4 Noam Chomsky Quotes on Colonialism

Noam Chomsky quotes on colonialism

139. There are significant strategic interests [in Oceania], and there's a lot of stuff going on that's important. Not just the United States. For example, France is doing some really vicious things there, in fact they're just wiping out islands because they want them for nuclear tests. And when the socialist government in France is asked, 'Why to do this?', they say, 'Well look, we have to have nuclear tests.' Well, if you have to have nuclear tests, why not have them in southern France? [audience laughter] Why have them in some island in the Pacific? Well, the answer to that is clear, after all they're just a bunch of little brown people or something. But you can't say that exactly, especially if you're a socialist, so something else is said.

143. The Oslo agreements did represent a shift in U.S.-Israeli policy. Both states had by then come to recognize that it is a mistake to use the Israel Defense Forces to run the territories. It is much wiser to resort to the traditional colonial pattern of relying on local clients to control the subject population, in the manner of the British in India, South Africa under apartheid, the U.S. in Central America, and other classic cases. That is the assigned role of the Palestinian Authority, which like its predecessors, has to follow a delicate path: it must maintain some credibility among the population, while serving as a second oppressor, both militarily and economically, in coordination with the primary power centers that retain ultimate control. The long-term goal of the Oslo process was described accurately by Shlomo Ben-Ami shortly before he joined the Barak government: it is to establish a condition of permanent neo-colonialist dependency. The mechanisms have been spelled out explicitly in the successive interim agreements; and more important, implemented on the ground.

144. [Q: Zionism=racism?] It's necessary, first of all, to distinguish between Zionism and the practices of the State of Israel. The practices are undoubtedly racist. As for Zionism as such, a more accurate charge would be that it was colonialist, in some ways the last episode of old-fashioned European colonialism. But even that somewhat overstates, because the ideology covered a lot of ground, as nationalist ideologies commonly do. And in this case, as in all, there are particularities to consider. That aside, the condemnation of the policies of Israel as racist, while correct, reeks of hypocrisy. Simply look at the practices of those who are issuing the charges.

186. There's one white powder which is by far the most lethal known, it's called sugar. If you look at the history of imperialism, a lot of it has to do with that. A lot of the imperial conquest, say in the Caribbean, set up a kind of a network... The Caribbean back in the 18th century was a soft drug producer: sugar, rum, tobacco, chocolate. And in order to do it, they had to enslave Africans, and it was done largely to pacify working people in England who were being driven into awful circumstances by the early industrial revolution. That's why so many wars took place around the Caribbean.