Noam Chomsky and the Manufacture of Consent for American Foreign Policy

Abstract

Few names of academic scholars are so well recognized all around the world as that of Noam Chomsky. He is listed as the author or coauthor of well over 1,000 items in the online database of the Library of Congress. The range of topics covered in these books, videos, and audiotapes reveals at least three different Chomskys: the linguistic scholar internationally recognized for his theory of transformational grammar and generative syntax, the political activist inspired by the writings of Mikhail Bakunin and Anton Pannekoek, and the analyst of media performance who (together with Edward S. Herman) promulgated a “propaganda model” as an alternative to the conception of the media as “adversarial,” the one to which journalists, jurists, and communication scholars typically subscribe. It is this third role, which accounts for roughly 80% of the Library of Congress items, that apparently moved the editor of this journal to suggest a review of work by or about Chomsky. Having dutifully absorbed the contents of what looms as an unceasing, still continuing, flood of books, pamphlets, articles, and interviews—including some on C-Span, public radio, and the Internet—we refrain from reviewing each individually. This becomes unnecessary inasmuch as, at least on the subjects of greatest concern to communication scholars, almost all make use of the same materials and dwell on the same themes with surprisingly little variation. Endlessly repetitive, they do, however, when considered in their entirety, confirm Chomsky’s contention that despite his academic preoccupation with language, he completely separates his role as linguistics scholar from those of media critic and political activist. It is in the two latter roles that he has expressed his anarchist creed and developed, in conformity with it, a communication model that concedes no legitimacy to state authority and certainly none to any kind of violence even when used to counter something far worse. The connection to ideology does not, of course, invalidate the model. Social science inquiry generally and the study of mass communication, in particular, have often been driven by meliorative impulses. They are not separated by an impenetrable wall. Be this as it may, Chomsky’s model, like any model, still has to be judged not just, or even primarily, on its suitability as a club for beating up on the media but rather on its theoretical adequacy, which is to say, on how closely it approximates how they actually function.