Noam Chomsky: Manufacturing Consent

Thought Control in Democratic Societies

  • Media and public relations shape and control opinions and information.
  • Major media (national press, television) control information sources.

Chomsky's Perspective

  • Scholarship reveals human creativity.
  • Language and cognition studies show creativity in ordinary people.

Chomsky's Linguistic Theories

  • Syntactic Structures (1957) revolutionized linguistics.
  • Proposed a new way of looking at the theory of grammar.
  • Worked out formal rules of universal grammar.
  • These systems are innate features of human beings.
  • Language development unfolds from a genetically determined program.
  • Core principles are the same across languages.

Link Between Linguistics and Politics

  • Fundamental human need is creative work and inquiry.
  • A decent society maximizes opportunities for this.
  • Advocates for a federated, decentralized system of free associations (anarcho-syndicalism).
  • This is suitable for an advanced technological society.

Sources of Authority and Domination

  • Challenge legitimacy, requiring justification.
  • Some coercion is justifiable (wartime, parent-child relations).
  • Major issue today is private control over resources (state capitalism).
  • Freedom of press is crucial for a healthy democracy.

Contrary View

  • Democracy as a game for elites; masses marginalized and controlled.
  • Quote from John Jay: "the people who own the country ought to govern it."

Manufacturing Consent

  • Walter Lippmann described it as a revolution in democracy.
  • It's a technique of control.
  • The common interests elude the public, so it has to be managed by a specialized class.
  • Indoctrination is the essence of democracy.
  • Control what people think when you can't control them by force.
  • Propoganda, creation of necessary illusions marginalizing the general public or reduces them to apathy.

Chomsky's Early Life

  • Born in Philadelphia in 1928, grew up in a Jewish household.
  • Involved in Zionist movement focused on socialist ideals and Arab-Jewish cooperation.
  • Family intellectual culture with working-class values and solidarity.
  • Attended an experimental progressive school with no competition.
  • Studied Gabriel Jackson's Spanish Civil War at age 12.

Chomsky's Political Education

  • Newsstand at 72nd Street in New York City provided political education.

Mass Media's Role

  • Mobilize public support for special interests.
  • Major decisions (investment, production, distribution) are in the hands of corporations.
  • These corporations also staff government positions and own the media.
  • Consent is manufactured for the "political class" (20%) and the general population (80%).

Propaganda Model Filters:

  • Institutional analysis of major media.
  • Ownership: Media are major corporations, integrated with larger conglomerates.
  • Advertisers: Media sell privileged audiences to businesses.
  • The perspective satisfies needs/interests of sellers, buyers, and the product.

Escaping Indoctrination:

  • Acknowledge imperfections and past shortcomings.
  • Support the underdog, feeling shame for not standing up.

Chomsky's Activism

  • Conscious decision to become a political activist, aware of consequences.
  • Immoral to not act against war crimes.

War and Media

  • Media war with tremendous fakery and subservience.
  • Washington's Office of War Information sought to tell the truth during the war.
  • The motion picture industry, radio networks play a role in the world tactics.

Media Control and Selection

  • NYT is the most influential newspaper and creates history.
  • It selects, shapes, controls, and restricts information.
  • The New York Times creates history.
  • Important decisions are being made in a flipped and frivolous way.

Bias and Agendas

  • Liberal and conservative media fall within the same framework.
  • The system functions well with a liberal bias to bound thought effectively.

Filters Determining Media Output

  • Ownership: Major corporations owning and integrating media.
  • Advertisers: Media sell audiences to advertisers.
  • Media corporations, big corporations that are selling relatively privileged to other businesses.

Diversion

  • Real mass media dull people's brains.
  • Reduce the capacity to think.

Sports as Indoctrination

  • Offers something unimportant to pay attention to.
  • Sports build irrational attitudes of submission to authority.

Paired Examples

  • Find atrocities committed by official enemies vs. friends/allies.
  • Did the media use the same agenda and criteria in both cases?

East-Timor

  • Elaine Bruyere founded the East Timor Alert Network to raise awareness
  • There are reports of atrocities against the Timorese people, and yet Canada and other nations have consistently voted against UN resolutions to end the occupation.

Methodology in propaganda

  • Controlled experiments of atrocities of one sort are committed by official enemies and friendly/allies. If framework from the government are accepted it is not honest for an outside observer.

Cambodia

  • The United States responsibility of attack against Cambodia started with bombing ending 1975.

Truths

  • The great act of genocide in the modern period is Pop pot.
  • Extraordinary amounts of outrage, exaggeration, no evidence required, fake photographs are fine.

Principles

  • Responsible for your own actions.
  • To minimize human suffering, real democracy is key.
  • Be responsible for the predictable consequences of your actions.
  • Not responsible for the predictable consequences of someone elses actions.