October 4, 2011
Noam’s Heroes

I’m currently reading “Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky” which is essentially a compilation of discussions that Noam Chomsky has had over several decades on a wide range of political topics. Though some of these discussions were back in the 80s, they are still relevant today and I reckon it will remain relevant in the near future too.
Q. Noam, I have to say, I’m getting a little depressed by all this negative information – we need it, there’s no question about it, but we also need a certain degree of empowerment. So let me just ask you, who are your heroes?
Well, let me first just make a remark about the “empowerment” point, which comes up again and again. I never know exactly how to respond to it – because it’s just the wrong question. The point is, there are lots of opportunities to do things, and if people do something with them, changes will happen. No matter how you look at it, it seems to me that’s always what it comes down to.
Q. Well, I guess I’m asking about your heroes so that you’ll be a little bit more specific about some of these “opportunities.” For example, who do you really admire when it comes to activism?
Well, my heroes are people who were working with S.N.C.C (the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a Civil Rights Movement organization) in the South – people who day after day faced very harsh conditions and suffered badly, some of them were even killed. They’ll never enter into history, but I knew some of them, I saw some of them – they’re heroes. Draft resisters during Vietnam War I think are heroes. Plenty of people in the Third World are heroes; if you ever have the chance to go to a place where people are really struggling – like the West Bank, Nicaragua, Laos – there’s an awful lot of heroism, just an awful lot of heroism. Among sort of middle-class organizers, there are three or four people I know who would get the Nobel Peace Prize if it meant anything, which of course it doesn’t, in fact it’s kind of an insult to get it – take a look at who it goes to. If you look around, there are people like that: if you want heroes, you can find them. You’re not going to find them among anybody whose name is mentioned in the newspapers – if they’re there, you know probably they’re not heroes, they’re anti-heroes.
- Chapter Three: Based Primarily on discussions at Rowe, Massachusetts, April 15-16 1989. pp.93-94
