THE INTEREST OF POWER
IN THE BRAINWASHING OF THE MASSES

Chomsky Reads the Riot Act to his Government

By Helmut Merchmann

[This article published in the German-English cyber journal Telepolis March 25, 2005 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, www.telepolis.de/r4/artikel/19/19753/1.html.]


Noam Chomsky (1) is on a lecture tour of Germany. His last appearance will be Easter Monday at the University of Leipzig on the theme: Europe-Israel-Palestine (2). The North American linguist and star political activist spoke on March 23, 2005 in the “Ernst Fraenkel Lectures” at the Free University of Berlin (3). He read the riot act again to his government.

Together with the late Susan Sontag, Noam Chomsky (4) did not enter the choir of patriots hastily called together in the US after September 11, 2001 and instead raised his voice against the “deeds and misdeeds” of his government [The American Dissident (5)]. For Chomsky, this was not anything new but a daily affair. Since the sixties, he has been a moral authority in the US. His “Critique of Power” inspires global justice activists. Chomsky’s “I Accuse!” was always heard far beyond the national borders and found grateful hearers inside and outside the European left.

As the political scientist Ekkehard Krippendorf noted in his introduction, Chomsky takes number eight in the list of the most-quoted sources “after Plato and Freud and ahead of Hegel and Cicero.” This is because of Chomsky’s linguistic achievements in cognition science. In addition, Chomsky has sued for justice with the same continuity with which his government has pursued its military and economic interests worldwide.

The lecture “Illegal but Legitimate: A Dubious Doctrine for the Times” summarized many of Chomsky’s themes. For a long while Chomsky has focused on the legitimation crisis in the United States that throws its weight around as the good conscience of the world without defending domestically the rights sued for elsewhere. Measures like the belligerent troop deployments abroad not justified by state law or transnational institutions are illegal but nevertheless suddenly elevated into necessary principles and accordingly legitimated.

The reasons why even the military establishment in the US has doubts in the perversion of justice interest Chomsky. Military strategists recently declared that a risk for ultimate doom is hidden in “Washington’s present military program and its aggressive posture.” Peace-loving nations “with China at the top” could ally against the US, the strategists say.

That the US nimbly ignores Article 51 of the UN Charter does not astonish the 76-year old. The tradition of American hegemonial policy extends from John Adams and Wilson to Reagan and the two Bushes. In a mellow and somewhat weary way, Chomsky quotes the 2004 resolution of the UN General Assembly:

“In a world full of potential danger, the risk for the global order and the norm of non-intervention on which this order rests is simply too great to accept unilateral actions instead of collective campaigns. Allowing one means allowing everyone.”

Chomsky is alarmed that this unilateralism is welcomed and approved by the “wealthy and powerful” as part of neoliberal globalization.

American unilateralism has a long tradition that Noam Chomsky has often discussed and decried. From this perspective, the “Bush Doctrine” is hardly different from the political intrigues of past American presidents. In an early essay (6), Chomsky showed Ronald Reagan’s pioneering role for Bush’s “War against Terror.” Reagan’s definition of an “evil scourge” led to troop deployments in Nicaragua and Honduras under the pretext of fighting terrorism. The recently chosen head of the Intelligence agency John Negroponte was active in the early eighties as an ambassador and operated the largest CIA interrogation station coordinating troop assignments in Nicaragua (7).

Clinton’s engagement in Kosovo also appeared dubious to Chomsky from an international law perspective. The underlying ideology usually remains vague. “The Clinton doctrine provided,” Chomsky said, “that the United States could use unilateral power to defend its vital interests in unhindered access to key markets, energy supply and strategic resources.” Former Secretary of State Madeline Albright in the Foreign Affairs” jo0urnal recently admitted that there was little debate about Clinton’s doctrine: “Every president has a doctrine in the back of his head. But triggering the opposition of allies would be simply foolish.”

Chomsky criticizes the liberal press that readily swallows the policy offered them. How else could the empty words of “anticipatory self-defense” have been accepted? How else could Bush’s perversion of justice be accepted as Christian “messianism”? Noam Chomsky’s political analysis is largely empirical, not theoretical.

“The United States will only accept a limited democratic change `from above’ that doesn’t endanger the traditional power structures with which the US has been connected for a long time.” Politics veils many things like the PR-industry that uses its pictures to deceive and pull the wool over consumers, not for information.







DESTRUCTIVE EFFECT

Noam Chomsky at the Free University of Berlin

By Harald Neuber

[This article published in: Junge Welt, 3/26/ 2005 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, www.jungewelt.de/2005/03-26/024.php.]


As the political scientist Ekkehart Krippendorf said as a greeting, Noam Chomsky doesn’t really need an introduction. His mammoth audiences give him an introduction. The Audimax of the Free University of Berlin was filled to the last seat Wednesday night. Interested persons had to register in advance.

One theme was unmistakable in Chomsky’s one-and-a-half hour lecture. Governments must be instituted “whose powers derive from the consent of the governed.” When a form of government has a destructive effect on this ultimate goal, the people have the right “to change or abolish that form of government, institute a new government and establish this government on these principles.” This revolutionary initiative comes from the American Declaration of Independence, not from Chomsky.

The use of force of arms to realize foreign policy goals, according to Chomsky, was only allowed in two cases since the Second World War: either with the legitimation of the UN Security Council or in the case of national defense. All other belligerent actions by definition are war crimes. That the present US government bombs all around the world despite the resistance of its own population is evidence of a disastrous global security doctrine. “Its dubious motto of “illegal but legitimated” brings the world to the “edge of the abyss.” This is a quotation from a security study of the American Academy of Sciences, not the judgment of a pessimist or prophet of doom.

The US scholar appealed to the assembled intellectuals to unmask the propaganda of this war. The double standards are intolerable. When the attack on Cambodia was ordered under the Nixon regime, Henry Kissinger, the Secretary of State at that me, admitted the attack violated international law. “We will attack everything that flies and everything that moves on the ground.” The chief prosecutor against Milosevic in the Haag, Chomsky said, would be glad to have such a quotation in his files.