Politics & Power Quote by Noam Chomsky

Chomsky is doing something deceptively simple here: lowering the bar for dissent while raising the moral cost of staying quiet. “Resistance is feasible” is a strategic phrase, not a romantic one. He’s arguing against the comforting alibi that only saints, martyrs, or charismatic leaders can push back. By insisting resistance is possible for people “who are not heroes by nature,” he frames political action as ordinary behavior, closer to civic hygiene than epic struggle.

Then comes the turn: feasibility becomes obligation. Chomsky targets a specific demographic - the anxious, informed bystander who “fears the consequences” yet “detests the reality” of American hegemony. That’s the subtextual villain of the sentence: not the zealot, but the reluctant spectator who privately disagrees and publicly complies. He’s tightening the vice on liberal discomfort, suggesting that fear doesn’t excuse passivity; it makes duty sharper.

The phrase “attempt to impose American hegemony” carries the signature Chomskyan move: stripping benevolent rhetoric from U.S. power and naming it as domination. In the post-Vietnam, Cold War-to-unipolar-era context that shaped his activism, he’s speaking to audiences surrounded by narratives of “security,” “stability,” and “spreading democracy.” He replaces those euphemisms with a blunt diagnosis, then asks: if you can see it and hate it, what exactly are you waiting for?

It’s less a call to heroism than an indictment of moral outsourcing. The point is not to feel brave, but to stop renting out your conscience to the powerful.