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Noam Chomsky predicted the rise of Donald Trump six years ago
Salon ^ | May 20th, 2016 | Jake Johnson, AlterNet

Posted on 05/20/2016 6:51:31 AM PDT by Mariner

In an interview with Chris Hedges in 2010, Noam Chomsky, the world-renowned linguist and dissident intellectual, remarked that he has “never seen anything like this.”

By this, he meant the state of American society, relative to the time in which he was raised — the Depression years — and to the tumultuous state of Europe during that same period.

“It is very similar to late Weimar Germany,” Chomsky said. “The parallels are striking. There was also tremendous disillusionment with the parliamentary system. The most striking fact about Weimar was not that the Nazis managed to destroy the Social Democrats and the Communists but that the traditional parties, the Conservative and Liberal parties, were hated and disappeared. It left a vacuum which the Nazis very cleverly and intelligently managed to take over.”

For decades, Chomsky has warned of the right turn of the Democratic Party, which has, in an effort to win elections, adopted large swaths of the Republican platform and abandoned the form of liberalism that gave us the New Deal and, later, Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.

(Excerpt) Read more at salon.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: alternet; chomsky; chrishedges; demagogicparty; jakejohnson; memebuilding; nazi; noamchomsky; partisanmediashill; partisanmediashills; predictions; salon; trump2016
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To: Mariner

Did anyone actually read Chomsky’s comments? The Democrats have absolutely veered in a different direction since the Progressive era. The have abandoned the unions in favor of cheap foreign labor. The have embraced foreign intervention and the military industrial complex. They have entered in to and maintain an unholy alliance with the Wall Street Gang and have given the “TooBigToFail” Gang a big sweaty hug. So have the Republicans. For the most part anyway. He quite accurately describes what many on here call the Uniparty. And he quite accurately predicted the rise of a “strongman” which Trump absolutely is. The writer thinks Trump’s “honesty” is not legit. I happen to think it is 100% legit. And Trump has my full support. But don’t discount Chomskly’s analysis of the conditions under which a dude like Trump could rise to the top. He is right. There’s a lot more thought in his comments than the typical “So and So is Hitler” we hear in the lamestream media all the time. Lots more.

Incidentally, the Old Left was not all bad. Wish they were not hunted to extinction. We need people who are against the Perpetual State of War we find ourselves in now, and are willing to stand up against the emergent surveillance state. And be champions of civil liberties when pol’s from both parties are encouraging us to relinquish more and more rights to be “safe.” Seriously. Don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater.


21 posted on 05/20/2016 7:30:44 AM PDT by 2big2fail
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To: Mariner
Totally wrong analogy with the Weimar Republic -- which was an unstable democratic experiment.

A much better analogy would be with the USSR of 1980s, which was a stable one-party socialist state slipping into morass ... just like the US today.

22 posted on 05/20/2016 7:37:08 AM PDT by mvonfr
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To: Mariner

The irony of this piece is that the morons who think they are making a statement regarding Trump by reference to Chomsky - that Chomsky himself wrote in detailed fashion in, ‘The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism’(initially couldn’t get a publisher in the US had to go to Canada) how the establishment media and corporate America work hand in hand in exploiting for cheap labour and propping up 3rd world dictatorships (or any dictatorships for that matter, Chicoms, etc.). They themselves, not Trump, are the aiders and abetters of fascism and exploitation all the while exporting manufacturing and industry out of the U.S.

Some have suggested Chomsky is a libertarian socialist (he himself has stated he is), others an anarchist. The reality is that his criticisms of the establishment media and corporate cheap labour America are equally applicable to the purveyors of the attacks on Trump.

But the reality is that this piece primarily attacks the Democratic Party:

“Bill Clinton, for his part, destroyed welfare, deregulated Wall Street, worsened the growing mass incarceration crisis, and signed into law the North American Free Trade Agreement, a sweeping deal that harmed millions of workers, in the United States, Mexico, and elsewhere.

Today, President Obama, in partnership with congressional Republicans, is lobbying aggressively for the so-called Trans-Pacific Partnership, which has been deemed by critics “NAFTA on steroids.” The agreement, if made the law of the land, will encompass 40% of global GDP and will grant massive companies unprecedented power.”

Some of these comments are caricatures but have grains of truth:

“Democrats, in short, have left the working class in the dust, often using “the excuse,” as a recent New York Times editorial put it, “that they need big-money backers to succeed.”

Republicans, meanwhile, as Chomsky has observed, are “dedicated with utter servility” to the interests of the wealthy, and their party, with its longing for war and denial of climate science, “is a danger to the human species.””

The GOPe has certainly gone down the road noted in the latter but Chomsky’s “denial of climate science” is just stupid leftist clap-trap.

I would have thought the empty-suited charismatic figure referenced to in the last paragraph was applicable to Obama though. It has no reference to Trump.


23 posted on 05/20/2016 7:43:23 AM PDT by Lent
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To: 2big2fail

Excellent comments as I’ve noted below you. Chomsky being the anarchist/libertarian socialist is as apt to attack the globalist cheap labour Democratic Party as he is the Republican Party which most of us have identified as the GOPe, globalist cheap labour express.


24 posted on 05/20/2016 7:49:39 AM PDT by Lent
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To: Lent
"The reality is that his criticisms of the establishment media and corporate cheap labour America are equally applicable to the purveyors of the attacks on Trump."

Correct. It is fascism that is most threatened by Trump and his voters.

International Fascism.

25 posted on 05/20/2016 8:20:39 AM PDT by Mariner (War Criminal #18)
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To: Mariner

Good grief. Is that old guy still alive and stirring up trouble?


26 posted on 05/20/2016 8:22:49 AM PDT by ladyjane
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To: Mariner

Noam Chomsky is one of the people most responsible for creating a political environment in which Donald Trump can become President.

Extreme leftism requires an extreme solution.


27 posted on 05/20/2016 8:23:00 AM PDT by MeganC (The Republic of The United States of America: 7/4/1776 to 6/26/2015 R.I.P.)
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To: Mariner

This old tosser is still alive?


28 posted on 05/20/2016 8:28:15 AM PDT by Albion Wilde (In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. --George Orwell)
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To: Mariner

Remember that Noam Chomsky is by far the most racist person who has ever lived, who with just a small group of his academic peers, managed to take black Americans from a near academic par with white students in the 1950s, even in segregated schools, to bottom basement near-illiteracy just two decades later.

He did this by creating the “Whole language” method of teaching English, which does not work, and never has, though they still push it; instead of the highly successful method of instruction called Phonics.

Poor black schools were “gifted” with free instructional materials that *prevented* them from learning to read, write and otherwise use good English. And stripped of literacy, they *could not* succeed in any other coursework.

So Noam Chomsky almost singlehandedly condemned *millions* of black children to lives of unemployment, underemployment, poverty, misery, despair and government dependency.

For this, we can but hope there is a Hell, so that Noam Chomsky can suffer an eternity of the pain and anguish he has inflicted on people he must passionately hate.


29 posted on 05/20/2016 8:51:54 AM PDT by yefragetuwrabrumuy ("Don't compare me to the almighty, compare me to the alternative." -Obama, 09-24-11)
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To: Mariner

ok so NOAM is a cunning linquist and a left wing turd...

got it

and we care what he says or thinks.... why??

is this the same SALON that advances pedophilia and masturbation.....

oh i see...

and who but libtards care about SALON...???


30 posted on 05/20/2016 9:05:04 AM PDT by zzwhale
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To: Mariner

Not to worry, Ben Shapiro, Michael Medved and Mark Levin are already on this. #neverTrump has already figured out that we are Brownshirts.


31 posted on 05/20/2016 9:08:44 AM PDT by Pelham (Trump/Tsoukalos 2016 - vote the great hair ticket)
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To: MeganC

“Noam Chomsky is one of the people most responsible for creating a political environment in which Donald Trump can become President. Extreme leftism requires an extreme solution.”

+1


32 posted on 05/20/2016 9:10:13 AM PDT by Pelham (Trump/Tsoukalos 2016 - vote the great hair ticket)
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To: MeganC

“Noam Chomsky is one of the people most responsible for creating a political environment in which Donald Trump can become President. Extreme leftism requires an extreme solution.”

+1


33 posted on 05/20/2016 9:10:16 AM PDT by Pelham (Trump/Tsoukalos 2016 - vote the great hair ticket)
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To: Mariner

Chomsky the America hater:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3432317/posts


34 posted on 05/20/2016 9:21:21 AM PDT by Albion Wilde (In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. --George Orwell)
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To: Mariner

““It is very similar to late Weimar Germany,” Chomsky said. “The parallels are striking.”

Chomsky’s an F-ing idiot, which is nothing new; but there are zero similarities between the U.S. right now with Weimar Germany. People aren’t wheeling around wheel barrows of money to buy loaves of bread, and armed Communists gangs aren’t attempting armed insurrection of the government, while executing dissidents in basements.


35 posted on 05/20/2016 9:46:51 AM PDT by catnipman (Cat Nipman: Vote Republican in 2012 and only be called racist one more time!)
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To: billyboy15

Bush, now Trump yet obama is more like Hitler than both.


36 posted on 05/20/2016 9:52:05 AM PDT by Pollard (TRUMP 2016)
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Why would anyone be surprised that the "brown shirts" meme now in use by the Demagogic Party got its start in the mouth of the demagogue Glenn Beck?


Glenn Beck to Vote for Hillary if McCain is GOP Nominee Glenn Beck - Why he would of voted for Hillary instead of John McCain Glenn Beck: McCain would've been worse Glenn Beck: I May have Voted for Hillary Clinton Glenn Beck: 'I won't vote for Trump.' (Even if running against Hillary)
Glenn Beck to Vote for Hillary if McCain is GOP Nominee Glenn Beck - Why he would of voted for Hillary instead of John McCain Glenn Beck: McCain would've been worse Glenn Beck: I May have Voted for Hillary Clinton Glenn Beck: 'I won't vote for Trump.' (Even if running against Hillary)


37 posted on 05/20/2016 11:06:25 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (I'll tell you what's wrong with society -- no one drinks from the skulls of their enemies anymore.)
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