3 ms·

Don’t Put ‘Aside the Possibility’ of a ‘Staged or Alleged Terrorist Attack’

49 points by mcone 10y ago

exodust 10y ago
> "And the typical scapegoating goes to vulnerable people: immigrants, terrorists, Muslims and elitists, whoever it may be" Terrorists are vulnerable people? I guess I'm not surprised that's coming from Chomsky. It's disappointing that he used the word "staged". This just feeds the idiots who think everything is staged.
- Scirra_Tom 10y ago
  Vulnerable to being scapegoated perhaps what he means
  - freshhawk 10y ago
    Or obviously what he means if you want to get specific.
- webreac 10y ago
  terrorists are vulnerable of manipulation.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- otalp 10y ago
  >Terrorists are vulnerable people? Neither are elitists, it was a spoken interview and he means that 'terrorism' will be taken as the boogeyman to explain away stagnating wages, increasing inequality and all the problems that modern America faces. The rhetoric will be that it's not concentration of power at the top and a broken system that caters to corporations that's the problem, it's people wearing hijabs and immigrants.
- badcede 10y ago
  He obviously means that those are the labels used to do the scapegoating.
otalp 10y ago
Relevant paragraph: "In order to maintain his popularity, the Trump administration will have to try to find some means of rallying the support and changing the discourse from the policies that they are carrying out, which are basically a wrecking ball, to something else. Maybe scapegoating, saying, “Well, I’m sorry, I can’t bring your jobs back because these bad people are preventing it.” And the typical scapegoating goes to vulnerable people: immigrants, terrorists, Muslims and elitists, whoever it may be. And that can turn out to be very ugly. I think that we shouldn’t put aside the possibility that there would be some kind of staged or alleged terrorist act, which can change the country instantly." The title and the way it's portrayed in certain news outlets makes it seem like some kind of conspiracy theory, but what he's really saying is that Trump will seize on any small event(or non-event) to try and rally people through fear. It's not out of the realm of possibility that Trump will tweet "Just learnt that ISIS has infiltrated America" and then proceed(or attempt) to clamp down further on civil liberties in the name of safety and peace. Or if some terrorist attack does happen- even if it's relatively minor, he will certainly use that to further increase surveillance powers, remove encryption right and attack those who criticise him. I mean only a couple of days ago he casually threatened to change libel laws to prevent news outlets from attacking him. These are dangerous times.
- pavlov 10y ago
  He's also been laying the groundwork for escalating anything that looks like a terrorist attack. Remember the tweet "If something happens, blame the judges?" The emergency powers he could demand might be surprisingly far-reaching and hard to terminate. France is still in a state of emergency, 16 months after the Paris attack, and people seem to be used to it. The police don't mind being able to do warrantless searches and surveillance, and as it normalizes further, people will start asking: "Why did we ever make a fuss about those people's rights anyway?" (Incidentally, this is a major theme in Brexit. The UK conservatives want to abolish the European Charter of Fundamental Rights because they feel it provides too much protection to non-citizens.)
matt4077 10y ago
Even if you believe that something like that could happen, it's irresponsible to just throw it out there. Everything that is wrong with politics right now is rooted in a breakdown of trust: Trust in institutions (FBI, the media), trust in politicians, trust in your neighbour. Chomsky is peddling what amounts to a future-conspiracy-theory. All it achieves is even more confusion that allows actual scandals to be disappear in the dense fog of lies, conspiracies, and bad faith. Example: the probably accurate theory that the Russians got directly involved in the elections is buried under (a) the so-far unlikely possibility that Trump was a direct part to it, (b) Trump's smoke grenade of "they tapped my phones", and now (c) this congressman's bizarre incompetence at both conducting an investigation and subverting it. Meanwhile, there's two or three elections in Europe coming up, and a forceful response could have been helpful in, say, averting WW3. It's still unlikely that France and Germany, will follow the US example – especially now that they get to watch this shit show – but it's the kind of risk you'd try to avoid if possible. So, anyway: Chomsky has done a lot of great stuff, but tolerating stuff like this risks turning the left into the same sort of rabid mob the right has been for the last 8 years or so. (Also: Trump doesn't have the support of the security apparatus to pull off anything like a false flag terrorist attack, nor is anybody in that administration capable of organising a birthday card without leaking it to the press, accidentally buying a condolence card, and sending it to the PM of Nicaragua instead of Trump's cousin)
- cam_l 10y ago
  "Everything that is wrong with politics right now is rooted in a breakdown of trust" You have got this backwards.. everything that is wrong with politics is rooted in breakdown of trustworthiness. Drawing attention to this lack of trustworthiness is not in the slightest bit irresponsible. Also, I think it is pretty shit state of affairs that someone like Trump (who is actually in power) can get away with a barrage of outright lies and bat-shit-crazy conspiracies, but if someone like Chomsky (who is not) utters one questionable—but immediately qualified—word, he is irresponsible.
  - matt4077 10y ago
    I have probably called Trump a dangerous buffoon often enough–calling out Chomsky is still important because (a) it's much more likely having an effect on him, since it's coming from "his" people, and (b) it does get noticed on the right as well. I still remember being all warm and fuzzy inside when John McCain told some lunatic at a rally that, no, Barack Obama is not a secret muslim al-quaeda terrorist. Plus, you know, he's wrong–that should usually be enough reason to challenge him.
pipio21 10y ago
People personalize too much: They believed in Obama like he was a Prophet or something and now they make Trump the devil. People can not see that around Power there are lots of interests, companies and people that fight for their own benefits no matter who is the president. They defeated Obama making him do bailouts to too big to fail companies from the first day of his presidency, they made it clear that closing Guantanamo was something that was not going to happen or else , the Nobel Price of peace bombed to dust and created more failed countries that any other president... and life goes on. The same happens to Trump, the man that did not want to make nuclear war with Russia was pulled apart as soon as he got into power and replaced with a pro war guy, because he was spied and he "could or could not" be a Russian agent. Stages or terrorist attacks are called "false flag attacks" and there was people in secret services that could do under Obama and the same people is there under Trump. The interest are the same, the structures of power are the same. In fact, under Obama some videos of ISIS appeared in which kidnapped western people appeared with absolutely no facial expressions, something that even myself could stage better with a computer and a 3d program. Those videos changed Europe's public opinion in support for the US against ISIS. Western freedoms have gone by the drain since 9 eleven. People should start demanding freedom, privacy and truth no matter who is in power. Democrats are only starting to value those things when they feel they are loosing it. When they benefited from freedom erosions they were silent.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
nafizh 10y ago
Why is this flagged? This is a comment by a respectable pundit of our era and an authority in linguistics. I do not get the arbitrary yardstick of flagging at HN.
andyklock 10y ago
"His rhetoric is about helping the working man and so on, but the proposals are savage and damaging to the constituency that thinks that Trump is their spokesperson." This about sums up our current affairs for me quite nicely. Chomsky later indicates that the working class will eventually figure this out (just in time for Trump to react in that way that he does), however, damaging policies will already be put into place and will be really difficult to roll back. Climate change should be the number one top priority.

49 points by mcone 10y ago

> "And the typical scapegoating goes to vulnerable people: immigrants, terrorists, Muslims and elitists, whoever it may be" Terrorists are vulnerable people? I guess I'm not surprised that's coming from Chomsky. It's disappointing that he used the word "staged". This just feeds the idiots who think everything is staged.

Scirra_Tom 10y ago
Vulnerable to being scapegoated perhaps what he means
- freshhawk 10y ago
  Or obviously what he means if you want to get specific.
webreac 10y ago
terrorists are vulnerable of manipulation.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
otalp 10y ago
>Terrorists are vulnerable people? Neither are elitists, it was a spoken interview and he means that 'terrorism' will be taken as the boogeyman to explain away stagnating wages, increasing inequality and all the problems that modern America faces. The rhetoric will be that it's not concentration of power at the top and a broken system that caters to corporations that's the problem, it's people wearing hijabs and immigrants.
badcede 10y ago
He obviously means that those are the labels used to do the scapegoating.

otalp 10y ago

Relevant paragraph: "In order to maintain his popularity, the Trump administration will have to try to find some means of rallying the support and changing the discourse from the policies that they are carrying out, which are basically a wrecking ball, to something else. Maybe scapegoating, saying, “Well, I’m sorry, I can’t bring your jobs back because these bad people are preventing it.” And the typical scapegoating goes to vulnerable people: immigrants, terrorists, Muslims and elitists, whoever it may be. And that can turn out to be very ugly. I think that we shouldn’t put aside the possibility that there would be some kind of staged or alleged terrorist act, which can change the country instantly." The title and the way it's portrayed in certain news outlets makes it seem like some kind of conspiracy theory, but what he's really saying is that Trump will seize on any small event(or non-event) to try and rally people through fear. It's not out of the realm of possibility that Trump will tweet "Just learnt that ISIS has infiltrated America" and then proceed(or attempt) to clamp down further on civil liberties in the name of safety and peace. Or if some terrorist attack does happen- even if it's relatively minor, he will certainly use that to further increase surveillance powers, remove encryption right and attack those who criticise him. I mean only a couple of days ago he casually threatened to change libel laws to prevent news outlets from attacking him. These are dangerous times.

pavlov 10y ago
He's also been laying the groundwork for escalating anything that looks like a terrorist attack. Remember the tweet "If something happens, blame the judges?" The emergency powers he could demand might be surprisingly far-reaching and hard to terminate. France is still in a state of emergency, 16 months after the Paris attack, and people seem to be used to it. The police don't mind being able to do warrantless searches and surveillance, and as it normalizes further, people will start asking: "Why did we ever make a fuss about those people's rights anyway?" (Incidentally, this is a major theme in Brexit. The UK conservatives want to abolish the European Charter of Fundamental Rights because they feel it provides too much protection to non-citizens.)

matt4077 10y ago

Even if you believe that something like that could happen, it's irresponsible to just throw it out there. Everything that is wrong with politics right now is rooted in a breakdown of trust: Trust in institutions (FBI, the media), trust in politicians, trust in your neighbour. Chomsky is peddling what amounts to a future-conspiracy-theory. All it achieves is even more confusion that allows actual scandals to be disappear in the dense fog of lies, conspiracies, and bad faith. Example: the probably accurate theory that the Russians got directly involved in the elections is buried under (a) the so-far unlikely possibility that Trump was a direct part to it, (b) Trump's smoke grenade of "they tapped my phones", and now (c) this congressman's bizarre incompetence at both conducting an investigation and subverting it. Meanwhile, there's two or three elections in Europe coming up, and a forceful response could have been helpful in, say, averting WW3. It's still unlikely that France and Germany, will follow the US example – especially now that they get to watch this shit show – but it's the kind of risk you'd try to avoid if possible. So, anyway: Chomsky has done a lot of great stuff, but tolerating stuff like this risks turning the left into the same sort of rabid mob the right has been for the last 8 years or so. (Also: Trump doesn't have the support of the security apparatus to pull off anything like a false flag terrorist attack, nor is anybody in that administration capable of organising a birthday card without leaking it to the press, accidentally buying a condolence card, and sending it to the PM of Nicaragua instead of Trump's cousin)

cam_l 10y ago
"Everything that is wrong with politics right now is rooted in a breakdown of trust" You have got this backwards.. everything that is wrong with politics is rooted in breakdown of trustworthiness. Drawing attention to this lack of trustworthiness is not in the slightest bit irresponsible. Also, I think it is pretty shit state of affairs that someone like Trump (who is actually in power) can get away with a barrage of outright lies and bat-shit-crazy conspiracies, but if someone like Chomsky (who is not) utters one questionable—but immediately qualified—word, he is irresponsible.
- matt4077 10y ago
  I have probably called Trump a dangerous buffoon often enough–calling out Chomsky is still important because (a) it's much more likely having an effect on him, since it's coming from "his" people, and (b) it does get noticed on the right as well. I still remember being all warm and fuzzy inside when John McCain told some lunatic at a rally that, no, Barack Obama is not a secret muslim al-quaeda terrorist. Plus, you know, he's wrong–that should usually be enough reason to challenge him.

pipio21 10y ago

People personalize too much: They believed in Obama like he was a Prophet or something and now they make Trump the devil. People can not see that around Power there are lots of interests, companies and people that fight for their own benefits no matter who is the president. They defeated Obama making him do bailouts to too big to fail companies from the first day of his presidency, they made it clear that closing Guantanamo was something that was not going to happen or else , the Nobel Price of peace bombed to dust and created more failed countries that any other president... and life goes on. The same happens to Trump, the man that did not want to make nuclear war with Russia was pulled apart as soon as he got into power and replaced with a pro war guy, because he was spied and he "could or could not" be a Russian agent. Stages or terrorist attacks are called "false flag attacks" and there was people in secret services that could do under Obama and the same people is there under Trump. The interest are the same, the structures of power are the same. In fact, under Obama some videos of ISIS appeared in which kidnapped western people appeared with absolutely no facial expressions, something that even myself could stage better with a computer and a 3d program. Those videos changed Europe's public opinion in support for the US against ISIS. Western freedoms have gone by the drain since 9 eleven. People should start demanding freedom, privacy and truth no matter who is in power. Democrats are only starting to value those things when they feel they are loosing it. When they benefited from freedom erosions they were silent.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

nafizh 10y ago

Why is this flagged? This is a comment by a respectable pundit of our era and an authority in linguistics. I do not get the arbitrary yardstick of flagging at HN.

andyklock 10y ago

"His rhetoric is about helping the working man and so on, but the proposals are savage and damaging to the constituency that thinks that Trump is their spokesperson." This about sums up our current affairs for me quite nicely. Chomsky later indicates that the working class will eventually figure this out (just in time for Trump to react in that way that he does), however, damaging policies will already be put into place and will be really difficult to roll back. Climate change should be the number one top priority.