A Conversation with Noam Chomsky

we said it today alive in the November of 74 you know didya and we said yeah we want to do a live so that's the name Daniel I get our live expansion mind Louis my mind my name is Steven SEF Carson this is dead our live presented by the Somerville producers group tonight we have as our guest dr. professor Noam Chomsky professor of linguistics and for 30 years very prominent and influential critic of American policy and of injustice around the world tonight we'll be discussing the role and the power of media in this country and the influences that it has in our lives that we may not realize and my first question professor is about the title of your book necessary illusions that control and democratic societies when people hear those terms of sub thought control and propaganda most often they think of they associate those with more totalitarian societies and certainly not democratic societies you explain those terms and what that means well actually the yeah the basic idea is given by the title which is actually not mine I borrowed it from Reinhold Niebuhr who's a very distinguished moralist and foreign affairs analyst he was known as the theologian of the establishment it was the grew of the Kennedys and the converge intellectuals George Kennan and so on and he he expressed the view that it's the task of the intellectuals people that we call the cool observers to create necessary illusions and emotionally potent oversimplifications for the general public the reason is that the general public are in are naive and naive simpletons and they you've got to ensure that they don't get involved in managing their own affairs or participating in the political system or making decisions and so on it would be immoral to do that as the immoral to let a three-year-old run across the street you have to take care of them and the way you take care of them is by creating these said illusions these necessary illusions that kind of keep the silly people on course and that's very standard a standard idea actually it's a kind of a leading idea of a good deal of liberal democratic theory so actually the previous book that friend and I wrote right before this was which is called manufacturing consent and we borrowed that term from walter Lippmann who's the Dean of American journalists and his conception was that the general population are what he called the bewildered herd and we have to he said we have to protect ourselves we smart guys have to protect ourselves from the rage and trampling of the bewildered herd it reminds me of another term by Aldous Huxley which was downward transcendence by means of herd intoxication regarding fascists and they're not just ideas they're talking about the necrotic societies yes and the idea is that in a totalitarian society you really don't need that much propaganda or the propaganda can be relatively crude and the reason is because you can control the population by force and in a military run society or a feudal society or a modern totalitarian society you can have a Ministry of Truth which you know produces obvious propaganda and everybody knows that it's breath again but they can choose to believe it or not choose to believe it as they wish but they can't do much about it because there they can be you've got the bludgeon to beat them with but as a society becomes more free and we're democratic you have to keep the bewilder to hurt under control in other ways and the way to do it is through propaganda and through manufacturing consent and construction of illusions and oversimplifications and a or simply marginalization a large part of the task of the media is simply to direct people away from issues so keep them focused on sitcoms and you know spectator sports or something anything as long as they don't get involved in something that might be serious and this goes if from every level from kind of imposing the values of a highly individualistic consumer culture where the only value this individual greed and people never do anything for one another and so on that's one aspect all the way up to concocting a framework of a delusionary framework for the interpretation of domestic and international affairs and different parts of the media have a different role to play in this respect it's only these idea they're not modern they go back to the earliest modern democratic revolutions the first real modern democratic revolution was in the 17th century in England when there were for the first time you know radical ministers and tradesmen were producing pamphlet literature and organizing people and reaching out to the general public for the first time and they had real highly democratical democratic ideas and I mean they were talking about the rights of ordinary people to control their own lives in universal education and access to health and all sorts and a lot of which is still not still far on the agenda and that had to be suppressed because the people as they put it in those days are getting so arrogant that they are refusing to submit to a civil rule and have to be repressed and that same idea reappears over and over again in the American Revolution for example the general public after the Revolution had won the general public had to be taught that the ideas that appeared in the revolutionary pamphlets about freedom and equality were not to be taken seriously and popular uprisings like say Shaye's in New England of rebellious farmers had to be crushed by force those guys were taking the this libertarian rhetoric seriously and they had to be taught that the way it works is different now the this country was founded on the idea that the people who own the country ought to govern that phrase is John Jay is the president of the Constitutional Convention and modalities had to be worked out to ensure that the people who owned the place also govern and that the rise of modern corporations it sort of new forms you know the the ideas keep being remodeled and reshaped in the 20th century it became a just a major industry in the early part of the 20th century the public relations industry was created and it's growing through a huge industry and it's very frank about what it does in fact it's leading figure Edward Bernays lives right here in Cambridge he wrote back in nineteen twenty suppose about what he called the engineering of consent which he said is the essence of democracy and we're a book called propaganda in fact in which he described the way you have to control people's thinking controlling the public mind is the concern of the advertising industry and has been from its origins puts lots of money and thought into their main concern actually is to create a public climate of support for business and business profitability to great labor unions to break the working class culture that at one time existed and so on well how would they informed public jeopardize that or threatened the highway 50 percent well yes bill so it's questions like why do we need bosses for example why can't we run things ourselves i watch it there be rich people living in mansions while other people our home was in the streets now why should some people have access to health care and others starve and not have access to it why should we pour money into creating stealth bombers instead of using it for schools and houses all kinds of questions immediately come to mind and the bewildered heard are likely to ask them if they're permitted to have a honest look at the world and it takes a that lasts just the last 10 years the general public was strongly opposed to the Reagan programs on virtually every issue but very large margin I mean right through the Reagan years if you take a look at this very heavily polled Society the reason is that business wants to keep its finger on the public pulse so it knows how to adjust the problem under in fact and there's extensive polling that it shows that right through the Reagan years the public was if went when people are asked would you prefer spending for military purposes or for or social spending like health and education welfare and so on by huge margins the public preferred social spending four to one or seven to one depending on how you ask fact most of the popularity the population was in favor of higher taxes if it was used for those purposes which is quite unusual people rarely are in favor of higher taxes but the policies nevertheless were quite the opposite the policies were to dismantle and destroy the limited support system that there was and to transfer resources from the poor to the rich the 1980s were a decade of outright robbery in which the poorer part of the population was robbed which is the great majority were robbed out right to enrich a small sector now that's why Tom Wolfe than the Boston Globe the other today described the 80s as one of the golden moments of human history for people like him it was a golden moment of human history they were robbing we wait in line and if you don't care about you know homeless people and the mutilated bodies in Central America and so on well it's just a golden moment look how rich I'm getting now the point is that you know if if any of this was presented to the general public in a regular intelligible fashion they would want to do something about it and in the United States which is a relatively free society you can't control them by force so they better not know about it think about well many people know that this problems exist I think that they just don't most people don't really know how to respond to them are there and maybe they're gone on to this but it was a very distorted way to look at it at least and it's very hard to know exactly what people you know people ask themselves what they don't understand what we can see what's presented so for example there was a canonical front-page story about the economic crisis it was about a man whose name I forgot who was telling about how impossible their life is no I can't exist he only makes fifty six thousand dollars a year he's having a tough time keeping it's two cars up and you know they didn't have time to spend in a swimming pool his wife even had to work you know to sort of and she didn't want to and this was really terrible and then he went on to and then he went on to say how awful everything else is you know there's roads you know good and schools are collapsing and so on and so forth what was the problem well the problem is big government well you know I mean put aside the question of what the problem is for a man who's making fifty six thousand dollars a year I mean that's grantee as a problem but why is the problem big government well doubtless there's corruption in government but there's a thousand times as much corruption in business and for every you know a bit of excessive spending in government there's a thousand times that much it goes of the super inflated salaries and idiotic managerial practices that have led to the decline of the productive system and in order to maximize rapid gain and so on but he didn't say the problems in the business system and in fact nobody would say you would never see that in the newspapers there's lots of attack on the corruption of government doubtless real you know but so marginal as to be insignificant on the other hand the the fact that that we have a business community that you know extracts huge profits and leads and has you know a sector of the population living an extraordinary luxury well making you know well control well in fact owning the country and also governing it and directing policy in a way which maximizes their profit but happens to be extremely destructive for the general population and future generations that's not that's not what this man complained about think it's not presented to you every day and it's not the world isn't shaped in those terms that's one of the things you don't look at even when people thought about the media they talk about him and his criticism in the media for something occasionally they'll be criticizing the media for being too soft on the government you know not being adversarial enough how about the criticism of the meat for being patches for business for the corporate system I've never see a true this isn't like that that's just one of the things you know it's best I think the most dominant criticism of the media would tend to be that it's too liberal I'm a new usual criticism is it's too adversarial but when you see it criticism from the other side you know says no it's not too adversarial it's that it's too subordinated the government will occasionally hear that but it's too subordinated to corporate interests that's unspeakable remember those work doesn't like that's not an English sentence save it because corporate interests don't exist they're part of the they're behind some curtain and you don't talk about this you can talk about the government being bad occasionally and you can criticize the government but the government is just it's just one segment of the business class that's all it is and the real problem is in it's basically in John J's dictum that dictum on which the country was founded if those who own the country are going to govern it which in fact is essentially what happens you want to look at who owns it not just that particular set of manager who happens to be running it today if you have written that resources come from the real source of power in this country from ownership those who owned productive assets of their country ultimately have the capacity to determine what else functions now how and in terms of again getting back to the media how would those systems be maintained or be reinforced in you know in a daily way and and television excuse me you mean what how does it work out there how does it well how is it reinforced if you say that that's something that is promoted or that's well I mean there are two levels at which you can discuss this which one you mean I mean no one we can talk about how they you know how do the institutions work out so that in fact the picture of the world is shaped in corporate interests that's one and secondly how our particular stories dealt with the particular issues but I think I'm interested in both well the first one is pretty straightforward and in fact you know it's not very mysterious just simply ask one just simply has to ask oneself what are the media okay so what are the major media you know let's take say the television channels or the cable channels or the big newspapers and so on what are they answer very simple they're big corporations in fact for the major media huge corporations what's more they're integrated into even bigger conglomerates you know like General Electric and Westinghouse and so on huge among real huge conglomerate now like any other corporations they have a product which they sell to a market the market is what keeps them going well what's the market markets advertisers that's what funds the media they're not funded by people who read them or look at them like when you turn on the tube you know CBS doesn't get a cent out of it they're financed by the advertisers in fact same with newspapers you may pay 50 Cent's but usually they lose money for every issue that they sell its the advertisers that keep them going so what you have is big corporations selling a product to other corporations well what's the product product is audiences if you sell upscale audiences you get more profit because you know there's no point advertising a Mercedes and you know in the slump so if you want to have if you want you know you want to sell a good product it's going to make a lot of money so rich audiences privileged audiences and in fact that's what the one sector of the media like the New York to the national media basically the New York Times The Washington Post those things that any Boston Globe for that matter they they're basically are selling privileged audiences so and and they're the ones who set the agenda you know I'd like they're like if you're running a small newspaper and say you know a big newspaper for that matter in Des Moines IO or something you don't have the resources to cover the world scene or even the national scene what you do you see what the New York Times has you do the same thing well see it's actually interesting if you watch the wire services I don't know you've got a if you got an AP wire here let it run and around four o'clock in the afternoon every day something comes across which says the New York Times is following for their front page tomorrow every editor in the country sees that he said okay here's the notice for tomorrow you know X Y Z because that's what the New York Times it's doing in fact even the television channels do that they see what's on the New York Times in the Washington Post that morning and that's true conceiving any evening a little more independent than a small newspaper but that's the way the thing works so there is a sort of a core of kind of agenda setting newspapers there is also a kind of a local quality press like say the globe or the Philadelphia Enquirer or the LA Times and they have a degree of in the they have enough resources so that they have a degree of Independence although they don't break far out of that framework either and then you sort of go on down to people who just pick up the structure and they then use the New York Times like to say if you have a Boston Herald you run the New York Times News Service this year the world I knew they I doubt if they have their own correspondents anyway you know so so on the one hand you've got these kind of agenda-setting media which are selling privileged audiences and then you have the mass media which are selling huge audiences and just sort of pick up the structure from above well we expect to come out of that let's take the agenda-setting media huge corporations selling privileged audiences to other businesses what kind of picture of the world they expect to come out of that system well you expect a picture that's going to reflect the interests of the sellers and the buyers and the product namely to reflect the to give a view of the world that serves the interests and the needs of the sectors of the population that in fact control the resources and make the decisions and they're the economic managers and the political managers and the cultural managers and the people in the culture business schools universities media and so on reflects their interests that's a top sector of the population at an extreme level it's the kind of people who Tom Wolfe was talking for it's it's the privilege now let's take the other sectors of the media and they have a job I mean their job is to those media have it their job is first of all set the agenda in a way which will serve those interests put the stories frame them suppress them modify them in such a way that it will serve the interests of privilege which they do but also to indoctrinate their own audience they go to indoctrinate them because those people the people in decision-making positions if they have to accept the values and interests and the understanding of the real bosses the people who actually are the corporate management and ownership it seemed to me that class that just say that this sooner this is being directed to is small and it's probably in fact it's becoming smaller that that very wealthy class whereas the you know the larger and expanding part of the population would be you know a lower class or you know the real mass media directed to the what I've been talking about so far is maybe 20% of the population which is subordinated to the interests of a few percent who really don't the resources what about the other 80% well they're the ones who are fed the rest of the media and the tasks of the media as far as they are concerned is in part - just inculcate the right patriotic slogans and make sure they don't look at the wrong things like people enriching themselves and their that their interest and so on you put that away but besides I just direct them director bewildered heard and make sure that they don't get involved in anything that might be unfortunate like running their own affairs so that's so so so basically a large part of the media's diversion and it's also isolation now make sure that everybody's alone you know each person is sitting alone in front of the - you don't support one another you don't have any organizations where you get together and try to work things out for different unions for example and the one of the major propaganda a very conscious propaganda efforts of the public relations industry was to destroy the unions I mean did that again that began well you know it's actually the United States has a very violent labor history so it began way back in fact I mean and we also had a highly class conscious business class very in fact if you read the business literature it's kind of its kind of like the Marxist literature that's all about class warfare and the masses and so on except they're on the other side just win the class war by suppressing the massive ISM and they're worried about the power of the masses and so on it's the only place in American you know reading material where it reads like kind of gold era Marxism upside down back in the 1970s century there's been a real battle now and American Labor's lost it I mean there was a long war in labor struggle for a long time to gain things like say the 40-hour a week finally gained it but no longer in fact the the unionization has declined very far and what's more the working class culture is declined the extent to which this is other here's it just takes a for example made a if you ask people I mean I ask my classes every year April thirtieth what's tomorrow and it's the day when you had dance around the Maypole or something the United States is I think probably the only country in the world where May Day is not a working-class holiday everywhere else in the world may days a working-class holiday well what's it celebrating what May Day is celebrating is a solid it's it's it's a holiday established by the International working-class movement in solidarity with the struggles of American workers you know they were it was in solidarity of the struggles of American workers for an eight-hour day over 100 years ago now the United States the only country where it's not celebrated in fact that we have a working class holiday it's Labor Day today when you go back to work that's when summers overnight now you know forget fishing you go back to work no see those things are very are not just since mother symbolic in a way but they reflect the enormous victory of the business class is over any conception of popular organization or popular solidarity now just the idea that people have a right to the fruits of their own labor or to struggle together to achieve something that's got to be completely destroyed and all that's left is the right of the rich to enrich themselves while nobody's looking and that's in fact what the public relations industry and advertising is dedicated to and what a large part of the mass media are dedicated to I think back to like for example looking at life magazines of the 40s and the during the war when there was very intensive propaganda and very blatant propaganda and looking at any of the you know mass might and magazine ask magazines of that time for example as I said Life magazine there's very intensive propaganda about you know characters of Hitler and so on and I think immediately after that and there in the 30s there was a bit of an experiment with socialism in this country and at least on one level but then that immediately after the war again to look at some of these magazines and see see the intensity of the propaganda effort to shift people's values and to move a much more of a consumer orientation and and so I associated was only with a big attack on unions starting and right after the war and an effort to roll back what had been gained by other working-class and the specialties vari I was very self-conscious I mean the business literature is full of discussion of how to do it they had begun in the late 30s working out one thing is go to Johnstown formula which was a technique that was used to break a major strike in 1937 by enlisting public opinion and using the media in fact to undermine popular support for the strikers and what they were fighting for which was in fact the interests of most of the population I was considered a big success and during the war of course this was all put on hold because yet another job but immediately after the war there was a major attack by business government the intellectual classes and so on to destroy the union's the working class culture solidarity popular organization and to restore to restore centralized power and at the hands of the privileged that led to the quiet period of the 50s when popular movements began again in the 60s the same thing happened in fact there was there's a very interesting book that everybody ought a read called the crisis of democracy put together by a group called the trilateral commission which is basically the international liberal establishment that this was 1975 and it was it's the people around Carter in fact Jimmy Carter and virtually his entire administration came out of that so it's the kind of liberal wing of the international ruling class trilateral meant United States Europe and Japan and they were all concerned with the same question they were concerned with the ferment of the 60s when out of crisis of democracy arose well what was the crisis if you read it it's very very enlightened ever talking to each other so you know everybody's very frank nobody was expected to read this book the the crisis was that people were organized sectors of the population that are usually passive and apathetic we're beginning to enter the political arena ethnic minorities women young people poor people I mean that you know people were just getting together and trying to organize and get into things within the Democratic Party as well after the crisis and the 1968 election and everything that happened Chicago by the 1972 election there was that at least temporarily the party had been restructured and that was called the crisis the crisis was that democracy was beginning to work and in fact the the spokesman for the United States happens to be a big professor at Harvard Samuel Huntington he he said that he described sort of the good old days when you didn't have a crisis he said Truman had been able to run the country with the assistance of a small group of Wall Street lawyers and bankers then there was no crisis everything that's the way it was supposed to be but now you couldn't just get a bunch of bankers and and Wall Street lawyers together and do everything because he had all these annoying people yeah the wielders herd getting involved and that's a crisis and how do you solve the crisis well you restore the population to apathy and obedience then you don't have a crisis of democracy anymore then democracy is working just fine working in the interest of the privileged you know it's by the privileged for the privileged and in their interests that's democracy and when that gets out of hand you have a problem well you know that's the same idea the thought that we've been hearing since the 17th century and every time you get popular involvement and action and organization you get an attempt to crush it in the United States it's been quite successful the people really are marginalized and isolated the United States I mean with what I mentioned about Maeda is a case in point but the United States has one of the weakest labor movements in the world it's the only industrial society virtually the only industrial society that doesn't have a labor based party we really have a one-party system if we were honest we have a business party one of the populist mayor's in the Midwest America leveland recently called it the bene publicans you know business party that's two factions and kind of shift around a little bit but it's what would be called the Conservatives of the Tories and almost any other industrial country there's no working class party there's no I doubt if there's a you'd have to really look hard in the United States to find any writer in a journal identify himself or herself as a socialist virtually no one every other industrial societies joke it's normal Canada England anyway in terms of that and and in terms of that in the press and people who are within the press as you say a journalist mentioned about socialist journalists as an example how is it that the perspective in the news that that we see is as narrow as it is is it how does that reinforced we're just saying is that they I've recently read a study about the the people who are presented as experts and in the the media of having a very narrow spectrum that's true but that's and there was a study in Mother Jones this month and uh the media and at Palace analysis group also do a study of people in Nightline or something that is true yeah of course picked from a pretty narrow spectrum but I think that kind of his misleading in a way although it's correct the point is that the entire spectrum is narrow yes so for example I'm gonna take I've done a lot of it well for example in this book I do some analysis on various issues so you know the big foreign policy issue of the 1980s was Nicaragua well you do bet Nicaragua so I took the two periods of pink concentration which if you look at number of news stories and so on it sort of peaked in early 1986 and in early 1987 that was in connection with Contra aid bills so I took all the opinion columns from the newspapers main newspapers Washington Post New York Times all the op-eds in the editor and the you know they're colonists and so on that's supposed to give the range of opinion and there were lots of them they were about plus 250 columns so how did they divide up on the issue well on the major issue what do you what's your attitude there the Sandinistas it was totalitarian 100 percent 100 percent of the cocaine the first sample a hundred percent of the columns were anti sandanista in the second sample 1987 there were two exceptions one of them was the ambassador of Nicaragua was allowed to write a column and the other was a the only person who had had first-hand experience in Central America a doctor in New York Kevin Cahill who's a specialist in Tropical Medicine and works has worked in Haiti and the Caribbean and the Central American he actually he was that he was the one person who said look it's the only place where they've carried out health programs directed to the war population they've had an enormous increase in life span huge decline in infant mortality because they're actually trying to do something for people that was those were the two columns in the whole Snapple that were not Andes and Aniston now you know that's the kind of unanimity you get in a totalitarian state now they're furthermore they're it's kind of interesting to see the topics that were never the weren't mentioned like you know whatever your attitude may be third the Sandinistas there's one rather striking property that differentiates them from say the government of El Salvador and Guatemala or even Honduras namely they don't slaughter their own population in in El Salvador and Guatemala they and even it to a lesser extent Honduras the government's essentially run by the Army and the army to gang murders you know having us trained and us supported murderers who've killed tens tens of thousands of people think huge massive slaughter they're well you can whatever you think about the Sandinistas they haven't done that so how might affect their record is much better than even Honduras in this respect well how much coverage did that get answer not one phrase not one phrase in all of the columns that shows how important mass slaughter and terror and torture are for elite values another a factor which is not in question is that the Sandinistas again whatever you think about them did carry out social reforms and they had quite a significant impact until they were cut back by the by us terrorism how much did that get well you know scattered phrases may be in the first sample two phrases in very negative context in the second the two columns I mentioned indicated that shows how important social reform are the third point that is interesting is is law international law I mean the the international the World Court ruled that US actions in Nicaragua were criminal that we were engaged in the unlawful use of force and that the embargo was illegal and that what we're calling humanitarian aid is military aid now that's the highest world tribunal you know the International Court of Justice how much attention was paid to that virtually zero I put all of this together and you get a picture I won't go on you get a picture of a society which is virtually totalitarian in its conformity to the needs of power which cares nothing about terror and violence as long as it's carried out for a constructive perfect to mention in your book about and a lecture that there was accusations of aiding the guerrillas from Colombia that were just completely fabricated I mean there was a big story in this New York Times we ran the ran a big series on Nicaraguan support for guerrillas in Colombia Colombian government denied it there's nothing like that ever happened that was never reported and they continued to publish the accusations it got to the point where they they might be it they had an editorial a couple of months after this event with it which denounced the Sandinistas for support for the guerrillas and it said in fact they had a mass they carried out a mass in Nicaragua for the guerrillas some of them who had been killed in an army operation a reader in Arizona was curious about that and he wrote the New York Times a letter asking them if they could tell him give him some information about this mass and he kept that it you know they never published his letter but he kept at it and finally they conceded the foreign editor conceded privately that they would never publish it that what actually happened was that there was a mass for something else and in the mask somebody got up in the back of the room with a with a poster about the guerrillas and taken out that's what happened so that becomes Nicaraguan support for the guerrillas and running a mass for them well they conceded it in private but they never commit a correction and it just goes on and on like this I mean I'm picking one issue you pick any issue in the world and you'll get the same story these are the operations of a well organized propaganda system with perfectly obvious objective its interest a very interesting case the United States because it's without force the nobody's forcing them to do it you know nobody got a gun at their heads this is done out of interest you know it's done out of interest and out of institutional need so it's not totalitarian it's done under conditions of freedom it's what I mean by flood control in a democratic society let's say well we're planning to take of some questions from the people that are here in our studio to discuss some of the topics we've been discussing tonight and some other questions and perhaps we can take the first question now hi dr. Chomsky hi um I'd just like to ask what you think the necessary illusions are that are supported by the media's any sin Denise Tobias in Nicaragua well that's very clear actually there's if we had something that you could call newspapers in the United States they would tell you what drives American policy towards the third world in third Central America and that's very explicit this is a free country you can the the major document finding documents have been Declassified find out what they say and here's what they say they say that the major threat they say that the roots of American policy in Latin America are the primary root is the economic group the trade and investment there they say that the major threat to US interests is what are called nationalistic regimes which are responsive to the needs of the masses of the population for improvement in living standards and diversification of production for domestic needs why is that a threat because we have to impose a climate favourable to private business including guarantees for a repatriation of profits for foreign investment it says we have to protect our resources and the documents say right back all including the Dubs people like George Kennan we have to support police States if necessary because liberal regimes will be too indulgent to people carrying out these negative actions well it goes on and on like that this is repeated over and over again in the highest level planning documents it's applied repeatedly throughout the world that's why I've continually had to overthrow democratic governments capitalist governments in fact when they became too devoted to their own to the needs of their own populations well you know that's what the Sandinistas were the sandinistas were directing resources to the general population and the way from the elites and they weren't protecting the interests of the business community so they have to go on that there's unanimity the only question is how they go so you have a tactical debate between the people who say let's do it by terror and violence let's support the Contras and then the doves who say let's do it by economic strangulation and ideological warfare but that they must go that's certain how often have you read an editorial or an opinion column in the United States saying this an ministers are doing good no I mean you certainly find people who say it for example Oxfam you know independent the major development and aid organization has described the policies of this end inist is as unique in the 76 developing countries in which they work in their concern for the needs of the population and the efficiency with which they address them but they don't write an op-ed because that's not a permissible position I'm wondering you say this Gallup poll they said that a majority of Americans are in favor of funding social programs and are willing to raise taxes to pay for them I'm wondering why in your mind Democratic candidates who stand for those things keep losing particularly presidential candidates there aren't any there's no presidential candidate who stands for those things for example right at the at the time when that's what the polls were saying the Democrats were saying let's do the opposite mondo freaks and L didn't say that Mondale didn't in fact Mondale did not Mondale's position was he was he was in favor of cutting back military spending but also cutting back social spending and the reason was because in 1984 the Democrats were basically the party of fiscal conservatism they were the party that was representing the interests of the banks and the investment firms and so on who were concerned with the big deficits the Republicans were the party of what's called Keynesian growth you know big government lots of government spending that's what the military means big subsidies to high-tech industry that's what the Pentagon basically is let's forget the deficits in fact the two parties that switched their unusual positions 180 degrees but none of them were talking about dropping military spending in favor of social spending you can't do that military spending is the way we keep high-tech industry going in fact Reagan's military spending programs were just basically the carter programs they were proposed in the last year through the carter administration and they were implemented under reagan and the reasons were because the business community all fundamentally had the same opinion that you have to figure out a way to increase profitability of corporations cut back social spending and force the public to subsidize advanced industry i mean there's one sector of American industry that's basically competitive high-tech industry you know computers and all that sort of thing electronics and you've got to get the public to pay for it the public has to pay for research and development then has to you know provide it has to subsidize the costly parts then if there's any profit to be made that goes back to private enterprise well we call free enterprise is actually publicly subsidized private profit has to be done through the Pentagon system here on that there was unanimity everyone was agreed you know virtually across the board that you had to cut back social programs and increase military spending that is high-tech subsidies didn't matter what the public for do you feel that there were any issues raised in Jackson campaign that lawyer sure there were issues raised in the Jackson campaign but they were not presented under the presentation of Jackson in the media didn't present those issues they did that boy did them in favor of other things marketing submit agree more did he say this did he say that but not what the populist content of the programs was doesn't it appear that the working class is in fact not being pacified anymore and being squeezed right out of the arena and whose aims were that serve is it not being squeezed it's yeah it's I mean the working class are being pushed further and further rather than being pacified to the point where they're hardly earning a living wage many people oh that's pacification I mean I I'm not sure I understand yes you're right they're being very much suppressed but they're also being pacified there there's I mean labour militancy is at a pretty low level even though they're the working class has been suffering like for example real wages the amount you actually can buy for what an hour's work it gives you that's been declining since about 1973 that's unprecedented in American history it's never happened before meanwhile others say the richer sectors of the population especially in the 80s have their incomes of them with their incomes have been going way up their economic value has been going way up nevertheless there's the reaction the labor Clinton the working class the reaction to this on the part of the working class and the poor is pretty limited beautiful something to happen eventually Gordon I would think that is fuel for something to eventually grow I mean the point of the the the goal of the cultural system is to prevent it from happening by preventing people from even seen I don't think people are in general aware of the fact that living standards for the mass of the population are regularly going down and that it's going to be even worse in the future because the enrichment of the rich is taking place at the expense of future generations that's what the deficits amount to but you know that's not present I mean you know if you if you if you look at the figures you can see it in fact if you look at your lives most people can see it but they are not presented with this characterization of the world on a daily basis you may find an article on page 78 some day that you know says something about it but what is not presented is this this part of me the mate this ought to be upfront this ought to be the headlines or be presented daily so you see what's happening to your world and that's not being done if that were happening probably would get the labor in the agency next well I suppose my question follows from that I'd like you described in a modernization of the criticism it's not merely lack of access this whole host of things that are happening in order for these things not to be brought to everyone's attention how does it work yeah the marginalization you know there are plenty of critics around but they occasionally took them to TV or on the community supported radio stations for example around the country where there are community where there are listener supported radio stations I don't mean like WGBH where you send them your 10 bucks and they do whatever they feel like but I mean really community supported radio stations where you send in your 10 bucks and then you play a role in deciding what they do and there's interaction in the towns and cities that have that are rather different I spend a lot of time traveling around the country when you go to a place like say Boulder Colorado or you know Madison Wisconsin or someplace that has a lively listener-supported radio station you feel the difference in the popular culture because people do have a way of participating and presented to them on a regular daily basis an alternative picture of the world which reflects their interests and their concerns and in fact reality that doesn't happen in places like Boston and where there are individual critics they will of course be very much marginalized well if just I mean it takes a that book that was mentioned that book was actually based on lectures that were given over the the national radio in Canada the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation series of you know big series of lectures every year that was given there then the book was published in Canada and it's on the bestseller list in Canada in the United States and Boston was also published in Boston but the Boston Globe wouldn't even list it under the listing of books by local authors no local boy makes good type list that they have every Sunday where you know if you write a chapter and cookbook they have you listed there but that and of course there could be a review in the United States it's inconceivable nobody would have heard of it well that's the difference and that that happens across the board I mean that my colleague had returned and I who wrote the manufacturing consent book our first book was published by a publisher that was owned by Warner Communications who also owns this outfit they didn't like that book they wanted didn't want the publisher to distribute it 20,000 copies had been printed the publisher which was a successful publisher insisted on printing it they cooked the publisher out of business they literally put them out of business and destroy their whole stock to prevent them from distributing that one book that was that's yeah that's Warner Communications now that's extreme things usually don't get that for I don't want to suggest that that's typical but there's a whole range of ways to ensure that unless you conform to the basic doctrines of the system you're not going to be heard that this there's a mechanism that begins in kindergarten that starts filtering people out for obedience and conformity and that goes for the schools and the colleges and the professions and if you pass through those filters you can take part and if you start deviating you'll be put off let's take our next question please yeah I just like you to comment on well this is an observation I think probably the people who most buy the necessary illusions are probably the ones who'd be most surprised to be considered in the bill wildered herds like people who feel that they're educated probably make fifty six thousand a year etc my take on things is that marginalized groups don't buy the necessary illusions and their jargon and everything else reflects that could you comment on how you think their role could be you know the role of marginalized groups the United States remember the marginalized groups is the large majority of the population fragmented yeah I'm fragmented but put them together that's the overwhelming majority I think your point is right well it's hard it's kind of hard to prove because the poles don't ask the right questions but my impression was exactly like yours that the educated part of the population is the most indoctrinated and the most deluded and I think there are good reasons for that I mean they're the ones who are subjected to the indoctrination regularly on a daily basis to be educated means to be bombarded with propaganda distortion the illusions is all the time for most of the population you see what's in your lives and you can't be deluded about the things I've just been talking about because it's right in front of your nose you know you and and you're not bombarded by the regular propaganda because we consider too unimportant you're just pushed to the side so what can these people do well they can create exactly the crisis of democracy that elites are worried about they can become organized they can enter the political arena they can begin to they could take over of the political system by their numbers as they should and in fact they can take over the system of production as well after all wide yeah why do you need bosses and managers what role do they serve other than to enrich themselves and to distort the process of production for the interests of the of the wealthy that's it let's face it and there's no other need for them and as long as you have as long as there's no law of nature that says that the people in a factory can't run the factory I can do it better than the manager they know better what's going on and so on and so forth alright now you know if when those issues become on the agenda you'll have a real crisis of see and in fact you'll complete the revolutions that began in the 18th century and then what cut off professor chance we have time for one more question I just wonder if the opening of the so-called Iron Curtain threatens any of our necessary illusions and if you foresee any changes as a result of that what's happening behind the iron curtain a very exciting development too much to talk about but the way the West is looking at it they want to they want to convert Eastern Europe into a kind of a third world so the idea is to convert Eastern Europe into Mexico and you know Dominican Republic and so on make them easy to rob that's the basic idea so they too can provide markets and resources and cheap labor and so on and so forth it's causing a problem for propaganda at home because the main way in which the general population here has been kept under control for the last 50 years is the Russian threat you can't wave it anymore in fact the invasion of Panama was very interesting in this respect it's so typical an operation of US violence that it barely you know merits a footnote but it was different in one respect it's the first act of u.s. international violence in 50 or 60 years that hasn't been justified on the pretext that we're defending ourselves from the Russians so when we invaded Grenada the Dominican Republic or whatever we're defending ourselves in the Russians or any Russians but at least they were over there we can say we're defending ourselves from this time you know that was beyond the imagination even of the editorial writers in the State Department so they had to set up a whole new propaganda framework and in fact it's interesting the way at work this problem was foreseen a couple of years ago and as soon as the United States decided that Noriega who had been there there aren't they're thug for decades they decided that he was getting to independence and he had to go the media took the cue and they began a process of demonization you know they took that he's a minor criminal by the hutt standards of the people the United States support is you know it looks like a choirboy but they turned him into the the the major monster since Attila the Hun the the drug war which is a complete hoax in my opinion its drugs is a serious problem but the drug war is not directed to it the drug war is largely designed as a way of controlling the American population can't terrify them by the Russians terrify them by you know narco something-or-other and this was this was used so Noriega is a minor is a minor figure in the drug system less significant than George Bush for that matter and certainly less significant than the bankers who are being put back into power in Panama he's but he became you know this this assistant he was somehow turned into the center of the international drug cartel well this huge propaganda operation has been going on for a couple of years and by the time they've tried various ways to get rid of Noriega because he was too independent and you know Panama has to be under a dossal pliable government so that we control the canal and so on that by the time they decided to invade you know Ted Koppel could get up and say he's a member of the fraternity of international villains who Americans love to hate sure after several years of demonization why did they love to hate him in 1989 in 1985 when he was our boy just as much of a thug then as he is now Ted Koppel didn't ask that question because to ask that question would be immediately to see the necessary illusions crumble well that's the kind of problem that the US propaganda system is facing and will continue to face with the inability to conjure up the Russian threat whenever it's needed to justify more military spending at home or professor Chomsky I'm afraid we're out of time I very much appreciate your comments and their questions from our audience and it's our hope that this evening will give people perspective on the news and where it originates and also an opportunity to look at the news and information we all receive every day and in enormous quantities from that from a jaded perspective but from an informed perspective and we're those that information may originate and the impact that it has on our lives thank you very much for joining us this evening my name is Seth Carson and goodnight you you

Channel: Dead Air Live

Views: 4,913

Keywords: Somerville Producers Group, SPG, Dead Air Live, DAL, Somerville Community Access TV, SCATV, SCAT, JoJo LaRiccia, Joanne LaRiccia, LaRiccia Media, LaRiccia Media Productions

Id: ma2Xnx0rkZU

Length: 59min 48sec (3588 seconds)

Published: Sun May 11 2014