Noam Chomsky full length interview: Who rules the world now?

Mr. Chomsky, that voter helplessness, that angry helplessness, as you speak, I would presumably say that is what is responsible for the rise of Donald Trump. It is quite clear who is responsible for the increase in support for Trump and there is general agreement on this. If you take a simple look at the economic statistics, Trump's primary support comes from poor, mostly white, working-class people who have been marginalized during the neoliberal period and have lived through a generation of stagnation or decline. Men's real wages are about what they were in the 1960s. There has also been a decline in the functioning of democracy.

The overwhelming evidence reveals that even their own elected representatives hardly reflect their interests and concerns. Contempt for institutions, especially Congress. it just went up it skyrocketed, it went down single digits often these are people who, in the meantime, of course, wealth has been created, wealth has been created, it's gone into very few hands, uh cousin, mainly to a fraction of one percent superior, in fact, enormous opulence, yes, in fact, and how dangerous do you think this all is in terms of Donald Trump, for example, I mean he's been toning down some of his more extreme pronouncements recently.

It's possible that, if he ever gets close to power, the congressman could control him. How dangerous do you think it is for the United States? The biggest danger that he and, indeed, all Republican candidates represent is barely mentioned. It's reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes' dog that didn't bark. The greatest danger is the gr. There are two great dangers facing the human species. We are now in a situation where we have to decide whether the species survives in a decent way, one is the growing danger of nuclear war, which is quite serious, the other is environmental catastrophe. Now, on these issues, Donald Trump and the other Republican candidates are basically uniform.

Do you believe the threat of nuclear energy? war do you think Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner, would advocate for those issues and in a way that would satisfy you, not in a way that would satisfy me, but at least recognize that climate change is happening and we have to do something about it ? All of the Republican candidates deny this is happening, with the sole exception of Kasich, who says yes, but we shouldn't do anything about it and that's having an impact. The Paris negotiations last December aimed at a treaty. "They could not". We didn't meet it for one simple reason: the Republican Congress wouldn't accept it, so it's a voluntary agreement, meaning that even the weak standards that were proposed will barely be met, perhaps undermining the likelihood that they will even be met.

All Republican candidates, including Trump, want to eliminate. environmental protection agency richard nixon's legacy of cutting regulation to run off the cliffs as fast as possible in militarism each of them wants to increase the huge military budget that already exceeds half of discretionary spending, which it takes right now to a factor that leads to confrontations that could be extremely dangerous and briefly, I think this again is not being discussed very well. I would suggest one thing that perhaps you could agree with Donald Trump on would be about the EU, I mean he talks about the fact that the UK can leave the EU.

I have criticized the bureaucracy of the European Union. Could you agree with him that no? I actually don't have a very strong opinion on Brexit, but I don't. My concern would be that it would weaken the European Union. but it would also probably make Britain not want to use too strong a word subordinate to the power of the United States than it is today, which I don't think is a good thing for the

world

or for Britain, which in a nutshell is the answer . As to who

rules

the

world

now, as I try to discuss in the book, there is no simple answer, we generally think of states when that question is asked and with respect to states, there is no doubt that the United States, despite its decline for many, many years.

It is still overwhelmingly more powerful than any state or group of states, but that is only one factor: states have internal structures, an internal distribution of power in the United States, power is overwhelmingly and increasingly in recent years in the hands of a very narrow sector of private corporate wealth. wealth and power, so they have counterparts in other places who agree with them, who interact with them to a great extent and that is another dimension of who

rules

the world and then there is the public that the public can have sometimes has a power enormous. We can go back to David Hume first.

An important modern work on political philosophy, foundations of the theory of government, noted that force is on the side of the governed, those who are governed have force if they are willing and eager to do so and recognize the possibility of exercising it, sometimes doing so. They do, that's a major force in who rules the world, but when it comes to state power you don't buy the idea of ​​China as the next superpower, the imminent superpower China, I mean, China has China plays a very important role in the world, without a doubt, if you take a look.

For example, the per capita income is far behind the United States and other developed states, it has huge internal problems, such as demographic, ecological resources, etc., and it will undoubtedly play an important role in military terms, it is not even even a fraction of the United States and the Western powers. So yes, and economically it is important, but keep in mind that a large portion of Chinese production is actually foreign owned. Apple's major global corporation produces largely in China, but that is American production, which uses labor from Chinese facilities and other facilities, so China is a growing developing power in some areas, in fact, has come quite far even in the high-tech industry;

For example, in the production of solar panels, China is in the lead not only in mass production but also in innovation and high-tech development, and all this is significant, but it is by no means a power on the scale of the united states, in fact, take a look at the clashes between china and the united states, now there are serious clashes, are they in the caribbean, are they off the coast of california, no, are they in waters around china where china and others have territorial claims, that is a symbolic reflection of the nature of state power.

Well, you describe being scathing about the United States. No one will be surprised to hear it described as a leading terrorist state. I'm just interested in how you would describe Russia, how I describe Russia, authoritarian, brutal, harsh, carrying out ugly actions in its own region, the United States, on the other hand, carries out such actions all over the world, in fact, again , look, there are serious confrontations between Russia and the United States and once again they are on the border with Mexico, the border with Canada, no, they are on the border with Russia, in fact, right at the point of the traditional invasion route through which Russia has been practically destroyed several times in the last century.

Again in the story above, that is not an apology for what Putin may be doing, but it should lead us to have a rational perspective on the relationship between these forces in the world, since the United States is the leading terrorist state. I must say that it is not just my opinion. So, for example, I noticed when I was introduced. In the

interview

, the person who introduced me said that I consider the United States to be the most serious threat to world peace. That's not exactly it, it misrepresents the situation a bit. There are international surveys conducted by leaders.

The American polling agency Gallup is the victory of Gallup, its international affiliate, and one of the questions they ask is which country is the most serious threat to world peace and the United States is in first place by a huge margin, far behind , in second place is Pakistan, which is undoubtedly inflated by the Indian vote. and others have a slight mention, so that is the global opinion and I should mention that this was not even reported in the United States, it happened to be reported by the BBC but it was not reported in the United States as a terrorist state.

The global assassination of President Obama. campaign the drone assassination campaign is an extreme terrorist war, I mean, if Iran, say, were carrying out a campaign to assassinate people around the world who they thought might be planning to harm Iran, we would consider it terrorism , for example, if they were bombing the editorial. New York Times and Washington Post offices that publish op-eds from prominent figures saying we should bomb Iran right now and not wait, so they obviously want to hurt Iran, let's assume Iran was murdering them and anyone else they came across. Over there. Would we consider that terrorism?

I think we could let me ask you some questions from people online. People are sending questions through Facebook. First, Gary says: what are the dangers of Putin's T-tip? It's the danger. What are the dangers? The dangers of t-tip of t transatlantic trade and a partnership t-t-i-p t-t-i-p oh tti oh yes oh are quite extreme, in fact, a couple of days ago, Greenpeace published 280 pages of internal documents about this so-called trade agreement and they detail details of what that we should all know the so called free trade agreements are not free trade agreements in fact they are largely not even trade agreements these are agreements on investor rights there is a reason why they are kept secret from the public and so As soon as you look at them, you'll see why notice I say secret from the public, not secret, they're not kept secret, they're not secret from the corporate lawyers and lobbyists who write the detailed regulations, of course, in their own interest.

Voters are not the public of the world or of their own countries, so they are highly protectionist for the benefit of private power. So-called intellectual property rights effectively increase tariffs. They are called patents, but they have a huge impact. about the economies great, uh, wonderful for pharmaceutical and media conglomerates, uh, and others, uh, uh, uh, uh, right for investors, corporations have the right to sue the government, something that you and I can't do it, but a corporation can sue. governments for damaging their potentially future profits, you can understand what that means in such cases that are already in court because they are not in court, they go to private trade adjudication groups composed largely of corporate representatives with whom they already they are working. uh, NAFTA and we can expect more from them uh, there are provisions that undermine regulatory efforts, including, incidentally, the regulation of environmental hazards and, surprisingly, the phrase climate change does not appear in these 280 pages, which are illustrative of all the structure, so these have almost no, I should say, these agreements, the so-called Pacific and Atlantic, have practically no effect on tariffs.

Tariffs are already quite low among major trading partners. When you read the blurb about it, it says "Oh yeah, I'm sure Vietnam will have to cut them down." their tariffs, yes, almost no effect on trade, the main trading partners already have agreements that have reduced tariffs very substantially, there are few exceptions, not many, so they are basic, we should disabuse ourselves of the illusion that It is about free trade agreements, quite the opposite and to a large extent, not even trade agreements, we have the experience of others like NAFTA, many years of experience, so let's say that NAFTA has all the aspects that I just described, but further consider even what are called trade interactions across the US-Mexico border.

They have increased substantially since NAFTA, so economists will tell you that trade has increased considerably, but take a look at them. Suppose, for example, that General Motors produces parts in Indiana, sends them to Mexico for assembly and sells the car in Los Angeles, that is called two-way trade, but they are not interactions internal to a command economy, it is as if During the days of the Soviet Union, parts would be manufactured in, say, Leningrad, shipped to Warsaw for assembly, and sold in Moscow. We would not call that trade, which is internal interactions in a command economy. economics well called

chomsky

, thank you very much for being so generous with your time and for staying to have that discussion live online, thank you