Understanding Power: the indispensable Chomsky (10 page)

And it’s the same right up until today. Why do we have to get rid of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua? In reality it’s not because anybody really thinks that they’re a Communist power about to conquer the Hemisphere—it’s because they were carrying out social programs that were beginning to succeed, and which would have appealed to other people in Latin America who want the same things. In 1980 the World Bank estimated that it would take Nicaragua ten years just to get back to the economic level it had in
1977
, because of the vast destruction inflicted at the end of the Somoza reign [the four-decade Nicaraguan family dictatorship ousted by the Sandinista revolution in July 1979]. But nevertheless, under the Sandinista government Nicaragua was in fact beginning economic development: it was establishing health programs, and social programs, and things were starting to improve for the general population there.
  ⁸
Well, that set off the alarm bells in New York and Washington, like it always does, and we had to stop it—because it was issuing an appeal to the “illiterate and mentally deficient” in other desperate countries, like Honduras and Guatemala, to do the same thing. That’s what U.S. planners call the “domino theory,” or the “threat of a good example,” and pretty soon the whole U.S.-dominated system starts to fall apart.
  ⁹

Orwell’s World and Ours

Well, all of that is within the rhetoric of “containing” Communism—and we could easily go on. But there’s one word. You look at any other term of political discourse, and you’re going to find the same thing: the terms of political discourse are designed so as to prevent thought. One of the main ones is this notion of “defense.” So look at the diplomatic record of any country you want—Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Libya, pick your favorite horror-story—you’ll find that everything they ever did was “defensive”; I’m sure if we had records from Genghis Khan we would find that what he was doing was “defensive” too. And here in the United States you cannot challenge that—no matter how absurd it gets.

Like, we can be “defending” South Vietnam. I have never seen in the media,
never
in thirty years that I have been looking carefully, one phrase even suggesting that we were not defending South Vietnam. Now, we weren’t: we were
attacking
South Vietnam. We were attacking South Vietnam as clearly as any aggression in history. But try to find one phrase anywhere in any American newspaper, outside of real marginal publications, just stating that elementary fact. It’s unstatable.
  ¹⁰

It’s unstatable in the scholarly literature. Gaddis again, when he talks about the battle of Dienbienphu, where the French made their last stand to keep colonial control over Indochina, he describes it as a defensive struggle.
  ¹¹
McGeorge Bundy, in his book on the history of the military system, talks about how the United States toyed with the idea of using nuclear weapons in 1954 to help the French maintain their position at Dienbienphu, and he says: we were thinking about it to assist the French in their “defense” of Indochina.
  ¹²
He doesn’t say defense against
whom
, you know, because that would be too idiotic—like, was it defense against the Russians or something? No. They were defending Indochina against the
Indochinese
.
  ¹³
But no matter how absurd it is, you cannot question that in the United States. I mean, these are extremes of ideological fanaticism—in other countries, you could at least
raise
these kinds of questions. Some of you are journalists: try talking about the American “attack” on South Vietnam. Your editors will think you came from Mars or something, there was no such event in history. Of course, there
was
in real history.

Or take the idea that the United States is supporting “democracy” all over the world. Well, there’s a sense in which that’s true. But what does it mean? When we support “democracy,” what do we support? I mean, is “democracy” something where the population takes part in running the country? Well, obviously not. For instance, why are El Salvador and Guatemala “democratic,” but Nicaragua [i.e. under the Sandinista Party] not “democratic”? Why? Is it because two of them had elections and the other one didn’t? No. In fact, Nicaragua’s election [in 1984] was a hundred times as good as any election in El Salvador.
  ¹⁴
Is it because there’s a lack of popular political participation in Nicaragua? No. Is it because the political opposition can’t survive there? No, the political opposition is barely harassed in Nicaragua; in El Salvador and Guatemala it’s just murdered.
  ¹⁵
Is it that there can’t be an independent press in Nicaragua? No, the Nicaraguan press is one of the freest presses in the world, much more so than the
American
press has ever been—the United States has never tolerated a newspaper even
remotely
like
La Prensa
in Nicaragua [opposition paper supported by the U.S. during the contra war], not even close: in any time of crisis here, the American government has shut down even tiny dissident newspapers, forget a major newspaper funded by the foreign power that’s attacking the country and which is openly calling for the overthrow of the government.
  ¹⁶
That degree of freedom of the press is absolutely inconceivable here. In El Salvador, there
was
an independent press at one time—it was wiped out by the U.S.-backed security forces, who just murdered the editor of one newspaper and blew up the premises of the other.
  ¹⁷
Okay, that takes care of that independent press.

So you know, by what criteria are El Salvador and Guatemala “democratic” and Nicaragua not? Well, there
is
a criterion: in Nicaragua [under the Sandinistas], business elements are not represented in dominating the state much beyond their numbers, so it’s not a “democracy.” In El Salvador and Guatemala, the governments are run by the military for the benefit of the local oligarchies—the landowners, rich businessmen, and rising professionals—and those people are tied up with the United States, so therefore those countries
are
“democracies.” It doesn’t matter if they blow up the independent press, and kill off the political opposition, and slaughter tens of thousands of people, and never run anything remotely like a free election—all of that is totally irrelevant. They’re “democracies,” because the right people are running them; if the right people
aren’t
running them, then they’re not “democracies.” And on this again there is uniformity: try to find anyone in the American press,
anyone
, who is willing to break ranks on the idea that there are four democracies in Central America and one totalitarian state [i.e. Sandinista Nicaragua] that never had a free election—just try to find one statement rebutting that. And if the killings in El Salvador and Guatemala
are
ever mentioned in the American press, they’ll always call it “Death Squads Out of Control,” or “Extremists Out of Control.” Now, the fact of the matter is that the extremists are in Washington, and what they’re controlling are the Salvadoran and Guatemalan militaries—but you’ll never find
that
in an American newspaper.

Or just take this phrase “peace process,” which we hear all the time. The phrase “peace process” has a dictionary meaning, it means “process leading to peace.” But that’s not the way it’s used in the media. The term “peace process” is used in the media to refer to whatever the United States happens to be doing at the moment—and again, that is without exception. So it turns out that the United States is
always
supporting the peace process, by definition. Just try to find a phrase in the U.S. media somewhere, anywhere, saying that the United States is opposing the peace process: you can’t do it.

Actually, a few months ago I said this at a talk in Seattle, and someone from the audience wrote me a letter about a week or so later saying he was interested, so he’d done a little research project on it. He took the
New York Times
computer database from 1980 (when it begins) up to the present, and pulled out every article that had the words “peace process” in it. There were like nine hundred articles or something, and he checked through each of them to see if there was any case in which the United States was opposing the peace process. And there wasn’t, it was 100 percent. Well, you know, even the most august country in history, let’s say by accident sometime, might not be supporting the peace process. But in the case of the United States, that just can’t happen. And this is a particularly striking illustration, because during the 1980s the United States was the main factor in blocking two major international peace processes, one in Central America and one in the Middle East.
  ¹⁸
But just try to find that simple, obvious fact stated anywhere in the mainstream media. You can’t. And you can’t because it’s a logical contradiction—you don’t even have to do any grubby work with the data and the documents to prove it, it’s just proven by the meaning of the words themselves. It’s like finding a married bachelor or something—you don’t have to do any research to show there aren’t any. You can’t have the United States opposing the peace process, because the peace process is what the United States is
doing
, by definition. And if anybody is opposing the United States, then
they’re
opposing the peace process. That’s the way it works, and it’s very convenient, you get nice conclusions.

M
AN
: Can I throw in another one? When you have a country which you can’t even pretend is a democracy—there’s no constitution, no parliament, there’s an absolute monarch—you use the word “moderate.”

Yeah, “moderate” is a word that means “follows U.S. orders”—as opposed to what’s called “radical,” which means “doesn’t follow U.S. orders.” “Radical” has nothing to do with left or right; you can be an ultra-right-winger, but you’re a “radical” if you don’t follow U.S. orders.

M
AN
: I have yet to see a single reference to Morocco’s King Hassan as an “absolute monarch.” He has the worst human rights record in the Arab world, torture widespread, he invaded Western Sahara, disobeyed the World Court, one of the nastiest characters anywhere—I have never seen an article that didn’t refer to him as a “moderate.”
  ¹⁹

That’s right, because we have U.S. airbases in Morocco, and we get plenty of minerals from there, and so on. Or just take Saudi Arabia—Saudi Arabia is even described as “moderate” now.
  ²⁰
In fact, even
Iraq
is sometimes described as “moving towards moderation”: Iraq is probably the worst terror-state in the world—death camps, biological warfare, anything you like.
  ²¹

M
AN
: How about Suharto [Indonesian dictator]—he’s called a “moderate” too
.

Suharto, yeah—that’s the most extreme case I’ve ever seen, in fact, I’m glad you mention it. This is a really astonishing one, actually. For example, there was an article in the
Christian Science Monitor
a couple years ago about the great business opportunities in Indonesia, and it said: after the Indonesian government stopped a Communist revolt in 1965, the West was very eager to do business with Indonesia’s “new moderate leader, Suharto,”
  ²²
Well, who’s Indonesia’s “new moderate leader, Suharto”? Suharto is the guy who, no doubt with the backing of the United States, carried out a military coup in 1965 after which the Indonesian army slaughtered about 500,000 people within four months. Nobody knows the exact numbers—I mean,
they
gave 500,000, pick your number; it was mostly landless peasants.
  ²³

Well, that was very much welcomed in the West, the American media just loved it. For instance, James Reston, the
New York Times
’s liberal columnist, had a column I remember called, “A Gleam of Light in Asia”—things are really looking up.
U.S. News and World Report
had a story called, “Hope Where There Once Was None.”
  ²⁴
These were the kinds of headlines that were running throughout the U.S. press—and the reason was, Suharto had wiped out the only mass-based political party in Indonesia, the Communist Party, which had about fourteen million members at the time. The
Times
had an editorial saying basically: it’s all great stuff, but the United States is right not to become too openly involved, because it doesn’t look too good to wipe out 500,000 people—but it’s going the right way, let’s make sure it keeps going the right way. This was right at the time of the massacre.
  ²⁵
Well, that’s Indonesia’s “new moderate leader,” Suharto. This is probably the most extreme case I’ve ever seen: this guy is one of the biggest mass murderers since Adolf Hitler.

Contemporary Poverty

W
OMAN
: Noam, I want to change gears for a moment if we could. You’ve said that you were politically aware as a young kid in the 1930s—I’m wondering, do you have any impressions of the differences between that time and today, in terms of general outlook and attitudes? How would you compare the two periods?

Well, the Thirties were an exciting time—it was deep economic depression, everybody was out of a job, but the funny thing about it was, it was hopeful. It’s very different today. When you go into the slums today, it’s nothing like what it was: it’s desolate, there is no hope. Anybody who’s my age or more will remember, there was a sense of hopefulness back then: maybe there was no food, but there were possibilities, there were things that could be done. You take a walk through East Harlem today, there was nothing like that at the depths of the Depression—this sense that there’s nothing you can do, it’s hopeless, your grandmother has to stay up at night to keep you from being eaten by a rat. That kind of thing didn’t exist at the depths of the Depression; I don’t even think it existed out in rural areas. Kids didn’t come into school without food; teachers didn’t have to worry that when they walked out into the hall, they might get killed by some guy high on drugs—it wasn’t
that
bad.