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Noam Chomsky Rains On Bernie's Parade

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Noam Chomsky Rains On Sanders Parade
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"the Bernie Sanders campaign - that campaign ought to be directed to sustaining a popular movement that will use the election as a kind of an incentive and then go on, and unfortunately it's not. When the election's over, the movement is going to die.

The only thing that's going to ever bring about any meaningful change is ongoing, dedicated, popular movements that don't pay attention to the election cycle. It's an extravaganza every four years"

(Sanders) is basically Eisenhower" -- Noam Chomsky. [1]

So Chomsky wants a popular movement, but not a political movement.

The last time he was happy with a popular movement was in 2011. Even then, I wondered why. The Occupy movement looked like a joke to me. The hippie-type movement had no teeth. It never said what it was for, only what it was against - vaguely - the status quo? (whatever that means).

In the end, all the Occupiers seemed to do was annoy a few people, hang up some hand-painted banners advertising themselves (but not their goals)" and then they went away.

Where are Chomsky's heroes now? One has a feeling that most of them, having "grown up," have gotten "serious." That most of them, recovering neoliberals, won't even bother to vote.

They accomplished nothing. Despite their "efforts," we have drifted further to the extreme right than at any time in our history. Wall St. has moved from lobbying the government to ruling it.

Occupy failed because it did not have a political leader, or even a spokesperson. Without a leader, it went in all directions, ultimately feeding on itself like Ouroboros, the mythological snake that eats its own tail.

So much for Professor Chomsky's popular movement.

Professor Chomsky compares Sanders to Eisenhower (which is not a compliment).

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James and Jean Anton were born and raised in New York City, and spent ten years living and working abroad in countries as diverse as Brazil, Ecuador, Denmark, Italy and Iran. They have written and illustrated books for Scholastic Inc, McGraw (more...)
 

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