SpunOut.ie chats with Noam Chomsky on Ireland.... (video interview)

Monday February 22, 2010 13:12

by Volunteer Team - SpunOut.ie

Interview at MIT Boston on GAA, Palestine, Ireland, Bolivia, Climate Change and more...

"All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume." - Chomsky

Interview with Prof. Noam Chomsky January 2010

Venue: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Video interviews online at http://www.spunout.ie/action/Be-inspired/SpunOut.ie-cha...omsky

Transcript below

Professor Noam Chomsky

SPUNOUT.IE: So, Professor Chomsky, I understand there is a rumour circulating in Ireland that you may be joining the Gaelic Athletic Association. Is there any merit in that claim?

NOAM CHOMSKY: I’m sure I’m gonna be one of the major players in the next championship, yes.

SPUNOUT.IE: Is this an aspiration that you’ve always held?

NOAM CHOMSKY: (Laughs)

SPUNOUT.IE: Maybe you could give me a little bit of information about how your relationship with the Gaelic Athletic Association has come about through the Palestine work?

NOAM CHOMSKY: I mean, I’ve met people associated with it through common interest in Palestine and ah, that’s about the limits of my association. Some very wonderful people in fact, like t who just got back from the free Gaza experience with quite a story to tell and in fact started a Gaelic Association club in Gaza.

SPUNOUT.IE: And do you see this type of initiative, like sport, as being an interesting way of creating awareness around the situation in Gaza?

NOAM CHOMSKY: I mean, it’s one. If it does so, fine. I mean the fact that there is a connection of that nature is a way of building up consciousness and awareness of the situation there and what we can do about it. Actually, I was in Ireland a couple of months ago and was struck to see substantial popular sympathy for the suffering and horrible oppression of Gaza. Especially I noticed it specifically in Belfast and I was impressed by it.

SPUNOUT.IE: Do you think there is a consciousness in Ireland for international struggles that maybe is different to elsewhere?

NOAM CHOMSKY: There has been sometimes. So, for example during the 1980s, when the U.S. was essentially at war with Central America, the Reagan administration was carrying out and supporting a horrendous terrorist war in Central America and a good deal of the information about it did come through Ireland. Ireland had special connections. The war was to a substantial extent a war against the church. Now there was a tradition of Irish priests in Central America, and through that connection information was coming back. I could read things in the Irish Press that I couldn’t find here and there seemed to be support for it, a popular concern over the atrocities going on there. I mean Ireland itself has had eight hundred years of oppression which I suppose creates some sensitivity to what it means for others.

SPUNOUT.IE: Ireland, like much of the world is going through some dramatic changes at the moment, particularly in terms of the role of the state, the role of the banks & the role of the church. In your own experiences of coming and going from Ireland, how do you see the country evolving and how do you see the future for Ireland?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, for one thing, there’s a difference between the Republic and Northern Ireland. In the case of Belfast, I hadn’t been there for fifteen years. The last time I was there was 1993. At that time it was a real war-zone as was the whole environment, South Armagh and so on. Today it’s, at least on the surface, at peace. There are tensions and it doesn’t take long to notice their manifestations but it’s more or less peaceful. The major conflicts have been substantially resolved and there’s a lesson there; as long as the British responded to IRA terror by just more violence, it simply stimulated the cycle of violence and retaliation.

As soon as they began with some useful U.S. intervention; George Mitchell and Bill Clinton, they began to pay some attention to the legitimate grievances that lay behind the violence, then it became possible, when there were some moves made, to deal with those (grievances), and they were legitimate. Then the violence subsided and finally it declined, not to nothing but certainly nothing like what it was a few years ago. And that is true generally. Where there is terrorist violence, it comes from something, and quite often it has its roots in legitimate grievances, which should be attended to quite apart from the violence. But when they are addressed seriously, that offers a constructive way to undercut and maybe eliminate the violence and confrontations.

The Republic is a different story. It went through a period of living in a fairy-tale euphoria. There was a moment when Ireland was able to capitalise on the fact that it had an educated, skilled population thanks to substantial state investment and had an entry into the European market so it was a perfect place for American firms to invest, and that led to a false prosperity. The numbers were real, Ireland looked like one of the richest places in the world, but it was all built on sand. The economy was not developing internally. Ireland became one of the main exporters of pharmaceuticals for example, but not because Ireland had developed a pharmaceutical industry or a software industry or so on but it was a convenient place for mostly American firms to invest and enter into the European market. That was clearly a temporary phenomenon.

The opportunity was wasted through a lot of plain robbery if you look at what happened; fake wealth, a housing boom which was based on nothing and yes it collapsed. And now Ireland is in serious financial straits. It’s necessary to live in the real world not a world of illusions and ideology. There are some very good, careful analyses of these; Fintan O’Toole’s recent book ‘Ship of Fools’ which goes through it in detail. He could see it coming, before in fact he himself had written about it, before he saw others worrying about it. Warnings were not attended to and now there is going to be a severe cost to pay.

SPUNOUT.IE: In terms of moving on from the difficulties that Ireland faces, what do you see as potential solutions?

NOAM CHOMSKY: For Ireland? Well, you know, I’m reluctant to talk about what should be done in Ireland because I don’t have a sufficiently intimate knowledge of the problems of the country. That has to be done by people that do. But plainly Ireland is going to have to create a self-sustaining economy. One that cannot just be a launching pad for others, while Ireland tries to live off the booty that comes along with it on the side. I think that those days are probably over. Ireland has opportunities, it has human resources, it has a rich culture and tradition, it’s part of Europe.

It has benefited enormously from the largesse of the European community and again it cannot go on forever being a kind of borrower state, depending on the kindness of strangers. So it will have to build an internally self-sustaining economy which is productive and makes use of the capacities that Ireland indeed does have to create something that is not simply parasitic on the outside. Added that it requires more knowledge of the details than I have.

SPUNOUT.IE: And in terms of...obviously the previous model of development has failed. Looking at your own experience in the U.S. and overseas, what do you see as alternative models for social and economic development? And perhaps where do you see signs of hope?

NOAM CHOMSKY: The main signs of hope today I think are probably in South America. I mean South America, for the first time in 500 years since the European conquests, has begun to confront its fundamental internal problems. The traditional Latin American society has been sharply split, between a wealthy Europeanised, often white elite which is quite wealthy and orientated towards societies abroad rather than the responsibilities for their own society, separated from the other societies of the region, all living in a real mass of misery and oppression. Latin America does have substantial resources internally but it has been a plaything for its wealthy elite since the imperial powers and the United States in recent years and those problems are beginning to be addressed. Other countries are beginning to integrate with one another for the first time which is a prerequisite for independence and they’ve also begun to, in various ways, face some of their internal problems.

Some of the examples are pretty striking like Bolivia where it’s the poorest country in South America but the majority of the population is indigenous. About a decade ago they began to become sufficiently organised so that they were able to take significant steps towards controlling their own society and economy and by 2005 even elect someone from their own ranks as president, Evo Morales. He has just been re-elected with an even higher vote partly because of the remarkably successful economic policies. Bolivia has had a quite impressive growth rate. I think the highest in Latin America. And for the first time, the rights of the indigenous majority are gaining serious attention.

The policies of the government involve control over resources, problems of cultural rights, which are very significant in a highly multi-cultural society, indigenous rights, problems of justice and the initiative for dealing with them is coming from substantial popular movements. These are democratic achievements which are hard to match elsewhere. There’s plenty wrong with it, and of course the traditional elite is bitter and angry and backed by the United States of course so there’s plenty of conflict. For example, one of the farces that goes on in the world is called the drug war, and it is a farce, it has very little to do with drugs but the Obama administration recently de-certified two Latin American countries claiming that they don’t cooperate sufficiently in the drug war; Bolivia and Venezuela, clearly on political and ideological grounds.

That’s one illustration of the hostility of the traditional elites and their traditional backer, the United States in the face of popular movements that are really making substantial gains. Similar things are happening in Ecuador, and in different ways in Brazil and Argentina. These are important moves. I’m sure there’ll be plenty of setbacks. The problems are enormous but it’s substantial progress. Latin America was one of the most rigorous adherents to the neo-liberal programs dictated by the United States, the IMF and the World Bank and suffered tremendously from them but it has pretty much overthrown that and is moving towards independent development. It could be successful. That’s not a radical model by any means.

That’s a very moderate model and I think there are things that can go much farther. Take, say, the United States; the richest country in the world with incomparable advantages. It’s been through 30 years of, from some points of view, the worst economic period in its history. There’s plenty of wealth, but it’s concentrated in very few pockets. For the majority of the population ever since the Reagan years, real wages have pretty much stagnated, in recent years even declined. Their benefits have declined, working hours have increased. Infrastructure is collapsing while the economy is being financialised. Around 1970 maybe 3% of GDP was produced by the financial industries.

By now it’s over a third. The corollary of that is that productive manufacturing is hollowed out, sent abroad or just eliminated which means decent jobs, decent work opportunities, reasonable life for families and communities. First of all this has led to (a) tremendous economic crisis, that we’re right in the middle of and also real anger, populist anger which is very understandable. While the population is suffering, not suffering by third world standards but suffering relative to what ought to happen in a rich country, the financial industries are just booming. Profits are bigger than ever after a huge public bailout, they’re giving away huge bonuses to their executives and that of course that creates a justified anger and it could be very dangerous.

SPUNOUT.IE: There’s a similar anger in Ireland I would say and I’m just curious as to, when you look at that anger and the situation in the U.S. and the situation in Ireland, and reference that to the experience in Latin America what do you think that ordinary people in both our countries can learn from those experiences and how can we organise and think differently?

NOAM CHOMSKY: It’s strange to say but I think we can learn a lot from the poorest and most repressed population in the hemisphere, namely the indigenous population of the poorest country in South America, Bolivia. They took their fate into their own hands and have succeeded. We’re not Bolivia obviously but similar things can be done here. So take for example the manufacturing industry.

A functioning manufacturing industry is going to be the basis for any successful, advanced society. People think of manufacturing as kind of old fashioned & not high tech. That’s not true. Manufacturing is a very high tech industry in fact. But it does offer employment, it develops wealth, it creates the basis for communities to survive and flourish. Does it have to be displaced abroad in the interest of bankers? No, that’s not a law of nature. That’s a special form of neo-liberal capitalism. And it would be possible, certainly, for say, working people in Michigan, in the mid-west to take over those industries, run them themselves, run them profitably and produce what is needed. In fact, what you observe in the United States today is almost surreal. I mean the country’s infrastructure is terrible. Just compare U.S. railroads to European continental railroads.

One thing that is very seriously needed, because of the energy crisis, the climate crisis, the infrastructure crisis is high-speed transit. Now, Obama’s transportation secretary is in Europe trying to use federal stimulus money for contracts with Spanish companies to produce high-speed rail technology and equipment for the United States. That’s outlandish. At the same time they’re dismantling the industrial capacity at home which could very well produce it. Well, you know, it’s not necessary to sit and watch that happen any more than it was necessary for Bolivian peasants to watch the World Bank privatise water so that some economists could be happy and Bechtel Company could make plenty of money but they wouldn’t have water to drink. They kicked the company out and took the system over themselves and that could be done here.

SPUNOUT.IE: What is your key message to people in terms of how they can solve these problems and take things back into their own hands?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well in this particular case, workers and communities can take over the industrial facilities that are being dismantled and just run them themselves. They’ll need popular support for that and maybe federal support too but that probably wouldn’t even be a fraction of what’s being given away to big bankers. Those are all feasible tasks and if the populist anger goes in that direction and in many similar things elsewhere, it could be meaningful. On the other hand, if it turns into a right-wing rage; a Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh style rage it could be extremely dangerous. It’s the task of serious organisers and activists to try to help direct these understandable currents into constructive directions rather than those that might have very ominous consequences. And I presume similar things can be said about Ireland with different circumstances. The same is true in many other things. Take, say, healthcare. The main issue that congress has been struggling with in recent months is a healthcare bill.

The U.S. healthcare system is a complete scandal. It has about twice the per-capita costs of other industrial societies. It has some of the worst outcomes. 50 million people have no insurance at all. It is also the only healthcare system in the industrial world that’s based on, essentially unregulated private insurance companies and a powerful drug industry. This is the only country in the world that I know of where the government is barred by law from negotiating drug prices with the big pharmaceutical industries. Well, you know, when you have an unregulated insurance system, a huge pharmaceutical industry that is free to do what it wants and of course benefits from enormous government support in research & development, in monopoly pricing rights and so on, it’s not a not a free-market system. As long as you have that you’re going to have an extremely expensive, wasteful and inefficient healthcare system. Now the public has views on this.

For years, decades, the public has been in favour of some sort of a national healthcare system. Well that’s not even on the agenda. Private financial institutions and the pharmaceutical industry won’t permit it. They basically own Congress and the White House so they get their way. Now there was an attempt in the current bills to deal with the public concern by allowing what was called a public option, that is, among the options that would be available for healthcare there would be a public one. Sort of like Medicare, the program for the elderly. And there was also an option to allow ‘buy-in’ to Medicare. So instead of (having the option) at 65, you could buy in at 55.

The public was and still is pretty strongly in favour of these choices. If you look at the polls it’s kind of like 2:1. They are not going to be enacted because of the power of the insurance companies and the financial institutions. Are the private insurance companies going to be regulated? Well the latest poll just came out about two days ago, and by a large margin, people think something should be done about it and are in favour of regulation. It’s not going to happen. In fact what you read in the press says that the public are opposed to the healthcare reform.

That’s true, because they want it to go farther, not because they don’t want to have it. But the power of private capital is so extraordinary and Congress and the White House are so subordinate to it that we are going to end up with, at best, some minor improvement over a system that is so fiscally out of control that it’s going to practically destroy the budget. Well, those are signs of serious failures of democracy and of organising and of activism. That has to be dealt with. You see that everywhere. Take say global warming. If nothing is done about that, nothing serious, it’s going to be, maybe not a death knell for the species, but it’s going to lead to a catastrophe sooner or later.

The energy industries in the United States are strongly opposed to doing anything about it because it will cut into their short term profits and they have launched a huge propaganda campaign, which the media are fairly receptive to, to try to convince the public that it’s not a significant issue. And that has been successful. In the past year, if you look at polls, the proportion of people who think that global warming is a serious problem has dropped sharply. In fact it has dropped to the point where barely a third of the population thinks that human activity has an effect on global warming. Well that’s a great victory for the energy corporations. It’s a huge defeat for our grandchildren who are going to live with the consequences of this and here’s a task where organisers and activists have their work cut out for them on an issue that’s basically one of species survival.

SPUNOUT.IE: Can they do it?

NOAM CHOMSKY: We don’t know but it’s not going to happen by itself. And there are many other issues.

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