& Noam Chomsky: ...Actually this notion anti-American is quite an interesting one. It’s actually a totalitarian notion. It isn’t used in free societies.
So, if someone in, say, Italy is criticizing Berlusconi or the corruption of the Italian state and so on, they’re not called anti-Italian. In fact, if they were called anti-Italian, people would collapse in laughter in the streets of Rome or Milan.
In totalitarian states the notion’s used, so in the old Soviet union dissidents were called anti-Soviet. That was the worst condemnation. ...
Now, it’s true that in just about every society, the critics are maligned or mistreated... Different ways depending on the nature of the society. ...
In the United States, one of the terms of abuse is «anti-American.» There’s a couple of others, like «Marxist.» There’s an array of terms of abuse. But in the United States, you have a very high degree of freedom. So, if you’re vilified by some commissars, then who cares? You go on, you do your work anyway.
& Noam Chomsky: These concepts only arise in a culture where, if you criticize state power, and by state, I mean... More generally not just government but state corporate power, if you criticize concentrated power, you’re against the society. That’s quite striking that it’s used in the United States. In fact, as far as I know, it’s the only Democratic society where the concept isn’t just ridiculed. It’s a sign of elements of the elite culture, which are quite ugly.
& Noam Chomsky: When you’re moving into an international «plutonomy,» as the banks like to call it... The small percentage of the world’s population that’s gathering increasing wealth...
What happens to American consumers is much less a concern, because most of them aren’t going to be consuming your products anyway, at least not on a major basis.
Your goals are, profit in the next quarter, even if it’s based on financial manipulations... High salary, high bonuses, produce overseas if you have to, and produce for the wealthy classes here and their counterparts abroad. What about the rest?
Well, there’s a term coming into use for them, too. They’re called the «precariat»... Precarious proletariat... The working people of the world who live increasingly precarious lives.
& Noam Chomsky: Each time, the taxpayer is called on to bail out those who created the crisis, increasingly the major financial institutions.
In a capitalist economy, you wouldn’t do that. That would wipe out the investors who made risky investments. But the rich and powerful, they don’t want a capitalist system. They want to be able to run to the nanny state as soon as they’re in trouble, and get bailed out by the taxpayer.
That’s called «too big to fail.»
& Noam Chomsky: In the interest of power and privilege, it’s good to drive those ideas out of people’s heads. You don’t want them to know that they’re an oppressed class. So, this is one of the few societies in which you just don’t talk about class.
In fact, the notion of class is very simple. Who gives the orders? Who follows them? That basically defines class. It’s more nuanced and complex, but that’s basically it.
& Noam Chomsky: The public relations industry, the advertising industry, which is dedicated to creating consumers, it’s a phenomena that developed in the freest countries, in Britain and the United States, and the reason is pretty clear.
It became clear by, say, a century ago that it was not going to be so easy to control the population by force. Too much freedom had been won. Labor organizing, parliamentary labor parties in many countries, women starting to get the franchise, and so on. So, you had to have other means of controlling people.
And it was understood and expressed that you have to control them by control of beliefs and attitudes. Well, one of the best ways to control people in terms of attitudes is what the great political economist Thorstein Veblen called «fabricating consumers.»
& Noam Chomsky: The ideal is what you actually see today... Where, let’s say, teenage girls, if they have a free Saturday afternoon, will go walking in the shopping mall, not to the library or somewhere else.
The idea is to try to control everyone, to turn the whole society into the perfect system. Perfect system would be a society based on a dyad, a pair. The pair is you and your television set, or maybe now you and the Internet, in which that presents you with what the proper life would be, what kind of gadgets you should have.
And you spend your time and effort gaining those things, which you don’t need, and you don’t want, and maybe you’ll throw them away... But that’s the measure of a decent life.
& Noam Chomsky: The point is to create uninformed consumers who will make irrational choices. That’s what advertising is all about, and when the same institution, the PR system, runs elections, they do it the same way. They want to create an uniformed electorate, which will make irrational choices, often against their own interests, and we see it every time one of these extravaganzas take place.
& Noam Chomsky: Right after the election, president Obama won an award from the advertising industry for the best marketing campaign.
& Noam Chomsky: I don’t usually agree with Sarah Palin, but when she mocks what she calls the «hopey-changey» stuff, she’s right. First of all, Obama didn’t really promise anything. That’s mostly illusion.
--
On the IMDb
