Listening to and reading Chomsky on this topic, I get persnickety and wonder, So is he telling us that he wrong about the answers he's already given to people who support the Tea Party? Am I wrong about the answers I give to people, aggrieved much as the Tea Partiers are, since my answers are much like Chomsky's? I must have missed the memo that told me that Chomsky was rethinking his oeuvre. But wait, that can't be it. He's articulating his oeuvre in the interview. I'm so confused. I'm not sure which way to turn? Is he saying that, as an activist, what I'm doing is wrong? Is he saying it's not enough. Are my colleagues in the Worker's Freedom School project failing to provide answers? What about the broader Virginia Organizing Project? Should I have not attended the immigration reform rally on May Day? Would the aggrieved Tea Partiers just see me and my comrades as yet another group refusing to listen to them and their grievances and, instead, supporting the grievances of, good lard!, people who aren't even citizens and, in fact, are stealing the aggrieved Tea Partiers' jobs?! I'm really confused because I was going to participate in an action for the Fair Wage campaign; but maybe I should be protesting bank bailouts and Wall St. Bonuses? Oh man, what a failure I am!
what really irks me about his material, i've watched and transcribed three interviews and read these articles, is that he repeatedly castigates the entirety of the Left for failure to "organize these people." first of all, how the fuck would he know? does he have some god's eye view? i'd like to know what the fuck he thinks of orgs like the workers justice center in this state, and several others like it across the country.
second of all, what is fascinating is his own self-erasure. he writes as if NO ONE onthe left provides anything to these people to help them understand their situation. there are reams and reams of such writing, most especially from chomsky himself. he talks as if his entire oeuvre, let alone that of others, doesn't exist. of course, we know he doesn't mean it. it is one of those slimey rhetorical devices he uses to avoid talking specifics and castigate an entire left for failing to proceed as HE thinks they should.
third, and relatedly, the left has been providing explanations for people since forever. so his real problem is that we are not doing it correctly, not advancing his preferred explanations, and we are not *organizing* these people.
because organizing these people is magically easy.
fourth, if you listen to him, he's engaged in the same critique he's always been: you people on the left don't provide simple explanations. the reason why palin et al 'win' them over is that there explanations are simple and make sense. simple, simple, simple man. talk to them in simple terms. it's just not that complicated. stop making it complicated!
beause it's all rilly rilly simple and eeeeeeeeeeeeasy peasey. which makes you wonder, fuck. i had no idea. if i just went out there and gave them a 200 word explanation of their problems in a mechanical marxist version, wham bam thank ya ma'am, we'd WIN! yay us! yay subject of history! yay revolution!
fuckmedead.
as carrol pointed out in another context, and i can attest to this via my research and my own personal experience, when someone gets canned in a lay off, it is NOT easy to grasp the explanation. there's a wealth of forces competing against a structural explanation of your fate. this is not a failure of individual psychology, but a psychology systematically created by capitalist society. no room or time to get into is here.
and all of this rhetoric about how easy it all is to provide simple explanations, yadda, is just another way of attacking people on HIS fucking side. he keeps saying, repeatedly, throughout his interviews and talks, that WE should be gazing at our belly button asking ourselves why WE are such failures at organizing these folks. he points specifically at the peace movement, the "activist movement", and "so on", saying that "we" after ask ourselves why "we" aren't doing anything. because whatever it is that these groups are doing is, well, not what he wants: *organizing* the tea partiers.
he says it quite plainly, if we don't get out there and organize, we could create a vacuum and fascism might erupt just like late weimar germany.
oh noes! if we don't do something, it will be ALL OUR FAULT! omigawd. O! the humanity!
o!
i'm such a fucking failure. the left is a failure. thanks for the gumball chomsky!
shag