Noam Chomsky: In Response to Coronavirus, “You Can Do Something”
In a new interview, Noam Chomsky gives his thoughts on the coronavirus pandemic, the depravities of capitalism, and the urgent need for a new era of solidarity and labor struggle.
Noam Chomsky speaks in Boston in April 2015. Cancillería del Ecuador / Flickr
For decades Noam Chomsky has been a leading intellectual troublemaker. His books and speeches have helped to explain how a world run by corporations and billionaires has led to endless war and catastrophic climate change. Now he is helping to explain how corporations and billionaires are actually making the coronavirus pandemic worse by pursuing savage policies that benefit themselves at the expense of everyone else.
Chris Brooks interviewed Professor Chomsky on April 10 to learn more about how we got into this moment — and what it will take to get us out of it.
Chris Brooks
I wanted to start out with getting your thoughts generally on the unprecedented moment we’re in. We’re obviously in the midst of both a global pandemic and a global recession and right now millions of people in the United States have found themselves both unemployed and uninsured while our health care system is overloaded and lacking anything close to the number of hospital beds and ventilators and personal protective equipment (PPE) that we need. We could spend the whole half-hour on this question alone, but in brief strokes, could you outline for us how to understand the current moment we’re in and the political choices that led us here?
Noam Chomsky
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