Noam Chomsky: We must confront the ‘ultranationalist, reactionary’ movements growing across the globe
AMY GOODMAN: Today, a Democracy Now! special,
an hour with Noam Chomsky, the world-renowned dissident and father of modern
linguistics. In April, Noam Chomsky visited his hometown of Boston, where he
was a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for more than half
a century. He now teaches at the University of Arizona, Tucson. Over 700 people
packed into the Old South Church to hear him speak. Later in the broadcast,
we’ll air my on-stage interview with him, but first we turn to his speech.
NOAM CHOMSKY: If you’ll indulge me, I’d like to start
with a brief reminiscence of a period which is eerily similar to today in many
unpleasant respects. I’m thinking of exactly 80 years ago, almost to the day,
happened to be the moment of the first article that I remember having written
on political issues. Easy to date: It was right after the fall of Barcelona in
February 1939.
The article was
about what seemed to be the inexorable spread of fascism over the world. In
1938, Austria had been annexed by Nazi Germany. A few months later,
Czechoslovakia was betrayed, placed in the hands of the Nazis at the Munich
Conference. In Spain, one city after another was falling to Franco’s forces.
February 1939, Barcelona fell. That was the end of the Spanish Republic. The
remarkable popular revolution, anarchist revolution, of 1936, ’37, ’38, had
already been crushed by force. It looked as if fascism was going to spread
without end.
It’s not exactly
what’s happening today, but, if we can borrow Mark Twain’s famous phrase,
“History doesn’t repeat but sometimes rhymes.” Too many similarities to
overlook.
When Barcelona
fell, there was a huge flood of refugees from Spain. Most went to Mexico, about
40,000. Some went to New York City, established anarchist offices in Union
Square, secondhand bookstores down 4th Avenue. That’s where I got my early
political education, roaming around that area. That’s 80 years ago. Now it’s
today.
We didn’t know at
the time, but the U.S. government was also beginning to think about how the
spread of fascism might be virtually unstoppable. They didn’t view it with the
same alarm that I did as a 10-year-old. We now know that the attitude of the
State Department was rather mixed regarding what the significance of the Nazi
movement was.
Actually, there was a consul in Berlin, U.S. consul in Berlin,
who was sending back pretty mixed comments about the Nazis, suggesting maybe
they’re not as bad as everyone says. He stayed there until Pearl Harbor Day,
when he was withdrawn—famous diplomat named George Kennan. Not a bad indication
of the mixed attitude towards these developments....
https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/noam-chomsky-we-must-confront-the-ultranationalist-reactionary-movements-growing-across-the-globe/see also
