Noam Chomsky (13 page)

This operation and the multitude of other affairs perpetrated by the Reagan administration to ‘root out evil’ in Nicaragua were rich pickings for Chomsky and any activist with an interest in such matters. In
The Managua Lectures
Chomsky reiterates the basic principle of
US
foreign policy as:

What with Daniel Ortega and his henchmen wanting to close the door a bit, the Kissinger doctrine had to kick in. The metaphor of the ‘open society’ is still very much in use today, with the Orwellian tinge of carrying the opposite meaning of the literal one. That President Bush in 2005 wanted to confer the benefits of an ‘open society’ on the ‘axis of evil’ (Iraq, Iran and North Korea) is no great surprise, given that these are ‘closed societies’, as defined by
US
foreign policy. Having a ‘closed society’ on the doorstep of the
US
– in the shape of a recalcitrant Cuba – has long been an obsession with the
US
State Department, hence any signs of other Latin American doorstep nations following suit must be prevented at all cost. Even the tiny island nation of Grenada had to be invaded in 1983. In Nicaragua in 1985 Chomsky was thus reduced to tears of shame at being a
US
citizen:

Here a very realistic Chomsky voices his frustration and shame at his own inability to change the course of events. Did the likes of Allende (Chile), Ortega (Nicaragua) and Bishop (Grenada) stand a chance? Now in 2006 will Hugo Chavez (Venezuela) and Lula de Silva (Brazil) fare any better? Possibly one reason the
US
hasn’t yet successfully invaded Cuba is that Cuba serves as a convenient bogey man for the
US
public, keeping at fever pitch the continuous portrayal of a deadly enemy at the doorstep of an ever so vulnerable ‘open society’, which must do everything possible to keep the terrorists out, including, of course, preventative strikes.

One of the themes inherent in all Latin American life and politics is the Catholic Church and its role in it. Many a political activist of an anti-religious persuasion might pronounce the Catholic Church in particular part of the problem. Even Rocker held that ‘the less … that man is influenced by ecclesiastical or political guardianship, the more efficient and harmonious will human personality become’. Thus it might come as bit of a surprise that Chomsky has few anti-religious sentiments. In fact, for the most part he sees the Catholic Church in Latin America as part of the solution. A provocative-sounding essay published in 1979, ‘The Nazi Parallel: The National Security State and the Churches’, suggests that Latin American churches – Brazilian ones in particular – oppose fascism in a manner similar to the German churches that opposed Nazism. Chomsky (and his co-author Herman) claim that ‘the most powerful bases of organized resistance in Nazi Germany were the churches, which provided the “most active, most effective, and most consistent” opposition to Nazi terror.’
⁴²
This is a controversial claim in that the Vatican and Catholic Church of Germany under the Nazis more often than not collaborated with the Nazis. Under Article 16 of the infamous 1933 Concordat, German Catholic bishops were required to swear that ‘in the performance of my spiritual office and in my solicitude for the welfare and the interests of the German Reich, I will endeavour to avoid all detrimental acts which might endanger it.’
⁴³
The British historian John Cornwell wrote a scathing account of the whole saga in
Hitler’s Pope
(2000). It is true that the Protestant churches were more proactive in their opposition to Hitler, but they too buckled under the strain. In line with Chomsky, though, one has to admit that the Latin American exponents of Liberation Theology are a totally different kettle offish, and sometimes come close to what are the basic tenets of radical Marxism or indeed anarcho-syndicalism; as such they are a phenomenon quite outside the norm. With the election of Pope John Paul 11 in 1978, however, things took a turn for the worse. Barry Healy from the Australian Green Left summed it up as follows:

So perhaps there was a brief window of Catholic resistance in Latin America, but it is hard to share Chomsky’s optimism in these matters, especially when he and Herman consider that

If the all-powerful Catholic Church of Latin America had done any of that, the twentieth-century history of a largely German fascist-inspired Latin America might have been a better one, Nicaragua and El Salvador included. Chomsky would, however, reject such criticism by pointing out that liberation theology was not powerful enough to overcome state terror, run or backed by the most powerful country on earth – with the support of the Vatican. On occasion Chomsky puts all the blame on the
US
Government (USG), as in the following statement from the 1988 essay ‘Central America: The Next Phase’:

This is all fair comment, but perhaps fails to give any sense that there just might be some local collaborators with which the Americans work together. The Contras, after all, were mainly local thugs, and probably good Catholics as well. Again, unfair criticism, Chomsky would suggest, for would anyone object to a similar statement about Russia in Hungary or Afghanistan (or Nazi Germany in France and the Low Countries), even though the invaders had plenty of local collaborators? Every imperial war was in part a civil conflict in the country attacked.

Even if we subscribe to Chomsky’s theory that all people deserve the benefit of the doubt and that it is the system that turns good people into bad ones, we are still left in a Catch-22 situation: we cannot get rid of all the fascists, who will never allow
US
to change or abolish the system. The role the churches play in this deadly game may well be benign and, on occasion, on the side of radical reformers, but as a pillar of the establishment and upholder of the dreaded system, especially in Latin America, again one has to question Chomsky’s optimism in this regard. While Chomsky, having been brought up in Jewish orthodoxy, has found room to criticize very severely Jewish religious fanaticism as it extends into the political realm in Israel and elsewhere, he has failed to criticize Christian fundamentalism in equal measure, especially the abhorrent forms rife in the
USG
. Here the paedophilia scandals within the Catholic Church in America should be mentioned, as well as influence that it exerts in Latin America owing to its financial clout. There have been recent reports that non-Catholic fundamentalist Christian churches from the
US
are also having an impact on Latin America, as intensive neo-missionary campaigns are fought. There is even a linguistic aspect to that campaign, what with the Texas-based Summer Institute of Linguistics (
SIL
) translating the Bible into local languages and spreading the good news of
US
intervention.

Chomsky, however, maintains that he has on occasion harshly criticized the Christian fundamentalist right, and that he has never expressed any admiration for the Catholic Church, except when its activities merited admiration (liberation theology, for example). Be this as it may, there is so much more to Chomsky’s political activism that deserves our attention: there is the central theme of Palestine and the Middle East (it’s in his bones, as it were); then we focus on East Timor, which shows Chomsky as a dedicated campaigner for political and social justice for a far-removed corner of the earth; as a final topic in this chapter we feature Chomsky in the centre of the current maelstrom, 9/11 and the War on Terror.

PALESTINE
. An ongoing catastrophe with which Chomsky has been closely associated as a political activist is, of course, Palestine and the Middle East, a struggle closely bound up with his personal life. He belongs to that minority of political activists who have come to the conclusion that Arabs (Palestinians) and Jews should live together in a single state in cooperation. In a concession to
Realpolitik
, he also considers the possibility of two states on equal terms. By 1974, as Chomsky has emphasized in his writings since then, Israel had lost the opportunity to establish a federal and ultimately binational state in
cis
-Jordan, and the only short-term option is the two-state international consensus that the
US
has blocked since it took shape in the mid-1970s.

These are admirable positions dictated by logic and humanitarian concern. The trouble is that most of the stakeholders have vastly different goals. Most Israelis fight tooth and claw to kick out the Palestinians and keep them out. Most Palestinians fight to get back what they lost and to kick out the Israelis. A more optimistic reading would be that long ago the Palestinians supported the international consensus. A large number of Israelis do, too, and this is sometimes a majority, depending on how questions are formulated. But with American support and superior technology, the Israelis make sure that the statistics for collateral damage remain in Israel’s favour, 3:1 at least. In his comments made in 1977 regarding American support for Israel, which still hold true today, Chomsky observed that ‘there’s been a very consistent
US
foreign policy in the Middle East, at least since the Second World War, whose primary concern has been to ensure that the energy reserves of the Middle East remain firmly under American control.’
⁴⁷
Israel is the local sheriff and gatherer of intelligence. Israel also ‘protected the “monarchical regimes” of Jordan and Saudi Arabia from “a militarily strong Egypt” in the 1960s, thus securing American interests in the major oil-producing regions.’
⁴⁸

How does Chomsky fare when he visits Israel and the occupied territories? It is certainly more dangerous than Nicaragua during the Sandinista versus Contra era: he risks life and limb in the occupied West Bank, breaking military curfews repeatedly. Pro-Palestinian American activists, such as Rachel Corrie, are sometimes killed by Israelis. In 2003 Corrie was run over by an Israeli bulldozer as she tried to stop it demolishing Palestinian homes. Chomsky’s visit to the occupied territories in April 1988 was marked by quite a few close shaves with the Israeli authorities. He writes with cool detachment of one such incident, in an account first published in Israel in Hebrew: