Tag: chomsky

We should not underestimate the capacity of well-run propaganda systems to drive people to irrational, murderous, and suicidal behavior. Take an example … World War I … on both sides, the soldiers marched off to mutual slaughter with enormous exuberance, fortified by the cheers of the intellectual classes and those who they helped mobilize across the political spectrum, from left to right including the most powerful left political force in the world, in Germany. Exceptions are so few that we can practically list them, and some of the most prominent among them ended up in jail for questioning the nobility of the enterprise: among them Rosa Luxemburg, Bertrand Russell, and Eugene Debs. With the help of Wilson’s propaganda agencies and the enthusiastic support of liberal intellectuals, a pacifist country was turned in a few months into raving anti-German hysterics, ready to take revenge on those who had perpetrated savage crimes, many of them invented by the British Ministry of Information. But that’s by no means inevitable, and we should not underestimate the civilizing effects of the popular struggles of recent years. We need not stride resolutely towards catastrophe merely because those are the marching orders.

Noam Chomsky (via noam-chomsky)

I was just talking about how ashamed I am for having supported the invasion of Afghanistan. I’m a different person now, but I am still susceptible, as we all are. Be vigilant. Demand peace.

The people who we call intellectuals are no different from anyone else, except that they have particular privilege. They’re mostly well-off, they have training, they have resources. As privilege increases, responsibility increases. And if somebody’s working 50 hours a day to put food on the table and never got through high school and so on, their opportunities are less than the people who are called intellectuals. That doesn’t mean that they’re any less intellectual. In fact, some of the best educated people I have known never got past fourth grade. But they have fewer opportunities, and opportunity confers responsibility.

Noam Chomsky (via noam-chomsky)

No less insidious is the cry for ‘revolution,’ at a time when not even the germs of new institutions exist, let alone the moral and political consciousness that could lead to a basic modification of social life. If there will be a ‘revolution’ in America today, it will no doubt be a move towards some variety of fascism. We must guard against the kind of revolutionary rhetoric that would have had Karl Marx burn down the British Museum because it was merely part of a repressive society. It would be criminal to overlook the serious flaws and inadequacies in our institutions, or to fail to utilize the substantial degree of freedom that most of us enjoy, within the framework of these flawed institutions, to modify them or even replace them by a better social order. One who pays some attention to history will not be surprised if those who cry most loudly that we must smash and destroy are later found among the administrators of some new system of repression.

Noam Chomsky, American Power and the New Mandarins, 1969 (via doctorofnothing)

Another factor is job insecurity, what economists like to call “flexibility in the labour markets,” which is a good thing under the reigning academic theology, but a pretty rotten thing for human beings, whose fate doesn’t enter into the calculations of sober thinking. Flexibility means you better work extra hours or else. There are no contracts and no rights. That’s flexibility. We’ve got to get rid of market rigidities. Economists can explain it.

Noam Chomsky (via noam-chomsky)

Americans are encouraged to vote, but not to participate more meaningfully in the political arena. Essentially the election is yet another method of marginalizing the population. A huge propaganda campaign is mounted to get people to focus on these personalized quadrennial extravaganzas and to think, ‘That’s politics.’ But it isn’t. It’s only a small part of politics…

Noam Chomsky – Interventions (via noam-chomsky)

The bewildered herd is a problem. We’ve got to prevent their roar and trampling. We’ve got to distract them. They should be watching the Superbowl or sitcoms or violent movies. Every once in a while you call on them to chant meaningless slogans like “Support our troops.” You’ve got to keep them pretty scared, because unless they’re properly scared and frightened of all kinds of devils that are going to destroy them from outside or inside or somewhere, they may start to think, which is very dangerous, because they’re not competent to think. Therefore it’s important to distract them and marginalize them.

Noam Chomsky – Propaganda and the Public Mind (via noam-chomsky)

The phrase “security” does not refer to the security of the population; rather to the security of the “principle architects of policy”—in [Adam] Smith’s day “merchants and manufacturers,” in ours megacorporations and great financial institutions, nourished by the states they largely dominate.

Noam Chomsky, Hopes and Prospects (via theworldofsleepers)

What is called ‘capitalism’ is basically a system of corporate mercantilism, with huge and largely unaccountable private tyrannies exercising vast control over the economy, political systems, and social and cultural life, operating in close co-operation with powerful states that intervene massively in the domestic economy and international society. That is dramatically true of the
United States, contrary to much illusion. The rich and privileged are no more willing to face market discipline than they have been in the past, though they consider it just fine for the general population.

“ Noam Chomsky”, – Anarchism, Marxism and Hope for the Future (via noam-chomsky)