?
Well, yes, I suppose. To take the last election, I thought it was quite vital for the world’s general welfare to vote against Bush.
I know it’s a secret ballot, but can I ask how you voted?
I happen to live in a very safe Democratic state where Kerry was certain to win, so I voted Green. Had I been in a marginal state, yes, I would have voted for Kerry. Because whatever slight differences there are, in a big system of power, they translate to massive human consequences. In many elections, there’s nothing at stake. That certainly wasn’t the case this time.
Would you concede, then, that the Clinton administration was more benign in its behaviour than the current one?
It was pretty horrible, but yes, that’s fair comment, it was less destructive than this one. This one is off the scale, it’s unimaginably worse than the Reagan administration. It’s run by the more extreme elements of the Reagan administration: pretty much the same people, but the more sane elements of the Reagan administration have dropped off – Scowcroft, people like that, even George Bush the first. Colin Powell is now seen as a moderate: in 1990, he was extremist by any definition. That tells its own story.
One of the frightening things about Ireland is our geographical position, directly between the USA and what you’ve described as its ‘spear-carrier’, Britain. In the event that a genuinely radical Irish government were to adopt ‘awkward’ foreign policies, what consequences would you foresee?
It would pose problems. You may have noted a couple of weeks ago that Norway’s government made some proposals about a limited boycott of Israel, with regard to its nuclear weaponry and so forth. They got a sharp dressing down from Condoleeza Rice, and they backed off. You don’t stand up to the mafia. International affairs are like that, sadly. If you’re a storekeeper in an area run by the Mafia, you’re not independent. You have choices, but they’re not made with impunity.
At this stage, could you assess the likelihood of a US-led attack on Iran?
In my estimation, not very likely. It’s guesswork, of course, but there are several reasons why I don’t foresee it. The only kind of attack that could take place is by air. The US can’t just invade, they don’t have the resources. An air attack is conceivable, but Iran is not like Iraq. Iraq was a mess of different ethnic and religious groups held together by masking-tape. Iran, however, is a functioning society. It can cause the United States plenty of trouble. Iran has very close relations with the Shi’ite population in the south of Iraq – though this is denounced, quite comically, by Blair and Bush as ‘foreign interference in Iraqi affairs’. How outrageous! But if they want to, they can stir up trouble in Iraq, and the US is in enough trouble as it is. Furthermore, it would cause an enormous backlash of outrage around much of the world. It would be a gift to al-Qa’ida, the greatest gift they could imagine. Also, I doubt that the White House really intends to. They’ve been loudly implying such intent for three years now, but if you’re actually planning to bomb another country, you don’t spend years announcing it, thus giving the victim a chance to prepare its defence.
So why all the aggressive posturing?
I suspect it’s just sabre-rattling for other purposes, partly to intimidate Europe. Which turns out to be extremely easy: Europe is very cowardly, and endlessly willing to subordinate itself to US demands. Europe isn’t like Norway or Ireland, it can stand up for itself, but it chooses not to. They don’t want to irritate the boss. So when the US imposes demands that Europe contribute to isolating Iraq or Iran, they do it. When Europe and Iran made contact a couple of years ago on the uranium issue, they made a very significant deal: Iran guaranteed no uranium enrichment for nuclear weapons purposes, in return for Europe’s guarantee that strategic and security issues would be dealt with, by which they meant US and Israeli threats to Iran. Europe then backed off from that commitment, under US pressure. Of course, Iran then saw no need to keep their half of the bargain. More escalation all round. The story was buried, but that’s all part of the sabre-rattling: keep the pressure on Europe.
Where does China fit into all of this – if at all?
The reason the US is so scared of China is that China can’t be intimidated like that. If they don’t like what’s put to them, they just refuse. As far as Iran, I also suspect the US is trying to get the Iranian government to be more harsh and repressive, which is the natural response to threats and intimidation. That contributes to subversion by causing internal dissidence, and maybe it’s conceivable that if they succeed in weakening Iran enough, they would be in a position to invade. But like any schoolyard bully, the US prefers to attack those who can’t fight back.
Do you think the Iranian president’s recent comments about ‘wiping Israel off the map’ were ill-advised?
His comments were idiotic, though clearly the US were delighted with them. You’d almost wonder if he was a CIA stooge, coming out with something like that. It was a perfect gift to the war lobby, they could use it to illustrate how awful Iran is. Wonderful.
You opposed the NATO intervention in Kosovo…
The one allegedly undertaken for humanitarian reasons, to prevent genocide? Yes, absolutely. It had hideous consequences which should have been anticipated. It created genocide.
Kosovo had been in an unpleasant situation since 1986, but nothing much was changing, it wasn’t getting any worse, until NATO decided to bomb. At that point, it went mad. As soon as they pulled out the monitors, huge atrocities broke out, exactly as could have been predicted. The consequence was the direct opposite of what was, allegedly, intended. The record has been entirely suppressed in the West. There is extensive documentation of the real reasons for the intervention – which I won’t go into now – but you can’t find it in the conventional literature, and the chronology has been reversed, to the point where people’s memories of the episode now appears to have been rewritten, i.e. they appear to believe it stopped genocide.
What are you saying did happen?
What NATO did, knowingly, was to expose the Kosovars to genocide, bombing the place in full awareness that it would cause major atrocities. It didn’t take a genius to figure that out. If you bomb somebody, they’ll react. The Serbs weren’t likely to react by bombing London – they were bound to react where they were strong, on the ground. Hence the atrocities. And, in turn, Albanian atrocities against the Serbs. Atrocities which continued, on both sides, after NATO took over the running of the place. And what happened to the Roma, or travellers as you call them here? They were kicked out of the country, or killed. Nobody cared about them, but they were human beings. The small Jewish community suffered too. All under NATO supervision.
What could have been done to prevent genocide in Rwanda?
A small intervention force of the kind that several observers asked for, but which wasn’t granted, because the West had no interest, except for France, whose government had close links with the Hutu perpetrators. That situation is ongoing – aside from the unimaginably huge death toll, it created over a million refugees. Most ended up in Eastern Congo, which is the worst part of the world, by far. Millions of people are being killed, not that you’d know it from watching the news – thousands every day. There’s a small UN force there, which could be a functioning UN force, if the West cared. Or take Darfur in Sudan: the US is aware that genocide is going on. Are they doing anything about it? Yes, they’re preventing the UN from acting. The UN Security Council did try to initiate something which would be under their auspices, but the US insisted that they had to go through the International Criminal Court to obtain indictments against specific individuals, which is profoundly difficult there. There’s an African peacekeeping force there, but it’s powerless. There’s a lot that the West could do, if it wanted to bother.
How do you view the phenomenon of international justice, as embodied in the Court in the Hague? Is it a desirable development?
In theory. The International Criminal Court can function only to the extent that the great powers permit it to. And there is one great power which not only refuses to accept its jurisdiction, but insists that nobody accept its jurisdiction. The US forces other countries to sign agreements stating that they will not appeal to the International Criminal Court. Take East Timor, where the US and Britain have been responsible for massive atrocities. It’s also the tiniest, weakest country in the world, but it’s finally got independence. The first US reaction was to send Colin Powell to order East Timor to agree that they would never send any Americans to the International Criminal Court. It’s more likely that an asteroid will hit the earth, but the fact that you have to force the weakest country in the world to sign that…it’s insanity, and indicative of genuine fear on America’s part. Congress has passed an Act which authorises the President to use force to rescue any American who’s brought to the Hague. And there’s another body, the World Court, and there is one country in the world which refuses to accept World Court judgements as binding. There used to be three: Albania, Libya and the United States. But Albania and Libya have long since accepted its legitimate authority. The USA rejects it. Therefore, the court can’t realistically function. The population of the United States overwhelmingly thinks that the US should accept the jurisdiction of both courts, it’s only the two political parties which won’t hear of it.
On most other significant issues, would you say the US population is more flexible than their government?
I would, yeah. I give talks all the time in very conservative parts of the United States, and I don’t feel particularly out of place. People may disagree with me, but I sense that we inhabit the same moral universe. I don’t get that feeling from government figures.
What’s your view of developments in Northern Ireland?
You mean the Good Friday Agreement? I think Britain finally understood that the way to deal with terror is to pay attention to the grievances. Once you pay attention to the grievances, there’s suddenly a realistic hope of mitigating conflict and moving forward. Incidentally, the same is true of al-Qa’ida terror. If you want to deal with it, recognise that there are grievances, and they’re real. They should be dealt with. If you start paying attention to them, you invariably reduce the support for terror. There are bound to be people who just want to be murderers, that’s a fact, but they get isolated if they don’t have a groundswell of popular support. And the popular support is based on grievances which are common to much of the population, as was the case in Northern Ireland. Start dealing with them, and you begin to make progress. I know Northern Ireland’s problems weren’t solved overnight, but anyone would accept it’s better than it was 15 years ago, when people were being killed every other day.
Would you credit Tony Blair personally with a positive role in the process?
That’s to applaud somebody for being minimally decent. But in contrast to his predecessors, yeah, sure. Britain finally took a position that was reasonable.
The concept of ‘democracy’ comes with obvious flaws attached. Popular opinion, if allowed to govern unchecked, would favour the death penalty, oppose gay marriage, and generally kick most liberal niceties into touch. Is there a point where enlightened elites are justified in imposing legislation which conflicts with the popular will?
If they’re clearly motivated by benevolence, which I doubt is really the motivation for many of them. On those kind of moral issues, the ‘elites’ you refer to probably cherish their personal freedoms, and don’t want a state with any power to govern their private lives. On occasion, depending on the issue, we may find such a case. But by and large, popular opinion is more enlightened than elite opinion. That’s been true throughout history. There are very few cases where elite opinion has imposed enlightened standards on the general public. Elites like to think so, of course. That theory is very popular among liberal intellectuals, but it swiftly translates into a general feeling that they are the responsible men – therefore, the population are ignorant proles to be led by the hand, and we have to control them by manufacturing consent.