Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media - Notes

Thought Control through the Media

media operate, public relations operate, extensive thinking about necessity of finding ways of controlling and marginalize the public in a democratic society.

“Propaganda is to democracy what violence is to dictatorship”

Chomsky believes people can see through the deceitfulness, but they must put in the effort.

Humans aren’t genetically programmed to learn one or another language.

Anarcho-syndalism - humans dont have to be forced into cogs/machines.

  • Chomsky envisions an anarcho-syndicalist future with direct worker control of the means of production and government by workers' councils which would select representatives to meet together at general assemblies.

  • seeking out forms of authority and domination, and challenging their legitimacy - sometimes they are legitimate (need for survival, for example)

    • Chomsky thinks that feminism and other such movements do this, but it would be useful to attack the fundamental state structure of capitalism

Democracy reuqire free access to information, ideas, opioion. The same standard holds inthe Media, educational instituions, intellectual comunity in general.

17th centrury english revolution - struggle between parliament representing elements of gentry and merhcants, rpyalists representing elite gorups, there was also a lot of popular ferment going agaisnt al of them - many popular movements questioning everything (relationship between master and slave. authority altogether) - radical publishing,

Founding Fathers - people who own the country ought to govern it (John J.)

wALTER lIPPMAN (1921) - Manufacture of consent, revolution in practice of democracy, technique of control, useful and necessary, cause concerns of all people/common interest eludes people opinion, so domain of specialized class.

Reinhold Neibuhr - rationality belongs to the cool observer. Cause of stupidity of average man, he folows not reason but faith, this naive faith requires necessary illusion and emotionally potent oversimiplifications that are provided by the myth maker to keep the ordinary person on cours.e

In a military/feudal/totalitarian state, it doesn’t matter what people think, because they have a bludgeon over their head by the state, that can control what they do. WHen the state loses the bludgeon (e.g., can no longer control people by force), and when voice of ppl can be heard, creates a problem int hat people becaome so curious that they get arrogant and erratic so that don’t have the humility to submit to civil rule, so you gotta control what people think (easiest way to do this is propaganda - manufacture of consent, marginzalizing the general public, apathizing them).

Chomsky is against idea of developing public personalities treated like stars.

If you want to understand how society works:

  • Who’s in a position to determine the way society functions?

    • Investment, production, distribution decisions + staffing executive positions in government + what is in the media are usually in the hands of a relatively concentrated network of conglomerates, investment firms, corporations, and so on

      • They have an overwhelmingly dominant role in the way life happens in a society

Whose consent is being manufactured?

  • Two targets of propaganda:

    • Political class (20% of the population who are relatively educated, participate in social life as managers or cultural managers, they’re supposed to vote) - due to their important roles in society, they are a group that must be deeply indoctrinated

    • Other 80% of the population whose purpose is to simply follow orders and not think or pay attention to anything - they usually pay the cost (advertisements divert these people - national football league, tv shows, etc.)

The Propaganda Model is an institutional analysis of the major media. Focusing mainly on the national media (the media that set a general agenda that others more or less adhere to). The elite media are the agenda-setting media (The Washington Post, the New York Times, the major television channels, and so on). How do they control the media narrative?

  • Selection of topics

  • Distribution of concerns

  • Shifting emphasis on particular issues

  • Framing of issues

  • Filtering of information

  • Bounding debate within particular limits

The Mass Media:

  • Determine

  • Select

  • Shape

  • Control

  • Restrict

  • Serve the interests of dominant elite groups

Chomsky thinks the equanimity and apathy with which many people allow or observe events such as Hitler’s reign is more terrifying that Hitler’s reign itself (as an example - this is not exactly what he said).

The papers are 60% ads, 40% news.

Pol Pot - the great genocidal act

  • Khmer Rouge takeover of Cambodia.

  • Fraudulent media stuff regarding the takeover, painting an all-too-clear ‘good’ and ‘bad’ party

Indonesia invasion of East Timor, bombing Dili (1975)

  • “The department of state desired thatt the U.N. prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. THis task was given to me, and I caried it forward with no inconsidereble success.

  • By late 1977/78, indonesia set up receiving centers for Timorese coming out of the jungle waving white flags

    • More educated indonesians, or ones suspected to belong to Fretilin (or other oppositional parties) were killed

  • Killed children and babies, strategy was starvation

  • U.S. provided 90% of the arms, and in 78 they increased arms sales under Jimmy Carter’s government (kill more timorese, get more profit)

  • U.S., and Canada coverage of East Timor massacre dropped to 0 in 1978 (the peak of the atrocities)

  • Half a dozen people committed to make this story break through, and nearly everything we know is basically thanks to them (1:24:30)