Because We Say So
Authors: Noam Chomsky
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“Chomsky is a global phenomenon . . . perhaps the most widely read voice on foreign policy on the planet.”
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“It is possible that, if the United States goes the way of nineteenth-century Britain, Chomsky’s interpretation will be the standard among historians a hundred years from now.”
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“Chomsky is an ardent defender of the poor, those populations considered disposable, the excluded, and those marginalized by class, race, gender, and other ideologies and structural relations considered dangerous to tyrants both at home and abroad. He is capacious in making visible and interrogating oppression in its multiple forms, regardless of where it exists.” —Henry A. Giroux
“There is no living political writer who has more radically changed how more people think in more parts of the world about political issues.” —Glenn Greenwald
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MAKING THE FUTURE
“Noam Chomsky is like an angel of light, sent to protect us from the powers of darkness. Not only is he the most badass intellectual radical alive, he’s also the premier linguist on the planet.”—Karl Tavis
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NTERVENTIONS
“Unwavering political contrarian Noam Chomsky smart-bombs the U.S. military’s global
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(City Lights). Shock and awe!”
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ANITY
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AIR
“Noam Chomsky sounds off on U.S. military interventions since 9/11.”
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HOENIX
“
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NTERVENTIONS
offers over forty of Chomsky’s columns; insightful, crisp and well-researched pieces on news events of the day. From 9-11 to the Iraq War, from the ‘non-crisis’ of social security to the leveling of Lebanon, Chomsky provides informed opinion and critical analysis.” —Mumia Abu-Jamal
BECAUSE WE SAY SO
NOAM CHOMSKY
Open Media Series | City Lights Books
Copyright © 2015 by Noam Chomsky
Foreword copyright © 2015 Henry A. Giroux
All Rights Reserved
Cover art by Lawrence Ferlinghetti:
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IBERTY
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ERIES
#6
, 1991; oil on canvas, 50 inches x 56 inches.
The writings in this book are adapted from essays by Noam Chomsky distributed by The New York Times Syndicate.
Open Media Series Editor: Greg Ruggiero
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Chomsky, Noam.
Because we say so / Noam Chomsky.
pages cm. — (Open media series)
ISBN 978-0-87286-657-7 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-87286-660-7 (ebook)
1. United States—Foreign relations-—2009- 2. World politics—21st century. I. Title.
JZ1480.C468 2015
909.83’12—dc23
2015011821
City Lights Books
Open Media Series
CONTENTS
Anniversaries from “Unhistory”
The Assault on Public Education
Cartegena: Beyond the Secret Service Scandal
The Great Charter: Its Fate, Our Fate
When Travesty Borders on Tragedy
Issues that Obama and Romney Avoid
Gaza, the World’s Largest Open-Air Prison
The Gravest Threat to World Peace
Can Civilization Survive Capitalism?
In Palestine, Dignity and Violence
Is Edward J. Snowden Aboard this Plane?
The “Honest Broker” Is Crooked
Red Lines in Ukraine and Elsewhere
Edward J. Snowden, the World’s “Most Wanted Criminal”
NOAM CHOMSKY AND THE PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL IN TURBULENT TIMES
By Henry A. Giroux
World-renowned academic Noam Chomsky is best known not only for his pioneering work in linguistics but also for his ongoing work as a public intellectual, in which he addresses numerous important social issues that include and often connect oppressive foreign and domestic policies—a fact well illustrated throughout this important collection of his recent political columns,
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ECAUSE
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Chomsky’s role intellectually, educationally and politically is more relevant now than ever given the need for a display of civic courage, theoretical rigor, and willingness to translate oppression and suffering into public concerns. Moreover, he provides a model for young people and others to understand the importance of using ideas and knowledge to intervene in civic, political and cultural life making it clear that democracy has to be struggled over, if it is going to survive.
Chomsky’s political interventions have been historically specific while continually building on the power relations he has engaged critically. For instance, his initial ideas about the responsibility of intellectuals cannot be separated from his early criticisms of the Vietnam War and the complicity of intellectuals in brokering and legitimating that horrendous act of military intervention.
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Yet, while it might appear difficult to compare his 1988 book,
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ANUFACTURING
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ONSENT
, coauthored with Edward S. Herman, with his 2002 bestseller, 9/11, what all of his texts share is a luminous theoretical, political and forensic analysis of the functioning of the current global power structure, new and old modes of oppressive authority, and the ways in which neoliberal economic and social policies have produced more savage forms of global domination
and corporate sovereignty. That uncompromising analysis is present on every page of
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Each column in this book confirms that Chomsky does not subscribe to a one-dimensional notion of power that one often finds among many on the left. He keenly understands that power is multifaceted, operating through a number of material and symbolic registers, and he is particularly astute in pointing out that power also has a pedagogical function and must include a historical understanding of the public relations industry and of existing and emerging cultural apparatuses, and that central to matters of power, agency and the radical imagination are modes of persuasion, the shaping of identities, and the molding of desire.
Chomsky incessantly exposes the gap between the reality and the promise of a radical democracy, particularly in the United States, though he often provides detailed analysis of how the deformation of democracy works in a number of countries that hide their diverse modes of oppression behind the false claims of democratization. Chomsky has attempted to both refigure the promise of democracy and develop new ways to theorize agency and the social imagination outside of the neoliberal focus on individualization, privatization and the assumption that the only value that matters is exchange value. Unlike many intellectuals who are trapped in the discourse of academic silos and a sclerotic professionalism, he writes and speaks from the perspective of what might be called contingent totalities. In so doing, he connects a wide variety of issues as part of a larger understanding of the diverse and specific economic, social and political forces that shape people’s lives at particular historical conjunctures. He is one of the few North American theorists who embrace modes of solidarity and collective struggle less as an afterthought than as central to what it means to connect the civic, social and ethical as the
foundation for global resistance movements. Implicit to his role as a public intellectual are the questions of what a real democracy should look like, how its ideals and practices are subverted, and what forces are necessary to bring it into being. These are the questions at the heart of his thinking, his talks and the commentaries in this book.
For Chomsky, crises are viewed as overlapping, merging into each other in ways that often go unrecognized. In fact, Chomsky often brings together in his work issues such as terrorism, corporate power, American exceptionalism and other major concerns so as to provide maps that enable his readers to refigure the landscape of political, cultural and social life in ways that offer up new connections and the possibility for fresh modes of theorizing potential resistance.
He has also written about the possibility of political and economic alternatives, offering a fresh language for a collective sense of agency and resistance, a new understanding of the commons, and a rewriting of the relations between the political and the up-to-date institutions of culture, finance and capital. And yet he does not provide recipes but speaks to emerging modes of imaginative resistance always set within the boundaries of specific historical conjunctures. His work is especially important in understanding the necessity of public intellectuals in times of tyranny, cruelty, financial savagery and increasing authoritarianism. His work should be required reading for all academics, students and the wider public. That he is one of the most cited intellectuals in the world strongly suggest that his audience is general, diverse and widespread, inhabiting many different sites, public spheres and locations.