English subtitles for clip: File:Noam Chomsky on Syria, China, Capitalism, and Ferguson.webm

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Hi I'm Laura Flanders - this week on the show, none other than professor, author, intellectual extraordinaire Noam Chomsky

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on everything from Iraq, to Ferguson, to China and trade.

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And a sneak peak at a documentary on a workers' struggle that won.

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It's all coming up, right here, welcome to the show

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[music playing]

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It's hard to find anyone on the U.S. left who hasn't been influenced by our next guest -

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he's an accomplished linguist who's work has transformed his field,

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he's a political theorist and the author of more than 100 books, the subject of many movies,

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and he's not just a committed public intellectual, he's an activist - he shows up on campuses where the action is

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and draws a crowd. Noam Chomsky is our guest in this special interview recorded in New York

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Noam - welcome to the program glad to have you

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President Obama picked the 10th anniversary of the U.S. battle of Fallujah

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to announce the doubling of the U.S. troop
presence in Iraq. Some of those troops are

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going back to Anbar Province where Fallujah
is situated. People talk about the crisis

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posed by ISIS, and [the West’s] lack of
good options. Is this how you see it?

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Noam Chomsky: It’s interesting to look at
it carefully. Fallujah, first of all, was

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one of the worst atrocities of the 21st century.
The Iraq war itself was the worst crime of

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the 21st century, easily. Fallujah was probably
the worst war crime carried out during that

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war.

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Seven thousand Marines attacked Fallujah,
probably killed everyone who was there. They

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called them insurgents - whatever that means.
On the first day of the invasion of Fallujah,

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the New York Times had a front page photograph
of Marines breaking into the general hospital,

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which is a war crime, and throwing all the
patients and doctors on the floor and shackling

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them. It was hailed as a triumph.

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When the High Command was asked why they broke
into the hospital, they said it was a propaganda

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center for the insurgents. [They said that
the hospital] was releasing casualty figures,

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and therefore it’s legitimate to carry out
a major war crime.

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Apparently pretty exotic weapons were used
there, and there’s evidence, which international

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agencies don’t want to look at, of high
levels of cancer and other effects of maybe

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depleted uranium, maybe something else.

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It’s a major atrocity, but it’s hailed
here as a victory. The only way it is referred

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to now is as a tragedy because the Marines
fought so hard to liberate Fallujah, and now

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ISIS is in control of it.

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LF: So what would you do if you were president?

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Noam Chomsky: First of all ISIS is a monstrosity.
There isn’t a conceivable way of dealing

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with it. It’s kind of hard to imagine following
the law (I say that cautiously because it’s

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such an outrageous idea), but there are laws,
and we’re bound by them. The Constitution

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requires that we adhere to them, of course
we never do.

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One of them is the U.N. Charter. A way of
dealing with ISIS following the law would

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be to approach the U.N. Security Council and
request that they declare a threat to peace,

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which of course they would do, and organize
a way to respond to it. And then follow the

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will of the international community. Out of
that there might come a reasonable response.

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The unilateral U.S. response -- mainly to
hit everything with a sledgehammer -- makes

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absolutely no sense. The correspondent who’s
followed this most closely and has been right

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all along, Patrick Cockburn, simply describes
it as an Alice in Wonderland strategy.

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The major ground forces that are fighting
ISIS are apparently the [Kurdistan Workers’

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Party] PKK and its allies in Syria. They’re
barred because we call them a terrorist group,

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so they’re under attack. Our ally, Turkey,
attacks them and we bar them support.

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But they’re apparently the ones who saved
the Yazidis and blocked the ISIS attack on

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Iraqi Kurdistan. They’re out. The major
regional state that could confront ISIS is

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Iran. In fact they could probably wipe them
out. And they’re influential in Iraq. In

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fact, [they’re] the victors of the Iraq
war. They’re out for ideological reasons.

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A more complex case, which Patrick Cockburn
has actually talked about, is what to do with

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Assad. That has all kinds of complexities,
but anyway they’re out.

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And the sledgehammer has its usual effect.
The U.S. bombings, are, in the usual and predictable

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way, eliciting anger from the civilians that
were under attack. They don’t like ISIS.

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They hate it, but they don’t want to be
attacked by American bombs.

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There was very interesting insight into this
in the New York Times, maybe a week ago. The

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lead article should have had the headline:
“The United States declares itself to be

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the world’s leading terrorist state and
is proud of it.” That was the content of

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the article, but of course it didn’t have
that headline. But it was very revealing.

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Also the lack of response to it.

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The lead story was a report of a CIA study
that had just come out of U.S. intervention

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and the study was concerned with when they
worked and when they didn’t work and why.

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They quoted Obama saying that he commissioned
some such studies. He was kind of disappointed

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they didn’t work so much. Then you take
a look at the examples, first paragraph of

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the story, three examples: Cuba, Angola, Nicaragua.
Each one a major terrorist war carried out

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by the United States, not even ambiguous.

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So here we take three major terrorist wars
with horrible consequences, we investigate:

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did they work? Didn’t they work? We’re
disappointed that they didn’t work. And

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the president says we have better ways. Again,
the headline should be: “Yes, we declare

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ourselves to be the world’s leading terrorist
state. We’re proud of it.”

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LF: It goes to a much bigger question. You
talk often about the conventional wisdom being

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reality on it’s head. That goes back to
the founding story of the United States.

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Noam Chomsky: It sure does.

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LF: Can you talk about the principles on which
this country is supposedly founded versus

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the ones you think it might actually be founded
on. I’ve been reading Edward Baptist’s

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extraordinary book, The Half Has Never Been
Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism.

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Noam Chomsky: Well, take Baptist’s book
and compare it with the New York Times this

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morning. There’s a description in the New
York Times of the horrible treatment of the

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Yazidi by ISIS. Now go back to Baptist’s
book. That’s what he’s describing. He’s

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describing the treatment of the slaves for
half of American history, and in fact it continues.

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And it’s almost identical. That’s the
way they were treated.

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It’s not just kind of bad people in Georgia,
Boston financiers were involved in it. They

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didn’t say they were in favor of slavery
but they were happy to become wealthy by exporting

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commodities that were produced by the leading
resource of the 19th century, which was cotton.

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Cotton was kind of like oil.

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So, the oil--the cotton gets exported and
they make a ton of money and the banks, they

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have enough money to import. The country grows
and becomes rich, and in fact as Baptist says,

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the economy was built on the backs of African
slaves.

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LF: So is capitalism- RECD as you call it
- real existing capitalist democracy - in

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the United States. Is it redeemable, reformable?

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Chomsky: Well, this is a good illustration
of how remote our system is from capitalism.

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It’s hard to think of any greater violation
of capitalist and market principles than slavery.

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But the country was based on two basic commitments:
one, slavery, which was as Baptist points

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out was all the source, pretty much the source
of the growing economy, including the industrial

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economy. The other is the extermination of
the indigenous population by state power.

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What’’s that got to do with capitalism?

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In effect, it goes right to the present. If
you have an iPhone and you take a look at

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the components in it, practically all of them
were developed through the state sector, government

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funding, research and development, often for
decades.

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LF: Public sector. We paid for it.

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Noam Chomsky: Yea, we paid for it. And notice
there is a principle of capitalism. Say we

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imagine we’re in a capitalist society. And
you invest money in something, and it’s

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a risky investment, and you keep investing
in it for decades. And finally, something

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comes out that makes a profit--well, in a
capitalist society you’re supposed to get

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the profit. That’s not what happens here.

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LF: If I’m the U.S. taxpayer…

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Noam Chomsky: You pay for decades, usually
under the pretext that the Russians are coming

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or something. You’re paying for the kind
of research and development and creative work

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that yields the IT revolution, computers,
the Internet, your iPhone, all the rest of

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it. Do you get anything back?

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LF: I haven’t noticed it.

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Noam Chomsky: It goes to Steve Jobs and Bill
Gates.

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LF: But, we work a lot with people these days
who are interested in trying to develop work

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around co-ops and cooperative regions of solidarity
economics. Is that hopeless?

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Noam Chomsky: No, I think that makes sense.
In fact, there are interesting things happening.

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The person who’s done the most writing about
this is Gar Alperovitz, and it’s interesting

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work. Throughout the Northern middle west,
like in Northern Ohio, there is a spread of

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worker-owned enterprises -- not huge but not
small either -- which could be the basis of

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a different kind of society. And notice that
these could be substantial if there was enough

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popular support.

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So, go back a couple of years--Obama virtually
nationalized the auto industry. It was collapsing,

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so it had to be kind of built up by the taxpayers.
So he took over most of the auto industry.

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There were a few possibilities. One possibility,
of course, was the one that was followed.

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Bail out the owners, bail out the banks, give
it back to the same people, or other people

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with different faces but essentially the same
roles in society, and have it continue to

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produce what it had always been producing--automobiles.
There was another possibility.

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Give it to the work force. Subsidize them
to develop and have it produce what we need.

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What do we need? I can give you a personal
example.

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My wife and I came to New York by train from
Boston. The train took only an hour and a

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half longer than when I took it in 1950 for
the first time. Either it was standing still

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or it was going slower than the trucks on
the Connecticut Turnpike.

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There isn’t a country in the world where
this happens. And that’s just a symbol of

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the country. This is the richest country in
the world that has incomparable advantages

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and it’s just falling apart.

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LF: Were you encouraged by the news that was
hailed as a breakthrough of the U.S.-China

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accord around emissions, for the first time
China committing to cap emissions?

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Noam Chomsky: Look, it’s better than nothing,
but it doesn’t really amount to much. And

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it had potential dangers that we’d better
keep our eye on. Notice that this a U.S.-China

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agreement. It could turn out that this is
going to undercut the international agreements,

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and it’s not impossible that that was the
purpose.

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When we talk about Chinese emissions, remember
they’re our emissions. China manufactures,

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say, your iPad, and there is pollution, but
that’s for the American markets. So, it’s

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a mixed story.

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LF: Well, so that goes to the questions that
we received from our Facebook friends. We

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invited them to pose questions for Professor
Chomsky and they posed very many. They fell

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into several camps: How did we get into this
mess? How would you describe this mess? And

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how to we get out of this mess? I think at
the “how do you describe this mess?” situation.

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One quick question in particular, was “How
do you assess the strengths and weaknesses

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of the U.S. movements for social justice,
and how would you advise we try to maximize

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the strengths and minimize the weaknesses?”

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Noam Chomsky: The labor movement has traditionally
been in the forefront of progressive social

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change, and for that reason and others it’s
under severe attack. Partly it’s the fault

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of labor bureaucrats, but partly it’s just
fierce attack from the business world, which

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pretty much runs the country.

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And by now the labor movement is a shadow
of what it once was. It could come back. There

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have been earlier periods of American history
when the labor movement was destroyed--1920s,

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it was partially wiped out, 1930s it rose
again, so it could happen.

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But with the labor movement seriously weakened
and an independent political parties almost

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gone, there’s a lack of, a fundamental lack
of, continuity in activist politics.

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So everything starts from--as if nothing ever
happened before. So, if you take Occupy, which

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was important but it came out of nowhere,
no institutional memory, no recollection of

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the history. Not even remembering how to run
a demonstration. You know, all of this kind

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of institutional memory is gone. There’s
a lot of activism, but it’s very separated.

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One of the things that I spend a lot of time
doing is just giving talks around the country.

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And one of the major positive contributions
is it just brings people together in the same

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community. People may be doing the same thing
in different neighborhoods and don’t know

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each other. And that extends across the country.
What’s happening here nobody knows about

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there. That’s a serious weakness.

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LF: One of the other questions we had from
our Facebook page was from people asking about

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the prospects for a movement growing out of
the conflict in Ferguson and the role of police

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and the militarization of police in our society.
Do you see any prospects for a broad anti-racist

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social justice movement coming out of that
mobilization?

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Chomsky: There are prospects, but it’s going
to be very hard. This is a very racist society.

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I mean it’s pretty shocking. What has happened
in the last, roughly 30 years, with regard

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to African Americans, actually is very similar
to what Baptist describes in the late 19th

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century. Remember what happened--the Constitutional
amendments during and after the Civil War

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were supposed to free African American slaves.

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It did something for about 10 years then there
was a North-South compact, which essentially

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granted the former slave-owning states the
right to do whatever they wanted. And what

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they did was criminalize black life in all
kinds of ways. That created a kind of a slave

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force.

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In fact, one of the most interesting books
on it, Douglas Blackmon’s Slavery by Another

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Name. It threw mostly black males, but also
women, into jail where they become a perfect

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labor force, much better than slaves. If you’re
a slave owner you have keep your capital alive.

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If the state does it for you, it’s terrific.
No strikes, no disobedience, the perfect labor

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force.

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A lot of the American Industrial Revolution
in the late 19th, early 20th century, is based

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on that. And that actually pretty much lasted
until the World War II when there was a need

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for what’s called free labor in the war
industry. After that come about two decades

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in which African Americans had kind of a shot
at entering this society. A black worker could

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get a job at an auto plant, the unions were
still functioning, maybe he could buy a small

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house and send his kid to college or something.

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By the 1970s or 80s, it’s going back to
criminalization of black life. It’s called

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the Drug War, which is a racist war. Ronald
Reagan was an extreme racist and denied it.

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And the whole Drug War is designed, from policing
up to eventual release from prison to make

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it impossible, for the black male community,
and more and more women and more and more

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Hispanics, to be part of the society.

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If you look at American history, the first
slaves came in 1619, and that’s half a millennium.

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There have been about three or four decades
in which African Americans had a limited degree

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of freedom, not entirely, but at least some.

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And of course, for black elites there are
some privileges, but I’m talking about the

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mass of the population, which has been re-criminalized
and also turned into a slave labor force (prison

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labor for example). This is American history.
To break out of that is no small trick.

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If you take a look

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at the elections, say the last election, in
many ways it’s a civil war. The red states

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are the confederacy. That extent

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is little bit beyond, but that’s pretty
much what it is. This is a real battle. These

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two founding crimes, slavery and extermination
of the 
indigenous population, are very much with

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us. Take a look at Indian reservations today.
It’s not a pretty sight.