Interview with Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky, born December 7, 1928, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S., American theoretical linguist whose work from the 1950s revolutionized the field of linguistics by treating language as a uniquely human, biologically based cognitive capacity.

Through his contributions to linguistics and related fields, including cognitive psychology and the philosophies of mind and language, Chomsky helped to initiate and sustain what came to be known as the “cognitive revolution.” Chomsky also gained a worldwide following as a political dissident for his analyses of the pernicious influence of economic elites on U.S. domestic politics, foreign policy, and intellectual culture. /Encyclopaedia Britannica/

Yuri Chekalin: There were lots of wars, epidemics, etc. that you have seen in in your life. What do you think about nowadays pandemics in terms of history?

Noam Chomsky: I should say that my earliest memories that are haunting me now are from 1930s. My first article, when I was 10, on fall of Barcelona in fact was mainly about apparently inexorable spread of the fascist plague all over Europe and I did much later discover when the internal documents came out that the analysts of the US government at the time and the falling years expected that the war would end the World divided into two US dominated regions and German dominated regions. So, my childhood fears were not entirely out of place. And those memories come back now. I can recall, when I was a young child, listening to Hitler’s Nuremberg rallies over the radio. I couldn’t understand the words, but you could easily understand the mood and the threat and so on. And I have to say, when I listen to Donald Trump’s rallies today, it resonates. It is not fascist, he doesn’t have much ideology and he is sociopath and usually concerned with himself, but the mood and the fear are similar. And the idea that the fate of the country in the World is in hands of sociopathic buffoon, is scary.

It’s worth recalling that there’s much greater horror approaching. We’re racing to the age of disaster far worse than what happened in human history. And Donald Trump and his minions are in the lead in racing to the abyss. In fact, there are two imminent threats we are facing. One is the growing threat of nuclear war which has exacerbated by tearing of what’s left of arms control regime. And the other, of course, is the growing threat of global warming. Both threats can be dealt with, there isn’t a lot of time.

The coronavirus is a horrible headache and has horrifying consequences, but there will be recovery. But the other, there will not be recovery. If we don’t deal with them, we are done. And so, childhood memories coming to haunt me, but in different dimension. You get the sense of where the world really is by looking to this January. Every year the Doomsday clock is set with minute hand a certain distance from midnight, which means termination, but ever since Trump was elected it has been moving closer and closer to midnight. Last year was two minutes to midnight, which is higher it ever reached. This year it’s dispensed with minutes, started moving seconds. 100 seconds to midnight. It’s the closest it ever been.

Sighting three things: threat of atomic war, thereat of global warming, and deterioration of democracy, because it’s the one we hope to have in overcoming the crisis, it involves public taking control of their fate. If it doesn’t happen we are doomed. If we’re leaving our fate to sociopathic buffoons, we’re finished. And that’s coming close Trump is the worst and that’s because the US power, which is overwhelming. When the US imposes murderous devastating sanctions, everyone has to follow. Europe may not like it, in fact they hate it, but it has to follow the master or it will be kicked out of international conversation. It’s not the law of nature. It’s a decision in Europe to be subordinate to the master in Washington, but other countries don’t even have a choice.

And back to the coronavirus, one of the most shocking, harsh aspects of it is the use of sanctions to maximize the pain, perfectly consciously. Iran has enormous internal problems, but they apply sanctions on it consciously to make it suffer, and suffer bitterly. Cuba has been suffering from them from the moment it was made independent, but it’s astonishing that they have survived, they stayed resilient, and the most ironic elements of today’s coronavirus crisis. It’s that Cuba is helping Europe. This’s too shocking, I don’t know how to describe it. The Germany can’t help Greece, but Cuba can help many countries. If you stop to think what it means, what Fidel did, when you see thousands of people dying in Mediterranean, fleeing from previously British colonies, devastated for centuries, and they sent to deaths in Mediterranean, you don’t know what words to use. The civilizational crisis in the West today is devastating. And it does bring childhood memories of Hitler raving on the radio to raucous crowds. And you wonder if these species even liable.

To be continued…