What We Say Goes - Noam Chomsky

WHAT WE SAY GOES – NOAM CHOMSKY

Does anybody still read Chomsky nowadays, or are we all meant to have moved on? Have the neo-conservatives finally wiped the board of everything and now totally own common sense values as once highlighted by Gramsci as being of necessity if social change is ever to occur?

What We Say Goes is another one of those books comprised of interviews with Noam Chomsky conducted by David Barsamian, this time published by Penguin rather than AK Books. It's from 2006 which means a fair bit of it is now out of date due to the world having moved on – arguably for the worse. We now, of course, have a shitbag, fucking scumbag, lying, narcissistic fucking bastard in the White House. ISIS have superseded Al-Queda, Brexit has happened, and climate destruction is fully on the agenda.

So what has Chomsky got to say this time round? Well, right from the start I'm reprimanded and put to rights for heaping abuse upon an American President. “If you want to contribute to the success of the ultra-right, then you should make fun of George Bush's accent and engage in other forms of ridicule,” he says “But that rhetoric is destructive and childish. And the same holds true of everyone else's rhetoric. What's important is the content.”

I appreciate this and I acknowledge it. Rhetoric is what nowadays makes the world go round. 90% of the news these days is rhetoric. The Daily Mail front page headlines being an obvious example. Those headlines and accompanying articles aren't news – it's rhetoric. Social media – rhetoric. Trump's midnight tweets that gets everyone hot under the collar – just rhetoric. Calling Trump a shitbag, fucking scumbag, lying, narcissistic fucking bastard – just rhetoric.

I should know better, I know, but I'm only human of flesh and blood am I. What's their excuse, I wonder? All those who are better educated and more privileged than me? Those who are paid to know better? Are they just being extremely clever, I wonder, and simply using rhetoric to disguise the content? Is Trump really an intellectual? He'd probably say so. Is Paul Dacre an intellectual? Nigel Farage? Boris Johnson?

Well, Chomsky has something to say about this as well: “People are called intellectuals because they're privileged. It's not because they're smart or they know a lot. There are plenty of people who know more and are smarter but aren't intellectuals because they don't have the privilege. The people called intellectuals are privileged. They have resources and opportunities.”

Privilege, of course, means power and you're either subordinate to it or not but according to Chomsky, in the West there's really no excuse and anyone displaying subordination to power is essentially displaying cowardice. “Why do we want to get behind the President if he's carrying out murderous, violent criminal acts?” Indeed, the great are only great because we are on our knees, as Irish republican James Larkin once said. Let us rise.

There's very little to disagree with when it comes to Noam Chomsky. Rather than the senile old pervert who wets himself all the time, Chomsky is like your ideal granddad sitting in the corner of the room at Christmas time, a pointy party hat on his head and sipping from a glass of Old Malt but declining to join in the party games. He's the wisest old bird in the family with an encyclopedic knowledge of everything and when asked a question he'll tell you straight. Everybody loves him and it's to him everyone will turn to for advice.

When 9/11 happened, everyone wanted to know what Chomsky had to say about it. The same for when Trump was elected. In his typical fashion, Chomsky responded very calmly and methodically, not resorting to knee-jerk reaction but using only the facts that were at hand.

“The Afghan war was a major war crime,” Chomsky tell David Barsamian, and this is as good a litmus test as any to gauge whether you agree with Chomsky or not. If you agree with this statement then it suggests you might just have a mind of your own and there is hope for you and the world yet. If you take umbrage and profoundly so then there's nothing for you here and we can bid you farewell as you skip merrily into your future of – as Orwell put it – a boot stamping on a human face - forever.

John Serpico