It really is not fair to blame this article on Chomsky, much of the content was lifted from chomsky.info, Noam Chomsky on Why This Is the Most Dangerous Point in Human History Noam Chomsky Interviewed by C. J. Polychroniou
All insights are his, all errors mine.
Introduction
1: The use of the religious:
2: Create Inequality
3: Break the will and the social order.
4: The Washington consensus
5: The Propaganda Model
What makes it possible for a dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer; what is lost is the capacity to act but also the capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.
Edited from Hannah Arendt On the subject freedom of press. Source: Interview with French writer Roger Errera, 1974. New York Review of Books. Note 1
Introduction
There is an organized assault on our society by economic forces controlled by the super rich. The resulting breakdown of the social order is a planned outcome that leaves great numbers of people angry, disillusioned, frightened, and contemptuous of institutions that they see as not working in their interests.
Dramatic economic transformations are the norm. This could give us incredible hope, China emerged from an agrarian society into an industrial powerhouse, lifting in the process hundreds of millions out of poverty.
Alternatively dramatic economic transformation can have the opposite effect. The rich have orchestrated massive immigration to Europe and North America. This has lead to more crowding, strains on medical, transportation, police and housing infrastructure. The decline in real wages and the rise in poverty is directly attributable to the increase in population and the flooding of developed countries with third world labour.
Mass migrations, overpopulation and the inevitable loss of democratic control is one aspect of a planned rise of the far-right globally in the form of nationalism, racism, and extremism. The far right or more accurately Fascism is making a planned comeback in Europe, the United States, India, Brazil, Israel, Pakistan and the Philippines with an orchestrated and concerted effort by the rich for whom Fascism is the preferred form of Government. Note 1 and 2
The cause of the rise of the right is an interplay of many factors. While the examples are many two interesting cases in point. The systematic dismantling of secular democracy in India by Narendra Modi and the creation of a harsh racist Hindu ethnocracy. The willingness of Americans to support a racist, rapist who proudly states he will be a dictator for just one day. Both men are portrayed as incorruptible saviors who will solve the problems their handlers have created. This is typical of the corporate fascist playbook.
5 areas worthy of study are outlined below.
1: The use of the religious:
The religious are easy to manipulate,they already believe in miracles, submission and their place in the grand order of things. So it is only natural that fascists in North America would work towards the replacement of large of numbers of European North Americans who are over 70% non secular, Atheist, Agnostic or Humanist with deeply religious immigrants (Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs) into North America. This phenomena [see note 5] has a dramatic effect on the politics of the nation. If you have people whose idealization is the Caste System, Submission and their own racial superiority it is a different country than one with idealization about democracy, freedom and equality.
2: Create Inequality
The radical increase in inequality in much of the world as a consequence of the policies of the U.S. and U.K.. Wages inequality has grown for 2 reasons.
Firstly “For the whole period from the 1940s to the end of the 1970s, the top 1% of earners received 9-10% of total income, no more. But in the short period since 1980, their share, that is the share of the top 1%, has gone up to 25%, while the bottom 80% have made virtually no gains.” Note 3
Secondly Massive immigration to the west as done in the extreme to Canada has lead to declining earnings and rising poverty.
Given the increases in immigration during the 1980s and 1990s, there were also concerns that immigrants’ declining earnings and rising poverty levels could result in an increase in the national low-income rate and in family income inequality overall. Research showed this was indeed the case.
From Institute for Policy research in Canada
For more from the institute for policy research jump to Note 4
3: Break the will and the social order.
“There is a close correlation between inequality and a range of social disorders. Britain is off the chart: very high inequality but even greater social disorder than expected by the correlation.”
The Spirit Level, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett
Countries that led the way in a commitment to small government and the creation of a free market, which ironically requires allot of government intervention can be more accurately described as dedicated to a class war. The work of Wilkinson-Pickett and Steven Bezruchka has confirmed that inequality is a prime factor in the breakdown of social order.
Harsh austerity policies have affected Venezuela, Ecuador, the hardest hit are the weak Latin America countries. In countries as varied as Yugoslavia and Rwanda such policies in the ‘80s sharply exacerbated social tensions, contributing to the horrors that followed.
4: The Washington consensus
Submission to the “Washington consensus” [note 6] is a pre requisite to not being bombed. It has induced U.S. investors to shift production to countries with much cheaper labor and limited labor rights or environmental constraints, thereby de industrializing America with well-known consequences for working people.
It is not that these were the only options. Studies by the labor movement and by Congress’s own research bureau (OTA, since disbanded) offered feasible alternatives that could have benefited working people globally. But they were dismissed.
The resulting attacks on unions, the main line of defense of working people against class war opened the door to corporate attacks on labor, often illegal, but that doesn’t matter when the state they largely control looks the other way.
Public education is the most important defense against racism, fascism and religious thinking. Public Education has come under harsh attack; sharp refunding, business models that favor cheap and easily disposable labor, teaching-to-test models that undermine critical thinking and inquiry are the norm.
The goal in attacking unions and the education system is to have a population that is passive, obedient, and atomized, distrustful of the institutions designed to protect them. Once they are angry and resentful, they are easy prey for the incorruptible demagogues [Trump and Modi] skilled in tapping ugly currents that run not too far below the surface in every society.”
Marx predicted the end of capital, even though Marx was an enthusiastic admirer of capitalism for having overthrown the feudal economy, which produced wealth for the few but not capital that would be used for production of goods and services. During the past 40+ years the economy has been regressing to something like a feudal structure, the structure Marx was critical of, where wealth is being produced for a few by financial manipulations that contribute virtually nothing to a productive economy.
The current system “has many consequences. The reduction of productive investment and shift to a rentier economy, in some ways a reversion from capitalist investment for production to feudal-style production of wealth. Capital becomes “fictitious capital,” Fictitious capital is “tradable paper claims to wealth”, with vastly inflated exaggerated price as Marx called it.”
Noam Chomsky
5: The Propaganda Model
It is noted by Chomsky that it is sometimes argued the neoliberal policies were a grand success, pointing to the fastest reduction in global poverty in history—but failing to add that these remarkable achievements were in China and other countries that firmly rejected the prescribed neoliberal principles. This is as outlined in “Manufacturing Consent,” by Chomsky and Herman as an example of the propaganda model of the Neo Liberal agenda. It is not that hard to find journalists with the courage and integrity to fight against deceitful and slanderous media who perpetuate a false narrative. You can start with “Voices of a People’s History,” Zinn-Arnove-Pessin, recently and the list of links in Note x
Notes:
Note: From https://chomsky.info/20230527-2/
Note 1: Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement,characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy. (From Wikipedia)
Note 2: Stalinism was implemented in the Soviet Union (USSR) from 1927 to 1953 by Joseph Stalin. It included the creation of a one-party totalitarian police state, rapid industrialization, collectivization of agriculture, intensification of class conflict, a cult of personality, and subordination of personal interests to those of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Ideas that were not “politically correct” were perged and repleaced with party slogans and group think.
(From Wikipedia)
Note 3: The facts are clear enough, particularly well-studied for the U.S. The Rand Corporation study we’ve discussed before estimated almost $50 trillion in wealth transferred from workers and the middle class—the lower 90% of income—to the top 1% during the neoliberal years. More information is provided in the work of Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, summarized lucidly by political economist Robert Brenner.
Note 4: A dominant theme in immigration debates in Canada has been the decline in the economic outcomes of immigrants since the 1980s and the associated rise in their poverty rate. These deteriorating outcomes were the impetus for significant changes in immigrant selection policy during the 2000s. Existing programs were altered and new ones introduced in an attempt to improve immigrants’ economic prospects, among other things (see Ferrer, Picot and Riddell 2014). Given the increases in immigration during the 1980s and 1990s, there were also concerns that immigrants’ declining earnings and rising poverty levels could result in an increase in the national low-income rate and in family income inequality overall. Research showed this was indeed the case. While the low-income rate among the Canadian-born fell through the 1990s, it rose among immigrants, accounting for virtually all of the increase in the national low-income rate during that period (Picot and Hou 2003). Immigrants’ declining economic outcomes had an effect on family income inequality as well: as much as one-half of the small rise in inequality during the early 1990s was associated with the immigrant population (Moore and Pacey 2003). The effect was most pronounced in large cities, where the immigrant population grew most.
These studies were concerned with what we refer to in this chapter as the direct effect of immigration on the incidence of low income and inequality among the total population (immigrants plus the Canadian-born) due to rising immigration levels and the worsening economic outcomes of immigrants. But another dimension is the indirect effect of rising immigration on overall poverty and inequality in Canada, which can occur as a result of the impact on the wages of Canadian-born workers as they compete with immigrants for jobs. Although only a small number of Canadian papers exist on this topic, the extensive international literature tends to find that immigration has only a very small effect on the wages of domestic workers (see, for example, Card 2009; Dustmann and Preston 2012; Longhi, Nijkamp and Poot 2009; Manacorda, Manning and Wadsworth 2012; Ottaviano and Peri 2012). In the United States, for instance, Card (2009) found that immigration had little effect on wage inequality among the American-born (i.e., the indirect effect), while the direct effect on inequality was larger, although still not dramatic. Given these results, it seems likely that the indirect effect of immigration on low income or family income inequality among the Canadian-born population would be quite small.
From Institute for Policy research in Canada https://irpp.org/research-studies/immigration-poverty-and-income-inequality-in-canada/
Note 5: The difference between a phenomena and a conspiracy.
Note 6: The concept and name of the Washington Consensus were first presented in 1989 by John Williamson, an economist from the Institute for International Economics, an international economic think tank based in Washington, D.C.
The consensus as originally stated by Williamson included ten broad sets of relatively specific policy recommendations:[1][3]
1:Fiscal policy discipline, with avoidance of large fiscal deficits relative to GDP;
2:Redirection of public spending from subsidies (“especially indiscriminate subsidies”) toward broad-based provision of key pro-growth, pro-poor services like primary education, primary health care and infrastructure investment;
3:Tax reform, broadening the tax base and adopting moderate marginal tax rates;
4:Interest rates that are market determined and positive (but moderate) in real terms;
5:Competitive exchange rates;
6: Trade liberalization: liberalization of imports, with particular emphasis on elimination of quantitative restrictions (licensing, etc.); any trade protection to be provided by low and relatively uniform tariffs;
7:Liberalization of inward foreign direct investment;
8:Privatization of state enterprises;
9:Deregulation: abolition of regulations that impede market entry or restrict competition, except for those justified on safety, environmental and consumer protection grounds, and prudential oversight of financial institutions;
10:Legal security for property rights.