Trump could lead the US towards ‘friendly fascism’: Chomsky

Leading American political analyst and philosopher Noam Chomsky says the election campaign of US President-elect Donald Trump has unleashed forces that could lead the United States towards “friendly fascism.”

Chomsky made the remarks in an interview with Truthout on Monday, almost a week after Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump stunned the world by defeating the heavily-favored Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton.

“For many years, I have been writing and speaking about the danger of the rise of an honest and charismatic ideologue in the United States, someone who could exploit the fear and anger that has long been boiling in much of the society, and who could direct it away from the actual agents of malaise to vulnerable targets. That could indeed lead to what sociologist Bertram Gross called ‘friendly fascism’ in a perceptive study 35 years ago,” he said.

“But that requires an honest ideologue, a Hitler type, not someone whose only detectable ideology is Me. The dangers, however, have been real for many years, perhaps even more so in the light of the forces that Trump has unleashed,” he added.

Professor Chomsky said the outcome of the November 8 elections “placed total control of the government — executive, Congress, the Supreme Court — in the hands of the Republican Party, which has become the most dangerous organization in world history.”

The analyst said Republicans “have moved so far toward a dedication to the wealthy and the corporate sector that they cannot hope to get votes on their actual programs.”

So they have mobilized “sectors of the population that have always been there, but not as an organized coalitional political force: evangelicals, nativists, racists and the victims of the forms of globalization designed to set working people around the world in competition with one another while protecting the privileged,” he added.

Trump presidency spells doom for climate science

The American commentator and writer said the presidency of Trump would be particularly damaging to environment since he does not believe in climate science.

Trump “calls for rapid increase in use of fossil fuels, including coal; dismantling of regulations; rejection of help to developing countries that are seeking to move to sustainable energy; and in general, racing to the cliff as fast as possible,” Chomsky said.

The scholar stated that it is difficult “to find words to capture the fact that humans are facing the most important question in their history — whether organized human life will survive in anything like the form we know — and are answering it by accelerating the race to disaster.”

He said the president-elect “has already taken steps to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by placing in charge of the EPA transition a notorious (and proud) climate change denier, Myron Ebell.”

In addition, Chomsky said, Trump's top adviser on energy, billionaire oil executive Harold Hamm, has already announced  to dismantle regulations, reduce taxes for the industry (and the wealthy and corporate sector generally), increase production of fossil fuel,  and lift Obama's temporary block on the Dakota Access pipeline.

In the run-up to the election, Trump had said that he would pull America out of the UN global climate accord if elected, spelling potential doom for a treaty many scientists view as a last chance to limit global warming.

"We're going to cancel the Paris climate agreement," Trump said at the Williston Basin Petroleum Conference in Bismark, Dakota, earlier this year.

The Paris climate agreement, which deals with greenhouse gases emissions mitigation, adaptation and finance starting in the year 2020, was negotiated by representatives of nearly 200 countries in Paris and adopted by consensus on December 12, 2015.

In a previous interview with Democracy Now! Chomsky had called the possibility of a nuclear war and global warming greatest threats to the mankind’s existence.

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