‘World at Most Dangerous Moment in Human History’

US professor Noam Chomsky warns that the presence of climate crisis, the threat of nuclear war and rising authoritarianism (three dangers) mean the risk of human extinction has never been greater. “…the current perils exceed those of earlier,” he says.

The 91-year-old US linguist and activist tells the New Statesman in an exclusive interview that “The end of organized human life on Earth, which is what we’re facing,”, adding that “[Donald] Trump has accomplished something quite impressive: he’s succeeded in increasing the threat of each of these dangers: “the growing threat of nuclear war, which is probably more severe than it was during the Cold War. The growing threat of environmental catastrophe (due to climate change), and the third thing that they’ve been picking up for the last few years is the sharp deterioration of democracy.”

Chomsky, who has lived through 22 US presidential elections, warned that Trump’s threat to refuse to leave office if defeated by Democratic candidate Joe Biden was unprecedented.

“He’s already announced repeatedly that if he doesn’t like the outcome of the election he won’t leave. And this is taken very seriously by two high-level military officers, ex-military leaders, who’ve just sent a letter to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, reviewing for him his constitutional duties if the president refuses to leave office and gathers around him the paramilitary forces.

“The military has a duty in that case, the 82nd Airborne Division, to remove him by force. There’s a transition integrity project, high-level people from the Republicans and the Democrats; they’ve been running war games asking what would happen if Trump refuses to leave office – every one of them leads to civil war, every scenario that they can think of except a Trump victory leads to civil war. This is not a joke – nothing like this has happened in the history of parliamentary democracy.”

Chomsky described Trump as the figurehead of a new “reactionary international” consisting of Brazil, India, the UK, Egypt, Israel and Hungary. Example: “[Narendra] Modi is destroying Indian secular democracy, severely repressing the Muslim population, he’s just vastly extended the terrible Indian occupation of Kashmir”.

Chomsky described Trump as the figurehead of a new “reactionary international” consisting of Brazil, India, the UK, Egypt, Israel and Hungary.

His views generally go unreported in major media outlets. “Sadly, Prof. Chomsky is in the minority,” says a geopolitical analyst based in Asia Pacific when asked by DesPardes to comment on the professor’s ominous warning.