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Chomsky's analysis of society, and the media, is common across radicals of all political persuasions. They need a theory to explain why their radicalism isnt po

Chomsky's analysis of society, and the media, is common across radicals of all political persuasions. They need a theory to explain why their radicalism isnt popular, despite being "obvious" -- so you have false consciousness (marx), manufactured consent (chomsky), class envy (ayn rand), etc. What Chomsky leaves out from his analysis is that he himself exists: a member of the elite, central to vast amounts of elite discourse. His ideas aren't marginal and indeed, in many ways, mainstream. Radicals are, generally, rationalists -- starting theory-first. But in matters as complex as society, you need to be an empiricist. If you study 'popular opinion', consent, etc. as an empiricist you do not find these categories: elite, media, etc. Rather there are shifting groups of people, each with their own interests, engaged in a competition to have their interests realised. When fox news called Arizona their viewers left them -- so fox jumped on election denial precipitating events which led to Jan 6th. What is the analysis here, say? Well chomsky would always 'find his enemies' in the elite: trump down to his base. Whilst this analysis is partly correct, it doesn't explain the existence of trump in the first place: his base chose him. Rather than any prior 'political elite'. The conspiratorial analyses of radicals always ends up with 'and this is why people don't subscribe to my view of the world' -- it is itself a political project to 'manufacture ideological consent' to their own world view. A mechanism they fail to notice. A scientist in these matters has to have basically no political project whatsoever, and not bend their empirical analysis towards their status and away from the status of others. And indeed: how many political scientists are there, by this definition? nearly none.

psychlops 3y ago
So are you saying the media does not have these filters?
js8 3y ago
I get your point, but I think there is a lot of empirical support for 5 filters. From a leftist perspective, there is something to your critique, I would say some of the hallucinations of the right-wing Trumpers far overtook what the mass media came up with using those filters. For example, anti-vaccines or stolen elections.
feedforward 3y ago
> They need a theory to explain why their radicalism isnt popular Actually what Chomsky notes is how the idea of "radical" laws such as that a person can't be kicked off their health plan if they develop cancer are not unpopular, but wildly popular with the public in polls. Nonetheless in the decades prior to Obamacare, despite its popularity, due to institutional reasons it did not become law. > the existence of Trump in the first place: his base chose him Chomsky said early on Trump support came mostly from the base, and the power structure did not want him. You're knocking down a straw man - inventing things Chomsky did not say, attributing them to him, then condemning him for words you put in his mouth, when he often said the opposite.
- mjburgess 3y ago
  I dont think we have a way to determine popularity as easily as you suggest. Brexit was popular: 52% said yes, but of those many would not pay any money at all to see it through. So, its popular if its free. Many things are. This is often the implied context around this polling: do you want better services and lower taxes? Yes. Yes, of course. The issue for america, in the case of universal healthcare, is that it would dramatically increase the tax burden and worsen healthcare for the middle/upper-middle. How many are so noble when it comes to this double-whammy? Few. On paper, people will spend other people's money with glee. In practice, politics expresses something ideologues can never really tolerate: that society is often getting what it wants. Or, more precisely, that the social ecology is both healthy and imperfect. That society may not get what it wants in some sense, but not for any malignant reason. The ideologue always has to locate the failure to reach the ideal with some flaw in people, in the system. They cannot brook that through ordinary, indeed healthy, political process can come non-ideal outocmes.
  - techdmn 3y ago
    A close look at the political system here in the U.S. exposes many significant ways in which policy is protected from voter intent: Electoral college, gerrymandered districting, a first-past-the-post system that is hostile to third parties (the main parties control the national debate process, for example). It is indeed possible for a policy to be widely popular with the voting public, but NOT on the ballot in any meaningful way. This is without even dipping into the fear-mongering toward more egalitarian policies in healthcare, taxation, workers rights, etc.
nkh 3y ago
"When fox news called Arizona their viewers left them -- so fox jumped on election denial precipitating events which led to Jan 6th. What is the analysis here, say?" From the first filter in the article: Mass media firms are big corporations. Often, they are part of even bigger conglomerates. Their end game? Profit. And so it’s in their interests to push for whatever guarantees that profit. Naturally, critical journalism must take second place to the needs and interests of the corporation. "it doesn't explain the existence of trump in the first place: his base chose him." 2015/2016 Trump was a ratings goldmine. See point #1 about media profits.
- mjburgess 3y ago
  Yes, but chomsky's analysis of "profit" is as this sort of christian evil. The profit motive in this case is to give non-elite a determining factor in what they see. You see how the profit motive is in many cases, and in this case, a democratic force?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
10000truths 3y ago
All models are wrong. Some are useful. There are, in fact, many establishments that are frighteningly efficient at devoting time, money and effort into manipulating people. But those establishments are ultimately guided by people, too. And those people are fallible creatures, just as prone to vagaries of ideological fashion and lapses in rational thought as those who ushered the events of January 6. Even the juggernauts make missteps. It does not diminish the empiricism of Chomsky's ideas. The phenomenon you describe transcends notions of class, race, and and so on: over lifetime timescales, a group of people is a chaotic and unpredictable system, replete with knock on effects, where any actor or interest, no matter how fringe, has the potential to dominate. And while one can apply basic sociological principles to anticipate some short-term behaviors, it stands to reason that no amount of cold calculation or meticulous planning (by governments, media, elites, or otherwise) is immune to the simple fact that the course of any given organization is extremely difficult to consistently predict.
- mjburgess 3y ago
  Yes, exactly. The problem with chomsky's model is how it manipulates the landscape of our analysis, how it introduces paranoia into our perception of the media. This is, I think, a serious pathology and a serious flaw -- though, for Chomsky, it's the mood he wants you to be in.. since he has a bridge to sell you. A real political science here has to explicitly engage with this chaos -- has to model society as the irreducibly complex system that it is. Theories here arent neutral: they modify the very thing being described.
  - standardly 3y ago
    Honest question. Have you read Manufacturing Consent?
    - mjburgess 3y ago
      Yes, but at 18 or 19.
      - 3y ago
GolfPopper 3y ago
>Chomsky's analysis of society, and the media, is common across radicals of all political persuasions. They need a theory to explain why their radicalism isnt popular, despite being "obvious" -- so you have false consciousness (marx), manufactured consent (chomsky), class envy (ayn rand), etc. There is a difference between "people don't agree with me, it must be a conspiracy!" and "I see people reliably making choices that go against their self-interest" there are likely other factors manipulating them based on those factors own self-interest. >Well chomsky would always 'find his enemies' in the elite: trump down to his base. Whilst this analysis is partly correct, it doesn't explain the existence of trump in the first place: his base chose him. Rather than any prior 'political elite'. Trump's base chose him... from a sample of one. Whether by design or happenstance, Trump's political shock-jocking drew eyeballs to the media covering him and got him vastly outsized mindshare by doing so. And the same thing is happening again right now as most media outlets dwell on every single outrageous thing he says, which helps Trump by making it more difficult for any casual voter to see the underlying pattern of fraud, failure, and severe personality disorder.
- mjburgess 3y ago
  What happens to our analysis if we throw away the idea of manipulation all togehrer? or perhaps, better, say: there is only manipulation. That Chomsky manipulates when he points out the manipulation of others; and what we care about is that we're not successful in our manipulations. By localising this notion of 'manipulation' to an 'elite' he creates a paranoid mood of analysis -- rather, manipulation is democratic; and as far as we're in trouble in politics, it's often because of how democratic manipulation turns out to be.
  - pphysch 3y ago
    Yes, people influence each other, even just by talking or writing or moving. No, this is should not be conflated with teams of media&communications experts spending thousands of man-hours on individual influence campaigns that have been focus-grouped to have precise impact.
wolverine876 3y ago
Very interesting. Is there someone who has explored or expanded on this idea?
- mjburgess 3y ago
  not for everything in the comment, but carefreewandering on youtube has a recent series on various media theories -- and there's a bit of that here
lyu07282 3y ago
To say Chomsky and Herman's media theory lacks empirical evidence and that every political theory held by (what western liberals consider as) "radicals" is the same, just reeks of neoliberal depolitization. Its the ultimate end-of-politics style argument to end all arguments, the little bit of actual political discourse left in western neoliberal societies is nothing but shunned and marginalized. The same vapid ideology that always claims to be free of ideology and that underpinned the culture of the Obama white house that brought us Trump in the first place. Not to mention the absolute havoc it wrought in the, for the lack of a better word, global south.
- mjburgess 3y ago
  Can there be a science of politics? If so then the must therefore be a non-ideological mode of analysis. If you deny the possibility of science here, so be it. I do not.
  - pphysch 3y ago
    You do realize that all of the people you dismissed as radicals -- Marx et al. -- more or less claimed the same thing? That they had a scientific or objective approach to history/politics/economics?
    - mjburgess 3y ago
      Yes, but i'm not advancing a particular theory -- only, at best the criteria for such a theory. The fashion for these theories is predictive power -- but this is unscientific when applied to complex systems of this kind. The error of marx et al. was to suppose that dialectical materialism is a possibility -- this mistakes the kind of phenomenon that history is -- we have learned, after marx, that maxism isnt even a possible theory today, we need to show we have learned these lessons
      - pphysch 3y ago
        Dialectical materialism is a powerful epistemological framework. It's a far better model than any alternative I'm aware of. > we have learned, after marx, that maxism isnt even a possible theory Are you referring to Popper? Have you actually read him? It's easy to say "Popper debunked Marxism" but his line of reasoning is flimsy at best.
tappio 3y ago
This is just so right. Very eloquently put. People just want to believe that humans are far more exceptional than we really are. These theories rest on the assumption that this 'elite' can predict the future. That there is no randomness in the world. That they are so smart and capable that they can just manipulate everyone. The truth is -- the individuals which make up the elite are just as clueless as everyone else. Furthermore, majority of them behave with good intentions. It is no surprise that no one really knows who represents the "elite". Once you dig deeper into the personality of each individual, you realise that they are just normal people. Often very selfish, but not much different from average Joe. The problems that we see and blame the elite, god, what ever for, are due to systems we have created. Institutions, culture, feedback loops; everything that exists when large groups of individuals exist together.
jampekka 3y ago
Chomsky is quite explicit that this is not due to any big conspiracy, but something that arises from how different interests align. It's sort of an evolutionary process, but this is (too) often stated as intentional agents behaving with some clear "conspiratory" goal. E.g. on journalists: "I don't say you're self-censoring - I'm sure you believe everything you're saying; but what I'm saying is, if you believed something different, you wouldn't be sitting where you're sitting." Isn't it quite an extraordinary claim that e.g. ad-funded media would be independent from their customers (the buyers of the ads)? Ad-funded media that doesn't please the ad buyers doesn't stay in business for long. This is discussed in Manufactuing Consent at length and the discussion doesn't resort to any conspiracies.

psychlops 3y ago

So are you saying the media does not have these filters?

js8 3y ago

I get your point, but I think there is a lot of empirical support for 5 filters. From a leftist perspective, there is something to your critique, I would say some of the hallucinations of the right-wing Trumpers far overtook what the mass media came up with using those filters. For example, anti-vaccines or stolen elections.

feedforward 3y ago

> They need a theory to explain why their radicalism isnt popular Actually what Chomsky notes is how the idea of "radical" laws such as that a person can't be kicked off their health plan if they develop cancer are not unpopular, but wildly popular with the public in polls. Nonetheless in the decades prior to Obamacare, despite its popularity, due to institutional reasons it did not become law. > the existence of Trump in the first place: his base chose him Chomsky said early on Trump support came mostly from the base, and the power structure did not want him. You're knocking down a straw man - inventing things Chomsky did not say, attributing them to him, then condemning him for words you put in his mouth, when he often said the opposite.

mjburgess 3y ago
I dont think we have a way to determine popularity as easily as you suggest. Brexit was popular: 52% said yes, but of those many would not pay any money at all to see it through. So, its popular if its free. Many things are. This is often the implied context around this polling: do you want better services and lower taxes? Yes. Yes, of course. The issue for america, in the case of universal healthcare, is that it would dramatically increase the tax burden and worsen healthcare for the middle/upper-middle. How many are so noble when it comes to this double-whammy? Few. On paper, people will spend other people's money with glee. In practice, politics expresses something ideologues can never really tolerate: that society is often getting what it wants. Or, more precisely, that the social ecology is both healthy and imperfect. That society may not get what it wants in some sense, but not for any malignant reason. The ideologue always has to locate the failure to reach the ideal with some flaw in people, in the system. They cannot brook that through ordinary, indeed healthy, political process can come non-ideal outocmes.
- techdmn 3y ago
  A close look at the political system here in the U.S. exposes many significant ways in which policy is protected from voter intent: Electoral college, gerrymandered districting, a first-past-the-post system that is hostile to third parties (the main parties control the national debate process, for example). It is indeed possible for a policy to be widely popular with the voting public, but NOT on the ballot in any meaningful way. This is without even dipping into the fear-mongering toward more egalitarian policies in healthcare, taxation, workers rights, etc.

nkh 3y ago

"When fox news called Arizona their viewers left them -- so fox jumped on election denial precipitating events which led to Jan 6th. What is the analysis here, say?" From the first filter in the article: Mass media firms are big corporations. Often, they are part of even bigger conglomerates. Their end game? Profit. And so it’s in their interests to push for whatever guarantees that profit. Naturally, critical journalism must take second place to the needs and interests of the corporation. "it doesn't explain the existence of trump in the first place: his base chose him." 2015/2016 Trump was a ratings goldmine. See point #1 about media profits.

mjburgess 3y ago
Yes, but chomsky's analysis of "profit" is as this sort of christian evil. The profit motive in this case is to give non-elite a determining factor in what they see. You see how the profit motive is in many cases, and in this case, a democratic force?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

10000truths 3y ago

All models are wrong. Some are useful. There are, in fact, many establishments that are frighteningly efficient at devoting time, money and effort into manipulating people. But those establishments are ultimately guided by people, too. And those people are fallible creatures, just as prone to vagaries of ideological fashion and lapses in rational thought as those who ushered the events of January 6. Even the juggernauts make missteps. It does not diminish the empiricism of Chomsky's ideas. The phenomenon you describe transcends notions of class, race, and and so on: over lifetime timescales, a group of people is a chaotic and unpredictable system, replete with knock on effects, where any actor or interest, no matter how fringe, has the potential to dominate. And while one can apply basic sociological principles to anticipate some short-term behaviors, it stands to reason that no amount of cold calculation or meticulous planning (by governments, media, elites, or otherwise) is immune to the simple fact that the course of any given organization is extremely difficult to consistently predict.

mjburgess 3y ago
Yes, exactly. The problem with chomsky's model is how it manipulates the landscape of our analysis, how it introduces paranoia into our perception of the media. This is, I think, a serious pathology and a serious flaw -- though, for Chomsky, it's the mood he wants you to be in.. since he has a bridge to sell you. A real political science here has to explicitly engage with this chaos -- has to model society as the irreducibly complex system that it is. Theories here arent neutral: they modify the very thing being described.
- standardly 3y ago
  Honest question. Have you read Manufacturing Consent?
  - mjburgess 3y ago
    Yes, but at 18 or 19.
    - 3y ago

GolfPopper 3y ago

>Chomsky's analysis of society, and the media, is common across radicals of all political persuasions. They need a theory to explain why their radicalism isnt popular, despite being "obvious" -- so you have false consciousness (marx), manufactured consent (chomsky), class envy (ayn rand), etc. There is a difference between "people don't agree with me, it must be a conspiracy!" and "I see people reliably making choices that go against their self-interest" there are likely other factors manipulating them based on those factors own self-interest. >Well chomsky would always 'find his enemies' in the elite: trump down to his base. Whilst this analysis is partly correct, it doesn't explain the existence of trump in the first place: his base chose him. Rather than any prior 'political elite'. Trump's base chose him... from a sample of one. Whether by design or happenstance, Trump's political shock-jocking drew eyeballs to the media covering him and got him vastly outsized mindshare by doing so. And the same thing is happening again right now as most media outlets dwell on every single outrageous thing he says, which helps Trump by making it more difficult for any casual voter to see the underlying pattern of fraud, failure, and severe personality disorder.

mjburgess 3y ago
What happens to our analysis if we throw away the idea of manipulation all togehrer? or perhaps, better, say: there is only manipulation. That Chomsky manipulates when he points out the manipulation of others; and what we care about is that we're not successful in our manipulations. By localising this notion of 'manipulation' to an 'elite' he creates a paranoid mood of analysis -- rather, manipulation is democratic; and as far as we're in trouble in politics, it's often because of how democratic manipulation turns out to be.
- pphysch 3y ago
  Yes, people influence each other, even just by talking or writing or moving. No, this is should not be conflated with teams of media&communications experts spending thousands of man-hours on individual influence campaigns that have been focus-grouped to have precise impact.

wolverine876 3y ago

Very interesting. Is there someone who has explored or expanded on this idea?

mjburgess 3y ago
not for everything in the comment, but carefreewandering on youtube has a recent series on various media theories -- and there's a bit of that here

lyu07282 3y ago

To say Chomsky and Herman's media theory lacks empirical evidence and that every political theory held by (what western liberals consider as) "radicals" is the same, just reeks of neoliberal depolitization. Its the ultimate end-of-politics style argument to end all arguments, the little bit of actual political discourse left in western neoliberal societies is nothing but shunned and marginalized. The same vapid ideology that always claims to be free of ideology and that underpinned the culture of the Obama white house that brought us Trump in the first place. Not to mention the absolute havoc it wrought in the, for the lack of a better word, global south.

mjburgess 3y ago
Can there be a science of politics? If so then the must therefore be a non-ideological mode of analysis. If you deny the possibility of science here, so be it. I do not.
- pphysch 3y ago
  You do realize that all of the people you dismissed as radicals -- Marx et al. -- more or less claimed the same thing? That they had a scientific or objective approach to history/politics/economics?
  - mjburgess 3y ago
    Yes, but i'm not advancing a particular theory -- only, at best the criteria for such a theory. The fashion for these theories is predictive power -- but this is unscientific when applied to complex systems of this kind. The error of marx et al. was to suppose that dialectical materialism is a possibility -- this mistakes the kind of phenomenon that history is -- we have learned, after marx, that maxism isnt even a possible theory today, we need to show we have learned these lessons
    - pphysch 3y ago
      Dialectical materialism is a powerful epistemological framework. It's a far better model than any alternative I'm aware of. > we have learned, after marx, that maxism isnt even a possible theory Are you referring to Popper? Have you actually read him? It's easy to say "Popper debunked Marxism" but his line of reasoning is flimsy at best.

tappio 3y ago

This is just so right. Very eloquently put. People just want to believe that humans are far more exceptional than we really are. These theories rest on the assumption that this 'elite' can predict the future. That there is no randomness in the world. That they are so smart and capable that they can just manipulate everyone. The truth is -- the individuals which make up the elite are just as clueless as everyone else. Furthermore, majority of them behave with good intentions. It is no surprise that no one really knows who represents the "elite". Once you dig deeper into the personality of each individual, you realise that they are just normal people. Often very selfish, but not much different from average Joe. The problems that we see and blame the elite, god, what ever for, are due to systems we have created. Institutions, culture, feedback loops; everything that exists when large groups of individuals exist together.

jampekka 3y ago

Chomsky is quite explicit that this is not due to any big conspiracy, but something that arises from how different interests align. It's sort of an evolutionary process, but this is (too) often stated as intentional agents behaving with some clear "conspiratory" goal. E.g. on journalists: "I don't say you're self-censoring - I'm sure you believe everything you're saying; but what I'm saying is, if you believed something different, you wouldn't be sitting where you're sitting." Isn't it quite an extraordinary claim that e.g. ad-funded media would be independent from their customers (the buyers of the ads)? Ad-funded media that doesn't please the ad buyers doesn't stay in business for long. This is discussed in Manufactuing Consent at length and the discussion doesn't resort to any conspiracies.