Imperialism and the Responsibility of Intellectuals with Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad

For this episode we welcome Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad back to the podcast.

This is our second conversation on The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power.

As we noted in our previous conversation we weren’t able to get to all of our questions in the first discussion, but Noam and Vijay were generous enough to agree to record a part 2. We recorded this conversation on September 2nd, which is interesting because some information on the war in Ukraine had been revealed between our two conversations and we get into that in discussion. We will link the article they reference in the show notes.

This conversation, begins with discussion of the Tet Offensive and Noam facing potential trial for his resistance during the US war in Vietnam. Vijay talks about Noam’s piece “The Responsibility of Intellectuals.” 

From there we get into discussion about “the Pentagon System,” and the military industrial complex. 

They both share some thoughts on Manufacturing Consent and the role of the media, and discuss a few examples of how this functions. Talk about imperialism with regards to resources and power. And Noam discusses how NATO and the Pentagon rebranded their purposes after the Cold War.

From there we get into the invention of “humanitarian intervention,” and how concepts of human rights and genocide have been manipulated by the US despite US’s total lack of accountability within the frameworks of international law. 

We close with some discussion on how to recompose and reconstitute movements in the imperial core, against imperialism and toward better horizons.

Both this conversation and our previous conversation with Noam and Vijay are based on questions developed on their book The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power. Which is on sale now and we definitely recommend it. We will also link the previous discussion the authors had with Guerrilla History that we reference in the episode. If you don’t listen to Guerrilla History check them out, we really like the work they do and hopefully you will as well.

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The Hill and Stent article (the one that references the April peace agreement)

Reflections on a Political Trial 

The Responsibility of Intellectuals