3 Noam Chomsky Quotes on Racism

Noam Chomsky quotes on racism

11. ...jingoism, racism, fear, religious fundamentalism: these are the ways of appealing to people if you're trying to organize a mass base of support for policies that are really intended to crush them.

31. See, capitalism is not fundamentally racist -- it can exploit racism for its purposes, but racism isn't built into it. Capitalism basically wants people to be interchangeable cogs, and differences among them, such as on the basis of race, usually are not functional. I mean, they may be functional for a period, like if you want a super exploited workforce or something, but those situations are kind of anomalous. Over the long term, you can expect capitalism to be anti-racist -- just because it's anti-human. And race is in fact a human characteristic -- there's no reason why it should be a negative characteristic, but it is a human characteristic. So therefore identifications based on race interfere with the basic ideal that people should be available just as consumers and producers, interchangeable cogs who will purchase all the junk that's produced -- that's their ultimate function, and any other properties they might have are kind of irrelevant, and usually a nuisance.

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.