I recently listened to the audiobook version of a series of lectures and Q&A with Noam Chomsky. If you have problems with being depressed into immobility by world politics and economics, I don’t recommend it. This is a sort-of review of the audiobook, with some comments by me and some quotes, and I plan to, over time, post a few passages from it.
All quotes are from: Understanding Power, The Indispensable Chomsky [audible]. I came away with a weird feeling about Chomsky, which is that he’s wasted his time and I think he knows it. Part of that may be due to the narrator of the text, who is as wooden and boring a speaker as Chomsky, himself. It’s like being dispassionately thrashed with a tire-chain. Ho hum here we go again.
It’s also undeniably brilliant, Chomsky at his best. He has a way of explaining the world behind the world clearly and tying his analysis to easily fact-checkable information from which he built his case. That makes it devastating and depressing, because his analysis is an endless and detailed litany of horrors. That’s the good news. The bad news is that Chomsky sounds defeated and helpless – in some of the Q&A sessions he is asked to defend his anarchism and all he can summon up is some dispassionate waffle to the effect of “well, we can’t overthrow government because that results in totalitarian dictatorships so about all we can do is reduce government wherever we can.” That’s weak sauce indeed. Basically, “you may as well remain a wage slave, because the food pellets are better than nothing.” I hate to hear that, because I think he’s right and I have had the same thoughts and reached the same conclusions – which lead me inevitably to the conclusion that anarchism is anti-social because it implies complete destruction and restructuring of civilization/society and there’s no way that’s going to have a positive outcome. Chomsky reminds me, unfortunately, of Bernie Sanders: someone who has been part of and inside the system for a long time, seen too much, and has realized that he’s ineffective and has adopted the role of The Wheel That Squeaks, knowing full well that his squeaks won’t even get heard by the masses. In the Q&A Chomsky is repeatedly asked “what can we do?” or “lead us!” and demurs, it’s just not going to happen. His advice is relentlessly practical and defeatist: organize, build popular movements. None of the questioners asked him, “Noam, you keep saying ‘build popular movements’ while simultaneously talking about how the popular movements around the world are wiped out by authoritarians with guns.”
It may be the downbeat narration, but it sounds to me as if Chomsky has given up, which is pretty reasonable, really, and then you hear the date of the interview: a lot of this stuff is from the 80s – Chomsky has been stuck in this depressing rut for a very long time. For someone like me, who basically agrees with his analysis, that’s not a heartening realization. He’s saying what Pvt Hudson said: “Game over, man!” Imagine 30 years of Pvt Hudson’s highly motivating analysis; Chomsky just makes me want to hide under the bed and take drugs that wipe out my mind. So does Bernie, for what that’s worth: look at the shitshow of Biden trying to get any significant legislation through, and imagine how Bernie’d have fared with all his grand-sounding plans for America. Yawn.
So, I accept that Chomsky has given up and offers nothing but clarity of analysis, which is considerable. For those who wish to engage in the rough-and-tumble of public argument, Chomsky presents a masterclass in how to argue: he ties everything to huge numbers of accurate facts, so it’s hard for anyone to call him a liar or argue he’s wrong. Chomsky’s analysis, I think, is so tight that about all you can do to refute it is ask, as I did above, “so what?” His world-view is of a world dominated by constructed power arrangements that have such a thorough grip on all aspects of society that you have no chance of changing anything except for the worse – and there’s no point in doing that because the authoritarians are already working on it. So: hide under the bed and take drugs.
Let me just tell you one piece of it, that was revealed about a year ago [In the 1980s] In the 1980s– Operation Mongoose practically blew up the world. I don’t know how many of you have been following the new material that’s been released on the Cuban missile crisis (1962) but it’s very interesting. There have been meetings with the Russians, now there are some with the Cubans, and a lot of material has come out under the Freedom of Information Act here and there’s a very different picture of the Cuban missile crisis emerging.
One thing that’s been discovered is that the Russians and the Cubans had separate agendas during the course of the crisis. See, the standard view is that the Cubans were just Russian puppets well, that’s not true. Nothing like that is ever true. It may be convenient to believe but it’s never true. And, in fact, the Cubans had their own concerns. They were worried about an American invasion and now it turns out that those concerns were very valid. The United States had invasion plans for October, 1962. The missile crisis was in October, 1962. In fact, American naval and military units were already being deployed for an invasion before the beginning of the missile crisis. That’s just been revealed in Freedom of Information Act materials. Of course it’s always been denied here. Like, if you read McGeorge Bundy’s book on the military system [National security advisor, co-architect of the Vietnam War] he denies it, but it’s true. And now the documents are around to prove it. And the Cubans, doubtless, knew it. So that was what was motivating them. The Russians, on the other hand, were worried about the enormous missile gap which was, in fact, in the US’ favor and not in their favor as Kennedy claimed. So what happened is, there was that famous interchange between Kennedy and Krushchev in which an agreement to end the crisis was reached. Then, shortly after that, the Russians tried to take control of their missiles in Cuba, in order to carry through the deal they had made with the United States. See, at that point, the Russians didn’t actually control the missiles – the missiles were in the hands of the Cubans and the Cubans didn’t want to give them up, because they were still worried, plausibly, that there would be an American invasion. So, there was a standoff between them, early in November, which even included an actual confrontation between Russian and Cuban forces about who was going to have physical control of the missiles. It was a very tense moment and you didn’t know what was going to happen. Then, right in the middle of it one of the Operation Mongoose activities took place: right at one of the tensest moments of the missile crisis, the CIA blew up a factory in Cuba with about 400 people killed, according to the Cubans. Well, fortunately, the Cubans didn’t react. But if something like that had happened to us, at the time, Kennedy certainly would have reacted and we would have had a nuclear war. It came very close.
Alright, there’s a terrorist operation that might have set off a nuclear war. That wasn’t even reported in the United States when the information was released about a year ago.
That’s just a tiny bit of the picture Chomsky sketches out, then fills in, of a world dominated by secret government power and overt economic power. A world in which ordinary people have absolutely no chance to be anything but cogs in the machine, good consumers, or perhaps they can complain a bit so long as they don’t appear to be on course for actually doing anything. It’s incredibly bleak.
The whole book is 22 hours long in audio format, which is a whole heck of a lot of bleakness to listen to. I honestly felt that Chomsky didn’t say a single encouraging or hopeful thing in the entire 22 hours. But he said a lot of things that made sense and seemed to exactly match the reality we experience.
One of the pieces (I will try to post extracts from it, eventually) that really made me sit up in surprise, was Chomsky’s point that we are already living in a fascist government. Remember, this was mostly recorded in the 80s. Chomsky’s argument is that the main characteristics of fascism are a strong coupling between state control of production and extreme militarization. Put that way, yes, the US has always been fascist. But what are we supposed to do about it? Well, obviously nothing has worked so far, so I guess crawling under the bed and doing drugs is as effective a response as anything else. Chomsky definitely tells us, over and over, that we are the baddies.
Operation Mongoose [wik] –
Operation Mongoose consisted of a program of covert action, including sabotage, psychological warfare, intelligence collection, and the creation of an internal revolution against the communist government. The U.S. still lacked the capability of effectively getting information to the majority of the Cuban people. They had a trade embargo, denial of bunkering facilities, increased port security, and control procedure on transshipment, technical data, and customs inspection. The U.S. also used diplomatic means to frustrate Cuban trade negotiations in Israel, Jordan, Iran, Greece, and possibly Japan. From the outset, Lansdale and fellow members of the SG-A identified internal support for an anti-Castro movement to be the most important aspect of the operation. American organization and support for anti-Castro forces in Cuba was seen as key, which expanded American involvement from what had mostly been economic and military assistance of rebel forces. Therefore, Lansdale hoped to organize an effort within the operation, led by the CIA, to covertly build support for a popular movement within Cuba. This was a major challenge. It was difficult to identify anti-Castro forces within Cuba and there lacked a groundswell of popular support that Cuban insurgents could tap into. Within the first few months, an internal review of Operation Mongoose cited the CIA’s limited capabilities to gather hard intelligence and conduct covert operations in Cuba. By January 1962, the CIA had failed to recruit suitable Cuban operatives that could infiltrate the Castro regime. The CIA and Lansdale estimated that they required 30 Cuban operatives. Lansdale criticized the CIA effort to ramp up their activities to meet Operation Mongoose’s expedient timelines. Robert McCone of the CIA complained that Lansdale’s timeline was too accelerated and that it would be difficult to achieve the tasks demanded in such a short timeframe.
I keep saying that the US is the largest exporter of state-sponsored terrorism, worldwide. The CIA is the worst collection of human rights violations ever.
I understand where you are coming from, but this statement smacks of American exceptionalism. I don’t know how much value there is in this kind of analysis, but in their days the various European empires did a pretty good job on that front, although they didn’t release the records the way they are relesed now, so it takes extensive academic excavation to reveal many ‘minor’ events. Also they were of course hard empires rather than the American attempts at soft empire, which can be viewed as different activities though I’m not sure there is any practicable difference, I mean eg far too many African states still have laws making homosexuality illegal thanks to the legacy of the British empire. That is now a self perpetuating terror inflicted by those states on their citizens.
I have often found myself listening to a recording of a Chomsky interview in the background, when I have a spare hour or two.
One of his more positive refrains tends to be along the lines that, actually, in many quite apparent and concrete ways, popular movements have made society a better place, have changed the culture and can make a difference. Most often he cites the Civil Rights movement and the US labour movement of the 30s which brought about the New Deal. Of course, these were movements within US society – the ones in client states tended to get murdered with unusual frequency. There is a world of difference between how the US government feels it can get away with treating domestic pressure groups compared to how it knows it can get away with treating foreign ones.
I’ve been listening to Chomsky for decades, and I never got that impression. Yeah, the story is grim. But what surprises me is that his response to questions like “what should we do, Noam?” hasn’t been along the lines of “jesus christ, you’re adults with agency. Figure it out.”
Why does anyone need to listen to Chomsky anyway? Does he really contribute anything useful to the debate? Seems to me there’s plenty of people, institutions and news sources who can give us a good sum-up of events, trends and history, without having to mention of refer back to Chomsky.
Oh, and Jazzlet’s quote @1 above really kinda sinks the guy. We all know the CIA have done some pretty bad things (many of which were also disgracefully stupid) — but pretending they’re the worst of the worst with no second prize awarded is just plain asinine. Has he never heard of the KGB? Salvadoran death-squads? Duterte? America is not the root of all evil.
Raging Bee @4:
Sinks which guy? Jazzlet is quoting Marcus, not Chomsky.
Rob Grigjanis @#5
Indeed.
Rob Grigjanis@#3:
I’ve been listening to Chomsky for decades, and I never got that impression. Yeah, the story is grim. But what surprises me is that his response to questions like “what should we do, Noam?” hasn’t been along the lines of “jesus christ, you’re adults with agency. Figure it out.”
Yeah, I’m probably projecting my own sense of helplessness and despair.
It’s amazing that Chomsky has been a dissident voice for so long, and so consistently. The stuff he says about the 80s more or less applies exactly to the 20s.
Jazzlet@#1:
I understand where you are coming from, but this statement smacks of American exceptionalism
Fair enough, I suppose. I guess we tend to see our own sausage-factory as worse than others’?
The British empire did leave behind a horrible legacy of shit, for sure. Millions of dead, civilizations shattered, and lines on the map re-drawn whimsically. by bureaucrats. And the French helped with a lot of that. Ugh.
I’m not sure if there’s a difference worth thinking about between “soft power” and “hard power” when it comes to “state-sponsored terrorism” – I think it’s terrorism all the way down, one way or another.
I remember one time someone asked Chomsky why he’s so critical of the US, compared to other powers that are as bad or worse. Chomsky said that he felt that, since he was a US taxpayer, he was part of the problem and entitled to his say on the topic.Well, there’s that.
In my opinion, religious sects hold first, second and third place in human rights violations, so the CIA maybe takes fourth place, so far. Only because the Catholic, Islamic, and Protestant churches have been around so much longer and have a huge head start. I agree that the USA is currently the largest sponsor of terrorism in the world, using the dollar as its main weapon. I must admit that I left Hinduism off the list because of my lack knowledge of when its more egregious features became common.
Raging Bee #4
Much of what you list as outside the USA evil was at least influenced if not directly the result of USA actions, especially Duterte. What we did in the Philippines starting just after the Spanish American War led to Marcos. And now Duterte, with encouragements from Trump, is definitely our sponsoring.
The British empire did leave behind a horrible legacy of shit, for sure.
Indeed it did. Helped massively by the USA during and after WWII.
IIRC India was to become a Commonwealth dominion in 1945 (interrupted by the war)
Erm, pretty sure if I was being thrashed with a tiere-chain, that wouldn’t be my reaction to it!
Also, wait, again?!
I was thinking of things like the Phoenix Program, Project Northwoods, Project Mongoose, The Farewell Dossier, the overthrow of various Haitian democracies, Grenada, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Syria, El Salvador, and god knows what all we haven’t heard of, yet. Just the Iraq war (and arguably the Iran/Iraq war, which was a consequence of the CIA overthrowing Mossadeq and backing Saddam) cost nearly a million lives. Sure, the British empire caused damage like that (India and starvation, the Zulu wars, the Middle East partition) but I guess the Brits get to shrug it off as “oh, you know the Great Game of empires, what what?” and bygones be bygones. But I was focused on the idea of “terrorism” – attempts to change politics by other means – which I did not fully parse out in my own mind. Of course, as Clausewitz said, war is politics by other means, but the imperalists weren’t even trying to pretend to be democratic or bothering to hide what they were doing: it was just march the redcoats and blast away with massed volleys from rifles. The US’ covert imperialism required a covert diplomacy that was completely at odds with its surface policy of promoting democracy – a terrorist organization that would do anything, and stop at nothing – to influence politics by other means.
The language of terrorism is interesting – even the FBI can’t seem to decide what it is. I suspect it’s “terrorism if you do it to us, foreign policy if we do it to you” because that certainly seems to be the case. But it’s not warfare, which tends to be explicit. “Covert Operations” sounds too … OK. So I think I will continue to use the word “terrorism” – it certainly is a matter of instilling fear in opponents. I’ll also go out on a limb and declare that the whole torture (which the CIA did, bigtime, in Vietnam) regime is not really an attempt to gain intelligence; it’s just an attempt to instill fear in an opponent: “see what crazy mf’ers we are?” The CIA ran the Academy of the Americas (now under another name) to teach terrorism through the world. Is it unique in history? It may be.
Raging Bee @4: Alan G. Humphrey has already covered Duterte, so I guess it falls to me to point out that those Salvadoran death-squads were trained and supported by the CIA.
Alan G. Humphrey @9:
Where does China fit into your neat little picture? Or, historically, the Soviet Union?
@15 Presumably, places 5 and 6.
Rob: Human beings are awful all the way down?
My first comment @ #9 was specifically about the CIA, but overall the worst human rights violators of all time have to be the English speaking peoples of the palest shade and the Y-est chromosome. They surpass the other religious cults by considering their “superiority” a matter of divine anointment, and that attitude has spread throughout the rest of the white non-English speaking world.
Is that the result of a comprehensive study of human rights violations across the globe and over the centuries*, or is it somehow just obvious to you?
*Perhaps beginning with the treatment of indigenous Britons in the fifth century?
Rob Grigjanis@#19:
Is that the result of a comprehensive study of human rights violations across the globe and over the centuries*, or is it somehow just obvious to you?
Oh, come on. Obviously, that’s an arguable statement; it’s a comment on a blog, not a research paper.
While, I suppose that’s a valid skeptical line of argument, it’s also a bit dishonest; I assume you know perfectly well that the commenter wasn’t making a formal presentation of historiography in front of a panel of historians, and didn’t show up here with armloads of supporting evidence – evidence which would take years of research to assemble and which you could dismiss, anyway, as arguable. That’s a technique I think of as “bullshit skepticism” – it adheres to skeptical tropes but the person throwing the technique is not arguing in good faith because they know as well as anyone else that it’s basically an unanswerable argument either way, so heads I win/tails you lose.
Nice try, though.
Hm, I gotta remember to do an argument clinic episode on bullshit skepticism.
Marcus @20: It would be nice if you could explain when exactly a comment on a blog can be taken seriously. As long as it’s not a research paper, you can say whatever you want, and dismiss any questioning as “bullshit skepticism”?
That’s a technique I think of as just plain bullshit. It’s a tawdry little ploy to let you and other lazy bloviators get away with saying whatever the fuck you like.
Rob Grigjanis@#21:
It would be nice if you could explain when exactly a comment on a blog can be taken seriously
I didn’t say “seriously” – you did. I said it’s arguable, and that’s because blogs are a fusion of fact and opinion, hyperbole and ranting, and that applies to the comments, as well. I try to often tie what I say to links with more information, but that’s not my duty, it’s just how I do things when I can. The point is that people decide what they are going to take seriously and what they aren’t.
Anyone who reads a blog and mistakes it for a formal debating club is a fool or isn’t really mistaking it for that, at all.
As long as it’s not a research paper, you can say whatever you want, and dismiss any questioning as “bullshit skepticism”?
Of course not. I didn’t try to dismiss what you said, either. I merely pointed out that it’s a basically dishonest argument for ${reasons}. You’re welcome to disagree with my reasoning but – again – this is a forum of opinion and argument, not a debating society or a dissertation defense committee.
That’s a technique I think of as just plain bullshit. It’s a tawdry little ploy to let you and other lazy bloviators get away with saying whatever the fuck you like.
Nice try. For one thing, everyone where can say whatever they like and, depending on how well they defend it it’s going to carry weight or it’s not. I don’t know if you’ve followed the GerrardOfTitanServer thread but it’s all “bloviation” all around, or, what I call “argument.”
Calling on someone for exhaustive evidence for a claim that is, rather obviously, a statement of opinion is dishonest because, as I said, you know that you are not, actually, asking for the evidence and are just kicking sand. And now that I’ve called you on it, you’re going to say the same of me. ${yawn} Again, that’s dishonest because you’re now attacking me for doing the same thing you just did. That’s also a bit of arguing in bad faith.
Probably the best response that can be given – other than just calling out your bullshit – would have been “do your own research.”
I guess another response to bullshit skepticism would be, “no, why don’t you present your research that argues against my position.”
I am not convinced that human rights violations are orderable, and it seems fairly obvious that even if they are, there is a great deal of disagreement about what that ordering should be. It is, however, interesting to note which statements on the topic are are considered controversial…
Marcus @22
Shhhhhhh, he finally seems to have shut up. I wouldn’t even characterize it as an argument once it became clear that his nuclear myopia is based on technology that might exist, someday.
Lovely plumage though.
I don’t know if whitest is accurate, but a read through the known history of colonization and subjugation does lean heavily to the Y carrying side of humanity.
There is no evidence that the Britons were subject to any mistreatment by the Anglo-Saxon takeover of trade following Romes fall, but we do have records of Rome subjugating southern areas before utterly annihilating the isle of Anglesey and the Druids several centuries earlier.
D’oh! Blockquote fail. Mea culpa and apologies.