 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today, we're very fortunate to have with us the legendary Norm Chomsky. Norm, welcome to NewsClick. Good to be with you. Thanks. I've only been virtually. About 60 years ago, 70 years ago, MSSR wrote a line which I wanted to read out to you. He said, a civilization that cannot solve the problems that it's created is a decadent civilization. I find this to be a very opposite line norm. How would you characterize the civilization, particularly in the western countries in our time? Fifteen years ago, I wrote a book called Failed States, which was primarily about the United States, but it generalizes to other western societies. They have, especially in the past 40, there are plenty of problems before, but for the past 40 years, most of the west has been engaged in a project which is great for the people who designed it. They're living in heaven, but it's a disaster for almost everyone else. It's called neoliberalism. The guy in the 70s really took off with Reagan and Thatcher. The design was pretty clear in the beginning. We now see the results. They worked out pretty much as anticipated. The wealth has concentrated to an extraordinary level. The general population has stagnated, declined, take the United States. By now, 0.1% of the population has 20% of the wealth. About half the population has negative net worth. Debt, other liabilities are greater than assets. Roughly 70% or so are living from paycheck to paycheck. Anything goes wrong, tough luck. Benefits have significantly declined. Concentration of wealth, of course, immediately translates into even greater control over the political system. It's always great, it's intensified. That shows up in the legislation which is designed to destroy unions, to destroy labor rights, to create a global system which turns out to be harmful for the perpetrators now. A very fragile global system designed to squeeze every cent of profit out of possible with mobility of capital, of course, no mobility of labor, free, and highly protectionist. A lot of talk about free market, but that's garbage. Highly protectionist system designed to ensure investor rights. So take drugs, for example, since that's not everyone's mind. There is a drug, Remdesivue, which seems to be of some use in overcoming symptoms turned by a corporation, really a huge drug company. The drug was produced in part, as always, by government research development subsidies. But they want a patent on it. And according to the neoliberal rules in the World Trade Organization, they have monopoly rights for decades, so they can charge $20,000 a dose if they want to. Now there happens to be a law in the United States by Dole Law, if you want to look at it. And what the law requires, not permits, requires the government to ensure that if a drug is produced with government support, it be available to the public at reasonable price. But we live with criminal governments. They don't pay any attention to the law, none. Reagan made that very clear, everyone else follows him. So nobody pays attention to this law, so they can charge what they want. Well, now there's so much public pressure that maybe they'll back off of it. But that's the way the system is designed. And it's had these effects on the general public. I've left out a lot. It's created what's called a precarious, huge number of people with very precarious positions, no unions, no support. As Thatcher pointed out, there's no society. Reagan and Thatcher were right on target. The first things they did was move to destroy unions, the only protection that people have against predatory capitalism. So let's destroy them. Reagan didn't even enforce, didn't even purposely didn't enforce the labor laws that require some observance of labor rights. It hires scabs, illegal everywhere in the world, break up strikes, corporations have been picked up the board, did the same. So people are left on their own kind of atomized. One consequence is a lot of anger, a lot of resentment, hatred of institutions. It's fertile terrain for demagogues to come along and say somebody else is full. Immigrants, black blacks, Reagan's welfare mothers, he was an extraordinary racist. Blaming the plague of things on rich black women and driving their limousines to welfare offices to steal your check. That kind of Trump is a master at this, does it all the time. That's what the big fuss is about, building the wall and so on. And it's happening in many countries, easy terrain for demagogues. That's the world we're facing. It's a world of extreme savage capitalism. It's had 40 years to wreck things. Europe is intensified by the structure of the European Union, which transfers all decisions, major decisions to unelected Troika and Brussels. With the big banks looking over their shoulders, you can predict what that's going to be. So yeah, the world is in, I haven't even mentioned the worst part. I mean, let's take India. In 50 years, India is going to be uninhabitable under present. If the present conditions persist, very likely, not for certain. But under the current course, the best scientific analysis suggests that India will simply be on all of South Asia, will be uninhabitable just because of worsting the planet. Who does this benefit? The rich and powerful. The fossil fuel companies, the banks, the manufacturing polluters. What are we doing about it? Well, most countries are doing at least something. The country that's doing most is the United States. It is racing to the abyss as quickly as possible. Trump's main program is to destroy the prospects for organized human life. Literally. This is the most criminal president human who has ever lived on earth. Hitler was a monster. He wanted to kill all the Jews, kill all the Roma, 30 million Slavs when you get rid of it. He didn't want to destroy organized human life on earth. Trump does. He knows exactly what he's doing. It just doesn't matter. And the people behind him, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, and pouring money into fossil fuels, they understand perfectly well. It just doesn't matter. The logic under which they operate says maximize your own gain tomorrow. Nothing else matters. In fact, if you read the neoliberal gurus, people they worship, Milton Friedman, says it's straight. The only role of a corporation is to maximize profit for shareholders and of course management. They destroy the world. It's not their business. And civilization would collapse if you don't live up to this. Now this is neoliberal doctrine back to the 1920s. It's not new. Now this stuff goes back to, in fact, the concept neoliberalism goes back to the 20s in Austria. Ludwig von Mises, the great guru Friedrich Hayek. They love authority. They talk about, you know, not liking the state. Total lie. They love the state. They love state power. Von Mises in the 20s could barely control his euphoria. When the neophyte incipient fascist regime in Austria smashed up the labor movement, destroyed social democracy by violence. So that was wonderful. It was eliminating interferences with sound economics. He praised fascism as saving civilization. When the Pinochet dictatorship came in, they rushed to endorse it and to take part in it. It was a perfect experiment for their neoliberal ideals. There could be no objections. The torture chambers took care of that. Money poured in, you know, from international investors from the World Bank, from the United States. They were smart enough to overcome their doctrines, to leave in place the highly efficient nationalized copper company Cadelko, which is the basis for most of the state revenues. So forgot their doctrines with that. Perfect experiment. What happened? Five years they totally crashed the economy. They had to take over more than it had under the end. Did that affect anything? In fact Hayek said that when he visited Chile under Pinochet, he said, I couldn't find a single person who didn't say that there's more freedom under Pinochet than there was before. Which is probably true considering the people he saw. That's neoliberalism. They're perfectly happy to emerge from the present crisis with a system very much like the one they instituted in their benefit, much much harder, more brutal, more authoritarian, more police control. That's fine. That's perfectly consistent with neoliberal ideals back a century. So we should not be surprised at that. And of course they're working on it relentlessly. While they're telling everybody else, you know, stay home, they're working very hard to ensure that the outcome will look very much like this. That's a brutal form of class war unfolding before our eyes. But as you say this norm, which is I think something that you would have anticipated, you know, given our understanding of what was going on, we anticipate this. In fact, as you said, your book was called a failed state. But as we are talking, the streets of the United States are on fire. People have decided that they're just not going to take it after the murder of George Floyd. And even liberals seem to be losing patience. I read George Packer, he wrote an article with the title, We are living in a failed state. It's quite astounding to see a liberal write about the failed state. And of course it's heartbreaking to see the murder of another African American, but then to see people come on the street. I mean, this reaction must, I mean, you know, give us at least some sense of hope. Well, actually, what's happening does give a sense of hope. First of all, the murder of George Floyd is not an unusual event. I mean, events like this used to happen pretty frequently and nobody paid any attention to them. What's encouraging, hard to say this in the midst of these horrors, but what's encouraging is there is a reaction. That shows that there has been a kind of improvement in the level of civilization in the country. Things that passed under the radar before, at least a lot of people notice. No, they didn't protest before, but they're protesting now. But let me say a word of criticism about it. I understand it, sympathize with it, good thing. But notice the focus on the few policemen. One of them is a murderer. Three others stood by and did nothing. And there's a lot of denunciations of those three who stood by. But it's useful every once in a while to look into the mirror. Can you think of anyone else who stood by for actually all of our lifetimes long before while all these things are happening and didn't do anything? People like me, for example, and the rest of us, what have we done to alleviate the circumstances that lead to this? Yes, we can certainly blame the policemen for standing by, but there's a deeper problem, deeply ingrained in white society. Even people who are activists and protesters, we pretty much stood by. The protests today are very reminiscent of others. So in 1992, after the Rodney King murder by police in Los Angeles, after the policemen who killed him were released from the court without any punishment, there were huge protests. A week of protests, I think about 60 people were killed, federal troops were brought in. The effect, as usual, was to shift public attention to rioters. We have to have more law and order, more force. That's the typical response to protests that become violent. We're reliving it, except now there's more protest. And I should say this raises a question that activists should ask themselves. They should always ask themselves. You have to distinguish between tactics that make you feel good and tactics that actually do good. The ones that make you feel good are easy. Like if I can break a window and show how angry I am, it makes me feel good. Is it doing good? No, it's a gift to President Trump and the right wing. They love it. And though it's maybe hard to restrain yourself in times of bitterness and horror and crisis, if you ask yourself, what am I trying to achieve? The answer of what to do is quite clear. Over time, consistently, nonviolent protests, which are hard to courage or strength, these have shifted opinion in support of the cause we're advancing. Violent protests consistently have been a gift to the harsher, more brutal elements in society. And you have to think about that if you're serious about the cause. It's hard. It's not easy. It's easy to sympathize with, especially blacks, that the Buddha on their neck for 400 years can't criticize any reaction. But on the part of others, they should really be thinking about these things. That's a very powerful thought because I think the question of strategy and the question of tactics should be taken, of course, very seriously. I wanted to ask you about something that I think doesn't get talked about much. We are playing with the concept of Corona shock. And we are suggesting that while the more capitalist states have been having a harder time with this pandemic, it's quite extraordinary that socialist countries seem to be bearing up much better. One of the first books I read of yours was the New Mandarin's book, which was about Vietnam. It affected me a great deal, Noam, because your writings on Vietnam were so important for those of us coming up and understanding American power. Vietnam and Prime Minister Nguyen have had a completely different attitude to the global pandemic. And in fact, despite sharing a 1400 kilometer border with China, they have had no casualties. Now, I wonder if you have anything to say about this country that was so brutally bombed by the United States for a considerable part of its 20th century history, has been able not only to have no casualties, but donated 440,000 pieces of protective clothing to the United States. How is one to understand this, a country so brutalized as being so generous in the middle of a global pandemic? Well, it is pretty striking to see the reactions of the Vietnam figures, which I can't verify, but scientists seem to take them seriously. They seem to indicate that the number of fatalities was either very low, maybe zero. In fact, if you look over when the pandemic struck, the United States was singularly unprepared. And there were many reasons for this. The main reason is that it is the most business run of any society. But when a society is business run, it's going to be geared for profit for the rich. That's a tautology. So hospitals were run on the business model, kind of like an assembly plant. You don't have spare resources. You don't have an extra bit. That would be a waste of money. It doesn't work very well, even in normal times. But when there's a catastrophe, or even anything mildly wrong, it's a catastrophe. Under Obama, who was science-oriented, the first W. Bush, H.W., had established a science advisory board. When Obama came to office, within the first days of his administration, he activated it. Then he asked them to work out proposals for an impending pandemic. Everyone knew it was coming, so what should we do? Within a couple of weeks, they gave him a detailed plan and it was implemented. As soon as Trump came into office, first days dismantled the whole thing. No profit. This is extreme neoliberalism instead of mild neoliberalism. Extreme savagery instead of mild savagery. From the first day in office, Trump defunded the Center for Disease Control every year. Eliminated programs of American scientists working in China with Chinese scientists to try to identify potential coronaviruses. Hard, dangerous work, Chinese scientists. Some of them were killed doing it. But all of this dismantled. That's the extreme end. U.S. totally unprepared. Within days, amazingly fast, Chinese scientists identified the virus and sequenced the genome. Given it to the world, everybody knew. U.S. nothing. Intelligence knew. Health officials knew. Didn't want to do anything. That's the worst. Europe was sort of in the middle. Some reacted. Some didn't pay attention to these Asians. But in the China area, almost everybody reacted. Vietnam was remarkable, but New Zealand, Australia reacted how it contained. South Korea was one of the most remarkable. They had a very severe outbreak, immediately contained, almost total testing. No lockdowns. They didn't need it because they used test and trace techniques. And it was pretty much under control. Taiwan the same. Hong Kong the same. Singapore pretty much. Singapore even had hospitals that had been established and kept vacant in case there would be a pandemic. The West much worse. The United States, the bottom of the barrel. And I think it pretty much correlates with to what extent is a government business run? To what extent does the government care about its population? These are inversely correlated. Not always. You have dictatorships that don't care about the population. But among the countries we're talking about, these are inversely correlated pretty much. And you sort of see it. So, in fact, one of the most amazing cases, which is another gap you're not allowed to talk about here, is Cuba. There's something called a European Union. There's a rich country, Germany. They were able to more or less contain it. Extra capacity, extra health and diagnostic capacity and so on. Pretty lewd. That's a very rich country. There's another country, not very far to the south, which had a huge pandemic in the north. Italy, northern Italy. Do you see German doctors in northern Italy? If so, it's been kept a secret. You do see doctors from Cuba. The one internationalist country in the world, which once again is sending thousands of doctors to places most affected, working in the most difficult conditions, just the way they did after the huge earthquake in Haiti and Pakistan. This is a country that's, I don't have to tell you, it's been under the U.S. boot for 60 years. The U.S. is trying to crush it. Terrorist wars. Economic warfare. So stringent that if a Swedish company wants to send medical equipment, they can't because there might be some, they might via the anger of the mafia don, so they can't do it. And it's Cuba, first of all, that has it pretty much under control itself and is now sending help to other countries. I mean, the irony of this is beyond words. It's another thing that you don't see headlined in the press exactly. In fact, when it is discussed, occasionally it is, Cuba is attacked for forced labor, for forcing doctors to go so the state can rob them. Well, it is based on a, like a lot of folder propaganda, it is based on a sliver of truth. And a part of the funding that goes to the doctors goes back to the government to use for health services, for training and improving the health services. Cuba's totalitarian state, slave labor, got to increase the punishment. Is this manufacturing concern? Well, it's a pretty good example of it, I think. But here's the European Union on the one hand and getting international aid for the one internationalist state in the world, the one that's under the most attack by the mafia don. That's the world we're living in. You don't talk about it. Well, Noam Chomsky, it was a pleasure to have your news click and especially to end that time with you, with you speaking so passionately about Cuba. Thanks a lot. Good to talk to you. Thanks. On to the next.