Noam Chomsky & Vijay Prashad: US Empire in Withdrawal | FULL INTERVIEW 2022 

This conversation should be be mandatory viewing for all Americans who want a better world. #Solidarity

I am forever grateful to you for this discussion. I am 86 and sense that I have been waiting for this sharing of the truth. Thanks and stay strong.

It will be a very sad day when Chomsky is no longer with us, which, unfortunately, will be way too soon. Thankfully Vijay will be with us for a long time, the world needs more people like them.

The interviewer was also great. Her summaries, just outstanding. She hit the ball out of the park with every question.

It is refreshing to watch and listen to this presentation. Ariella, Vijay and Noam form a troika in perpetuity... The student, the scholar, and the wise man.

Going by Noam's sharp mind, he has many years left to provide wisdom. The man is pushing into his 90s and he is as sharp as a 20 year old! It's actually unreal.

As a citizen of the united states of america I have to make huge efforts to get accurate legitimate news from all over the globe. These gentlemen are brilliant and assist me enormously. I'm so grateful for their analysis

Ariella is a good interviewer. Concise and fluent.

So excited to watch this. The idea of Vijay and Noam coming together like this is utterly brilliant and this will be the next book I read.

An excellent and imperative discussion with 2 of the most important contemporary intellectuals today.

Noam Chomsky is back baby!

Chomsky is best when he brings up how the USA was always planned to be this way

This was a great interview! Always enjoy listening to Noam and Vijay speak facts.

Loss of "appetite for dialogue and diplomacy" is an excellent observation of current U.S. policy. It complements Chomsky's Godfather analogy.

Great talk, great host, great guests, great show

Regarding Cuba. Fidel Castro remarked that only because Cuba had no oil was it allowed to be.

Been listening Chomsky wherever I can find him ever since 2004 and 'The Corporation' documentary

When the godfather is in trouble, he goes crazy.

The simple fact that you will never hear conversation like this on main-stream, corporate-owned media should be very disturbing to all. Orwell and Huxley warned us.

What an in-depth and thorough discussion between two most outstanding scholars, on the prevailing precarious world situation. The depth of cruelty and shamelessness of the self-proclaimed exceptionalist is simply beyond comprehension !

Hats off to the Host, excellent job. Thanks.

Wow - fantastic. Thank you Jacobin ! Great interviewing skills Ariella.

Excellent, rich analysis and evidence, thank you

Great interview Jacobin, thank you for having Noam. For me he is/was and always will be the voice of the reason fueled by the great passion for the wellbeing of humanity and further of ecology.

When Chomsky just brutally went after Pelosi for buffing up her CV I couldnt help but laugh.

Vijay Prashad is having a revitalizing effect on Chomsky. Nice to see.

Amazing interview!!! Thanks so much for sharing!

Thank you, Ariella. Excellent work!

Wow 😮 a great discussion! Wanted to hear it for so long!

This was such an amazing and awesome Interview! Thank you!

Best interview so far of Jocobin

US vs Cuba is a very sad situation. What a courageous people, the Cubans are! And China is playing a very wise, long game! US is showing how weak minded we have become.

" The attacks are compliments when the journalists lie about you, defame you, that shows you must be doing something right, so keep at it." -Noam Chomsky

I love Chomsky but the main reason Taiwan needs that sand is not for concrete but because that's where the silicon in computer chips comes from. Taiwan makes most of the chips and if they don't have the main ingredient the chip shortage (which leads to other shortages) is only going to get worse. Ukraine also exports sand as well as neon and krypton which are needed to make chips.

The "world" used to portray Noam as a crazy liberal. Now the world is crazy and Noam is the voice of reason. Thank you for the interview, I learned some new things.

Thanks to the 3 of you. Great.

Thanks for bringing us this conversation. A consequential book for our time.

I'm loving everything Vijay is saying, he's bringing the right tone here

Awesome content, 10/10 would watch again

Outstanding interview 👍

Great segment,thank you guys. A very worthwhile listen.

Much thanks to the panel

Interesting and informative. Wise men discussing current world events

Great interview and discussion.

Great interview….good show👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿!!!

The Canadian government is using the method of defunding the single payer health system, which Canadian people love, and now privatization talk is getting louder and louder. It’s sickening.

Thank you! 👏🏼

Thank you guys. Absolutely clear.

I only became involved with YT and internet audio/videos about ten years ago. I'd come across some compelling Noam Chomsky audio somewhere and I was looking for more. He still sounds good to me.

Vijay Prashad is the gift that keeps on giving. India supported Russia in the Ukraine war because India got a juicy discount on the oil Russia sells them. India made sure they got a mutual defense pact (in regard to China's expansionist attitudes) with the United States and now they want to play defense games with China. China does the same with African nations, China gives them nice railroads and sets up plantations to grow food for China and next thing you know, these nations line up to support China in the UN. China shows money can get you friends.

I just can’t get over this I’ve tried…..there has got to be a way to get Chomsky just one time to just pause and then right to the cameras face shout…..YOU SHALLNOT PASS. A dream of mine

Great program!!! 2 World Great Historians and Intellectuals

Great troika, very interesting discussion.

I admire Noam Chomsky. Glad to see he is still ticking!

Fantastic! Its aneye opener!

very enlightening, so completely ominous.

This was GREAT

Outstanding! Book ordered!

Wow, Arielle is good, very talented!

america uses the tonya harding approach to competition named after the ice skater who kneecaped her rival.

Thank you, RU-vid algorithm, for inserting a DCCC fundraising ad with Nancy Pelosi at just the right moment in this video.

35:00 Reminded of Michael Parenti, an excerpt from his piece Mystery: How Wealth Creates Poverty: _In their perpetual confusion, some liberal critics conclude that foreign aid and IMF and World Bank structural adjustments “do not work”; the end result is less self-sufficiency and more poverty for the recipient nations, they point out. Why then do the rich member states continue to fund the IMF and World Bank? Are their leaders just less intelligent than the critics who keep pointing out to them that their policies are having the opposite effect?_ _No, it is the critics who are stupid not the western leaders and investors who own so much of the world and enjoy such immense wealth and success. They pursue their aid and foreign loan programs because such programs do work. The question is, work for whom? Cui bono?_ _The purpose behind their investments, loans, and aid programs is not to uplift the masses in other countries. That is certainly not the business they are in. The purpose is to serve the interests of global capital accumulation, to take over the lands and local economies of Third World peoples, monopolize their markets, depress their wages, indenture their labor with enormous debts, privatize their public service sector, and prevent these nations from emerging as trade competitors by not allowing them a normal development._ _In these respects, investments, foreign loans, and structural adjustments work very well indeed._ _The real mystery is: why do some people find such an analysis to be so improbable, a “conspiratorial” imagining? Why are they skeptical that U.S. rulers knowingly and deliberately pursue such ruthless policies (suppress wages, rollback environmental protections, eliminate the public sector, cut human services) in the Third World? These rulers are pursuing much the same policies right here in our own country!_ _Isn’t it time that liberal critics stop thinking that the people who own so much of the world---and want to own it all---are “incompetent” or “misguided” or “failing to see the unintended consequences of their policies”? You are not being very smart when you think your enemies are not as smart as you. They know where their interests lie, and so should we._ _"The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make and could just as easily make differently."_ - the late great David Graeber *Socialism or [continued] barbarism.*

Brilliant. Always. We in NZ hear you loud & clear. Inspiring, illuminating, empowering.

I like how everyone said "spend, spend, spend" during the pandemic and now nobody can afford to buy a place to live anymore.

Excellent presentation 😊👍 Thank you 😊 ! Learnt so much. Regards and Respects from Pakistan 🇵🇰🇵🇰

ARIELLA YOU ARE BRILLIANT!!!

They are good speakers !

G00d to put young and seasoned thinkers

The young woman interviewing these two was absolutely brilliant!!

I've been watching DVDs of the 1960s TV series "The Untouchables". The bombastic declarations of the mob bosses depicted in the show remind me of Noam Chomsky's Godfather principle.

While I think that Prashad's point at the end of the interview was very well made, I also think that it's a little bit of an understatement. My degree is in history & for the last several years I can't help but see similarities between the US & the Ottoman Empire. Like the Ottomans, our decline is entirely avoidable from a strictly materialist perspective... but I think it's also inevitable from a political perspective; which was observed in this discussion. It's not that we're lacking in military power or in corporate dominance, it's that our state institutions have become too dysfunctional & self-serving to respond appropriately to the needs of the people or, indeed, to a changing world. When I hear people talk about American "fragility," it sounds a lot like "sick man of Europe," to me. And once that perception becomes commonplace, it's very difficult to come back from it.

Hyped to listen to the dynamic between these 2. One is the one who brought me into leftist and the other is my favorite living.

Defund MIC " Military Industrial Complex ". There will be a better, peaceful world.

underrated

“Fragile, not in decline…” Thanks for that; it’s so true - the ‘fragile’ part - going all the way back. Beginning with our origin story, we created a collective defense mechanism to shield our eyes from the otherwise clear evidence of harm done. We settled in to a pattern of child-like responses to the monsters we created, to justify our actions. And we wrote our history to embed this meme into our national character - our exceptional ability to identify our enemies, foreign & domestic, as monsters - in support of our never-ending, narcissistic ability to excuse, forgive, forget or deny our bad behavior. The realist school of international relations, including Kissinger, has no problem explaining (nor did Howard Zinn, RIP) America has been an empire continuously since its entrepreneurial & political leaders constructively decided about a year after the British-French 1763 Treaty of Paris ending their major war, incl. the French & Indian War in N. America. Britain suffered thousands of casualties in its effort to protect its subjects in the Atlantic colonies, depleting its treasury in the process (France also). So the people & govts of both were eager for repose & an end to violence. Since the Indians’ consent was key to the treaty’s success, consulting with them, Britain & France realigned & froze in place their claimed territories - thus hopefully ending their aggressive imperial expansion in N. America. Treaty compliance included leaving the Indians alone in a large triangular area bounded, more or less, on the north by the (now) British Canadian territories; on the west by the Mississippi River; and on the east by Appalachian Mountain divide - the western boundary of the Atlantic colonies. Even before ten yrs of war, colonial leaders (George Washington, et al.) had been exploring, surveying & assessing the benefits of taking & developing that vast expanse of ‘empty’ land, following the established European nation-state imperial rules then in effect.

A stunningly clear analysis and critique of why we are where we are - and likely will never make progress from that situation. Many thanks to all three of you.

great interview!

GUNS!!! WEAPONS!!!! Pandora Box Has Been Opened and it can't be closed yet

American imperialism never stops

I am mad at everyone else in America for not introducing me to Jacobin over a decade ago. At least Lisa Simpson introduced me to Noam Chomsky. Thank you, Lisa. This video is fantastic btw.

Homeless camps in major cities says it all about USA.

Who’s in for ultimate chaos, where everyone fend for themselves? Sweet freedom!!!

"Fun" fact: In the very movie The Godfather uncoincidentally, there's a scene which appropriately and pretty plainly highlights "the godfather" analogy being elucidated in this interview as they literally slice up a cake with a frosting image of Cuba on top, much like the parallel European antecedent in carving up African spheres of colonial influence. NATO's "offer you can't refuse" covert enforcement in Operation Gladio also alluded to in The Godfather part 3 if I recall, our global "full spectrum domination" masquerading as a "Pax Americana" is but a thin blood-soaked curtain we can all see but to point out, certainly to do anything to _actually change_ , is (as Noam often puts it) "not well to do". _"Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."_ - some guy

I am Cuban, and we will never allowed the us to impose their in my country, rs

what island off of Africa does Noam mention ? i cant hear him

Noam is a hero for all times.

The part where Noam talked about why the Afghanistan war was launched was great. Also very interesting about the middle East nuclear free zone.

at 52:40 I couldn't make out who Noam said was a definitive source for exposing the blockade of UN efforts to facilitate Russian withdrawl.

Sand for Taiwan is essential for future growth

The USA behaves exactly as all other powerful enterprises of the past. It is not exceptional.

35:00 ish, echoed by Ariella at 54:34 ish - Reminded of Michael Parenti, an excerpt from his piece Mystery: How Wealth Creates Poverty: _In their perpetual confusion, some liberal critics conclude that foreign aid and IMF and World Bank structural adjustments “do not work”; the end result is less self-sufficiency and more poverty for the recipient nations, they point out. Why then do the rich member states continue to fund the IMF and World Bank? Are their leaders just less intelligent than the critics who keep pointing out to them that their policies are having the opposite effect?_ _No, it is the critics who are stupid not the western leaders and investors who own so much of the world and enjoy such immense wealth and success. They pursue their aid and foreign loan programs because such programs do work. The question is, work for whom? Cui bono?_ _The purpose behind their investments, loans, and aid programs is not to uplift the masses in other countries. That is certainly not the business they are in. The purpose is to serve the interests of global capital accumulation, to take over the lands and local economies of Third World peoples, monopolize their markets, depress their wages, indenture their labor with enormous debts, privatize their public service sector, and prevent these nations from emerging as trade competitors by not allowing them a normal development._ _In these respects, investments, foreign loans, and structural adjustments work very well indeed._ _The real mystery is: why do some people find such an analysis to be so improbable, a “conspiratorial” imagining? Why are they skeptical that U.S. rulers knowingly and deliberately pursue such ruthless policies (suppress wages, rollback environmental protections, eliminate the public sector, cut human services) in the Third World? These rulers are pursuing much the same policies right here in our own country!_ _Isn’t it time that liberal critics stop thinking that the people who own so much of the world---and want to own it all---are “incompetent” or “misguided” or “failing to see the unintended consequences of their policies”? You are not being very smart when you think your enemies are not as smart as you. They know where their interests lie, and so should we._ It's no coincidence that our bipartisan blackhole "defense" budget passes with ease to implicitly/explicitly enforce this now global financial "order" through the 1,000+ military bases worldwide and toward the perpetual benefit of US corporate/finance capital at the zero-sum cost of the global working class (not to mention the planet that we're consciously destroying at this point...), meanwhile any modest domestic spending bill or god forbid even the most basic of healthcare for the people that actually make the soulless mechanical logic of this life directed/enforced by capitalism at all worth living is callously thrown at the wayside at the mere suggestion. The empire feeds off the republic. To echo Rosa Luxemburg from 1918 Germany, before of course being executed by the freikorps paramilitary (later becoming the SS, shocker) at the behest of Ebert's ostensibly _social democratic_ SPD party, almost immediately resonating the truth of such a succinct political dichotomy which to this day only continues to reverberate its veracity more firmly: *socialism or* [continued] *barbarism* _"The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make and could just as easily make differently."_ - the late great David Graeber

To withdraw or withdrawl that is the question. Peace

Us voters never look outside even their home or even the day

Young people creating soon many enlightening podcasts they are our hope.

It sure would be nice if we could direct our massive imperial machine to focus it's time, money, and energy on stopping climate change.

I wouldn't call playing a proxy game with Russia in Ukraine, pumping Ukraine with hi tech weaponry while planting US soldiers in neighbouring countries US withdrawal.

I went back to Grenada after the US invasion in 1983. I'd lived there for a year 1980 -81. What the US did there was nothing short of criminal; a little, desperately poor country trying to make a go of it for it's people. Tore my heart out. After the US invaded, the country was flooded with cocaine causing even more problems. Never saw cocaine there before that.

Hope the west wakes up soon. The silent majority in US and UK needs to do something before it’s too late. US needs to apologise for all the wrongdoings and start afresh. 99% of US has good ppl. This 1% of US is screwing rest of the 99%.

Thank you for making a lonely Sunday more bearable

☮️