Don’t Put ‘Aside the Possibility’ of a ‘Staged or Alleged Terrorist Attack’

"In order to maintain his popularity, the Trump administration will have to try to find some means of rallying the support and changing the discourse from the policies that they are carrying out, which are basically a wrecking ball, to something else. Maybe scapegoating, saying, “Well, I’m sorry, I can’t bring your jobs back because these bad people are preventing it.” And the typical scapegoating goes to vulnerable people: immigrants, terrorists, Muslims and elitists, whoever it may be. And that can turn out to be very ugly.

I think that we shouldn’t put aside the possibility that there would be some kind of staged or alleged terrorist act, which can change the country instantly."

The title and the way it's portrayed in certain news outlets makes it seem like some kind of conspiracy theory, but what he's really saying is that Trump will seize on any small event(or non-event) to try and rally people through fear. It's not out of the realm of possibility that Trump will tweet "Just learnt that ISIS has infiltrated America" and then proceed(or attempt) to clamp down further on civil liberties in the name of safety and peace.

Or if some terrorist attack does happen- even if it's relatively minor, he will certainly use that to further increase surveillance powers, remove encryption right and attack those who criticise him. I mean only a couple of days ago he casually threatened to change libel laws to prevent news outlets from attacking him. These are dangerous times.

Chomsky is peddling what amounts to a future-conspiracy-theory. All it achieves is even more confusion that allows actual scandals to be disappear in the dense fog of lies, conspiracies, and bad faith.

Example: the probably accurate theory that the Russians got directly involved in the elections is buried under (a) the so-far unlikely possibility that Trump was a direct part to it, (b) Trump's smoke grenade of "they tapped my phones", and now (c) this congressman's bizarre incompetence at both conducting an investigation and subverting it.

Meanwhile, there's two or three elections in Europe coming up, and a forceful response could have been helpful in, say, averting WW3. It's still unlikely that France and Germany, will follow the US example – especially now that they get to watch this shit show – but it's the kind of risk you'd try to avoid if possible.

So, anyway: Chomsky has done a lot of great stuff, but tolerating stuff like this risks turning the left into the same sort of rabid mob the right has been for the last 8 years or so.

(Also: Trump doesn't have the support of the security apparatus to pull off anything like a false flag terrorist attack, nor is anybody in that administration capable of organising a birthday card without leaking it to the press, accidentally buying a condolence card, and sending it to the PM of Nicaragua instead of Trump's cousin)

People can not see that around Power there are lots of interests, companies and people that fight for their own benefits no matter who is the president.

They defeated Obama making him do bailouts to too big to fail companies from the first day of his presidency, they made it clear that closing Guantanamo was something that was not going to happen or else , the Nobel Price of peace bombed to dust and created more failed countries that any other president... and life goes on.

The same happens to Trump, the man that did not want to make nuclear war with Russia was pulled apart as soon as he got into power and replaced with a pro war guy, because he was spied and he "could or could not" be a Russian agent.

Stages or terrorist attacks are called "false flag attacks" and there was people in secret services that could do under Obama and the same people is there under Trump. The interest are the same, the structures of power are the same.

In fact, under Obama some videos of ISIS appeared in which kidnapped western people appeared with absolutely no facial expressions, something that even myself could stage better with a computer and a 3d program. Those videos changed Europe's public opinion in support for the US against ISIS.

Western freedoms have gone by the drain since 9 eleven. People should start demanding freedom, privacy and truth no matter who is in power.

Democrats are only starting to value those things when they feel they are loosing it. When they benefited from freedom erosions they were silent.

This about sums up our current affairs for me quite nicely. Chomsky later indicates that the working class will eventually figure this out (just in time for Trump to react in that way that he does), however, damaging policies will already be put into place and will be really difficult to roll back. Climate change should be the number one top priority.

Terrorists are vulnerable people? I guess I'm not surprised that's coming from Chomsky.

It's disappointing that he used the word "staged". This just feeds the idiots who think everything is staged.