synopsis:

in this political analysis chomsky divides People, institutions, governments, business, and ideas into two camps: the fascist camp and the anti-fascist camp.

On the one hand, Chomsky sees the following as part of the fascist camp: American planners of the US government; the US-Nazi alliance after WWII; the postwar alliance between the US and the SS; a prewar Fascist regime in Italy; the Vatican and fascist priests; influence of George Kennan of the US State Department; the Marshall Plan; industrial capitalist societies; racism; an opposition to democratic capitalist governments in the Third World when they seek too much independence; teaching methods of the Gestapo and Heinrich Himmler's extermination squads; seeking to destroy Brazilian democracy; instituting a neo-Nazi-style national security state with torture; supporting the contras in Nicaragua; quashing the support of Communist and anti-American activities; employing gangsters in the Third World; supporting government terrorists in the Third World; the US-run terrorist army; totalitarianism; business leaders; the rich white elite; the right-wing European press; the demonization of Qaddafi; blocked free elections in Laos and Vietnam; to maximize repression and suffering in the Third World; some kind of Nazi or unreconstructed Stalinist; Washington sadists; the global enforcer; President Bush, etcetera.

The fascist camp has acted, writes Chomsky, to stop the spread of what US planners call Communism, and Communism is, according them, the idea that the government has direct responsibility for the welfare of the people. After WWII in regions throughout the world, Chomsky writes, the US was installing fascists and Nazi collaborators in place of the antifascist resistance, installing in one instance a Nazi collaborator who had been the author of the antisemitic laws promulgated by the Vichy government.

Chomsky writes the following when arguing that Moscow during the Cold War was not a party to unspeakable acts but that the US was: while the Moscow-imposed government in Prague would degrade and humiliate reformers, the Washington-made government in Guatemala would kill them. Chomsky describes Iraq's invasion of Kuwait as well within the range of many similar crimes conducted by the US and its allies, and nowhere near as terrible as some. Later on the book, Chomsky describes the invasion of Kuwait as Saddam Hussein's sole crime and as the crime of disobedience. The USSR permitted popular movements and encouraged them. The USSR publicly apologized for the invasion of Afganistan, but the US has not apologized for the attacks against Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

On the other hand, Chomsky sees the following as part of the anti-fascist camp: the antifascist resistance with its radical democratic ideals; a worker-and peasant-based movement [in Italy], led by the Communist party; the unions and other democratic forces; the Third World; democratic governments in Latin America, the underground French Communist party; the French labor movement; popular forces that push for meaningful democracy; social revolution, etcetera.

The antifascist camp seeks independence for Third World nations, which has been a threat, writes Chomsky, to the new US-led world order. Chomsky writes that he thinks that there are legal grounds for impeaching every American president since the Second World War because they have all been outright war criminals. The Soviet Union did not practice real socialism, he says, but had too much central authority due to Lenin, and Chomsky calls the fall of the Soviet Union an opportunity to revive the lively and vigorous libertarian socialist thought. Chomsky describes the end of the Soviet Union as a small victory for socialism, much as the defeat of the fascist powers was.

on this book:

by writing this book Chomsky encourages readers to change the system by voting, letter writing, demonstrations, and forms of civil disobedience such as office sit ins. He says that change happens only if efforts are sustained and organized. He writes the following: "we can provide them ['people of the Third World'] with a margin of survival by internal disruption in the United States".