Trump’s rise due to fear, society breakdown: Chomsky
US Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump’s surprising rise in politics is attributable to “fear” and a “breakdown of society,” says renowned scholar Noam Chomsky.
Trump emerged victorious in Tuesday night’s Nevada caucuses, his third win out of the four contests so far held for the Republican Party’s nomination.
After his second-place finish in Iowa caucuses, the billionaire has swiped the floor with his rivals in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, enjoying double-digit margins.
“Fear, along with the breakdown of society during the neoliberal period,” Chomsky said in an interview with AlterNet published on Tuesday, when asked why Trump is on a winning streak. “People feel isolated, helpless, victim of powerful forces that they do not understand and cannot influence.”
The MIT professor and intellectual pointed to the political environment that has allowed the New York businessman to flourish, comparing it to the 1930s, when the US was engulfed by the Great Depression.
“Objectively, poverty and suffering were far greater, but even among poor working people and the unemployed, there was a sense of hope that is lacking now, in large part because of the growth of a militant labor movement and also the existence of political organizations outside the mainstream,” the academic explained.
Chomsky refused to predict who he thought would make it to the White House.
“I can express hopes and fears, but not predictions,” he said.
Chomsky is known to have contributed to Democratic contender Bernie Sanders’ campaigns in the past. However, he said he would “absolutely” vote for Hillary Clinton over the eventual Republican nominee if he lived in a swing state, where the two major political parties have similar levels of support among voters and can’t secure that state's Electoral College votes.
Last month, Chomsky praised Sanders but said he didn’t have “much of a chance” due to “our system of mainly bought elections.”
Clinton narrowly defeated Sanders in the Nevada caucuses on Saturday.
The former secretary of state had lost the New Hampshire primary to Sanders but won the caucuses in Iowa by a razor-thin margin.
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