Chomsky's Philosophy
1 HN recommender · recommended in 5 months, 2018–2025
11:35 · 6.6M views · Oct 7, 2014
A short clip, from 2003, of Noam Chomsky going through crimes of post-WW2 US presidents. He argues that they would be indictable under the Nuremberg principles.
HN links it as the source for the claim that every post-war president would be indictable under Nuremberg standards.
5 comments from Hacker News
This is an interesting piece from Chomsky on that matter: "Noam Chomsky - The Crimes of U.S. Presidents" - this video .
> In democracies, politicians have to care about what the public thinks. The US is not a democracy for 90% of Americans (Princeton study). > Americans as a whole are extremely judgmental about moral issues, and any president that stands by and allows 25 million Taiwanese to be crushed under the boot of the CCP will go down in history as the biggest coward since Neville Chamberlain. Sure. Except America will support “bad guys” and oppose “good guys” according to what suits them (like natural resources). Like how Saddam Hussein was an ally of the US until he went against their interests. The American people protested Reagan's interference in Latin America. That made them stop doing it. Right? No. They just went clandestine. > By and large yes, I do think democracies tend to operate (highly imperfectly) out of the goodness of their hearts (as they perceive it). Every post-WWII president up to 2003 (at least) could be indicted under the Nuremberg principles if they were upheld.[1] It's easy to have good intentions according to yourself when there are no one else around who can challenge your worldview. [1] this video
Trump is awful and so was G.W. Bush and Reagan and Nixon and Andrew Jackson and even George Washington[1]. We don’t learn much in school about George Washington burning down Iroquois villages because we focus on other things. It’s entirely possible that Trump becomes so bad that the people who remember his misdeeds get erased like so many Iroquois or Vietnamese people or gays with HIV under these other presidents. Here’s a clip [2] of Noam Chomsky describing the war crimes of every post WW2 president. Many people still regard those people as good presidents because they ignore their misdeeds. [1] [LINK] [2] this video
Supporting any US President of the last century or so is morally dubious(if you consider mass murder and toppling democratic regimes morally dubious). Like Chomsky likes to say, if US Presidents were held to the standards of the Nuremberg principles, they would all be executed. In that regard, Trump has so far done less harm than most recent Presidents. this video
If the Nuremberg principles were applied, every post-World War 2 president would be indictable. [0] [0] this video