Noam Chomsky Predicted the Rise of Trump Six Years Ago

[eridani]

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/05/05/noam-chomsky-predicted-rise-trump-six-years-ago

Democrats, in short, have left the working class in the dust, often using "the excuse," as a recent New York Times editorial put it, "that they need big-money backers to succeed."

Republicans, meanwhile, as Chomsky has observed, are "dedicated with utter servility" to the interests of the wealthy, and their party, with its longing for war and denial of climate science, "is a danger to the human species."

So we are faced with a political system largely devoted to the needs of organized wealth, which leaves working people anxious, worried about the future, and, as we have seen, very angry. In essence, political elites — on both sides — have created a vacuum into which a charismatic and loudmouthed demagogue can emerge.

As Chomsky noted in his interview with Hedges, "The United States is extremely lucky that no honest, charismatic figure has arisen. 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."

That was in 2010. Now, in 2016, we have Donald J. Trump, the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party.

Trump is, of course, not "honest" in any meaningful definition of the word, but his supporters believe that he "tells it like it is." They view him as a no-nonsense straight-talker, a man not confined by the limits of political correctness.

To garner votes, Trump has tapped into the fears and animosities of members of the white working class who previously backed Republicans but now view the party as a collection of bureaucrats who have sold them out.

[KG]

1. I regret i have but one rec to give....

[malaise]

2. Well given that Trump is a pathological LIAR, the word

honest does not fit

[UtahJosh]

4. His racism seems pretty honest to me. nt

[malaise]

5. Oh he is racist

no doubt about that

[UtahJosh]

6. I think that's the kind of honesty Chomsky was driving at. nt

[SammyWinstonJack]

7. It was.

[pampango]

3. Great post. It reminded me that a Pat Buchanan adviser predicted a "Trump" in 1996.

How an obscure adviser to Pat Buchanan predicted the wild Trump campaign in 1996

(S)ooner or later, as the globalist elites seek to drag the country into conflicts and global commitments, preside over the economic pastoralization of the United States, manage the delegitimization of our own culture, and the dispossession of our people, and disregard or diminish our national interests and national sovereignty, a nationalist reaction is almost inevitable and will probably assume populist form when it arrives. The sooner it comes, the better…

(Samuel Francis in Chronicles)

Imagine giving this advice to a Republican presidential candidate: What if you stopped calling yourself a conservative and instead just promised to make America great again?

What if you dropped all this leftover 19th-century piety about the free market and promised to fight the elites who were selling out American jobs? What if you just stopped talking about reforming Medicare and Social Security and instead said that the elites were failing to deliver better health care at a reasonable price? What if, instead of vainly talking about restoring the place of religion in society — something that appeals only to a narrow slice of Middle America — you simply promised to restore the Middle American core — the economic and cultural losers of globalization — to their rightful place in America? What if you said you would restore them as the chief clients of the American state under your watch, being mindful of their interests when regulating the economy or negotiating trade deals?

That's pretty much the advice that columnist Samuel Francis gave to Pat Buchanan in a 1996 essay, "From Household to Nation," in Chronicles magazine. Samuel Francis was a paleo-conservative intellectual who died in 2005. Earlier in his career he helped Senator East of North Carolina oppose the Martin Luther King holiday. He wrote a white paper recommending the Reagan White House use its law enforcement powers to break up and harass left-wing groups. He was an intellectual disciple of James Burnham's political realism, and Francis' political analysis always had a residue of Burnham's Marxist sociology about it. He argued that the political right needed to stop playing defense — the globalist left won the political and cultural war a long time ago — and should instead adopt the insurgent strategy of communist intellectual Antonio Gramsci. Francis eventually turned into a something resembling an all-out white nationalist, penning his most racist material under a pen name. Buchanan didn't take Francis' advice in 1996, not entirely. But 20 years later, "From Household to Nation," reads like a political manifesto from which the Trump campaign springs.

To simplify Francis' theory: There are a number of Americans who are losers from a process of economic globalization that enriches a transnational global elite. These Middle Americans see jobs disappearing to Asia and increased competition from immigrants. Most of them feel threatened by cultural liberalism, at least the type that sees Middle Americans as loathsome white bigots. But they are also threatened by conservatives who would take away their Medicare, hand their Social Security earnings to fund-managers in Connecticut, and cut off their unemployment too.

http://theweek.com/articles/599577/how-obscure-adviser-pat-buchanan-predicted-wild-trump-campaign-1996

It is really not fair to use a quote from a Buchanan adviser to predict the rise of a "Trump" since Trump is a re-creation of Pat Buchanan in many ways. Donald is just a 'new-and-improved' version of Pat, who is better at demagoguing policies that Pat discussed too blandly.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=7807168

[malaise]

8. Great post

[davidn3600]

9. Anyone who has a brain and followed politics saw this coming

And it won't end with Trump. Even if Trump loses, these people don't just slink back and go away. They will be angrier in 2020 and 2024. And we will get people even more radical than Trump. And eventually one of them is going to get elected.

It's not limited to the Republicans. Many in the Democratic party are angry too. An ever increasing number of people are getting sick and tired of how the middle class keeps getting screwed by Wall Street.

[bemildred]

10. +1.

I knew we were governed by buffoons when they allowed Citizen's United to stand, it is a recipe for enterpreneurial politics, which was aready doing quite well here. Politics IS a business here.