UNITED NATIONS – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez waved a copy of Noam Chomsky's, "Hegemony of Survival," during his speech Wednesday to the United Nations General Assembly, declaring that it is a book every American should read.
Chavez praised the book in an interview last Friday on the public affairs radio program Democracy Now! saying he would like to shake Chomsky’s hand.
Chomsky is a linguistics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an avowed left-wing political activist, who since the late 1960s has written more than 30 books highly critical of American media, politics and foreign policy.
In “Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance,” released in 2003, Chomsky dissects what he calls the government’s plan to “stake out the last unarmed spot in the neighborhood — the heavens — as a militarized sphere of influence,” according to the publisher's note.
In his interview with Democracy Now!, Chavez noted that the book says he was shocked by Chomsky’s idea that there are two superpowers in the world, with the U.S. being one.
“What is the other superpower that could perhaps stop this government,” Chavez told the program. “That could even put an end to imperialism so we can have a true democracy to help the peoples of the world.”
Chomsky, meanwhile, calls himself a libertarian socialist and is a member of the Industrial Workers of the World.
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