Forum Post: Noam Chomsky on propaganda - something everyone should know, especially people in the occupy movement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YftlB3AxBws

more: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzd4WiuKr7M

Noam Chomsky, groundbreaking Linguist and Professor at MIT, explains how the 1% use the media as propaganda outlets to control the information environment we all live in, with the deliberate end of maintaining and enhance existing wealth and power disparities.

It's particularly great because he didn't just come up with this stuff through discussion and pontification or passive observation - what most of us have to make do with - it is based on extensive serious research. For more details see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model . Actually, you have to wonder how they did not stop him from doing the research. Maybe they did bias or cripple it, or he got it done too fast and too quietly for them, who knows.

Secondly, just want to say IMO, it's great to have historical evidence like the trilateral commission stuff, catching these people red-handed at this, so to speak. But really, when we just look at the way the media is organized, who controls it, etc. we really can simply infer that it is a heavily biased propaganda organ. The public broadcasting is no better at this either as is has been subject to the equivalent of regulatory capture and is run in a hierarchical way with 1%ers at the top. Example is the BBC: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bbc#Executive_Board . Typical corporation really, the director general alone gets paid around >$2.2 million USD equivalent. And of course it was set up that way deliberately by the rich white people who controlled the government back then, too.

BTW, the take away for anyone who can't watch the videos etc. is that the media is heavily biased by it's very structure, having been built that way on purpose. And not really due to an organized conspiracy, more like class solidarity and cynical, Machiavellian individual selfishness among the 1%. The journalist do not have to conspire - the people who are already biased are simply put in the right place, fired on an excuse if they break ranks, etc. The liberal and conservative media dichotomy is graciously permitted by the 1% as it serves to give a misleading veneer of honesty. Hawks and doves, good cop/bad cop type stuff, they really are all in on it.

As a clarifying example, the liberal media is happy to portray us as liberal as if they were being honest, even though most occupations have made it crystal clear that this is a social, not political movement, and we welcome conservatives with open arms to help achieve our common goals. 99%, that's pretty clear. One obvious reason for this is that they are trying to shimmy us into politics as usual, because the 1% knows exactly what to do with that. Divide and conquer. They are not on our side.

Lastly, I want to note that it is great that someone in Chomsky's position is saying this stuff, and he knows what he is talking about and everything. But we need to move away from the myth of the lone hero or leader, as I am sure he would agree. This type of stuff has long been known within activist circles, and is what the "The revolution will not be televised" slogan refers to. But it doesn't get out there unless a highly unusual person, basically a fifth columnist, Chomsky, says it. That's a big problem. What else are we missing out on?