Fo the past few months, American business mogul and presidential hopeful Donald Trump has been making headlines with his outrageous quotes. Naom Chomsky, the renowned scholar and MIT professor emeritus, analyzed Trump’s controversial personality, saying the social conditions that are driving voters to Donald Trump also explain the rise of fascist leaders such as Adolf Hitler.

“Fear, along with the breakdown of society during the neoliberal period,” Chomsky said in a recent interview. “People feel isolated, helpless, victim of powerful forces they do not understand and cannot influence.”

In his opinion, the economic uncertainty and the loss of social cohesion has also fueled the rise of fascism in the last century, but the current social atmosphere that led to Donald Trump’s rise may actually be worse.

“It’s interesting to compare the situation in the ‘30s, which I’m old enough to remember,” Chomsky said. “Objectively, poverty and suffering were far greater. But even among poor working people and the unemployed, there was a sense of hope that is lacking now, in large part because of the growth of a militant labor movement and also the existence of political organizations outside the mainstream.”

The ‘No war, no catastrophe’ idea has caused the spiking mortality rate for this population, Chomsky added. “Just the impact of policies over a generation that have left them, it seems, angry, without hope, frustrated, causing self-destructive behavior.” That could well explain Trump’s appeal, he speculated.

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