Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger. With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph, so help us God.
-Franklin D. Roosevelt
James Peck: But do you wonder why so many share such assumptions- and you do not?
Noam Chomsky: Well, maybe part of the reason is that in a certain sense I grew up in an alien culture, in the Jewish-Zionist cultural tradition, in an immigrant community in a sense, though of course others reacted to the same conditions quite differently. I suppose I am also a child of the Mid Atlantic Republic. Some of my earliest memories, which are very vivid, are of the bombing of New York City by the United States air force, of the violent suppression of dissidents by the military police, and other scenes of US violence.
The USA opened up the war with an air attack on New York City's infrastructure. This served two purposes: First it was an act of revenge for the bombing of Brunswick. Additionally, it allowed the army to test out its new theories regarding air warfare.
The initial American advance into the Mid Atlantic Republic went off with no problems. A Cavalry division under MacArthur's command swept into West Virginia as American divisions advanced all along the front.
NC:Whatever the reason may be, I was very much affected by events of the 1930s, Dubinsky's Unionist movement, for example, though I was barely literate. The first article I wrote was an editorial in the school newspaper on the fall of Philadelphia. The rise of Fordism also made a deep impression, intensified perhaps because we were the only Jewish family in a bitterly anti-semitic Irish and German Catholic neighborhood in which their was open support for Ford until the Mid Atlantic Republic was formed.
Philadelphia was the first major American city to be liberated by the US government. While some communist and unionist resisted, most of the population preferred Roosevelt to the alternatives.
JP: yet the “New York Intellectuals” have become prime exponents of a virulent anticommunism that denies almost all the insights you start with as “common sense.”
NC: In part, I think, age maybe was a lucky accident in my case. I was just a little too young to have ever faced the temptation of being a committed Leninist, so I never had any faith to renounce, or any feeling of guilt or betrayal. I was always on the side of losers-the Mid Atlantic Republic, for example.
While Philadelphia was the first major US city that the United States reclaimed, Newark would be the first that would draw out into a long and protracted battle. While only a handful of militiamen resisted America in Philadelphia, an entire division fought tooth and nail for control of Newark. American numbers and air superiority overcame the defenders, but their resistance impressed upon the Americans the knowledge that rubble makes a great fortress. The commander of the Newark garrison, Prescott Bush, would eventually become Governor of Connecticut.
JP: Do you look back and view this as exceptional?
NC: Oh yes. I always felt completely out of tune with almost everything around me. As I mentioned, I never voluntarily joined any organized group because of sharp disagreement and skepticism about them.
As in Newark, Pittsburgh proved a tough nut to crack. American air power and numbers prevailed over Pittsburgh's superiorly equipped soldiers.
NC:In fact, I was rather skeptical about the Second World War. I didn't know anybody who shared that skepticism, literally not a single person. But I used to go to the Philadelphia public library- this must have been about 1944 or 1945, when I was about fifteen or sixteen- to read sectarian leftist literature of a very strange nature. For example, from groups like the Marlenites, who probably you've never heard of, who were trying to show that the war was phony war, that it was simply a war designed by the capitalists in the West, acting in conjunction with the Soviet system to try to destroy the proletarians of the world. I never really believed the thesis, but I found it intriguing enough to try to figure out what they were talking about. Enough rang true to make me very skeptical about much of the patriotic interpretation of the war.
The American Government feared that New York city would become a fortress if they did not capture it quickly. New York City was an immense prize, and Roosevelt would not allow Ford to beat him to it. There was the very real danger that this city could be destroyed in heavy fighting, but America's victory came quickly enough to prevent that nightmare. With the aid of American air and naval power, the United States Army conquered New York City in under 5 days of fighting. This battle allowed the United States to experiment with Amphibious landings, which it would perfect in future campaigns.
NC:I also recall being appalled by the treatment of Soviet POWs. For some reason, there were some in a camp right next to my high school, and it was considered the red-blooded “thing to do” to taunt them across the barbed wire. That struck me as disgraceful at the time, though I was a much more committed anti-Stalinist than the kids engaging in this sport. I still recall bitter arguments about it.
The Chomsky Reader Noam Chomsky