25 ms·

Still Manufacturing Consent: An Interview with Noam Chomsky

559 points by zachguo 7y ago

tsimionescu 7y ago
Of all of Chomsky's positions that I have read, the propaganda model is the hardest to doubt - it seems almost unassailable. Are there any convincing criticisms of it?
- hash872 7y ago
  It's been about 15 years since I read Manufacturing Consent, but- the weak version of his thesis is fine, sure. An NBCUniversal media property, say, is probably not going to report critically on something that NBCUniversal has a financial stake in. The actual hypothesis Chomsky puts forward in the book is childishly simple, though. He imagines literally every for-profit corporation, the military, and the entire federal government as being one fused united party with identical interests, and so NBCUniversal would never report anything critical of the military or the US government. This, um, doesn't track reality. While it's easy for me to just dismiss this obviously incorrect hypothesis as 'dumb' (which it is), I think on a deeper level Chomsky is influenced by Marx who was influenced by other 18-19th century philosophers like Hegel. Who used extremely, overly broad handwavey concepts like Elites or The Powerful as part of their totally academic, abstract, philosophical explanation for How Society Works. As someone who read a bunch of Chomsky books when I was 20 years old- part of his worldview is that nothing happens by accident, but every major moment in history is part of a Hegelian Battle Between Forces (like elites vs. the working class or something). It's still a childishly unrealistic way of looking at how society actually functions, but it comes from a super super abstract philosopher's worldview where he can handwave Big Business/the Military/the Government as one unit with identical interests. If that makes sense at all. Sort of reminds me of ancient philosophers theorizing about how physics or medicine works without conducting any empirical tests whatsoever
  - nerdponx 7y ago
    The actual hypothesis Chomsky puts forward in the book is childishly simple, though. He imagines literally every for-profit corporation, the military, and the entire federal government as being one fused united party with identical interests, and so NBCUniversal would never report anything critical of the military or the US government. This, um, doesn't track reality. Is that really his thesis? It seems to me that it's more about how incentives for all these organizations are aligned towards those same interests. Only the very "top" of the power pyramid needs to be deliberately trying to manufacture consent; everyone else falls into line because of the incentives set up by those one level of power above.
    - hash872 7y ago
      But in practice, we don't observe that these organizations blindly support 'those at the top'. Empirical observation over abstract philosophizing, please. Society is much more complex & interesting than Chomsky imagines, with many more nuances. Even the actual federal government and military have many competing factions with different interests, different goals, etc. It's a philosopher's 'let's model civilization as a one-page flowchart' level of analysis. I don't think it's particularly deep or interesting, and I read a great deal of Chomsky back in the day
      - streb-lo 7y ago
        This reads like an undergrad's hot take. No offense, and there are plenty of valid criticisms of Chomsky, but this is the laziest reading and interpretation of Chomsky that you are arguing with. >t's a philosopher's 'let's model civilization as a one-page flowchart' level of analysis. Irony.
      - Supermancho 7y ago
        > (there are) incentives for all these organizations are aligned towards those same interests. > But in practice, we don't observe that these organizations blindly support 'those at the top'. That isn't the same thing. I'm not sure how you connect these. This is better illustrated in specific countries, where the incentives are fierce and immediate. You still see dissent there too, but that's not relevant to the point ("I don't see it all the time so it's not true", missing the point).
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - fit2rule 7y ago
    >how society actually functions You know a better answer to this question than a 91 year old philosopher, so .. lets hear it.
  - ska 7y ago
    That's not a fair reading of the central thesis to my memory (which is going back more than 15 years, to be fair). This is meant constructively: Some of the rhetorical devices you've chosen ("childish", "dumb", etc.) nearly always read to me as coming from someone who hasn't understood the work they are commenting on, so I suspect you might communicate more effectively with different choices.
  - pizza 7y ago
    Judging from Chomsky’s critique of Žižek I really doubt you can call his position Hegelian
  - thundergolfer 7y ago
    > The actual hypothesis Chomsky puts forward in the book is childishly simple, though. He imagines literally every for-profit corporation, the military, and the entire federal government as being one fused united party with identical interests, and so NBCUniversal would never report anything critical of the military or the US government. This, um, doesn't track reality. That's, a bad misreading. Can you quote relevant sections that support this statement? The laying out of the propaganda model is only about 50 pages in entirely so you shouldn't need walls of text to show some evidence.
  - tsimionescu 7y ago
    That is not his thesis at all. He is claiming that in most cases mainstream media will be supportive of American imperialism (it applies more broadly than the US, but let's limit it for now). Of course there are factions within the most powerful, but there are also universal interests. For example, there are no rich or powerful groups in the US who are pro unionization in tech or pro worker's co-ops (there may be individuals, sure, but you won't find a PAC or lobby group). There are no rich or powerful groups in the US who would accept unilateral nuclear disarmament. There are no rich or powerful groups in the US which consider the US has no legal or moral rights to intervene militarily unilaterally anywhere in the world. Of course, there are sometimes 'dissident' groups, like the currently surprisingly popular Bernie Sanders movement. If they do get a foothold, some popular opinions may also change. But such moments are a good time to test the hypothesis, and you can easily see how much the media, 'left' or right, is against the Bernie campaign, and considers it naive or pie-in-the-sky. Overall, going on the empirical path, you'll be really hard-pressed to find any US mainstream media critical of US actions, or often even reporting on relevant events, if they put the US in a bad light.
TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
Would be great if the video was available.
thundergolfer 7y ago
Among people familiar with the book, "Has the propaganda model been invalidated by the social media media giants?" is a regular question. Chomsky's initial reply is most of what needs to be said. Information production is a vital part of the media industry and the landscape of information producers by volume is more or less the same as it was back then — dominated by state institutions and corporations. It was so interesting to read that section in Manufacturing Consent; the hard numbers really helped get a proper sense of the scale imbalances in information production. The marking out of the symbiotic relationship between reliable information producers and journalists is also vital to understanding the media system. A reliable, centralised stream of new information content is the life blood of journalism organisations, with a strong emphasis on _reliable_ and _centralised_. This particular need that journalists have sees them often becoming dependent on state institutions and corporations at the expense of minority groups and labor. An example being the journalists 'on the beat' that used to hang out around the local courthouse because that's where the 'feeding trough' is. Or the reports so nicely formatted and condensed produced by the state departments such that journos merely have to copy-paste the information straight into their papers. Easy-peasy. Fascinating book.
- rstuart4133 7y ago
  > the landscape of information producers by volume is more or less the same as it was back then It's not quite the same. Before fact checking anything took an impossible amount of time and not a few resources - a very good library for a start. Now, or even a decade ago it suddenly became possible for everyone. I vividly remember when the Iraq was announced, and you could see the "information producers" in full swing. I was amazed when my local radio station announcer, well known for his resistance for being bullshitted asked someone he was interviewing in a disbelieving voice if they didn't agree Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The point being that by then I had already done my own homework (we were going to war, my fellow citizens were going to be killed and I wanted to know why), and knew full well Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. The reports and opinions of the UN weapons inspectors was easily available on the internet, along with numerous dumbed down pieces from the mass media. Anyone willing to waste a few hours could easily get past the propaganda smokescreen. Yet this news interviewer who up until then I assumed to be a master of his craft had been pulled in hook, line and sinker. It changed the message in Chomsky's books from an interesting theoretical discussion to distressingly real. But it also created another puzzle: why didn't the Internet fix it? Why didn't people immediately put this bullshit filter to good use? I still don't know the answer. There have now been numerous studies into the phenomenon of people continuing to loudly defend bullshit despite the facts being easily available in just about anywhere you look (cue: climate change). Apparently it has to do with people preferring to signal they are part of a particular tribe over acting in their best interest. Or something. I guess I'll never understand, as they aren't people like me.
sudoaza 7y ago
How is it that this guy still has no Nobel Prize?
- thundergolfer 7y ago
  He’d be deserving of a Turing Award too for his “Hierarchy of the Grammars”. Maybe would have been more likely to win it if he hadn’t discovered it 10 years before the award existed.
  - bcaa7f3a8bbc 7y ago
    How does Noam Chomsky's work on linguistic contribute to computer science? And are there applications? He is always described in the popular media as a "linguist", although many works seem to be directly related to formal language in computer science to me, but I'm not sure.
    - incompatible 7y ago
      The Chomsky hierarchy of grammars, Context-free, Context-sensitive etc., thus to regular expressions: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomsky_hierarchy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomsky_hierarchy
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - me_me_me 7y ago
      Ever heard of compiler? Or computer language(s)? I first heard about Chompsky at the Uni when doing semester on compilers.
    - justin66 7y ago
      > How does Noam Chomsky's work on linguistic contribute to computer science? And are there applications? This stuff is referenced in textbooks on compilers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomsky_hierarchy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomsky_hierarchy
- 7y ago
freeflight 7y ago
I consider myself a rather well-informed person, but this is the first time I've read about Harris Media involvement in the last German election and I'm German. All I can remember is indeed the "Russian interference" and how the AfD is supposedly financed out of Russia. But that Bloomberg Businessweek article [0] unearths some scary details: “We took that 300,000 (AfD likes), and Facebook created a model of them and used their lookalike audiences to find the closest 1 percent of German people to match that audience,” That "1 percent" sounds extremely familiar, particularly in a far-right context [1] It makes me wonder who originally came up with that concept, was it Harris Media or was it the idea of their client, the AfD? [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-29/the-german-far-right-finds-friends-through-facebook https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-29/the-germa... [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ein_Prozent_f%C3%BCr_unser_Land https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ein_Prozent_f%C3%BCr_unser_Lan...
- oh_sigh 7y ago
  One percent is just a small, round, common number that crops up in human thought frequently. What's the point of targeting 5% of the closest users if you might not even have luck converting the 1% closest users? Would you see this connection if it turns out they actually targeted the closest .96% of users? Do you think the one percenters that Bernie Sanders rallies against have anything in common with your [1]?
  - freeflight 7y ago
    > Do you think the one percenters that Bernie Sanders rallies against have anything in common with your [1]? I don't know and I seriously doubt it. I didn't see Bernie Sanders stickers in the middle of Germany advertising for "We only need 1% to change the country", as the German identitarians do. But as you say: It's very likely just a coincidence.
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
  The next paragraph goes on to state they targeted 10.1 million people: In all, Harris Media created seven target groups, according to Canter, including mothers (2.6 million targets), business owners (1.1 million), and working-class people such as union members (6.4 million). The detail about the 1% is pretty much a non-sequitur; I don’t really follow why that is even mentioned.
denzil_correa 7y ago
Here's a nice 1h documentary on "Engineering Consent" focusing on Edward Bernays (pioneer of PR and propaganda). https://www.arte.tv/en/videos/071470-000-A/propaganda-engineering-consent/ https://www.arte.tv/en/videos/071470-000-A/propaganda-engine...
- whatamidoingyo 7y ago
  Here's another (37 minute) documentary on Edward Bernays, Gustave Le Bon, etc. Mind-boggling stuff. https://youtube.com/watch?v=p8ERfxWouXs&t=85s https://youtube.com/watch?v=p8ERfxWouXs&t=85s
  - stephenSinniah 7y ago
    Adam Curtis has a good documentary about Bernays influence in the PR industry.It's a really good watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04
    - jamesblonde 7y ago
      This is really 'blue pill' stuff. It's like discovering product placement in movies. Once you see it, you can't unsee it again.
- seagullz 7y ago
  John Pilger's 2010 Documentary The War You Don't See (https://vimeo.com/67739294 https://vimeo.com/67739294) is also great; it references Bernays too. Would check this one.
- mistrial9 7y ago
  "cannot be viewed from your current location" (California?) A (related?) four-part video series on this topic is called 'Century of the Self' and might be found out there somewhere
  - vageli 7y ago
edoo 7y ago
The latest CNN veritas videos are eye opening. Chomsky is still dead on as far as I can tell.
- cbnotfromthere 7y ago
  Using CNN to confirm Chomsky is like using RT to confirm Putin.
  - leto_ii 7y ago
    I had to make an account just to point out that your analogy doesn't make any sense :D RT (like CNN) is a network (mostly) aligned with the interests of the power structure of its respective country. Chomsky is a dissident and critic of the power structure of his country, therefore broadly in disagreement with the CNN world view.
  - 300bps 7y ago
    CNN Veritas videos aren’t from CNN. They are undercover videos that purport to show CNN’s biases. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/10/15/project_veritas_hidden_camera_footage_from_inside_cnn.html https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/10/15/project_v...
    - DiabloD3 7y ago
      What I don't understand is why people are claiming CNN doesn't have a bias: if a news media outlet exists, it is biased, and that is an immutable rule.
      - Paradigma11 7y ago
        Which makes the use of the term "bias" worthless. I do see quite obvious differences in the bias of say fox (not the news section) vs cnn. Fox just lazily omits facts and arguments that don't fit while cnn presents both sides most of the time. I do not care if the information is framed in a specific way since i have to make up my mind anyway. Then there are real propaganda outlets like the state owned RT or http://www.globaltimes.cn/opinion/ http://www.globaltimes.cn/opinion/ . I do think that making these distinctions is useful.
CommieDetector 7y ago
COMMUNIST ALERT!!!
codeulike 7y ago
Noam Chomsky is 91. Holy crap. My favourite Chomsky thing is the very short shrift he gives to conspiracy theorists. e.g. Rethinking Camelot, his book about JFK - https://zcomm.org/wp-content/uploads/zbooks/htdocs/chomsky/rc/rc-contents.html https://zcomm.org/wp-content/uploads/zbooks/htdocs/chomsky/r... - the thesis being that JFK was really no different to any other president at that time - the idea he was radical being a kindof post-hoc reconstruction - and hence there was absolutely no reason for anyone to want to bump him off. A methodological point is perhaps worth mention. Suppose that we were to concoct a theory about historical events at random, while permitting ourselves to assume arbitrary forms of deceit and falsification. Then in the vast documentary record, we are sure to find scattered hints and other debris that could be made to conform to the theory, while counter-evidence is nullified. By that method, one can "prove" virtually anything. For example, we can prove that JFK never intended to withdraw any troops, citing the elusiveness of NSAM 263 and his unwillingness to commit himself to the withdrawal recommended by his war managers. Or we can prove that the attempt to assassinate Reagan was carried out by dark forces (Alexander Haig, the CIA, etc.). After all, Reagan had backed away from using US forces directly in Central America (unlike JFK in Vietnam); he was cozying up to the Chicoms; he had already given intimations of the anti-nuclear passion that led him to offer to give away the store at Rejkjavik and to join forces with the arch-fiend Gorbachev, whose perestroika was a transparent plot to entrap us; his associates were planning off-the-shelf international operations, bypassing intelligence and the Pentagon. Obviously, he has to go. Or suppose there had been an attempt to assassinate LBJ in late 1964, when he was refusing the call of the military to stand up to the Commies in Vietnam, pursuing Great Society and civil rights programs with a zeal well beyond Kennedy, and about to defeat a real alternative, Barry Goldwater. Nothing is easier than to construct a high-level conspiracy to get rid of this "radical reformer." The task is only facilitated by a search for nuances and variations of phrasing in the mountains of documents, usually committee jobs put together hastily with many compromises. This is not the way to learn about the world.
- zzzcpan 7y ago
  These days people can call you a conspiracy theorist for the very things Chomsky stands behind.
pixpine 7y ago
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tony12356 7y ago
哈哈233333
throw_xyzyz 7y ago
>The first book that Ed and I wrote together, Counterrevolutionary Violence, was published by a small publisher that was doing quite well. They published 20,000 copies of it, and were ready to distribute it. The publisher was owned by a big conglomerate, Warner Brothers, now part of Time Warner. One of the Warner executives saw the advertising for the book, and did not like it. He asked to see the book, and when he saw it, he went berserk and ordered them to stop distributing it immediately. >The publisher at first did not agree. They said they would publish a critical volume with contrary views, but that was not enough. To prevent it from being published, in the course of the discussion, he just put the whole publisher out of business, destroying all their stock—not only our book, but all their books. >We brought this to the attention to some civil libertarians at the American Civil Liberties Union. They did not see any problem. It is not government censorship; it is just a corporation deciding to destroy a publisher to prevent them distributing a book. All that needs to be said when someone lies that freedom of speech only applies to government censorship.
k1m 7y ago
The 1992 documentary film based on Herman and Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent book is also worth watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnrBQEAM3rE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnrBQEAM3rE
schalab 7y ago
I love how people are worried about the far right in these comments but not on the impact of propaganda on themselves. This recent Kurds vs Turkey is an example of this. The left usually hates war. Why? If you break down to the lowest level, it looks like the current left is mainly dominated by the maternal instinct. In every issue they divide the world into child vs predator. And they always come down on the side protecting the weak child. You can see this across a number of social, economic and geo poilitical issues. In terms of war, they look at it as America's selfish predatory instincts preying upon innocent parties in the middle east leading to countless lives lost of the weak. So how do you get people who think like this to support war? Simple. Invent a weak, childlike ally in the middle of the war zone, who are being attacked by a notorious hateful predator, and we would be abandoning them if we dont put our troops in harms way. So, you rebrand the american troop presence as honorable protection rather than predatory intervention. Thats all it takes to manufacture consent.
- Miner49er 7y ago
  Interesting example, considering Chomsky was one of the early proponents on the left for keeping troops in Syria to protect the Kurds. https://www.kurdistan24.net/en/news/13cf816e-8e40-41c8-bb76-d453a3261d8b https://www.kurdistan24.net/en/news/13cf816e-8e40-41c8-bb76-... I think this is a case where the establishment/media and the left actually agree. We shouldn't abandon allies. Additionally, Rojava is running a libertarian socialist society, which leftists obviously like. Finally, 60 or so troops is all that's needed to stop Turkey, and I wouldn't really call 60 troops "predatory intervention". I don't think the left's opinion here is manufactured consent.
  - turk73 7y ago
    The US currently has a military occupation of practically the entire world and then we pull out (but not really) of Syria and it's somehow the end of the world? Come on.
  - pnw_hazor 7y ago
    The YPG is marxist offshoot of the PKK. Turkey (an actual member of NATO) will never voluntarily let them establish an independent homeland in Syria. The way it is working out now is the best anyone, Americans at least, could hope for. Let the regional powers that have actual national interest sort it out. If ISIS comes back, the US can come back if needed. As a vet, with a son who was an Army Ranger and a daughter who is an Army aviator, 60 troops sounds like too many to me.
dls2016 7y ago
It's funny/sad that there's even a term for when reporters venture outside of the confines of their pen: investigative journalism.
- josho 7y ago
  The thesis of Manufacturing Consent is that even investigative journalism doesn't venture outside of certain acceptable norms.
mc32 7y ago
Manufactured consent can be similar to fabrication. But, it cuts both ways. People think of this manufacture as big gov or big biz pushing their agenda trough their lapdog media. But the same process happens with social causes. Let’s say vegetarianism or the anti-fur movement (very few people would disagree with the latter), but this took manufactured consent to achieve. The same with environmental and social causes. People don’t just wake up and change their minds. These opinions are filtered down to them.
- late2part 7y ago
  I remember in high school I used to say "I believe I speak for the class when I say..." And if folks didn't disagree it was consent by silence. Not the same thing but an allegory, when "fake news" parrots an absurd line, if we don't step it, it stands.
- justin66 7y ago
  > Let’s say vegetarianism or the anti-fur movement (very few people would disagree with the latter), but this took manufactured consent to achieve. The concept of "consent" as it's used in Manufacturing Consent does not apply to those movements at all. It means more than "some people agree with x because of information that was presented to them."
  - mc32 7y ago
    I think it does. These movements start out small but have vocal sympathizers who have some kind of gravitas via popularity or due to some other characteristic people grant some “authority”. Then media carry water for it, etc. The mechanism is exactly the same. If the media didn’t carry the message and others wouldn’t grab in to that, it wouldn’t happen. Why aren’t social causes not as prevalent in China? Because the media is controlled. Lots of feminists in CN lament that they are not allowed to influence people. And it’s true. The gov will not allow subversion of their power no matter how just a cause is. It will only happen on their terms.
    - justin66 7y ago
Shivetya 7y ago
I do find it interesting that while he talks about frameworks from within media conveys the story they present, a property of the government they work and live under, he seems overly concerned with large corporations having too much power of influence. Well, sorry, but the same has been true about governments for too long. For too long they controlled the message and some of them are doing their damn best to not lose that control. Whether but authoritarian methods as used in China to coercion of public opinion in Western countries that government needs to step in and protect people from the message they don't control and therefor is not true. This is not to say that very large organizations like Facebook or Google are not a concern but to highlight the hypocrisy that does not call out the various governments who are worse regardless of what method they use to control speech and money
- streb-lo 7y ago
  Dictatorships notwithstanding, in a real democracy, voters are the check on that power. The problem is that, in the USA, money has been allowed to become directly correlated with voter share and the tail wags the dog.
  - late2part 7y ago
    While an unpopular position, I place the blame for this on the uneducated voters. Intelligence and research trump marketing and campaign finance.
    - streb-lo 7y ago
      What about voters who are uneducated by design?
    - luckylion 7y ago
      How is "the voters are just stupid" an unpopular position?
      - Synaesthesia 7y ago
        It’s not unfortunately. I don’t buy it, I think people aren’t stupid. It’s a profoundly anti-democratic idea. They’re manipulated by sophisticated powers, and the truth is hidden from them, they’re not stupid.
A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago
I find it beyond fascinating that Chomsky is effectively barred from appearing on any news network. His perspective is that dangerous to the status quo and, amusingly, supports his points about media control.
- littlestymaar 7y ago
  Is he actually “barred”? Or he just don't go there? I remind him talking[1] about TV and radio, and how it was structurally[2] impossible to hold non-mainstream views there, so he wasn't really interested going. [1] in On Anarchism. [2] he said it was because the mandatory conciseness when talking live.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago
    My personal bet that it is a mix of the above. But is it a happy coincidence that an individual that does not really talk in bumber sticker langauage and questions some of the basic core beliefs, is not there in the 'marketplace of ideas'.
  - hindsightbias 7y ago
    He used to appear on PBS news shows in decades past. News Hour is now the epitome of “there are only two sides”. Chomsky can be seen on RT every now and then. Of course, today’s woke equate RT as only propaganda while they consume whatever media they watch without question. https://rtd.rt.com/shows/conversation-with/chomsky-correa-talk-us/ https://rtd.rt.com/shows/conversation-with/chomsky-correa-ta...
    - badrequest 7y ago
      They are quite literally a propaganda arm, someone being unable to recognize that the other news networks fit a similar bill doesn't mean RT isn't a propaganda arm of the Russian government.
    - WizardAustralis 7y ago
      He also appears on Democracy Now! occasionally. That it takes a listner/viewer funded station to get this stuff out is interesting. RT can be propaganda in intent but I do like that they are at least showing a very different point of view to the majority of mass media. That Chris Hedge gets a weekly program would never happen on most other networks nowadays. Watch it, take it in but don't take it too seriously. Treat it as stuff to be contemplated in its context.
yakovsi 7y ago
Genuine question, why does he say NYT and WaPo present "center to far right opinion"? C'mon. How NYT is far right?
- asveikau 7y ago
  There isn't really a mainstream left wing in the US. Since the times of Reagan, the right moved steadily rightward, and the left "compromised" its way towards the center. Note for example that the mid-90s GOP health care proposal was eventually the basis for the Obama plan 20 years later, which the more recent GOP called some kind of communism. Chomsky is left of the mainstream American "left", and it is common in that crowd to refer to the latter as center-right.
  - deogeo 7y ago
    What you write is only true on the economic axis. E.g. attitudes towards LGBT or immigration (as measured by number of immigrants, not hot air spouted by politicians) certainly haven't moved rightward.
    - m0zg 7y ago
      20 million illegal migrants and legal gay marriage in many states still not enough?
- nickik 7y ago
  Because he is a full on Communist. Its not that hard to understand.
  - fit2rule 7y ago
    By what measure is he, or indeed anyone really, a "full on Communist"? I have always believed there have never been any real ones.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
nickik 7y ago
Why do we take this dispicable genocide denier and constant apologist for any socialist government seriously? He is clearly incredibly idiological and all his conclusions validate his idiology. People like Milton Friedman get rosted and attacked constantly for once going Chille during a dictatorship and that 'tarnished' his reputation amoung the whole left. Chomsky has been an apologist for many horrible regimns but he is an intellectual in good standing.
- Synaesthesia 7y ago
  Really? Because he was against the USSR and the PRC
nokilli 7y ago
shadowban test
YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago
>> Note: The day after this interview took place, the Sun, Britain’s largest newspaper by circulation, ran with the front-page headline, “Putin’s Puppet: Corbyn Refuses to Blast Russia on Spy Attack,” as the leader of the Labour Party did not unreservedly endorse sanctions on Russia. I've noticed this sort of thing and it just doesn't make sense. The UK press (not just the tabloids) loves to present Corby as simultaneously a "Red" and a "Putin's puppet". How does that work? Putin is not a communist. He's probably as far as it's possible to be from being a communist without being a Stalinist. Corby is clearly a leftie, so what's his affiliation to Putin supposed to be? Why is the British press _still_ associating Russia to communism? They missed the memo in 1989? (Ask me for refs on the press calling Corby a commie if you are curious).
- Synaesthesia 7y ago
  It’s Russiaphobia gone mad. Yeah just like when Trump withdrew troops from northern Syria and gave the ok to Turkey to invade, the media in the US said it would please Syria and Russia (!) Like, why would Syria and their ally be happy about a loss of Syrian territory?
  - pavlov 7y ago
    Imagine you're a tinpot dictator. A corner of your country is home to a stubborn group of people who were there before you ever appointed yourself President for life. They feel no allegiance to you and would like to create an independent nation-state. Unfortunately for you, they're supported by the world's most powerful military. One day the commander-in-chief of that powerful military decides to pull out his troops so that his friend — another tinpot dictator like you — can invade the land of those stubborn people. You find this development quite pleasing because the stubborn ones you've long been hoping to wipe out have lost their only ally, and you'd much rather fight your neighbor dictator than the world's most powerful military. Besides, an old friend of yours has promised to lend a hand there as soon as the powerful military is out of the picture.
    - a_tractor 7y ago
bhntr3 7y ago
This article is from June. I've generally been a bit skeptical of Noam Chomsky's politics but this interaction seems prophetic given the current situation in Syria and makes me think that I should give "Manufacturing Consent" some attention: >But as Patrick Cockburn pointed out in the Independent, what is happening in Afrin is about the same. > AM: Happening where, sorry? > NC: Afrin. Turkish forces and their allies are carrying out the attack in a mostly Kurdish area. Patrick Cockburn has covered it, but almost nobody else. Doing some research on it, the articles I read in the Washington Post (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/10/11/who-are-kurds-why-is-turkey-attacking-them/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/10/11/who-are-kurd...) said that the Turkish offensive was "days old" while the Independent article Chomsky references (https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/syria-afrin-crisis-turkish-forces-civilians-deaths-eastern-ghouta-assad-a8247206.html https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/syria-afrin-crisis-turk...) attributes a death toll of 220 to Turkey in March 2018.
MarkMc 7y ago
I'd agree that Noam Chomsky's linguistic contribution is of the highest order, but I'm not so sure about his political analysis. Here are his comments in 1977 regarding the reported genocide in Cambodia [1]: "We do not pretend to know where the truth lies amidst these sharply conflicting assessments; rather, we again want to emphasize some crucial points. What filters through to the American public is a seriously distorted version of the evidence available, emphasizing alleged Khmer Rouge atrocities and downplaying or ignoring the crucial U.S. role, direct and indirect, in the torment that Cambodia has suffered. Evidence that focuses on the American role, like the Hildebrand and Porter volume, is ignored, not on the basis of truthfulness or scholarship but because the message is unpalatable." And on the veracity of reports about horrific slaughter made by Cambodian refugees: "Refugees are frightened and defenseless, at the mercy of alien forces. They naturally tend to report what they believe their interlocuters wish to hear. While these reports must be considered seriously, care and caution are necessary. Specifically, refugees questioned by Westerners or Thais have a vested interest in reporting atrocities on the part of Cambodian revolutionaries, an obvious fact that no serious reporter will fail to take into account." Did Chomsky show poor judgement by discounting such refugee reports? Was the evidence of genocide really so muddy in 1977 that you could not 'know where the truth lies'? [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20131207072650/http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2779086.html https://web.archive.org/web/20131207072650/http://www.abc.ne... [2] https://m.jpost.com/Opinion/Terra-Incognita-Chomsky-and-the-myth-of-instant-expertise-514661 https://m.jpost.com/Opinion/Terra-Incognita-Chomsky-and-the-...
- Synaesthesia 7y ago
  He says his statements made in 1977 were qualified, and the best he had with the scholarship available. Since then he’s criticized the Cambodian Khmer Rouge as genocidal. It’s a forgivable mistake considering his political & historical output, which is very significant.

559 points by zachguo 7y ago

Of all of Chomsky's positions that I have read, the propaganda model is the hardest to doubt - it seems almost unassailable. Are there any convincing criticisms of it?

hash872 7y ago
It's been about 15 years since I read Manufacturing Consent, but- the weak version of his thesis is fine, sure. An NBCUniversal media property, say, is probably not going to report critically on something that NBCUniversal has a financial stake in. The actual hypothesis Chomsky puts forward in the book is childishly simple, though. He imagines literally every for-profit corporation, the military, and the entire federal government as being one fused united party with identical interests, and so NBCUniversal would never report anything critical of the military or the US government. This, um, doesn't track reality. While it's easy for me to just dismiss this obviously incorrect hypothesis as 'dumb' (which it is), I think on a deeper level Chomsky is influenced by Marx who was influenced by other 18-19th century philosophers like Hegel. Who used extremely, overly broad handwavey concepts like Elites or The Powerful as part of their totally academic, abstract, philosophical explanation for How Society Works. As someone who read a bunch of Chomsky books when I was 20 years old- part of his worldview is that nothing happens by accident, but every major moment in history is part of a Hegelian Battle Between Forces (like elites vs. the working class or something). It's still a childishly unrealistic way of looking at how society actually functions, but it comes from a super super abstract philosopher's worldview where he can handwave Big Business/the Military/the Government as one unit with identical interests. If that makes sense at all. Sort of reminds me of ancient philosophers theorizing about how physics or medicine works without conducting any empirical tests whatsoever
- nerdponx 7y ago
  The actual hypothesis Chomsky puts forward in the book is childishly simple, though. He imagines literally every for-profit corporation, the military, and the entire federal government as being one fused united party with identical interests, and so NBCUniversal would never report anything critical of the military or the US government. This, um, doesn't track reality. Is that really his thesis? It seems to me that it's more about how incentives for all these organizations are aligned towards those same interests. Only the very "top" of the power pyramid needs to be deliberately trying to manufacture consent; everyone else falls into line because of the incentives set up by those one level of power above.
  - hash872 7y ago
    But in practice, we don't observe that these organizations blindly support 'those at the top'. Empirical observation over abstract philosophizing, please. Society is much more complex & interesting than Chomsky imagines, with many more nuances. Even the actual federal government and military have many competing factions with different interests, different goals, etc. It's a philosopher's 'let's model civilization as a one-page flowchart' level of analysis. I don't think it's particularly deep or interesting, and I read a great deal of Chomsky back in the day
    - streb-lo 7y ago
      This reads like an undergrad's hot take. No offense, and there are plenty of valid criticisms of Chomsky, but this is the laziest reading and interpretation of Chomsky that you are arguing with. >t's a philosopher's 'let's model civilization as a one-page flowchart' level of analysis. Irony.
    - Supermancho 7y ago
      > (there are) incentives for all these organizations are aligned towards those same interests. > But in practice, we don't observe that these organizations blindly support 'those at the top'. That isn't the same thing. I'm not sure how you connect these. This is better illustrated in specific countries, where the incentives are fierce and immediate. You still see dissent there too, but that's not relevant to the point ("I don't see it all the time so it's not true", missing the point).
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- fit2rule 7y ago
  >how society actually functions You know a better answer to this question than a 91 year old philosopher, so .. lets hear it.
- ska 7y ago
  That's not a fair reading of the central thesis to my memory (which is going back more than 15 years, to be fair). This is meant constructively: Some of the rhetorical devices you've chosen ("childish", "dumb", etc.) nearly always read to me as coming from someone who hasn't understood the work they are commenting on, so I suspect you might communicate more effectively with different choices.
- pizza 7y ago
  Judging from Chomsky’s critique of Žižek I really doubt you can call his position Hegelian
- thundergolfer 7y ago
  > The actual hypothesis Chomsky puts forward in the book is childishly simple, though. He imagines literally every for-profit corporation, the military, and the entire federal government as being one fused united party with identical interests, and so NBCUniversal would never report anything critical of the military or the US government. This, um, doesn't track reality. That's, a bad misreading. Can you quote relevant sections that support this statement? The laying out of the propaganda model is only about 50 pages in entirely so you shouldn't need walls of text to show some evidence.
- tsimionescu 7y ago
  That is not his thesis at all. He is claiming that in most cases mainstream media will be supportive of American imperialism (it applies more broadly than the US, but let's limit it for now). Of course there are factions within the most powerful, but there are also universal interests. For example, there are no rich or powerful groups in the US who are pro unionization in tech or pro worker's co-ops (there may be individuals, sure, but you won't find a PAC or lobby group). There are no rich or powerful groups in the US who would accept unilateral nuclear disarmament. There are no rich or powerful groups in the US which consider the US has no legal or moral rights to intervene militarily unilaterally anywhere in the world. Of course, there are sometimes 'dissident' groups, like the currently surprisingly popular Bernie Sanders movement. If they do get a foothold, some popular opinions may also change. But such moments are a good time to test the hypothesis, and you can easily see how much the media, 'left' or right, is against the Bernie campaign, and considers it naive or pie-in-the-sky. Overall, going on the empirical path, you'll be really hard-pressed to find any US mainstream media critical of US actions, or often even reporting on relevant events, if they put the US in a bad light.

TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago

Would be great if the video was available.

thundergolfer 7y ago

Among people familiar with the book, "Has the propaganda model been invalidated by the social media media giants?" is a regular question. Chomsky's initial reply is most of what needs to be said. Information production is a vital part of the media industry and the landscape of information producers by volume is more or less the same as it was back then — dominated by state institutions and corporations. It was so interesting to read that section in Manufacturing Consent; the hard numbers really helped get a proper sense of the scale imbalances in information production. The marking out of the symbiotic relationship between reliable information producers and journalists is also vital to understanding the media system. A reliable, centralised stream of new information content is the life blood of journalism organisations, with a strong emphasis on _reliable_ and _centralised_. This particular need that journalists have sees them often becoming dependent on state institutions and corporations at the expense of minority groups and labor. An example being the journalists 'on the beat' that used to hang out around the local courthouse because that's where the 'feeding trough' is. Or the reports so nicely formatted and condensed produced by the state departments such that journos merely have to copy-paste the information straight into their papers. Easy-peasy. Fascinating book.

rstuart4133 7y ago
> the landscape of information producers by volume is more or less the same as it was back then It's not quite the same. Before fact checking anything took an impossible amount of time and not a few resources - a very good library for a start. Now, or even a decade ago it suddenly became possible for everyone. I vividly remember when the Iraq was announced, and you could see the "information producers" in full swing. I was amazed when my local radio station announcer, well known for his resistance for being bullshitted asked someone he was interviewing in a disbelieving voice if they didn't agree Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The point being that by then I had already done my own homework (we were going to war, my fellow citizens were going to be killed and I wanted to know why), and knew full well Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. The reports and opinions of the UN weapons inspectors was easily available on the internet, along with numerous dumbed down pieces from the mass media. Anyone willing to waste a few hours could easily get past the propaganda smokescreen. Yet this news interviewer who up until then I assumed to be a master of his craft had been pulled in hook, line and sinker. It changed the message in Chomsky's books from an interesting theoretical discussion to distressingly real. But it also created another puzzle: why didn't the Internet fix it? Why didn't people immediately put this bullshit filter to good use? I still don't know the answer. There have now been numerous studies into the phenomenon of people continuing to loudly defend bullshit despite the facts being easily available in just about anywhere you look (cue: climate change). Apparently it has to do with people preferring to signal they are part of a particular tribe over acting in their best interest. Or something. I guess I'll never understand, as they aren't people like me.

sudoaza 7y ago

How is it that this guy still has no Nobel Prize?

thundergolfer 7y ago
He’d be deserving of a Turing Award too for his “Hierarchy of the Grammars”. Maybe would have been more likely to win it if he hadn’t discovered it 10 years before the award existed.
- bcaa7f3a8bbc 7y ago
  How does Noam Chomsky's work on linguistic contribute to computer science? And are there applications? He is always described in the popular media as a "linguist", although many works seem to be directly related to formal language in computer science to me, but I'm not sure.
  - incompatible 7y ago
    The Chomsky hierarchy of grammars, Context-free, Context-sensitive etc., thus to regular expressions: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomsky_hierarchy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomsky_hierarchy
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - me_me_me 7y ago
    Ever heard of compiler? Or computer language(s)? I first heard about Chompsky at the Uni when doing semester on compilers.
  - justin66 7y ago
    > How does Noam Chomsky's work on linguistic contribute to computer science? And are there applications? This stuff is referenced in textbooks on compilers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomsky_hierarchy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomsky_hierarchy
7y ago

freeflight 7y ago

I consider myself a rather well-informed person, but this is the first time I've read about Harris Media involvement in the last German election and I'm German. All I can remember is indeed the "Russian interference" and how the AfD is supposedly financed out of Russia. But that Bloomberg Businessweek article [0] unearths some scary details: “We took that 300,000 (AfD likes), and Facebook created a model of them and used their lookalike audiences to find the closest 1 percent of German people to match that audience,” That "1 percent" sounds extremely familiar, particularly in a far-right context [1] It makes me wonder who originally came up with that concept, was it Harris Media or was it the idea of their client, the AfD? [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-29/the-german-far-right-finds-friends-through-facebook https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-29/the-germa... [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ein_Prozent_f%C3%BCr_unser_Land https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ein_Prozent_f%C3%BCr_unser_Lan...

oh_sigh 7y ago
One percent is just a small, round, common number that crops up in human thought frequently. What's the point of targeting 5% of the closest users if you might not even have luck converting the 1% closest users? Would you see this connection if it turns out they actually targeted the closest .96% of users? Do you think the one percenters that Bernie Sanders rallies against have anything in common with your [1]?
- freeflight 7y ago
  > Do you think the one percenters that Bernie Sanders rallies against have anything in common with your [1]? I don't know and I seriously doubt it. I didn't see Bernie Sanders stickers in the middle of Germany advertising for "We only need 1% to change the country", as the German identitarians do. But as you say: It's very likely just a coincidence.
TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
The next paragraph goes on to state they targeted 10.1 million people: In all, Harris Media created seven target groups, according to Canter, including mothers (2.6 million targets), business owners (1.1 million), and working-class people such as union members (6.4 million). The detail about the 1% is pretty much a non-sequitur; I don’t really follow why that is even mentioned.

denzil_correa 7y ago

Here's a nice 1h documentary on "Engineering Consent" focusing on Edward Bernays (pioneer of PR and propaganda). https://www.arte.tv/en/videos/071470-000-A/propaganda-engineering-consent/ https://www.arte.tv/en/videos/071470-000-A/propaganda-engine...

whatamidoingyo 7y ago
Here's another (37 minute) documentary on Edward Bernays, Gustave Le Bon, etc. Mind-boggling stuff. https://youtube.com/watch?v=p8ERfxWouXs&t=85s https://youtube.com/watch?v=p8ERfxWouXs&t=85s
- stephenSinniah 7y ago
  Adam Curtis has a good documentary about Bernays influence in the PR industry.It's a really good watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04
  - jamesblonde 7y ago
    This is really 'blue pill' stuff. It's like discovering product placement in movies. Once you see it, you can't unsee it again.
seagullz 7y ago
John Pilger's 2010 Documentary The War You Don't See (https://vimeo.com/67739294 https://vimeo.com/67739294) is also great; it references Bernays too. Would check this one.
mistrial9 7y ago
"cannot be viewed from your current location" (California?) A (related?) four-part video series on this topic is called 'Century of the Self' and might be found out there somewhere
- vageli 7y ago

edoo 7y ago

The latest CNN veritas videos are eye opening. Chomsky is still dead on as far as I can tell.

cbnotfromthere 7y ago
Using CNN to confirm Chomsky is like using RT to confirm Putin.
- leto_ii 7y ago
  I had to make an account just to point out that your analogy doesn't make any sense :D RT (like CNN) is a network (mostly) aligned with the interests of the power structure of its respective country. Chomsky is a dissident and critic of the power structure of his country, therefore broadly in disagreement with the CNN world view.
- 300bps 7y ago
  CNN Veritas videos aren’t from CNN. They are undercover videos that purport to show CNN’s biases. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/10/15/project_veritas_hidden_camera_footage_from_inside_cnn.html https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/10/15/project_v...
  - DiabloD3 7y ago
    What I don't understand is why people are claiming CNN doesn't have a bias: if a news media outlet exists, it is biased, and that is an immutable rule.
    - Paradigma11 7y ago
      Which makes the use of the term "bias" worthless. I do see quite obvious differences in the bias of say fox (not the news section) vs cnn. Fox just lazily omits facts and arguments that don't fit while cnn presents both sides most of the time. I do not care if the information is framed in a specific way since i have to make up my mind anyway. Then there are real propaganda outlets like the state owned RT or http://www.globaltimes.cn/opinion/ http://www.globaltimes.cn/opinion/ . I do think that making these distinctions is useful.

CommieDetector 7y ago

COMMUNIST ALERT!!!

codeulike 7y ago

Noam Chomsky is 91. Holy crap. My favourite Chomsky thing is the very short shrift he gives to conspiracy theorists. e.g. Rethinking Camelot, his book about JFK - https://zcomm.org/wp-content/uploads/zbooks/htdocs/chomsky/rc/rc-contents.html https://zcomm.org/wp-content/uploads/zbooks/htdocs/chomsky/r... - the thesis being that JFK was really no different to any other president at that time - the idea he was radical being a kindof post-hoc reconstruction - and hence there was absolutely no reason for anyone to want to bump him off. A methodological point is perhaps worth mention. Suppose that we were to concoct a theory about historical events at random, while permitting ourselves to assume arbitrary forms of deceit and falsification. Then in the vast documentary record, we are sure to find scattered hints and other debris that could be made to conform to the theory, while counter-evidence is nullified. By that method, one can "prove" virtually anything. For example, we can prove that JFK never intended to withdraw any troops, citing the elusiveness of NSAM 263 and his unwillingness to commit himself to the withdrawal recommended by his war managers. Or we can prove that the attempt to assassinate Reagan was carried out by dark forces (Alexander Haig, the CIA, etc.). After all, Reagan had backed away from using US forces directly in Central America (unlike JFK in Vietnam); he was cozying up to the Chicoms; he had already given intimations of the anti-nuclear passion that led him to offer to give away the store at Rejkjavik and to join forces with the arch-fiend Gorbachev, whose perestroika was a transparent plot to entrap us; his associates were planning off-the-shelf international operations, bypassing intelligence and the Pentagon. Obviously, he has to go. Or suppose there had been an attempt to assassinate LBJ in late 1964, when he was refusing the call of the military to stand up to the Commies in Vietnam, pursuing Great Society and civil rights programs with a zeal well beyond Kennedy, and about to defeat a real alternative, Barry Goldwater. Nothing is easier than to construct a high-level conspiracy to get rid of this "radical reformer." The task is only facilitated by a search for nuances and variations of phrasing in the mountains of documents, usually committee jobs put together hastily with many compromises. This is not the way to learn about the world.

zzzcpan 7y ago
These days people can call you a conspiracy theorist for the very things Chomsky stands behind.

pixpine 7y ago

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tony12356 7y ago

哈哈233333

throw_xyzyz 7y ago

>The first book that Ed and I wrote together, Counterrevolutionary Violence, was published by a small publisher that was doing quite well. They published 20,000 copies of it, and were ready to distribute it. The publisher was owned by a big conglomerate, Warner Brothers, now part of Time Warner. One of the Warner executives saw the advertising for the book, and did not like it. He asked to see the book, and when he saw it, he went berserk and ordered them to stop distributing it immediately. >The publisher at first did not agree. They said they would publish a critical volume with contrary views, but that was not enough. To prevent it from being published, in the course of the discussion, he just put the whole publisher out of business, destroying all their stock—not only our book, but all their books. >We brought this to the attention to some civil libertarians at the American Civil Liberties Union. They did not see any problem. It is not government censorship; it is just a corporation deciding to destroy a publisher to prevent them distributing a book. All that needs to be said when someone lies that freedom of speech only applies to government censorship.

k1m 7y ago

The 1992 documentary film based on Herman and Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent book is also worth watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnrBQEAM3rE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnrBQEAM3rE

schalab 7y ago

I love how people are worried about the far right in these comments but not on the impact of propaganda on themselves. This recent Kurds vs Turkey is an example of this. The left usually hates war. Why? If you break down to the lowest level, it looks like the current left is mainly dominated by the maternal instinct. In every issue they divide the world into child vs predator. And they always come down on the side protecting the weak child. You can see this across a number of social, economic and geo poilitical issues. In terms of war, they look at it as America's selfish predatory instincts preying upon innocent parties in the middle east leading to countless lives lost of the weak. So how do you get people who think like this to support war? Simple. Invent a weak, childlike ally in the middle of the war zone, who are being attacked by a notorious hateful predator, and we would be abandoning them if we dont put our troops in harms way. So, you rebrand the american troop presence as honorable protection rather than predatory intervention. Thats all it takes to manufacture consent.

Miner49er 7y ago
Interesting example, considering Chomsky was one of the early proponents on the left for keeping troops in Syria to protect the Kurds. https://www.kurdistan24.net/en/news/13cf816e-8e40-41c8-bb76-d453a3261d8b https://www.kurdistan24.net/en/news/13cf816e-8e40-41c8-bb76-... I think this is a case where the establishment/media and the left actually agree. We shouldn't abandon allies. Additionally, Rojava is running a libertarian socialist society, which leftists obviously like. Finally, 60 or so troops is all that's needed to stop Turkey, and I wouldn't really call 60 troops "predatory intervention". I don't think the left's opinion here is manufactured consent.
- turk73 7y ago
  The US currently has a military occupation of practically the entire world and then we pull out (but not really) of Syria and it's somehow the end of the world? Come on.
- pnw_hazor 7y ago
  The YPG is marxist offshoot of the PKK. Turkey (an actual member of NATO) will never voluntarily let them establish an independent homeland in Syria. The way it is working out now is the best anyone, Americans at least, could hope for. Let the regional powers that have actual national interest sort it out. If ISIS comes back, the US can come back if needed. As a vet, with a son who was an Army Ranger and a daughter who is an Army aviator, 60 troops sounds like too many to me.

dls2016 7y ago

It's funny/sad that there's even a term for when reporters venture outside of the confines of their pen: investigative journalism.

josho 7y ago
The thesis of Manufacturing Consent is that even investigative journalism doesn't venture outside of certain acceptable norms.

mc32 7y ago

Manufactured consent can be similar to fabrication. But, it cuts both ways. People think of this manufacture as big gov or big biz pushing their agenda trough their lapdog media. But the same process happens with social causes. Let’s say vegetarianism or the anti-fur movement (very few people would disagree with the latter), but this took manufactured consent to achieve. The same with environmental and social causes. People don’t just wake up and change their minds. These opinions are filtered down to them.

late2part 7y ago
I remember in high school I used to say "I believe I speak for the class when I say..." And if folks didn't disagree it was consent by silence. Not the same thing but an allegory, when "fake news" parrots an absurd line, if we don't step it, it stands.
justin66 7y ago
> Let’s say vegetarianism or the anti-fur movement (very few people would disagree with the latter), but this took manufactured consent to achieve. The concept of "consent" as it's used in Manufacturing Consent does not apply to those movements at all. It means more than "some people agree with x because of information that was presented to them."
- mc32 7y ago
  I think it does. These movements start out small but have vocal sympathizers who have some kind of gravitas via popularity or due to some other characteristic people grant some “authority”. Then media carry water for it, etc. The mechanism is exactly the same. If the media didn’t carry the message and others wouldn’t grab in to that, it wouldn’t happen. Why aren’t social causes not as prevalent in China? Because the media is controlled. Lots of feminists in CN lament that they are not allowed to influence people. And it’s true. The gov will not allow subversion of their power no matter how just a cause is. It will only happen on their terms.
  - justin66 7y ago

Shivetya 7y ago

I do find it interesting that while he talks about frameworks from within media conveys the story they present, a property of the government they work and live under, he seems overly concerned with large corporations having too much power of influence. Well, sorry, but the same has been true about governments for too long. For too long they controlled the message and some of them are doing their damn best to not lose that control. Whether but authoritarian methods as used in China to coercion of public opinion in Western countries that government needs to step in and protect people from the message they don't control and therefor is not true. This is not to say that very large organizations like Facebook or Google are not a concern but to highlight the hypocrisy that does not call out the various governments who are worse regardless of what method they use to control speech and money

streb-lo 7y ago
Dictatorships notwithstanding, in a real democracy, voters are the check on that power. The problem is that, in the USA, money has been allowed to become directly correlated with voter share and the tail wags the dog.
- late2part 7y ago
  While an unpopular position, I place the blame for this on the uneducated voters. Intelligence and research trump marketing and campaign finance.
  - streb-lo 7y ago
    What about voters who are uneducated by design?
  - luckylion 7y ago
    How is "the voters are just stupid" an unpopular position?
    - Synaesthesia 7y ago
      It’s not unfortunately. I don’t buy it, I think people aren’t stupid. It’s a profoundly anti-democratic idea. They’re manipulated by sophisticated powers, and the truth is hidden from them, they’re not stupid.

A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago

I find it beyond fascinating that Chomsky is effectively barred from appearing on any news network. His perspective is that dangerous to the status quo and, amusingly, supports his points about media control.

littlestymaar 7y ago
Is he actually “barred”? Or he just don't go there? I remind him talking[1] about TV and radio, and how it was structurally[2] impossible to hold non-mainstream views there, so he wasn't really interested going. [1] in On Anarchism. [2] he said it was because the mandatory conciseness when talking live.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago
  My personal bet that it is a mix of the above. But is it a happy coincidence that an individual that does not really talk in bumber sticker langauage and questions some of the basic core beliefs, is not there in the 'marketplace of ideas'.
- hindsightbias 7y ago
  He used to appear on PBS news shows in decades past. News Hour is now the epitome of “there are only two sides”. Chomsky can be seen on RT every now and then. Of course, today’s woke equate RT as only propaganda while they consume whatever media they watch without question. https://rtd.rt.com/shows/conversation-with/chomsky-correa-talk-us/ https://rtd.rt.com/shows/conversation-with/chomsky-correa-ta...
  - badrequest 7y ago
    They are quite literally a propaganda arm, someone being unable to recognize that the other news networks fit a similar bill doesn't mean RT isn't a propaganda arm of the Russian government.
  - WizardAustralis 7y ago
    He also appears on Democracy Now! occasionally. That it takes a listner/viewer funded station to get this stuff out is interesting. RT can be propaganda in intent but I do like that they are at least showing a very different point of view to the majority of mass media. That Chris Hedge gets a weekly program would never happen on most other networks nowadays. Watch it, take it in but don't take it too seriously. Treat it as stuff to be contemplated in its context.

yakovsi 7y ago

Genuine question, why does he say NYT and WaPo present "center to far right opinion"? C'mon. How NYT is far right?

asveikau 7y ago
There isn't really a mainstream left wing in the US. Since the times of Reagan, the right moved steadily rightward, and the left "compromised" its way towards the center. Note for example that the mid-90s GOP health care proposal was eventually the basis for the Obama plan 20 years later, which the more recent GOP called some kind of communism. Chomsky is left of the mainstream American "left", and it is common in that crowd to refer to the latter as center-right.
- deogeo 7y ago
  What you write is only true on the economic axis. E.g. attitudes towards LGBT or immigration (as measured by number of immigrants, not hot air spouted by politicians) certainly haven't moved rightward.
  - m0zg 7y ago
    20 million illegal migrants and legal gay marriage in many states still not enough?
nickik 7y ago
Because he is a full on Communist. Its not that hard to understand.
- fit2rule 7y ago
  By what measure is he, or indeed anyone really, a "full on Communist"? I have always believed there have never been any real ones.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]

nickik 7y ago

Why do we take this dispicable genocide denier and constant apologist for any socialist government seriously? He is clearly incredibly idiological and all his conclusions validate his idiology. People like Milton Friedman get rosted and attacked constantly for once going Chille during a dictatorship and that 'tarnished' his reputation amoung the whole left. Chomsky has been an apologist for many horrible regimns but he is an intellectual in good standing.

Synaesthesia 7y ago
Really? Because he was against the USSR and the PRC

nokilli 7y ago

shadowban test

YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago

>> Note: The day after this interview took place, the Sun, Britain’s largest newspaper by circulation, ran with the front-page headline, “Putin’s Puppet: Corbyn Refuses to Blast Russia on Spy Attack,” as the leader of the Labour Party did not unreservedly endorse sanctions on Russia. I've noticed this sort of thing and it just doesn't make sense. The UK press (not just the tabloids) loves to present Corby as simultaneously a "Red" and a "Putin's puppet". How does that work? Putin is not a communist. He's probably as far as it's possible to be from being a communist without being a Stalinist. Corby is clearly a leftie, so what's his affiliation to Putin supposed to be? Why is the British press _still_ associating Russia to communism? They missed the memo in 1989? (Ask me for refs on the press calling Corby a commie if you are curious).

Synaesthesia 7y ago
It’s Russiaphobia gone mad. Yeah just like when Trump withdrew troops from northern Syria and gave the ok to Turkey to invade, the media in the US said it would please Syria and Russia (!) Like, why would Syria and their ally be happy about a loss of Syrian territory?
- pavlov 7y ago
  Imagine you're a tinpot dictator. A corner of your country is home to a stubborn group of people who were there before you ever appointed yourself President for life. They feel no allegiance to you and would like to create an independent nation-state. Unfortunately for you, they're supported by the world's most powerful military. One day the commander-in-chief of that powerful military decides to pull out his troops so that his friend — another tinpot dictator like you — can invade the land of those stubborn people. You find this development quite pleasing because the stubborn ones you've long been hoping to wipe out have lost their only ally, and you'd much rather fight your neighbor dictator than the world's most powerful military. Besides, an old friend of yours has promised to lend a hand there as soon as the powerful military is out of the picture.
  - a_tractor 7y ago

bhntr3 7y ago

This article is from June. I've generally been a bit skeptical of Noam Chomsky's politics but this interaction seems prophetic given the current situation in Syria and makes me think that I should give "Manufacturing Consent" some attention: >But as Patrick Cockburn pointed out in the Independent, what is happening in Afrin is about the same. > AM: Happening where, sorry? > NC: Afrin. Turkish forces and their allies are carrying out the attack in a mostly Kurdish area. Patrick Cockburn has covered it, but almost nobody else. Doing some research on it, the articles I read in the Washington Post (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/10/11/who-are-kurds-why-is-turkey-attacking-them/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/10/11/who-are-kurd...) said that the Turkish offensive was "days old" while the Independent article Chomsky references (https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/syria-afrin-crisis-turkish-forces-civilians-deaths-eastern-ghouta-assad-a8247206.html https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/syria-afrin-crisis-turk...) attributes a death toll of 220 to Turkey in March 2018.

MarkMc 7y ago

I'd agree that Noam Chomsky's linguistic contribution is of the highest order, but I'm not so sure about his political analysis. Here are his comments in 1977 regarding the reported genocide in Cambodia [1]: "We do not pretend to know where the truth lies amidst these sharply conflicting assessments; rather, we again want to emphasize some crucial points. What filters through to the American public is a seriously distorted version of the evidence available, emphasizing alleged Khmer Rouge atrocities and downplaying or ignoring the crucial U.S. role, direct and indirect, in the torment that Cambodia has suffered. Evidence that focuses on the American role, like the Hildebrand and Porter volume, is ignored, not on the basis of truthfulness or scholarship but because the message is unpalatable." And on the veracity of reports about horrific slaughter made by Cambodian refugees: "Refugees are frightened and defenseless, at the mercy of alien forces. They naturally tend to report what they believe their interlocuters wish to hear. While these reports must be considered seriously, care and caution are necessary. Specifically, refugees questioned by Westerners or Thais have a vested interest in reporting atrocities on the part of Cambodian revolutionaries, an obvious fact that no serious reporter will fail to take into account." Did Chomsky show poor judgement by discounting such refugee reports? Was the evidence of genocide really so muddy in 1977 that you could not 'know where the truth lies'? [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20131207072650/http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2779086.html https://web.archive.org/web/20131207072650/http://www.abc.ne... [2] https://m.jpost.com/Opinion/Terra-Incognita-Chomsky-and-the-myth-of-instant-expertise-514661 https://m.jpost.com/Opinion/Terra-Incognita-Chomsky-and-the-...

Synaesthesia 7y ago
He says his statements made in 1977 were qualified, and the best he had with the scholarship available. Since then he’s criticized the Cambodian Khmer Rouge as genocidal. It’s a forgivable mistake considering his political & historical output, which is very significant.