“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.” - Noam Chomsky
I really like this quote, but I’m not sure if I’m exactly right in the way I’m understanding it. Could anyone tell me what they get from it and maybe it’s implications to society or an example of them?
‘Many people like to accuse others of seeing the world in black or white. The truth is, people are able to expand their horizons to see such colours as blue, yellow, green, etc. Some people can even see colours, such as magenta, that most people have never heard of.’
“That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.” = ‘Hey, guess what guys? There are things like x-rays and gamma rays and radio waves in our spectrum, but someone is not letting you see them.’
Basically Chomsky is commenting on the mass media, particularly in the U.S. The media in the US, almost entirely owned by big corporations, often appears to be hosting lively debate on some issue or other, but upon closer inspection the debate turns out to be narrow and slanted in one direction.
Rather than simply publishing obvious lies, as we would expect of the media in a totalitarian state, the U.S. media creates a framework within which “debate” can occur. One of Chomsky’s favorite examples of this is the Vietnam war, during which the media presented basically two viewpoints – the “hawks” and the “doves.” The hawks were your “lets bomb them back into the stone age / do whatever it takes / maybe even nukes” types of people. The “doves” would say things such as “this war is costing too much / maybe it’s not in our best interests / this isn’t worth American lives” All within an incredibly simplistic “commies vs. freedom & democracy” framework. (Note I am NOT talking about the views of protesters, which were quite varied. I’m talking about the views of the media punditocracy.)
The missing viewpoint, the one that is outside the framework and therefore not subject to debate, is the underlying motive of the US in Vietnam, which is assumed to be honorable and above reproach. Imagine Walter Cronkite saying “the US should halt its invasion* of Vietnam, stop trying to undermine the will of the Vietnamese people, and stop supporting economic colonialism in Indochina” – that’s something clearly outside the established framework of debate.
Note that there is no “conspiracy” involved here, this is an entirely rational, self-generated and self-perpetuating system. Exactly what you’d expect from a system dominated by corporations and economic elites.
Chomsky makes an interesting point about the US invading Vietnam. To any rational outside observer that is exactly what the US did – invaded Vietnam. Just as we recognize the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Yet you will find no reference to the “US invasion of Vietnam” in the press at the time.
A low brow pop version of his meaning-- the “Dilbert” cartoons pasted all over cubicles in oppressive offices. This makes people think they are being sneaky and dissident and feel like they are rebelling and making a statement, which lulls them prematurely into complacency so that they don’t REALLY do anything about their condition.
I can’t remember who first criticized Adams for this-- pardon my lack of acknowledgement.
Well, my immediate reaction is a big giant roll eyes, just as much of what Chomsky has to say does.
His Vietnam and the media example is just one thing where I think he doesn’t really understand how the real world works. The hawks/doves thing has nothing to do with big corporations or approving of one ideology over the other, it has to do with the fact that the media’s job is not to present arguments, but to report facts. The hawks/doves debate got attention because that was the debate that was occurring in the government and in the majority of the minds of Americans. The whole missing aspect was left out because it was a non-issue to most people.
Similarly, the reason there was no mention of any invasion was because invasion is typically used to describe a sudden massive movement of troops. That didn’t occur in Vietnam, it was a gradual deployment. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan in the normal connotation of the word and so the term was used.
That being said, I would have to say that I agree with the quote in the OP. If I were going to consciously try and restrict debate, then that’s what I would do as well.
I sort of agree with Neurotik here. Generally, I agree with Chomsky’s worldview but even I think he often goes too far with some of his claims. For example, I think it was Chomsky that said the US was the most rapacious imperialist power in hist ory. I hate it when he comes out with crap like this because it devalues a lot of the valid stuff he also says.
However, I disagree with Neurotik’s definition of invasion. I would call it a sudden massive movement of troops that the bad guy s carry out. It’s a pretty heavily loaded word really. America has carried out lots of sudden, massive movements of troops but you would never hear of D-Day being referred to as an invasion. Landings, liberation of France even an operation but never a n invasion. Only Nazis, communists (and Arab dictatorships) would ever invade somebody.
America did invade Vietnam. Towards the end of the 60’s, deployment was anything but gradual. However, the fact that it was an invasion doesn’t make it morally wrong just as the Normandy invasion wasn’t wrong. Vietnam was wrong for a whole raft of reasons aside from it being an invasion though…v
Sorry but I have to disagree here, there are many references to the “Normandy invasion,” “D-day invasion” etc. Even at the time this was seen as an invasion, but in a very positive sense. This positive sense couldn’t be used in Vietnam, ostensibly because we were defending the country from communism (no matter what the majority of Vietnamese felt).
I agree with your point about Chomsky making sweeping statements, however. I remember him saying about the 20th century being “the most brutal in the history of mankind” or something similar. I’d bet a majority of the world’s population would not want to go back to even the 19th century, before the advent of modern medicine, etc.
That said, though, I think his critique of the media is extremely important at this point in time, with increased corporatization, the collapse of local newspapers and other factors. I think Chomsky hits the mark here a lot more than he misses.
But isn’t it also absurd to assume that the “U.S. media” behaves monolitically? That it’s such a self-perpetuating system that it’s easily understood by hundreds of reporters and producers what should and shouldn’t be reported?
It may be possible in the context of a political campaign, where the flow of information can be limited (or, for that matter, during a military campaign, although Newsweek just ran a major report on the dissenters of the Afghan War, such as Sontag).
There is a certain amount of “follow the leader” being played when it comes to reporting the issues of the day, but I suspect that it’s a result of a) laziness among reporters who don’t want to do the work of ferreting out the news; and b) the pressure from filling the gaping amount of broadcast time everyday; and c) the demands placed upon reporters to summarize a complicated situation in under 3 minutes per story.
I don’t think it’s absurd at all – the reporters themmselves are actually quite honest. The distortion (ie the framing of the debate) happens mainly with the editors, who decide what to publish, and the pundits, who put their “spin” on the issues of the day. This was quite evident with Central America in the eighties, when you could read almost daily stories about supposed repression under the Sandinistas but very little about life under the Guatemalan Junta (which was demostrably worse for the average citizen, but that’s another story). It wasn’t that reporters in Guatemala weren’t doing their jobs – no, the “filter” was applied back in the U.S. by editors and pundits. And Chomsky would argue that this is almost unconsious – you don’t get to be an editor or pundit without instinctively knowing what constitutes “acceptable” news and debate.
Many of the best books about Central America have been written by disgruntled reporters.
This is another problem endemic to the US media, and Chomsky arues rather convincingly that this also stacks the deck against dissident voices. When you have only a short sound bite to get your point across, its much easier to rely on tired cliches and patriotic slogans than to attempt an elaborate policy critique.
(Geez, I’m sounding like a parrot, but this is a thread about Chomsky).
Ace_Face, I definitely agree that the media is not very good at reporting dissident voices. There are a lot of factors that go into this, including the very nature of the media and the things it must exist in. The short sound-bite pieces are definitely not suited towards detailed information and debate. It is also true that editors are the ones who provide the slant of a newspaper. However, that’s not really out of a desire to frame the debate so much as to play to their audience. Think about the main newspapers out there, and think of people who read a certain newspaper because of its ideological slant (Washington Times = center right, Washington Post = center left). A paper’s slant is reinforced by its main audience’s biases, not out of a desire to consciously keep people passive.
My problem with Chomsky is that he takes something that occurs (media bias and restriction) and then with only theoretical hops, turns it into a conspiracy that goes outside the bounds of how things work in real life.
I’d also like to point out that that the US did not invade Vietnam. Just as we did not invade France during WWI or invade Britain during WWII. We were there at the request of the rulers of the country (France, South Vietnam).