Wednesday, December 22, 2021

Optimism over despair - Noam Chomsky & C.J. Polychroniou


This is a collection of interviews to Noam Chomsky on US and world affairs, conducted by C. J. Polychroniou and published in the magazine Truthout. The topics are: American politics, neoliberalism, economics, social issues, environment, the war on terror, refugee crisis and many more.
Being a collection of separate interviews the book might not always been coherent or homogeneous, and is sometimes repetitive. However Chomsky always appears to be extremely informed and sharp minded. What he seems to be most concerned about is social inequality at various levels: those self fueling mechanisms whereby the richest tend to exert an ever stronger hold on politics, which in turn will operate in a way that will make them more rich, and therefore more politically influential, and so on.
Political parties, especially in America, but in the European Union as well, have become representatives of the business world, with slight differences. The working class is not actively represented by any faction and tends to get inspired by populistic movements mostly controlled by their traditional class adversaries. Big corporations tend to ignore key problems like global warming or social inequality. And all this seems to be getting worse and worse.
The situation might appear desperate. But Chomsky, as the title suggests, seems to be optimistic about it. Mostly because he thinks that those who are not rich and powerful can manage to organize themselves and be actively playing a decision making (or influencing) role. It has already happened before. Why not again?

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