“On August 6, 1945, I was a summer camp counselor when an atomic bomb exploded in the city of Hiroshima…” A small dog with a strident yelp interrupts Noam Chomsky, 94, who recounts the anecdote calmly. The philosopher and linguist, icon of the radical left and inescapable critic of mass media, American politics and capitalism, appears on screen on Zoom, shaggy beard, damaged royal blue wool knit. The Hiroshima bombings had a telling effect on his awareness of the world.
I sip my lukewarm coffee in front of my screen. We are 54 people from all over the world attending this online seminar offered by the University of Arizona, Consequences of Capitalism, given in collaboration with geographer Marv Waterstone.
I listen carefully to Noam Chomsky who speaks very slowly. “Yesterday the annual report of the Doomsday Clock was announced. We are 90 seconds away from the destruction of humanity. How did capitalism and its inherent structures accelerate this degeneration? This catastrophic premise pisses me off.
PHOTO JODI HILTON, THE NEW YORK TIMES ARCHIVES
Noam Chomsky in 2006
Noam Chomksy, authority figure of my rebellious youth fed to Manufacturing Consent, recently issued the following invitation: “Attend my class given at the University of Arizona. I saw there a perfect opportunity to be confronted with his vision of the world. In May, he will add a book to his hundred publications already published, Illegitimate Authoritya collection of interviews with the thinker CJ Polychroniou, focusing in particular on American foreign policy.
In this essay, Chomsky argues that Russia would have acted “with restraint and moderation” during the war against Ukraine.
He compares Russia’s way of fighting to that of the United States during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, arguing that the large-scale destruction of infrastructure observed during this conflict “did not take place in Ukraine “. A speech that sparked controversy.
Chomsky remains very critical of American foreign policy. Twenty years after the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, he stresses that this military intervention was “illegal” in the name of international law and “immoral”, since it was based on false information. The US government’s justification that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction was a lie. Chomsky recalls that according to various estimates, such as the study published in the medical journal The Lancet in 2006, more than 650,000 Iraqi civilians were killed between 2003 and 2006. In hindsight, we all know the wanderings of the American government in this controversial intervention based on deception. I vaguely remember 2003. I was very small, 12 years old and a little bit. I had accompanied my mother to the demonstration in Montreal against the war in Iraq. Going back to this recent history is confronting, since it allows us to see how manipulation of public opinion can easily be done to the detriment of thousands of lives.
The philosopher is also not kind to the American mass media, which he says supported the invasion by creating a collective consensus around the intervention. This is the heart of his thesis, that of manufacturing consent through propaganda. Chomsky argues that mass media serves the interests of economic and political elites rather than contributing to democracy. It’s disturbing to hear Chomsky talk about propaganda, because he accuses his own nation of using it to the detriment of the public good.
In his lessons, Chomsky, as stoic as ever, adapts his concept to contemporary events. Between two sips of his cold coffee, he returns to the Fox News saga. And that’s where his argumentative strength amazes me. The media, one of America’s most powerful, agreed in April to pay $787.5 million to settle a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems over false claims made on air. Fox claimed Dominion’s voting machines were manipulated to skew the 2020 US presidential election in favor of Joe Biden. The settlement provided for some acknowledgment of the facts by Fox News. It seems to me that this historic case blatantly illustrates an attempt to manufacture consent based on deception and motivated by political and economic gain.
The seminar lasts two and a half months and is relatively demanding. Every week, we have to read five texts, watch documentaries. I admit that this colossal amount of work for the tired mother that I am is boring. But I hang on, I learn and I dialogue. On Thursday, we have the chance to ask a question to Chomsky and Waterstone. So, professors, what about the echo chambers of social networks? Do they not contribute to a scattered production of consent? I find that this cornerstone of the current public space is missing in their analysis. Digital capitalism generates, through the constituent algorithms of GAFAM, a democratic erosion. This results in a growing polarization of perspectives and a radicalization of certain ideologies that reinforce a dominant vision of the world.
The lessons follow one another. I annotate Chomsky’s book Consequences of Capitalism and my existential angst about the future of the world swells. I don’t recommend Chomsky to brighten up your sad days. I cling to the fortuitous encounters that this seminar offers me.
Who is interested, like me, in Noam Chomsky? Dora, golden hair and small glasses at the end of her nose, is a doctoral student in geography in Arizona. Aged in her fifties, she is worried about the climate crisis and seems to be a loyal follower of Bernie Sanders. Camila, an international financial crime specialist based in Copenhagen, is concerned about corporate tax evasion. Atoosa is a research director at the Center for Technomoral Futures at the Futures Institute at the University of Edinburgh and researches applied ethics in artificial intelligence. Then there is this relatively silent American, Kent. I interrogate him to find out what he is doing there. He tells me that he sold his start-up in IT and is now a wealthy freelancer. Everyone wants to know what the philosopher thinks of today’s world.
Basically, I’m a bit like them. Noam Chomsky is probably one of the most important dissident intellectuals of the last century. So, if only to have access to snippets of modern history… I listen to it.