Understanding Power: the indispensable Chomsky

by Noam Chomsky

  It’s sort of like what happens in cancer research: Congress is funding a lot of cellular biology because they want somebody to discover a cure for cancer by the time they get it, but what the scientists are doing is just what they know how to do—and what they know how to do has nothing to do with cancer, what they know how to do is work with big molecules. Maybe a cure for cancer will come out of it someday, but that’s sort of by the side. And that’s pretty much the way it goes in the sciences: you can work on what you understand, you can’t work on what people tell you to solve. It’s like the joke about the drunk and the streetlight: you see some drunk guy looking for something under the streetlight and you go over to him and ask, “What’s the matter?” He says, “I lost my key.” You say, “Where did you lose it?” He says, “On the other side of the street.” You say, “So why are you looking over here?” “Well, this is where the light is.” That’s the way the sciences work: you look where the light is—because that’s all you can do.

  You understand only a certain small number of things, and you just have to work around the periphery of them. If somebody says, “I’d like to have you solve this problem out here,” you say, “I’ll gladly take your money”—and then you go on looking where you are. And there basically is nothing much else that can be done. If you started trying to direct the money to solving those problems, you’d just do nothing, because we don’t know how to solve them. There’s kind of a tacit compact between funders and recipients to overlook this …

  The Favored State and Enemy States

  WOMAN: Noam, people often attack you as a political commentator for focusing your criticism against the activities of the United States, and not so much against the old Soviet Union, or Vietnam, or Cuba and so on—the official enemies. I’d like to know what you think about that kind of criticism?

  Well, it’s true that’s one of the standard things I get—but see, if that criticism is meant honestly (and most of the time it’s not), then it’s really missing the crucial point, I think. See, I focus my efforts against the terror and violence of my own state for really two main reasons. First of all, in my case the actions of my state happen to make up the main component of international violence in the world. But much more importantly than that, it’s because American actions are the things that I can do something about. So even if the United States were causing only a tiny fraction of the repression and violence in the world—which obviously is very far from the truth—that tiny fraction would still be what I’m responsible for, and what I should focus my efforts against. And that’s based on a very simple ethical principle—namely, that the ethical value of one’s actions depends on their anticipated consequences for human beings: I think that’s kind of like a fundamental moral truism.

  So for example, it was a very easy thing in the 1980s for people in the United States to denounce the atrocities of the Soviet Union in its occupation of Afghanistan—but those denunciations had no effects which could have helped people. In terms of their ethical value, they were about the same as denouncing Napoleon’s atrocities, or things that happened in the Middle Ages. Useful and significant actions are ones which have consequences for human beings, and usually those will concern things that you can influence and control—which means for people in the United States, American actions primarily, not those of some other state.

  Actually, the principle that I think we ought to follow is the principle we rightly expected Soviet dissidents to follow. So what principle did we expect Sakharov [a Soviet scientist punished for his criticism of the U.S.S.R.] to follow? Why did people here decide that Sakharov was a moral person? I think he was. Sakharov did not treat every atrocity as identical—he had nothing to say about American atrocities. When he was asked about them, he said, “I don’t know anything about them, I don’t care about them, what I talk about are Soviet atrocities.” And that was right—because those were the ones that he was responsible for, and that he might have been able to influence. Again, it’s a very simple ethical point: you are responsible for the predictable consequences of your actions, you’re not responsible for the predictable consequences of somebody else’s actions.

  Now, we understand this perfectly well when we’re talking about dissidents in the old Soviet Union or in some other enemy state, but we fail to understand it when we’re talking about ourselves—for obvious reasons. I mean, commissars in the old Soviet Union didn’t understand it about dissidents there either: commissars in the old Soviet Union attacked Sakharov and other Soviet dissidents because they weren’t denouncing American crimes. In fact, an old joke fifty years ago was that if you went to a Stalinist and criticized the Soviet slave-labor camps, the Stalinist would say, “Well, what about the lynchings in the American South?” Alright, in that case the dishonesty’s obvious, and we can easily understand why.

  Now, just personally speaking, it turns out that I do spend a fair amount of effort talking about the crimes of official enemies—in fact, there are a number of people now living in the United States and Canada from the old Soviet Union and Eastern Europe who are there because of my own personal activities on their behalf. But I don’t take great pride in that part of my work, particularly: I just do it because I’m interested in it. The most important thing for me, and for you, is to think about the greater consequences of your criticisms: what you can have the most effect on. And especially in a relatively open society like ours, which does allow a lot of freedom for dissent, that means American crimes primarily.

  Well, that’s the main point here, I think. But there’s also another consideration which is important—and which simply can’t be ignored, in my opinion. Honest people are just going to have to face the fact that whenever possible, people with power are going to exploit any actions which serve their violent ends. So when American dissidents criticize the atrocities of some enemy state like Cuba or Vietnam or something, it’s no secret what the effects of that criticism are going to be: it’s not going have any effect whatsoever on the Cuban regime, for example, but it certainly will help the torturers in Washington and Miami to keep inflicting their campaign of suffering on the Cuban population [i.e. through the U.S.-led embargo]. Well, that is something I do not think a moral person would want to contribute to.

  I mean, if a Russian intellectual had started publishing articles denouncing very real atrocities committed by the Afghan resistance forces at the time of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, knowing that his accurate criticism would have helped enable the Kremlin to mobilize popular support for further atrocities by the Red Army, I do not think that would have been a morally responsible thing for that person to do. Of course, this often creates difficult dilemmas. But again, honest people have to recognize that they are responsible for the predictable consequences of their acts. So perfectly accurate criticism of the regime in Cuba, say, will predictably be used by ideologists and politicians in the United States to help extend our absolutely barbaric stranglehold on Cuba. Your criticism could be perfectly correct—though obviously much of what we do hear today is in fact false. But even so, an honest person will always ask, “What are the likely consequences of this going to be for other people?” And the consequences in that case at least are clear. Well, making decisions in these circumstances can often be difficult—but these are just dilemmas that human beings have to face in life, and all you can do is try to deal with them the best way you can.

  Canada’s Media

  WOMAN: I’m from Canada, Professor Chomsky, and when I come to the United States and turn on the T. V., to me the propaganda all seems so blatant—I see this woman talking about guilt and abortion, there’s this black woman saying, “I’m on welfare because I’m lazy,” it’s just one image like that after another, there’s no subtlety to it whatsoever. On Canadian T. V. it’s more subtle: the C.B.C. [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation] wouldn’t put on the black woman saying, “I’m lazy, I’m on welfare because I’m lazy”—they’d put up a chart or something that tries to say the same thing.


  That’s right.

  WOMAN: The Globe and Mail [self-billed “Canada’s National Newspaper”] also is more subtle than the papers I see here—it’s not as obvious. What I’m wondering is, how do you explain this difference in the two countries’ media systems? I mean, I don’t think I could apply the “Propaganda Model” you and Edward Herman laid out in Manufacturing Consent to the Canadian media—it really wouldn’t work.

  I think you could, actually—I think you’re wrong about that. Let me just give you some examples. The first part of my book Necessary Illusions was made up of talks on the media that I was invited to give in Canada over C.B.C. national public radio [titled “Thought Control in Democratic Societies”]. Okay, obviously that would never happen in the United States. 29 So that’s a difference.

  On the other hand, in preparation for those lectures I figured that it would be interesting to compare the Globe and Mail, Canada’s main newspaper, with the New York Times, and maybe I’d discuss the results in my talks. So for a year I subscribed to the Globe and Mail—which I must say cost about $1,500 or something in the United States, and apparently all their U.S. subscribers are rich investors, because every two weeks or so you’d get a big fat glossy book about investment opportunities in Canada. But anyhow, for about a year I read the Globe and Mail every day and the New York Times every day, plus all the other junk, and at first I figured it would be an interesting comparison. Alright, it turned out that it wasn’t an interesting comparison. Reading the Globe and Mail is like reading the Boston Globe—it’s like an ordinary, quality local newspaper in the United States: small amount of international coverage, huge amount of business news, and mostly picking stories off sources in the United States.

  Now, it’s true that over that year I did find things in the Globe and Mail which did not appear in the United States, or which appeared only in really remote places. And also I have friends in the Canadian media who clip the Canadian press regularly for me, and they often find stuff there that doesn’t appear anywhere in the United States. So you’re right, there are some differences. But overall, reading the Globe and Mail for a year, I didn’t get a different picture of the world than I get from reading the Boston Globe or the L.A. Times or any other quality local newspaper in the United States. The Globe and Mail was more local in orientation and less international than the New York Times, but I didn’t feel that it was qualitatively different—it’s mostly a business paper like all the others.

  Now, when I go to Canada, I do get asked onto mainstream national radio and television a lot, as distinct from here—a lot. But see, that’s because I criticize the United States, and in Canada they like it when people come up and dump on the United States—because the United States is always pushing them around all the time, so it’s nice if somebody comes and says how rotten the United States is once in a while. On the other hand, I got sick of this a couple times, and I started talking about Canada—and I was off so fast you couldn’t even see it. The first time I did it was on this big morning radio show they have there, with this guy whose name I can never remember …

  MAN: Peter Gzowski.

  Gzowski, yeah. There’s this nation-wide radio talk show in Canada which everybody tunes into some time in the morning [Morningside, on C.B.C], and every time I’d go to Toronto they would invite me to come on that show. So we’d have whatever it is, fifteen minutes, and this guy would ask me some leading questions, I’d tell him how rotten the United States is, big smile.

  Well, one time I really got sick of this, and I started talking about Canada. He said some line about, “I hear you just flew in.” I said, “Yeah, I landed at the War Criminal Airport.” He said: “What do you mean?” I said, “Well, you know, the Lester B. Pearson Airport.” And he says, “What do you mean, ‘war criminal’?” Lester Pearson’s the big hero in Canada [he was a prominent diplomat and Prime Minister from 1963 to ’68]. So I started running through Pearson’s involvement in criminal activity—he was a major criminal, really extreme. He didn’t have the power to be like an American President, but if he’d had it, he would have been the same—he tried, you know. And I went through some of this. 30 The guy got infuriated.

  Then I said something about Canada and the Vietnam War—Canada was always denouncing the United States during the Vietnam War for its criminal actions, meanwhile Canada was probably the leading military exporter in the world per capita, enriching itself on the destruction of Indochina. 31 So I mentioned some of this stuff. He went into kind of a tantrum. I actually thought it was sort of funny, but apparently his listeners didn’t—when I left, after about ten minutes of listening to this harangue, the producer, sort of quivering, stopped me and said: “Oh my God, the switchboard’s lighting up, we’re getting thousands of phone calls from all over Canada.”

  And apparently the phone calls were all just about the fact that this guy Gzowski was being impolite—I don’t know if people agreed with me particularly, but there were a lot of people who were very angry at the way he was going about it. Like I said, I thought it was comical, didn’t bother me.

  WOMAN: I’m sorry, they got angry at him?

  Him, yeah—and they were pretty upset, because there were a lot of calls. Alright, so then the producer asked me “Well, look, could you go on again?” And I said, “No, I’m leaving; I’m busy while I’m here, and then I’m going home, I don’t have that kind of time.” So he said, “Well, can we call you in Boston to do a follow-up?”—which they never do, it’s an in-studio program. So I said, “Okay, if you can arrange it, I’ll do it.” Anyway, they made a big effort, they called me up in Boston, and we went through another show—in which Gzowski was very contrite and quiet, just to make up to the audience. But that was the last time I ever heard from them; I’ve never been asked on that show with him again.

  And that’s happened to me elsewhere in Canada too, I should say—I mean, I’ve been invited to universities in Canada where they’ve literally refused to pay my plane fare after I gave talks in which I denounced Canada. So you know, Canada’s very nice as long as you’re criticizing the United States—try going after Canada and see what happens to you.

  But the point is, I think the media system works the same in both countries. I don’t think it works the same in detail—like, there’s a labor movement there, and there are other factors that are different between the two countries as well which may influence the range of coverage a bit. But I doubt that the differences in the media product are very great—and if you examine the question in detail, I’m pretty sure that’s what you’ll find as well.

  Should Quebec Separate from Canada?

  MAN: In Canada there’s been a strong movement for Quebec to separate from the English-speaking part of the country—do you think it would be in Quebec’s self-interest to become independent like that? And also, do you think it would be to the advantage of American business to see that kind of instability in Canada, or is it better for powerful interests here if Canada just remains stable?

  Well, I don’t know the whole situation in detail, but my guess is that it’s in Quebec’s self-interest to stay part of Canada—because the alternative is to become part of the United States. Quebec’s not going to be able to remain independent, so it can either become part of the United States or stay part of Canada. And given that choice, I think it’s better off staying part of Canada. I mean, if Quebec became independent from Canada, it wouldn’t necessarily be called part of the United States—like it wouldn’t get colored the same as the United States on the map—but it would be so integrated into the American economy that it would effectively be a colony. And I don’t think that’s in the interest of the people of Quebec, I think they’re better off staying part of Canada.

  As for American business, I suspect that powerful interests in the United States would more or less prefer things to stay the way they are—just because it’s too disruptive: you don’t know what all the consequences of separation would be. The way the relationship between the two countries
is now, things sort of work—and after all, all of Canada is going to become a colony of the United States anyway, through things like N.A.F.T.A., so why go and pick off one piece and have all of these other disruptive effects?

  Remember, people here were trying to take over Canada as early as the 1770s—it’s not a new idea. And if you look back at the history of the two countries, in 1775—before the American Revolution even began—the American colonists had already invaded Canada, and had to be driven back by the British [the Continental Congress’s first act before declaring independence from Britain was to send an invasion force to Canada in the unsuccessful “Quebec Campaign”]. Then through the nineteenth century, the only reason the U.S. didn’t conquer Canada was that the British forces in Canada were just too strong to allow it [e.g. invading American forces were repulsed by British and Canadian soldiers several times in the War of 1812]. And ever since then, it’s just been a matter of the United States integrating Canada into our economy through other means: the so-called Free Trade Agreement of 1989 gave that a big shot forward, N.A.F.T.A. is accelerating it still further, and it is very quickly taking place.

  Deciphering “China”

  MAN: Noam, China has been in the news a lot recently, especially in light of their resistance to intellectual property rights, and worldwide concern over some of their extremely destructive environmental practices and human rights abuses. What I’m wondering is, what do you think would be viable diplomatic measures now to improve U.S. relations with China?

  Well, I don’t know—do we want to improve relations with China? China’s a very brutal society, a brutal government: I don’t feel any particular interest in improving relations with it.

  Look, the ways in which issues are framed for us in the media and in the mainstream culture typically involve so many assumptions and presuppositions that you’re kind of trapped as soon as you get into a discussion of them—you’re trapped in a discussion you don’t want to be in. And I think you have to start by taking apart the assumptions.