Noam Chomsky Zitate

seite 9

„Die Bürger demokratischer Gesellschaften sollten Kurse für geistige Selbstverteidigung besuchen, um sich gegen Manipulation und Kontrolle wehren zu können.“

„Der kluge Weg, Menschen passiv und gehorsam zu halten, besteht darin, das Spektrum akzeptabler Meinungen streng einzuschränken, aber eine sehr lebhafte Debatte innerhalb dieses Spektrums zuzulassen - und sogar kritischere und dissidenten Ansichten zu fördern. Das gibt den Menschen das Gefühl, dass freies Denken im Gange ist, während die Voraussetzungen des Systems durch die Grenzen der Debatten immer weiter verschärft werden.“

„Der schlaueste Weg, Menschen passiv und gehorsam zu halten, ist, das Spektrum an akzeptabler Meinung streng zu beschränken, aber eine sehr lebhafte Debatte innerhalb dieses Spektrums zu ermöglichen – sogar die kritischeren und die Ansichten der Dissidenten zu fördern. Das gibt den Menschen ein Gefühl, dass es ein freies Denken gibt, während die Voraussetzungen des Systems durch die Grenzen der Diskussion gestärkt werden.“

„Ich war mir nie einer anderen Möglichkeit bewusst, als die, alles in Frage zu stellen.“

„Jeder mächtige Staat verlässt sich auf Spezialisten, deren Aufgabe es ist, zu zeigen, dass das, was die Starken tun, nobel und gerecht ist, und dass es die Schuld der Schwachen ist, wenn diese leiden. Im Westen nennt man diese Spezialisten "Intellektuelle", und sie, mit kaum nennenswerten Ausnahmen, erfüllen ihre Aufgabe mit großer Fertigkeit und Selbstgerechtigkeit, egal wie lachhaft ihre Behauptungen sind, in dieser Praxis, die sich bis zu den Ursprüngen aufgezeichneter Geschichte zurückverfolgen lässt.“

„Dieser Konsumismus gründet darin, dass wir eine Gesellschaft sind, die von Geschäftsinteressen dominiert wird. Es gibt eine massive Propaganda, die jedermann zum Konsum anhält. Konsum ist gut für die Gewinne, und Konsum ist gut für das politische Establishment. […] Konsum lenkt die Menschen ab. Die eigene Gesellschaft lässt sich schlecht mit der Armee kontrollieren, aber sie lässt sich durch Konsum ablenken. Die Wirtschaftspresse ist da deutlich zielgerichtet.“

„Es ist durchaus möglich, überwältigend wahrscheinlich, könnte man vermuten, dass wir über das Leben und die Persönlichkeiten von Menschen stets mehr aus Romanen lernen werden, als von der wissenschaftlichen Psychologie.“

„Der schlaueste Weg, Menschen passiv und folgsam zu halten, ist, das Spektrum akzeptierter Meinungen strikt zu limitieren, aber innerhalb dieses Spektrums sehr lebhafte Debatten zu erlauben.“

„Mein Augenmerk liegt vor allem auf dem Terrorismus und der Gewalt, die von meinem eigenen Staat ausgeführt werden, aus zwei Gründen. Erstens, weil es den Hauptteil internationaler Gewalt ausmacht. Aber auch aus einem viel wichtigeren Grund; nämlich, dass ich etwas dagegen tun can. Selbst wenn die Vereinigten Staaten für nur zwei Prozent der Gewalt in der Welt verantwortlich wären, wären das die zwei Prozent für die ich vor allem verantwortlich wäre. Und dies ist eine simple ethische Beurteilung. Das heißt, der ethische Wert unserer Handlungen hängt von ihren erwarteten und vorhersehbaren Konsequenzen ab. Es ist sehr einfach, die Abscheulichkeiten anderer zu verdammen. Das hat ungefähr so viel ethischen Wert wie Gräueltaten, die im Achtzehnten Jahrhundert stattfanden, zu verurteilen.“

„Die intellektuelle Welt ist zutiefst konformistisch.“

„Mutwilliges Töten unschuldiger Zivilisten ist Terrorismus und kein Krieg gegen den Terrorismus.“

„Indoktrination ist keineswegs inkompatibel mit der Demokratie. Vielmehr […] ihre Essenz. […] Ohne Knüppel, ohne Kontrolle durch Gewalt […] muß man das Denken kontrollieren. Dazu greift man zu dem, was in ehrlicheren Zeiten Propaganda genannt wurde.“

„Alle machen sich Gedanken, wie man Terrorismus beenden kann. Nun, es gibt einen wirklich einfachen Weg: indem man damit aufhört, daran teilzunehmen.“

„Der effektivste Weg, Demokratie zu beschränken, ist das Treffen von Entscheidungen von der öffentlichen Sphäre hin zu Institutionen zu verlagern, die nicht zur Rechenschaft gezogen werden können: Könige und Prinzen, Priesterkasten, Militärjuntas, Parteidiktaturen, oder moderne Unternehmen.“

„Optimismus ist eine Strategie für eine bessere Zukunft. Denn wenn Sie nicht glauben, dass die Zukunft besser sein kann, dann werden sie auch nicht aufstehen und die Verantwortung dafür übernehmen.“

„Die größten bekannten Terrorakte gehen von Washington aus.“

„Leute mit Macht verstehen genau eine Sache: Gewalt.“

„Wir sollten nicht nach Helden suchen, wir sollten nach guten Ideen suchen.“

„Wenn die USA ihre unvergleichliche Macht tatsächlich um der Menschheit willen ausüben, dann hat die Menschheit dabei ein gewisses Mitspracherecht.“

„Die erste Pflicht der Regierenden ist es die Minderheit der Wohlhabenden gegen die Mehrheit zu schützen.“

„Die Schule erzieht zur Dummheit.“

„In den Vereinigten Staaten ist das politische System nur am Rande von Bedeutung. Es gibt zwei sogenannte Parteien, aber sie sind in Wirklichkeit Fraktionen der gleichen Partei, der Geschäftspartei. Beide repräsentieren eine Reihe von Geschäftsinteressen. Sie können sogar ihre Positionen um 180 Grad wenden, ohne dass es überhaupt jemand merkt.“

„Wir glauben nicht an die Meinungsfreiheit, wenn wir sie
nicht auch den Leuten zugestehen, die wir verachten.“

„Was kann man über ein Land sagen, in dem ein wissenschaftliches Museum in einer großen Stadt ein Ausstellungsstück hat, wo die Leute von einem Helikopter aus mit einem Maschinengewehr auf Hütten in Vietnam feuern, mit aufblitzendem Licht, wenn ein Treffer gelandet wird? Was kann man über ein Land sagen, in dem solch eine Idee überhaupt nur in Erwägung gezogen wird? Man muß um dieses Land weinen.“

„Entweder wiederholt man dieselben konventionellen Doktrinen wie jedermann, oder man sagt etwas Wahres, und das klingt dann,
wie wenn es vom Neptun wäre.“

„Das Volk gilt der Regierung als gefährlicher Feind, der um seines eigenen besten Willens kontrolliert werden muss.“

„Die intellektuelle Tradition ist eine des Buckelns vor Macht, und wenn ich sie nicht betrügen würde, würde ich mich meiner selbst schämen.“

„Farblose grüne Ideen schlafen wütend.“

„Die Kultur der Terrors zielt darauf ab, die Hoffnungen der Mehrheit auf Alternativen zu den Vorstellungen der Herrschenden zu zähmen.“

„Die Bush-Regierung hat sehr wohl moralische Werte. Ihre moralischen Werte sind sehr explizit: poliere die Stiefel der Reichen und Mächtigen, trete allen anderen in's Gesicht, and lass die Enkelkinder dafür zahlen. Dieses einfache Prinzip schreibt fast alles vor, das geschieht.“

„Eine Schwierigkeit der Psychologie liegt in der Vertrautheit der Phänomene, über die sie handelt.“

„Es ist kein radikaler Islam, der die USA beunruhigt - es ist Unabhängigkeit.“

„Die amerikanische Gesellschaft ist heute zivilisierter als früher. Das verdanken wir der Entwicklung in den sechziger Jahren. Unsere Gesellschaft, und auch die in Europa, wurde damals freier, offener, demokratischer und damit für viele furchteinflößend. Dafür wurde diese Generation verurteilt. Aber es hat Wirkung gezeigt.“

„Erziehung ist ein System der aufgezwungenen Ignoranz.“

„Washington und seine Alliierten bleiben bei dem bewährten Prinzip, dass Demokratie nur akzeptabel ist, solange sie sich strategischen und wirtschaftlichen Zielen unterordnet: gut in feindlichen Gebieten (bis zu einem gewissen Punkt), aber bitte nicht in unserem Hinterhof, außer wenn sie ausreichend gezähmt ist.“

“The most important victory, in fact, was in Indonesia. In 1965 there was a military coup, which instantly carried out a Rwanda-style slaughter, and it's not an exaggeration. Rwanda-style slaughter, which wiped out the only mass-based political organization, killed mostly landless peasants, and instituted a brutal and murderous regime. There was total euphoria in the United States. So happy, they couldn't contain it. When you read the press, it was just ecstatic. It's kind of suppressed now because it doesn't look pretty in retrospect, but it was understood. Years later, McGeorge Bundy, who was the national security advisor, recognized that, he said, and I think he's right, the U. S. should have stopped the war in Vietnam in 1965, because we basically won. By 1965 South Vietnam was largely destroyed, most of the rest was going to quickly be destroyed, and we had saved the major prize, Indonesia. The rot wasn't going to spread to Indonesia after this delightful Rwanda-style slaughter.”

“In my view, if there's going to be an army, I think it ought to be a citizens' army. Now, here I do agree with some people, the top brass, they don't want a citizens' army. They want a mercenary army, what we call a volunteer army. A mercenary army of the disadvantaged. And in fact, in the Vietnam War, the U. S. military realized, they had made a very bad mistake. I mean, for the first time I think ever in the history of European imperialism, including us, they had used a citizens' army to fight a vicious, brutal, colonial war, and civilians just cannot do that kind of a thing. For that, you need the French Foreign Legion, the Gurkhas or something like that. Every predecessor has used mercenaries, often drawn from the country that they're attacking, like England ran India with Indian mercenaries. You take them from one place and send them to kill people in the other place. That's the standard way to run imperial wars. They're just too brutal and violent and murderous. Civilians are not going to be able to do it for very long. What happened was, the army started falling apart. One of the reasons that the army was withdrawn was because the top military wanted it out of there. They were afraid they were not going to have an army anymore. Soldiers were fragging officers. The whole thing was falling apart. They were on drugs. And that's why I think that they're not going to have a draft. That's why I'm in favor of it. If there's going to be an army that will fight brutal, colonial wars… it ought to be a citizens' army so that the attitudes of the society are reflected in the military.”

“"Tough love" is just the right phrase: love for the rich and privileged, tough for everyone else.”

“If the principle is, "Let's not get lethal substances out to the public", the first one you'd go after is tobacco. The next one you'd go after is alcohol. Way down the list you'd get to cocaine, and sort of invisibly low you'd get to marijuana.”

“Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 with the intention of destroying secular Palestinian nationalism.… OK, they did destroy the secular PLO and instead what they got was an Islamic fundamentalist movement that they couldn't control, that drove them out of most of Lebanon. What did they do next? They did exactly the same thing in the West Bank.”

“When the facts are in, it may well turn out that the more extreme condemnations were in fact correct. But even if that turns out to be the case, it will in no way alter the conclusions we have reached on the central question addressed here: how the available facts were selected, modified, or sometimes invented to create a certain image offered to the general population. The answer to this question seems clear, and it is unaffected by whatever may be discovered about Cambodia in the future.”

“I would feel no hesitation in saying that it is the responsibility of a decent human being to give assistance to a child who is being attacked by a rabid dog, but I would not intend this to imply that in all imaginable circumstances one must, necessarily, act in accordance with this general responsibility. One can easily concoct imaginary situations in which it would be inadvisable, even immoral to do so […] [I will not defend] the assumption that it is reprehensible for a powerful nation to invade a weak and tiny neighbor in order to impose on it an "acceptable" government […] just as I would not take the trouble to justify my belief that one should assist a child being attacked by a rabid dog.”

“Virtually all informed observers agree that a fair and equitable resolution of the plight of the Palestinians would considerably weaken the anger and hatred of Israel and the US in the Arab and Muslim worlds – and far beyond, as international polls reveal. Such an agreement is surely within reach, if the US and Israel depart from their long-standing rejectionism.”

“A good way of finding out who won a war, who lost a war, and what the war was about, is to ask who's cheering and who's depressed after it's over - this can give you interesting answers. So, for example, if you ask that question about the Second World War, you find out that the winners were the Nazis, the German industrialists who had supported Hitler, the Italian Fascists and the war criminals that were sent off to South America - they were all cheering at the end of the war. The losers of the war were the anti-fascist resistance, who were crushed all over the world. Either they were massacred like in Greece or South Korea, or just crushed like in Italy and France. That's the winners and losers. That tells you partly what the war was about. Now let's take the Cold War: Who's cheering and who's depressed? Let's take the East first. The people who are cheering are the former Communist Party bureaucracy who are now the capitalist entrepreneurs, rich beyond their wildest dreams, linked to Western capital, as in the traditional Third World model, and the new Mafia. They won the Cold War. The people of East Europe obviously lost the Cold War; they did succeed in overthrowing Soviet tyranny, which is a gain, but beyond that they've lost - they're in miserable shape and declining further. If you move to the West, who won and who lost? Well, the investors in General Motors certainly won. They now have this new Third World open again to exploitation”

“Despite these shortcomings, the insights into the organization of grammar that were achieved in Cartesian linguistics remain quite impressive, and a careful study of this work can hardly fail to prove rewarding to a linguist who approaches it without prejudice or preconceptions as to the a priori limitations on permitted linguistic investigation.”

“[Q: when do you think is it right to intervene in the affairs of another nation? ] I think there are conditions under which that would be possible. One basic condition is that nonviolent -- you mean violent intervention? -- that nonviolent means have been exhausted. That's one condition. A second condition is that the people of the country in which you're intervening support the intervention. Under those conditions -- and you can think of others -- intervention would be justified. However, we don't ever apply those conditions.”

“Now of course, the idealistic slogans are still needed for the media, for a lot of scholarship, for the schools, and so on. But, where the serious people are, the problem is that we have to maintain this disparity, and obviously it's gotta be maintained by force. So none of the idealistic slogans at home. So when you're setting up death squads in El Salvador under the Alliance for Progress, you're not hampered by these idealistic slogans. That's for the masses, for us. Well, given this kind of thinking, it's not too surprising that President Kennedy should say, with regard to El Salvador after supporting a military coup there, that "Governments of the civil-military type of El Salvador are the most effective in containing communist penetration in Latin America." This at the time when he organized the basic framework for the death squads that have been torturing and murdering ever since, and which we attribute to some kind of extreme right-wingers who somehow we can't get under control.”

“The dominant propaganda systems have appropriated the term "globalization" to refer to the specific version of international economic integration that they favor, which privileges the rights of investors and lenders, those of people being incidental. In accord with this usage, those who favor a different form of international integration, which privileges the rights of human beings, become "anti-globalist." This is simply vulgar propaganda, like the term "anti-Soviet" used by the most disgusting commissars to refer to dissidents. It is not only vulgar, but idiotic. Take the World Social Forum, called "anti-globalization" in the propaganda system -- which happens to include the media, the educated classes, etc., with rare exceptions. The WSF is a paradigm example of globalization. It is a gathering of huge numbers of people from all over the world, from just about every corner of life one can think of, apart from the extremely narrow, highly privileged elites who meet at the competing World Economic Forum, and are called "pro-globalization" by the propaganda system. An observer watching this farce from Mars would collapse in hysterical laughter at the antics of the educated classes.”

“…I don't feel that they deserve a blanket condemnation at all. There are many things to object to in any society. But take China, modern China; one also finds many things that are really quite admirable. […] There are even better examples than China. But I do think that China is an important example of a new society in which very interesting positive things happened at the local level, in which a good deal of the collectivization and communization was really based on mass participation and took place after a level of understanding had been reached in the peasantry that led to this next step.”

“Say, take Rachel Corrie, local young woman, she was extremely courageous. She's a martyr for peace and justice. We happened to kill her too, even if we don't like to admit it. She was killed by U. S. sent equipment, which is Caterpillar…
[Q: you draw that line right back to you and me sitting here? ] Absolutely, we're responsible for it. I mean, we didn't drive the bulldozer, but why is it there? What's it doing? Who provides the military, economic, and diplomatic support for destroying the occupied territories?”

“Let us turn now to the most elementary principle of just war theory, universality. Those who cannot accept this principle should have the decency to keep silent about matters of right and wrong, or just war. If we can rise to this level, some obvious questions arise: for example, have Cuba and Nicaragua been entitled to set off bombs in Washington, New York, and Miami in self-defense against ongoing terrorist attack? Particularly so when the perpetrators are well known and act with complete impunity, sometimes in brazen defiance of the highest international authorities, so that the cases are far clearer than Afghanistan? If not, why not?”

“Somebody's paying the corporations that destroyed Iraq and the corporations that are rebuilding it. They're getting paid by the American taxpayer in both cases. So we pay them to destroy the country, and then we pay them to rebuild it.”

“Going back years, I am absolutely certain that I have taken far more extreme positions on people who deny the Holocaust than you have…Even to enter into the arena of debate on whether the Nazis carried out such atrocities is already to lose one's humanity.”

“Independent nationalism is unacceptable to the West, no matter where it is, and it has to be driven back into subordination. In the case of Grenada, you can do it in a weekend; in the case of the Soviet Union it may take 70 years. But these are matters of scale, the logic is essentially the same.”

“Spectator sports make people more passive, because you're not doing them—you're watching somebody doing them.”

“After September 11th I had tons of interviews everywhere, except the United States of course, and often it was national radio and TV. A couple of times it turned out to be Irish television and BBC back to back, and the difference in reaction was startling. If I said this much on Irish TV, OK, discussion over, everyone understands what I'm talking about. You try to say it on BBC, you have to go on for like about an hour to explain to them what you mean. The Irish sea is a chasm, and it just depends who's been holding the whip for 800 years and who's been under it for 800 years.”

“Nothing should be done to impede people from teaching and doing their research even if at that very moment it was being used to massacre and destroy. […] the radical students and I wanted to keep the labs on campus, on the principle that what is going to be going on anyway ought to be open and above board, so that people would know what is happening and act accordingly.”

“Clinton, Kennedy, they all carried out mass murder, but they didn't think that that was what they were doing - nor does Bush. You know, they were defending justice and democracy from greater evils. And in fact I think you'd find it hard to discover a mass murderer in history who didn't think that.”

“Control of thought is more important for governments that are free and popular than for despotic and military states. The logic is straightforward: a despotic state can control its domestic enemies by force, but as the state loses this weapon, other devices are required to prevent the ignorant masses from interfering with public affairs, which are none of their business.”

“A study of the inter-American system published by the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London concluded that, while the US pays lip service to democracy, the real commitment is to "private, capitalist enterprise." When the rights of investors are threatened, democracy has to go; if these rights are safeguarded, killers and torturers will do just fine.”

“We're supposed to worship Adam Smith but you're not supposed to read him. That's too dangerous. He's a dangerous radical.”

“Nothing can justify crimes such as those of September 11, but we can think of the United States as an "innocent victim" only if we adopt the convenient path of ignoring the record of its actions and those of its allies, which are, after all, hardly a secret.”

“I think the basic question you ask is a good one: if we were to withdraw our own beating people over the heads with clubs, would it necessarily follow that somebody else would take that role, or are there other alternatives? Well yeah, there are other alternatives. For example, the alternatives that are favored by the overwhelming majority of the population of the United States. I mentioned one piece of it: let the UN function. The UN isn't perfect, a lot of things wrong with it, just like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights isn't perfect… But one step would be to pay some respect to the "decent opinion of mankind", to quote the famous author, and let international institutions function so as to reduce the likelihood that anybody will use force…”

“Modern linguistics has also failed to deal with the Cartesian observations regarding human language in any serious way.”