Noam Chomsky BBC Interview - The State-Corporate Complex: A Threat to Freedom and Survival
This interview dropped on April 13, 2013, with over 1.2 million views by now, peels back the layers on how the state-corporate complex screws us over, talking about where Trump and the GOP were heading. Let’s bring Chomsky’s vision up to date.
Invalid Assumption: Humans Can’t Own or Control Nature
Throughout recorded history, a tiny percentage of people claimed ownership of land containing critical resources and with less than 5% of the total population, they have convinced the general population to fight wars to seize more resource-bearing land. In recent history, deeds signed by popes, kings and natives who didn't know better signing treaties later broken, letting Europeans snatch vast territories.
Chomsky calls this out as the flawed belief that humans can own and control nature, a mindset that’s been wrecking us. Einstein’s relativity (E=mc²) shows nature’s mass, gravity, and motion run the show, not us. We’re busting past the planet’s limits—sucking down 1.7 Earths’ worth of resources (Global Footprint Network, 2023)—and our human-made junk now outweighs living biomass (Nature, 2020). The deck is seriously stacked against humans in mass, gravity and motion, and with climate tipping points hitting 1.7°C warming per century (The Guardian, 2017), nature’s telling us to back off. Western civilization is not sustainable, and the planet's immune responses are kicking in hard.
War Racketeering Through the Ages
Chomsky lays out how war racketeering has placed the planet on the brink of climate collapse, and I see it clear as day. This perpetual war machine started with a tiny elite pushing wars for resources, from the East India Company’s 17th-century land grabs to the U.S.’s $816 billion 2024 defense budget. Back then, you had Cecil Rhodes and John D. Rockefeller turning oil into war fuel, and now it’s Halliburton pocketing $39.5 billion from the Iraq War (2003–2011). War Is a Racket (Smedley Butler, 1935) nails it—95% of war profits line the pockets of these industrialists. The so-called Rothschild-Rockefeller New World Order cartel are war racketeers running a petroleum powered perpetual war machine, from Columbus’s 1492 theft to Netanyahu’s 2025 West Bank mess. They’ve trashed 75% of habitable land (Nature Communications, 2020) and wiped out 69% of wildlife since 1970 (WWF, 2022), with military emissions matching small nations (IEA, 2024). Einstein’s 1955 Russell-Einstein Manifesto saw this coming, and with climate catastrophes ramping up (IPCC, 2022), we’re on the edge.
Republican Strategic Plans and Neoliberal Economy
Chomsky says, “the entire Republican party's strategic plans are aimed at pushing the envelope harder,” and I agree—they’re cranking up that neoliberal economy to break us. This is all about corporate profit over people, with Reagan’s 1980s deregulation and the World Bank’s 1990s African land grabs leaving 26 billionaires with wealth equal to 3.8 billion of us (Oxfam, 2023). The neoliberal economy keeps us chained to 80% petroleum energy (IEA, 2024), wrecking the planet. Western civilization is not sustainable, and the planet's immune responses—wildfires torching 2 million acres in California (2024) and floods hitting 10 million in Bangladesh (2025, UN)—are proof.
Religious Nationalism’s Rise
Chomsky highlights religious nationalism’s rise, and here’s where I take the wheel. This mess is aiming for a Christian North America from Panama to Greenland and a Jewish Middle East, a mass psychosis gripping the planet. I see the U.S. Christian Right pushing prayers in the Pentagon (Mike Johnson, 2025) and Israel’s settlers, fat on $3.8 billion U.S. aid (2023), stirring chaos. If real Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists governed the planet's resources, none of this would be happening, but instead, we’ve got a holy war brewing that’s screwing us all.
Planetary Immune Responses and Overpopulation
The planet's immune responses are kicking in, and I’m calling it like I see it—wildfires, floods, and pandemics tied to biodiversity loss (Ecological restoration - Wikipedia) are nature’s way of fighting back. Chomsky ties this to climate change feedback, and the Limits to Growth (2021) backs me up with a 40–70% population drop by 2100 if we don’t stop. There are too many people and they have made too big a mess, with our U.S. footprint at 8 hectares per person against a sustainable 1.7 (Global Footprint Network). The planet is going to kill most of humanity off by the end of the century if we don’t wake up.
Indigenous Management as Salvation
Management of the land and water must be returned to the indigenous people and honest life scientists, or we’re done. Indigenous stewardship, like the Amazon’s 11,000-year terra preta (Nature, 2021), keeps life thriving, and Standing Rock’s 2016 stand proves it works. Life scientists’ rewilding, like Scotland’s peatlands, can pull us back from the brink. Chomsky’s all about decentralized control over corporate greed, and I’m with him—this is our last shot.
Critique of External Narratives
Elon Musk’s population theories, pushing for three kids per family (X post 1938254253027717270), are a joke. With fertility at 1.66 (CDC 2024) and 39% can’t afford kids (
@unusual_whales
), his Rome analogy (X post 1938243688578355314) doesn’t hold for a world of 8 billion with too big a mess. Einstein’s 1949 Why Socialism? warned growth can’t outpace resources, and Musk’s missing that boat.
Conclusion
Chomsky’s video shows a planet on the brink due to the invalid assumption of owning nature and centuries of war racketeering. The Republican neoliberal push and religious nationalism are making it worse, but indigenous and scientific stewardship can save us. We’ve got until 2028 (BBC, 2025) to act, and the spotlight fight is in the Everglades right now—everywhere else is just simmering compared to the uproar over Alligator Alcatraz. Get in the game, or nature’s taking us down.