A series of objections worth considerations otherwise noted.
1. This
program has been made possible by JohnDAndCatherineTMacArthurFoundation.
2. NoamChomsky
has been called many things. Themostimportant intellectual alive. America’s
leading dissenter, and a few other things notsuitable for polite company.
Scholars around the world know him for his revolutionary work on structure
ofLanguage, studies that he has pursued atMIT since1955. But he’s
mostcontroversial as freelance critics of Politics and power. Honest dissidence
is what he calls it, a blunt scrutiny of national power, arbitraryGovernment
and Injustice. In dozens of books and hundreds of articles over the past
quarter of century, he’s criticised the superpowers, USinvolvement in
southeasAsia and centralAmerica, Sovietinvolvement inAfghanistan and
Chezkoslovakia. Twentyyearsago, he was an early volunteer in the protest
against the war inVietnam. We met inBoston to talk about dissent then and now.
3. You
saidrecently that this country is moredissident than you ever remember it,
moreso than even during theVietnamWar. When I read that, my mind went back
immediately to that period, to the protests in the streets, the
massdemonstrations, the riots on collegecampuses and in the ghettos. That
dissidence was powerful and emotional and unprecedented. You say we're a
moredissident nation now?
4. The
dissidence now is muchwider and moredeeplyrooted, and it's found in sectors of
the population that were excluded from the dissidentmovements of the1960s. I
think to compare the present situation with thelatesixties is a little
misleading, because of the scale of what is being protested. Movements of the
sixties became, PeaceMovement at least, theAntiwarMovement, became a
significant movement at a time when we had thousands of troops attacking
southVietnam and expanding the war to all ofIndochina. Major war of hundreds of
thousands people slaughtered. One of the major wars of the century, in fact.
Until that time thePeaceMovement was verylimited. As late as mid1966 here in
Boston, which is a prettyliberal city, we had a hard time having public
meetings, because they'd be broken up, often by students. In fact, it really
wasn't until late1966 and early1967, when we had about fourhundredsthousand
troops fighting inVietnam, that we got a largescale protestmovement going. Now,
compare the eighties. When RonaldReagan came into office, one of thefirstthings
he did was the lay the basis for, his advisors, one of thefirstthings they did
was for direct military intervention in centralAmerica. TheWhitePaperOfFebruary1981 was
a clear effort to [“]test the waters[“], to see if you could get the population
to support direct dispatch of troops to elSalvador and probable military
intervention inNicaragua. That's kind of comparable, roughlycomparable to the
situation JFK faced in 1961 or even to the late fifties. At that time,
intervention could take place without any protest, but as soon as
theReaganpeople made just the beginnings of an indication that there might be
direct military intervention, there were substantial protest, spontaneous
protests from all over the country. There were demonstrations, the churches
were protesting, there were letters toCongress. In fact, the protest was
sufficient so that the administration backed off, because they were afraid it
was going to harm the programs that they were reallyinterested in.
5. And
they went underground with it.
6. ReaganAdministration
was literallydriven underground by a dissidentpopulation. The scale of
clandestine activities, in fact, is a pretty good measure of domestic
dissidence. After all, clandestine activities are
secret from no one except the domesticpopulation.
7. Are
you talking only about dissidence toward centralamerican policies? Do you see?
8. No,
it's muchbroader. It's a striking fact that on almost every major issue, the
population has been quitestronglyopposed to the policies of theReaganadministration.
These have been true from the beginning. Take a look at the polls. The
pollresults have been quite consistent about this. In fact, apart from a
verybrief period in the very firstyear of the administration, when there was
support for a military buildup briefly. Apart from that, the population has
been basicallytending toward classicalNewDealpositions. It favours social
spending over military spending. Population had been in favour of increased
taxes if they are used for improving theEnvironment or Education or
socialwelfare, and so on. If you look at the questions on the polls, which
asks, Would you spend suchandsuch amount of money on new weapons or for say
medical insurance, the answers always have been, consistenly have been, In
favour of socialspending against militaryspending. The population has been
quite stronglyopposed to directInterventionism. Theonlyexceptions to this are
the oneday, quick victories, Grenada.
9. Libya.
10. Things like that, of
course, everybody rallys around the flag. But anything that has extended even
to a limited extent beyond that has encountered public opposition. It’s not
organised public opposition.
11. You are saying that
negativepoll on the issue constitutes dissidence?
12. No, it onlyconstitutes
dissidence if it becomes articulated.
13. Articulated.
14. On many issues, it
doesn't become articulated. On centralamerican policy, it did, in fact, become
articulated, and that's what drove theGovernment underground.
15. Even as we talk, however,
fiftyfivepercent of the people in the latestGallupPoll express approval
ofPresidentReagan as he is preparing to leave office, so that you have polls
showing opposition to his policies while he himself remains unusuallypopular in
the public standing.
16. I think there’s something
muchmorestriking than polls, and that is the events of the1980s. In the1980s, I
think it’s a verydramatic fact that theGovernment driven underground because of
its domesticenemy, because its domestic enemy, because the domesticpopulation would
not tolerate its activities. In fact, theReganadministration is veryinteresting
in this respect. It’s thefirstadministration to have created anything like
theStateDepartment.OfficeOfPublicDiplomacy. I mean, there were elements of that
before.
17. I have to tell you that
Kennedyadministration, Johnsonadministration [which Moyers served], and
Nixonadministration all engaged in domestic propaganda.
18. WoodrowWilson,
CreelCommission.
19. That’s where it began.
20. But there’s a substantial
increase in scale. In theReaganadministration, there were massive enterprise to
control the public mind. In fact, when it was exposed inIranContraHearing,
partiallyexposed, one high administrative officiel
described as themostsuccesful operation carried out. He said, It’s the kind of
operation that you carry out in enemyterritory.
That expresses the attitude toward the population completely. The population is
the enemy, and you’ve got to control the enemyterritory, and the way you do it
is veryextensive public diplomacy, meaning propaganda. Sure, it’s always
been there.
21. LyndonJohnson considered
it as.
22. That’s right, but there’s a qualitative change.
23. RichardNixon, Enemy are
the people on the streets, the demonstrators.
24. But the point is, there’s
a qualitative change in the resources, the intelligence it’s been devoted, the
resources drawn upon to ensure that enemyterritory is controled. Now, why go
into that? Why do that? It’s because the enemy is muchmoredangerous. When the
enemy’s quite.
25. The protestors. The
dissenters.
26. Yeah. When the enemy is
quite. Like for example, when JohnFKennedy sent americanAirForce to start
bombing southVietnam in1962, as he did, he didn’t have to keep it secret. It
was on the frontpage of theNewYorkTimes. Nobody cared. When Johnson sent
twentythousandmarines toDominicanRepublic to, in fact, prevent democratic
revival there, there was a little bit of protest, but basically it wasn’t
secret. When Johnson sent hundreds of thousands of troops to invade
southVietnam, it wasn’t a secret. When we subverted theonlyfreeelection inLaos
in1959, it wasn’t a secret. Nobody evercared about these things. The population
was reallymarginalised. That changed. It changed as a result of the popular
movements of[19]60s, which had a dramatic effect on the country, and I think, a
lasting effect.
27. You keep coming back to
the opposition to the centralamerican policies, and I have to keep coming back,
asking what’s the evidence of other dissidence?
28. In theearly60s, there was
like nothing likeEnvironmentalMovement, there was nothing likeFeministMovement,
there was nothing likeAntiNuclearMovement, but it was a few people sitting in a
livingroom somewhere. It’s now a movement so vast, it’s got something like
seventyfivepercentsupport for the nuclearfree. Couldn’t do anything with that
support, but that’s because organisational structure has been lacking. But all
of these developments are extremelysignificant. Take say, the churches. In
the1960s, the churches were by and large either supportive or acquiescence. Now
it’s very different.
29. Not all. WilliamSloaneCoffin,
CivilRightsMovement.
30. WilliamSloaneCoffin was a coconspirator of
mine.
31. CivilRightsMovement was
driven by churchmen, churchwomen. MartinLutherKing was himself baptistminister.
32. Absolutely, in fact, it
was a tremendoulyimportant movement, and for thefirsttime, close to
twohundredsyears technicallyenfranchised significant segment of the population.
Now that was a movement which did in fact have large scale support.
Businessupport, too, for that matter. Thrust ofCivilRightsMovements was not
directed against the interests of centralised power in theUnitedStates, and
that’s crucial. The protest against the war, whether EnvironmentalMovement or
FeministMovements in other respects are directed against power, and those are
the kinds didn’t exist then. They developed in the sixties. I mean, they
existed to an extent.
33. There’s moreDemocracy
today.
34. On the one hand, there’s
a lot more popular expression ofDemocracy. On the other hand, it’s less and
less part of the officiel institution of the system, and that’s why you get
these [“]funny[“] conflicts. I can see it in my own personal life. For example,
over the last couple of years, demands on me personally for say speaking
somewhere have escalated beyond anything imaginable. I have to plan years in
advance. The audiences are interested and thoughtful. They reach out to parts
of the population that you couldn’t have talked to threeyearsago.
35. If all of these ferments
are going on, if there is moredissidence now than you can remember, why do you
go on to write that people feel isolated?
36. Because I think much of
the general population recognises that organised institutions do not reflect
their concerns and interests and needs. They do not feel
participatemeaningfully in the politicalsystem. They do not feel theMedia is
not telling them the truth or evenreflect their concerns. They go outside of
the organised institutions to act. So on the one hand, you have a lot of
popular ferment, a lot of dissidence, sometimes veryeffective. On the other
hand, you have remoteness of the general public from the functioning
institutions.
37. We see moreandmore of our
elected leaders, and know lessandless of what they’re doing. This medium does
that.
38. The presidential
elections have always been removed from the point where the public doesn’t take
[consider] them seriously as a matter of choice. Take
congressional election, especially theHouse, which is moreresponsive to
publicopinion than higher levels, but even here, the rate of electoral victory
by incumbents has been going up.
39. High nineties.
40. High nineties. That's virtually a way of saying
that there aren't any elections. It means other systems
are.
41. [Unclear.]
42. It means something else
is happening, not choice. It means, Options are not being presented. On the one
hand. I think you do have a kind of complex situation in theUnitedStates.
There’s a break taking place, a cleavage taking place between a rather
substantial part of the population and eliteelements, and that includes
eliteintellectuals incidentally.
43. But those eliteelements are
supported by a substantial part of the population. There are people who take
seriously the debates, they go out and vote, who believe they're participating
and believe they’re participating in a legitimate exercise ofDemocracy.
44. It's not a cleavage of
the point of revolution. It's not as if you had anAristocracy facing a
masspopulation. It's not(Iran in1978), nothing like that.
45. A lot of people [are]
like that.
46. It's split and complex
and fluid, and so on, but I think you can see tendencies. You can see
tendencies toward popular marginalisation from functioning institutions, and
the abstraction of those institutions from publicparticipation, or even from
reflection of the publicwill.
47. That means what?
48. Well, it means that the
politicalsystem increasingly, increasinglyfunctions without public input. It
means that, to an increasing extent, not only people not ratify decisions
presented to them, they don't even take the trouble of ratifying them. They
assume that the decisions are going on independently of what they may do in the
pollingbooth. Notice that even ratification of decisions made elsewhere is a
veryweak form ofDemocracy.
49. Ratification would be
what?
50. Ratification would mean a
system in which there are twopositions presented to me, the voter. I go into
the pollingbooth, and I push one or another button, depending on which of those
positions I want. That's a verylimited form
ofDemocracy. ReallymeaningfulDemocracy would mean that, I'd play a role in
forming those positions, making and creating those decisions. Those positions
would reflect my active, creative participation. Not just me, but of
course, everyone. That would be realDemocracy. We're veryfar from that. But
we're evendeparting from the point where there is a ratification. When you have
stagemanaged elections, the publicrelationsindustry determining what words come
out of people'smouths. Even the fact that they’re going beyond the point where
even the element of ratification is disappearing, because you don't expect the
candidates to stand for anything. Candidates decide
what to say on the basis of tests that determine what the effect will be across
the population. Somehow people
don't see how profoundlycontemptuous that is ofDemocracy.
51. Contempuous?
52. Suppose I'm running for
office, and I don't tell people what I think or what I'm going to do. I tell
them what the pollsters have told me is going to get me elected. That's expressing utter contempt for the electorate. That's
saying, Okay, you people are going to have the chance to push your buttons, but
once you're done, I'll do exactly what I intend, which is not what
I'm telling you. If you express
what you believe, you don’t have to ask what the polls tell you. You
don’t believe what the polls tell you, that’s what you say. And in fact, the
whole structure of our politicalsystem is increasinglymoving towards a real
articulated contempt for the general population, and I think people understand
it.
53. But if you
conduct polls to tell you what the people want, and they tell you, are you
notlistening to the voice of the people? [Objection especiallyworth
consideration.]
54. Onlyif that
changes your mind. But of course, the whole structure of system, the system is
based on the assumption that that doesn't change your mind, it changes what you
say. In other words, a politicalfigure is not [“]testing the
waters[“] and saying, Okay, that's what I believe. If
we had that kind of a politicalfigure, we wouldn't bother voting for him. He’s
not a barometer. Thepoliticalfigure-represents-something, supported by
certain interests and has certain commitments, and so on. The politicalfigure
then comes before us, and tells us things which the pollsters or his advisors
have told him on the average will increase his chances of gaining office, after
which he will follow his commitments, his interests, what he’s demanded by who
was supporting, those who have provided him with resources, and so on. This has always been, of course, true, but what is
interesting now is the extent to which it is recognised to be the
democraticsystem. It is recognised that we don't care what we say. We
don't express interests. What we do is reflect power. I think Reagan is a
veryinteresting politicalfigure. And I think, in a way, he may represent what
the capitalistDemocracy is tending. He’s a verynatural phenomenon in a
capitalistDemocracy. In a capitalistDemocracy, you have the problem, and it has
always been perceived as a problem, that the general population has the method
of participating in the decisionmakingprocess by participating inPolitics. They
can participate inPolitics. TheState is notcapable of stopping them. You can't shut them up, you can't put them in jail, and
you can't keep them away from the polls, and so on. It's striking that that has always been perceived as a
problem to be overcome. It's what’s calledACrisisOfDemocracy,
toomanypeople organising themselves to become, enter the public arena, that's a crisis we have to overcome.
55. According to certain
view.
56. It’s always been
understood by. I would say even the mainstream of democratic theorists, when the voice of the people is heard,
you’re in trouble, because they're going to make wrong
decisions. These stupid and ignorant masses, as they're called, are going to make
the wrong decisions. So therefore, we have to have what WalterLippmann, back
in1920 or so, called theManufactureOfConsent. We have to ensure that actual
decisionmaking, actual power is in the hands of what he called a
specialisedclass. Smart guys.
57. [Moyer smiles.]
58. We’re going to make the
right decision, and we’ve got to keep the population marginalised, because
they’re going to make the wrong decision.
59. Marginalising meaning?
60. Reducing them to apathy
and obedience, allowing them to participate in the politicalsystem, but as
consumers, not as true participants. You allow them a method for ratifying
decisions that are made by others, but eliminate the methods by which they
might first, inform themselves; second, organise; and third, act in such a way
as to reallycontrol decisionmaking, that is, the idea is, Our leaders control
us, not, We control them. That is a verywidespread view from liberals to
conservatives. And how do you achieve this? Well, there are a lot of ways of
achieving it, but one of the ways of achieving it is by by turning elected
offices into ceremonial positions. If you could get to the point where people
would essentiallyvote for theQueen ofEngland and take [consider] it
seriously, then you would have gone a long way toward marginalising the public.
We've made a big step in that direction.
61. President as a ceremonial
figure.
62. That’s why Reagan’s so
interesting. Although a lot of intellectuals [“]put thebestface[“]
they can on it, the fact of the matter is, and most of the population knows
that RonaldReagan had only thefoggiestideas of what the policies of his
administration were, and in fact, nobody much cared.
The democrats were alwayssurprised that he could get away with
these incredible bloopers and crazy [ridiculous] statements, and so on.
63. The detachment.
64. And I think the reason is
that much of the population understoodverywell that they were supporting
someone like theQueenOfEngland or the flag. TheQueen ofEngland opensParliament
by reading a politicalprogram, but nobody asks whether she understands it or
does she believes it, or anything like that.
65. Everybook from within
theReaganadministration to the/book to the/book to the new book, that’s now on
the newsstand says that. Says that, President was detached.
66. More than
detached. I think he doesn't know what it is, and I think much of the
population understood it. Now, I think that explains the combination
of moderate, not enormous, but moderate popularity without opposition of the
program.
67. What do you do about it?
I mean, I don’t want to leave people in negative analysis although I believe in
facingReality.
68. But for ordinary people,
it's extremelyhard. That's why you need organisation. If
a realDemocracy is going to thrive, real values that are deeplyembedded in
humannature are going to be able to flourish, and I think that’s necessary to save
us if nothing else, it will be, it’s an absolute
necessity that groups form in which people can join together, share their
concerns, can articulate their ideas, can gain response, can discover what they
think, discover what they believe, what their values are. This can't be imposed
on you from above. You have to discover it by experiment, by effort, by trial,
by application, and so on, and this has to be done with others. Furthermore,
surely central to humannature is a need to be engaged with others in
cooperative efforts of solidarity and concern. That can
onlyhappen, almost by definition, through groupstructures.
69. Politicalorganisations.
70. Political and others.
71. Civic organisation.
Tradeassociation.
72. All kinds of ways in
which people can associate with one another. What I would like to see is a move
toward toward a society proliferating voluntary organisation, and eliminating
as much as possible structures of hierarchy and domination, and the basis for
them in ownership and control, and becoming the means by which we govern
ourselves and by which control our lives.
73. Doesn’t a citizen have to
have farreaching, specialisedKnowledge to understandRealities of power, to
understand what’s really going on?
74. It's not
absolutelytrivial, but as compared to intellectuallycomplex tasks, it's
prettyslight. It's not like theSciences. There’s a big effort to made to make
everything seem mysterious. There are things you have to study and know
something about. But, by and large, what happens in social- and political-life
is relativelyaccessible. It does not take special training. It doesn’t take
unusual intelligence. What it really takes is honesty. If you're honest, you can see it.
[Accurate.]
75. Do you believe in
commonsense?
76. Absolutely.
77. You do?
78. I believe
inCartesiancommonsense. I think people have the
capacities to see through the deceit in which they are ensnared, but they've
got to make the effort.
79. Seems a little
incongruous to hear a man from theIvoryTower of [theMIT], a scholar, a
distinguished scholar, Linguisticsscholar, talk about common people with such
appreciation and commonsense.
80. I think that scholarship,
at least the field that I work in, has the opposite consequences. My own
studies in-Language and -humancognition demonstrate, to me at least, what
remarkable creativity ordinarypeople have. Theveryfact that people talk to one
another is a reflection, just in a normal way, I don't mean anything
particularly fancy, reflects deepseated features of humancreativity which in
fact separate humanbeings from any other biologicalsystem we know.
81. FromBoston, this has been
NoamChomsky. I’m BillMoyer.
82. This program has been
made possible by JohnDAndCatherineTMacArthurFoundation.
83. He’s one of theAmerica’s
mostbrilliant man, but in some circles, he’s trated as intellectual pariah,
intellectual leopard whose ideas might prove to be contagious. NoamChomsky is a
scholar ofLinguistics atMIT. His breakthrough work there revised how we think aboutLanguage.
But it is his criticism of power that has earnedChomsky so much dismay in
establishmentcircles. Angry over theUSrole inVietnam, he started speaking out
twentyyearsago, and he’s never let up. He’s blunt and unyielding and gives no
quarter to comfortable parties. Take his newest book, ManufacturingConsent. It
suggest that, unlike a totalitarian regime, aDemocracy doesn’t stoop to
violence to control its citizens. It uses propaganda instead. We talked about
the subject during our recent conversation inBoston.
84. You have said that, “we
live entangled in webs of endless deceit,” that “we live in a
highlyindoctrinated society where elementarytruths are easilyburied.”
Elementarytruths such as?
85. Such as the
fact that we invaded southVietnam, or the fact that we are standing in the way
of significant, and have for years, significant moves towards armsnegotiation,
or the fact that the militarysystem is to a substantial extent, not-toally, but
to a substantial extent, a Mechanism by which the general population is
compelled to provide a subsidy to highTechchologyindustry.
Since
they're not going to do it if you ask them to, you have to deceive them
into doing it. There
are many truths like that, and we don't face them. We have an interesting
politicalsystem in theUnitedStates, different from those of the other
industrialDemocracies. This is a veryfree country. I mean, Individuals are, by
comparative standards, theState is veryrestricted in its capacity to coerce and
control us. There’s verylittle they can do. At least, they
can't come in and stop us from talking [to each other], or anything
remotelylike that. In fact, compared with other industrialDemocracies,
we are veryfree in this respect. On the other hand, the practical limits on
those freedoms are unusuallyhigh.
86. Practical limits?
87. There are
sophisticatedMechanisms that has been devised to prevent us from making use of
those freedoms, furthermore it has been understood for a long period in a
society that’s free, in a society where theState does not have the power to
coerce, otherMechanisms must be found to ensure that the population doesn't get
in the way.
88. OtherMechanisms being?
89. Indoctrination,
elimination of secondary organisations, say unions, other politicalclubs. Ways
in which. For a single isolated individual to
participate in a meaning way in a politialsystem is almostimpossible.
You have to have means to inform yourself. To have
ideas, to interchange those ideas with others, to turn them ideas into possible
programs, and to press for those programs. Now that takes accesstoinformation,
it takes an independentMedia, it requires what sociologists call secondary
organisations, means by which isolated people can group together.
90. Politicalclubs.
91. Active politicalparties
and politicalclubs. Unions have oftenplayed this role in many countries.
TheUnitedStates is unusual in the extent to which all of these structures are
weak. The level of unionisation is extremelylow, and under theReaganperiod,
Declined evenfurther. Furthermore, american unions have always been
basicallyapolitical, or largely so. We're the only major industrialDemocracy
that doesn't have a politicalparty which is basically labourbased. We have onlyonepoliticalparty with twofactions, it's the
businessparty. We have twofactions of the businessparty called theDemocrats and
theRepublicans, and that’s unusual. In fact, these perception is
transmuted in an odd way into political terminology. So for example, in
the1980s, in each election of the1980s, theDemocrats have been accused of being
a party of the specialinterests, and then they hotlydenied it and said they’re
not the party of specialinterests. But who are the specialinterests? Well, take
a look behind theRhetoric and you find that the specialinterests are women,
labour, youth, the elderly, ethnicminorities, the poor, farmers. In fact, it’s
the entire population
92. The point being?
93. The one group that's
never identified as being among the special interests is corporations, and
that’s correct, they're the nationalinterest. Both parties are
basicallybeholden to them, whereas the specialinterests have to be
marginalised, the population. So everyone denies that they represent the specialinterests,
that is, the people, and they don’t say who[m] they do represent, but there is
somebody notablylacking in this list of specialinterests, and in fact, it’s the
group with anyone with [“]his head screwed on[“], has inordinate power in
controlling economicdecision, and setting the parameter for politicallife, and
controlling theIdeologicalsystem, and so on. They’re the nationalinterests.
94. You think it is the
coroporation or is it the capitalist businessystem whose firstpriority is the
wellbeing or profitmaking for the general welfare, as it is said?
95. Ask the
chairman-of-the-board, and he’ll alwaystell you that he spends his every waking
hour labouring, so that people will get the best possible products at the
cheapest possible price and work in the best possible conditions, and so on and
so forth. Now it's an
institutional fact, independent of who the chairman of the board is, that he'd
better be trying to maximise profit and marketshare, and if he doesn't do that,
he's not going to be chairman of the board any more. If he were ever to succumb
to the delusions he expresses, he'd be out. Now, he can hold those
delusions as long as he performs his institutional role, and thesame is true
across the board. So take say, who can be, say WalterLippmann'sspecialisedclass,
the experts. Some of them are candidenough to tell you the truth, likeHenryKissinger who defined an expert as A Person who is
capable of articulating the consensus of people with power.
That's what made him an expert. That's true. If you want to be an expert, a
part of the specialisedclass, you have to be able to serve the interests of
objective power. That's an institutional role that has to be played. If you do
that, you can be in it. If you want to be a journalist, let’s say, you have to
accord to the needs of the institutions, and institutions have verydefinite
needs. The majorMedia are.
96. They're all corporations.
97. Major
corporations. They're just like any other business. They have a product and an
audience, a market. The product is audiences, and the market is other
businesses. They sell their product to advertisers, that's what keeps them
going. And the product is audiences, and in fact for the eliteMedia, previliged
audiendes. So what theMedia are, fundamentally as far as institutions are
concerned, major corporations selling relatively privileged audiences to other
businesses, so it's not verysurprising to discover that those are the interests
they reflect. Furthermore, if you take a look at the managing positions, managerial
positions, cultural managers, more or less, editors, and so on. They are, first
of all, veryprivileged themselves. They share associations and concerns with
other privileged people. There's a close interaction and a flow of people
between corporateboardrooms, Governmentdecisionmakingcenters, and Media, and so
on. There are many other factors in fact, which yield to the consequence that
independentMedia, withoutGovernmentcoercion, there’s some of that, but
evenwithout Governmentcoercion, the independentMedia tend to accept as the
framework for discussion the interests, concerns and perspectives of the
privileged sectors of the society. That's true of the
informationsystem, and it's true of the politicalsystem. The distribution of resources alone determines
it. As other modes of organisation and articulate expression, and
so on, have declined, isolated individuals find themselves marginalised, and
they end up by voting for a ceremonial figure if they bother to vote at all.
98. Are you
suggesting that there are, that there’s a conspiracy? There are people who
decide to eliminate unions, we’re going to elimite popular participation and
politicalparties. We’re going to do this, we’re going to do that. Is there a
conspiracy?
99. My point is, in fact,
exactly theopposite. I think, I stress again, these are institutional facts.
These are the ways institutions function. Let’s go back to the
chairman-of-the-board. There’s no conspiracy in the board of managers to raise
profit and marketshare. In fact, if the board of managers didn't pursue that
program, they wouldn't be in business any longer. It's part of the structure of
the socialsystem and the way in which the institutions function within it, that
they are going to be trying to maximise profit, marketshare,
decisionmakingcapacity, and so on.
100.
Doing what comesnaturally?
101.
It’s not. You might say [that] it
comesnaturally, because they would never have gotten to that point unless they
had internalised those values. [Soderbergh, Clooney, Spielberg.] But
it's alsoconstrained. If they stop doing it, theirstockisgoingtodecline, and so
on and so forth, and somebody else will be brought up, and so on. Now,
prettymuch thesame is true of these other institutions. If some segment of
politicalsystem. Suppose we had an authentic
politicalparty reflecting the needs of the specialinterests, the population. It would no longer be supported. It would be denounced by the
informationsystem. It would be condemned for being antiamerican or subversive,
and so on. It would not even have the minimal resources to keep functioning,
and since we don’t have network of popular structures to sustain it, it would
disappear.
102.
You said, “the primary function of the massMedia is to mobilise
public support for the specialinterest to dominate theGovernment and the
private sector.” That’s not how theMedia see it. They claim, we claim that, Our
newsjudgement are based on unbiased, objective criteria. That’s how we see it.
103.
The chairman-of-the-board also sees what he's doing as service
to humanity.
104.
You're saying we're like lobsters. We’re trapped. We can’t see
it closed **?
105.
The point is, No one make[s] it to a high position in
theMedia whether as columnist or managing editor or whatever unless you've
alreadyinternalised the required values.
106.
Internalised?
107.
They believe in them. There is a number of things you have to
believe in order to make it to top managerial positions. You alreadybelieve that theUnitedStates is unique inHistory
in that it acts from benevolent motives. [I discovered that it is true from
experience.] Now, benevolent motives are not a property ofState whether it's
theUnitedStates or any other one. It’s
meaningless to talk about it. It acts because of the interests of groups that
have power within it, like any other society, but anyone who believes this
truism is alreadyexcluded. You have to believe that whatever theUnitedStates
does is defensive. If we bomb
southVietnam, we're defending southVietnam. If the russians
invadeAfghanistan, that's not defense. Now of course, I suppose, if you go to
thePolitburo, they would tell you they're defendingAfghanistan. They’re
defending it against terrorists supported from the outside. In fact, they'll
eventell you they were invited in. [Accurate.] There's an element of
truth to all of that, but we naturallydismiss it as nonsense.
On the other hand, when we create aGovernment in
southVietnam to invite us in, and we attack the population of
southVietnam, and we bomb people to drive them into concentrationcamps to
separate them from the guerrillas who[m] we can see they're supporting, and so on,
we're defending southVietnam. Anyone who doesn't
agree with this is not part of the system.
108.
You’re equatingSovietUnion with theUnitedStates, and
JeanneKirkpatrick and others would say, Of course, that’s the fundamental
fallacy ofDr.Chomsky’sapproach. He’s saying that there’s aMoralequivalency.
109.
I don't say anything of the kind. That's, these notions are, in
fact, inventions of(JeanneKirkpatrick and other reactionary jingoists).
TheSovietUnion and theUnitedStates are at opposite poles among contemporary
politicalsystems. What I‘m saying is that even though
they're at opposite poles, in some respects they behave-alike, and that’s for
deepseated reasons that have to with the exercise of power and institutions, and
so on. It has nothing to do withMoralequivalence.
110.
You admit that we are free society, then? [Stupidquestion of a
dumbass who lives in his own little world.]
111.
I admit it, I insist upon it. I insist that we are a
free society and that theSovietUnion is a ["]dungeon["], and
therefore we have completelydifferent methods of populationcontrol.
Completelydifferent methods. In fact, I've written a lot about this. There's
noMoralequivalence here. No State is trulytotalitarian, but as we move toward
the totalitarian end of the spectrum, the technique of control is roughly that
[which was] satirised byOrwell. You have a center of truth, you have [MiniTru],
it announces officialtruths. People can believe it
or not. Nobody caresverymuch. It's sufficient that they obey.
TotalitarianStates can be more or less behaviouristic. They don't reallycare
what people think, because they alwayshave a [“]club[“] [violence or threat of
violence] at hand to beat them over the head if they do the wrong thing.
112.
They force people to do what they want them to do?
113.
People can think what they like in private, but they'd better do
what we tell them in public. That's the model towards which totalitarianStates
tend. As a result, the propaganda may verywell be not tooeffective. On the
other hand, democraticStates can't use thoseMechanisms.
114.
Can’t force anybody.
115.
You can't force people, therefore you have to control what they
think. Since the power is stillconcentrated, but in different hands, in our
society largely in private ownership. Since you can’t control people by force,
you’d better care what they think. You have to have other forms and
moresophisticated forms of indoctrination.
116.
I had an interview once withEdwardBernays, who was considered
the pioneering figure in american businesspublicrelations, and he talked
about theEngineeringOfConsent.
117.
Yeah, that's his phrase. And he thought it was a wonderful thing.
In fact, he described it as theEssenceOfDemocracy.
118.
He said that, Consider theGovernment presupposes that, efforts
and persuations, Try to persaude people to [make them] see things your way.
[Stupidquestion of someone who is an imperialist and an aristocrat.
StevenPinker. ErnestLehman. Coppola. Soderbergh.]
119.
Notice the picture. The picture is, Certain people are in a
position to persuade, and theEssenceOfDemocracy is that they have the
freedom to persuade. Who has the freedom to
persuade? Well, who runs the publicrelationsindustry? It's not the
specialinterests, they're the targets of the publicrelationsindustry.
The publicrelationsindustry is a major industry, closelylinked to other
corporations, and those are the people who have the power to persuade. That's
theEssenceOfDemocracy, and they mustEngineerTheConsent of others.
120.
There was a VicePresident ofAT&T in1905, who said that, The
public mind is the chief danger to the company.
121.
Exactly. The general public might have [“]funny[“] ideas about
corporatecontrol. For example, people who really believe inDemocracy, people
who take [consider] eighteenthcenturyvalues seriously, people who really
might merit the term conservatives, that muchabused term, are against
concentration of power. They. Remember, after all, the doctrines of
theEnlightenment held that individuals should be free from the coercion of
concentrated power. The kind of concentrated power
they were thinking about was theChurch, and theState, and the feudalsystem, and
so on, and you can sort of imagine a collective population of
relativelyequal people, at least equal whitemalepropertyonwer notcontrolled by
those private power, but in the subsequent period, a
new form of power developed, namely corporations, with highlyconcentrated power
over decisionmaking in the economiclife, that is, control of what’sproduced,
what’sdistributed, what’sinvested, and so on and so forth. There’s a verynarrow
concentration.
122.
That’s why theVicePresident said the public mind is.
123.
Public mind might have [“]funny[“] ideas aboutDemocracy, which
say that, We should not be forced simply to rent ourselves to the people who
own the country and own its institutions, rather We should play a role in
determining what those institutions do. That's Democracy. If we are to move
towardsDemocracy, and I think Democracy even in theeighteentcentury sense,
there should be no maldistribution of power in determining what’sproduced,
what’sdistributed, what’sinvested, and so on. Rather that’s a problem for the
entire community. My personal [feeling], Unless we move in that direction,
humansociety probably isn’t going to survive.
124.
Why?
125.
We now face
themostawesome problems of humanHistory. Problems such as the likelihood of
nuclearconflict, even among the superpowers or through prolifeartion. The
destruction of our fragileEnvironment, which finally, we're beginning to
recognise. It was obvious decades ago it was heading for disaster. Others
problems of this nature, they're of a level of seriousness that they never were
in the past.
126.
Why do you think moreparticipation by the public, moreDemocracy
is the answer? [Question of an elitist or thefuckingpoleece.]
127.
Because moreDemocracy is a value in itself.
128.
Why?
129.
Because Democracy is a value. It doesn't have to be
defended any more than freedom has to be defended. It's part of, an essential
feature of humannature that People should be free, They should be able to
participate, They should be uncoerced, and so on.
130.
Why do you think?
131.
Because I think that's theonlyhope that I can see other values
will come to the fore. I mean, if the society is based on control by private
wealth, it will reflect the values that it in fact does reflect, thehighest,
theonly real humanproperty is Greed, and the desire to maximise personal gain
at the expense of others. A small society based on
that principle is ugly, but it can survive. A globalsociety based on that
principle is headed for massive destruction, and that's what we are. We have to
have a mode of socialorganisation that reflects other values that I think are
inherent in humannature that people recognise.
132.
And that would be? I want to see exactly.
133.
What are humanbeings? I mean, in the family for example. It's
not the case that in the family everyperson tries to maximise personal gain at
the expense of others. If they do, it's pathological. It's not the case, if you
and I are say, walking down the street, and we see a child eating a piece of
candy, and we see that nobody's around, and we happen to be hungry, we don't
steal it. If we do that, we'd be pathological. The idea of care for others, and
concern for other people's needs, and
concern for our fragileEnvironment that must sustain future generations, all of
these things are part of humannature. These are elements of humannature that
are suppressed in a social system which is designed to maximise personal gain,
and I think we must try to overcome that suppression, and that's, in fact, what
Democracy could bring about. It could lead to the expression of other
human-needs and –values, which tend to
be suppressed under the institutional structure of a system of private power
and private profit.
134.
Do you believe, by nature, human yearn for freedom, or do we
settle in the interest of safety and security and conformity, or do we settle
for order?
135.
These are really matters of faith rather than
Knowledge. On the one hand, you have
theGrandInquisitor [who] tells you that what humans crave is submission, and
therefore Christ is a criminal, and we have to vanquish freedom. That's
oneview. The other view, say Rousseau in some of his moments, that people are
born to be free and that their basic instinct is the desire to free themselves
from coercion, authority and oppression. It's, the answer to which you believe
is more or less where you stake your hopes. I'd like to believe that people
are born to be free, but if you ask for proof, I couldn't give it to you.
136.
You have dealt with such unpopular truths, and had been such a
lonely figure as a consequence. Do you ever regret either you took the stands
as you took or have written the things you’ve written or we’ve listened to you
earlier?
137.
I don’t. There are particular things I would do differently,
because you think about things, you’d do it differently, but in general, I
would say I do not regret it.
138.
Not Caught in the [controversy]?
139.
No, it’s nuisance.
140.
Because this mass mediumpage views of dissenter, not just
NoamChomsky, but most dissenters do not get much of a hearing in this medium.
141.
In fact, that's completelyunderstandable. They wouldn’t be
performing their societal function if they allowed favoured truths to be
challenged, because after all, their role, their veryinstitutional role is to
establish certain truths and beliefs, not to allow them to be challenged.
142.
Society does need in order to [be] coherent, does need
consensus, does it not?
143.
I think it needs tentative
assumptions, but we should remember what JusticeHolmes said in one of
his famous dissents in which he said, Fighting faiths have repeatedly been seen
to be false, and we should recognise that. Yes, we need tentative assumption in
order to continue with our lives, but we also ought to be open to, a healthy
society would not only tolerate but encourage challenge. That's what happens in
theSciences. In theSciences, where the world is keeping you honest, and you
can't be dishonest fundamentally. Not only is challenge tolerated, but it's
stimulated. When students come along with a new idea that threatens established
beliefs, you don't kick them out of your office. You pay attention. You're
stuck.
144.
But inPolitics?
145.
Well, politicallife is preserved in politicalpower, but that's
not a value that should be protected, that's a property that should be
overcome. I'm not suggesting, I’m not saying you should question everything
always. That's hopeless. Like I walk out the door and I don't think the floor
is going to collapse. Of course, you have faith and beliefs, and so on, and you
operate on the basis of them. But you should, if honest, recognise that they
are subject to challenge and that if the past is any guide, they're
probablywrong, because beliefs have generally been wrong in the past. Also, we
just understandmore. We understand more about ourselves as History continues.
It’s hard to look at thetwentiethcentury and be an optimist, but there’s been
someMoralprogress inHistory. Take say, Slavery. It wasn't verylongago that
Slavery was consideredMoral. Not just don’t want to do it. The slaveowners,
Nice for me, so I’ll do it. The slaveowners offered aMoralbasis forSlavery.
Nobody does that anymore, that's an improvement. Just in our own lifetime, this
has happened. Take the issues raised by theFeministMovement.
146.
Women do have equal rights.
147.
These are things many people simply did not see thirtyyearsago.
Now the problems are still there, at least we see them, that’s greater insight
into our own nature. It’s inside in the discovery of repression and authority
that we know we do not accept as Moralhumanbeings and we ought to try to
overcome, and I think you can sense such progress. At the same time, you also
have decline, NaziGermany and StalinistRussia.
148.
Genocide of the century. Holocaust.
149.
It's indescribable. That's why I say it's hard to look at the
twentiethcentury and say that you're an optimist.
150.
How about twentyfirstcentury?
151.
I don’t think
we're going to get far into the twentyfirstcentury unless these problems are
overcome because the problems are no longer localised. Hitler'sgenocide
was probably theworstmoment in humanHistory, but it was still, in a sense,
localised. It was a huge massacre, but it was bounded. The problems we are now facing
are not going to be bounded. Nuclearwar, for example. If there is a
superpowerconfrontation or even a confrontation among lesser nuclearpowers,
that's not going to be bounded in any sense that wars were in the past.
152.
Or if we all unplug theEnviroment.
153.
Or if we do
not, if we continue to act on the assumption that theonlything that
basicallymatters is personalGreed and personal gain, the commons will be
destroyed. We didn't have to worry about that toomuch in the past. It was
happening. But now, it's clear they’re going to be destroyed. Other humanvalues
have to be expressed if we hope to have, future generations are going to even
be able to survive.
[Freezeframe].
154.
FromBoston, this has been a conversation withNoamChomsky.
I’mBillMoyers.
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