“Unregulated Capitalism is a Suicide Pact”: Noam Chomsky Talks Climate, China, and More with Lowkey
“Unregulated capitalism is a suicide pact” – Noam Chomsky did not hold back today when discussing the worldwide economic system and the world’s acceleration towards climate collapse. Chomsky made the comments in the context of the recent COP26 climate-change conference in Glasgow, where global leaders gathered to discuss global environmental threats, but little of any note was achieved.
The renowned linguist and political scientist also trained his ire on the European Union and its treatment of refugees fleeing from NATO’s wars in the Middle East and North Africa, calling it “one of the worst crimes of the modern age,” and claiming it made “what Trump did to refugees look mild” by comparison.
“[There are] thousands of people dying in the Mediterranean, trying to flee from Africa, where Europe has a certain history — it destroyed Africa for centuries. People are trying to flee from the wreckage and the Europeans are saying ‘go drown in the Mediterranean,’” he explained, noting that Europe had also set up military bases in Niger (one of the poorest countries in Africa) in a bid to stop migrants from even making it to the Mediterranean.
“The message is ‘don’t come anywhere near us. We destroy you for a couple of hundred years, we enslave your population, we prevent you from developing, we murder and slaughter you, but don’t come anywhere near our shores,’” he told Lowkey; “I don’t think there are words to describe this; …it is a hideous crime.”
While widely hailed as the father of modern linguistics, Noam Chomsky has, for well over half a century, also been one of the sharpest and most committed voices critiquing the crimes of the United States government. Having written well over 100 books on a range of subjects – from politics to media to science and history – Chomsky was at ease discussing many of the biggest questions facing humanity today.
Among those questions is the increasing American hostility towards China and the possibility of a terminal nuclear war. While the 92-year-old University of Arizona professor was critical of Chinese actions in the South China Sea, he reserved most of his criticism for the U.S. government, which he claimed sees the world in much the same way as the head of an organized crime syndicate views a turf war. “The ‘threat’ of China is China’s existence; it exists as a major power that the United States cannot push around, cannot intimidate, and does not follow U.S. orders. That is intolerable. Any mafia don can explain that,” he told Lowkey.
The real hysteria over China and Xi Jinping, he argued, is based on the fact that Beijing refuses to blindly follow U.S. dictates as most of the rest of the world does:
Not China, We can’t intimidate them. That’s unacceptable. So we have to destroy them, to prevent them from developing, to try to undermine their economy and send nuclear submarines to threaten them. You cannot tolerate defiance. That’s a major principle of international affairs… That’s imperial power.
In this wide ranging conversation, Lowkey and Chomsky also discuss U.S. war crimes, the rise of conservative academic star Jordan Peterson (and what that says about academia), and the concocted antisemitism crisis in British public life.
- Source : Lowkey
