Your friend, dissident and activist Howard Zinn who recently died wrote in his famous book “A People's History of the United States”: “Yes, we have in this country, dominated by corporate wealth and military power and two antiquated political parties, what a fearful conservative characterized as a 'permanent adversarial culture' challenging the present, demanding a new future.” I guess not a lot of people here in Europe but probably also in the U.S. know much about this “permanent adversarial culture”, this world of dissidents and activists. How would you describe the importance of progressive social and political movements in the States especially today?
Noam Chomsky: Linguist, Intellctual and Political Activist
David Goessmann: Your friend, dissident and activist Howard Zinn who recently died wrote in his famous book “A People's History of the United States”: “Yes, we have in this country, dominated by corporate wealth and military power and two antiquated political parties, what a fearful conservative characterized as a 'permanent adversarial culture' challenging the present, demanding a new future.” I guess not a lot of people here in Europe but probably also in the U.S. know much about this “permanent adversarial culture”, this world of dissidents and activists. How would you describe the importance of progressive social and political movements in the States especially today?
Noam Chomsky: I mean it's very important. Take the Iraq war and compare it with the Vietnam war. In the Vietnam war for the first several years there were no constraints. There was no adversarial culture. I mean, I started giving talks about the Vietnam war in 1963. You talked to four people on a church or in somebody's living room or something like that. In October 1965, it was pretty late in the war, there were a couple of hundred thousand American troops. South Vietnam was practically destroyed by then. We tried to have our first public meeting against the war in Boston. Boston is a liberal city. So an outdoor meeting on the Boston common. It's the traditional place for … that's Hyde Park, traditional place for public meetings. I was supposed to be a speaker. It was broken up by force by students in fact. The liberal Boston Globe denounced the demonstrators. The only reason we weren't killed was 'cause there were a couple of hundred police around.
That was October 1965, three years after the war had started. By then there were the beginnings of the protests after many years. And the U.S. practically destroyed Vietnam. If you read the main military historians and Vietnam specialists, Bernard Fall was the most respected of them. He doubted by 1967, he doubted that Vietnam will survive under the assault of the greatest military machine ever unleashed against a country of this size. Well, finally there was enough protests, so that they could curtail what they were doing.
Take Iraq. It's the first time that there's been massive protest before the war was launched. And it certainly limited the war. They couldn't do what the could do in Vietnam. There was no saturation bombing by B 52s. There are plenty of crimes. Pretty much destroyed the country, like the Mongol invasions. But it could have been a lot worse. And it wasn't because there were some constraints. The same is true elsewhere. A lot of constraints against aggression and violence. Well, it's because of an adversarial culture. And the same is true on other things.
I mean, the same in Europe. Europe has by comparative standards pretty decent welfare systems. That wasn't given by some gift from above. It was given because there was an adversarial culture. There were popular movements that were strong enough so that they could demand it. So that is what an adversarial culture is.
Incidentally Howard Zinn who was an old friend incidentally, what he's said in that statement is considered very radical and extreme. You read it in “Der Spiegel” or something. They tell you that he is an extremist maniac of some sort. He is practically quoting Adam Smith. I mean literally. Adam Smith as I mentioned this pointed out in “Wealth of Nations” that in England --- he was concerned with powers in the hands of the merchants and manufacturers. They were the economic power in the day. And they made sure that their own interests are carefully insured no matter how grievous the effect on the public and however hideous it is for everybody else. He condemned what he called the “savage injustice” of the Europeans referring mainly to England in India. He is an old fashioned conservative. He had a moral conscious. And he was rational. He could see how policy was made. Now his position would be considered kind of extremist. That's an indication of the decline of Western culture in the last couple of hundred years. Somebody who is regarded as a hero but never read just warshipped could see things that were very transparent, really truisms. But the counterpart to him today say Howard Zinn would be denounced here as anti-American, radical, extremist and so on. But that tells you something about Western culture. Adam Smith's observation is correct. That's pretty much how world affairs work. And an adversarial culture can combat it. And has over history. That's how progress is made.
David Goeßmann: Thanks a lot for the interview, Mr. Chomsky.
Fabian Scheidler: Yeah, thanks a lot Noam Chomsky for being with us.