Noam Chomsky on How To Prevent World War III
CHOMSKY
Well, let me recount one of the most horrible experiences of my life, in the early ‘50s, maybe around 1951-52, with my first wife who died years ago. My wife and I were graduate students. One evening, we decided to go to a film. So we looked through the movie ads, and surprisingly, we saw a film called Hiroshima. That was surprising. We lived in Boston, and the film was in an area called Scollay Square. It was the porn district. We never went there. But we figured we’d go see this film. It was being shown as a pornographic film. The audience was laughing hysterically. It was a graphic film. I don’t know where they got the live film. But it was a live film from Hiroshima: people running around with their skin peeling off—hideous scenes—and it was being shown as a pornographic film, while people were laughing. Can you even imagine that?
I mean, I can tell you from my own experience. When I was a kid, in the 1930s, my friends and I were running around in the woods, playing cowboys and Indians. We were the Cowboys, killing the Indians. Okay. I don’t know if that was still true when you were my age. That’s the history of the United States. The United States never gets attacked, not until 9/11. The last attack on American soil was the War of 1812. What we do is attack others.
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