Year 501: the Conquest Continues
Noam Chomsky
331 pages
published in 1993

Noam Chomsky has long been a bogeyman not just for the American right, but also the "moderate" left. He has been accused of everything, from being an apologist for Pol Pot and Milosevic, to being reflexively anti-american. If you actually read his work you know here's no ground for those accusations, but who reads someone who everybody in the mainstream media portrays as an anti-american clown? Even when we should know better, we do get influenced by what we read and hear; I know far too many people who would like Chomsky but who are turned off by what they've heard about him.

If you could only get those people to read one of his books, they would, if not agree with him, at least realise that Chomsky has good reasons for condemning America's foreign policies, that it isn't a kneejerk anti-americanism that drives him. That book should not be Year 501: The Conquest Continues however, as this is such an angry, ranting denouncement of everything the US has ever done wit its foreign policy that it would turn off anybody who wasn't already convinced of America's general mendacity. It's hardly a subtle or gentle introduction to the subject.

Published in 1993, the title refers to Columbus' "discovery" of America in 1492 and the ongoing conquest and subjugation of non-western peoples ever since. Year 501 sums up many of the themes Chomsky had been exploring ever since he started writing about politics and foreign policy: the world order the US has imposed on the world since the second World War, the use of high principles like democracy and human rights to justify this and the hypocrisy with which these high principles are betrayed again and again through support of fascist dictators as long as they remain useful while truly democratic governments are undermined when they're not pro-american enough.

Year 501 is divided into four parts. In the first, Chomsky gives a quick overview of America's imperial history, then goes on to describe the "contours of world order", the way in which the world is organised for America's --more specifically, American business' -- benefit as well as the role the Cold War played in tempering this world order for a while. Soviet Russia was a giant "rotten apple", for all its faults a constant reminder that it was possible to live without western domination. Even though it was never in any sense of reality truly socialistic, its existence was an appealing example for peoples in the Third World to follow and remove the yoke of western colonialism. As long as the Soviet Union existed, US hegemony was never complete, could always be challenged, even if the Soviet system itself was as brutal and dictorial as the worst the west had to offer.

In the second part Chomsky looks at how America's most cherished and trumpeted values, democracy, free markets and human rights are used and abused. This is a recurrent theme in Chomsky's analyses of US foreign policy, the central place human rights and democracy have in either justifying an US supported regime or condemning a hostile one. One example being the way in which elections in Nicaragua were dismissed by the US because they took place outside their control and kept confirming the popularity of the Sandinistas, while elections held in El Salvador at roughly the same time against a backdrop of civil war and murder squads were seen as legitimising the US sponsored regime there. At the same time, if democracy or human rights interfere with what's called "the free market". Chomsky shows that the latter always triumphs. A free market without democracy is preferred above a democracy without a free market.

In part three Chomsky delves deeper into the history of US foreign policy, giving some case studies as it were. This goes from the US dominance of Latin and South America in general, to the treatment of Cuba and Haiti, as dangerous precedents, in particular. Again, he shows how capitalist interests have always driven US policies, rather than more lofty principles and what this did to the countries being meddled with.

Finally, in the last part of the book, Chomsky looks inward, into America itself and attempts to show what the country's policies have done to itself: the creation of the third world inside what's supposed to be the richest country on Earth. He also shows how history itself is propagandised within the US, not just in te classrooms, but in all mainstream discourse. The faults of countries like Japan to own up to their imperialistic past are widely covered, yet America itself rarely examines its own sordid past, let alone what's it's doing at present.

If you're a regular reader of Chomsky there's little here that will be new to you, but it's good to see it all laid out in one place. However, I find it doubtful that anybody hostile to Chomsky will be convinced by this, as it may just be too relentless a summing up of America's flaws. Ironically, this makes it easier for critics to dismiss everything Chomsky says, as he's so "obviously" anti-American.

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