http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/talktojazeera/2013/01/201311294541129427.html
Noam Chomsky: The responsibility of privilege
The famed linguist and political activist says intellectuals have a moral duty
to hold centres of power to account.
Talk to Al Jazeera Last Modified: 12 Jan 2013 12:10
Linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky remains as vigorous as ever at the
age of 84.
His popularity - or notoriety as some would say - endures because he is still
criticising politicians, business leaders and other powerful figures for not
acting in the public's best interest. At the heart of Chomsky's work is
examining the ways elites use their power to control millions of people, and
pushing the public to resist.
In this episode of Talk to Al Jazeera, Noam Chomsky sits down with Rosiland
Jordan to talk about the two main tracks of his life: research and political
activism.
And it is his activism that keeps this US scholar engaged in the public
discourse well into his ninth decade.
"The activism for me long antedates the professional work," Chomsky says. "I
grew up that way. So I was a political activist as a teenager in the 1940s
before I ever heard of linguistics."
Discussing US politics, he attributes the growing popularity of the Tea Party
movement, and the fanatical opposition to President Barack Obama in some
quarters, to what he calls the country's "pathological paranoia".
"It's something that exists in the country. It's a very frightened country,
always has been," he says.
At the same time, Chomsky sees Obama himself as a man without a "moral centre".
"If you look at his policies I think that's what they reveal. I mean there's
some nice rhetoric here and there but when you look at the actual policies
the drone assassination campaign is a perfectly good example, I mean it's just
a global assassination campaign."
On Israel's continued expansion of settlements in the West Bank, Chomsky says
"there was no effort" by Obama to even try and curb it.
"[Obama's] telling Netanyahu and the other Israeli leaders: I'll tap you on the
wrist but go ahead and do what you like .... So in fact, Obama is actually the
first president who hasn't really imposed restrictions on Israel."
Chomsky also criticises neoliberal programmes which, he says, have played a
large part in the ongoing global financial crisis and are "pretty harmful"
almost everywhere they have been implemented.
"[In] the 1950s and the 1960s, which was the biggest growth period in American
history, financial institutions were regulated. The New Deal regulations were
in place and there were no financial crisis, none .... Starting in the 1970s it
changed pretty radically. There were decisions made - not laws of nature - to
reconstruct the economy."
And decades later, these decisions have resulted in a situation which "really
is a catastrophe," he says.
But Chomsky also feels that "nothing's ever gone too far. Anything can be
reversed; these are human decisions."
He emphasises: "The more privilege you have, the more opportunity you have. The
more opportunity you have, the more responsibility you have."
Talk to Al Jazeera can be seen each week at the following times GMT:
Saturday: 0430; Sunday: 0830, 1930; and Monday: 1430.
Click here for more Talk to Al Jazeera
Source:
Al Jazeera
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