Noam Chomsky Quotes

The surge in right-wing populism and the phenomenon of Trump are related. You can think of them together as the same problem.

There are two forms of populism, left-wing populism and right-wing populism. Right-wing populism requires the denigration of an "Other." Left-wing populism tends to be about the haves and have-nots.

I think that liberalism and the centrist governing elite of this country need to learn lessons from the Trump phenomenon. It is part of the way that the country is governed and the country is shaped that induces spasms of populism, including spasms of bigoted populism.

When it comes to explaining the phenomenon of right-wing populism, liberals are likely to argue both that the populist era has exposed a darkness always present at the heart of conservative politics and that a toxic, post-truth new-media ecosystem has greased the skids for President Trump, Brexit and the rest.

Trump has seized the Republican nomination by finding scapegoats for the economic hardships and disintegrating lives of working-class whites while giving these voters a reassuring but false promise of their restoration to the center of American life.

Trump channeled ethno-populist rage as naturally and charismatically as George Wallace had during the 1960s, while seating a billionaire cabinet.

These days you can't write anybody off. If anybody is a right-wing populist, you can't write them off now because that is the rising tide of our time.

The more you push back on Donald [Trump], whether you're in the media or whether you are in the GOP establishment, the stronger his base of support comes.

Donald Trump has a unique connection with his voters. There aren't that many people personally invested in Barack Obama. The people invested in Obama are invested in an idea that it's about time white America took it on the chin. That it's about time the people that founded this country found out what it's like to not be in a majority. That's the kind of people Obama has a connection to.

In Obama's world, it's Fox News and me that are the reason the Republican base doesn't like him. It can't possibly be that those people actually pay attention, are actually intelligent, informed, and they actually disagree with what he's doing. It can't be that because you are not that smart and independently thinkable. You're like the Democrat base. You're bunch of idiots who only know and do and believe what you're told. There may be a degree of exaggeration in there, but that is exactly how the left looks at their voters, and that's how they look at the whole population.

I think there's going to be a tug of war in this country over who are the real patriots because at a time of national crisis, economic collapse and calamity, ecological peril and social dislocation, the American people deserve to be a partner to the American government.

The media has created this environment that is okay to say almost anything about somebody who is, you know, right of Jane Fonda. You know, if you are slightly conservative or even libertarian points of view, especially if you are persuasive and charismatic and funny and effective, you will get called the most appalling things.

I remember a prominent conservative media figure, talking to him about prominent liberal media figures that he knew, that he liked. And I questioned him. "How can you trust these people? I mean, these are..." "No, no! They're good guys. In fact, one of them likes you, says you're not a hater." And I was supposed to be thrilled to hear this!I was supposed to be mollified that some liberal media figure had just pronounced I was okay because, after he had listened to me, he had determined I wasn't a hater. I did not take that as a compliment, and I got kind of mad.

I have made you - along with Fox News has made you - think Obama is something that he isn't. And it's such a shame. I have so distorted who the real Obama is in your mind, that it is paralyzing our government. It is paralyzing the Speaker of the House, who really, really, really, really wants to go in there and really, really work with Obama, but he just can't. It's hard for people like Boehner to move too far in my direction because of the misperception of me, Obama says, created by Fox News and Rush Limbaugh.

Politicians, you know Harry Reid hates you. We get it. But when somebody from "The New York Times" or "The Washington Post" is saying this stuff, that's different, that's offensive, that's wrong.

My media considers the left media to be the bullies on the playground.

Of course, there are also faculty who are discouraged from speaking critically about social issues because of the increasing assumption in American society that any form of critique which calls official power into question is somehow un-American. This absurd attempt to define any critique of official power as unpatriotic has a chilling effect on faculty, especially when such views and the names of the people to whom they are ascribed are widely disseminated in right-wing and dominant media outlets.

I keep telling my American friends, "If you think of Donald Trump as only something that is happening inside the United States, you're missing it." Because there are Trump-like events happening across the Western world, in Warsaw Pact countries, in France, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands. As we speak, the second-largest party in the Dutch legislature - who's more level-headed than the Dutch? - is Geert Wilders's party, which is a very Trump-like party, and they've got 33 out of 150 seats.

There are millions of people fed up with this daily diet of drivel from the Drive-By Media. But the media thinks everybody in America is waiting with bated breath for Trump to be convicted. They're totally, totally out of touch. The disconnect between everything going on in Washington and the real country has never been wider.

I've been a radical for a long time. I guess it's too bad. I'd be more marketable as a right-wing redneck.

Steve Bannon has quoted as lamenting the fact that he predicts a "Fox News" that will be more centrist in the future. He came after our boss Rupert Murdoch in some unflattering terms.

I'm fighting for real change, not just partisan change where everybody else gets rich but you. I'm fighting all of us across the country are fighting for peaceful regime change in our own country. The media donor political complex that's bled this country dry has to be replaced with a new government of, by, and for the people.

I think Donald Trump is trying to use populist rhetoric to cover up a right-wing agenda.

There's an internal coherence and logic to what they get from [Rush] Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and the rest of these guys. And they sound very convincing, they're very self-confident, and they have an answer to everything - a crazy answer, but it's an answer. And it's our fault if that goes on. So one thing to be done is don't ridicule these people, join them, and talk about their real grievances and give them a sensible answer, like, "Take over your factories."

I said something recently about how the president [Barak Obama] should stop trying to placate the crazies and the right wing and the Republicans and stand up for the 70 percent of Americans who are not insane and stand up for the people who actually voted for you. That hit a real nerve.