The loneliness of Noam Chomsky by Arundhati Roy

[MRDU]

SITTING in my home in New Delhi, watching an American TV news channel promote itself ("We report. You decide."), I imagine Noam Chomsky's amused, chipped-tooth smile.

Everybody knows that authoritarian regimes, regardless of their ideology, use the mass media for propaganda. But what about democratically elected regimes in the "free world"?

Today, thanks to Noam Chomsky and his fellow media analysts, it is almost axiomatic for thousands, possibly millions, of us that public opinion in "free market" democracies is manufactured just like any other mass market product — soap, switches, or sliced bread. We know that while, legally and constitutionally, speech may be free, the space in which that freedom can be exercised has been snatched from us and auctioned to the highest bidders. Neoliberal capitalism isn't just about the accumulation of capital (for some). It's also about the accumulation of power (for some), the accumulation of freedom (for some). Conversely, for the rest of the world, the people who are excluded from neoliberalism's governing body, it's about the erosion of capital, the erosion of power, the erosion of freedom. In the "free" market, free speech has become a commodity like everything else — — justice, human rights, drinking water, clean air. It's available only to those who can afford it. And naturally, those who can afford it use free speech to manufacture the kind of product, confect the kind of public opinion, that best suits their purpose. (News they can use.) Exactly how they do this has been the subject of much of Noam Chomsky's political writing.

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http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=11&ItemID=4116

[SharonAnn]

1. Wow! Really powerful, as all of her writing is.

Wow! Really powerful, as all of her writing is.

It's really a damning indictment of what the USA has become to the rest of the world and praise to one who has been describing it to all of us for decades.

[Jack Rabbit]

2. A very sad essay

One in which there is much uncomfortable truth.

While I believe Professor Chomsky oversimplifies the extent to which US corporate power is the driving force of in all matters nowadays, it certainly is the dominant force. One would get a better view of the world from reading Chomsky than listening to Rumsfeld's press briefings. After all, Chomsky at least tries to tell the truth.

[IrateCitizen]

3. Some thoughts on the article

First and foremost, I am a big fan of both Roy and Chomsky -- I consider Roy to be one of the most eloquent voices of the "Another World is Possible" movement out there -- so my take may be a bit more jaded than those who inevitably have an axe to grind with Chomsky.

Roy writes about Chomsky, "He embarks on his course of inquiry with an anarchist's instinctive mistrust of power." This is perhaps the greatest theme that I have taken away from reading Chomsky. The details of events about which he writes can be debated all day long, but it is an inevitable truth that power seeks to expand and solidify itself. Only by creating checks on power (and those who seek it) in the hands of the greater citizenry, can its neverending hunger for expansion be restrained.

Later, she writes: "As someone who grew up on the cusp of both American and Soviet propaganda (which more or less neutralised each other), when I first read Noam Chomsky, it occurred to me that his marshalling of evidence, the volume of it, the relentlessness of it, was a little — how shall I put it? — insane. Even a quarter of the evidence he had compiled would have been enough to convince me. I used to wonder why he needed to do so much work. But now I understand that the magnitude and intensity of Chomsky's work is a barometer of the magnitude, scope, and relentlessness of the propaganda machine that he's up against." That's a pretty accurate description of Chomsky, IMHO. I think that the first time I read him it felt like being bludgeoned by a giant sledge hammer right between the eyes. The lengths to which he coldly documents everything can be a slight bit overwhelming, and to be quite honest, I believe it is a reason why so many people will write him off at first reading. Given the lies that we are told from the moment we are born, it is a quite understandable reaction when confronted with something that not only presents an alternative view, but blows apart EVERYTHING you've ever been told.

It's completely understandable that Chomsky has his detractors (as does everybody) -- as it is also completely understandable that he receives the viritol bordering on outright hatred from some of them. After all, he is a guy who challenges the conventional wisdom on just about EVERYTHING out there. But this visceral reaction also underlies the important purpose he serves, regardless of whether he has been sucked into a leftist "cult of personality" as so many of his detractors claim at every opportunity.

[Karmadillo]

4. Kick. Great article. Thanks for posting.

n/t