[Peace-discuss] Noam Chomsky on the Corona Virus (now with automatically generated transcript)

[J.B. Nicholson]

Karen Aram wrote:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-N3In2rLI4

Here's a rush transcript (meaning this comes straight out of the speech-to-text 
transcriber, to some light editing by yours truly, to your email client). Maybe this 
in text format will help you locate this email with a full text search...or maybe 
it'll help the robots advance on us all. One or the other.

Enjoy.

> Srecko Horvat (Host): Welcome to another 'World After Corona Virus'. I am really
> happy and honoured for this special episode, because there is a special guest,
> joining us today. And that special guest is, not only mine but a hero of many
> generations. Both of us are unfortunately in self- isolation, so this is also very
> a special occasion, but without further introduction I think most of you, who are
> watching this know who is Noam Chomsky and I am so glad that Noam is joining us
> today. Hello Noam, could you just tell us, where are you, are you already in self-
> isolation and for how long?
> 
> Noam Chomsky: Well, I am in Tucson, Arizona in self-isolation. So, you wrote, you
> were born in 1928 And you wrote your first essay, as far as I know, when you were
> only ten years old, which was an essay on the Spanish civil war. Actually just
> after the fall of Barcelona and so that was 1938, which looks very far away, for
> my generation. You survived the second world war, Hiroshima, you were a witness to
> Hiroshima, you were a witness to many very big important political, historic
> events, from the Vietnam War, to the oil crisis, to the fall of the Berlin wall.
> Before that, you where a witness to Chernobyl, after that in the 90s, you where a
> witness to a historical moment which was leading to 9/11, which was also a global
> event and most recently, I mean I am trying to really shorten a long history of a
> lifetime of someone like you, but the most recent event was the financial crash of
> 2007 and 2008. So in this background, of such a rich life and being a witness and
> also an actor in this major historical processes, 'how do you look at the current
> corona virus crisis? Is it an unprecedented historical event, is it something
> which surprised you? How do you look at it? That would be my question. I should
> say that my earliest memories which are haunting me now, are from the 1930s, the
> article that you mentioned on the fall of Barcelona was acting mainly about the,
> apparently, inexorable spread of the fascist plague all over the, all over Europe
> and how it was gonna end. I later, did much later discovered, when internal
> documents came out, that the analyst of the U.S government, at the time and the
> following years expected, that the war would end with, the end of the war was
> coming, that the war would end with, the world divided into U.S dominated air
> regions and a German dominated region. So my childhood fears were not entirely out
> of place. And these memories come back now. I can recall, when I was a child, a
> young child listening to Hitler's Nuremberg rallies over the radio, I couldn't
> understand the words but you could easily understand the mood and the threat and
> so on, and I have to say when I listen to Donald Trump's rallies today, it
> resonates. It's not that he's a fascist, he doesn't have that much of an ideology,
> he's just a sociopath, but an individual concerned with himself, but the mood and
> the fears is similar and the idea that the fate of the country and the world is in
> the hands of a sociopathic buffoon, is shocking. The coronavirus is serious enough
> but it's worth recalling that there is a much greater horror approaching, we are
> racing to the edge of disaster, far worse then anything that's happened in human
> history. And Donald Trump and his minions are in the lead, in racing to the abyss.
> In fact there are two immense threats that we are facing. One is the growing
> threat of nuclear war, which has exacerbated it by the tearing what's left of the
> arms control regime and the other of course is the growing threat of global
> warming. Both threats can be dealt, but there isn't a lot of time and the corona
> virus is a horrible can have terrifying consequences But there will be recovery,
> while the others won't be recovered, it's finished. If we don't deal with them,
> we're done. And so the childhood memories are coming back to haunt me, but a
> different dimension. The threat of nuclear war didn't get a sense of where the
> world really is, by looking to early, to this January, as may you know every year
> the doomsday clock is set, set with the minute-hand at certain distance from
> midnight, which means termination. But, ever since Trump was elected, the minute
> hand has been moving closer and closer to midnight. Last year it was two minutes
> to midnight. The highest, matching the highest it ever reached. This year the
> analysts dispensed with minutes, started moving to seconds, 100 seconds to
> midnight That's the closest it's ever been. Sighting three things: The threat of
> nuclear war, threat of global warming and the deterioration of democracy, which
> doesn't quite belong into here but it does, because that's the only, hope that we
> have, for overcoming the crisis and in for [inaudible] public taking control of
> their fate, if that doesn't happen, we are doomed. If we are leaving our fate to
> sociopathic buffoons, we're finished. And that's coming close, Trump is the worst,
> that's because of US Power, which is overwhelming. We are talking about U.S
> decline, but you just look at the world, you don't see that when the U.S imposes
> sanctions, murderers, devastating sanctions, that's the only country that can do
> that, but everyone has to follow. Europe may not like, in fact hate actions on
> Iran, but they have to follow, they have to follow the master, or else they get
> kicked out of the international financial system. That's not a law of nature it's a
> decision in Europe to be subordinate to the master in Washington, other countries
> don't even have a choice. And back to the Coronavirus, one of the most shocking,
> harsh aspects of it, is the use of sanctions, to maximize the pain, perfectly
> consciously, Iran is in a zone, enormous internal problems. By the stranglehold of
> tightening sanctions, which are consciously designed, openly, to make the suffer
> and suffer bitterly now. Cuba has been suffering from it, from the moment, where
> it gained independence, but it's astonishing, that they survived but they stayed
> resilient and one of the most ironic elements of today's virus crisis, is that
> Cuba is helping Europe. I mean this is so shocking, that you don't know how to
> describe it. That Germany can't help Greece, but Cuba can help the European
> countries. If you stop to think about what that means, all the words fail, just as
> when you see thousands of people dying in the Mediterranean, fleeing from a
> region, that has been devastated for centuries and being sent to the deaths in the
> Mediterranean, you don't know what words to use. The crisis, the civilizational
> crisis of the West at this point is devastating, to think of them and it does
> bring up childhood memories of listening to Hitler raving on the radio to raucous
> crowds it makes you wonder if this species is even viable.
> 
> Srecko Horvat (Host): You mentioned the crisis of democracy, At this moment I
> think we find ourselves also in a historically unprecedented situation, in the
> sense that almost 2 billion people, that's a figure I found today, are in one or
> the other way confined at home, whether it is isolation, self-isolation or
> quarantine. Almost 2 billion people in the world are at home, if they are lucky
> enough to have a home. At the same time what we can witness is that Europe, but
> also other countries, closed their borders, not only internal ones but outer
> borders. There is an estate of exception in all the countries we can think of,
> which means curfew in many countries, such as France, Serbia, Spain, Italy and
> other countries, army on the streets and what I want to ask you as a linguist, Is
> the length language which is now, circulating around. If you listen not just to
> Donald Trump, if you listen to Macron, also some other European politicians, you
> will constantly hear that they speak about, war. And even the media speak about
> doctors who are on the first "front line" and the virus is called an enemy. Which
> reminded me of course also, not of childhood memories, luckily but a book which
> was written at that time, Victor Klemperer, "Lingua tertii imperii" the book
> which, which is a book about the language of the Third Reich and in which way
> through the language, the ideology was imposed, so from your perspective, what
> does this discourse about war, tell us and why do they present a virus as an
> enemy, is it just to legitimize the new state of exception or is there something
> deeper in this discourse?
> 
> Noam Chomsky: In this case, [it's important to] protect the rhetoric, but I think
> it's not exaggerated. It has some significance. The meaning is, that if we want to
> deal with the crisis, we have to move to something like wartime mobilization. So
> if you think of, take a rich country, like United States, it has the resources to
> overcome the immediate economic The mobilization for the Second World War, led the
> country into far greater debt than is contemplated today and was very a successful
> mobilization, practically quadrupled the U.S manufacturing, ended the depression,
> left the country with [inaudible] instead, but a capacity to grow. That's less
> than we need probably, not on that scale it's not like this in a world war, but we
> need the mentality of the movement, of a social ??? is to try to overcome the
> short-run crisis, which is severe. Also here we, can recall the swine flue
> epidemic in 2009, to originated in the U.S. Couple hundreds thousand people, at
> the first sight recovered from worst, but it has to be dealt with, That's a rich
> country like the States. Now there's two billion people, the majority are in
> India. What happens for Indian, they live from hand to mouth, who's isolated,
> starves to death. What's gonna happen? In a civilized world, the rich countries
> would be giving assistance, after those who were in need, instead of strangling
> them, which is what we are doing, particularly in India but in much of the world.
> The kind of crisis, you know whether the crisis can be within a country like
> India, I don't know, bear in mind that the, with current tendencies if they
> persist South Asia, is going to be unlivable in a few decades. The temperature
> reached a 50 degrees, in Rajasthan this summer and it's increasing. The waters
> right now, could get even worse, there's two nuclear powers, they're gonna be
> fighting over restricting reduced water supplies. I mean the corona virus is very
> serious, we can't underestimate it, but we have to remember that it's a fraction,
> small fraction of major crisis, that are coming along. They may not disrupt life
> to the extent, that the corona virus does today, but they will disrupt life to the
> point of making the species unsurvivable and not in the very distant future. So we
> have many problems to deal with, well, immediate ones, corona virus is serious,
> has to be dealt with and much larger ones, vastly larger ones, they're looming.
> Now, there is the civilizational crisis, we have to time possibly good side of the
> corona virus, as it may, might bring people to think about what kind of a world do
> we want? Do we want the kind of world that leads to this? We should think about
> the origins of this crisis, why is there a corona virus crisis? Its a colossal
> market failure, it goes right back to the essence of markets, exacerbated by the
> neoliberal, savage, neoliberal intensification of deep social economic problems.
> It was known for a long time, that pandemics are very likely and it was
> understood, very well understood, that there likely to be corona virus pandemic
> slight modifications of the SARS epidemic, 15 years ago it was overcome, the
> viruses were identified, sequenced, vaccines were available, labs around the
> world, could be working right then on developing protection for potential corona
> virus pandemics. Why didn't they do it? The market signals were wrong. The drug
> companies, we have handed over our fate to private tyrannies, hold corporations,
> which are unaccountable to the public, in this case, big Pharma and for them they
> make new body creams, it's more profitable, than that of finding a vaccine that
> will protect people from total destruction. It's impossible for the government to
> step in, going back to wartime mobilization, that's what happened Polio, at the
> time, I can remember very well was a terrifying threat, it was ended by the
> discovery of the Salk vaccine, by a government institution, set off by the
> Roosevelt administration. No Patents, available to everyone. That could have been
> done this time, but the neoliberal plague has blocked that. We are living under an
> ideology, for which economists have a good bit of responsibility, so which comes
> from the corporate sector. An ideology, which is typified by that Ronald Reagan
> reading the script chided to, by his corporate masters with his sunny smile, saying
> government is the problem. Let's get rid of government, which means, let's hand
> over decisions to private tyrannies, that are unaccountable with the public. On
> the other side of the Atlantic, Thatcher was instructing us, that there is a
> society, just individuals thrown into the market to survive somehow and
> furthermore, there is no alternative. The world has been suffering under the rich,
> years and it's now at the point where things, that could be done, like direct
> government intervention on the scope the invention of the Salk vaccine, but that's
> blocked for ideological reasons, coming out of the neoliberal plague and the point
> is that this corona virus epidemic could have been prevented, the information was
> there to be read, in fact it was well known in October 2019, just before the
> outbreak. There was a large scale simulation, by level simulation in the United
> States, in the world of the possible pandemic of this kind. Nothing was done, now
> the crisis was then made worse by the treachery of the political systems. We didn't
> pay attention to the information that they were aware of, on December 31st, China
> informed the World Health Organisation of pneumonia, like symptoms with unknown
> etiology. A week later, they identified, some Chinese scientists, identified it as
> a corona virus, furthermore they sequenced it and gave the information to the
> world, by then virologists, others who were bothering to read World Health
> Organization report knew, that they were Corona Virus and they knew how to deal
> with it. Did they do anything, well yes, some did. The countries in the area,
> China, Soth Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, began to do something and they have sort of
> pretty much it seems contained, at least the first surge of crisis. In Europe to
> some extent, that's happened. Germany which had, which hadn't moved, just on time,
> it has the hospital systems under the liberalism, did have spare diagnostic
> capacity and was able to act in a highly selfish fashion, not helping others but
> for itself at least, to have a reasonable containment Other countries just ignored
> it, the worst of them the United Kingdom and the worst of all was the United
> States, which happens to be led by [inaudible] who says, you know one day there's
> no crisis, it's just like flu, the next day it's a terrible crisis, I knew it all
> along, the next day we have to give it for business, because I have to win the
> election. The Idea that the world is in these hands, is shocking, but the point is
> that it started with it, again, a colossal market failure by pointing to
> fundamental problems the social economic order, made much worse by the neoliberal
> plague and it continues, because of the collapse of the kinds of institutional
> structures, that could deal with it, if they were functioning. These are topics
> that we ought to be thinking about seriously and thinking in more depth about, as
> I said, what kind of world do we want to live in? If we overcome somehow, there
> will be options. The options range from the installation of highly authoritarian
> brutal States all the way over to radical reconstruction to society and more
> humane terms, concerned with human needs of private profit. That we should bear in
> mind, that highly authoritarian vicious states are quite compatible with neo-
> liberalism, in fact, the [inaudible] of neo-liberalism from [inaudible] to Hayek
> the rest, were perfectly happy with massive state violence, as long as it
> supported what they called sound economics. Neo-liberalism has it's origins in
> 1920s Vienna, from [inaudible] could barely contain in his delight, in the
> proto-fascist of the Austrian state and smashed the labor unions and Austrian
> social democracy and joined the early proto-fascist government, praised it.
> praised fascism, in fact, because of his protecting sound economics. When Pinochet
> installed a murderer's brutal dictatorship in Chile, they all loved it, they all
> fought there, [inaudible] helped out of this marvelous miracle, that was bringing
> sound economics, great profit to it, for harness up some small part of the
> population. So, it's not out of line to think, of a savage neoliberal system might
> be reinstalled by self-proclaimed libertarians with a powerful state violence,
> imposing, that's one part, one nightmare, that might come about. But it's not
> necessary, there is the possibility that people will organize, become engaged, as
> many are doing, and brings about a much better world, which will also confront the
> enormous problems, that were facing right down the road, the problems of nuclear
> war, which is closer than it's ever been and the problems of environmental
> catastrophe from which there is no recovery once we've gotten to that stage, that
> it's not far in distance, unless we act decisively. So it's a critical moment of
> human history, not just because of the corona virus, but to bring us, should bring
> us to awareness of the profound flaws the world flawed not strong enough, the
> deep, dysfunctional characteristics of the whole socio-economic system, which has
> to [inaudible], if there's going to be a survivable future. So this could be a
> warning sign and a lesson to deal with it today or prevent it from exploding, but
> thinking of it's roots and how those roots are going to lead to more crisis, worse
> ones than this, extra pay right away.
> 
> Srecko Horvat (Host): And since we don't have much time, I'll just pose one last
> question, yes, so, I think many people are interested and also us, who are active
> in social movements and mobilization and organized for decades, using physical and
> social closeness between people, but now suddenly we are all getting accustomed to
> what is now being called 'Social-distancing', so my questions is, how do you see
> the future of social resistance, in times of social distance and if this takes a
> few more months, not to mention maybe a year to two, and we are mainly in self
> isolation at home, what would be your advise to progressives around the world,
> activists, also intellectuals, students, workers, how to organize in this new
> situation? And could you perhaps tell us whether you see a hope , that instead of
> going into a global authoritarianism, this open historic situation might go in a
> radical transformation of the world, which would be green, equal, just and full of
> solidarity?
> 
> Noam Chomsky: First of all, we should bear in mind that, in the past few years,
> there has been a form of social isolation, which is very damaging. Now you go into
> a McDonald's and take a look at a bunch of teenagers, sitting around the table,
> having a hamburger, what you see is, two conversations going. One sort of shallow
> discussion among them, another the one, that each one is having on his cellphone,
> with some remote individual, who with friend. This has atomized and isolated
> people to an extraordinary extent. The Thatcher principle, there was no society,
> has escalated, the misused social media, that has turned people into very isolated
> creatures, especially young people. There are actually universities, now in the
> United States, where the sidewalk have plaques on them, saying, look up. Because
> every kid is walking around, is glued to itself. That's a form of self induced
> social isolation, which has been very harmful. We're now on a situation of real
> social isolation. It has to be overcome by recreating, social bonds in whatever
> way can be done , who need if whatever kind that can be helping people in need.
> Contacting them, developing organizations, expanding nationalization, like before I'm
> getting them to be functional and operative, making plans for the future, bringing
> people together as he can in the internet age, to join, consult deliberate to
> figure out answers to the problems that they face and work on them, which can be
> done, it's not face to-face communication which for human beings is essential. But
> it'll be deprived of it for a while, you can put it on hold find other ways and
> continue with the, and in fact, extend and deepen the activities carried out, can
> be done, it's not going to be easy, but humans have faced problem
> 
> Srecko Horvat (Host): Can I pose a question, since we are both in self-isolation?
> 
> Noam Chomsky: My dog is trying to have a conversation.
> 
> Srecko Horvat (Host): Was that before a parrot? You have a bird as well or a
> parrot? Or a bird, there was a sound of a bird, yes?
> 
> Noam Chomsky: Yes, a ????? Parrot, it can say: Sovereignty to all the people in
> Portuguese. That's better wisdom than we hear from people in Washington.

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