Famed linguist and polemicist Noam Chomsky said recently that Democrats are becoming an international punchline for obsessing over theories that Russia somehow manipulated the U.S. election outcome.
Even if Russia was somehow able to interfere in the election, Chomsky contends that the country’s actions would still in no way stack up to the kind of international political manipulation the U.S. performs.
He told Democracy Now: “It’s a pretty remarkable fact that—first of all, it is a joke. Half the world is cracking up in laughter. The United States doesn’t just interfere in elections. It overthrows governments it doesn’t like, institutes military dictatorships. Simply in the case of Russia alone—it’s the least of it—the U.S. government, under Clinton, intervened quite blatantly and openly, then tried to conceal it, to get their man Yeltsin in, in all sorts of ways. So, this, as I say, it’s considered—it’s turning the United States, again, into a laughingstock in the world.”
Chomsky also rightly pointed out that the Democratic Party’s new obsession of vilifying Russia at every opportunity is risks sparking an extremely devastating military conflict.
“Why are they focusing so much attention on the one element of Trump’s programs which is fairly reasonable, the one ray of light in this gloom: trying to reduce tensions with Russia? That’s—the tensions on the Russian border are extremely serious. They could escalate to a major terminal war. Efforts to try to reduce them should be welcomed,” Chomsky said.
He added: “Just a couple of days ago, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, Jack Matlock, came out and said he just can’t believe that so much attention is being paid to apparent efforts by the incoming administration to establish connections with Russia. He said, “Sure, that’s just what they ought to be doing.”
The bottom line, Chomsky suggested, is that Americans are being fed a bunch of fake news by embarrassed Democratic campaign handlers.
“You can understand why the Democratic Party managers want to try to find some blame for the fact—for the way they utterly mishandled the election and blew a perfect opportunity to win, handed it over to the opposition,” he said.