Re: Media Bias -- Chomsky

[jamesd@netcom.com (James A. Donald)]

Please put "Chomsky" in your threads title, or else we will get
flamed by the numerous people who have "Chomsky" in their kill
files
 
j.hastings6@genie.geis.com describes a Chomsky movie where
Chomsky protests about media priorities.
 
The problem is that Chomsky does not use words such as
"bias" and "persuasion".  Instead he uses words such as
"coercion" and "control"
 
If he said "bias" the implication would be that we should
deal with this problem by individual action, for example
we should subscribe to magazines and so forth that give us
diverse views - that we should respond as individuals.   By
using words such as "control" he implies that we should
respond collectively to resist these acts of coercion.  He
calls speech, and thus implies they should be met with
force.
 
The natural and intended emotional response to Chomsky's
lies and distortions is:
 
"How do you explain that, Man?! Fight the Power! Right Awn!"
 
By defining speech and ideas as force and coercion Chomsky
is implicitly arguing for democratic control of speech and
ideas.
 
He implies that democratic control of speech and ideas
would be a vast improvement in our civil liberties, that
it would make us more free.
 
If you say "bias" as Rush Limbaugh does, then the obvious
implication is that one should start ones own newsletter
and or attend to alternative sources of information.  When
Rush says "Media Bias" he is really saying "buy my book,
listen to my radio show, watch my TV show."
 
When Chomsky says that the public are "subject to a system
of rigid ideological control" (not that particular
newspapers are subject to rigid ideological control by
imperialist capitalist stooges, but that *the people* are
subjected to rigid ideological control by imperialist
capitalist stooges") he is saying that the speech acts he
that protests are acts of violence and coercion and thus
he implies that we should defend ourselves collectively
against such speech.
 
In other words he is perverting the language so that for
him "freedom of speech" is democratic control of speech and
ideas by the people.  Speech should be subjected to
democratic control by the people, and this will make us
more free and expand civil liberties.
 
If Susie tells stories of how John ruined his life with
drugs or booze, one might reasonably conclude that Susie is
telling us to be selective and exercise self control.
 
If Susie tells stories of how evil drug lords/publicans
ruined Johns life by *forcing him* to consume drugs and or
booze, one can only conclude that Susie is calling for
drug/alcohol prohibition.
 
Chomsky continually claims that we are *coerced* into accepting
the ideas of the evil imperialist capitalist conspiracy.  From
this I reasonably infer he is arguing for democratic control
of speech and ideas.
 
He continually describes (and wildly exaggerates) the problem
using language that implies that only a collective, rather than
individual, response to misinformation can make us free.
 
As you know, democratic control of speech and ideas was
tried very successfully under the National Socialist German
Workers party.  In practice it proved remarkably similar to
the undemocratic control of speech and ideas employed in
the Soviet Union.
 
j.hastings6@genie.geis.com writes
> East Timor people suffered the same magnitude of oppression at the
> hands of the U.S.-supported Indonesians, as did the Cambodians under
> the Khmer [Rouge] ...
> ....
>
> The reports of East Timor atrocities were relatively non-existent.
>  
> How do you explain that, Man?! Fight the Power! Right Awn!
(I assume that Right Awn! is a smiley)
 
What Chomsky said about US involvement in Indonesian
imperialism is a pack of lies.  (Or rather what he implies
- Chomsky mostly lies by carefully arranging truths and
half truths so as to give a wildly misleading impression.)
But even if what Chomsky said about the US involvement in
Indonesian imperialism was completely true one can easily
point to even more extreme examples bias in the opposite
direction in the press.  For example compare the massive
publicity for Pinochet's murder of a handful of people,
the deadly silence concerning the murder of huge numbers
of people mostly women and children, by the marxist anti
American regime in Ethiopia.  This genocide was vastly
greater than Timor, and you do not see Chomsky jumping up
and down about media silence concerning Ethiopia.
 
(One can easily dig up the real, rather boring, reasons
why Ethiopia was ignored, and one can easily dig up the
real, rather boring, reasons why East Timor was ignored,
but is more fun to allege that the press is controlled by a
vast evil immensely powerful communist conspiracy and force
the commies write up the complicated boring research
for a change.)
 
 
> When I saw him live and on stage, Chomsky said he thought
> the genocide stories about Cambodia were as bogus as the
> other 99% lies told by the lapdog "adversarial" press (like
> Yellow Rain "chemical warfare" actually caused by bee
> droppings). ...
> 
> Can we really blame him for doubting the unreliable media?
> 
> He stopped defending Khmer Rouge (sp?) when he became
> convinced that the killing fields were real. In other
> words, he would never support genocide. That's the Party
> Line anyway, comrade.
 
Like practically everything Chomsky says, the above is a
half truth that is used to imply a lie.
 
Sure, in the beginning, all reasonable people assumed that
the reports of genocide were more vomit by the Pentagon
misinformation machine (not the lapdog press -- the press
was very far from being lapdog -- it had been lapdog in the
beginning, but dramatically shifted.)   That is what I
assumed -- at first.
 
It soon became apparent that the reports of genocide
were horribly real.
 
But Chomsky kept right on pushing the same wheelbarrow on
and on and on as the terrible evidence piled up, until the
Vietnamese invaded - and *then*, when the winds of politics
blew, he abruptly changed his position.
 
This shows his position was based purely on politics, and
that he displayed a contemptuous disregard for the truth,
for principle, and for human lives.
 
It reminds me of that scene in the book "1984" where in
the middle of hate week, yesterdays enemy suddenly becomes
today's ally, and yesterdays ally becomes today's enemy.
Orwell's fictional hate week was based in part on real life
abrupt shifts in magazines such as "New Republic" when
Stalin made a non aggression pact with Hitler, and the
further abrupt shift when Hitler broke that treaty.
 
> Chomsky is an extreme free-speech anarchist, from what
> I've read about and by him. He even defended the right of
> Holocaust-revisionist Robert Faurisson to speak about his
> historical beliefs against the French state's claim that it
> has the right to determine what is "historical fact."
> Chomsky himself does not deny the Holocaust.
 
Chomsky is not an anarchist.  
 
He advocates an economic system very similar to that
advocated by the National Socialist German Workers party,
and somewhat different from that advocated by the
Bolsheviks.
 
This was demonstrated very nicely in his papers on GATT,
which described managed trade as democratic control and as
control by the people.  If you define the Washington
bureaucracy as "the people", as Chomsky does whenever he
discusses acts of theft, coercion, and violence by the
current American government against American individuals,
then fascism is anarcho socialism by definition, and
Chomsky is indeed an anarchist.
 
Chomsky may well be tolerant of holocaust revisionists, as
am I, but Chomsky fans show a notable lack of tolerance
for other forms of speech, as is most noticeable on the
net.  This leads me to suspect that Chomsky's tolerance of
holocaust revisionism may well be based on grounds
somewhat different my own.
 
If Chomsky was a fan of free speech, he would be
celebrating what the laser printer and the internet have
made possible.  If he was genuinely concerned with
monopolistic control of speech, rather than ensuring that
"the people" exercised that monopoly, he would be
celebrating what is now happening.
 
Chomsky has the very clear objective of creating a
economic, social and political system based on democratic
control of speech, thought, work, and property, through
the Democrat Party, using normal constitutional, legal,
institutional and democratic means, just as the National
Socialist German Workers party successfully did in Germany.
 
Clearly this objective is far more realistic and
achievable than the ridiculous fantasy of the Marxists of
coming to power in America through revolutionary means.
 
Since there are clearly a great many people who seek and
desire totalitarianism, with their group at the top,  we
should hardly be surprised to see large number of people
seeking to achieve this through means that are workable
and feasible, rather than through means that are absurd
and impossible.  Nor should we be surprised to find that
these people are mostly in the party whose ideas can most
readily be perverted to this objective.
 
> According to the S.F. Weekly in 1989, Noam Chomsky was
> once described in a college newspaper as both "a Nazi
> sympathiser" and "a Soviet apologist." That's a neat trick,
 
The ideological difference between the Soviet Union and
Nazi Germany is so slight as to be almost indiscernible.
 
Stalin permitted abortion on a large scale, Hitler on a
modest scale.  Stalin murdered Jews on a modest scale,
Hitler on a large scale - but this was more a tactic to
create a body of killers who had no choice but to support
him, rather than through any burning ideological difference.
 
Apart from Jews and abortion, I cannot see any noticeable
political difference between Hitler and Stalin, other than
the very important fact that Hitler took power through
democratic, constitutional, and institutional means, and
that Hitler obeyed the letter of the constitution (while
grossly violating the spirit of the constitution.)
 
Similarly Hitler respected the form of property rights
while brushing business owners aside and running their
businesses directly by the German people for the greater
good of the German nation.  Chomsky would do likewise,
rather than implementing the Soviet form of socialism.
 
My impression is that if Chomsky or (more likely) one of
his disciples were to achieve power he would resemble
Stalin on abortion, and on America's Jews - the Asians, and
he would resemble Hitler in regard to democracy and the
constitution, and property rights.  (Constitution as
currently interpreted by the supreme court -- not
constitution as originally written, of course.)
 
But I would not be particularly surprised if he resembled
Hitler on both Asians and on the Constitution  (Supreme
court version).
 
I can definitely and confidently say that he would *not*
resemble Stalin on the constitution and property rights. 
This is why people get hysterical when other people call
Chomsky a totalitarian and a commie sympathizer.  It is
perfectly true, and perfectly clear, that Chomsky aims to
achieve totalitarian terror by means radically different
from those intended by the commies.  
 
In this sense he is clearly not a commie sympathizer.
 
-- 
 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
We have the right to defend ourselves and our
property, because of the kind of animals that we              James A. Donald
are.  True law derives from this right, not from
the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state.                jamesd@netcom.com