Noam Chomsky: Why the elites are succeeding in their “failure”

Econvergence, a conference adressing the current political, economical, and environmental problems, brought together Pacific Northwest activists in Portland, from Oct. 2–4. The keynote speaker was the ubiquitous Noam Chomsky, his presence exciting the sold-out audience and even bringing the man who introduced him, American University economics professor Robin Hahnel, to tears. For a man who is eight decades old, Chomsky resonated with authority during his speech, though he used humor to ease the density of information he presented.

A main theme that ran throughout Chomsky’s lecture was the fact that even though our economy has crashed, even though Obama is doubling the amount of troops currently in Afghanistan, even though our world is suffering a food crisis leaving over one billion fellow humans suffering from hunger and malnutrition, all of these events have factored into the success of the leaders in control of our national and international economic policies.

The first step to achieving a situation like this is to strip away democracy and power from the people as covertly as possible in order to give the government legitimacy. This is evident in universities across the nation. Looking back at history, it can be observed that students tend to grasp and promote democracy through protests, marches, advocacy campaigns, etc.

However, The Evergreen State College raised its tuition by 14% this year and was not the only college in the United States to do so. For the first time in Evergreen history, there is more funding coming from the student body than the State, making it less of a public institution. As education becomes less accessible, especially for those with a lower socio-economic status, fewer people have the opportunity to take part in higher education and the revolutionary activities that have historically been a part of that experience.

Another tactic that makes it possible for the elite to benefit from the suffering of others, Chomsky noted, is keeping the public as “spectators” and engineering consent from the masses. What Chomsky referred to as the “democratic deficit” (the gap between public opinion and public policy) grows further each year, as we become less and less informed and our government broadcasts superfluous crap through our mainstream media. It isn’t a coincidence that President Barack Obama won the Advertising Age’s “Marketer of the Year” award in 2008 for his presidential campaign (followed by Nike and Coors respectively).

Maybe we really should “Hope” to “Change.” To do this, the masses have to utilize their rights. But our population is fragmented—“atomized,” was Chomsky’s word—by the barrage of pop-culture and pseudo-politics that aims to whitewash our memory of this country’s history of collective organizing and the victories collective power has won. He emphasized the importance of reclaiming this history and putting it to new use in organizing against those who benefit from the crises that plague the rest of us.