Summary of Illegitimate Authority by Noam Chomsky : Facing the Challenges of Our Time

By GP SUMMARY

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Summary of Illegitimate Authority by Noam Chomsky : Facing the Challenges of Our Timeillegitimate authority facing the challenges of our time

 

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Noam Chomsky examines the deteriorating democracy in the US, rising tensions globally, the Biden era, the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade, the War in Ukraine, diplomatic tensions, and climate action on an international scale.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookRix
• Release date: May 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9783755442271

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Summary of

Illegitimate Authority

A

Summary of Noam Chomsky’s book

Facing the Challenges of Our Time

GP SUMMARY

Summary of Illegitimate Authority by Noam Chomsky: Facing the Challenges of Our Time

By GP SUMMARY© 2023, GP SUMMARY.

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This is an unofficial summary & analysis of Noam Chomsky’s Illegitimate Authority: Facing the Challenges of Our Time designed to enrich your reading experience.

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PREFACE

The world is in dangerous and disconcerting times, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine bringing war back to Europe, climate change accelerating, and nuclear weapons posing a unique threat to the environment and human survival. The US is a global outlier on multiple fronts, including gun ownership and gun violence, religious fundamentalism, health care, inequality, global warming, and now abortion. The Republican Party has become a full-fledged proto-fascist political organization, and the Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade and struck down a New York hand-gun licensing law. The US is a global outlier on multiple fronts, including gun ownership and gun violence, religious fundamentalism, health care, inequality, global warming, and now abortion. Joe Biden's election offered hope that US democracy could be saved, but the forces of reaction had other plans.

Republicans and moderate Democrats blocked Biden's economic agenda, and Biden himself betrayed his climate promises by siding with Big Oil. The US is still the only superpower in the world, and what is happening in the country tends to have global ramifications. Progressive forces in the US are leading the struggle for a new socioeconomic order and a carbon-free future, but the Russian invasion of Ukraine has far-reaching consequences beyond Ukraine. The invasion of Ukraine triggered a global food crisis, revitalized NATO, and put climate action on the back burner. Noam Chomsky dissects the root cause of the war, the risks associated with the escalation of the conflict, and the making of the new international order in Illegitimate Authority: Facing the Challenges of Our Time. The interviews were conducted between late March 2021 and the end of June 2022 and originally appeared in Truthout, a nonprofit progressive news organization dedicated to providing an independent alternative to mainstream, corporate organizations and aiming to spark action by revealing systemic injustice and crimes against humanity.

BIDEN’S EARLY AGENDA GIVES HOPE, BUT ACTIVIST PRESSURE MUST NOT CEASE

President Joe Biden has been in office for two months and has signed executive orders to reverse Donald Trump's policies. He has also passed a huge and ambitious stimulus bill unlike anything seen during peacetime. Noam Chomsky assesses Biden's actions as better than expected. The stimulus bill has its flaws, but considering the circumstances, it is an impressive achievement. Republicans who favor it voted against it, but some Democrats insisted on watering it down.

However, the bill has valuable elements, such as an increase in the minimum wage, which could be a basis for moving on. The American Rescue Plan is a substantial step towards fulfilling the promise envisioned by Roosevelt Institute president Felicia Wong. Biden's strong support for Amazon workers and unions is a welcome shift. House Democrats have passed H.R. 1 and the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which protects voting rights and restoring workers' right to organize and bargain collectively.

However, the Senate has little sympathy for working people in Republican ranks, but it is a basis for organizing and education. The decline of union membership is a major factor in rising inequality. Michael Regan's appointment as Environmental Protection Agency administrator should replace corporate greed with science and human welfare. Biden's refusal to cancel $50,000 in student loans is a bad decision, but higher education should be recognized as a basic right, freely available, as it was in the US when it was a much poorer country. Activist pressure must not cease to counter the masters of the universe.

The postwar GI Bill of Rights provided free education for white males, and Biden has promised to fight domestic terrorism by passing a law that respects free speech and civil liberties. White supremacist violence is a serious issue, and Biden has proposed a plan to strengthen the middle class by encouraging unionization and collective bargaining. His affirmation of the rights of workers to unionize has spread enthusiasm among progressives. Biden's support for unions is in line with the favorable ratings they have received in recent years. This is due to the rise in inequality and the decline of unions, which have been at the forefront of struggles for justice and rights. Workers' organizations are changing in character with the growth of service and knowledge-based economies.

BIDEN’S FOREIGN POLICY IS LARGELY INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM TRUMP’S

The challenge to US hegemony posed by Russia and China has been a major theme of foreign policy discourse for some time, with consensus on the severity of the threat. Noam Chomsky argues that Russia and China sometimes deter US actions to enforce its global hegemony in regions on their periphery that are of particular concern to them, but this is a long distance from the way the challenge is commonly understood: as an effort to displace the US global role in sustaining a liberal rule-based international order. The US has internal and security advantages unmatched anywhere, and sanctions are a major instrument of world power for one country on Earth. The most important details in this text are the echoes of Senator Arthur Vandenberg's 1947 advice to the president to scare hell out of the American people if he wanted to whip them up to a frenzy of fear over the Russian threat to take over the world. NSC-68 of 1950, a founding document of the Cold War, called for a huge military buildup and imposition of discipline on our dangerously free society to defend ourselves from the slave state.

China is a world leader in renewable energy and manufacturing, and its global influence is expanding in investment, commerce, and takeover of facilities. US policy could help create a more serious challenge by confronting and hostile acts that drive Russia and China closer together in reaction. The most important details in this text are the efforts of the Department of Global Affairs (OGA) to mitigate efforts by states, including Cuba, Venezuela and Russia, to increase their influence in the region to the detriment of U.S. safety and security. Examples include using OGA’s Health Attaché office to persuade Brazil to reject the Russian COVID-19 vaccine and offering CDC technical assistance in lieu of Panama accepting an offer of Cuban doctors. Additionally, the US must block malignant initiatives to help victims, such as Brazil's failure to use the Russian vaccine, which Western authorities recognize as comparable to the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines used here.

The author of this article in the EU-based Brasil Wire comments that the US has dissuaded Panama from accepting Cuban doctors who have been on the global front line against the pandemic. He also mentions that the Biden administration has named Richard Nephew, an architect of sadistic sanctions against Iran under Barack Obama, as its deputy Iran envoy. Trump has withdrew US participation in the JCPOA, in violation of UN Security Council Resolution 2331, and has imposed harsh new sanctions to cause maximum pain to Iranians. Iran is responsible for taking the first steps towards negotiations to capitulate to Trump's demands. A better solution is to establish a nuclear weapons-free