Savage Capitalism: From Climate Change to Bank Failures to War

In this wide-ranging interview with David Barsamian, Chomsky goes to the heart of some of the most pressing issues facing humankind: global warming; the ‘bail-out economy’; the war in Ukraine; the prospect of nuclear disaster; the ‘rules-based international order’; social media, AI, and corporate and governmental manufacture of public consent; and the core problem of savage capitalism and how to dismantle it. He emphasises the malign role played by the United States; most notably, the extent to which state and federal government are corrupted by what amounts to corporate bribery in domestic and foreign policy. Chomsky illustrates how state and private power bullies transgressors of the ‘rules-based international order’ into submission. He and interviewer Barsamian note the US State Department’s cavalier treatment of the horrifying prospect of nuclear war against Russia and China. Also discussed are US military threats, such as the expansion of NATO and proxy wars, and economic sanctions. Chomsky revisits government’s ever-increasing hold on the public mind via social media, with even greater control and disinformation promised by AI. Challenges to the system must be based on informed dissent, which should produce gradualist change that has the ‘core problem’ of wage slavery at its centre.