Category: Noam Chomsky
Liberals can’t accept US is a ‘leading terrorist state,’ just as Trump supporters can’t accept his election loss – Chomsky to RT
worker | January 25, 2021 | 7:40 pm | Cuba, Fascist terrorism, Noam Chomsky | Comments closed

https://www.rt.com/usa/513482-noam-%D1%81homsky-interview-hedges/

Liberals can’t accept US is a ‘leading terrorist state,’ just as Trump supporters can’t accept his election loss – Chomsky to RT

Liberals can’t accept US is a ‘leading terrorist state,’ just as Trump supporters can’t accept his election loss – Chomsky to RT
Just like many Trump supporters, US liberal intellectuals exist in a fantasy world in which a leading purveyor of “international terrorism” – the US government – is perceived as a fundamentally benign force, Noam Chomsky told RT.

“Just as you can’t get the Republican mobs to admit that the election was lost, you can’t get liberal American intellectuals to recognize that the United States is a leading terrorist state,” Chomsky told RT’s Chris Hedges.

The facts are that for almost the entirety of its history as a sovereign state, the US has waged a war of aggression against somebody, Chomsky said. The so-called ‘War on Terror’, which Ronald Reagan made the focus of his foreign policy, was Washington dealing with “resistance to US terrorism in Central America and also in South Africa.”

Nelson Mandela was considered terrorist by the US until 2008, long after the apartheid regime was dismantled. The US clandestine war on Nicaragua was ruled by the International Court of Justice a breach of international law.

“What the Reagan administration was doing was the peak of terrorism by our own definitions,” Chomsky said. “But the New York Times ran an editorial saying we can dismiss the judgement of the court because it’s a hostile forum. Why is it a hostile forum? Because it condemned the US.”

Another victim of the US is Cuba, which endured a decades-long blockade and a sustained US campaign to undermine its government and cause an uprising. In the US, those actions are perceived as the CIA hatching silly plots to take away Fidel Castro’s beard. “It was not that, it was a serious terrorist war that almost led to the destruction of the world” with the Cuban missile crisis, Chomsky pointed out.

ALSO ON RT.COMApologies from Joe, cookies from Jill: Bidens try to smooth over scandal with outcast & Covid-hit National Guard troopsThe failure of liberal intellectuals to see US policies for what they are is not something buried in the history books or limited to what is happening in foreign lands. The January 6 riot at the Capitol, for example, was not some “crazed mob” of Trump supporters coming “out of nowhere” and being defeated to prove the glory of American democracy.

“There are really serious ills – bipartisan, incidentally, although the Republicans have gone off the spectrum – but those are not being discussed,” he said.

ALSO ON RT.COMDespair, depression, and the inevitable rise of Trump 2.0: Glenn Greenwald tells RT his Biden administration predictionsAnd this failure is doing real harm to millions of Americans. The ideas of Bernie Sanders, a politician who would easily be considered right-center in a country like Germany, were painted as too radical for the US during the presidential campaign.

“What he is calling for – universal healthcare, free higher education – is just taken for granted by conservative parties in Europe,” Chomsky said. “This is such an insult against the American people to say, you are so backward and reactionary that you can’t have what Mexico has, what France has, what Brazil has.”

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If you criticize policy, you are anti-American. That only happens in dictatorships’ – Chomsky to RT
worker | July 3, 2017 | 9:16 pm | Analysis, Noam Chomsky | Comments closed

‘If you criticize policy, you are anti-American. That only happens in dictatorships’ – Chomsky to RT

World-famous academic and campaigner Noam Chomsky talked to RT about the “neoliberal shift” that has made markets king, and how the US silences its critics in the first segment of a two-part interview with Chris Hedges for “On Contact.”

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/394960-chomsky-criticize-american-policy/

RT: There are 10 principals of concentration of wealth and power that you laid out in the book “Requiem for the American dream,” which was based on a documentary that you did. The first one you’re talking about is “reducing democracy.” What do you mean by that?

Noam Chomsky: I should first comment that the construction of the ten principals is really the contribution to the editors. It is their quite effective consolidation of hours and hours of interviews and discussions, which they organized in this form. “Reducing democracy” means the gradual marginalization of the population; the reduction of the role of the general population in decision making on the public arena, which is an expected and predictable consequence of the introduction of the transition to neoliberal principals in the 70s and onward.

There is basically two general phases of post-war US socioeconomic history. The first phase was sometimes called regulated capitalism, embedded liberalism of the 50s and 60s; very high growth period; egalitarian growth; some moves towards social justice in the 60s; substantial increase and democratic participation – people became really engaged in the public arena. All of this had various effects. One effect was reduction, the falling rate of profit, which is critical. Second effect was people becoming too engaged in public affairs.

RT: That’s what Samuel Huntington called an “excess of democracy,” didn’t he?

NC: “Excess of democracy.” And in fact two very important publications came out in the early 70s – both directed to this theory. Interesting, because they were opposite ends of the political spectrum, but they basically came to the same conclusion with somewhat different rhetorical styles. One was The Powell Memorandum written by a corporate lawyer working for the tobacco corporations who later became Supreme Court justice under Nixon. He wrote a memorandum, which was supposed to be confidential, but it leaked to the US Chamber of Commerce business group. The rhetoric is quite fascinating: he expressed the view, which is not uncommon among those who really own the world – that their control has been very slightly diminished, and in a manner of spoiled three-year-old that doesn’t get a piece of candy – that means the world is coming to an end. So you really have to read the rhetoric to appreciate it.

RT: It is an attack on American free enterprise system, isn’t it?

NC: The business world is under severe attack led by Ralph Nader and Herbert Marcuse. We are barely surviving attack on everything significant in American life. Then he says: “Well, look after all we, businessmen basically own everything. We are the trusties at the universities. We don’t have to let this kids run wild. We can constrain the media after all; we have the power.” It calls for mobilization of the business world to defend themselves…

‘Trump’s only ideology is ‘me’, deeply authoritarian & very dangerous’ – Noam Chomsky

It had a big impact on the growth of the right-wing think tanks – much of the ideology, the far right. So that is the right end of the spectrum. Then you go to the other end of the spectrum – basically the Carter administration liberalism. In fact the people who staffed the Carter administration, the Trilateral Commission – its industrial democracies: Europe, Japan, the US, basically liberal internationalists. They have a publication, called “The crisis of democracy,” and the crisis of democracy is there is too much democracy. In the 1960’s too many people, who were usually passive and apathetic, the way people are supposed to be started, becoming engaged in the political arena, pressing for the demands and so on, sometimes called special interests – meaning young people, old people, farmers, workers, in other words everybody. Except the corporate sector, which isn’t mentioned – they are the national interest. But these special interests are putting too much pressure on the state. So, we have to have more moderation in democracy. People have to return to being passive and apathetic…Samuel Huntington, with some nostalgia referred to the period when, as he put it, Truman was able to run the country with the cooperation of a few Wall Street lawyers and executives. And then there was no crisis of democracy.

RT: Let’s go to your next point about “shaping of ideology.” You talk about the difference between Madison and Aristotle. Both of them understood that if there was inequality, there would be tensions between the rich and the poor. Madison was calling for government to reduce democracy. Aristotle saying, the solution, which you obviously support, is to reduce inequality. Your second point – shaping the ideology. We mention the Powell Memo, we mention the Trilateral Commission. But specifically, they targeted various segments of society. You talk about the way they created architectural plans for colleges so that large demonstrations would not be possible, the use of student debt for debt peonage. The destruction of public institutions. Talk about that process to reconfigure the ideology into a form of neoliberalism.

NC: I don’t want to suggest that the Trilateral Commission led these developments. It was more or less an articulation of the liberal elite consensus on these issues. For that reason, it is quite interesting, the indoctrination of the young is actually their phrase – the consensus phrase. The institutions responsible for the indoctrination of the young are failing their duty.

RT: That’s an interesting way to describe educational institutions.

NC: It’s kind of like the nostalgic comment on Truman being able to run the country with few corporate lawyers, and so on. But that is kind of the ideal. There should be indoctrination. Students should not be free to think. They don’t put it this way, but what it means they shouldn’t be free to enquire, to think, to challenge – just the kind of things that’s in descent educational system young people would be encouraged to do in schools and universities. But it’s dangerous, because they’re questioning too many eternal verities, including that there has to be elite domination and control. This is expressed all through the history.

RT: How successful do you think they were?

NC: They were articulating the consensus that led to many developments. It’s been reasonably successful. For example…a kind of business model began to be imposed at colleges and universities. There has been a tremendous growth of bureaucracy, tilting the balance from the faculty control to bureaucratic control. There has been a sharp rise in tuition which has a very strong disciplinary effect. In the 1960’s young person could say: “Ok, I am going to take off a year and get involved in an anti-war movement or a feminist movement, or something, they I’ll come back and continue my life.” You can’t do that, if you have a burden of debt over your head. If you come out of law school thinking: “I’d love to be a public interest lawyer, but I have to pay off $200,000 in debt.” You just have to go to a corporate law firm and absorb into that culture. And in many different ways there are disciplinary effects imposed…

RT: You also talk about how suddenly critics of American empire or American capitalism got tagged with Anti-Americanism.

NC: Anti-Americanism is a very interesting concept. It’s a concept that only exists in totalitarian states. For example, if someone in Italy, let’s say criticizing the Berlusconi government – they are not accused of being anti-Italian. In the old Soviet Union you could be condemned for being anti-Soviet, in the Brazilian military dictatorship you could be anti-Brazilian. But aside from the US, I don’t know any other non-totalitarian, non-authoritarian country where the concept even exists. That’s a very striking concept. If you’re critical of policy – you’re anti-American. Actually, this has a very interesting Biblical origin.  The first use of this concept was by King Ahab, who was the King of the ultimate evil in the Bible. He called Prophet Elijah to him and asked him why he was a hater of Israel, meaning condemning the acts of the evil king. That’s basic concept: if you challenge authority, you’re opposed to the society, the culture and the community.

Watch ‘On Contact’ next week for Part II of the interview with Noam Chomsky

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

‘Trump’s only ideology is ‘me’, deeply authoritarian & very dangerous’ – Noam Chomsky
worker | May 11, 2017 | 9:24 pm | Analysis, Donald Trump, France, Noam Chomsky, political struggle | Comments closed

https://www.rt.com/news/387981-chomsky-trump-dangerous-interview/

‘Trump’s only ideology is ‘me’, deeply authoritarian & very dangerous’ – Noam Chomsky
World-famous linguist, philosopher and political thinker Noam Chomsky has described US President Donald Trump’s ideology simply as ‘me’, adding that while it’s not fascist, it’s still “deeply authoritarian and very dangerous.”

However, there is no other option in the eyes of the people, Chomsky added in his interview to BBC.

“What is the alternative to Trump? The democrats gave up on the working class 40 years ago. It’s not their constituency, no one in the political system is. The Republicans claim to be, but they are basically their class enemy. However they can appeal to people on the basis of claims ‘We’re gonna help you economically, even when we kick you in the face’?”

In his book, Chomsky branded the Republican Party as “the most dangerous organization on Earth,” and when asked to explain, he pointed out that it’s about something they refuse to admit exists.

“Trump will do damage to the world, and it’s already happening. The most significant aspect of the Trump election is not just Trump, but the whole Republican Party as they are departing from the rest of the world on climate change, a crucial issue, an existential threat,” Chomsky said.

He called the denial “an astonishing spectacle,” in which “the US, alone in the world, not only refuses to participate in efforts to deal with climate change, but is dedicated to undermining them. And it’s not just Trump – every single Republican leader is the same and it goes down to local levels.”

And US popular opinion isn’t exactly of any help, according to Chomsky.

“Roughly 40 percent of the population think it can’t be a problem, because Jesus is coming in a couple of decades.”

Isn’t Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) more of a threat? It would seem so, but Chomsky isn’t sure about that.

“Is ISIS dedicated to destroy the prospects for organized human existence? What does it mean to say is Not only we’re not doing anything about climate change, but we’re trying to accelerate the race to the precipice. Doesn’t matter whether they genuinely believe it or not, if the consequence of that is, let’s use more fossil fuel, let’s refuse to subsidize developing countries, let’s eliminate regulations that reduce greenhouse gas emissions — if that’s the consequence, that’s extremely dangerous.”

“Trump’s only ideology is ‘me’, it’s not Hitler or Mussolini, but deeply authoritarian and very dangerous,” the philosopher concluded.

The process happening in the US is universal, though, and is taking place worldwide, Chomsky told BBC, due to “a massive assault on the large part of the population, an assault on democracy” which led to “not just anger, but contempt for centrist institutions.”

“A large part of the population feels that they are just not responsive to them,” and Chomsky enumerates the results of this: Trump, Brexit, Le Pen.

Nevertheless, Emmanuel Macron’s victory in the French presidential election is “by no means the end to the populism in Europe,” he said. In fact, “Macron is an example of populism, because he came from the outside, because the institutions have collapsed. The vote for him was substantially the vote against Le Pen.”

Last, but not least, Chomsky spoke out on WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Julian Assange, calling his persecution and threats against him to be “completely wrong.”

“What’s keeping him in prison – and in fact he is in prison [holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London] – is the threat that the United States will go after him. Same thing that’s keeping [security whistleblower Edward] Snowden in Russia. And he is right to worry about it and it is the threat that is wrong.”

From Lenin to Davos: A stark warning on Capitalism’s excesses
worker | January 19, 2017 | 7:37 pm | Analysis, class struggle, Economy, Imperialism, Noam Chomsky, political struggle, V.I. Lenin | Comments closed

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/374207-lenin-davos-eight-billionaires/

John Wight
John Wight has written for newspapers and websites across the world, including the Independent, Morning Star, Huffington Post, Counterpunch, London Progressive Journal, and Foreign Policy Journal. He is also a regular commentator on RT and BBC Radio. John is currently working on a book exploring the role of the West in the Arab Spring. You can follow him on Twitter @JohnWight1
From Lenin to Davos: A stark warning on Capitalism's excesses
The surprise over Oxfam’s recent report on global poverty is that anyone is surprised. The revelation that eight people own more wealth than the poorest half of humanity merely confirms that neoliberalism is working precisely as intended.

When the Russian Revolution occurred a hundred years ago in 1917, it did so in response to an economic order that had been responsible for the most devastating global conflict the world had seen, one that left 17 million killed and millions more wounded and maimed.

The First World War was fought over the colonial carve up of the undeveloped world, specifically Africa and the Middle East, in the interests of the wealth and power of European ruling classes whose greed for more wealth and power knew no bounds.

The very same level of greed, the complete lack of concern for working people and the poor on the part of the super-rich and elite, is the ideological driving force of neoliberalism in our time, regardless of what its proponents and apologists argue. The eight multi-billionaires, named in the Oxfam report, who own more wealth than 3.6 billion human beings in 2017, are as follows: Bill Gates, Amancio Ortega, Warren Buffet, Carlos Slim Helu, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, and Michael Bloomberg. The striking though perhaps not surprising statistic about this group is that all but two of them are American.

Eight men could not amass such vast and obscene wealth without an obliging global political and economic order to make it possible. Neoliberalism – in other words, unfettered global capitalism – is that very order and the very antithesis of national sovereignty. It has ensured that while governments around the world may speak the language of power, in truth they are mere courtiers at the feet of global corporations and those who own them.

As Noam Chomsky said, “The very design of neoliberal principles is a direct attack on democracy.”

So the surprise, given the nature of neoliberalism, is not that such an obscene level of inequality exists in our time. The surprise instead is that such an obscene level of inequality, and the foundations of mass poverty on which it rests, has not sparked a social revolution of a similar impact as the Russian Revolution. Here we must take account of the role of ideology in conditioning us to accept the status quo as normal, indeed natural, and in doing so ensuring that we toe the line, regardless of the glaring evidence of the irrational and unjust nature of that status quo.

According to the French political philosopher, Louis Althusser, “The ideology of the ruling class does not become the ruling ideology by the grace of God, nor even by virtue of the seizure of state power alone.” He also observes, “Ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence.”

The point is that we live our lives within social, political, and economic parameters we have not chosen for ourselves. And even though we may be among the ever-increasing number of who find themselves struggling or living in poverty, we are conditioned to believe that the problem lies with us rather than the system. Stepping back from this dynamic for a moment: are we really saying that the aforementioned eight multi-billionaires deserve to enjoy so much wealth, while the 3.6 billion human beings who own so little deserve their poverty?

Surely this is a question that answers itself.
In the same week that wider members of the economic and political elite enjoy their annual Davos jamboree, otherwise known as the World Economic Forum, 154,000 children will die due to extreme poverty. You can bet that the children of the rich and powerful cavorting around this exclusive and luxurious Swiss resort are not among them.

It is a disgusting and despicable state of affairs, not to mention a withering indictment of what many have the temerity to describe Western civilization.

Such statistics should have all of us – all people of conscience and consciousness – spitting nails at the level of injustice they reveal. Yet the truth is that we’ve become so accustomed to this reality that we have become desensitized and do not, or no longer believe, that an alternate reality possible.

Which brings us back to Lenin and the Bolsheviks in 1917. They refused to ignore reality or to become desensitized to it. Instead, they rode a the tidal wave of anger that had built up at the scale of the suffering and injustice being endured by masses in Russia, with the end result a revolution that not only succeeded in overthrowing the existing order in their own country, but which also succeeded in threatening to do likewise throughout Europe. The end result, history reveals, was cataclysmic societal collapse of a kind that no-one should make the mistake of believing could never happen again. It could.

Indeed perhaps the only failing of the Bolsheviks is that they came too soon. However that their like will come again grows increasingly certain with each passing year in which the world remains hell for the many and heaven for the few.

Our eight multibillionaires and members of the Davos elite should take note.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

Noam Chomsky discusses Trump victory he predicted 6 years ago
worker | November 14, 2016 | 8:02 pm | Analysis, Donald Trump, Noam Chomsky, political struggle | Comments closed

https://www.rt.com/usa/366946-noam-chomsky-trump-victory/

Noam Chomsky. © PeoplePowerTelevision
Donald Trump’s victory came as a shock to many, but not to renowned scholar and activist Noam Chomsky, who foresaw a similar outcome in 2010. Now Chomsky sees “one hopeful prospect” of a Trump presidency.

Speaking in 2010, Chomsky, an MIT professor, described the situation in the US as being similar to that of late Weimar Germany.

“The most striking fact about Weimar was not that the Nazis managed to destroy the Social Democrats and the Communists but that the traditional parties, the Conservative and Liberal parties, were hated and disappeared,” he said.

“If somebody comes along who is charismatic and honest this country is in real trouble because of the frustration, disillusionment, the justified anger and the absence of any coherent response,” he said. “What are people supposed to think if someone says ‘I have got an answer, we have an enemy’? There it was the Jews. Here it will be the illegal immigrants and the blacks.”

Chomsky’s prediction was eerily accurate. Now, six years later, he spoke to TruthOut about the current US political landscape.

Describing the Democratic establishment as the equivalent of “moderate Republicans” of the past, Chomsky pointed to the Republicans’ “dedication to the wealthy and the corporate sector” as rendering them unable to gain support for their programs without mobilizing “evangelicals, nativists, racists and the victims of the forms of globalization.”

“The angry and disaffected are victims of the neoliberal policies of the past generation,” Chomsky said. “These groups share the anger throughout the West at the centrist establishment.”

These voters believe Trump will bring change, “though the merest look at his fiscal and other proposals demonstrates the opposite,” he said.

Chomsky described Trump’s campaign as being “remarkable in its avoidance of issues,” which the media generally complied with.

The president-elect’s unpredictability makes it difficult to tell what a Trump leadership will look like, Chomsky said, but he highlighted Trump’s placing a climate change denier in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) transition as an indication.

“The Supreme Court will be in the hands of reactionaries for many years, with predictable consequences,” he said.

“One hopeful prospect is that there might be a reduction of the very dangerous and mounting tensions at the Russian border,” he added.

Chomsky described a possible outcome could see Europe aim to “defuse the tensions,” and even “move toward something like Mikhail Gorbachev’s vision of an integrated Eurasian security system without military alliances.”

Hillary Clinton and the Big (Neoliberal) Lie
worker | August 10, 2016 | 5:09 pm | Analysis, class struggle, Donald Trump, Economy, Hillary Clinton, Labor, Noam Chomsky, political struggle | Comments closed

 

election-2016-US

This election season has brought to the surface an issue that, until recently, seemed to have become a neoliberal sacred cow, the holy writ of the lords of capital: free trade. And while this cornerstone of US economic hegemony has come under fire from a deeply reactionary, and to varying degrees racist and xenophobic, perspective, as expressed by Donald Trump, it has nevertheless sparked a much needed conversation about free trade and its destructive impact on both the American working class, and the Global South as well.

But free trade having become a campaign issue has also spotlighted for the umpteenth time the breathtaking hypocrisy of Hillary Clinton who I have previously referred to as the high priestess of the Church of Free Trade and Neoliberalism. For it is, in fact, Hillary Clinton who has for more than two decades been one of the loudest and most resolute voices championing neoliberalism and free trade. And still, despite her record, Clinton today presents herself as a friend of the working class. The same working class that has been all but eviscerated by the policies she herself has supported.

This is, of course, not to say that Trump is somehow the great defender of workers and the poor – his long track record as a predatory, racist real estate developer illustrates his complete lack of concern for oppressed communities and workers. Still, like a sadistic dentist, Trump has deliberately struck a nerve in the body politic of the US. For Trump has managed to eschew the typical right wing cultural wedge issues of gay marriage, abortion, and the like in favor of the core economic concerns of the working class.

hillary-clinton

Whatever one’s opinion of Trump, one can say with certainty that his reintroduction of the free trade into the national conversation has forced Hillary Clinton onto the back foot.

Hillary Clinton, NAFTA, and the Attack on American Workers

“I think that everybody is in favor of free and fair trade, and I think that NAFTA is proving its worth.” Or so Hillary Clinton said in 1996, more than two years after the North American Free Trade Agreement was enacted under her husband’s administration. At the time one could still labor under the illusion – or perhaps it was delusion? – that NAFTA was going to benefit workers in the US, Canada, and Mexico by allowing for the free flow of goods (and capital) leading to decreased prices for many consumer goods. Indeed, that was precisely the mythology that was peddled at the time.

While it’s true that many experts and workers alike, especially those on the Left, were deeply suspicious about the inflated claims of the glorious benefits of the NAFTA utopia of the future, the concept was made into policy, and the policy translated into a grim reality for US workers. As the Economic Policy Institute noted in 2013:

By establishing the principle that U.S. corporations could relocate production elsewhere and sell back into the United States, NAFTA undercut the bargaining power of American workers, which had driven the expansion of the middle class since the end of World War II. The result has been 20 years of stagnant wages and the upward redistribution of income, wealth and political power.

Without question, NAFTA was a direct assault on the US working class. Its repercussions are still being felt today. As the Economic Policy Institute further explained, NAFTA had four major negative impacts:

  1. The loss of at least 700,000 jobs due to production moving to Mexico. Some of the heaviest losses were felt in California, Texas, Michigan and other manufacturing-dependent states, particularly those in the Rust Belt.
  2. Allowed employers to drive down wages, slash benefits, and undermine and destroy unions. Because capital could always threaten to simply close up shop and move to Mexico, workers had little recourse but to accept the assault on their standards of living.
  3. It devastated the Mexican agricultural and small business sectors which led to the dislocation of millions of Mexican workers and small farmers, many of whom were forced to migrate to the US in search of work, thereby creating the immigration “problem” that Trump and his reactionary base have seized upon.
  4. It was the model free trade agreement, the blueprint upon which others were based. It laid the foundation for the neoliberal trade model wherein capital reaps the benefits while labor shoulders the costs.

Obviously, one could point out myriad other negative effects of NAFTA. But perhaps even better than that, one could simply take a drive down Interstates 80 and 90 – crossing through New Jersey, upstate New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, etc. – and get off almost anywhere and see the impacts for one’s self. Countless shuttered factories, depressed and often nearly abandoned towns and cities, and populations blighted by unemployment and the social breakdown that goes with it. The bleakness of the post-NAFTA industrial landscape is difficult to articulate, and is often completely hidden from view, especially for many working people in the population centers on the East and West coasts.

And this depression, both economic and psychological, is what Donald Trump has rather cynically exploited. The scapegoating of Mexican immigrants as economic parasites feasting on the blood of the American worker is a fairly predictable, though highly effective, means of marshaling support from the working class, in particular the white working class.

However, the political opportunism notwithstanding, it was not Donald Trump, but rather Hillary Clinton, who consistently was the unyielding supporter of NAFTA. As White House documents from the Clinton administration revealed, Hillary was one of the principal salespeople for NAFTA, going so far as to speak at a confidential White House briefing on NAFTA in November 1993, just a few days before it was approved by Congress. The documents also prove the fact that Hillary was, as John Nichols wrote in The Nation in 2008, “the featured speaker at a closed-door session where 120 women opinion leaders were hectored to pressure their congressional representatives to approve NAFTA.”

Clinton lobbied for NAFTA all throughout the halls of power in Washington, but also before the American people on television and in the major media. In short, NAFTA can be seen as one of Hillary’s crowning achievements; heavy is the head that wears such a crown.

Hillary the Hypocrite

Today Hillary Clinton shamelessly presents herself as a friend of working people. She trots out the elites of organized labor, concerned primarily with their own positions atop demoralized and fragmented unions, and trumpets their endorsements of her. And even these working class backstabbers have to grit their teeth and smile as they kneel before the high priestess herself in hopes of eight more years of privileged relations and fine dining.

But behind closed doors, everyone in America who even casually follows politics knows the truth: Hillary Clinton is a crusader for free trade and neoliberalism.

And that’s precisely why Hillary’s anti-free trade posture at election time is so deeply cynical, to say nothing of the insult to working people. In 2007-2008, in the midst of a hotly contested primary campaign against then Senator Barack Obama, Clinton repeatedly claimed that she was anti-free trade, and critical of NAFTA. In a debate in late 2007, Clinton admitted that NAFTA had been a mistake “to the extent that it did not deliver on what we had hoped it would.”

Of course, these were just the populist sentiments that Clinton knew she needed to utilize in order to deceive organized labor, and the working class in general, that she was an ally, rather than a devout worshiper at the altar of the god of neoliberalism.

After Obama became president and appointed Clinton Secretary of State she immediately reverted to being the great champion of free trade. Indeed, in her position as America’s top diplomat Clinton traveled the world preaching the gospel of free trade. And by this point she had a new holy scripture to tout: the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

Clinton unabashedly lied during Democratic national debates on the issue of the TPP, saying that she now opposes it, despite having been in favor of it as late as 2012 when she said the TPP “sets the gold standard in trade agreements.” While she now masquerades as a protectionist opposing a deal that would be bad for working people, she has demonstrated her unflagging support for this type of so called free trade in the past.

To get a sense of just how insidious the TPP is for American workers, and in fact citizens of every country involved in the deal, consider the words of the Grand Poobah of the American Left, Noam Chomsky, who correctly explained that the TPP is “designed to carry forward the neoliberal project to maximize profit and domination, and to set the working people in the world in competition with one another so as to lower wages to increase insecurity.” In his characteristically soft-spoken manner, Chomsky manages to encapsulate the overarching danger that the TPP represents. And in so doing, he further implies that Hillary Clinton represents a serious threat to American workers.

Similarly, as Secretary of State, Clinton vocally backed the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), hailing it as an “economic NATO”. Leaving aside the terrifyingly ironic turn of phrase, Hillary’s support of TTIP represents support for yet another massive free trade deal that would have serious negative effects on workers, and indeed the majority of citizens, in the US and Europe. As Politico noted, “TTIP covers around a third of global trade. It would create an open market of 829 million consumers and expand a trade relationship that’s already worth €2 billion every day.”

And, just as with the TPP, TTIP is as much a political and geopolitical weapon as it is an economic arrangement. While TPP is aimed at economically isolating China (despite the raving lunacy of Donald Trump who argues just the opposite, that TPP will unfairly benefit China), TTIP is directed against Russia in hopes of depriving Moscow the chance at deepening economic ties with Europe.

And this is precisely why Clinton is the darling of both Wall Street and the neoconservative establishment. From the right wing financier Koch Brothers’ admission of support for Hillary, to the obvious backing of George Soros,Warren Buffett, and countless other liberal (and some conservative) Wall Street ghouls, Clinton has the near unanimous endorsements of the One Percent. It should be added that she is also being supported by arch-neocons such as Max Boot, who described Clinton as “vastly preferable,” Robert Kagan who sees Hillary as “saving the country,” and Eliot Cohen who described Clinton as “the lesser evil by a large margin.”

The reason for the near unanimous support is simple: Clinton will deliver all the economic policies, including TPP and free trade, that the Masters of Wall Street demand. And she’ll do it all while coldly smiling at every worker she meets on the campaign trail. She will also pursue just the sort of aggressive and belligerent foreign policy that makes neocons salivate at the prospect of more and bigger wars.

Ultimately, Clinton represents the very worst of the American political class – a cynical manipulator whose thirst for blood and war is matched only by her thirst for power. Lies flow from her mouth into the US political scene like water into a vast ocean. And, like water, she erodes the once sturdy rock of the working class in the United States.

Noam Chomsky on the exoneration of Ethel Rosenberg
worker | July 17, 2016 | 8:56 pm | Noam Chomsky, political struggle | Comments closed

“I would like to join in the appeal to President Obama to formally exonerate Ethel Rosenberg before leaving office. By now it is overwhelmingly obvious that there was no case at all, and that the government manufactured the case in order to pressure her husband to cooperate with the prosecution. The case was a gross miscarriage of justice, an ugly stain on American legal history. It is long past time for official recognition of the magnitude of this crime, and exoneration of the tragic victim.” – Noam Chomsky