As protests continue in Brazil over the Legislature's vote to suspend President Dilma Rousseff and put her on trial, Noam Chomsky told : "We have the one leading politician who hasn't stolen to enrich herself, who's being impeached by a gang of thieves, who have done so. That does count as a kind of soft coup."
Rousseff's replacement, Brazil's former vice president, Michel Temer, is a member of the opposition PMDB party who is implicated in Brazil's massive corruption scandal involving state-owned oil company Petrobras, and has now appointed an all-white male Cabinet charged with implementing corporate-friendly policies.
Video:Â Noam Chomsky: Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff "Impeached by a Gang of Thieves".Â
Amy Goodman: What about what's happening right now in Brazil, where protests are continuing over the Legislature's vote to suspend President Dilma Rousseff and put her on trial? Now El Salvador has refused to recognize the new Brazilian government. The Brazilian—the Salvadoran president, Cerén, said Rousseff's ouster had, quote, "the appearance of a coup d'état." What's happening there? And what about the difference between—it looked like perhaps Bush saved Latin America simply by not focusing on it, totally wrapped up in Iraq and Afghanistan. It looks like the Obama administration is paying a bit more attention.
Noam Chomsky: Well, I don't think it's just a matter of not paying attention. Latin America has, to a significant extent, liberated itself from foreign—meaning mostly U.S.—domination in the past 10 or 15 years. That's a dramatic development in world affairs. It's the first time in 500 years. It's a big change. So the so-called lack of attention is partly the fact that the U.S. is kind of being driven out of the hemisphere, less that it can do. It used to be able to overthrow governments, carry out coups at will and so on.
It tries. There have been three—maybe it depends how you count them—coups, coup attempts this century. One in Venezuela in 2002 succeeded for a couple of days, backed by the U.S., overthrown by popular reaction. A second in Haiti, 2004, succeeded. The U.S. and France—Canada helped—kidnapped the president, sent him off to Central Africa, won't permit his party to run in elections. That was a successful coup.
Honduras, under Obama, there was a military coup, overthrew a reformist president. The United States was almost alone in pretty much legitimizing the coup, you know, claiming that the elections under the coup regime were legitimate. Honduras, always a very poor, repressed society, became a total horror chamber. Huge flow of refugees, we throw them back in the border, back to the violence, which we helped create. Paraguay, there was a kind of a semi-coup. What's happening—also to get rid of a progressive priest who was running the country briefly.
What's happening in Brazil now is extremely unfortunate in many ways. First of all, there has been a massive level of corruption. Regrettably, the Workers' Party, Lula's party, which had a real opportunity to achieve something extremely significant, and did make some considerable positive changes, nevertheless joined the rest—the traditional elite in just wholesale robbery. And that should—that should be punished.
On the other hand, what's happening now, what you quoted from El Salvador, I think, is pretty accurate. It's a kind of a soft coup. The elite detested the Workers' Party and is using this opportunity to get rid of the party that won the elections. They're not waiting for the elections, which they'd probably lose, but they want to get rid of it, exploiting an economic recession, which is serious, and the massive corruption that's been exposed.
But as even The New York Times pointed out, Dilma Rousseff is maybe the one politician who hasn't—leading politician who hasn't stolen in order to benefit herself. She's being charged with manipulations in the budget, which are pretty standard in many countries, taking from one pocket and putting it into another. Maybe it's a misdeed of some kind, but certainly doesn't justify impeachment. In fact, she's—we have the one leading politician who hasn't stolen to enrich herself, who's being impeached by a gang of thieves, who have done so. That does count as a kind of soft coup. I think that's correct.