by
Noam Chomsky
1
Looking Ahead: Tenth Anniversary Interview
0
terms
2
notes
6
[...] The Gingrich program has several aspects to it. He wants to focus on what he calls “cultural issues.” That makes sense, because when you’re going to rob people blind you don’t want to have them focus their attention on economic issues. The second is the actual programs, robbing people blind and enriching the rich. [...]
[...] In order to push through the social policies that really interest them, like distributing resources even more to the rich than before and reducing the status of the general population and marginalizing them even more than before—in order to carry that off, they have to develop at least some kind of popular support. You have to mobilize some support for what you’re doing. You can’t do that on the social and economic issues. So therefore you turn to what they call “cultural issues.” There’s something that resembles the 1930s about this, Germany in the 1930s. You try to mobilize people on something else. So a large part of the focus of attention in the Gingrich program is what he calls “rebuilding American civilization,” which means cutting back on rights of women, prayer in the schools, narrowing the spectrum of discussion, attacking civil liberties, and so on. Those are things that rich and powerful people don’t like, because they benefit from those. First of all, they tend to be what is called “liberal” on cultural values. [...]
kind of obvious but worth remembering. relevant to my convo with the taxi driver about jordan peterson etc
[...] The Gingrich program has several aspects to it. He wants to focus on what he calls “cultural issues.” That makes sense, because when you’re going to rob people blind you don’t want to have them focus their attention on economic issues. The second is the actual programs, robbing people blind and enriching the rich. [...]
[...] In order to push through the social policies that really interest them, like distributing resources even more to the rich than before and reducing the status of the general population and marginalizing them even more than before—in order to carry that off, they have to develop at least some kind of popular support. You have to mobilize some support for what you’re doing. You can’t do that on the social and economic issues. So therefore you turn to what they call “cultural issues.” There’s something that resembles the 1930s about this, Germany in the 1930s. You try to mobilize people on something else. So a large part of the focus of attention in the Gingrich program is what he calls “rebuilding American civilization,” which means cutting back on rights of women, prayer in the schools, narrowing the spectrum of discussion, attacking civil liberties, and so on. Those are things that rich and powerful people don’t like, because they benefit from those. First of all, they tend to be what is called “liberal” on cultural values. [...]
kind of obvious but worth remembering. relevant to my convo with the taxi driver about jordan peterson etc
9
[...] none of these people believe in a free market or anything remotely like it. They want a powerful welfare state, directing resources and protection to them. So on the one hand you have a powerful welfare state for a small sector of the population. For the rest, those who you need to do the dirty work, you pay them a pittance, and if they won’t do it, get somebody else. A large part of them are just superfluous. You don’t need them at all. In the Third World, maybe you send out death squads. Here you don’t quite send out death squads, so you lock them into urban slums which are more or less urban concentration camps and make sure they don’t have any resources there so it will collapse and deteriorate. If that won’t work, just throw them into jail.
[...] none of these people believe in a free market or anything remotely like it. They want a powerful welfare state, directing resources and protection to them. So on the one hand you have a powerful welfare state for a small sector of the population. For the rest, those who you need to do the dirty work, you pay them a pittance, and if they won’t do it, get somebody else. A large part of them are just superfluous. You don’t need them at all. In the Third World, maybe you send out death squads. Here you don’t quite send out death squads, so you lock them into urban slums which are more or less urban concentration camps and make sure they don’t have any resources there so it will collapse and deteriorate. If that won’t work, just throw them into jail.