From: hayesstw@telkomsa.net   
      
   Noam Chomsky: The Left needs to “find common ground” with Evangelical   
   Christians   
      
   "There’s no point arguing that it can’t be done because the cultural   
   differences are too great," says Chomsky   
      
   Charles Derber   
      
   Excerpted from "Welcome to the Revolution: Universalizing Democracy   
   for Social Justice in Perilous Times" by Charles Derber (Routledge,   
   August 2017, paperback). Excerpted with permission from the publisher.   
      
   This discussion between Noam Chomsky and Charles Derber took place on   
   October 21, 2016, and is excerpted from a forthcoming ?lm to be   
   released in 2017.   
      
   Noam, recently you gave a very powerful talk on the theme of   
   extinction, the nightmare looming over us from climate change and   
   nuclear war. As I listened and read the transcript, one gets the   
   feeling that we’re entering a new stage of history. It’s not an easy   
   stage to contemplate. What I want to focus on in this conversation is   
   just what can everybody do, especially in the wake of Trump’s election   
   as President. Trump’s agenda appears to be taking out the climate   
   initiatives that gave a little hope on climate change. And foreign   
   policy measures that would make nuclear con?ict more likely deserve   
   attention in our discussion of extinction.   
      
   Do you believe we have moved into this new era? Do you see the threat   
   of extinction as fundamentally changing the way the Left movements   
   have to think about what they’re doing?   
      
   It’s very dif?cult to talk about the Left as an entity because it’s a   
   collection of very disparate movements involved in all sorts of   
   endeavors, many of them quite valuable.   
      
   The Left needs to become uni?ed and integrated because whatever   
   particular issue you’re working on, this crisis of potential   
   extinction is overshadowing it. There must be international   
   solidarity.   
      
   The situation for organizing here is not that bleak. If you take a   
   look at the last election, Clinton won a majority of the votes. The   
   outcome has to do with special features of the U.S. electoral system,   
   which is pretty regressive by world standards. Among younger people,   
   Clinton did win a substantial majority. More important, Sanders won an   
   overwhelming majority. That’s the younger part of the population. You   
   take a look at Trump supporters. Many of them voted for Obama.   
      
   In 2008, they were seduced by his slogan which was Hope and Change.   
   They pretty quickly found out that they’re not getting hope and   
   they’re not getting change. Now they voted for someone else who’s   
   preaching hope and change, different orientation. They want change.   
   They’re right. The situation that much of the workforce and lower   
   middle class has lived in is, it’s not starvation, but it’s   
   stagnation. The system has been designed. It’s not a matter of   
   economic laws. It’s policy and decisions, which have been quite   
   harmful to a large mass of the population. In fact, a majority. It’s   
   also undermined democracy, both here and even more so in Europe.   
   There’s a natural and justi?ed call for change. These are   
   opportunities for the Left. Many of the people who voted for Trump   
   could have voted for Sanders.   
      
   A lot of people are saying now, they’re putting a lot of onus of   
   responsibility on Obama and on Clinton.   
      
   The Left has been highly critical of neoliberalism. But it hasn’t been   
   seen broadly by the population. Particularly the working-class parts   
   of the population that you’re identifying as being really harmed by   
   this, as that somehow neither the Left nor the Democratic Party is   
   really speaking to them. It’s speaking to coastal elites, it’s   
   speaking to educated people, speaking maybe to young educated people.   
   It’s not speaking to them.   
      
   Not speaking to people who are really deprived.   
      
   The Left should be working with and for the African-American   
   community, it should be working on civil rights, it should be working   
   for gay rights, for women’s rights, and so on. That’s ?ne. What it has   
   dropped pretty much is class issues.   
      
   Would you encourage the Left to rethink the class issue and economic   
   opportunities—that maybe a Sanders-style development will help   
   recon?gure the Left? Not that it abandons the most depressed people in   
   the society, but it ?nds a way to deal with larger forces of   
   inequality, as you say, as integrated within the larger capitalist   
   systems.   
      
   It’s certainly a must. The so-called identity politics has led to   
   great successes, but when they are designed and presented in such a   
   way that they appear to be an attack on the lifestyle, values,   
   commitments of a large part of the population, there’s going to be   
   reaction. That shouldn’t be done.   
      
   For example, the progressive movement uses the language of white   
   privilege. Some of the people who live in working-class areas, white   
   working-class areas, they look at that and they say, “What are you   
   talking about? We’re not seeing this privilege.” Does this require the   
   Left to re-assess its vocabulary?   
      
   It’s not just about our vocabulary. It’s about an understanding.   
   Actually, Arlie Hochschild’s book is very revealing in this respect.   
      
   “Strangers in Their Own Land.” Hochschild is a noted sociologist.   
      
   We know the story. She’s lived for many years in the bayou country in   
   Louisiana and gave a very sympathetic understanding, conception of   
   what the people are thinking and why, from a point of view of a   
   Berkeley progressive, which she is. She was accepted into the   
   community. It’s very revealing. The images she uses, which they   
   accepted as the correct ones, is that people . . . they see themselves   
   as standing in a line. They’ve been working hard all their lives,   
   their parents worked hard, they’re doing all the right things. . . .   
   They go to church, they read the Bible, they have traditional   
   families, and so on. They’ve done everything the right way.   
      
   All of the sudden the line is stalled. Up ahead of them, there are   
   people leaping forward, which doesn’t bother them because according to   
   the doctrine, that’s the American way. You work hard and you have   
   merit, strange kind of merit, you get rewards. What bothers them is   
   that the people behind them in the line, as they see it, are being   
   pushed ahead of them by the federal government.   
      
   By liberal elites and so forth.   
      
   By liberal elites and the federal government. That they resent. The   
   facts are different. There’s no basis in fact, but you can understand   
   the basis for the perception. That can be dealt with by serious   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)