The system doesn’t just manufacture consent. It also manufactures dissent and decides which dissidents you’re allowed to hear.
Michael Parenti published “Inventing Reality” in 1986. Chomsky’s “Manufacturing Consent” came out in 1988.
Chomsky cited Parenti exactly once, for an article, not the book that preceded his own on the same subject.
Same thesis: media serves power. But the books are not the same.
On “conspiracy”: Chomsky dismisses structural analysis that names actors as “conspiracy theorism.” Parenti: “The alternative to a conspiracy theory is an innocence theory… the CIA is by definition a conspiracy.”
Chomsky wanted you to protest… abstractly. Never name the names.
Right-wing anticommunism is obvious. But they needed someone to attack socialism from the left, to gut-punch communism from inside the tent. Enter Chomsky.
Chomsky equates Stalin with Goebbels, called Leninism “counterrevolution.”
Parenti documented the real gains: full employment, free healthcare, free education, free housing.
He wrote about how the existence of the USSR forced concessions in the capitalist countries: social programs, worker rights, formal decolonization.
Capital had to compete with an alternative Chomsky made sure you wouldn’t defend.
On empire: Chomsky framed US foreign policy as blunders and mistakes. Parenti said “the Iraq war has not been a mistake”, it succeeded for the class it serves. Your taxes, your children’s lives. Their profits, their reconstruction contracts. Externalized costs, privatized gains.
On intervention: Chomsky supported the NATO no-fly zone over Libya. Parenti opposed it, listed what Libyans would never see again after “liberation.”
On elections: Chomsky did the “lesser evil” dance every four years, vote Democrat in swing states. Parenti broke with Bernie Sanders over the bombing of Yugoslavia.
Chomsky got MIT, The Guardian, documentaries, Jacobin. Parenti barely got lecture halls and public access TV.
Parenti was the one they didn’t want you listening to, so they put Chomsky in front of you.
two polemics that nail Chomsky
Chomsky, consistent in his lifelong opposition to Lenin, instead of suggesting what is to be done, restricts himself to exclusively pointing out what is not to be done.
The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS), aiming to exert economic pressure against the apartheid regime of Israel in Palestine, is ruled out completely in a 2016 interview:
I mean you might as well boycott the United States. [23]
If that seems fatalistic, informed by recent events, consider that his opposition to any meaningful action in solidarity with Palestine was even bleaker in 2002:
Well, the objective reality is that most of the Palestinian refugees will never go back to Palestine — that’s just a fact of life, just like the American Indians will never get back what they had on the American continent. So in that respect, there’ll never be justice. And there’s just no way out of that: if there was ever any prospect of Palestinians in any large number going back to what was formerly Palestine, Israel would probably blow up the world, which they’re capable of doing. And that’s never going to happen. So the only question is, what kind of limited form of justice can be achieved? [24]
what a scumbag
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
given that chomsky was in the plane with the past best friend of the bourgueoisie, this theory has lots of sense
Calling Lenin counterrevolutionary is another level of
Bro said the real revolution was the petite bourgeoisie doing parlimentarism, can’t make this up
Fucker didn’t even belief in the Anarchist theories (if they actually exist).
The strange case of anarcho-socialdemocratism, way more common than it seems.
A.k.a. Vaushism. (No wonder they all ‘love’ children.)
More commonly known as Anarcho-natoism.
Chomsky equates Stalin with Goebbels, called Leninism “counterrevolution.”
Not even trots sink that low.
The funny thing is the trots were the most enthusiastic about ‘coppitty chopping’ the anarchists after the revolution.
oh goodness 😭 ew 😭
It worked wonders.
Except, Parenti also knew that his work in rooted in materialism, and when the time comes, people will know the truth. Now the world sees Chomsky for the pedophile he is. While Parenti will likely end up being many people’s introduction to communism
His magnum opus: Manufacturing (the age of) Consent
The photos of him with Epstein explained in a nutshell. Thank you.
well he failed
Unfortunately we’re in the minority by far.
There’s some people in the replies who are saying that Chomsky didn’t frame US foreign policy as blunders and mistakes, and in fact criticized that mentality quite often, but I’m not sure if that’s true or not.
This article, Mainstream and the Margins has a bunch of examples of this framing by Chomsky (chapter “Inept Empire”).
