I've listened to this at least half a dozen times and though I learned nothing new the first time it never gets old. It's like watching a bunch of balloons attack a cactus.
I'm so happy they were respectful and let him talk till he was finished. Chomsky is filled with so much valuable knowledge it just makes you see clearly what is really going on.
I'm actually amazed that Chomsky was allowed to talk uninterrupted for so long. Such a difference from the modern talking head debates of today's media. That's one thing I'll give to the format of this conversation. You can visibly see David Frum and the rest of the table fuming. I wonder what made them hold back.
32 years later and everything Chomsky has to say is just as true and relevant as it was when he said it. Sad, but hopeful that he left us his writings and speeches. He is still out there speaking truth to power today and we need that message more than ever.
More relevant, I'd say. The state is even further underground and the population is even more humane despite increasing efforts to destroy human feeling by capital
For anyone seeking context for this, 1988 was the year Chomsky and Herman published their seminal work Manufacturing Consent, the central thesis of which is known as the Propaganda Model and it is now considered the most important and influential text on the subject of mass media pro-status quo propaganda. Any journalism course worth its salt teaches the Propaganda Model to its students as one of the fundamentals of media analysis.
"In England, they still have a labor party, though they won't for long." Tony Blair became the leader of the Labor Party 9 years later. This is how you know someone knows what they're talking about; that they're working with an accurate political model, and that it has predictive power.
If you use your knowledge, talk about it, write it down, truly learn from it, you will never forget it. It also helps if you’ve written hundreds of books, lol!
I've noticed something extremely telling and illustrative. I'm currently reading Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent." Given the profundity of the thesis put forward in the book (ie that the media serves the interests of power rather than truth and democracy), I assumed that I would be able to find many examples of journalists debating this with Chomsky and countering his arguments. In fact, there's virtually nothing out there (this video being a rare exception). In a way, this supports the central thesis of the book - presumably none of the major networks were prepared to countenance even a debate on the matter.
Very little that you would call debates in a formal sense, but interviews with journalists have become adversarial, particularly on the subject of the media. The Andrew Marr one is a fine case. In general though Chomsky doesn't debate a huge amount. True, there are a few with Buckley, Dershowitz, Silber, Foucault (if you can follow it), but the vast bulk of what's out there in terms of debate are Q&As after lectures. These typically entail a first year student ignoring everything he has just said and waiting to spring a canned gotcha on him. It rarely ends well. His interactions with journalists are generally just question, answer, next question.
Have you read his recent book...the best exposé of the sham that is the Trump administration that has yet been written..Frum has really matured as a writer and analyst since this broadcast..he was just a kid then.
@@rkgrant I suppose it's good that Frum isn't marching (goose step) in line with Trumps obvious BS, but... Wasn't he a speech writer for 'Dubyah', making full-throated arguments for invading Iraq? He (Frum) and others are now behaving as if Trump is an aberration, 'I'm shocked, shocked to find there are Neo-fascists in the republican party!' When Frum and his ilk laid the ground work and made straight the way for the orange one. So, I don't see much redemption in him now effectively pointing out 'the sky is blue'.
Mystic Noam at 22:20 talking about england not going to have a labour party for very long. Just a few short years before the rise of blair's new labour
You can tell they're riled up and they WANT to prove him wrong, but you can also tell by how they back down that they also know they have no chance because Noam Chomsky has the uncanny inability to be wrong.
@Seb G I thought the guy at the bottom of the pic sat opposite Chomsky was a prick too. The one who admitted working for the Daily Herald near the end of the vid. Sounded like he was gloating when he falsely claimed Noam’s work was having no impact on the population.
18:56 I love how they cut the queen of England part, I can even tell what he was saying at that moment, he was saying "nobody cares if she even understands it". How appropriate for Chomsky making an analogy with the queen of England, it's amazing to see the media censorship at work.
@@duxnihilo we're just saying, it might be curious, that the tape is chewed up when England comes up. You are the one who's trying to call a valid observation a conspiracy and thus dismiss it. People's mind shut off whenever the word conspiracy is mentioned. It's just a simple case of observation and interpretation; we accept it could be wrong, no need to call it a conspiracy you idiot.
@@duxnihilo and do some f***I ng research too dumbo, most political actions are very well planned in advance, just like a conspiracy. If you knew the truth, you would question everything too asshole.
Noam gets hit with a question that basically asks, "You make profound arguments against the elite, but only elites would understand the argument." One of the lamest attempts at a tautology I've ever seen. I'm a blue collar worker and I get Noam's point. Also I'm immature and I want to say F#@$ that guy in a way that only an "intellectual" would get it.
Peter Worthington: "I'm very impressed by the mass of evidence that's been arrayed , unfortunately it's not always accurate and it's very selective." OK., then, why did you just sit there and not challenge what was being said by Mr. Chomsky? And when you did speak, why not bring up these inaccuracies?
This interview reminds me of Noam Chomsky’s only appearance on William F. Buckley’s ‘Firing Line’ in 1969, a show to discuss the war in Vietnam and American military intervention in other parts of the world. That program in its entirety is on you tube. Mr. Chomsky debated Buckley (favoring intervention) on American intervention and the use of force in places such as Greece, Central America, the Philippines, and Vietnam. After 35-40 minutes or so (approx.), Mr. Buckley had nothing really left to say. It was a civilized discourse, the likes of which, unfortunately, you do not see on mainstream television today. No one on television today possesses Mr. Chomsky's knowledge or intelligence. Sad, really. I read somewhere that Mr. Buckley was mad afterwards and vowed never to have Noam Chomsky back a second time. He was right.
Hi, i watch that debate from time to time. Apart from buckleys incessant interrupting, its a great watch. At the close, buckleys meek sign off was that of a man so thoroughly bested, his head hung, his shoulders dropped, he was done. Also, i remember reading Chomsky in the 80s, he was writing about being offered by canadian media to come to Canada and share his views. He said it was going great until he bought up Canadas complicity in a number of extra judicial state sponsored killings, the power of oil over govt etc.
No according to Chomsky he was mad but promised he would have him on again. Of course, he didn't because he can't deal with Chomsky's mastery of the facts
It's interesting to see a change in response styles at 41:25. The previous question posed by the interviewer two spots to the left regarding popular culture and youth in the United States gets interrupted by the one to the right. Instantly you can see a change in posture. Whereas the former question was being answered as one adult to another, the latter was as an adult speaking to a child about an incredibly obvious point. Like another commenter mentioned, it's like balloons attacking a cactus.
'You're speaking to a room full of journalists on national t.v., how'd that happen?' What Chomsky could have said: 'Well, for this discussion to happen, I needed to be surrounded like a criminal in an interrogation room and grilled by skeptics whose questions demean and side-step the research that went into my best books.'
Awesome. Love it. But man, the reporter at 54:00 really gave Chomsky pause. He had to repeat, and reframe the question before he could have an answer, and he did it by digging under it, and defining his own specific definitions of “win”. I mean, he’s just fantastic, but here he is becoming a little slippery.
As usual the details matter. Reagan increased military spending substantially - sure, that qualifies as "Keynesian", but it's a poor use of federal tax dollars, and indeed contributed to Reagan's egregious and historical deficits. At the same time Reagan was cutting what Chomsky would consider "useful" Keynesianism, social spending: "education and training, community development, welfare, nutrition, housing assistance and other antipoverty programs suffered most." (NYT February 16, 1988). From the same article: "Prof. Richard Neustadt, a political scientist at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, said: ''Mr. Reagan has been willing to tolerate extraordinary deficits and extraordinary defense expenditures, by previous standards, for the sake of keeping Congress from expanding domestic programs. It became the purpose of the deficits.' In other words it seems that the nature of the Reagan style Keynesianism was the opposite of what Chomsky would approve of: more military instead of less, less social spending instead of more. Finally, the deficit was also being inflated not just by military spending but by cutting taxes on the rich.
Michael Darlingon: what Reagan did is called "military Keynesian" - it was always part of society following WWII, but he accelerated it and stripped away civil spending.
The last question whether the US "lost" the Vietnam war - can a superpower (or any country for that matter) really "lose" a war in someone else's territory to begin with? (in this case thousands and thousands of miles away). It doesn't seem conceivable. It may not achieve its ultimate objectives but to call it a defeat would be a serious exaggeration, which many do. That logic may work in wars between neighboring countries, sharing common borders even if far away, otherwise it reduces war into a very trivial, simplistic, binary win or lose view, which doesn't seem conceivable when it comes to remote, proxy, or plain imperialistic military campaigns.
Chomsky is the perfect example of raising up people with memory and processing power :) In science it is very common that such people write history (not in the sense of fake history, I mean make a progress to find the truth). It is just a cultural upbringing, which any person of any race can enjoy. Please learn about Resource Based Economy :) You are welcome, your children can thank me later through you :D
