Russia-Ukraine week 8A: A bridge too far by Chomsky?

In a snippet from a much longer interview posted by Glennwald, Noam Chomsky not only doubles down on a stance of his since the start of the war — a negotiated peace, with which I heartily agree — but laughably says that Donald Trump is the person to do that.

Chomsky's justification for invoking Trump is laughable and laughably misunderstanding of Trump. Trump wasn't looking for abandonment of NATO nearly as much as he transactionally wanted European members to pay more — and a goal that Putin's invasion is achieving.

Beyond that, as demonstrated this past week, Trump himself is a mountain of nationalistic and macho bluster, which he would unleash on Putin. And, he then pivoted back to #StartTheSteal. If Chomsky thinks this person should be the person who would lead to a negotiated peace, let alone be the person to guide it, he HAS lost it.

Full interview here if you have the time to watch it. I don't need to bother.

Sigh.

That said, I think I "get" where Chomsky is coming from, and in a sense it only makes it worse.

Like Adolph Reed, Doug Henwood and others, he's a leftist duopolist.

So, he's touting Trump to "own the Dems," or at least to "own the Dem establishment."

This is almost as stupid as the likes of Walker Bragman doing the same with touting Xi Jinping Thought. (There's even less excuse for Howie Hawkins, Margaret Flowers and People's Republic of Humboldt Bay Commissar Rainier Shea to do that, as the first two represent Green Party thought leaders, and I think Commissar of Northern California Nationalities Shea is also outside the duopoly.)

It's still stupid. No excuse for Chomsky to be Trump puffing.

And, as noted, I saw the clip via Greenwald. "Shock me" that he is playing this up for the same reason as Chomsky, only more malevolently in his intent.