Noam Chomsky Predicted the Rise of Trump Six Years Ago

[Cheese Sandwich]

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.

This new approach was canonized by Bill Clinton, who triumphantly declared that the "era of big government is over."

With this declaration, Clinton ushered in a new era of the Democratic Party (the so-called New Democrats), which left behind the working class and cultivated amiable relationships with corporate executives and Wall Street financiers; many of them would eventually occupy key positions in Clinton's government, and many of them emerged once more during the presidency of Barack Obama.
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As Chomsky noted in his interview with Hedges, "The United States is extremely lucky that no honest, charismatic figure has arisen. Every charismatic figure is such an obvious crook that he destroys himself, like McCarthy or Nixon or the evangelist preachers. If somebody comes along who is charismatic and honest this country is in real trouble because of the frustration, disillusionment, the justified anger and the absence of any coherent response."

That was in 2010. Now, in 2016, we have Donald J. Trump, the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party.

Trump is, of course, not "honest" in any meaningful definition of the word, but his supporters believe that he "tells it like it is." They view him as a no-nonsense straight-talker, a man not confined by the limits of political correctness.

To garner votes, Trump has tapped into the fears and animosities of members of the white working class who previously backed Republicans but now view the party as a collection of bureaucrats who have sold them out.

Trump, they believe, is different. He isn't bought, they say; he uses his own money, accrued by his uncanny deal-making abilities. He's an outsider; he'll stand up to the stuffy elite. And he, above all, speaks the truth about who they perceive as the real enemies — not billionaires like Trump, but illegal immigrants and Muslims.

"What are people supposed to think if someone says 'I have got an answer, we have an enemy'?" Chomsky asked. In Germany, he added, "it was the Jews. Here it will be the illegal immigrants and the blacks. We will be told that white males are a persecuted minority."

Sound familiar?

"We will be told we have to defend ourselves and the honor of the nation," Chomsky continued. "Military force will be exalted. People will be beaten up. This could become an overwhelming force."

As Matt Taibbi has observed, America, specifically America's political elite, "made Trump unstoppable."

Trump has been viewed with bewilderment by politicians who have divorced themselves from the needs of the people and who have sold them false goods to get ahead. But Trump, as Chomsky's prescient interview demonstrates, was inevitable.

"The mood of the country is frightening," Chomsky concluded. "The level of anger, frustration and hatred of institutions is not organized in a constructive way. It is going off into self-destructive fantasies."
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more: http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/05/05/noam-chomsky-predicted-rise-trump-six-years-ago

[whereisjustice]

1. Dem Party is no longer representative of best interests of families...workers..old..young...

It is as cynical and self serving as Republican Party. The failure to address corruption in banking..education..health care..law enforcement is disenfranchising voters who will lash out by promoting extremists.

[cantbeserious]

2. This Revolt Has Been Building For Years - The DWS, DNC, DLC, Third-Way Has Only Themselves To Blame

eom

[glowing]

3. And he may just win because of the anger and disgust with the alternative to Trump.