Johnny-come-lately Chomsky. (Duncan Rawlinson)
More from DK...
Not everyday that I find myself agreeing with a radical militant leftist like Noam Chomsky.
Or rather, not every day that Noam Chomsky agrees with a stubborn (left-leaning) centrist like me.
But last week while receiving the University of Wisconsin’s A.E. Havens Center’s award for lifetime contribution to critical scholarship, Chomsky warned that fascism looms if Americans are not careful:
“I’m just old enough to have heard a number of Hitler’s speeches on the radio, 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…”
Well, la dee da. Now where have you heard something like that before? Right here, over and over again.
The very first article published here on Post-Partisan Examiner was a siren call, warning that Obama’s leadership would slide America towards corporate fascism. We have kept calling out the fascististic Washington-Wall Street corporate oligarchy and urging post-partisanship ever since. No one should put one hundred percent of one's faith, money, time, and support in one party one hundred percent of the time.
Chomsky's speech went on to cite a poll showing that at least half of independent voters sympathize more with the Tea Party than with any partisan movement or political figure, to slam Obama for coziness with Wall Street and Big Corporate, and to explain why the upset disaffection of tea partiers is “understandable”:
The level of anger and fear is like nothing I can compare in my lifetime. Ridiculing the tea party shenanigans is a serious error. For over 30 years, real incomes have stagnated or declined…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. The financial industry preferred Obama to McCain. 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. People want some answers. They are hearing answers from only one place: Fox, talk radio, and Sarah Palin.
According to Chomsky, this is what is fueling “the indignation and rage of those cast aside.” Of course, Obama critics have been pointing this out all along.
While Obama’s Big Media pals have been denigrating the disaffected as racist, ignorant, hick teabaggers who represent a meaningless minority of the country we defended the movement as legitimate civil disobedience and the inevitable reaction to Obama’s blatant hypocrisy and poor leadership.
While deranged Palin haters have used every low, cruel, misogynistic trick in the book to knock her down, we have warned that she deserves to be treated with respect even when we disagree with her policy views.
We have constantly knocked Obama for his sellouts to Big Corporate and warned that Obamacrats are turning their backs on the working classes with their odious policy of endless bailouts for their bankster friends on the back of taxpayers.
Chomsky’s public truth-telling indicates that even the most hardcore leftists are waking up to the awful truths centrists warned about for two years.
We need more Noam Chomsky’s willing to admit reality and fewer lamestream media elites with their biased heads buried up the President’s butt. We need people on the left respected by the left who can see through Obamacratic empty rhetoric and announce to their friends on the left that the emperor has no clothes. That liberals and progressives have been duped. Obama is not who he said he was. He is not a change agent.
He is a tool of the regressive anti-Main Street, pro-Wall Street status quo which plots daily to subjugate working folks while consolidating more and more of America’s wealth into their own insatiably greedy hands.
Chomsky's statements will startle those who view he and Obama as two of the biggest living liberal heroes. They will be alone in their astonishment. Chomsky has merely admitted the obvious.
Hillary promoting PUMAs were the first to realize that Obama’s inexperience, incompetence, and corporate hackery would lead to disaster. They were followed by Republicans, then independents, and now Tea Partiers. Together, these group represent the growing majority whose votes will rescue America from Obamacratic corporate cronyism and remind politicians and pundits, once more, that Americans are the deciders.
Chomsky need not worry. The voting booth will save ourselves from ourselves. Democracy and the will of the people – and the right of the people to govern themselves as they see fit – will prevail again.
Obama can lay with the bankers all he wants: America will not be sacrificed upon a cross of credit default swaps.
Comments
Jamal,
Excellent! Chomsky is right! We've known that "Hillary-promoting Pumas" (we need the hyphen) were right on target in their estimation of Obama as a puppet of Wall Street and a Main Street-walking alien. He does not, never did, the hardships of the average woman or man, for BHO is a dilettante who traveled all over the globe, frequenting private Honolulu/California schools, thanks to his banker grandparents, and never had to use a food coupon! The man was and is a FRAUD!
Jesus said "My Kingdom is not in this world". And Chomsky is right in saying that the "treason of the intellectuals" is the real problem. Whether left or right, they are all servants of the corporatist Wall Street banksters.
And to think Timmy Geithner,sexist Larry Summers and the defraudster (sued for a billion) Mr. Rubin, all Goldman Sachs alumni are now whispering sweet somethings into the ears of that incompetent, self-serving puppet-President!
Appoint Brooksley Born (fired by Greenspan) Re
Sorry, but no, Palin hasn't proven she deserves my respect. She's a fundamentalist Christian and a racist (or an idiot).
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/18/sarah-palin-supports-dr-laura_n...
Defending a person's first amendment rights is awesome, but not understanding that what Dr. Laura did had NOTHING to do with her first amendment rights makes Palin a moron. If she DID know that it didn't have anything to do with the first amendment, then she's a racist.
Using the first amendment to defend someone from being rightfully shit on for saying the N word eleven times on the radio is just twisting things around to obfuscate the point. And, "shackles?" Seriously. She disgusts me, not as a politician, but as a human being. Tell me again why she deserves my respect?
You have obviously never actually read Chomsky, just articles about Chomsky. He is far more radical than any garden variety 'liberal' you've ever heard of. Try reading American Power and the New Mandarins. It will make your head spin.
Brooksley Born headed the CFTC and wanted to regulate the Derivatives Market in 1998 when Greenspan and Rubin and Timmy T. sent in pit-bull Larry (women are dumb at Math!)Summers to force her to resign! Brooksley Born was referred to Bill Clinton by her friend Hillary Clinton. The prez found Brooksley "boring" for the Att. Gen. job so he gave her the CFTC Chair!
Brooksley did her job right. Now she's questioning the Greenspan/Rubin gang of banksters at the Fin. Crisis Inquiry Commission! How sweet it is....
Born should be top Economic Advisor to Obama and force him to do the right thing he's afraid of: REGULATE WALL STREETERS!
Reading Julien Benda's Treason of the Intellectuals will make one more appreciative of the reason for Noahm Chomsky's being so "extreme left wing".
We've recently watched 'MANUFACTURING CONSENT', a documentary by a Canadian producing team that outlines Chomsky's vision of the media as servants of the corporatist-Wall Street agenda.
Too bad Tea Partiers don't realize how much in common they should have with Chomsky's vision. They, like Bush, did not correctly identify the "enemy". It's not really Obama or Palin or Limbaugh, but the very system that allows the "mainstream media" to propagandize the "truths" of the elite that control us. Goldman Sachs and AIG and the FED are the real presidents and senators. Don't look for the real power in the White House!
Hillary was less likely than BHO to bend to Wall St.'s whims. That's why DNC wanted Obama--at any cost! Goldman Sach alumni now run the White House! Progressive, eh?
This post was a joke. Many liberals were well aware of Obama's centrist and corporate leanings and have been saying this during the primary season. Sure, some read way too much into the campaign rhetoric and heard things that weren't really said. But the reality is not as severe as this clown suggests. First, yes, Obama and Democrats continued bank bail outs. So stop calling them liberals already and recognize what many on the left have been saying for years. The Democratic Party needs less pro business conservatives and more liberals.
Obama is no fraud however. He is changing things slowly as he promised he would. PUMAs kept insisting Obama supporters were kool aid drinkers but that's an over simplification. Many of us recognized Hillary was no better and we could also do math and it was clear she lost.
I am happy however that right wing hacks are finally getting that Obama is no lefty though. Now if we could just get them to see what an empty suit Palin is.
Even as people Center, Left and Right begin to come together, I still see no on emerge as the candidate who could unite them all. Two years to go for an Executive election and I don't feel it will be Palin, bothered that Powell hasn't chimed in significantly and worried that computer tallying may give us questionable results.
I never trust "bipartisianship", it just means messing up together... Obama is doing alot of great things for this country. He's going to create the jobs we desperately need with nuclear reactors and trains, we are headed toward a production rather then construction mode of capitalism. And that scares the lolbertarians who are interested in keeping people nice and stupid so they can continue giving us crappy pay and send our jobs to India. I admit, Obama isn't perfect. Like continuing the war on terror, and the mandatory insurance thing is total bull, and should've been more like "bigger insurance companies have to offer more coverage then smaller insurance companies" to create fairer markets. And despite Obama apparently being a social marxist, as a social conservative, nothing he's really done has offended me. This whole teaparty movement is just full of angry libertarians who aren't happy unless they're sitting on rich people's scrotums.
Also the completely un-fascist "centre left" apparently can't let a post with a little naughty language through. So I have to make the post sound ridiculous by using volacular that conveys the same thing but in a "non-cursing" context. What a pain in my orface...
Anyway, do to character limits, I also couldn't say how we need to get behind Obama. People always whine about fascism, but if we let these libertarians have their way, we're going to end up with feudalism which is waaayyyy worse. Or God forbid a second confederacy. Which is just feudalism with a little more voting involved.
Thanks Mr. Jamaal for your article. In Chomsky's work I have yet to find an error of fact or moral reasoning.
"The parallels [to Weimar Germany] are striking. There was also tremendous disillusionment with the parliamentary system..."
"What are people to think if someone says 'I have got an answer, we have an enemy'? There it was the Jews. Here it will be the illegal immigrants and the blacks. We will be told that white males are a persecuted minority. We will be told we have to defend ourselves and the honor of the nation. Military force will be exalted. People will be beaten up. This could become an overwhelming force. And if it happens it will be more dangerous than Germany. The United States is the world power. Germany was powerful but had more powerful antagonists. I don't think all this is very far away. If the polls are accurate it is not the Republicans but the right-wing Republicans, the crazed Republicans, who will sweep the next election." - Chomsky quoted by Chris Hed
I must say, however, that I don't understand your article's title and, for the record, Chomsky was never under any illusions about Obama.
BingJustBing, you're a little concerned by this article, aren't you? This article will shake up quite a few of those progressive sheeple as well it should.
Chomsky, a radical militant leftist? Must be some new definition of the word "militant" that I'm not familiar with. I'm not even certain that the term leftist fits, because that implies a certain type of economic worldview that doesn't hold up well. Anti-imperialist, anti-globalist or leading academic foreign policy analyst feels about right though, feel free to use those terms in the future.
I recommend reading Chomsky's comments from the source rather bothering with second-hand spew like this - make up your own mind.
URL here: bit.ly/bIQmki
Your article is right on the money. My only complaint is that it's a mistake to describe Chomsky as "radical militant leftist," even if it's just to placate your "centrist" friends. Noam has been a refuge of sanity and hope, mostly for young people, from the chaos caused by the exigencies of global neo-liberalism. In fact, calling him a famous "liberal icon" is probably a misnomer, since Chomsky has been railing against the arrogance and moral bankruptcy of the liberals in this country for decades.
The term "Tea Bagger" is profane and not the way members of the Tea Party movement self-describe themselves. You should edit your article to reflect this.
It is incredibly obvious Jamaal did not do his homework. If you believe your own title or believe that Chomsky was ever an Obama supporter you are greatly misinformed. Just because there is an article on the examiner before this speech does not mean Chomsky hasn't said these same things for YEARS. Wisen up, read a little.
Well said DK well said.
My jaw is still on the ground...
Another old person in America afraid of the young people and their ideas. All of those tea party (Post Bush Supporters) people are old and afraid. And I guess Noam Chomsky is now one of them. It's funny to see all of these baby boomers who were once hippies and radicals all becoming conservative. pussies.
Well,anybody who has been paying attention for the last few years knows that Barokeydoke Obozo has been Wall Street's butt boy ever since he took a cool $1 million in campaign donations from Goldman Sachs employees alone...all the more reason to oppose his so called 'reform bill' that would be nothing more than a slush fund for him to bail out those firms that toe the line for him while smaller firms get tossed under the bus along with everybody else who has outlived their usefulness to Da Won
My my - listen to all the little Obamessiah drones get their panties twisted. lol
Thanks for the article.
Chomsky is the biggest loon this side of J. R. “Bob” Dobbs. It just proves even a broken clock can be right twice a day.
Your ignorance is only surpassed by your ignorance
You guys do know that the fascists he is alluding to are Palin and the teabaggers right? Read any current interview that is not edited for the sake of propoganda. I'm not saying he's pro-Obama of course, but he's not defending Palin or the Tea Party by a long shot.
@cc: It is blatantly obvious that Chomsky is referring to the rhetoric and behavior of the Tea Party with his comparison to Nazism. If Jamaal is truly the person his bio says he is I find it hard to believe he would miss such an obvious point.
This comment is for the author....
I have been studying Noam Chomsky since I was first introduced to his work in political science class at university. I am confused why you label him at a militant? He has been a huge critic on the use of violence in the world since the 60's. I'm interested to know how you came to this conclusion. Thanks
Evan
Nova Scotia, Canada
Chomsky has been saying stuff like this for years... The author is trying to make out that he's just discovered Obama is not a good guy when Chomsky has never been a supporter of Obama of any kind, he (the author) has no idea what he's talking about
"Chomsky’s public truth-telling indicates that even the most hardcore leftists are waking up to the awful truths centrists warned about for two years."
Chomsky has been, since the get-go, an extremely vehement critic of the Obama administration. He very probably "woke up to the awful truths", a long time before the author did.
Perhaps if the author had done a touch of research (for example: youtube.com/watch?v=tEJyrrgUvFI), he/she would not have had to waste time writing this article.
I was at the Chomsky lecture in Madison, and I've read a lot of Chomsky's work. When Chomsky referred to the cheering fascist crowds, he was referring to the tea-partiers. However, Chomsky blames Obama and others for not addressing the genuine grievances that tea-partiers have. As the Germans were fooled into scapegoating the Jews for their problems, the tea-partiers are manipulated into blaming the "liberals" for all their problems. This sort of extreme anger could lead to terrible things if ever unbottled.
Also, I don't how chomsky could be labeled a "militant" as others have pointed out.
Understand the government works for the rich no matter who is president. You can drink your freedom tea and think one party works for you and you can demonize the other. Pawns are born everyday laying the groundwork for facism. Noam is right because he doesnt have a show sponsored by corporate america. This author is limited in his roam. Its up to us to save this ship before it is too late. Support third parties and debate in this plutocracy. Get the money outand maybe oneday we will be free
That so many people understand so little
The only thing worth reading in this article is the large quote from Chomsky.
your accusation of Chomsky as a "racist" appears but once in this article: in the title. Well that's content for you...
your accusation of Chomsky as a "racist" appears but once in this article: in the title. Well that's content for you...
When Chomsky referred to the cheering fascist crowds, he was referring to the Tea Party members and Fox News pundits & disciples who vehemently blame, antagonize & distort their "opponents". Historically, very similar tactics were the underpinnings of pre-fascist revolutions.
"Chomsky has merely admitted the obvious." It is only because of him that the obvious is in fact the obvious. You say that he is catching up to you and your two years of being skeptical of Obama. I will call foul. Chomsky has spent the last sixty years warning us that we are slowly surrendering our freedoms and liberties to the soulless market. It is of little consequence WHO is now leading the country into complete economic fascism only that we eventually get there. Obama, McCain, Bush, Gore, it never actually mattered. I urge you to read more.
It is kind of stupid calling Chomsky Militant.
Can't you people be more creative ? teabagger My 3yo IS BRIGHTER THEN YOU IDIOTS !!!!!!
Conservative vs. Liberal's YOUR ALL JACK ASSES
Liberal's DROPPED THE NUCLEAR BOMB ARE YOU REALLY BETTER
a radical militant leftist? is that what they call people who tell the truth nowadays.
A libertarian socialist and an anarchist sympathizer(by his own admission). That's who you are agreeing with, LOL. Sure Obama hasn't done the best job, but he has done a lot with a whole lot of obstruction in his way. You are calling him out for his Wall Street support, yet Romney would have us all beholden to the rich and powerful.
Got something to say?
Examiner.com is looking for writers, photographers, and videographers to join the fastest growing group of local insiders. If you are interested in growing your online rep apply to be an Examiner today!