Chomsky Warns of Risk of Fascism in America

[jimmy olsen]

Oh Noes! Beck's Brownshirts will get me!!111

http://www.progressive.org/wx041210.html

Chomsky Warns of Risk of Fascism in America
By Matthew Rothschild, April 12, 2010

Noam Chomsky, the leading leftwing intellectual, warned last week that fascism may be coming to the United States.

"I'm just old enough to have heard a number of Hitler's speeches on the radio," he said, "and I have a memory of the texture and the tone of the cheering mobs, and I have the dread sense of the dark clouds of fascism gathering" here at home.

Chomsky was speaking to more than 1,000 people at the Orpheum Theatre in Madison, Wisconsin, where he received the University of Wisconsin's A.E. Havens Center's award for lifetime contribution to critical scholarship.

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"The level of anger and fear is like nothing I can compare in my lifetime," he said.

He cited a statistic from a recent poll showing that half the unaffiliated voters say the average tea party member is closer to them than anyone else.

"Ridiculing the tea party shenanigans is a serious error," Chomsky said.

Their attitudes "are understandable," he said. "For over 30 years, real incomes have stagnated or declined. This is in large part the consequence of the decision in the 1970s to financialize the economy."

There is class resentment, he noted. "The bankers, who are primarily responsible for the crisis, are now reveling in record bonuses while official unemployment is around 10 percent and unemployment in the manufacturing sector is at Depression-era levels," he said.

And Obama is linked to the bankers, Chomsky explained.

"The financial industry preferred Obama to McCain," he said. "They expected to be rewarded and they were. Then Obama began to criticize greedy bankers and proposed measures to regulate them. And the punishment for this was very swift: They were going to shift their money to the Republicans. So Obama said bankers are "fine guys" and assured the business world: 'I, like most of the American people, don't begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free-market system.'

People see that and are not happy about it."

He said "the colossal toll of the institutional crimes of state capitalism" is what is fueling "the indignation and rage of those cast aside."

"People want some answers," Chomsky said. "They are hearing answers from only one place: Fox, talk radio, and Sarah Palin."

Chomsky invoked Germany during the Weimar Republic, and drew a parallel between it and the United States. "The Weimar Republic was the peak of Western civilization and was regarded as a model of democracy," he said.

And he stressed how quickly things deteriorated there.

"In 1928 the Nazis had less than 2 percent of the vote," he said. "Two years later, millions supported them. The public got tired of the incessant wrangling, and the service to the powerful, and the failure of those in power to deal with their grievances."

He said the German people were susceptible to appeals about "the greatness of the nation, and defending it against threats, and carrying out the will of eternal providence."

When farmers, the petit bourgeoisie, and Christian organizations joined forces with the Nazis, "the center very quickly collapsed," Chomsky said.

No analogy is perfect, he said, but the echoes of fascism are "reverberating" today, he said.

"These are lessons to keep in mind."

Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive magazine.

[Jaron]

What is funny is you actually consider yourself in a right winger. Only two groups are allowed in the right wing: White people and their house niggers. Which are you?

[Eddie Teach]

Unnerving.

[citizen k]

Chomsky, Rothschild ...

[Kleves]

"The Weimar Republic was the peak of Western civilization and was regarded as a model of democracy," he said.

[Jaron]

That is an alarming statement..

[JonasSalk]

No need to fear, just like his pal Zinn he'll be dead soon and irrelevant as ever.

[Razgovory]

Who's Zinn?

[garbon]

Fuck Chomsky. That is all.

[Jaron]

Who's Zinn?

He is already forgotten and irrelevant! 

[Razgovory]

Who's Zinn?

He is already forgotten and irrelevant! 

The wages of Zinn is death.

[MadImmortalMan]

He's an interesting guy in my opinion. He's got such a different outlook on things that he has the effect of showing you the same things you look at every day from odd and bizarre angles. That's a good thing, even if he's outrageously wrong. I like how he credits class struggle and popular uprising against the rich for the Tea Parties' popularity as though it were a proletariat revolution against the rampant capitalism of Obama. 

[CountDeMoney]

Noam Chomsky, the leading leftwing intellectual,

That's incorrect.  Everybody knows its The Minsky Moment.

[Admiral Yi]

I like how he credits class struggle and popular uprising against the rich for the Tea Parties' popularity as though it were a proletariat revolution against the rampant capitalism of Obama. 

And yet his fear is for a Fascist takeover, rather than a Communist one.

I don't think Chomsky applied his usually razor-sharp intellect to this question.

[Warspite]

Chomsky is very useful because the moment someone starts spouting his waffle, I can immediately disregard any thoughts or opinions they might have.