Noam Chomsky - Turning the Tide U.S. intervention in

The Challenge Ahead
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover as the national political police, succeeded
in severely weakening the labor movement and undermining democratic
politics. Promoted by business and proceeding with the enthusiastic
support of the press, the repression wound down when it had achieved
its ends and when elites began to fear that the anti-immigrant hysteria
they had evoked might deplete the best reserve of cheap labor. 6
The story was reenacted after World War II. NSC 68 in 1950, while
proposing a vast military build-up and a rollback strategy, warned that
our society would be “vulnerable” if dissent were too freely tolerated and
that “a large measure of sacrifice and discipline will be demanded of the
American people.” The alleged Communist threat to our survival was
skillfully manipulated to induce conformism and passivity. The antics of
Joe McCarthy were one variant, quickly terminated when they passed
beyond helpless victims and extended to such powerful institutions as
the US Army. But “McCarthyism”—the campaign to reduce the
population to apathy and obedience and eliminate independent
thought—was far broader, and was eminently successful for some years;
its effects have yet to be overcome.
With the democratic revival of the sixties, US elites recognized the
threat and dedicated substantial resources to assuring that the Crisis of
Democracy would be overcome. 7
In the years since, Thomas Edsall observes, there has been “a major
shift in the balance of power in the United States” with “a significant
erosion of the power of those on the bottom half of the economic
spectrum, an erosion of the power not only of the poor but of those in
the working and middle classes” and a corresponding “sharp increase in
the power of economic elites.” The process culminated in the Reagan
programs that reshaped government, even more than before, into a
welfare system for corporate power and wealthy sectors. As discussed in
chapter 4, the military system is one of the devices used effectively to