Adonis Diaries

Chomsky looks at the central issues, questions and demands that are driving ordinary people to protest. How did we get to this point? How are the wealthiest 1% influencing the lives of the other 99 percent? How can we separate money from politics? What would a genuinely democratic election look like?

Chomsky appeared on this week’s AlterNet Radio Hour. Below is a transcript that’s been lightly edited for clarity. (You can listen to the whole show here.)

Joshua Holland: I want to just ask you first about a few trends shaping our political discourse. I’ve read many of your books, and the one that I probably found influential was Manufacturing Consent. You co-authored this manuscript in the late 1980s and since then we’ve seen some big changes. The mainstream media has become far more consolidated, and at the same time we’ve seen a proliferation of other forms of media.

We have the alternative media outlets, like online outlets like AlterNet and various social media. Looking at these trends, I wonder if you think that the range of what’s considered to be acceptable discourse has widened or narrowed further?

Noam Chomsky: Actually, I had a second edition to that about 10 years ago with a new, long introduction. At that time, we didn’t really think much had changed, but if we were to do one now we would certainly want to bring in what you’ve just mentioned.

Remember we were talking about the mainstream media. With regard to them I think pretty much the same analysis holds, although my own feeling is that, since the 1960s, there has been some broadening and opening through the mainstream — the effect of the activism of the ’60s, which changed perceptions, attitudes, and civilized the country in many ways. Topics that are freely talked about today were invisible, and, if visible, were unmentionable 50 years ago.

Furthermore, a lot of the journalists themselves are people whose formation was in the ’60s activism and its aftermath. These are changes that have been going on for a long time. With regards to the alternative media, they certainly provide a wide range of options that weren’t there before, and that includes access to foreign media. On the other hand, the Internet is kind of like walking into the Library of Congress in a sense.

Everything in the Library of Congress is there, but you have to know what you’re looking for. If you don’t know what you’re looking for, you might as well not have the library. Like you can’t decide you want to become a biologist.

It’s not enough to walk into Harvard’s biology library. You have to have a framework of understanding, a conception of what’s important and what isn’t important; what makes sense and what doesn’t make sense. Not a rigid one that never gets modified, but at least some kind of framework.

Unfortunately that’s pretty rare. In the absence of activist movements that draw in a very substantial part of the population for interaction. Interchange, the kinds of things that went on in the Occupy community for example, in the absence of that most people are kind of at sea when they face the internet.

Yes, they can find things of value and significance, but you have to know to look for them and you must have a framework of analysis and perception that allows you to weed that out from a lot of the junk that surrounds it.

Note: AlterNet is offering readers an opportunity to purchase Noam Chomsky’s new book, Occupy, available here.