
Don’t Put ‘Aside the Possibility’ of a ‘Staged or Alleged Terrorist Attack’ - mcone
https://chomsky.info/20170327/
======
otalp
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
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
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
"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
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.

~~~
cam_l
It is pretty crazy that John McCain has found himself on the left fringe of
his party. Warmongering SOB that he is.

But I am not so sure Chomsky is categorically 'wrong'.. wrong phrasing or
wrong to say it maybe. Besides I took 'stage' to mean fake, like Wag the Dog
fake, rather than stage as in false flag.. which at least shows that what he
said was not clear cut.

Not clear cut enough to call him a conspiracy nut, and not after what, 60
years of service to humanity.

------
pipio21
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.

------
andyklock
"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.

------
nafizh
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.

------
exodust
> _" 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
Vulnerable to being scapegoated perhaps what he means

~~~
freshhawk
Or obviously what he means if you want to get specific.

