Renowned intellectual and political activist Noam Chomsky said the United States was responsible for the conditions that have led to the mass exodus from Central American countries.
“People are fleeing from the misery and horrors for which we are responsible ... people fleeing from severe oppression, violence, terror, extreme poverty from three countries: Honduras — mainly Honduras, secondarily Guatemala, thirdly El Salvador — not Nicaragua, incidentally — three countries that have been under harsh U.S. domination,” the US writer said on November 2 in an interview with Democracy Now.
US President Donald Trump warned the day before that the troops deployed to the border to stop the Central American exodus, which he calls an “invasion”, will regard stones possibly thrown by migrants as firearms, paving the way for the use of lethal force by US soldiers.
“All of this rings very familiar bells,” said Chomsky of Trump’s rhetoric which has dehumanised the men, women, and children walking to the US southern border. “It’s been a long-standing element of the US propaganda system, mostly on the far right but not only, which goes way back and is a kind of pathological feature of the dominant political culture that should be understood, analysed, and dismantled.”
Chomsky also referred to the deployment of troops as a charade. “Poor, miserable people, families, mothers, children, fleeing from terror and repression, for which we are responsible, and in reaction, they’re sending thousands of troops to the border...
“They’re frightening much of the country into believing that we’re just on the verge of an invasion by, you know, Middle Eastern terrorists funded by George Soros, so on and so forth.”
[Abridged from TeleSUR English.]