[Intro: Noam Chomsky, Lowkey]
You're listening to Soundtrack to the Struggle 2 by Lowkey
Thank you for joining us, Noam.
In "Optimism Over Despair", you say, "It seems to me unlikely that civilization can survive really existing capitalism".
Would you be able to explain that statement for us?
Really existing capitalism is what we can see described in the press day after day
We read that the major banks like, JPMorgan Chase, are increasing their investment in fossil fuels - including the most dangerous, like Canadian tar sands
And all of this is quite understandable on the assumption that the structure of our institutions is geared to maximising short-term profit and power, without regard to what might happen to the world in another twenty or thirty years
But that’s spoke capitally, well we can't survive that...

[Verse 1: Lowkey]
Is it the economic system v the ecosystem?
How we gonna define deep when the seas have risen?
How can we define 'woke’ when our sleep's commissioned?
Drowned out by Koch brother bots, how can the people listen?
Can't detoxify as we watch the sky fade to grey
The source devoured corporate power killed the nation's state
Sophisticated murder defined as innovation
Corporations wine and dine just to mine the information
Eight men versus humanity, terrorist who
His search engine knows your thought pattern better than you
In an environment resentful uprising is essential
The horizon is torrential, thinking silence will protect you
Subject to propaganda that terrifies the slumbered
We can jeopardise their cover if we energise the numbers
Collectivise or die, protect your mind or suffer
Life is paradise to some and a pair of dice to others
[Verse 2: Lowkey]
I saw horror in the eyes of a tired retired fireman
Knowing he couldn't help a child survive the frying pan
When we riot we disquiet the leviathan
Forget Iron Man I've got an iron lion's diaphragm
My salutations to those with imagination
Doom anticipated and that's no exaggeration
Your flag doesn’t exist, let me back up that statement
What happens to the nation if the Queen has a tax haven?
Pushing these buttons you don’t need a brave heart
Frontex turned the Mediterranean to a graveyard
Paperwall will drive you crazy if you let it
Had a mother burying her newborn baby in the desert
What's commonsensical is sensible to question
What seems to be a lesson is intellectual repression
Rebel against the system that deprived you of a voice
Rebel against this hell while our survival’s still a choice

[Verse 3: Lowkey]
The state committed suicide cannibalised itself
While the banks treatin' fictitious capitol like it's wealth
Your lurid lobby system means corruption is legalised
Privatised healthcare, elsewhere people die
Rebellion lives in all those that dream of a better way
Refused to be brainwashed with false visions of yesterday
Choose to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted
So many choose the opposite, their spirit contradicted
Bring a child to the world where the future seems impossible
Five trillion dollars a year subsidising fossil fuels
The truth was in their eyes but you shrugged and just turned your back
I watched a family beg for help while their flat turned to ash
Apocalypse now, we saw our future in that damn building
CEOs loving profit more than they love their grandchildren
We saw our future in that damn building
CEOs loving profit more than they love their grandchildren
[Outro: Noam Chomsky]
Not to be concerned about the future, preferentially, you have to put yourself in the position of, say, Jamie Dimon - the CEO of the biggest bank, JPMorgan Chase. As CEO he has, essentially, two choices. One choice is to do exactly what he's doing - invest direct investments into the most profitable outcome, which happens to to be the most dangerous fossil fuels. You can do that but the other alternative he has is to resign and be replaced by somebody else who’ll do the same thing. But this is an institutional problem; not an individual one...

[Album version outro: Lowkey]
Frontex turned the Mediterranean to a graveyard (x4)