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US, Europe behaves nothing like democracy – Noam Chomsky

August 17, 2013   ·   0 Comments

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Professor Noam Chomsky, an American philosopher and renowned political critic, laid out how the majority of US policies were practically the opposite of what wide swathes of the public wanted in a speech at DW Global Media Forum, Bonn, Germany. 

According to Chomsky, “Obama’s remarkable global terror campaign and the limited, pathetic reaction to it in the West is one shocking example. And it is a campaign of international terrorism – by far the most extreme in the world.”

The study of social attitudes and policy shows a correlation between them, for roughly 70% of the population – the lower 70% on the wealth/income scale – people have no influence on policy whatsoever.

“They’re effectively disenfranchised. As you move up the wealth/income ladder, you get a little bit more influence on policy. When you get to the top, which is maybe a tenth of one percent, people essentially get what they want, i.e. they determine the policy. So the proper term for that is not democracy; it’s plutocracy”, he noted.

So the policy bases on minorities’ interests instead of majorities’ (which what a democracy is supposed to be based on). According to Professor Chomsky, familiar processes are happening in Europe, but in even worse ways.

“The French, the Spanish, the Irish, the Dutch, Portuguese, Greeks, Slovenians, Slovakians and Cypriots have, to varying degrees, voted against the currency bloc’s economic model since the crisis began three years ago. Yet economic policies have changed little in response to one electoral defeat after another. The left has replaced the right; the right has ousted the left. Even the center-right trounced Communists (in Cyprus) – but the economic policies have essentially remained the same: governments will continue to cut spending and raise taxes”, he said, quoting The Wall Street Journal.

So elections are getting close to meaningless, very much as in Third World countries which are ruled by the international financial institutions.

From his point of view, that’s what Europe has chosen to become and that’s what the United States are heading to.

You can read the full text of his speech here.

Voice of Russia

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