Chomsky : “Je n’ai jamais rien vu de pareil”

Chomsky : “Je n’ai jamais rien vu de pareil”

En connexion bien sûr avec le texte de Chris Hedges sur les néo-sécessionnistes (le 26 avril 2010) et notre commentaire (le 27 avril 2010), nous signalons également le précédent commentaire de Hedges pour Truthdig.com, le 19 avril 2010. Il s’agit d’une interview de Noam Chomsky.

Le principal intérêt que nous trouvons à cette interview, c’est l’avis général que Chomsky donne, notamment en tant que témoin âgé de 81 ans (donc ayant connu l’époque de la Grande Dépression), sur le climat régnant actuellement aux USA. Il met bien en évidence la colère et le désarroi de la population US, complètement sans précédent.

«“I have never seen anything like this in my lifetime,” Chomsky added. “I am old enough to remember the 1930s. My whole family was unemployed. There were far more desperate conditions than today. But it was hopeful. People had hope. The CIO was organizing. No one wants to say it anymore but the Communist Party was the spearhead for labor and civil rights organizing. Even things like giving my unemployed seamstress aunt a week in the country. It was a life. There is nothing like that now. The mood of the country is frightening. The level of anger, frustration and hatred of institutions is not organized in a constructive way. It is going off into self-destructive fantasies.”

»“I listen to talk radio,” Chomsky said. “I don’t want to hear Rush Limbaugh. I want to hear the people calling in. They are like [suicide pilot] Joe Stack. What is happening to me? I have done all the right things. I am a God-fearing Christian. I work hard for my family. I have a gun. I believe in the values of the country and my life is collapsing.”»

Par contre, nous sommes moins convaincus par l’analyse politique, ou l’éventuelle prospective politique que Chomsky fait à propos de cette situation. Elle revient à faire des USA un pays menacé de fascisme ou d’un équivalent du nazisme, ce qui revient également à faire une équivalence entre ce pays si particulier et un pays européen dans la crise de l’entre deux guerres. Les conditions structurelles sont très différentes, les USA sont très dissemblables des pays européens. L’hypothèse néo-sécessionniste nous paraît beaucoup plus convaincante.

«“It is very similar to late Weimar Germany,” Chomsky told me when I called him at his office in Cambridge, Mass. “The parallels are striking. There was also tremendous disillusionment with the parliamentary system. The most striking fact about Weimar was not that the Nazis managed to destroy the Social Democrats and the Communists but that the traditional parties, the Conservative and Liberal parties, were hated and disappeared. It left a vacuum which the Nazis very cleverly and intelligently managed to take over.”

»“The United States is extremely lucky that no honest, charismatic figure has arisen,” Chomsky went on. “Every charismatic figure is such an obvious crook that he destroys himself, like McCarthy or Nixon or the evangelist preachers. If somebody comes along who is charismatic and honest this country is in real trouble because of the frustration, disillusionment, the justified anger and the absence of any coherent response. What are people supposed to think if someone says ‘I have got an answer, we have an enemy’? There it was the Jews. Here it will be the illegal immigrants and the blacks. We will be told that white males are a persecuted minority. We will be told we have to defend ourselves and the honor of the nation. Military force will be exalted. People will be beaten up. This could become an overwhelming force. And if it happens it will be more dangerous than Germany. The United States is the world power. Germany was powerful but had more powerful antagonists. I don’t think all this is very far away. If the polls are accurate it is not the Republicans but the right-wing Republicans, the crazed Republicans, who will sweep the next election.”»

dedefensa.org