Noam Chomsky

[Republicans] have turned to mobilizing sectors of the population that have always been there, but not as an organized coalitional political force: evangelicals, nativists, racists and the victims of the forms of globalization…Every candidate that has emerged from the base — such as [Michele] Bachmann, [Herman] Cain or [Rick] Santorum — has been so extreme that the Republican establishment had to use its ample resources to beat them down. The difference in 2016 is that the establishment failed, much to its chagrin, as we have seen..

The political and social history of Western democracies records all sorts of efforts to ensure that the formal mechanisms are little more than wheels spinning idly. The goal is to eliminate public meddling in policy formation.

Already under Obama, the nuclear modernization programs had reached the level where they were posing a literal first-strike threat to Russia. Trump is escalating it, even more modernization of extremely dangerous forces, also significantly lowering the threshold for nuclear war.

Edward Bernays’ first great achievement, that sort of made a star out of him, was a public relations campaign trying to get women to smoke. So he had models walking down Fifth Avenue smoking cigarettes and showing how it makes you beautiful and slim.

It is beyond imagining in responsible circles that we might have some culpability for mass slaughter and destruction, or owe some debt to the millions of maimed and orphaned, or to the peasants who still die from exploding ordnance left from the U.S. assault…

I think it only makes sense to seek out and identify structures of authority, hierarchy, and domination in every aspect of life, and to challenge them; unless a justification for them can be given, they are illegitimate, and should be dismantled, to increase the scope of human freedom.

I am not so much alarmed at the excessive liberty which reigns… as at the inadequate securities which one finds there against tyranny.

If any foreign minister begins to defend to the death a ‘peace conference’, you can be sure his government has already placed its orders for new battleships and airplanes.

And then, Sir, there is this consideration, that if the abuse be enormous, nature will rise up, and claiming her original rights, overturn a corrupt political system.

When we analyze this war in a materialistic way and ask when is it going to end and who will be the winner and the loser, it means that we do not see the endgame.

Sometimes it’s difficult to accept, to recognise one’s own mistakes, but one must do it. I was guilty of overconfidence and arrogance, and I was punished for that.

[on the 2016 election] In light of this last election, I’m concerned about us as women and how we think. What is going on in our heads where we let that happen, you know?

Artillery is the god of war.

I am sick of all the chaos and the nastiness of our politics. It’s exhausting, and frankly, it’s depressing.

When [Lenin] became the leader, he didn’t waste much time, and Trotsky helped him, in instituting a pretty repressive regime with the basic elements of Stalinism. They moved pretty quickly to dismantle most of the organs of popular power.

I found this national debt, doubled, wrapped in a big bow waiting for me as I stepped into the Oval Office.

That government is best which governs least.

It’s a very good question, very direct, and I’m not going to answer it.

There’s a whole filtering process that enables people to rise through the system into managerial roles only if they’ve demonstrated that they’ve successfully internalized the values demanded by private power.

So the fear of drugs and the fear of crime is very much stimulated by state and business propaganda. The National Justice Commission repeatedly points out that crime in the United States, while sort of high, is not off the spectrum for industrialized societies.

My own view is that the CIA is very much under the control of executive power….It often looks as though it’s undertaking initiatives on its own, but that’s because the executive wants to preserve deniability.