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AUDIENCE: So my question
is sort of two-fold.

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It sort of goes back on
some of the other things

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00:00:31,131 --> 00:00:35,168
we've discussed with
the recent elections.

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So I've recently been
following some of your stuff.

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00:00:38,705 --> 00:00:40,440
And there's evidence
that suggests

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that you sort of predicted
the rise of the Trump campaign

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00:00:45,345 --> 00:00:48,581
about seven years ago.

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00:00:48,581 --> 00:00:53,286
And I'm sort of curious,
what was so different

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about this election?

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00:00:55,221 --> 00:01:00,927
I presume you've seen the rise
of many presidential candidates

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over the years.

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00:01:01,928 --> 00:01:03,930
And I'm sort of
curious to understand,

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00:01:03,930 --> 00:01:09,035
what sort of prompted
that speculation?

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And the second
part of my question

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00:01:11,104 --> 00:01:14,874
sort of is looking more
so into the future.

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So as we've discussed, America
is probably more polarized.

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And it's sort of
been-- in the past.

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And there's s of this
idea that the clustering

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of like-minded Americans
is tearing us apart.

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00:01:29,422 --> 00:01:36,096
So where do you see the
future of this nation going?

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00:01:36,096 --> 00:01:38,298
NOAM CHOMSKY:
Well, I mean, there

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are many special factors
in the United States.

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Societies are different.

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00:01:42,702 --> 00:01:47,039
But notice that what happened
in this election, what actually

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happened in the 2016 election
is that the mainstream

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00:01:51,578 --> 00:01:56,783
establishment institutions
were basically destroyed.

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00:01:56,783 --> 00:02:00,587
The two major phenomena
in this election

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00:02:00,587 --> 00:02:03,890
were the Sanders campaign
among the Democrats

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00:02:03,890 --> 00:02:06,960
and the Trump campaign
among the Republicans.

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00:02:06,960 --> 00:02:09,662
And they were both
anti-establishment.

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00:02:09,662 --> 00:02:14,667
And the voters went that way.

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00:02:14,667 --> 00:02:17,837
If you take a look at polling
results, you can see it.

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00:02:17,837 --> 00:02:21,674
I mean, anger and
contempt for institutions

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00:02:21,674 --> 00:02:23,977
is just phenomenal.

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00:02:23,977 --> 00:02:27,607
If you ask people
in polls, do you

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have any-- what do you
think about Congress?

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00:02:31,284 --> 00:02:35,121
You know, 90% say they
should be all thrown out.

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00:02:35,121 --> 00:02:36,789
In fact, about the
only institution

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that has any respect
is the military

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because you're taught
somehow, the military

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is defending us
from who knows what.

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00:02:47,400 --> 00:02:48,801
And the same is true in Europe.

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00:02:48,801 --> 00:02:52,372
Take a look at the French
election a couple of days ago.

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The two candidates
were outsiders.

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The political parties
barely participated.

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Macron and Le Pen are from
outside the mainstream that

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has run Europe for 50 years.

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The center right and center
left parties are gone.

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Same thing happened in
England with Brexit.

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00:03:13,293 --> 00:03:16,429
Same thing's happening in
other European countries.

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We're seeing the phenomenon all
over the Western world in which

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the centrist-- center left,
center right-- institutions

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are under attack.

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People are angry about them.

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They hate them.

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They think they're
not working for us.

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And they're right.

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That's the effect of
the neoliberal programs.

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We're all subjected to the
same socioeconomic programs.

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They've had a similar
effect everywhere.

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They've led to
stagnation, decline,

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undermining of public
services, inability--

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Reagan's slogan, the state is
the problem, not the solution.

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Let's turn it over to private
tyrannies, which make it worse.

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That's happening.

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00:04:06,512 --> 00:04:09,315
Bits and pieces of that
are happening everywhere.

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So it happened in
the United States

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in its own particular way.

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But notice that
it's two directions.

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It's Sanders and Trump.

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And I think in
many ways, they're

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appealing to the
same sentiments.

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00:04:23,363 --> 00:04:25,765
And they could even converge.

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A lot of the pop-- if you
look at what people believe,

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the policies that they favor.

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A lot of it's shared.

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So for example,
across the population,

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all the way over
to the Tea Party,

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00:04:43,216 --> 00:04:47,987
people think there ought to
be higher taxes on the rich.

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Probably a majority
of the population

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00:04:50,623 --> 00:04:54,327
thinks there ought to
be national health care.

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00:04:54,327 --> 00:04:58,398
In fact, the support for
nationally guaranteed health

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00:04:58,398 --> 00:05:01,701
care has been so
high over the years,

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00:05:01,701 --> 00:05:05,371
that sometimes it's
almost hard to believe.

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So in the late Reagan years,
for example, about 70%

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of the population thought that
guaranteed national health care

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00:05:15,181 --> 00:05:17,950
ought to be in the
Constitution because it's

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such an obvious demand.

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About 40% of the population
thought it already

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was in the Constitution.

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Nobody knows what's
in the Constitution.

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Just everything good must
be in the Constitution.

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00:05:30,330 --> 00:05:34,067
Since this is so obviously good,
it must be in the Constitution.

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00:05:34,067 --> 00:05:37,470
And right at the present,
the most recent polls

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show somewhat over 50%
supporting national health

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care.

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00:05:43,543 --> 00:05:47,580
When Obama's Affordable Care
Act was being pushed through,

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00:05:47,580 --> 00:05:53,319
at first one of the proposals,
one of the parts of it,

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was what was called a
public option, which

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00:05:55,922 --> 00:05:58,558
means you could
choose if you wanted

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00:05:58,558 --> 00:06:02,695
to be part of a government
health care program.

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00:06:02,695 --> 00:06:05,798
About two thirds of the
population favored that,

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00:06:05,798 --> 00:06:09,335
but it was just thrown
out without discussion.

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And in fact, if you
go case by case,

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there's a lot of
similarity in the attitudes

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about social/political issues.

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Not necessarily cultural issues,
but social/political issues

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among parts of the
population that appear

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to be extremely polarized.

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It's very interesting.

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In England right now,
if you followed it,

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Jeremy Corbyn, who's kind of
a-- a little bit like Sanders,

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is bitterly attacked
by the media, including

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the liberal media,
like The Guardian

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and by the parliamentary
labor party.

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Meaning the guys who sort of--
the elites who run the party.

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They just came out with a--

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I happened to be in England
a couple of days ago,

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so I was reading
the British press.

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They just came out
with-- the labor party--

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with their program,
which was just

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00:07:06,339 --> 00:07:10,196
lambasted by the media--
crazy, lunatic, insane.

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00:07:10,196 --> 00:07:12,131
It will destroy the labor party.

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00:07:12,131 --> 00:07:16,636
At the same time, polls
came out asking people

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about the components
of the program.

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They're all very popular.

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Very strong support among the
population for the elements

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of the program.

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But attack on the party
that's proposing them.

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And in particular, on Corbyn.

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Serious activism and
organizing could overcome this.

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I mean, you're
fighting elite elements

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who have their own image of the
way they want society to go.

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And in fact, there's quite a lot
of interesting things going on.

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A lot of it is stuff that you
guys might be interested in.

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It has to do with
data harvesting.

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There's a company called
Cambridge Analytics, I think,

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00:08:05,952 --> 00:08:12,024
which is run by some
ultra-right billionaires.

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00:08:12,024 --> 00:08:14,861
Peter Thiel, the
guy who owns PayPal

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00:08:14,861 --> 00:08:17,330
and a bunch of other things.

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00:08:17,330 --> 00:08:21,067
Robert Mercer, who's a
big hedge fund manager,

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multi-billionaire,
a couple of others.

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What they've been doing--
and this essentially

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gave the election to Trump--
is extremely careful data

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analysis.

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There's a ton of data
now from Facebook

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and other things about
people's personal preferences

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and attitudes and feelings.

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Are you depressed,
all kinds of things.

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And what they're doing is
looking carefully at this data

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and analyzing it
to see if you can

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find small numbers of people
in particular areas who

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are vulnerable to one or
another form of manipulation.

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And what they're doing
is trying to say, look.

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If they kind of
tend to be liberal,

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try to get them to
get so disillusioned

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that they won't vote.

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And if they tend to be, say,
traditionally conservative,

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maybe religious or whatever,
try to get them to-- reach them

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individually in ways
which will increase

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00:09:27,439 --> 00:09:30,503
the probability they'll
vote for the right wing.

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This has small effects,
but the elections

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are won on very small effects.

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As you know, Trump
lost the popular vote

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by a couple of million.

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But in particular counties
that made the difference,

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a couple of 100,000 votes
shifted the election.

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In England, Brexit was the same.

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They estimate about
maybe 600,000 votes.

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The whole country switched.

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Now, these companies using a lot
of complicated data processing

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and statistics, and so
on, are working on ways

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00:10:05,271 --> 00:10:08,608
to try to control the
electoral process.

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00:10:08,608 --> 00:10:11,110
I mean, this is way
more important than any

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00:10:11,110 --> 00:10:13,846
of the nonsense about
the Russian hacking.

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That's all garbage.

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But this stuff is real.

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And it's right in
front of our eyes.

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It's the people we know.

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MIT students going off
to work on these things.

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And it has a big
effect on controlling

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00:10:31,430 --> 00:10:35,001
formal democratic systems.

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This is Steve Bannon.

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This is his image of how you
control the world, you know?

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These are people
who are influential.

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They have tons of money.

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Deeply reactionary.

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00:10:46,479 --> 00:10:52,485
And they want to use
modern data processing.

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You know, big data, statistical
analysis, and so on,

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to see if you can just find
ways of swinging elections

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00:11:00,426 --> 00:11:04,530
by going after individual
vulnerabilities using

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the massive data that people
provide through Google

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00:11:09,235 --> 00:11:12,738
and Facebook, and
all of this stuff.

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Google and the rest of them
use it for advertisers,

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so that advertisers can go
after you individually and say--

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00:11:20,913 --> 00:11:23,954
you try to get a book on
Amazon and they suggest

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00:11:23,954 --> 00:11:26,168
10 other books you ought
to buy because they've

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got so much information
on you that they think,

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00:11:28,726 --> 00:11:31,957
maybe I can sort
of sell this one.

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00:11:31,957 --> 00:11:33,359
That's going on all the time.

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00:11:33,359 --> 00:11:36,195
But here, it's right in the
middle of a political system.

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00:11:36,195 --> 00:11:38,664
And it's really significant.

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00:11:38,664 --> 00:11:43,169
Quite unlike the Russian
hacking story, this is real.

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00:11:43,169 --> 00:11:45,137
And it's not very far from us.

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00:11:45,137 --> 00:11:49,475
In fact, it's
happening right here.

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00:11:49,475 --> 00:11:52,344
There are things that
can be done about that.

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00:11:52,344 --> 00:11:57,049
Like exposing it for one thing.

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00:11:57,049 --> 00:11:59,685
These should be live issues,
I think, amongst students.

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00:11:59,685 --> 00:12:03,989
Do we want to devote our
lives to destroying democracy?

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00:12:03,989 --> 00:12:05,239
Maybe.