Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Noam Chomsky sulle elezioni USA e la politica Europea

Un'intervista alla TV Catalana.
http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/18257
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One of the reasons for the extraordinary pressure of consumerism,
which goes back to the 1920s, is the recognition by the business world
that unless it atomizes people, unless it drives them to what it calls
the "superficial things of life, such as fashionable consumption," the
population may turn on them. Right now, for example, about 80% of the
U.S. population believes that the country is, in their words, run by
"a few big interests looking out for themselves," not for the benefit
of the population. About 95% of the population thinks that the
government ought to pay regular attention to public opinion. The
degree of alienation from institutions is enormous. As long as people
are atomized, worried about maxing out their credit cards, separated
from one another, and don't hear serious critical discussion, the
ideas can be controlled.
...
VN: Another thing that happens abroad is the idealization of the U.S.
system by the European media. For example, the presidential primaries
are being portrayed in the European media as a sign of the vitality of
U.S. democracy. And the Obama phenomenon is presented as being
responsible for the mobilization of the masses. This is so contrary to
the reality. But how do you explain this idealization of the American
political scene that is so common in Europe?
NC: People have these illusions, and you have to ask, what is the
source of these illusions? But it's clear what has happened, and the
establishment understands it very well.
For example, on one day, called Super Tuesday, February 5th, there are
a couple of dozen primaries, so there's big excitement. Take a look at
the Wall Street Journal: its front page story on Super Tuesday, with a
big headline, reads: "Issues recede in '08 Contest as Voters Focus on
Character." Shortly after, a poll appeared, which I did not see
reported, finding that three-fourths of the public want coverage of
candidates' positions on issues. Exactly the opposite of the standard
doctrine, expressed in the headline. That's not new. The same has been
true in earlier elections But issues are carefully kept out of sight
by the party managers. It's not true that voters prefer character over
issues. Voters would be perfectly happy to vote for the national
health care system that they've wanted for decades. It's just that
those things aren't options. The party managers - or, basically, the
public relations industry that sells commodities on television and
markets candidates in the same way that they market commodities. When
you see an ad on television, you don't expect to learn anything from
it. If we had a free market of the kind economists discuss, in which
informed consumers make rational choices, General Motors would post on
television the characteristics of the cars they're selling. They don't
do that. What they do is try to create illusions, using complicated
graphics, a famous actress driving up to heaven, or something like
that. The point is to delude and marginalize the public, so that
uninformed consumers will make irrational choices. When you market
candidates, it's the same thing - keep away from the issues, that's
too dangerous because the public doesn't agree with you on the issues.
So what you have is character, trivialities, personal issues -
somebody's pastor says something, Clinton made a mistake when she
talked about Bosnia. The Pew research foundation released a study of
press coverage of the primaries. The top story was Rev. Jeremy
Wright's sermons. Second was the role of the "superdelegates." Third
was whether Obama misformulated his comment about "bitterness" of the
electorate over the economy. And on down to the tenth story about
Clinton's misstatement concerning Bosnia. All of the top stories
listed were about marginal irrelevancies. None brought up the stand of
the candidates on any issue - what the vast majority of the public
wants to hear. You know, anything but the issues. So the population
just doesn't know what the issues are, and this is quite obvious.
Popular opinion in the United States has been very well studied,
mainly because the business classes, who run the country, want to have
their finger on the public pulse - for the purpose of control and
propaganda. You can only hope to control people's attitudes and
opinions if you know a lot about them, so we know a lot about public
opinion. In the last election, 2004, most Bush voters were mistaken
about his views on major issues - not because they're stupid or
uninterested, but because the elections are a marketing system. This
is a business-run society: you market commodities, you market
candidates. The public are the victims and they know it, and that's
why 80% think, more or less accurately, that the country is run by a
few big interests looking after themselves. So people are not deluded,
they just don't really see any choices.
The Obama phenomenon is an interesting reaction to this. Obama's
handlers, the campaign managers, have created an image that is
essentially a blank slate. In the Obama campaign the words are hope,
change, unity - totally vacuous slogans said by a nice person, who
looks good and talks nicely - what commentators call "soaring
rhetoric" - and you can write anything you like on that blank slate. A
lot of people are writing on it their hopes for progressive change. In
the campaign, as the Wall Street Journal correctly notes, issues have
received little attention. Personal characteristics are the key
element. It's character that's up front.
...
 So, yes, the Obama phenomenon, I think, reflects the alienation of
the population that you find in the polls: 80% say the country is run
by a few big interests. While Obama says we are going to change that,
there's no indication of what the change is going to be. In fact, the
financial institutions, which are his major contributors, think he's
fine, so there's no indication of any change. But if you say "change,"
people will grasp at it; you say "change" and "hope," and people will
grasp at this and say, OK, maybe this is the savior who will bring
about what we want, even though there is no evidence for it.
...
NC: McCain is another example of very effective propaganda-creation
imagery. I mean, suppose there was a Russian pilot who was bombing
civilian targets in Afghanistan and was shot down and tortured by the
American-run Islamic fanatic terrorists there. Would we say he's a war
hero? Would we say he's an expert in strategic and security issues,
because he was a bomber of civilian targets? We wouldn't. But this is
the image that's been created of McCain. His heroism and his expertise
and strategy are based on the fact that he was bombing people from
30,000 feet and he was shot down. It's not nice that he was tortured,
it shouldn't have happened, it was a crime, and so on. But that
doesn't make him a war hero or a specialist in foreign policy. That's
all a public relations creation. The public relations industry is a
huge industry, very sophisticated. Probably something like a sixth of
the gross domestic product goes into marketing, advertising, and so
on, and that's a core element of society. It's the way you keep people
separated from one another, subdued, and focused on something else.
And this is explicit and, as I say, it's all discussed in public
relations propaganda.
VN: Would you foresee any difference between McCain and Obama
administrations in terms of foreign policy?
NC: Yes. McCain may be worse than Bush. He doesn't say much, because
you're not supposed to say much about issues, but the few things he
has said are pretty frightening. He could be a real loose cannon.
...
VN: One thing that is very worrisome is the Americanization of
European politics, which I think is happening everywhere. Even the
European left has lost its language. For example, even left-wing
leaders do not speak about the working class, but about the middle
class. Class struggle has completely disappeared from left-wing
discourse. So there is a very worrisome development: American
political language is now appearing in Europe, coinciding with the
enormous weakness of the left.
This Americanization of European political life seems paradoxical,
because it is happening at the same time that U.S. influence is
declining in the world. Europe is becoming more and more like the
United States. Political parties, for example, have lost their potency
and value. Rather than political parties, what we see is leaders'
media networks. And politics becomes a show, a theatrical show. As you
said earlier in our conversation, slogans are presented without any
meaning. How do you explain that, at a time when U.S. influence is
declining, the cultural and political values of the U.S. establishment
are becoming very dominant in Europe?
NC: That's a large topic, but let's just pick a few elements. If you
look over a longer historical sweep, Europe was the most savage and
brutal region of the world for centuries. Establishing the nation-
state system in Europe was a program of mass murder and destruction.
In the 17th century, probably 40% of the population of Germany was
wiped out by war. In the course of this savagery and brutality, Europe
created a culture of savagery and a technology of savagery that
enabled it to conquer the world. For example, Britain is a little
island off the coast of Europe, but it dominated the world. And the
rest of Europe didn't exactly have nice policies. A small country like
Belgium was able to kill probably 10 million people in the Congo.
This, of course, was associated with racist arrogance of the most
extreme kind. And it finally culminated in two world wars. Since the
Second World War, Europe has been at peace, not because Europeans
became pacifists, but because there was a realization that the next
time they played the traditional game of slaughtering each other they
would wipe out the world. They've created such a culture of savagery
and technology of destruction that that game is over.
The Second World War was also a sharp shift of global power. The
United States had been the most powerful economy in the world for a
long time, far stronger than Europe, but it was not a major player in
world affairs. It dominated the Western hemisphere and there were
forays into the Pacific, but it was second to England and even France.
The Second World War changed all that. The United States profited
enormously from the war, and the rest of the world was seriously
harmed and destroyed. The war ended the Depression, and industrial
production practically quadrupled. The United States ended the war
possessing literally half the wealth of the world and with
incomparable security and military force, and planners knew it. They
planned for global domination in which the exercise of sovereignty by
other countries would not be tolerated. The plans were developed and
implemented. In Europe, at the end of the war, there was a wave of
radical democracy, anti-fascism, the resistance, workers' control -
some of which was quite significant ~W and the first task of the
United States and Britain, the conquerors, was to crush it. So in
country after country, Japan as well, the first task of the
liberators, so-called, was to crush the resistance to fascism and
restore the traditional order. Maybe not under the same name, but
often under the same leaders. It was a battle that didn't happen
overnight. For example, Italy was probably the main target of CIA
subversion, at least into the 1970s when the record runs dry, to try
to prevent Italian democracy, because this would have meant a big role
for the labor movement, which couldn't be tolerated. It gradually sank
in: European elites had to accept a position in which the United
States would take over their traditional role of running the world by
savagery and barbarism, and they would accept part of the gains that
would come to the United States from global domination.
It's not that the radical democrats lost entirely in Europe - they did
gain a measure of social democracy. In fact, Europeans live better
that Americans in many respects: they're healthier, they're taller,
they have more leisure. The United States, especially since the 1970s,
has about the highest number of work hours in the industrial world,
about the lowest wages, the worst benefits, and the worst health
outcomes. Even if we just look at height: when an American goes to
Europe, the first thing that strikes you is how tall everybody is, and
it's literally true. So Europe has had many gains from its subordinate
position - let the United States take the lead in destroying,
massacring, and so on - and a kind of complacency has set in. There's
almost a sigh of relief: after centuries of savagery and barbarism,
we'll relax and follow somebody else, let them do it, and we'll just
enjoy the benefits from that.
The political classes, the business classes, and so on, don't have any
objection to this. What you call Americanization is really the spread
of business control. The business classes are quite happy. They're
closely integrated. There is some conflict, but they are really
closely integrated with the United States.
If you look at the conflict, that is interesting. We supposedly have a
free market, or so the ideology says. In fact, we have a state-based
economic system. The dynamism of the high-tech economy comes largely
from the state sector, places like where we are sitting right now
[Massachusetts Institute of Technology], and then it's handed over to
private capital to exploit. Sometimes it becomes almost comical. One
of the leading exports is civilian aircraft. The civilian aircraft
industry is now dominated by two companies, Airbus and Boeing, and
they are constantly having battles in the World Trade Organization as
to which one gets greater state subsidies. In fact, they are both
offshoots of state power. In the United States, commercial aircraft
are largely an offshoot of the Air Force and aerospace, and wouldn't
exist without it.
In Europe the civilian aircraft industry has massive state subsidies.
Recently, great horror was expressed in the United States over the
fact that Airbus won a contract to refuel planes for the U.S. Air
Force. Take a look at the contract and you'll see it's integrated: a
U.S. company working together with Airbus. That's what we call a free
market: state-based industries integrated with one another. But for
the European business classes and American business classes this is an
acceptable arrangement, and since they largely dominate their
societies, it's OK. It's what the propaganda and the doctrine say,
too.
I suspect that, underneath the surface, a class struggle still exists
and is understood, and is ready to burst out at any moment. It's true
you're not supposed to talk about it. One of my daughters teaches in a
state college that has students from relatively poor families whose
aspirations are to be a nurse or a policeman, or something like that,
for the most part. In her first class she asks them to identify
themselves, their class background, give a classifying word. Most of
them have never heard this, you're not supposed to use that word. The
answers that she gets are "underclass" or "middle class." If your
father has job as a janitor somewhere, you're middle class. If your
father is in jail, you're underclass. Those are the two classes.
That's an ideological trap. The understanding that class has something
to do with who gives the orders and who follows them has been driven
out of consciousness, at least on the surface. But it is there, right
below. As soon as you talk to working-class people, they respond quite
promptly because they feel it.


da quotare fino alle virgole, e infatti il "compagno" MMAX è sbroccato

 da quotare fino alle virgole
Sospettavo che fosse un'idiozia.
Tb


sospettavo che il fesso non mi avesse rimesso nel KF

giovanni2 ha scritto:
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Hai troppi nick, è una palla anche filtrarti.
Tb

 wrote:
nel frattempo aspetto ansioso l'orsacchiotto che ti dà dell'imbecille
perchè giudichi gli articoli in base ai commenti altrui e non dopo
averli letti

 Sospettavo che fosse un'idiozia
pinter, se fosse una idiozia l'avresti già scritta
-- 
Luca Logi - Firenze - Italy        e-mail: 
ll...@dada.it