Tuesday, November 09, 2010

Noam Chomsky: If you don't fear carbon dioxide, you're a Nazi?

Noam Chomsky: Americans are Outraged and Misguided - Infoshop News
The doomsday metaphor also applies outside the financial world. The American Petroleum Institute, backed by the Chamber of Commerce and the other business lobbies, has intensified its efforts to persuade the public to dismiss concerns about anthropogenic global warming—with considerable success, as polls indicate. Among Republican congressional candidates in the 2010 election, virtually all reject global warming.

The executives behind the propaganda know that global warming is real, and our prospects grim. But the fate of the species is an externality that the executives must ignore, to the extent that market systems prevail. And the public won’t be able to ride to the rescue when the worst-case scenario unfolds.

I am just old enough to remember those chilling and ominous days of Germany’s descent from decency to Nazi barbarism, to borrow the words of Fritz Stern, the distinguished scholar of German history. In a 2005 article, Stern indicates that he has the future of the United States in mind when he reviews “a historic process in which resentment against a disenchanted secular world found deliverance in the ecstatic escape of unreason.”

3 comments:

TDK said...

resentment against a disenchanted secular world found deliverance in the ecstatic escape of unreason.

Doesn't that sound exactly like the modern environmental movement?

Anonymous said...

Wasn't it Chomsky who defended the Khmer Rouge?

As Orwell commented, "some things are so stupid it takes an intellectual to believe them'

Anonymous said...

Yes, Chomsky supported Khmer Rouge, quite complimentary.
It seems Chomsky's contribution is to call someone a barbarian if they don't conform to his views.
Of course he uses many more words than the above to do this. I'll give him marks for creativity and effort, but zero for integrity or honesty.