Monday, February 07, 2011

Chomsky and Democracy

Political activist Noam Chomsky spoke to a packed house at the University of Tennessee

Chomsky opened the lecture by telling the audience "The guiding principle [for American government] is that as long as the public is under control, everything is fine," he said. "[The traditional argument is] the powerful should gain ends by any possible means. As long as the public is kept under control, public will doesn't matter." Chomsky said this "guiding principle" is not a recent thing, though "Throughout American history, there has been a constant struggle over who should control and who should obey," he said. "The Founding Fathers were ambivalent about democracy." Chomsky added that James Madison, one of the framers of the Constitution, was concerned that if voters could determine policy, it would challenge the privileged. "This is why he put the power in the hands of the Senate, whose primary task is to protect the opulent minority against the majority," he said.

He also discussed how history plays a role in today's public relations and marketing industries. "By World War I, the business class realized that because of new freedoms, it was impossible to control the public by force, so they need new means," he said. "They tried to control of opinion and attitude to divert people from the public arena. This is why the public relations industry was started." Chomsky called elections today "public relations extravaganzas." "You don't want to provide information about the candidates; that's the last thing you want to do," he said. "So you delude people with slogans."

Chomsky ended his lecture with a question for the audience. "Will we subject ourselves to the guiding principle?" he said.

Meanwhile, SOYMB reads that other than in a handful of pockets across the U.S. - including Ohio, Vermont and Washington, D.C. - cable carriers do not give viewers the choice of watching Al Jazeera. That corporate censorship comes as American diplomats harshly criticize the Egyptian government for blocking Internet communication inside the country and as Egypt attempts to block Al Jazeera from broadcasting. Al Jazeera English launched in the fall of 2006, opening a large bureau on K Street in downtown Washington, but has made little progress in persuading cable companies to offer the channel to its customers. Paige Austin, a student at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a former associate producer for Al Jazeera English in Doha, wrote about U.S. cable's refusal to carry the station in a 2010 paper. Austin argues that AJE's willingness to show graphic suffering in the developed world is at odds with the U.S. networks' practice. It's not that American viewers are unaccustomed to seeing violent imagery on the television, but the selection of which mangled corpses to show -- civilians killed by U.S. bombs in Afghanistan is what makes the difference.

2 comments:

Deadbeat said...

When it comes to American policy much of it is paid for by Zionist sources. 50% of all political campaign contributions to the Democratic Party come from Zionist sources. When it comes to foreign policy there is no more "American" policy.

This is point that Chomsky won't make. In fact he is quite responsible for keeping activists ignorant of these facts.

When Chomsky has an opportunity to take a stance against Zionism in 2004 he folded along with his buddy, Howard Zinn, like an accordion. Continuing to heap praise upon Chomsky without scrutiny misleads leftists into his propaganda campaign.

Capitalism and Zionism are not one in the same. While both have areas of overlap it is where they stand apart that gets obscured by the pseudo-Left. Capitalism uses racism to keep the working classes divided but will make concessions when challenged.

Zionism on the other hand is non-compromising and uses capital accumulation to fund and to maintain its supremacy. This is what sets Zionism apart from Capitalism.

The uprising in Egypt crosses conflicting class lines because the struggle is nationalist against Zionism. What Egypt reveals is how U.S. policy is carrying out the wishes of a racist ideology even if that policy harms its economic and national interests. Chomsky obscures Zionism by conflating it as part of the continuum of “U.S. Imperialism (tm)”. Chomsky, the master linguist, has for decades constructed a narrative to shift attention from Zionism and onto other scapegoats.

U.S. policy is despicable but the interests behind those policies have changed since the time of the "founders". Today Zionism is in control of the hardware and must be directly confronted and not smoothed over.

The biggest fear coming from the Left is not an "independent" Egypt but an anti-Zionist one.

ajohnstone said...

for a fuller SPGB analysis of Zionism see here

http://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2011/02/zionism-and-palestine.html