Noam Chomsky

The United States is unusual among the industrial democracies in the rigidity of the system of ideological control – ‘indoctrination’, we might say – exercised through the mass media.

Trump himself seems to be having the time of his life. He’s constantly in the limelight, his loyal base worships his every move, he’s free to defy convention, to insult anyone he chooses, to disrupt the international economic and political order at will…

Much research, including a widely quoted Rand Corporation study of 1994, has shown that prevention and treatment are considerably more cost-effective than the coercive [drug war] measures that receive the bulk of funding. Such nonpunitive measures are also of course far more humane.

The 2014 IPCC report reaffirms that the “vast majority” of known fuel reserves must be left in the ground to avert intolerable risks to future generations. Meanwhile the major energy corporations make no secret of their goal of exploiting these reserves and discovering new ones.

The most effective device [of thought control developed in democratic societies] is the bounding of the thinkable, achieved by tolerating debate, even encouraging it, though only within proper limits.

So the fear of drugs and the fear of crime is very much stimulated by state and business propaganda. The National Justice Commission repeatedly points out that crime in the United States, while sort of high, is not off the spectrum for industrialized societies.

If you want my personal attitude, I would tell you that I don’t care about a person’s sexual orientation.

…I try to keep in mind the principle that one should not try to persuade; rather, to lay out the territory as best one can so that others can use their own intellectual powers to determine for themselves what they think is taking place and what is right or wrong.

Amusing and perfectly self-conscious charlatans.

I was shocked more than most white people to find we had a black President!

A total of 1,580 people, the civilian population, suffered as a result of the bloody wave of terrorist acts that swept over Moscow and other towns and villages of our country.

I’ve been in the Labour Party all my life. I am a socialist. I am determined to see a fairer and more equal society.

Nowadays wars are not declared. They simply start.

If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.

In a situation of occupation or domination, the occupier…has to justify what it’s doing. There is only one way to do it — become a racist. You have to blame the victim. Once you become a raving racist in self-defense, you’ve lost your capacity to understand what’s happening.

You can build a throne of bayonets, but you can’t sit on it for long.

So it seems like if they want to reduce abortion, the best thing to do would be to support contraception – but they’re against contraception, too, because contraception and abortion decouple sexuality from procreation. That’s why I think religious preoccupation with abortion is largely about controlling the sexuality of women.

I am most anxious that in dealing with matters which every Member knows are extremely delicate matters, I should not use any phrase or expression which would cause offence to our friends and Allies on the Continent or across the Atlantic Ocean.

The only reason I don’t use the word class is that the terminology of political discourse is so debased it’s hard to find any words at all. That’s part of the point — to make it impossible to talk.

But Klaus Barbie was basically small potatoes. Operation Paper Clip was a big operation, involving many top Nazis. We managed to get Walter Rauff, the guy who created the gas chambers, off to Chile. Others went to fascist Spain.

While greatly honored internationally, Mandela remained on the US terrorist list until 2008, when at last a congressional resolution allowed him to enter the ‘land of the free’ without special dispensation.