In areas like the United States, they were systematically exterminated. While Spanish and Portuguese colonization is hard to be praised, in areas of the world where they ruled the native populations intermarried with settlers.

The tragic irony, as Chomsky points out, is that even while these myths were being formed, a genocide of historical proportions was being carried out against the native populations – first in what was to become the United States, then in Canada, and finally in Australia. John Winthrop originally made the comparison in 1630 and it was a particular favorite of Ronald Reagan. Early on in the European colonization of North America, it was popular to compare the area to Christ’s parable in the Sermon on the Mount in which he speaks of the “shining city upon a hill” that sends out its light for the world to see. The feeling abounds in the United States that it is a special country, even one with divine blessing. Of course, those that Chomsky claims to be victims of their own country are often the first to defend it. Most Americans have suffered, according to Chomsky, right along with other victims of American power. But, a core part of Chomsky’s argument is that the plight of individual people matter more than the artificial state, but matter less to policy planners.

If a typical person in the world were asked the question, “Who rules the world?” they might well answer the United States. The former made the assumption that the world was the United States to control while the latter is responsible for reviving the laissez-faire economics of the 19th century that includes slashing tax rates, eliminating trade barriers and business regulation, and shrinking the role of the government in economic affairs. Chomsky is particularly critical of post-World War II foreign policy planners in the United States and proponents of neoliberal economics. We know that this is the case because Chomsky is not the slightest bit ambivalent that an answer to the book’s title is readily available: a small elite in the United States as well as a handful of other Anglophone countries.

Who rules the world chomsky review