The person who said this is renowned linguist and political analyst Noam Chomsky. How did Trump beat out the usual favorites for that title such as Hitler and Stalin? Chomsky explains in an interview that while those people targeted specific groups of people for extermination, Trump’s appalling policies that will aggravate global warming risks the extinction of everyone.
Stalin was a monster. Was he trying to destroy organized human life on earth?
Yes, he was trying to destroy lots of lives but not organized human life on earth, nor was Adolf Hitler. He was an utter monster but not dedicating his efforts perfectly consciously to destroying the prospect for human life on earth.
Let’s take some of [the Trump administration’s] publications. A couple of years ago, you may recall the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration published a several-hundred-page analysis. They concluded that, on our present course, we’re likely to reach four degrees Celsius, seven degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels by the end of the century. That’s an utter cataclysm. Any climate scientist will tell you that. And they drew a conclusion from it. We should not put restrictions on automotive and truck emissions. We should limit the restrictions. Can you find a counterpart to that in human history? Please tell me.
…I’m not talking about Trump the human being. I couldn’t care less about him. I’m talking about the policies. The policies are clear; the understanding is clear. There is nobody that’s not living under a rock that can’t comprehend that maximizing the use of fossil fuels and eliminating the restrictions is going to lead to disaster. The document I just mentioned assumes that we’re racing toward total disaster.
And yet, there is a serious chance that the people of the US may actually re-elect this person despite his appalling record while in office.
LMFTFY: … the people of the US may actually re-elect this person
despitebecause of his appalling record while in office...and even if the ‘people’ as they vote wouldn’t re-elect him, the courts and various Republican bureaucrats may engineer his re-election.
I dont think Chomsky’s got that right. The reactionary/anti-science movement was already in full-warble denial of climate change -- they just found a useful idiot who’ll cheerfully promote their agenda while more than half of the US population does nothing. It’s not Trump that is driving us to extinction, it’s US civilization -- a mix of ignorance, religion, toxic individualism, and greed.
If Trump was so much worse than Hitler or Stalin, and was understood to be, someone would have shot him in self-defense before now.
I have been watching humanity’s ineffective response to a little pandemic that requires some social distancing, advanced medical science, and fucking face masks -- and Americans can’t even manage THAT. Climate change requires massive re-tooling and a reversal of important parts of the economy -- and people won’t even be arsed to wear fucking breath masks. Thus far both arms of the duopoly have basically ignored climate change (except for lip-service measures like cap and trade and fudgible targets that exempt the US’ massive all-polluting military)
Like all of us I am betting my life that the global response to climate change will be more politically frought and less effective than the shit-show response to the pandemic. We are currently blowing right past all the waypoints on the route to 6C global temperature rise, which is extinction in 100-300 years. And the fucking shitheads who run the world are not asking “what can we do?” They are preparing to go to war over new arctic drilling sites as they become exploitable. Laissez les bon temperatures roulez!
Marcus Ranum @ # 3: If Trump was so much worse than Hitler or Stalin, and was understood to be, someone would have shot him in self-defense before now.
Nobody did so (or even made a good try that I heard of) for Stalin, and Hitler finally had to do that for himself. Mobutu, Mao, Pol Pot, Bonaparte, Tamerlane, Genghis Khan … the only major mass murderers I can think of who were taken out for their excesses by their own people were Robespierre, Shaka Zulu, and Julius Caesar (Mussolini maybe gets an honorable mention on this list, but the Italian resistance needed a lot of help bringing him down).
As Marcus suggests, and as has been said before, Trump is the symptom, not the disease.
Mano: “… there is a serious chance that the people of the US may actually re-elect this person despite his appalling record …” Yes, my anxiety is likely to continue for several more days.
Missouri, where I vote, is reliably red; so I fully expect to be sad but unsurprised. Two moderately encouraging bits of news: 538 still gives democratic challenger, Jill Schupp, about one chance in three of flipping the Second Congressional District; and there’s a good chance that Amendment 3, which reverses redistricting reform approved by voters in 2018, will go down in flames.
Pierce R. Butler@#4:
Nobody did so (or even made a good try that I heard of) for Stalin, and Hitler finally had to do that for himself. Mobutu, Mao, Pol Pot, Bonaparte, Tamerlane, Genghis Khan … the only major mass murderers I can think of who were taken out for their excesses by their own people were Robespierre, Shaka Zulu, and Julius Caesar (Mussolini maybe gets an honorable mention on this list, but the Italian resistance needed a lot of help bringing him down).
OK, that’s what I get for trying to be an optimist.
Not to quibble but Chomsky did not say that Trump is the worst criminal in modern history, as suggested by the title of this post. He said that Trump is the worst criminal in human history.
joelgrant @#7,
You are quite correct. I have made that important change in the post. Thanks!