INTRO TO NOAM CHOMSKY

From AlterNet:

“I don’t bother writing about Fox News,” Chomsky said. “It is too easy. What I talk about are the liberal intellectuals, the ones who portray themselves and perceive themselves as challenging power, as courageous, as standing up for truth and justice. They are basically the guardians of the faith. They set the limits. They tell us how far we can go. They say, ‘Look how courageous I am.’ But do not go one millimeter beyond that. At least for the educated sectors, they are the most dangerous in supporting power.”

And

“I try to encourage people to think for themselves, to question standard assumptions,” Chomsky said when asked about his goals. “Don’t take assumptions for granted. Begin by taking a skeptical attitude toward anything that is conventional wisdom. Make it justify itself. It usually can’t. Be willing to ask questions about what is taken for granted. Try to think things through for yourself. There is plenty of information. You have got to learn how to judge, evaluate and compare it with other things. You have to take some things on trust or you can’t survive. But if there is something significant and important don’t take it on trust. As soon as you read anything that is anonymous you should immediately distrust it. If you read in the newspapers that Iran is defying the international community, ask who is the international community? India is opposed to sanctions. China is opposed to sanctions. Brazil is opposed to sanctions. The Non-Aligned Movement is vigorously opposed to sanctions and has been for years. Who is the international community? It is Washington and anyone who happens to agree with it. You can figure that out, but you have to do work. It is the same on issue after issue.”

More here.

It's not so much that something is right because Chomsky says so, as it is that reading his stuff puts you in an intellectual place where you're much more able to see the contradictions and inconsistencies within the rhetoric on a given issue.

Many people, for instance, take what they read or hear in the news at face value, or, at least, have a vague sense that some kind of liberal or conservative bias exists within the reporting, and clumsily try to filter for it. Chomsky, on the other hand, reminds us continually that the news business is, in fact, a business, motivated by the sole desire to deliver audiences to the advertisers who provide the industry's income, rather than being motivated by some pure desire to inform citizens for the sake of better democracy. Such a motivation shapes and selects the information we call news in surprising and weird ways, but the net effect is to continually misinform the population, often hurting democracy, rather than improving it.

But once you have a handle on how the news is actually constructed, you're much better equipped to see what's being avoided, what's being distorted, and why. That is, you're no longer much of a slave to "conventional wisdom," whatever that might mean.

And that's just one example. Chomsky uses this approach for all kinds of issues, digging deeply, assuming that what people in power assert is usually motivated by more than a simple desire to tell the truth. Reading Chomsky is indispensable intellectual training in our era of mass communication and public relations.

The above linked article is a very good start. Go check it out.

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