Rev Left Radio - [BEST OF] The Noam Chomsky Interview: Fragility of US Power w/ Vijay Prashad

Episode Date: May 21, 2025

ORIGINALLY RELEASED Aug 19, 2022 In this landmark episode, we sit down with the legendary Noam Chomsky and renowned historian Vijay Prashad to discuss their insightful new book, The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power. Exploring the aftermath of America's military engagements, Chomsky and Prashad illuminate the complexities of U.S. imperial ambitions, the consequences - moral and material - of foreign interventions, and the growing cracks in America's global dominance. Noam Chomsky, widely celebrated as one of the greatest intellectual figures of our time, brings his sharp analytical mind and decades of political activism to this conversation. Vijay Prashad, director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and chief correspondent for Globetrotter, adds his deep historical expertise and critical insights into global politics. Don't miss this extraordinary dialogue, unpacking profound geopolitical questions with two influential thinkers who have shaped how we understand power and resistance in our world today. ---------------------------------------------------- Support Rev Left and get access to bonus episodes: www.patreon.com/revleftradio Make a one-time donation to Rev Left at BuyMeACoffee.com/revleftradio Follow, Subscribe, & Learn more about Rev Left Radio https://revleftradio.com/

Hello, guerrilla history listeners. Today for you, we have an excellent episode, one that features two fantastic guests. And as a result of having some time constraints with our guests, we weren't able to give a proper introduction to them. So we are going to do that briefly now before we get into the episode itself. The guests that we have are Professor Noam Chomsky and our friend Vijay Prashad, who together wrote the forthcoming book, The Withdrawal, Iraq, Libya. Afghanistan and the fragility of U.S. power, which is coming out next week from the new press. So keep your eyes peeled for that.

Pre-order now. Highly recommend everybody get that book. The book is talking about the weaknesses of the American state as well as kind of a history of American imperialism. It's a fascinating conversation that we have and it actually worked out in a very interesting way. We planned on them coming on together to talk simultaneously with us, but we actually had it workout so that Professor Chomsky came on first and VJ joined us right at the end of that and we had a little bit of a supplemental discussion with VJ after Professor Chomsky had to leave. It's a fascinating episode. I know that you're all really going to love it. And I highly recommend that

you share this episode widely because regardless of where you stand ideologically, I think that there is a lot of really valuable information in this episode. And I highly recommend that you listen to it in its entirety from beginning to end because you'll learn a lot, I guarantee it. So without further ado, let's turn to our episode on the withdrawal with Professor Noam Chomsky and V.J. Prashad. You remember Den Van Booh? The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The prince had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare.

But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello and welcome to guerrilla history, the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present. I'm your host, Henry Huckimacki, joined by my co-hosts, Professor Adnan Hussein, historian and director of the School of Religion at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada, Hello, Adnan. How are you doing today?

I'm doing great. It's wonderful to be with you, Henry. Absolutely. And also joined by Brett O'Shea, host of Revolutionary Left Radio and co-host of the Red Menace podcast. Hello, Brett. How are you? Doing great. Very excited for this conversation. Absolutely. We have hopefully two fantastic guests. Right now we're starting with just one, which is the inimitable professor, Noam Chomsky, who really doesn't need much of an introduction at this point. we're also hoping to be joined by Vijay Prashad, who I guess for our listeners also doesn't need much of an introduction at this point as he's been on the show two or three times at this point. But we're going to be focusing on their new book, The Withdrawal, which hasn't come out yet

at the time of recording, but we'll release this right at the time that the book is coming out. And it's a very, very interesting work. The first thing that I want to open with as we get the conversation underway is something that's really fundamental to a lot of the analysis that takes place in the withdrawal, which is looking at case studies of Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and how the U.S. pull out of these areas has really caused devastation for the population. One of the things that's really critical to the analysis is your analysis of the godfather attitude. I'm wondering, Professor Chomsky, if you can introduce what the godfather attitude is for the audience, because this will be

useful going forward into the conversation. Well, there's plenty of serious academic work in international relations theory. But in fact, there are some simple approaches which are pretty good as first approximations. One is that international relations are... in many ways, rather like the Mafia. There's a godfather, somebody who wishes to be the godfather. He gives the orders, others obey or else they're in trouble. It's, for a long period, Britain was the major dominant hegemonic power, France as well,

that ended with the Second World War the United States took over in a position of power that had no historical precedent whatsoever even though it's declined some sense still remains largely true so when the U.S. gives orders everyone obeys or else whether they like it or not

just to give a couple of examples to illustrate, take, say, the U.S. torture of Cuba for the last 60 years. Ever since Cuba won independence, almost within months, the U.S. started to try to overthrow the government, invasions, terrorist war, crushing sanctions. The world is totally against it. If you look at the votes in the United Nations on the sanctions, Most recent one was 184 to 2, or the United States and Israel, Israel has to vote with the United States. So it's basically the world against the United States.

But every country adheres to them. European countries oppose, but they adhere to the sanctions. They don't want the punishment that comes with disobeying the godfather. U.S. sanctions or third-four parties, what are called third-party sanctions. Even those not named or mentioned have to adhere to them. Take another case, Iran, same story. U.S. pulled out of the joint agreement on Iraqi, on Iranian nuclear programs in violation of security counsel endorsement and in opposition.

to all of the other signers, European countries, all opposed, strongly opposed, but they all obey. They all obey the sanctions because the godfather is too frightening. So that's a reasonable for, give many other examples, but it's a reasonable first approximation to the way the world actually works. So, you know, this book covers many countries, from the Vietnam War up to the present day. And a lot of times when we talk about Iraq and Afghanistan and places like even Vietnam, they'll often be framed by certain people as failures. The U.S. was defeated in Iraq or Afghanistan or Vietnam.

Are these ostensible failures abroad really losses for U.S. imperialism, or is their destabilization and destruction sufficient for U.S. goals in the region? Not really. take Vietnam the worst, the most grotesque crime since the Second World War. It's not just Vietnam. It's all of Indochina, the United States devastated Laos and Cambodia under Nixon. Did the United States lose the war? Well, it depends how you look at it.

The United States did not achieve its maximal gains. its maximal gains were to turn all of Vietnam into kind of like the Philippines client state. That didn't work. Vietnamese resistance was too strong. But if you look back at the original goals of the war, which fortunately we can do, because one of the good things about the United States is it's a very free society, have a lot of access to internal documents. Even more, in this case, thanks to Dan Ellsberg,

who released the Pentagon Papers, and the government released its own version. So we have extensive documentation, rich record of why the United States went to war. It goes back to the early 50s. And the rationale for entering the war was perfectly rational imperialism. It's what Henry Kissinger called the threat of a virus that can spread contagion.

Vietnam was the virus. It was embarked on a course of successful independent development. No, not Russia, not China. That was all invented. But it was moving towards independent development. It might have been successful. that would have had a contagious effect. It would have affected, sometimes called the domino effect.

It would have affected Thailand, then Burma, Malaysia, Indonesia, which was the big price. Vietnam didn't matter much, but Indonesia had enormous resources and wealth. And if it went that far, I'm virtually quoting internal documents now. If we went that for Japan, at that point the industrial technological powerhouse of Asia would accommodate to an independent East Asia and become its technological industrial center and have the rest of the region as a research and market area. Well, that's Japan's goal during the Second World War. to create what they called a new order in Asia. And in the early 1950s, the United States was not prepared to lose the Second World War. Maybe ugly, but it's not unintelligible.

So how do you deal with the virus that's going to cause contagion? You destroy the virus. You inoculate the potential victims. That means establish brutal military dictatorships. in the surrounding countries, which would prevent any spread of dangerous thoughts of independent development. As for the virus, you just smash it to pieces. Well, it's pretty much what happened.

In fact, it was sort of recognized by the more intelligent U.S. planners. So towards the end of the war, late 70s, McGeorge Bundy, who was the National Security security advisor for Kennedy and Johnson reflected on the war. And he said, we maybe we should have pulled out in 1965. Why? Because in 1965, first of all, the whole region was in the hands of dictators. So that problem had been solved. The last one was Indonesia, the most important, still independent. But in 1965, U.S.-backed military

coup took place. So hard to a coup, killed hundreds of thousands of people, destroyed the main political party. Indonesia was in safe hands. Or open to U.S. investors, no more problems. So, Bundy's reflection was, well, at that point,

there was really not much point going on. with the Vietnam War. So in that respect, the U.S. won the war. With regard to its maximum objectives, it lost the war. So the question is where you look. You look at the other cases, it's a mixed bag. So take Afghanistan. That's one case where the U.S. had no strategic objectives.

It was just vengeance and rage. In fact, it's very clear from the Bush. Rumsfeld Cheney statements. In fact, the reasons were pretty well captured by the leading figure in the Afghan anti-Taliban resistance. Highly respected Afghan, Abdul Khukh, was later killed. But at the very beginning of the U.S. bombing, he was interviewed and asked, why is the U.S. bombing? He said, the U.S. wants to show its muscle and intimidate everyone. They're killing a lot of Afghans.

They're undermining our efforts to overthrow the Taliban from within, but they don't care. They just want to – they're angry. They want to show their muscle. And let's kill anybody on site. The Afghan population had nothing to do with al-Qaeda. And in fact, that – I mean, they wanted to get rid of them, in fact. They made efforts to get rid of them. The U.S. rejected it, but at that point, when the U.S. bombed, it did not even know that al-Qaeda was responsible for 9-11.

It was suspected, but as the FBI conceded, they really didn't know. They just wanted to go in and smash things up. Bush made it very clear. He had his exact words. He used vulgarisms, but he said, I just want to go and smash something. something up, I'm angry. So let's kill the Afghans. Well, in fact, it became very clear couple of months into the war. Actually, even before the invasion, Afghanistan, the Taliban had offered some various means of putting up al-Qaida to international trial. The U.S.

didn't want to hear it. Shortly after the war, Taliban simply surrendered. He said, okay, you take over, you get al-Qaeda, you get whatever you want. U.S. rejected it. Rumsfeld, the Defense Secretary, responded by saying, we do not negotiate surrenders.

George Bush repeated it. Shortly after Bush was asked in a press conference, What's the situation with al-Qaeda? He said, we don't care. I'm not interested in al-Qaeda. We're going to show the world that we can be tough and brutal, don't meddle with us or we'll kill somebody else. There was no strategic goal for Afghanistan.

And that ended up with a 20-year debacle, wrecked, destroyed Afghanistan. U.S. got nothing out of its, trillions of dollars. So that's one case where the U.S. didn't win the war. But almost every other case is very hard for the godfather to lose overwhelming power, fighting much weaker enemies. Not easy. That brings up an interesting point. I mean, in the book, you do talk about both this kind of godfather-like expression. of hegemony through brutal means and mechanisms.

And at other points, the analysis of U.S. Empire resolves around rational, geopolitical, or other kinds of material sorts of interests. And it seems that there is something of attention between these. I'm wondering if you find or feel that there is a larger or deeper logic to how this form of imperialism works in such a way that you know, that sometimes the destruction in the global south is somehow the point or whether it's the military Keynesian dimension that you also discuss that makes it a dysfunctional empire because there's certain powerful interests that will stand to gain, even if there's a larger lack of a geostrategic rationale. Well, you're quite right. These are multiple variable. events, there are many factors involved.

I think that's true of international, anything complex, certainly international relations. So you get people who are just infantile, childish, furious, angry, the George Bush types. You get people like Donald Trump, who has only one idea in his head, namely me. Nothing else matters. the people around him kind of restrain him and try to move him back to serious to strategic thinking but he may be impossible

so you get things like that but in fact all across the board take Kennedy Kennedy was a reasonable person Massachusetts Harvard Liberal but after the Bay of Pigs he and his whole

Harvard group were just went crazy. This is actually described in memoirs by people like Charles Bowles who was in the group. So there was just hysteria. Fury, how can they do this to us? How can a tiny little nothing country

beat back our invasion? They went crazy. That's when they launched the terrorist war massive sanctions, even a buildup to the terrorist war probably leading to invasion. was one of the major factor in the missile crisis, which almost blew up the world. But they were just off.

It was totally irrational. They say we were just, in fact, Kennedy himself said people in the outside are going to think we're crazy. Well, they did, in fact. So there are factors like that. But nevertheless, there is a geostrategic region. And if you look back at Cuba again, So we do have documents, internal documents from the 60s. And State Department made clear that, as they put it, the threat of Castro is his successful defiance of U.S. policies going back to the Monroe Doctrine.

1823, Monroe Doctrine, the U.S. announced that it intends to dominate the hemisphere. Couldn't do it at that time. Britain was much too strong. But it was understood that Britain's power would decline. U.S. power would increase sooner or later the United States could dominate the hemisphere. Castro was challenging that you don't get away with it.

So despite the hysteria and irrationality that was an underlying serious analysis, namely the Godfather theory, which does play an enormous role in world affairs. It's never described that way, but if you look at it, that's pretty much what it is. I might say that one of the most astute brief analysis of international relations goes back 250 years to Adam Smith. You read Wealth of Nations, not a high school variant of it that you learned, but what he actually wrote. I said that throughout all the ages, the masters of mankind have pursued their vile maxim, all for ourselves, nothing for anyone else. then he was talking about England in 1776 said in England the masters of mankind are the merchants and manufacturers of England and they make sure that they are the principal architects of government policy and they make sure that their own interests are most peculiarly attended to taken care of no matter how grievous the effect on others, including the people of England,

but particularly those subject to the savage injustice of the Europeans, referring specifically to the British and India. That's a pretty good description of world affairs in all ages. Yeah, so when we think about the geopolitical reasoning, it often is quite clear, you know, when we look at what interest the United States has and various interventions abroad, there are certain things that really stand out if you think beyond what you're hearing in the headlines. However, what we often hear are not geopolitically based. They're based in other sorts of justifications. And you and VJ in

the withdrawal talk not super extensively, but at least a little bit about different justifications for war. You talk about just war theory, talk about the responsibility to protect, R2P, and in quite excoriating terms, and rightly so. So I'm wondering if you would be able to, for our audience, give a little bit of that critique of these various theories of when is it time to intervene abroad and how the United States, particularly, and also using its proxies like NATO, which really is just the United States by any other name, if we're being honest with ourselves, how they use this as basically a smokescreen to hide the geopolitical reasoning behind their interventions.

Well, now we're moving into the arena of what's called American exceptionalism. Other countries are do bad and ugly things, but we always have good intentions. Maybe we make mistakes. Anybody can make mistakes, but it's all done with the best of intentions. So, for example, at the end of the Vietnam War, the Indo-China War, which was an utter monstrosity, as I said, the worst crime since the Second World War. Of course, at the end of the war, everyone had to write a comment about it. The most interesting is at the left end of the admissible spectrum.

That's always the most interesting. So you go to Anthony Lewis and the New York Times. Critic of the war, left analysts by mainstream standards. He wrote that the United States entered the war with benign intentions to do good, but we found that it was a mistake we couldn't bring democracy to Vietnam at a cost to satisfactory to ourselves. So it was a mistake. That's the left end of criticism in the mainstream. stream. It's about on the par of Russian generals and the invasion of Afghanistan who recognized that it was a strategic error.

Okay, we don't give them a fusive praise for that. But that's basically the end of the spectrum here. There's two problems with American exceptionalism. One is the historical record. We chose that It's totally false. But another is, it's not exceptional. Every other imperial power has pursued the same line. So when Britain was smashing India to pieces, right at the peak of the atrocities, in fact, in 1857, John Stuart Mill, a really remarkable intellectual,

there are very few capable of, who worthy of shining his, shoes, really outstanding person. 1857, right in the middle of the worst British atrocities, Mill wrote an article about intervention. Serious article, thoughtful guy, and people teach it in law schools. He said, intervention is a bad thing, shouldn't do it. But there are exceptions. He said, one exception is Britain. Britain is not an ordinary country. It's an angelic power. work solely for the benefit of mankind. In fact, it's so angelic that European countries can't understand us.

They, as he put it, heap obliquian on us, try to find hidden motives in what we're doing. Because we're so beyond them in our angelic character that they just can't understand that we're working for the benefit of mankind as we slaughter Indians, conquer more of India for more opium production so we can force our way by gun moot into China. It's all ultra-angelic. Well, that's John Stuart Mill.

But respectable and intellectuals you'd find. You go to France. The intellectuals were admiring themselves for their civilizing mission. Well, the chief general in Algeria said

we must exterminate the population. go down the list, you're going to find the same thing. If we had records from the till of the Hun, we'd probably find the same thing. I've never found an exception. So American exceptionalism is just conformity to the norm plus denial of the facts. And it's very interesting to see how this is dealt with by the more reasonable and serious of international relations scholars. So it takes Hans Morgenthau,

a very decent person, very good scholar, one of the early critics of the Vietnam War. He was the founder of what's called the realist movement, the dominant movement in IR theory, hard-headed, no sentimentality, realism. He was the founder of it. Well, he wrote an interesting book called the purpose of America

other countries don't have purposes but America has purposes wants the purpose of America to bring justice and freedom to all good things to the Americans and to the world

but he's a serious scholar so he ran through the record he said if you look at the record you can see that the United States did not live up to its purpose in case after case it acted contrary to its purpose. And then he made an interesting comment.

He said to question the American purpose on grounds of history is an error. It's to confuse the abuse of history with history itself. The abuse of history is what happened. History itself is the transcendent purpose as reflected in our minds. And he said, too, he said, this is like the error of atheism, which questions

the glory of God because there's evil in the world. We should not fall into that error. Well, I think he inadvertently captured it pretty well. And remember, this is the founder, the guru of the

hard-headed, no-nonsense, realist school. Well, you learn things from that. So the American exceptionalism is the norm, and it's completely refuted by history, but it changes nothing. You read article after article, press scholarship about American exceptionalism. In fact, it just don't matter. They're what Morgenthau called abusive history. Well, that's interesting that you brought up the founder of realism and this realist school when it comes to American exceptionalism,

which seems to be a purduring presumption in the American foreign policy sort of class. And over the discussion in this book, you do talk about some of these different orientations that made different kinds of arguments for U.S. imperial intervention at different stages. It reminds me a little bit of that shift from, say, George H.W. Bush, who was presumably guided by the sort of realist geostrategic interests, rational foreign policy, balance of power, kinds of things to ensure U.S. dominance and the first Iraq war, and the George W. Bush policy that was guided by the neocon desire for, you know, American hegemony for the sake of it and all of the things that you discuss about how the goals, the very ideological goals for U.S. hegemony were apparent right after 9-11 already in these discussions by Rumsfeld. But it makes me wonder if you think there's really much of a difference ultimately between the sort of realist and the kind of neocon liberal spread democracy hegemony. And

what you think about that kind of apparent conflict that sometimes has made a great deal of within internal U.S. policy debates and discussions. Well, there's a difference, but you're quite right. It's not much of a difference. From the point of view of the victims, it's about the same. It comes out the same way. So take H.W. Bush, the statesman, after the first Gulf War, he said, we have demonstrated his words that what we say goes, Godfather.

Do you have to fight the first Gulf War? Absolutely not. Take a look at what happened. Saddam Hussein was a dictator surrounded by psychopaths, never heard any contrary voice. He apparently assumed that the U.S. had given him the green light to invade Kuwait. Kuwait had been robbing Iraqi oil resources,

tapping into Iraqi fields. Iraq had defended the Arab world and he thought Kuwait was owed them a debt and he should take over the old. He very quickly realized he'd misinterpreted it. He was actually reacting to a talk with him by the U.S. Ambassador April Glasby, who was a pretty innocent person. I met her. She didn't know what she was doing. She was relaying a message from Washington, and it was sort of ambiguous. Didn't say, it's okay to invade Kuwait, but didn't say don't do it.

So Saddam misinterpreted. Within a couple of days, he realized he'd made a mistake when he saw the U.S. reaction. This is August. He began to make offers to withdraw. The U.S. didn't want to hear them. Bush wanted to go in there. there and smash things up properly what we say goes. So the offers were disregarded. They kept getting stronger and stronger, disregarded all of them. U.S. media cooperated by suppressing

them. It was very interesting what happened. There were constant leaks from the State Department talking about these things. Where did they appear somewhere in a suburban New York newspaper New York Long Island News Day nobody leaks anything to a suburban newspaper

people leak it there because they want it to be seen on the New York news stands where you do see this big headline saying Saddam offers to negotiate can't miss it

well the New York Times has to somehow react to it so a day later, Thomas Friedman has an article talking about how wonderful the U.S. policy is, says there are these rumors going around the 22nd paragraph that Saddam wants to negotiate, but of course that's nonsense. Let's go on to the next topic. After the war, they finally conceded. But the idea was, let's smash them up properly. We can, of course, easily defeat the Iraq. Army, you know. This is a joke. And once we've done then, in a very brutal fashion,

in fact, Newsday had some very good reporters, New Royce, a couple others, who reported what was happening with like American, you know, the U.S. Army was using bulldozers to bury Iraqi soldiers, peasants mostly. The main army was pulled down. So Iraqi conscripts were being buried in the desert by bulldozers. That's the way we were fighting the war. Meanwhile, Bush made sure to really destroy Iraq, destroy the power stations, the infrastructure, a really severe blow. It had nothing to do with rescuing Kuwait.

That could have been done my negotiations. Well, that's statesmanship. and it ends up with what we say go. As he put it, we finally kicked the Vietnam syndrome. What's the Vietnam syndrome? Well, that was addressed by one of the leading neocon intellectuals, Norman Puthoritz. He said the Vietnam syndrome is the sickly inhibitions against the use of military force. We finally kicked that sickly inhibitions against the use of military.

force. We have the force, let's use it to get what we want. Pursue the Vial Maxim. We go back to Afghanistan. On 9-11, the very day, 9-11, Donald Rumsfeld,

was sending memos his famous snowflakes to the defense of military saying can we work this into a way of justifying our broader objective? of attacking Iraq and so on. It's the day of 9-11.

They're thinking. Yeah, that's just, yeah, galling. I wanted to kind of shift because we want to be respectful of your time and kind of shift more towards what's happening currently in the world, you know, specifically the rise of China over the last few decades and now this war in Europe between Russia and Ukraine. There's a lot of talk around this of the emergence of multipolarity, of the end of complete U.S. hegemonic domination of the entire globe.

I'm just kind of thinking, what are your thoughts on the emergence of a multipolarity and what are its implications for U.S. imperialism in the decades to come? That's a major issue that's developing right now. First of all, the war in Ukraine is going to have a big effect on the emerging world system. There's very little doubt of that. It's already had several effects. One thing is, in his criminal stupidity, Putin handed the United States on a silver platter,

the greatest gift it could ask for it, expanding NATO, driving Europe into the U.S. pocket. It's an amazing contribution to U.S. hegemony They're just gloating about it in Washington. There's a background here, significant background. Since the Second World War, there has been a question about the role of Europe in world affairs. It's a huge economy, bigger than the United States, more advanced in many ways, certainly in social justice and so on, educationally. once it got unified through, more or less through the EU, could have been an independent

third force, as it was called, in world affairs. Of course, that would require accommodation with Russia, which is part of Europe. That's Charles de Gaulle. He was the leading exponent of what was called Europe from the Atlantic to the Euros, maybe even from Lisbon of Vladivostok, an independent grouping, which would have no military alliances, or if there were any there, they'd be marginal, but basically a unified, powerful element in world affairs. That was combated by the United States. It's anathemat of the United States. The U.S. wanted to impose what's called the Atlanticist system. That means NATO,

based run by the United States. It's now called the rule-based international order, meaning the U.S. sets the rules as distinct from the U.N.-based national order, which the U.S. opposes. In fact, it's now almost uniform in U.S. academic and media circles to call for a rule-based international order, while China, the global south and so on, are calling for U.N. international order. There's a deep reason there. The UN-based international order bars U.S. foreign policy. Can't have that. It bars the threat of use of force in international affairs. Obviously, it can't have that. So we need the rules-based order. We run it. For Europe,

that means the Atlantis is a version based on NATO. Well, it's been a, it became a big issue in the early 90s. when Russia collapsed, and Gorbachev, particularly put forth the idea of a common European home, Lisbon of Latavastok, no military blocs, co-equal partners, U.S. and Europe in creating a new world order, which in his view should be social democratic, it's a mutual transformation in both, the major societies. Actually, George H.W. Bush was not, he didn't like it, but he wasn't strongly opposed to it. It was Clinton who undermined it totally with the expansion of NATO to Russia's borders. It was pretty open and frank about it, actually.

But ever since then, this continues. The Russian leaders, including Putin, kept calling for a common European home. The U.S. has been trying to block it. Well, Putin now handed it to the United States. No European common home, Europe, Western Europe, in Washington's pockets. But there's a problem. China isn't buying it. The global south isn't buying it.

They're not participating in the war, no sanctions, keep their relations with Russia open. They attack the war. They denounce its crime. But then they keep saying, get off your high horse. This is what you do to us all the time. You're in no position to start condemning it. So, yes, it's a crime, but we're not going to break ties with Russia anymore, and we broke ties with you. you do it a thousand times worse than Russia does.

So the world is dividing up. And a very interesting question is how Europe is going to deal with this. The losers in the war so far, outside of Ukraine, are Germany. Germany and it's Germany had a sophisticated, German-based, integrated trade and industrial system in Western Europe, stretching from the Netherlands to the former European satellites, that's in real trouble now because it was heavily dependent on exports. It's an export-producing area. Most of the exports are to China, and it needed Russian resources, not just oil, but metals and precious metals and others, like nickel, for example, is crucial for all, it's crucial even for renewable energy.

They're not going to be able to do much without access to Russia's resources, and they're certainly not going to want to give up their main market in China, main export market, and they're not going to be wanting to be cut out from this huge infrastructure program that China is developing throughout Central Asia, the BRI, you know, the Belt and Road Initiative, an enormous development project, historically unprecedented, also reaches to Africa, even to Latin America. Europe's not going to want to cut out from that, and Russia's right in the way. They can't be part of it unless they accommodate with Russia. So there already are strong pressures, and they're surely going to grow for German-based Europe to ask,

do we want to decline hanging on to Washington's coattails, or do we want to move towards a common European home? How that's going to play out, nobody knows, but it's going to be a major factor in world affairs, as will the growing independence of the global south breaks connected with China countries like India are playing a very delicate game their main military supplier is Russia and they're almost at war with China they don't like the Russia China alliance

the United States is trying to draw them into its system for encircling China. They're reluctant, so they're kind of playing both sides in a pretty delicate game. But these are things that are playing out in the world, and they're going to be complicated. Yeah, these complexities are very interesting to watch. In some ways, your answer to Brett's question suggests that we have kind of of Cold War, you know, but maybe it'll be a little bit different from the previous Cold War with an Atlantisist vision competing against a kind of Eurasianist sort of vision. But, you know, one of the things that was important in this book in the last chapter talks about the fragility

of U.S. power. And that's kind of what we're seeing emerge with multipolar areas of other great powers challenging the U.S. I wondered, you know, does this open up the possibility of more effective challenges to U.S. Empire on the one hand, but also does it also make for an unstable and one might say dangerous, even more dangerous world as the U.S. reacts. I mean, I feel like in some ways the Iraq war was kind of like the U.S., you know, trying to leverage its military power, you know, in a kind of desperate way to kind of maintain global hegemony. And that since the Gulf, the second Iraq war, the erosion of U.S. economic and military hegemony has been continuing. Does this open up for very dangerous kind of period, you might

say, of aggressive conflict? It's very dangerous. We don't know how the U.S. is going to respond to this. The United States is historically a very violent power. It's been a war throughout its entire history. Since 1789, there's hardly been a year when the United States wasn't a war, conquering the Indian nations, conquering Mexico, expanding intervention all over and so on. And as we've talked, the godfather doesn't give up easily. Now, we also have to look at the domestic scene. One of the main sources of U.S. weakness is internal. The U.S. is tearing itself to shreds while the rest of the world is watching kind of be mused.

The United States is an extraordinary outlawyer. I mean, just take, say, mortality. the United States is the only country where mortality is increasing that never happens and mortality constantly declines except for war estolence

that the U.S. is so internally dysfunctional that it's killing itself literally among the white especially white working class people are dying from what are called

deaths of despair, opioids, suicides, homicides, or militias, storming things. We don't know what's going to happen to this country. It may fall apart. In fact, Republicans are exploiting this, and in fact, inflaming it, their basis for power. They can't get votes on their actual programs of enriching the super-rich in the corporate sector. So they're mobilizing people on what are called cultural issues. You know, about half of Republican voters now think that the Democrats are grooming children for sexual perversion. About 70% of them think the election was stolen.

You know, same percentage think that Democrats are trying to carry out the great replacement by bringing migrants in. to get rid of the white race. I mean, you know, it's a level of lunacy that it's really hard to discuss. I mean, you look at the attitudes and beliefs, it's just can't grasp it. But that's very likely going to take over the country. And they're not hiding their proposals. Like Supreme Court, which is by now ultra-reactionary, decided to take up the most outlandish case you can imagine.

It's a principle called legislative election interference program or some name like that. It's something that's been hanging around and would work for a long time, which is an idea that state legislatures can intervene to a point their own electors, no matter what the vote was. For various structural reasons, the state legislatures are mostly reactionary, very heavy effect of the rural vote and so on. So, the majority Republican, very reactionary now. According to this principle, the state legislatures could say we reject the popular vote and we elect our own right-wing electors. Nobody has to It has some kind of constitutional basis, but it was so crazy.

Nobody ever paid any attention to it. Well, the Supreme Court decided for no reason whatsoever to take it up. That's Moore v. Harper coming up in the next session of the Supreme Court. Given the nature of the court, it wouldn't be a great surprise if they endorse it. That's only one thing. There's another, which was kind of under the radar, but it's no. coming up. The last weeks of the Trump presidential era, end of I think August or so 9th, 2020, Trump passed, issued an executive order which allows the president to pretty much dismantle the

the whole civil bureaucracy, civil service, and select loyalists to run it, presidential loyalists. This undermines legislation back to the 19th century to create a neutral civil service. That's the foundation of any democracy. You don't have a neutral civil service, you have a fascist dictatorship. Well, this is what's called Schedule F was proposed by Trump last days of his tenure in office. Biden rescinded it, but it's an executive order.

It's now being debated in Congress. The Democrats in Congress want to pass legislation to block this, even if the court approves of it, legislation, which will overrule potential court decision. Republicans are opposed. They want to keep it because they're looking forward to an electoral victory, which will then enable them to establish permanent minority rule by devices such as these. That's where the country's heading, quite apart from its internal dysfunctions, like mortality or a collapsing health system.

which is just unbelievable. For example, there's a paper that just came out in the proceedings in the National Academy of Sciences studying COVID deaths in 2020. They estimate that there were more than 200,000 COVID deaths resulting just from the dysfunctional health care system. I mean, it's like the country's destroying itself. Can't do anything. When Congress wants to pass a bill to rebuild the bridges that

are falling apart and the collapsing interest structure, they have to call it a China competitive bill. Not that we need it. We have to beat China. I mean, the country's going crazy. And it will be very interesting. I mean, if you're in Mars and you're just curious, it'll be not living in it. It will be interesting to see how this kind of collapsing country, with, of course, enormous military force overwhelming everyone, can deal with declining hegemony. That's going to be difficult. And we should not forget that we're meanwhile racing towards climate catastrophe, not only doing nothing about it, but now going backwards. That could be the end of all of us. I mean, that's the world we're living in,

in the world I'm living in as I have another appointment to get to. Yeah, unfortunately, we don't have time. I had one question that I was really dying to ask you about no fly zones, but if you have to go, you have to go. So that's no issue. I'll ask the question and maybe we'll leave it as a cliffhanger. But this question was essentially a way of allowing the listeners to see their way through how Noam Chomsky thinks through problems, because at surface level, this may seem a little

bit contradictory. So, Professor Chomsky, in the past, you've, you know, railed against no-fly zones, as of course we on the show have. For example, you did an interview and truth out where you said that a no-fly zone in Ukraine could unleash untold violence. Many times where you've said no-fly zones were not justified and, you know, completely insane in some case. But in other cases, you stated in the book that we're talking about, the withdrawal, that in 1991, it was a good decision to set up a no-fly zone in northern Iraq in the Kurdish area and that I also had seen in some Turkish media that you recently had signed a letter along with other distinguished colleagues of yours that a no-fly zone over Rojava would perhaps also be a good idea. So the question of when is a no-fly zone good, when is a no-fly zone not good, if it's the United States that's pushing for the same policy in different instances, like this is at surface level, right? This is at surface level how people might perceive it. So your explanation would be very interesting.

Very straightforward. There's a single principle. What is the policy that would be most beneficial to human needs? and human welfare. That's the principle. And in fact, it leads to different conclusions about shallow matters, tactical matters, like no-fly zones. So in the case of, say, Rojava in Syria, I wasn't actually calling for a no-fly zone. There was a Turkish invasion, which is already carrying out massive atrocities.

massive atrocities in Syria against the Kurds, and it would extend to the rest of the Kurdish-run region. And it could have been stopped by simply keeping in place a small U.S. contingent, which has no function whatsoever, doesn't do anything, just deters a Kurd-Turkish invasion. So that was the right thing to do. in the case of the no-fly zone over northern Iraq stopped Saddam massacering Kurds. So it was the right thing to do. The case of a no-fly zone in Ukraine, I agree with the Pentagon, which vetoed it for sensible reasons. Because if you set up a no-fly zone in Ukraine, first thing you have to do is attack and destroy Russian anti-aircraft systems.

which happen to be within Russia. So you have to start bombing Russia. Then what happens? Well, you're on an escalatory ladder which will end human life on Earth. So it's not the right idea. So there's no inconsistency. Different tactical decisions have to be made

on the basis of a standard elementary moral overriding principle. Fascinating. Professor Noam Chomsky, unfortunately, we know you have to leave and we thank you for spending the time with us. It was really fascinating. Now, interestingly, we were planning on having to wrap up now, but we've just been joined by our friend Vijay Prashad. Hello, VJ. How are you doing? Oh, and thanks. I have to leave it to Vijay. It's up to you to see you know. Unlikely. Unlikely.

Unlikely. Thank you again. Thank you very much. So, Vij, it's nice to have you back on the show. We were hoping to have you with the professor, but, you know, this is great. Yeah, well, I mean, I just came to say hi, really. It's very difficult to be on with Nome, I suppose. But that's not the reason that I was delayed.

Still, you know, Nome is the best, you know, person to, speak on our book, in fact. So I'm glad you had him on. And I just came to say hi. Well, it's terrific to be in touch with you. And this was such an interesting work. I mean, and maybe it's in fact actually easier to ask you this question with Professor Chomsky, not present, which is that in some ways this seemed like a real, I mean, it was a history of U.S. Empire in, you know, post-Cold War, really starting with the 60s, Vietnam. to the present and potentially, you know, consequences for the future in this world of multipolarity. But it was also a kind of history of his comments and interventions on these

issues as they were happening, his analysis of them and his reflection of the role of the real responsibility of the intellectual. And so you had these dialogues as a conversation but it was also, you know, inflected with quotations from previous discussions that he had had and publications that he had. And so I wondered what was your thinking with doing this kind of resume, not only of U.S. Empire, but also of Professor Chomsky's critique and analysis of it historically over the last five plus decades. You know, I've known Nome for, I don't know, over 30 years. And it's really super difficult to get him to talk about himself, for instance, and to admit that he plays a role in the world, which is extraordinary because, you know, he's a legend. And how could he not have the self-aware of that? Of course, he's self-aware of it. But he simply does not like to talk about himself, to insert himself into the story. And in a way, the initial idea for the project was to write, to reflect on Nome Chomsky and the world that we live in, you know, to trace his own radicalization from the U.S. illegal war against the Vietnamese people right up to the present.

That was the initial, that was the impetus. you know, I was very interested to come back to his visit to Southeast Asia in, you know, in 1970. I mean, you know, people don't know about the active work that he has done, the role he has played. It was so significant that he taught in Hanoi during the war. He lectured on a range of issues in Hanoi during the war. And, you know, I know that there's a kind of semi-biography out there and there are other things out there. And I doubt very much that he will allow a biography to be written of him in the classical sense. I very much doubt it. That has to do a great deal with his integrity and his sense that, you know, world history is

made by more than a person. But in a way, Noam Chomsky's political writings are a standing rebuke of U.S. imperialism. And in a way, I wanted to trace that. I mean, you can remember in the parts around the first attack on Iraq, where he reflects on these leaks that came to an obscure newspaper in Long Island, which were not published in the New York Times, you know, basically what he's saying is, listen, we were telling you all along that these were not correct things. And we were not telling you this, you know, in some abstract way, like, oh, intervention is bad. But in an empirical way, like this intervention is going to be catastrophic. in this particular way.

And each time when you trace, you know, Gnom's writings and a kind of his sort of prophetic way of talking about the world, you find that there is an accuracy to precisely what he is talking about. And I wanted to go back because I bet that there's an entire generation that really has no clue about the fact that Gulf War I, Gulf War II, these things were premeditated disasters and that there was some marginal perhaps, but some public discussion about these issues. So, you know, that was the impetus for basically

getting him to think. But really, the most powerful part of the book is where it opens, which is when I ask him how he gets the courage to do what he does. And bam, you know, his answer is beautiful. And I'm not going to tell you his answer because that's, in the book. Yeah, the book is absolutely great and, you know, this chance to talk with Chomsky and you about it is also amazing. You're a huge inspiration for me, and I really appreciate all the work that you

do, Vij. And I'm going to kind of ask you a question that I asked Chomsky because I like both of your takes on this, which is, you know, with the emergence of the rise of China over the last few decades, with the war in Europe between Russia and Ukraine, a lot of talk about the concept of an emerging multipolarity.

So I'm wondering what your thoughts are on the emergence of this possible multipolarity and what its implications are for U.S. imperialism going forward? Well, it's always difficult to talk about China in particular because I keep getting attacked for being like an agent of China. These days, if you speak with any sanity, I mean, I'm not pretending to be sane, but if you speak with any sanity or at least try to approach a rational discussion, you get slammed down, you know, and I'm not just talking about social media. You know, there have been some articles in the South African media recently that have just gone off to me viciously, including the fact that I have a non-resident post at a Chinese university, you know, as if that means that then I'm a ventriloquist dummy for Xi Jinping.

Maybe I agree with Xi Jinping, you know, have you considered that, that maybe I'm an agreement with him, you know, and I don't need to be paid. I don't need to have some sort of, you know, malicious be a foreign agent or whatever. Maybe I simply agree with some of the things that they're saying. Well, no, it can't be, right? You have to be an agent. So I hesitate, but okay, here we go. I'm actually not of the view that we are moving to a multipolar world. I think things are a little more complicated than that.

I believe, for instance, that if you break up power axes into the conventional, you know, distinctions, in terms of military power, there's nobody who can time. the United States. It's just nobody, you know, they have, in a sense, nuclear primacy. Just counting nuclear warheads is wrong. Russians have more nuclear warheads in the U.S., but the U.S. has much more lethal and better warheads, more accurate warheads and so on. So nuclear primacy, military power, incomparable. Nobody can compare. They can destroy any country. Political power, it's complicated, and it's been recently weakening. We saw that in the Vladimir Zelensky, lecture to the African Union, where basically only two out of 55 heads of governments attended,

or the behavior of the Indian government regarding the war in Ukraine, or Andres Manuel Lopez-Obrador, Mexico, again, center-left person, but super strong position against the U.S. intervention in Latin America. So political power, there's some fragility. That's why the word fragility is being used in our book. But when it comes to ideological power or information war and so on, so nobody again to compete with the United States. When it comes to economic power as such, the United States and the dollars still have a hold on world trade, on the questions of development, and so they still play a pretty overwhelming role, actually. So what I think we are moving towards is the weakening of the perhaps disarticulation of U.S. complete, full

spectrum power. In bits and pieces, they are weakening their hold on the planet. And I don't think the Chinese or the Russians or anybody are interested in setting up an alternative pole. I think, in my opinion, the Chinese actually don't have the appetite to have a kind of renminbi or yuan dominated world situation. They want to have like a basket of currencies issue and they want to have a regional issue and they have a different approach to what's happening. And I feel like we are actually adopting a kind of Eurocentric paradigm. If we go from like, you know, when it goes from Britain to the United States and before from Amsterdam to London and before from the, you know, city states of Italy to, you know, this Giovanni, a rigi idea of you go, empires go from

one center to the other. I actually don't think that the Chinese are interested. You know, they don't want the music to stop. They don't want the parcel in their lap. They don't want the responsibility, quote, unquote. They don't want to be the world's hegemon. They say that all the time. There's a kind of Western fascination that China wants to dominate the world. But they are saying we're not interested.

Now, what does that mean? It doesn't mean multipolarity necessarily. It could mean a much more fragmented world system with the United Nations playing a more considerable or respectable role. I don't know. but I certainly know that I don't want us to jump from a kind of unipolar situation. Oh, okay, now we've got a new term, multipolarity. I'm not sure it's that accurate, in fact.

I just want to hop in and add something from the perspective of somebody who's living in Russian. Vij, I don't know if you were aware that I'm living in Russian. Now, I don't think I was here the last time that we talked to on another. But this, what you describe as China. Wow, wait a minute. Now I'm the Chinese agent and you're the Russian agent. Good God, man.

what's wrong with this podcast. Exactly. I wish I was being paid by somebody, but, you know, that's not really the case. Otherwise, I wouldn't have my computer set up on some cardboard boxes to prop it up. But that's neither here nor there. What I was going to say, though, is that you're absolutely right that China is not pushing themselves for having a multipolar world. They're not pushing to have themselves propped up. And you can see that very clearly by looking at the media here in Russia. Russia is trying to integrate themselves more tightly with China than perhaps ever before, at least since the Sino-Soviet split, you know, and this is quite some decades ago. So we're seeing much closer integration these days, and they are successful in

some ways. We are seeing, you know, a strengthening of the BRICS relationship right now. We're seeing other alternative structures coming together. We're seeing alternatives to SWIFT system being put forth by China and Russia. We're seeing even integration at a smaller level, like credit cards being used. I can tell you from the experience of living here, everybody was either using Visa or MasterCard until this quote-unquote operation started, at which point the domestic Russian card called Mir, which means both peace and world, and Union Pay, the Chinese credit card, became the most widely used things here because of the Western sanctions that were put on visa and

MasterCard. They didn't work for international purchases. You couldn't withdraw money abroad if your card was issued in Russia, like very, very severe sanctions put on us here. But at every step of the way that we're seeing this happening, the Russian media is like Russia is pushing for closer integration. Russia is hoping that we will have an alternative to Swift very soon. Russia is seeing that with closer integration to China, that we will be moving towards a multipolar world where the United States cannot bully people around. And this is the hope that we keep seeing in every news article that's coming out of here. We're moving towards multipolarity because eventually the integration of Russia and China and as other countries come into

this relationship, you know, through the bricks alignment or through this alternative to the swift, you're going to have more of a diversity of options within the global market. I hate that term, but you know what I mean. So this is the hope. But yet we see China really dragging its feet into like jumping head first into these sorts of arrangements that could legitimately, at least on an economic level, as you mentioned, not on a military level, but on the economic level, really level the playing field on the international stage. So it's very interesting coming from the perspective of somebody who's living here to analyze the news that's coming out here versus, you know, the complete lack of of the discussion in the West and perhaps some very simplistic takes on it where, as you mentioned, China is trying to, you know, take the mantle from the United States on the international stage. This just is not true. Yeah, just to say one thing about that. I mean, you know, there's a reason why China also is refusing to have a military arrangement with Russia. It has a security pact, not a military pact.

You know, they're cautious for good reason. They have a large dollar denominated holding. You know, they continue to export to Western markets. And also the Chinese do not have a theory that puts them in an imperial position. They don't want that. I mean, this is the thing that's hard to get people to understand, you know, that, okay, they used to be a Chinese empire, but that was largely a territorial empire in parts of Asia. Now the Chinese are basically interested in integration into the world. Hello, that used to be called globalization. The irony is that the Chinese seem to be interested in globalization and the West seems to be interested in partitions. Wow. Well, speaking of these partitions, one feature, it seems, of U.S. strategy now

is reaffirming. Of course, we just mentioned NATO's kind of revival and giving it some kind of rationale in the post-Cold War period. And of course, the book deals with much of its extensions beyond either as secure of the global energy system, i.e. the world or just frankly, just for establishing U.S. hegemony. But in addition to the revival of that kind of military alliance, the U.S. has been involved in something that reminds me very much of practices in the 1950s and 60s during the Cold War, which is creating new regional military alliances. And we've had reports about a new alignment that reminds me of the Baghdad Pact of 1955 with the U.S. trying to sponsor a regional Middle East treaty organization that would now incorporate Israel

and, of course, isolate Iran. And we see the Aukus kind of formation, which is to hem in China by having the U.S., U.K., Australia, and India, collaborator. Of course, there is the, you know, collaboration with India trying to recruit them to oppose China's regional power and its expansion. So this seems to me that we're back in a kind of era of the blocks, and perhaps what you're mentioning about China's different approach to geopolitics reminds me of the Bandung, you know, kind of moment, of the spirit of Bandung, which was We just don't want to be pressured and forced into a U.S. rules-based military alliance.

You're either with us or you're against us, attempted imposing and dictating the terms. Not necessarily an aggressive attempt at a new block, but that idea that there could be peaceful collaboration among nations of the global South for mutual benefit, for peace, for development. I wonder, and I know you've written about the Bandung conference in your wonderful book, the darker nations. And so I wondered if you have any reflections on that as a way to analyze not multipolarity, but the possibilities of other ways of resisting the U.S. hegemony and reinforcing of it through regional military alliances that are being created. Yeah, it's a really good point you raised that. And there's three quick things I'll say. Just, you know, observations coming out of what

you've said. The first thing is, you're right that, you know, in the 1950s, there was the Manila pact, the Baghdad pact and so on. The difference from then and now, and I'm going to structure each of these observations as, yes, it's like that, but then it's different, you know, because, well, historians and so on. Right. History changes, yes. Right. Yes, it was like that. The difference is that in the earlier period, in the 50s, military technology was not as sophisticated as it is. today. So for instance, you know, even though the United States had set up kind of central command, it of course is established later, you know, the United States relied on, say, you know, Iran in the 1950s to be a major military partner to help the United States, you know, expand its

global reach. Well, now, actually, with its immense base structure and its immense ability to strike targets from the United States. Remember, in Gulf War, won as well. U.S. bombers took off in Illinois, flew and bombed Iraq, then landed in Diego Garcia to refuel and flew back to Illinois. And that was not conceivable in the 1950s because you just didn't have the ability to fly a plane filled with weapons and fuel that far. Also, of course, you know that they can fuel on air. And that technology comes really sophisticated technology in the 1970s. You know, with AWACs, you had mobile radar systems and so on. So you need these alliance structures, but also you have the ability to hit any country

anywhere in the world. And that's incredible, you know, with ICBMs and so on. So one, yes, it looks similar. You know, you could add in the quad in Asia. You could add in what you just talked about, the U2, I2. United States, UAE, India and Israel, this so-called new pact in the Middle East and so on. Yes, it's like that, but not really. Secondly, it's like that and not really, because not really, now many of these countries

that are in these kind of alliances like Australia or the UAE, the United Arab Emirates, find that their largest trading partner or the second largest trading partner is China. So that situation was simply not there in the 1950s, that these countries now have very contradictory problems. Australia's largest trading partner is China, but yet it is in the middle of a security understanding to threaten China. The United Arab Emirates signs a deal so that the Jebel Ali port is basically there to be expanded by the Chinese, and yet it joins this I2, U2, weird formation with India, Israel, the United States. that's the second way in which it's not quite, you know, the same. The third way, it's not the same. And now to the other side, the Bandong side, the side of, is there a Bandong like situation? You know, at I Institute Tri-Continental, we joined with the Peace and Justice

project of Jeremy Corbyn and others. And we did a series of articles talking about the new non-alignment. In fact, we'll release that in September and a little booklet. We're looking at this, I think, as you are, you know, is there a new non-alignment emerging? Now, I would say there's a new mood emerging, but people are saying, look, we're not interested in this conflict. That's in Africa. That's true in Latin America. That's true. In India, as I said, you know, people say, we're not interested in this conflict. I will say to you that as this war in Ukraine accelerates and whatever, people in Germany are going to say, we're not interested in this conflict, okay? We just want power, the price of electricity to come down. We want natural

gas from Russia and so on. As it is, many Eastern European countries have been signing new deals with the Russians saying, okay, we'll pay you, we'll do the trade in roubles and so on. So, you know, the new non-alignment, there's a mood for it. There's something in the air, but I don't see the kind of political confidence available. You know, there's going to be no Bandung conference called by anybody. And this lack of a political confidence is going to hurt the world. Because we are. Look at this Nancy Pelosi incident. If she had landed in Tai Bay, imagine the confrontation. We just don't need this in the world. You know, you've got an ongoing conflict in Ukraine, which the West, let's be frank, okay, the West is basically blocking a peace agreement. It's on the table. It was on the table

in the border between Belarus and Russia and they basically said, no, let's accelerate the conflict to weaken Russia. You have that ongoing. Then if you started something in the South China Straits, the world economy would plunge into something. We don't have a concept for it. Crisis is not sufficient as a term. So there's no mood, you know, who is going to stand up

and say, I am going to host a conference on non-alignment, you know, who's going to take that initiative? I just don't see it. Adana, I don't see Cyril Ramaphosa standing up and saying, everybody, come to Pretoria right now. We're going to hold, you know, we're going to hold an emergency session of the United Nations, not in New York, but in Pretoria. We're going to assemble the General Assembly or the G77 or the NAM or something is going to happen. They're not doing it. There's just no political confidence. So you mentioned that, you know, people in Germany would probably be turning against this sort of strategy. This is something that I cited on a recent episode, maybe one or two episodes back.

I used to live in Germany before I lived in Russia, so I still follow a lot of German polls and whatnot that came out of there. And there was a poll that came out at this point, probably about a month ago, where they asked Germans, are the sanctions on Russia hurting Germans more or Russians more or equally? And the results, if I remember correctly, and it's been, like I said, about a month since I've seen it, 47% of Germans said that it's hurting Germans more than Russia, only 12% of Germans thought that it was actually hurting Russia more.

The rest were undecided. This is why we see a widespread apathy towards the situation against the German populace right now, but not by the German political class, especially by people like, you know, Beirbach, the foreign minister, you know, like these are people that do not represent the will of the people, the regular people in the country, which is something that you brought up in the book with Noam Chomsky, where you talk about opposition to the Iraq War, a lot of countries were not signing on to go to the Iraq War, but there was one very interesting case that you talked about of Spain, where nearly every person in Spain, very nearly every person in Spain was very

staunchly opposed to the Iraq War. Yet, the Prime Minister of Spain decided they would join the Coalition of the Willing, right? So we have some political leaders that completely disregard popular opinion within their country. And it almost always seems that when there is a complete disregard for popular opinion within the country, it is in service of U.S. Empire. So I'm curious, VJ, you know, obviously some of this is because they feel like they're going to get something out of the U.S., you know, the political leaders are U.S. aligned or something along these lines.

But also up until, you know, pretty much the current moment, the United States has a its hand so firmly on all of the levers of power, whether it is the SWIFT system, whether it is the international banking systems, whether it is military means. The United States is a hegemon. You know, even now, it's starting to lose, there's a fracturing of this power, as you mentioned, but up until now, there is this complete power of the United States where a lot of these countries, the political leaders feel like they have to tow the line of the United States. at this point, even though China is not, you know, militarily as strong as the United States and it's not trying to step up into the forefront, which we've already talked about,

there is an alternative now. There is an alternative. So do you think, I mean, you can be brief with this, but do you think that we're going to see less of this sort of egregious going against what the populace of the country wants by country's political classes when that basically the only reason to do so is to play into the hand of the imperial logic of the United States now that there's an alternative? It really depends on the countries and the kind of internal, let's call it, you know, the internal sort of class power of different factions and so on. I mean, we just saw this

happened in Argentina where Alberto Fernandez government had to pay a coupon to international creditors in January of 2022. He traveled to Beijing. He met with. He met with, with people at the People's Bank of China, they opened the window, they said, we'll do a currency swap, you give us pesos, we'll give you renminbi, then you can take the renminbi to the international markets, buy dollars, pay off your coupon, no problem. And it's not a one-time deal, you can come back. Well, Fernandez goes back, having taken the coupon with him, ready to pay, and they still went to the IMF. And when the letter from the Argentinian finance minister went to the public, In it, he said, look, we want to come back to the IMF so that we can return to international

capital markets. This has basically been a demand of the Argentinian ruling class. Even though it's a left of center government, the finance ministry felt compelled to essentially, you know, honor the demand of the ruling class in Argentina rather than public opinion and rather than deal with the fact that the IMF would increase austerity on a country that's been battered by austerity for two and a half decades. So, you know, there's so many examples of this. And it's really about the class power in a country. Does the popular sections have the power to hold a government accountable? We talk a lot about democracy. You know, it's fine. You can have a election and come to power. But will you be held to account? And who will you be held to account by? Are the popular

force is strong enough you know having elected somebody they don't have any command over them there's no right to recall in most countries and there's no really structures of accountability so you can do whatever you want you know you're the spanish prime minister public opinion says don't go to war you sign on to it okay you may lose an election but the next candidate that comes in is going to hold up the ruling class line look at sri lanka you know massive demonstrations whatever they may be. Let's not get into, whether it's a color revolution or whatever. Raja Paxia gets thrown out of office. The two Raja Paxias, Mahinda goes to a military base. And then who comes in to take over?

I mean, of all scandals, it's Ranil Vikrama Singer. Ranil Vikrama Singer, who has been off and on Prime Minister of Sri Lanka for six times since 1993. He had only one seat, his party had one seat in the parliament of 225. And Vikrama Singer comes in safe hands for the ruling class. This is another good example of what do you mean by democracy when you talk about the things that are happening in Sri Lanka or in Argentina or other countries, you know, it's not enough to just use the word.

What is democracy? You know, we strive, we aspire to democracy, but let's not pretend that these are actually, you know, settled democratic situations, not at all. And I'm not even mentioning the United States. So leave that aside. Well, it's very funny that you mentioned that because that's kind of where I wanted to take the next question. We've been talking about the international arena imperialism, and certainly that's the focus of the withdrawal.

But I am curious about the U.S. domestic situation. You know, it's hard to tell when you're living through it how unique this period of American history is, how uniquely bad it is. So I'm going to kind of ask you that, like, how uniquely chaotic and crisis racked does this current decade or so in American? history seemed to you compared to the rest of its history. And where might it go from here? Because, you know, there's a few trajectories that, you know, American domestic society can take from this clear moment of just chaos and crisis and instability. We can move. I mean, we saw SCOTUS do the functionally dismantling core aspects of the administrative state. So you could see something like the end of federalism or even Balkanization in the coming decades. The Republicans are clearly going for

something like minoritarian rule, which will have to increasingly be backed up by violence and then we get into fascist dictatorship possibilities. Or there could be, you know, as we've seen throughout American history, more or less a progressive renaissance, working class and progressive politics coming together and pushing back against inequality and all these problems and actually bringing America into a new era of something like prosperity and what the implications for that will be internationally is unknown. But, you know, maybe I'm missing plenty of possible trajectories as well. So kind of what's your take on how bad things are and where it could possibly go from here? But Brett, I don't want to repeat what you said. You already said what, how bad things are

and so on. But here's one of the issues is that a significant section of the U.S. ruling class, particularly, say, the tech barons and so on, you know, who contribute a great deal to the political parties. This section of the U.S. ruling class has to, in a way, come to terms with the fact that it no longer is dominant and that it's not going to be able to, you know, just by a miracle, overcome the developments in China. You know, it is a section that's been actually pushing some of the conflict against China. You remember Tim Scott of Apple goes to see Trump during the now, seems years ago, the trade war. Tim Scott doesn't say, look, don't do the trade war. Apple produces its stuff in China and so on. Tim Scott said, look, pursue the trade war.

We don't mind. We'll take the short term hit. But in this short term, Samsung is going to benefit. So you should go and tell the South Korean government to somehow have Samsung share some of the pain. I mean, the other day, I'm in Santiago and Chile. The other day I was in a shop. I was just scanning the cell phones. I mean, it's like 20 Chinese offerings to maybe one or two made by the U.S. But of course, it's made by the commodity chain. The prices are just impossible. You can't beat these Chinese commodities. So the U.S., that fraction of the U.S. ruling class, you know, from the Tim Scots to the Elon Musk and so on,

they're going to have to come to terms of the fact that they're not going to win, you know, and you need to have an accommodation with China. Until that happens, I don't think there's going to be space in the United States for any kind of political rapprochimo and so on. And some of these things will not, there will be no rapprochimo. I don't actually think you'll go to full-fledged dictatorship. We don't need to. There's no need because this intense, you know, partisanship and paralysis, the inability to move an effective investment expenditure, you know,

to have a big investment bill. The whole infrastructure is crumbling, you know. You're unable to actually invest in infrastructure. You know, what are the big achievements of the recent period? you know, the revocation of Roe versus Way. That's a decisive political breakthrough, not let's have an infrastructure bill. That was not a decisive political breakthrough. So I don't see any real need for a actual fascist dictatorship.

You already have the class power pretty insurmountable. You know, it's not feeling threatened by anything. Why move to a dictatorship? What you will see, and that's why I think this January 6th thing is a little overdone, What you'll see is increased political hooliganism, but not the need for a dictatorship. You know, you'll see more hooliganism of this kind,

more outrageous acts of perhaps direct violence, maybe against minorities of different kinds, maybe more xenophobic violence, maybe against people of Chinese descent or those who resemble people of Chinese descent and so on. But no, liberal democracy has a very dear intimacy

with fascistic forms of power. You know, liberal democracies have no problem with the police going out and shooting people without any accountability. Why would you need to suspend the Constitution to do that? You're already doing it. You know, so I think that when people say, well, we're going to go to fascism,

I'm like, wait a minute, fellas, what are you talking about? There's no need for fascism. You've already got power entrenched in the elite and they are unwilling to accommodate with changes in the world. They're unwilling to have rational conversations with anybody. They're pretty happy having, you know, yelling fights on television,

which confuse and disorient people, they're very happy that the left, for instance, in the U.S., constantly tears itself apart. You know, now the debate about Xinjiang, how that is, you know, like an earworm enters the world of the left and tears people apart. You know, what's your position on Ukraine? What's your position on this? I mean, what's your position on building a, you know,

united phalanx of Starbucks, Amazon, workers with, say, the older unions, what's your position on uniting Black Lives Matter with the trade union movement? Where are those serious discussions? No, it's a litmus test. If you don't agree with me on Ukraine, then you're, you know, excommunicated or whatever. You know, this is where the discussion should be, not escalating to fascism. You know, there was a book written many years ago, published by the now out of, you know, close down South End Press called friendly fascism, which is about the argument made then, it's a little bit like Upton Sinclair.

When fascism comes to the United States, it will arrive in a friendly fashion. And I think the author was reflecting on kind of the Reaganist dynamic. I quite agree, you know, you don't need the jackboots and the this and that. Those people are a curious anachronism, you know, and they will provide the hooligan function, which is probably necessary in some spaces and places. But by and large, I mean, why do you need idiots in jackboots

when you've got a police force that has given license to just walk out on the street and shoot anybody they want and there's so little accountability for that, almost zero, right? So yeah, I mean, there are real debates to be had. And I'm afraid those debates don't seem to me to be happening. like I look at the discussion around the Starbucks workers or the Trader Joe's workers or the Amazon workers, you know, people celebrate these isolated victories. But then there's no question of what's the historical block that could be created out of these developments, linked to the older unions, linked to Black Lives Matter, linked to, you know, the millions of people who are angry with the revocation of Roe versus Wade. Can there be a historical block that is not electoral be created of this because the moment you start thinking electoral then the energy is dissipated to the mainstream of the democratic party that's the end of that but think in gramscian terms of a historical block rather than

an electoral formation you know the debate you know how it always gets to right isn't it tiring can there be a third party you know let's not have an electoral debate let's have a debate about politics about the historical block how do you constitute that wow it's not happening right now i mean i hope that you guys engineer more and more discussions like that, you know, bring in trade union leaders, bring in Black Lives Matter leaders, have them talk to each other as well, talk about the possibility of creating a political block because even they have a limited horizon. They suddenly think about the next election. And is there a way to get people to start talking about something different? Well, Vijay, I want to be respectful of your time. I know that you said that you

were just coming in to say hi so we stole a little bit of your time but that's okay uh can you tell the listeners how they can find you as i read us out of this interview section of the of the episode well i would like to say that people should go and read the withdrawal not because i had anything to do with it but because it's really a kind of way of understanding the arc of noam chamski's thinking but people are happy you know i'm happy to have people come and look at the tricontinental dot org the website and look at the material we produced but hey i came to say hi and this is a very long high and perhaps a even longer goodbye yeah that's okay and i highly recommend everybody check out the tri-continental's newsletter i get it in my inbox every week and uh just read the last one

yesterday or the day before and as always excellent so thank you for that resource vj uh listeners you definitely need to pick up the withdrawal iraq libya afghanistan and the fragility of u.s power It's available from the new press and it'll be coming out right when this episode comes out. So on that note, we will be right back with the wrap up. And listeners, we're back with the wrap up. We just finished our interview, kind of an interlocking interview with Professor Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad. We thought that we were going to have them together, but it turns out

that we had them sequentially. But regardless, it was a fascinating conversation with a lot of different topics that were covered and based around this really interesting book, The Withdrawal, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the fragility of U.S. power. And I will pitch one more time that you should pick up this book. It'll be coming out right when the episode does. If you listen to guerrilla history, and guess what? If you hear this part of the show, you obviously do.

You'll like the withdrawal. It's written as an interview between Vijay and Noam. and so it's like reading a podcast. It's really excellent. So if you like how these kind of conversations unfold over time, this is exactly how the book unfolds. It'll definitely be up your alley. Brett, why don't I toss you the initial thoughts from this interview that we had with Professor Chomsky and VJ? Yeah, first off, it actually kind of worked out very well. It was almost like more difficult to have them both on at the same time. So to have that perfect sequential VJ comes in right when Chomsky's leaving, it actually worked out very nice. But I just, to start off the outro remarks, I'm just infinitely impressed by, you know, given Chomsky's age, I think he's 93 years old at this point, just how absolutely coherent he is, how his working memory is better than mine at my best day, and his crystallized intelligence, this library of almost a century of deep intellectual knowledge, is just pulled from at will.

I'll never not be impressed by that. He's 15 years older than Joe Biden. So for what it's worth, it's just that. But then, yeah, just generally, this is my once-a-lifetime opportunity to speak with Chomsky in person and actually ask questions. And it was absolutely a real gift for me and something that I won't be forgetting anytime soon. Definitely we'll treasure it. Not only because it was with somebody we've revered, we've read, we've learned from so much, but also because he's an inspiration even to this day, you know, with his.

acute analysis. And as you were pointing out, Brett, the acuity that he maintains. I mean, he is a sharp guy who not only can analyze what's going on, but, you know, in the present, but connected with this wealth of engagements that he's had. And that's why the book is also so fascinating, as I mentioned in our conversation with Vijay, that one thing that was so interesting about it was the way in which they incorporated quotations. from Chomsky's work on the subjects that we're looking back on retrospectively now to see how U.S. Empire has functioned. And so it gives you a really nice resume also of his career and his critique of U.S. Empire and his exemplification as he's doing still today of the responsibility

of the intellectual, which is to really speak truth to power and to analyze with a critical acumen honestly, you know, beyond the propaganda, beyond the manufacturing of consent, you know, to actually analyze, you know, the way in which U.S. power is operating around the world and it's devastating consequences to have the courage to do that. So that's wonderful. And then on top of it to have a chance to reflect a little bit on it and on the book with VJ as well as hear about his analysis of the situation presently and the future fascinating. I think what he's really done in this last remarks with us is set, I think what is the clear agenda for the left is, and something that we've talked about many times in different ways, but it really crystallized it. It's like,

when are we going to talk about the possible political formations that we need to forge now that, you know, revive. As you were, you know, were saying, Brett, you know, other eras of progressive left action, whether it was, you know, populist farmers, you know, in the Middle West in the late 19th century, whether it was progressives trying to roll back the, you know, golden age, you know, feudal industrial barons of the United States control over everything to try and create a little bit more equality, whether it was struggles for women's rights and the franchise against racial injustice. At certain periods, there have been opportunities for solidarity and forging a kind of political

coalition. That's what we need to be doing now and figuring out how we can enlist the kind of labor resistance, you know, into a kind of more broader-based political movement. against the kind of oppressive class politics that is camouflaged behind various forms of ideology that are isolating and, you know, polarizing people to really recognize the genuine material interests. And, you know, also just the urgency of this couldn't be more clear. And it's something that Professor Chomsky ended with, which is that, you know, we're going to kill ourselves if we don't do something about the climate emergency, that is a huge challenge

we're facing. It's a global challenge. And instead of coming together to create the foundations for a collective solution to save our planet, to save human life and animal life and plant life on this planet, you know, we're accelerating the drive toward it in this kind of short-term fashion and the forces that could have to come together to stop it are actually pitted against one another, divided, and that's very destructive. So I think this was a very important conversation on multiple levels, not only about the book and its key themes, but about the urgency of moving beyond the fragmentation that imperialism is creating around the world and dividing people from their common collective interests.

And I just want, I agree with everything that's been said. And what I want to add in is that there's genuinely so much to learn from both Professor Chomsky and Vijay. And I say that is somebody who doesn't have ideological alignment with Chomsky in many ways. Obviously, broadly speaking, we're both, you know, on the pretty far left. So in that regard, we are ideologically aligned. But, you know, he's described himself variously as an. anarcho syndicalist or a libertarian socialist. And as the listeners probably know by now,

you know, I'm more of the Marx-Leninist type with a lot of dependency theory thought and a lot of, you know, black liberation thought, you know, Walter Rodney and Krumah, some of these things sprinkled in there. So like not a ton of ideological alignment once you dig into the left tendencies themselves. But Noam Chomsky is a wealth of knowledge. I mean, every time that you listen to him, every time that you read him, you see the total acuity of thought. You see the complexity of thought, the ability to tie in all of these various threads. And regardless of whether or not you have the same ideological tendency as him or not, you're going to learn so much.

And the same goes for Vijay. Vijay doesn't have what, I mean, based on my perception, Vijay doesn't have ideological alignment with Chomsky either. I'd say that, you know, Vijay is much more closely aligned to me, but also, you know, there are differences here as well. But yet they've been writing together, working together, corresponding with one another for 30 years, which is the epilogue of the book, VJ writing about his correspondence with Chomsky over 30 years. By having these sorts of relationships with people

that have a deep acuity and understanding and complexity of thinking about the world, events that are happening, historical phenomena, geopolitical phenomena, by really taking what we can from those thoughts and fostering these sorts of relationships with one another, even if we don't, necessarily agree on every single thing. That is how we can arrive at many of the same decisions, many of the same conclusions. This is how we can advance our own thought in many ways, be challenged. So I think that, you know, these sorts of works that have people of somewhat differing ideologies and whether or not they differ from you, consuming these works is really important. And it's something that I hope that we talk about an intelligence briefing sometime is,

you know, reading outside of your specific ideology. The reason I bring this, up is that, you know, I know some of the people that listen to the show are going to say things like, ah, you have Noam Chonsky on, you know, he's a anarchist, which, you know, he's, he's not an anarchist, but that'll be the charge level, you know, how could you bring an anarchist on? I'm a Maoist. There's no way I would ever listen to this. Or you have Vijay Prashad on. He talks about, you know, Zinjiang, and he's dismissing the U.S. government's claims because he's a tankie and you're bringing tankies on to the show. Like, these are the sorts of allegations that are inherently going to be brought up. But both VJ and Nome are deeply, I mean, brilliant individuals

with so many insights that we can glean from them. And the opportunity to have them both on for an interlocking conversation and have this book, you know, along with their other works where they've collaborated on before, to have them synthesize their differing ideologies on complex topics is really invaluable. And I'm very grateful that we had the opportunity to bring that onto the show, and I think that the show is only the better for that. Guys, any final words as we wrap up? Brett, I saw you raise your hand. Yeah, an extreme diplomatic language. Like, if anybody is like, you know, you shouldn't have had on Chomsky or VJ because I disagree with, just fuck off. This is a once in a lifetime

opportunity. And regardless of whether you agree with him on everything or not, he is a absolutely fundamental public intellectual for American history. And this book I'm holding right now, you can't see it for most people listening, but my co-host can. Profit Over People by Noam Chomsky, Neoliberalism in the Global Order, is a book I came across, I think, 18 or 19, and I was not politically sophisticated whatsoever. Even now, you can see from, I think, almost 15 years ago, it's heavily highlighted. I felt my worldview shift reading this book at age 19. And so, you know, I can never toss somebody aside for having that impact on my political development.

And, you know, one thing is when Chomsky inevitably passes, I think there will be some, people on the Marxist side of things, especially online, that circus, that is social media, that will be more or less dancing on his grave or using that moment to take sectarian shots at the guy. And I disdain that entire approach to politics. I view Chomsky as an elder, you know, for the American left to learn from, not, you know, 19-year-olds who just became Marxist yesterday talking about how Chomsky's an anarchist and he's not, you know, one of us or whatever. I think all that is very, very silly. And it's precisely the type of attitude that V.J. was warning against and that makes the left so weak, so inefficient, because it's the tyranny

of differences that aren't even perceivable by most human beings, but it's going to be the thing that drives you to disown this person or to not work with that group or whatever it may be. So just humble yourself. And one thing we can learn from, from Chomsky, is his deep and profound humility, you know, and Vijay pointed to this. It's like he doesn't ever make it about himself. He never will even, you know, indulge in you trying to ask questions about himself because is not about himself and that displacement of his own ego and focus on the work and the

educational work is something that no matter what you believe, you can absolutely learn from. And his deep humility, his deep ability to learn and pull from that store of knowledge and his just fundamental role in educating a lot of people like me on U.S. Empire, these are crucial contributions and he should be absolutely saluted for it. And I just also wanted to say on some of the political points he made really quickly, um just on one that stood out that i wrote on my notes is uh you know he's talking about bush and afghanistan and you know smashing it up in like american anger being taken out on the afghan people and just worth remembering that when obama came in Obama's big thing is like the iraq war

is bad you know but Afghanistan is our just war this is where we actually are you know justified in doing this and you know chomsky just tears that to shreds um and i i think he does a wonderful service in that and in so many other areas as well so those are my that's my thought my personal thought on that issue in particular. Yeah. Adnan, any final words? We wrap up this episode? No, just that I think this is a wonderful conversation.

We can all learn something from it. So let's focus on the real work, you know, not the asserting ourselves in identity fashion. You know, I mean, the real identity is we're human beings who want justice and equality in this world. Got a lot of work to do. so let's focus on the real work and the political education that we need and we'll have differences. But that political education, I think, was fully and thoroughly advanced today in discussing the key issues of U.S. Empire and of the world to come. The only thing I really wish we could have talked a little bit more about, but I think BJ started getting us on that

is, you know, what's our role in this going forward? What is the responsibility of intellectuals in the next stage because it may differ. There will be different opportunities and responsibilities. How can we make a difference? You know, in the unclear and contested global future ahead. The main thing, however, is that we just have to be committed and continue that commitment to the ideals of solidarity, of equality, and justice. I mean, that's our guiding principle.

And I feel those principles fully reinforce. after a great conversation with two luminaries of the left. Totally. I think that that's a great note to end us on. I'll just say that, you know, as we wrap up this episode, you've finished listening to the episode, share this episode on social media, and then log off, go organize in the real world, do some activism in the real world, do some political education in the real world. As Brett said, a lot of these worst, you know, tendencies within the ideological left sphere of things is, you know, I don't want to highlight young people, but people that are terminally online that have just come into an ideology

and they decide that they have to be loud online. Share this episode online somewhere and then log off. Go outside, talk to some people, share some stories, teach a thing or two, learn a thing or two, and then organize. Brett, how can our listeners find you in all of the excellent work that you do well thank you very much you can find everything i do at revolutionary left radio dot com i don't promote as much on twitter anymore i mean for the last several months specifically with rev left and even red menace um i just find the diminishing returns on that so if you just follow us on on twitter it might be best to subscribe to the show on actual podcast app or go to the website itself to really keep up with what we're doing but i've released a lot of new

rev left stuff um we just dropped a red menace episode i'm very proud of and a lot more is coming so stay tuned. Yeah, totally. Lots of really great stuff has come out within the last week. I think you've put out three episodes within the last week or so. It really excellent. Adnan, how can the listeners find you in your other podcast? You can follow me on Twitter at Adnan A. Hussein, H-U-S-A-I-N. And if you're interested in Middle East, Islamic World, we've had some infrequency over the summer and with travels, but the Mudgellis will be back this coming month. So look forward to an episode, in particular, a conversation with my former PhD student Muhammad Abdul and his exciting book, Islam and anarchism. And so look for that conversation.

You can subscribe to the MHA, M-A-L-I-S on all the platforms. Really looking forward to that conversation. I have a funny story about that, but I think I've told it twice before during these wrap-up segments. So I'll save it for some other time. maybe you can bring it up on the much list. But anyway, as for me, listeners, you can find me on Twitter at Huck1995, H-U-C-K-1-995. My wife and I have another little show that we do basically for fun, but we have some very interesting conversations on there. I know we'll be talking with Harriet Fraud sometime very soon, as well as some other people. Max Haven author of Palm Oil, fuel of empire, egressive empire, sorry.

So very interesting conversations coming up. You can find that on any podcast app or on YouTube by going to what the huck, question mark, exclamation point, or just look on my Twitter page. You'll find it. And what I really want to do is encourage people who are still listening to this episode at this very late stage of it to subscribe to the new guerrilla history newsletter. Every week we're putting out a newsletter. It comes out every Saturday.

It's got a roundup of all of the latest things that Brett Adnan and myself have put out as well as reading, listening, viewing recommendations by us, the hosts of the show, as well as former guests of the show. People like Amanda Ye from Radio Free Amanda have been submitting things. Richard Wolfe has submitted things. Salvatore Angle de Mauro, Brandon Wolfe, Honeycutt, you know, people that you know and love from past episodes of guerrilla history, these are the people who are telling you things that you should. keep your eye out for things that are worth reading, things that are worth watching, listening to. And you can find that just by, if you Google guerrilla history, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history newsletter, I believe it's gorillaHistory.com, something like that, totally free.

It's just a weekly piece of, it's a resource for political education is really what it is. And I would like as many people to check it out and share it as possible. Totally free. As for the show, you can follow the show. on Twitter at Gorilla underscore Pod, G-O-E-R-R-I-L-A-U-S-Core-Pod. And you can support us and help us keep the lights on to continue doing conversations like this

by going to patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history, again, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A. Until next time, listeners, solidarity. I'm going to be able to be. Thank you.