Noam Chomsky

I would not use the term “totalitarian” to refer to the American system of “brainwashing under freedom.” It is, nevertheless, a remarkably effective system, a fact that is rarely recognized, analyzed or understood.

Take Spain. It was admitted into the European Community with some conditions, one of which was that it is to be what is pretty openly called a ‘barrier’ to these hordes of North Africans who the Europeans are afraid are going to flock up to Europe. It’s a narrow distance.

The major advances in speed of communication and ability to interact took place more than a century ago. The shift from sailing ships to telegraph was far more radical than that from telephone to email!

Of course there are differences, but they are not fundamental. Nobody should have any illusions. The United States has essentially a one-party system and the ruling party is the business party.

…if you want to be praised and have your books reviewed and told how brilliant you are and get great jobs, it’s not advisable to be a dissident. It’s not impossible, and in fact the system has enough looseness in it so that it can be done, but it is not easy.

The business classes are very class-conscious-they’re constantly fighting a bitter class war to improve their power and diminish opposition. Occasionally this is recognized.

The idea that workers are only interested in horse-racing [odds] is an absurdity that cannot withstand even a superficial look at labour history or the lively and independent working class press that flourished in many places, including the manufacturing towns of New England…

But even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked.

Although some people felt Adolf Hitler was bad, he was a great man and a real conqueror whose name would never be forgotten.

It profits me but little, after all, that a vigilant authority… averts all dangers from my path… if this same authority is the absolute master of my liberty and my life.

In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the state’s role absolute. In the long run, this made the Soviet economy totally uncompetitive. This lesson cost us dearly. I am sure nobody wants to see it repeated.

Tough love is just the right phrase: love for the rich and privileged, tough for everyone else.

No one’s asked me. If somebody felt there was a job I could actually do I would consider it — not out of any ambition to be in Washington, but I do want to rise to the occasion of serving there if warranted.

Instead of giving a politician the keys to the city, it might be better to change the locks.

Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman can.

If we take all this actions and if it turns out not be true, we have reduced pollution and have better ways to live, the downside is very small. The other way around, and we don’t act, and it turns out to be true, then we have betrayed future generations and we don’t have the right to do that.

The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems.

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.

In France, to break the powerful labor movement, the US occupying forces needed strikebreakers and, more generally, goons. They reconstituted the Corsican Mafia for that purpose and, in payment, allowed them to restore the old heroin connection based in Marseilles…

The problems we face now – poverty and violence at home, war and destruction abroad – will last only as long as we continue relying on the same politicians who created them in the first place.

To confront power is costly and difficult; high standards of evidence and argument are imposed, and critical analysis is naturally not welcomed by those who are in a position to react vigorously and to determine the array of rewards and punishments.