Trump didn't win the working class, the Democrats lost it; it's urgent that progressive organizing focus on the working class and unions - human civilization depends on it. There should be a focus on union organizing at Amazon. Noam Chomsky on theAnalysis.news with Paul Jay.

Paul Jay

Hi, I'm Paul Jay. Welcome to theAnalysis.news. Please don't forget there's a donate button at the top of the webpage.

At 92 years old, Noam Chomsky never stops learning and never stops teaching. His latest book, Chomsky for Activists and that's another thing that Noam never stops: his activism. Every drop of his life's blood is dedicated to changing the world for the better. Now joining us is Noam Chomsky. Thanks for joining us now.

Noam Chomsky

Very glad to be with you again.

Paul Jay

So before we dig into this very peculiar moment in American history, let me ask you something a little personal, because the book kind of starts with some personal reflections.

What keeps you learning and teaching? How do you stay motivated? Given the existential threats facing us, the relative strength of the elites and I would say the relative weakness of revolutionary and progressive movements around the world, you seem to just never tire of picking activists up, encouraging organizing. You never seem to lose your fighting spirit. What gives you such hope and conviction?

Noam Chomsky

Well, what makes the commitment is what you just describe. We're facing catastrophic threats, like nothing that has ever arisen in human history. There are ways to deal with them. There are opportunities. If we don't deal with them very soon, in not many years we'll be finished. Never risen before. We're in a unique moment of human history where we have to answer the question of whether the human experiment will survive or whether it'll end in glorious failure. We don't have much time.

That's enough to keep going. The actual situation doesn't look as grim to me as you describe. It's true that there are no revolutionary movements, but when were there? There are movements, substantial, energetic engagement over a very broad breadth of great many people, actually. I think if you count those, it's higher than was the proportion of the population than it was in the 60s except for a very brief moment and its committed, engaged, doing things, making progress, we have a long history of success.

Countries a lot better than it was in the 1960s in many ways, thanks to the activism of the 60s in the aftermath. There are lots of things we don't have to struggle about anymore because they won. It's a bad period in many ways, a dangerous period, and there's plenty of, there are both opportunities that are available and there are people engaged, should be a lot more. It's kind of astonishing. We've been through seventy-five years of the nuclear age and things that I remember on August 6, 1945, and astonishingly then, still astonishing.

So on August 6th, I happened to be a junior counselor at summer camp, the news came over the loudspeaker in the morning, early morning: atom bomb destroyed Hiroshima. There was some light applause, great wars ending, all that, then everyone went off to their own activities, and that's pretty much the way it's been since. On August 6th, anyone who was thinking realized that not only had horrible events taken place, but that human intelligence had reached the point where very soon it would progress or maybe decline to the level where it could destroy all human life on Earth, and most of the species with it.

Which in fact happened in 1953 when thermonuclear bombs were explode...