Re-examining History with Noam Chomsky: US Elite’s view of European Fascism before WW2

Reexamining History with Noam Chomsky: US Elite’s view of European Fascism before WW2

This is the beginning of a new series called “Reexamining History” in which we explore history and surface facts that are usually suppressed and/or ignored in mainstream historical literature.

In this part of Reexaming History, we talk to Prof. Noam Chomsky about the time period before World War II and what perceptions the United States maintained during it. These questions and many more will be addressed in this video.

• How did the US establishment view fascist figures such as Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini before the global war began?
• Was the US complicit or did it actively support fascism in Europe?

VIDEO: Reexamining History with Noam Chomsky

To read the interview transcript click here.

To watch acTVism Munich’s video playlist on Noam Chomsky, click here.

Notable excerpts from the video:

Noam Chomsky on Roosevelt’s view of Mussolini’s fascism:

“Well it was a mixed story. Roosevelt himself had a mixed attitude. For example: he was pretty supportive of Mussolini’s fascism, in fact described Mussolini as that admirable Italian gentleman. He later concluded that Mussolini had been mislead by his association with Hitler and had been lead kind of down the wrong path. But the American business community, the power systems in the United States were highly supportive of Mussolini. In fact even parts of the labor bureaucracy were. Fortune Magazine for example, the major business journal, I think in 1932, had an issue with the headline, I’m quoting it: ‘The wops are unwopping themselves.'”

Noam Chomsky on the US-Elite’s view after Hitler’s rise to power:

“When Germany, when Hitler took over, the attitude was more mixed. There was a concern for a potential threat but nevertheless the general approach of the U.S., the British even more so, was fairly supportive. So, for example in 1937 the State Department described Hitler as a kind of a moderate, fending off the dangerous forces of the right (and left)”

About Noam Chomsky:

Noam Chomsky is a world-renowned political dissident, anarchist, linguist, author and institute professor emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he’s taught for more than half a century. Chomsky has written more than 100 books, his latest being “Because We Say So“.  Chomsky has been a highly influential academic figure throughout his career, and was cited within the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI) more often than any other living scholar from 1980 to 1992. His work has influenced a wide range of domains, including artificial intelligence, cognitive science, computer science, logic, mathematics, music theory and analysis, psychology and immunology. Chomsky also developed the propaganda model of media criticism with Edward S. Herman which they presented in their book “Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media“. Chomsky remains a leading critic of U.S. foreign policy, neoliberal capitalism, and mainstream news media.

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