Noam Chomsky and His Political Stance on Donald Trump

Noam Chomsky is an erudite scholar who has rendered enormous support in the field of linguistics, philosophy, history, and cognitive science with his groundbreaking innovations which include the theory of transformational generative grammar. Besides his contributions in academia, he is also a prominent author and media personality who is globally known for his frequent criticism of United States foreign policy and has penned down over a hundred language and political-related publications including Lectures on Government and Binding, Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, and The Political Economy of Human Rights. Noam Chomsky is also a scriptwriter who has written many TV documentaries and movies including Noam Chomsky: Internationalism or Extinction, Imperial Grand Strategy, and Pirates and Emperors (or Size Does Matter). Below is an in-depth detail of Noam Chomsky’s publications, education and opinion on Donald Trump’s administration.

Noam Chomsky’s Books

Noam Chomsky’s publications can be categorized into three, namely; general, linguistics, and politics. His writings on the scientific study of language are quite small compared to that of politics. He got his writing career to a get-go with his 1951 Master’s thesis at the University of Pennsylvania titled, Morphophonemics of Modern Hebrew and then followed it up with his second publication on language, Systems of Syntactic Analysis in 1953. He then changed the ideologies of linguistics with his 1957 book, Syntactic Structures which went on to become one of his famous publications and established him as the pioneer of modern linguistics.

So far, he has written over forty books and articles on linguistics including The Sound Pattern of English with Morris Halle (1968), Language and Mind (1968), Language and Thought (1993), New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind (2000), and The Science of Language with James McGilvray (2012). His writing credits on general issues include The Chomsky-Foucault Debate: On Human Nature with Michael Foucault (2006) and What Kind of Creatures Are We? (2015).

Renowned for his criticism of United States foreign policy, United States involvement in the Vietnam War, and news media and propaganda, Noam Chomsky has published several political-related books and articles. His first publication came as an essay titled, The Responsibility of Intellectuals and was published as a special supplement by The New York Review of Books on 23rd February, 1967. He wrote the article during the then-ongoing Vietnam War at the peak of its human rights abuses. So far, Noam Chomsky has penned down over sixty publications on political matters including Democracy in a Neoliberal Order: Doctrines and Reality (1997), The Umbrella of US Power: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Contradictions of US Policy (1999), Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy (2006), and Requiem for the American Dream: The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth and Power (2017).

His Education

Noam Chomsky obtained his preschool and elementary education at Oak Lane Country Day School, situated in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. He then got his basic education at Central High School, Philadelphia (a public high school in the Logan section of Philadelphia, and the second-oldest continuously used public high school in the United States). While in the aforementioned high school, he greatly excelled in academics as he became a fellow of several societies and clubs but was later disillusioned with the school’s hierarchical and strict teaching methods. He also attended Hebrew High School, Gratz College. Following completion of his high school education in 1945, Noam Chomsky enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania in the same year and graduated with a degree in linguistics in 1945 before acquiring his master’s degree and a doctorate degree in linguistics from the same university in 1951 and 1955 respectively.

His Take on Trump

The famed political critic and linguist who is not shy of baring his mind on political issues whenever the need arises, not minding the people or government involved, has not spared Donald Trump’s administration either. Noam Chomsky said in 2016 that the GOP is the most dangerous organization in human history because of their inability and neglect of climate change.

Fast forward to 2018, he said that climate change and nuclear war are two main existential threats facing humanity. And that US president, Donald Trump and his Republican allies have turned a blind eye to it as they chose to race toward the catastrophes of it in the interest of short term profits. He went on to label Trump and his political party associates as criminally insane, and equally called Trump’s Economic Boom a sham.