Noam Chomsky

Irma's research on Noam Chomsky

Introduction : After analyzing Is a tall man happy, an animated documentary by Michael Gondry based on his conversation with Noam Chomsky, I wanted to research the theory professor Chomsky has on the manipulation in the media. To get an overview of his point of view I'll try to summarize several fragments of lectures and interviews on him.

Video: Propaganda terms of the media and what they mean

Fragment of a lecture of 9 min 41 sec.

Chomsky claims that every term has two meanings :

- official meaning

- technical meaning

He gives several examples :

Democracy

The official meaning is the ability of the public taking part and running around affairs, or something. (note Irma : He assumes  we know what he means by this logical term)

The technical meaning is that it's only a democracy when it's run by the business class, a specially a United States business class.

Peace Proces

The dictionary meaning is that it's a process trying to work towards peace. The technical meaning is whatever the US is advocating at a particular moment. By the fact of having a peace process the US is always working towards peace, no matter what they do, this makes every country who is not supporting them is then against peace.

Chomsky refers to someone who, inspired by one of his lectures, researched all the articles from the NY TIMES Newspaper over the last ten years, claiming that from 900 references from the peace process that not in even one article that the US opposing the peace process. Chomsky finds this quite remarkable because this was the period that the US undermine diplomatic discussions with for example the middle east. The newspaper never mentions that the US blocks the peace process.

On another example comes from an article on the front of the NY Times of the day of the lecture in march 1990. The headline of the front pages said 'US envoy urges Hondurans to let the contras stay' This gives the reader the impression that it seems to be in the spirit of the peace agreement but on the second page, where the article continues, it says 'on its face the second proposal to keep the contras in place would seem to be inconsistent with the spirit of the regional agreement which calls for their relocation but administration officials say there is now consistency ' Chomsky tells us the 1987 peace agreement, wich the US succeeded in undermining and destroying, is quite explicit. It says 'that the one indispensable element is obtaining peace in the region is the end of any form of support, logistical, military, propaganda, etc. for irregular forces, like the countries. So it does not seem to be inconsistent with the spirit it is flatly inconsistent with the words. Chomsky thinks the US, with the support of the media tries to undermine the peace agreement. In this lecture Chomsky names several examples relevant in the period of 1990 to underline his statement that the media helps to establish the power of the government,  this is remarkable because there is no force behind it. This is willing subservience not completed subservience, this flows by the logic of institutions.