'Make Whatever Alliances You Can': Noam Chomsky on necessary responses to existential threats.

• Author: Barsamian, David
• Position: Interview

Noam Chomsky, by any measure, has led a most extraordinary life. In one index, he was ranked the eighth most cited person in history, on a top-ten list that also included Aristotle, Shakespeare, Marx, Plato, and Freud. The legendary scholar is a major contributor to twenty-first-century linguistics, and has been a leading voice for peace and social justice for decades.

Chomsky is an institute professor (emeritus) in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT and laureate professor of linguistics and Haury chair in the environment and social justice program at the University of Arizona. As he prepares to turn ninety-one in early December, he still gives lectures all over the world. He has written scores of books, including Propaganda and the Public Mind, Power Systems, and Global Discontents with David Barsamian of Alternative Radio. His articles have appeared in The Progressive since the early 1980s.

What follows is an edited excerpt of a two-hour-long on-stage interview with Chomsky by Barsamian, at an event sponsored by The Progressive in Tucson, Arizona, on November 4.

Q: Let's say I totally agree with you on the impending environmental catastrophe being generated by predatory corporate capitalism. But then you find out that I'm against gay marriage, I'm against reproductive rights, I'm a misogynist, I'm a racist. Are you going to work with me toward a goal? How do you negotiate that?

Noam Chomsky: There is just no choice. This matter is so urgent, as is nuclear war, that you have to make whatever alliances you can. There was an interesting op-ed article in The New York Times a couple days ago by an evangelical Christian professor who was describing the kinds of tactics that she uses and she thinks ought to be used to try to bring the evangelical community to recognizing the importance of doing something urgent about global warming.

She said, OK, we all believe that the Second Coming is not very far off, maybe in our lifetimes. When Jesus returns to Earth, we want to demonstrate to him that we have taken care of Gods creation. We haven't destroyed it, we've cared for it, it's in good shape.

Let's approach evangelical Christians that way. Overcoming the environmental crisis is going to have to be done within some form of existing institutions. It doesn't mean that, on the side, you shouldn't be trying to change them. But this [climate crisis,] along with nuclear war, overwhelms everything.

Q: Some people were startled by your...