Noam Chomsky and the Manufacturing of American Dissent: 2 videos

[Paul Rigby]

Chomsky's comments on the 9/11 Truth movement are full of surprising statements and bizarre non sequiturs. Find out more about the ways in which Chomsky is attempting to limit dissent by dismissing the concerns of a growing percentage of the population who no longer believe the official government-approved conspiracy theory about 9/11.

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hPP3xQtTfc

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NdWiCPrOyI

[Dawn Meredith]

These are incredibly revealing of just how complex a job it is to be a
left wing gatekeeper. He'd lose his damn (government) job at MIT if he
didn't spout the party line.

"Who cares?" Boy, that really says it all!

Dawn

[Paul Rigby]

"Who cares?"

The perfect - only - fitting epitaph for his career, Dawn, a career of deception and deceit in the service of the Central Intelligence Agency.

But the tide is turning:

http://candobetter.org/node/1286

Noam Chomsky, phony American dissident

Posted May 26th, 2009 by James Sinnamon

Of the overwhelming evidence which contradicted the official explanation that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman who murdered President John F Kennedy in 1963, Noam Chomsky said:

"I mean, who knows? And who cares? I mean plenty of people get killed all the time. Why does it matter that one of them happened to be John F Kennedy?"

(See YouTube broadcast "The Shame of Noam Chomsky & left gatekeepers" : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhrZ57XxYJU )

Chomsky insists that Oswald, acting alone, murdered President John F Kennedy, but also says that even if it was not the case, and he was, indeed, murdered by people within the US administration, why should it matter?

The answer should have been obvious. If it was purely bad luck that Kennedy was murdered, then other political figures, opposed to the establishment, would have little to fear. People such as Barack Obama who were (once) thought to pose a threat to the US corporate elites would have had little reason to fear that those corporate elites would be so ruthless and so unconscionable as to conspire to have him killed, contrary to what many of his supporters openly feared would happen. Strangely, even people such as Australia's Phillip Adams, who refuses to consider JFK and 9/11 'conspiracy theories', expressed this fear for Barack Obama before he was elected.

If, on the other hand, there was a conspiracy to murder JFK as many credible people argue, because he posed a threat to powerful vested interests who wanted to escalate the Vietnam War, then surely others, who stand opposed to those vested interests, should also fear assassination.

Clearly it must matter whether or not a gunman acting alone murdered JFK and Chomsky could not possibly have been so stupid as to not have understood that. The only possible reason why Chomsky would choose to insist that it does not is to allow him to avoid having to openly defend the lone crazed gunman theory, which has happily peddled on other occasions.
In fact, in the same decade, three of the other most charismatic and effective leaders opposed to the US establishment also met violent deaths in suspicious circumstances that were never properly investigated - Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and Robert F Kennedy.

In all cases, Noam Chomsky insisted that there was nothing suspicious. Almost certainly, because of the influence he wielded amongst progressive circles, many who would have otherwise followed the trail that would have led to the killers of JFK, Malcolm X, MLK and RFK were dissuaded from doing so.

Thus the left of the 1960's was decapitated and those responsible were never unmasked and brought to justice.

Shortly after the terrorist attack of 11 September 2001 Chomsky pronounced that Al Qaeda led by Osama bin Laden had indeed master-minded the attacks, just as George Bush had insisted. Those who questioned the official account and pointed to the glaring contradictions and absurdities of the official account of 9/11 were dismissed by Chomsky as conspiracy theorists.
Once again, many, who held Chomsky in high regard, were dissuaded from questioning the official 9/11 fiction, thus leaving unchallenged the huge propaganda advantage that made it possible for the US rulers to overcome public opposition to the invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq and numerous attacks on civil liberties and democratic freedoms in the West.

During my participation in the protest movement against the invasion of Iraq in 2003, I never personally doubted the official 9/11 explanation nor was I aware of anyone else who questioned it, such was the influence of the likes of Chomsky on the anti-war movement in Australia.

Barrie Zwicker has shown1 how Noam Chomsky is a practitioner of the 'bait and switch' technique. The 'bait' is his many scholarly works which show up many of the crimes of the US rulers (although rarely accompanied by practical suggestions as to how to prevent these crimes). The 'switch' are ideas that serve the interests of the US rulers. These include acceptance of the lone crazed gunman explanation of the JFK assassination and the dismissal of the overwhelming evidence pointing to senior figures within the administration as the perpetrators of the 9/11 atrocity.

Postscript: (19 July) In spite of the damning critique of Noam Chomsky by Zwicker, and Chomsky's failure to acknowledge, let alone respond to that critique, many progressives, even amongst those aware of the truth of 'false flag' attacks such as 9/11, still accord Chomsky credibility that he clearly does not deserve. One of many possible examples is the publication of the article "The Grim Picture of Obama's Middle East" also republished by Information Clearing House. Whatever may be the merit of that article, the fact remains that Chomsky has done enormous harm to the causes he claims to support and will continue to harm those causes until more people are able to see him for what he is.

Appendix: Online forum discussion about influence of Noam Chomsky in Australia

So, far, on two occasions, when I have participated in online forums, my detractors have referred to my low regard for Noam Chomsky as expressed in this article in attempts to discredit the views I had put to those forums. The following are recent posts to a Larvatus Prodeo discussion about 9/11:

18 Sep 09:

Interesting. Daggett is making a claim about 9/11 that as far as I’m aware no-one been able to refute. Everytime I ask the free fall question I get treated like a loony but no-one can tell me how it works.

They'll link to some complex document that has a lot of equations and fancy theories that explains how such a freak occurrence is possible and there’s nothing untoward about it happening three times on one morning in one place. There’s citations of various experts who've written debunking articles but those I've read can’t explain it either.

Can you? Can you understand? Because this is what Noam Chomsky refers to when he talks about the manufacturing of consent. The issue is inherently outré . This is how Foucault describes our power structure as a demarker of normality, morality, sanity and those that fall outside.

And it’s interesting that people who've read books by both men somehow play the game they’re describing. By all means ban Daggett. S/he’s obviously crazy.

My comment: Whilst Chomsky was cited in my defence here, I felt most anxious that the undeserved credibility given to Chomsky not be left to stand. I was helped somewhat in this, when further along, one of my detractors wrote:

18 Sep 09:

Interesting. Daggett is making a claim about 9/11 that as far as I’m aware no-one been able to refute. Everytime I ask the free fall question I get treated like a loony but no-one can tell me how it works.

To be fair, Adrien, this happens even when you don’t ask the free-fall question.

As to Chomsky, Daggett will explain to you that Chomsky is a phony, because he accepts the “official conspiracy theory”. [see]

http://candobetter.org/node/1286

That is convincing proof of just how vast and pernicious the cover-up is, wouldn't you say?

[Paul Rigby]

As recognition of Chomsky’s role as a crass left-gatekeeper spreads and deepens, expect more formulaic hagiography from the CIA’s assets in the MSM. Here’s a taste of things both past and to come, predictably, from the CIA’s favourite liberal British daily, and the paper’s resident licensed pseudo-lefty jester:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov...ign-policy

'US foreign policy is straight out of the mafia’

Noam Chomsky is the west's most prominent critic of US imperialism, yet he is rarely interviewed in the mainstream media. Seumas Milne meets him

Seumas Milne
The Guardian, Saturday 7 November 2009

Noam Chomsky is the closest thing in the English-speaking world to an intellectual superstar. A philosopher of language and political campaigner of towering academic reputation, who as good as invented modern linguistics, he is entertained by presidents, addresses the UN general assembly and commands a mass international audience. When he spoke in London last week, thousands of young people battled for tickets to attend his lectures, followed live on the internet across the globe, as the 80-year-old American linguist fielded questions from as far away as besieged Gaza.

But the bulk of the mainstream western media doesn't seem to have noticed. His books sell in their hundreds of thousands, he is mobbed by students as a celebrity, but he is rarely reported or interviewed in the US outside radical journals and websites. The explanation, of course, isn't hard to find. Chomsky is America's most prominent critic of the US imperial role in the world, which he has used his erudition and standing to expose and excoriate since Vietnam.

Like the English philosopher Bertrand Russell, who spoke out against western-backed wars until his death at the age of 97, Chomsky has lent his academic prestige to a relentless campaign against his own country's barbarities abroad – though in contrast to the aristocratic Russell, Chomsky is the child of working class Jewish refugees from Tsarist pogroms. Not surprisingly, he has been repaid with either denunciation or, far more typically, silence. Whereas a much slighter figure such as the Atlanticist French philosopher Bernard Henri-Lévy is lionised at home and abroad, Chomsky and his genuine popularity are ignored.

Indeed, his books have been banned from the US prison library in Guantánamo. You'd hardly need a clearer example of his model of how dissenting views are filtered out of the western media, set out in his 1990's book Manufacturing Consent, than his own case. But as Chomsky is the first to point out, the marginalisation of opponents of western state policy is as nothing compared to the brutalities suffered by those who challenge states backed by the US and its allies in the Middle East.

We meet in a break between a schedule of lectures and talks that would be punishing for a man half his age. At the podium, Chomsky's style is dry and low-key, as he ranges without pausing for breath from one region and historical conflict to another, always buttressed with a barrage of sources and quotations, often from US government archives and leaders themselves.

But in discussion he is warm and engaged, only hampered by slight deafness. He has only recently started travelling again, he explains, after a three-year hiatus while he was caring for his wife and fellow linguist, Carol, who died from cancer last December. Despite their privilege, his concentrated exposure to the continuing injustices and exorbitant expense of the US health system has clearly left him angry. Public emergency rooms are "uncivilised, there is no health care", he says, and the same kind of corporate interests that drive US foreign policy are also setting the limits of domestic social reform.

All three schemes now being considered for Barack Obama's health care reform are "to the right of the public, which is two to one in favour of a public option. But the New York Times says that has no political support, by which they mean from the insurance and pharmaceutical companies." Now the American Petroleum Institute is determined to "follow the success of the insurance industry in killing off health reform," Chomsky says, and do the same to hopes of genuine international action at next month's Copenhagen climate change summit. Only the forms of power have changed since the foundation of the republic, he says, when James Madison insisted that the new state should "protect the minority of the opulent against the majority".

Chomsky supported Obama's election campaign in swing states, but regards his presidency as representing little more than a "shift back towards the centre" and a striking foreign policy continuity with George Bush's second administration. "The first Bush administration was way off the spectrum, America's prestige sank to a historic low and the people who run the country didn't like that." But he is surprised so many people abroad, especially in the third world, are disappointed at how little Obama has changed. "His campaign rhetoric, hope and change, was entirely vacuous. There was no principled criticism of the Iraq war: he called it a strategic blunder. And Condoleezza Rice was black – does that mean she was sympathetic to third world problems?"

The veteran activist has described the US invasion of Afghanistan as "one of the most immoral acts in modern history", which united the jihadist movement around al-Qaida, sharply increased the level of terrorism and was "perfectly irrational – unless the security of the population is not the main priority". Which, of course, Chomsky believes, it is not. "States are not moral agents," he says, and believes that now that Obama is escalating the war, it has become even clearer that the occupation is about the credibility of Nato and US global power.

This is a recurrent theme in Chomsky's thinking about the American empire. He argues that since government officials first formulated plans for a "grand area" strategy for US global domination in the early 1940s, successive administrations have been guided by a "godfather principle, straight out of the mafia: that defiance cannot be tolerated. It's a major feature of state policy." "Successful defiance" has to be punished, even where it damages business interests, as in the economic blockade of Cuba – in case "the contagion spreads".

The gap between the interests of those who control American foreign policy and the public is also borne out, in Chomsky's view, by the US's unwavering support for Israel and "rejectionism" of the two-state solution effectively on offer for 30 years. That's not because of the overweening power of the Israel lobby in the US, but because Israel is a strategic and commercial asset which underpins rather than undermines US domination of the Middle East. "Even in the 1950s, President Eisenhower was concerned about what he called a campaign of hatred of the US in the Arab world, because of the perception on the Arab street that it supported harsh and oppressive regimes to take their oil."

Half a century later, corporations like Lockheed Martin and Exxon Mobil are doing fine, he says: America's one-sided role in the Middle East isn't harming their interests, whatever risks it might bring for anyone else.

Chomsky is sometimes criticised on the left for encouraging pessimism or inaction by emphasising the overwhelming weight of US power – or for failing to connect his own activism with labour or social movements on the ground. He is certainly his own man, holds some idiosyncratic views (I was startled, for instance, to hear him say that Vietnam was a strategic victory for the US in southeast Asia, despite its humiliating 1975 withdrawal) and has drawn flak for defending freedom of speech for Holocaust deniers. He describes himself as an anarchist or libertarian socialist, but often sounds more like a radical liberal – which is perhaps why he enrages more middle-of-the-road American liberals who don't appreciate their views being taken to the logical conclusion.

But for an octogenarian who has been active on the left since the 1930s, Chomsky sounds strikingly upbeat. He's a keen supporter of the wave of progressive change that has swept South America in the past decade ("one of the liberal criticisms of Bush is that he didn't pay enough attention to Latin America – it was the best thing that ever happened to Latin America"). He also believes there are now constraints on imperial power which didn't exist in the past: "They couldn't get away with the kind of chemical warfare and blanket B52 bombing that Kennedy did," in the 1960s. He even has some qualified hopes for the internet as a way around the monopoly of the corporate-dominated media.

But what of the charge so often made that he's an "anti-American" figure who can only see the crimes of his own government while ignoring the crimes of others around the world? "Anti-Americanism is a pure totalitarian concept," he retorts. "The very notion is idiotic. Of course you don't deny other crimes, but your primary moral responsibility is for your own actions, which you can do something about. It's the same charge which was made in the Bible by King Ahab, the epitome of evil, when he demanded of the prophet Elijah: why are you a hater of Israel? He was identifying himself with society and criticism of the state with criticism of society."

It's a telling analogy. Chomsky is a studiedly modest man who would balk at any such comparison. But in the Biblical tradition of the conflict between prophets and kings, there's not the slightest doubt which side he represents.

For the record, Chomsky, by his own admission, was politically quiescent, save for a spell on a kibbutzim in 1953, until 1965; and carpet bombing of Vietnam began under LBJ. Miss those minor details, Seamus? But of course you did - that's what you're at the Guardian for.

[Peter Presland]

Paul

Thanks for all this. It really is very persuasive indeed. It illustrates the vastness of the deceptions everyone is up against if their purpose really is genuine, agenda-free inquiry into the realities behind the façades of 'official' narratives of just about everything worthy of a 'narrative'.

The thing is of course, that just about everybody DOES have an agenda - whether or not they are concious of it - and Chomsky is clearly no exception. He needs a good grilling on the nature of his, rather than the customary deferential invitations to wax lyrical about his opinions of this and that issue du jour.

The Chomsky thing is especially illustrative in that he is still regarded with reverence by people that I have great respect for - The 'Media-Lens' organisation being a case in point.

[Paul Rigby]

The Chomsky thing is especially illustrative in that he is still regarded with reverence by people that I have great respect for - The 'Media-Lens' organisation being a case in point.

Baffles me, Pete, why such otherwise courageous and perceptive observers as Media Lens continue to turn a Nelsonian eye to the blatant absurdities of Chomsky, but there we are. As ever, we must look at the horror and the deceit squarely and not shirk from the obligations imposed by the evidence, however saddening, uncomfortable or unexpected.

The deeper point - by which I mean the point beyond this individual intellectual secret policeman - is one that can be readily apprehended by most: trade-offs.

At the root of the work of Chomsky, Zinn et al, is the notion of "giving-to-get" - one concedes ground on the generality of US/Israeli/European exterminism to protect a few key, strategic assets. The underlying, unifying principle to be resisted at all costs is conspiracism, resistance to which is vital to sustaining the illusion - more accurately, the monstrous lie -that we live in a democracy & that our mainstream politics has meaning. This is the rampart defended to the last left-gatekeeper.

A new generation is now in place: For IF Stone and MS Arnoni, read Glenn Greenwald & Noami Klein. Nor is this confined by any means to the defence of Israel at the deepest level (as even the most cursory inspection of the career of Alexander Cockburn, the man who blew details of Arnon Milchon's role as Mossad disinformationist, reveals.) What the Chomsky deception illustrates so powerfully is the densely intertwined connection between the Anglo-American MIC, Israel, and western spookery, a relationship far more profound than superficial examination of the neo-cons would have us believe.

It's a battle we can't win, but then they're always the only ones worth engaging in.

Paul

[Paul Rigby]

A new generation is now in place: For IF Stone and MS Arnoni, read Glenn Greenwald & Noami Klein. Nor is this confined by any means to the defence of Israel at the deepest level (as even the most cursory inspection of the career of Alexander Cockburn, the man who blew details of Arnon Milchon's role as Mossad disinformationist, reveals.) What the Chomsky deception illustrates so powerfully is the densely intertwined connection between the Anglo-American MIC, Israel, and western spookery, a relationship far more profound than superficial examination of the neo-cons would have us believe.

Until you get to subjects like 9/11 and Dallas '63, Greenwald is very fine. In today's posting at Salon, he offers a brief reminder of why Arnon Milchon's bosses, not to mention the US MIC, used the memory of JFK, not to mention the absurdity of the official account of his murder, to assist in the ousting of Bush I and the installation of the infinitely pliant nullity from Arkansas:

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_.../08/israel

Is using aid to Israel as leverage becoming a mainstream idea?

When is the last time there were serious discussions like this in the establishment media about cutting off aid to Israel if they refused to cease taking actions that harmed American interests? That was probably 1992, when then-Secretary of State Jim Baker repeatedly tried to link continued American aid and loan guarantees to Israeli cessation of settlement expansions and increased good faith in negotiating a peace agreement with the Palestinians -- which caused a major political backlash in the U.S., fueled by what then-NYT-reporter Tom Friedman described as "a number of pro-Israeli Senators." It's amazing how little has changed vis-a-vis American debates over Israel in the 17 years since then.

Stone's JFK boasted a veteran Mossad man - take a peek at Milchon's role, for example, in Muldergate, the South African government's attempt to creat a global propaganda network in support of Apartheid - as the film's executive producer? Absolutely: Alexander Cockburn was quite correct.

Like the Clay Shaw case upon which it was loosely based, JFK the film was a classic example of conceding ground the better to sustain a citadel - in both instances, the Z-fake.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Of the overwhelming evidence which contradicted the official explanation that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman who murdered President John F Kennedy in 1963, Noam Chomsky said:

"I mean, who knows? And who cares? I mean plenty of people get killed all the time. Why does it matter that one of them happened to be John F Kennedy?"

For the record, I don't believe that Chomsky is a "left-gatekeeper".

Chomsky is far more interested in structures than individuals. It can be argued that his academic linguistic work, including the development of a hypothesis of "universal grammar" shared by all humans, is a logical consequence of this.

He's also an egalitarian: the murder of a child in Denver or Kabul or Bogota matters as much to him as the murder of a President.

Ultimately though, if it's a battle of the Profs, Peter Dale Scott has done more important work in analysing deep political structures than Noam Chomsky.

[Paul Rigby]

Stone's JFK boasted a veteran Mossad man - take a peek at Milchon's role, for example, in Muldergate, the South African government's attempt to creat a global propaganda network in support of Apartheid - as the film's executive producer? Absolutely: Alexander Cockburn was quite correct.

Like the Clay Shaw case upon which it was loosely based, JFK the film was a classic example of conceding ground the better to sustain a citadel - in both instances, the Z-fake.

Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi. The Israeli Connection: Whom Israel Arms and Why (I.B. Tauris, 1988) [1850430691], p.155:

When the South African Information Department decided to acquire the London-based West Africa magazine in 1975, the actual buyer was Mossad man Arnon Milchon (Bloch & Weir, 1982). Milchon was “the key financial figure in the South African scheme that later became known as Muldergate” (Rapoport, 1986, p.13). In an interview in 1986, he said that he had been recruited for the operation by “a Hebrew University professor, and a Foreign Ministry official” (p.13).

Mervyn Rees & Chris Day. Muldergate: The Story of the Info Scandal (Jo’burg, SA: 1980), p.194:

Another name also cropped up in the transaction – that of Arnon Milcham, the mysterious Israeli who had, Rees discovered, bought Rhoodie’s Plettenberg Bay apartment.

Mervyn Rees & Chris Day. Muldergate: The Story of the Info Scandal (Jo’burg, SA: 1980), p.197:

…the Abramson-Pegg financial jigsaw puzzle had fallen into place and again, Rhoodie’s choice of front men was difficult to understand…Arnon Milcham, the mysterious Israeli…

[Paul Rigby]

For the record, I don't believe that Chomsky is a "left-gatekeeper".

Chomsky is far more interested in structures than individuals.

Except in the case of responsibility for the escalation in Vietnam; and the structures of the CIA, for which he has offered next to nothing. In the case of the former, we are solemnly invited to believe one man was responsible:

“Kennedy escalated” (p.2); “John F. Kennedy’s escalation” (p.23); “Kennedy’s escalation” (p.27); “Kennedy…escalated the war” (p.37); “JFK raised the level of US attack” (p.43); “As he prepared to escalate the war…in late 1961” (p.46); “Kennedy’s 1961-62 escalation” (p.51); “his 1961-1962 escalation” (p.67).

Just in case his less nimble readers missed the point, the Gnome served up a variation on the theme. Subtlety, as is clear, was not his strongpoint:

”Kennedy’s war” (p.2); “Kennedy’s war” (p.36); “Kennedy’s war” (p.39); “Kennedy’s war” (p.52); “Kennedy’s war” (p.53); “Kennedy’s war” (p.69); “Kennedy’s war” (p.73); “Kennedy’s war” (p.81); “Kennedy’s war” (p.86); “Kennedy’s war” (p.105).

Still not got it? Chomsky had a third variant on the same basic slogan:

”Kennedy…his aggression” (p.15); “Kennedy moved on to armed attack” (p.25); “JFK’s aggression” (p.32); “JFK’s aggression” (p.35); “Kennedy’s aggression” (p.52); “Kennedy’s aggression” (p.63); “JFK’s 1961-1962 aggression” (p.66); “JFK’s aggression” (p.115).

Impressively sophisticated stuff: If you can’t convince ‘em with the quality of your argument or evidence, beat ‘em into submission by mindless repetition.

It can be argued that his academic linguistic work, including the development of a hypothesis of "universal grammar" shared by all humans, is a logical consequence of this.

Machine translation for intelligence purposes. This why the Air Force etc funded him.

He's also an egalitarian: the murder of a child in Denver or Kabul or Bogota matters as much to him as the murder of a President.

A classic non-sequitur, even if true, which I'm less than convinced it is.

Ultimately though, if it's a battle of the Profs, Peter Dale Scott has done more important work in analysing deep political structures than Noam Chomsky.

Rethinking Camelot: JFK, the Vietnam War, and US Political Culture (London: Verso, 1993), p.144

Another common belief is that JFK was so incensed over the failure of the CIA at the Bay of Pigs that he vowed to smash it to bits, sowing the seeds for right-wing hatreds. Again, there are problems. As historians of the Agency have pointed out, it was Lyndon Johnson who treated the CIA “with contempt,” while JFK’s distress over the Bay of Pigs “in no way undermined his firm faith in the principle of covert operations, and in the CIA’s mission to carry them out.” JFK promised to “redouble his efforts” and to “improve” covert operations. He fired the CIA’s harshest critic (Chester Bowles) and appointed as Director the respected John McCone, who “revitalized the intelligence process,” though persistent failures kept the Agency from returning to the “golden age.” Nevertheless, the CIA was “re-established…in White House favor” and became a “significant voice in policy making” under Kennedy, particularly in 1963, “as covert actions multiplied in Cuba, Laos, Vietnam and Africa” (including new instructions in June 1963 to increase covert operations against Castro). Under JFK, the CIA Director became “a principal participant in the administration, on a par with the Secretary of State or of Defense.” The enthusiasm of the Kennedy brothers for counterinsurgency and covert operations is, of course, notorious.

One of the crudest, and most dishonest, pieces of CIA hackwork ever written.