Chomsky For Beginners

David Cogswell, Paul Gordon

• Publisher: For Beginners
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9781934389171
• eBook ISBN: 9781939994011
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political History & Theory
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Noam Chomsky has written some 30 books, he is one of the most-quoted authors on Earth, The New York Times calls him “arguably the most important intellectual alive” – yet most people have no idea who he is or what he’s about.

Chomsky For Beginners tells you what he’s about: Chomsky is known for his work in two distinct areas – Linguistics and... “Gadflying.” (“Gadfly,” the word applied to Socrates, comes closest to the constant social irritant that Chomsky has become.) It is Chomsky’s work as Political Gadfly and Media Critic that has given passion and hope to the general public – and alienated the Major Media – which is, of course, why you don’t know more about him.

Chomsky’s message is very simple: Huge corporations run our country, the world, both political parties, and Major Media. (You suspected it; Chomsky proves it.) If enough people open their minds to what he has to say, the whole gingerbread fantasy we’ve been fed about America might turn into a real democracy.

What’s so special about Chomsky For Beginners? The few existing intros to Chomsky cover either Chomsky-the-Linguist or Chomsky-the-Political-Gadfly. Chomsky For Beginners covers both – plus an exclusive interview with the maverick genius. The clarity of David Cogwell’s text and the wit of Paul Gordon’s illustrations make Chomsky as easy to understand as the genius next door. Words and art are combined to clarify (but not oversimplify) the work and to “humanize” the man who may very well be what one savvy interviewer called him – “the smartest man on Earth.” 

or the sake of clarity and convenience, this book divides Media and Politics into separate chapters—but the point of the book is that they are inseparable.

Nothing better illustrates that point than the story of a little book called Counter-Revolutionary Violence.

In 1973, Claude McCaleb, publisher of Warner Modular books, decided that Watergate was merely a symptom of America’s overall deterioration, so he planned to publish a series of books exploring his idea. One of the books in the series was an ornery little book called Counter-Revolutionary Violence—written by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman: “Their thesis was that the United States, in attempting to suppress revolutionary movements in underdeveloped countries, had become the leading source of violence against native people.” (The Media Monopoly—Ben H. Bagdikian)

When William Sarnoff, the president of all Warner books…

Let us pause momentarily for station identification: Warner Modular books (which was preparing to publish the Little Book) was a subsidiary of Warner Publications (which was a subsidiary of Warner Communications) (which owned factories in West Germany and Brazil and had “considerable interests” in books, movies, broadcasting, video games, and Richard Nixon).

When William Sarnoff, the president of all Warner books, learned that a company under his spiritual guidance was preparing to advertise, print, and publish the Chomsky-Herman book, he brutally chewed out Mr. McCaleb, canceled the ads, ordered the destruction of the catalogues announcing the book, halted the printing, and destroyed any books that had been printed.

Freedom of speech doesn’t have a chance against Politics, Media, & Money.

When you hear the report of the day’s news,

do you often get the feeling that it doesn’t “compute,”

it doesn’t quite make sense… like something was left out?

When Chomsky explains what the media leaves out, suddenly the news-of-the-day makes perfect sense. Sometimes the media leaves out specific things (we’ll get to those later), but even more insidious (because it affects the way we see everything), they leave out entire concepts, without which our world makes no sense. One of the concepts that has been pretended out of existence by our media is the reality that the We stern “Democracies” (America included) are still divided into the Royalty and the Peasants, the Rulers and the Ruled…

In place of that reality, they feed us…

There is a body of folklore that reaches all the way back through our history, about America being a country where people are not separated into social and economic classes, a place where everyone is truly free and equal. (If you believe that, there’s a big white house in Washington, DC we’d like to sell you.) Once we had kings; before that we may have had packleaders. The layers of social classes included peasants, merchants, landed gentry, nobles, aristocracy and royalty. Today we have presidents, prime ministers, dictators, managers, officers, owners. Only the names have changed. No matter what you call it, the world is still divided into Us and Them.

What should we call today's rulers? Think about that for a moment while we give America credit for the good place that it thought about becoming…

In the U.S. since the ‘60s, the trend has been a shrinking middle class, wealth concentrated into fewer and fewer hands, and a general decrease in economic prosperity and quality of life for the vast majority. Those who drop from the middle class are forced to tighten their belts drastically, but for the growing underclass of people who are no longer participants in the economic system, it means a brutal struggle for day-to-day survival.

It is no longer possible to pretend we are a classless society. Holding on to such symbols is choosing to be blind.

So what do we call today’s rulers? They may not be genealogical heirs to yesterday’s aristocracy (though in many cases they are), but they are certainly the historical heirs of the aristocracies. And they intend to rule.

To many, the phrase “ruling class” would sound too much like Marxism or, God forbid, communism. Whatever you call them, today’s rulers get very nervous when you shine a flashlight on them. They know the power of the media. Some people prefer to think there are no rulers and to put the question out of their minds. But if it has crossed your mind that perhaps all Americans are not equal -- not before the law and certainly not in terms of the benefits we receive from the government -- then you have already recognized that there are ranks in society.

And if that is so, then there is, by definition, an elite. If that word is offensive, too something, then replace it with whatever word pleases you: bosses, big guys, operators, upper class, masters, whatever.

(Or, if you choose, stick your head back in the sand, give them no name, and continue to pretend they don’t exist.)

But if we are going to talk about them—which we are—we have to call them something. Rulers is as good a word as any.

Who Are These Rulers?

They are investment bankers, boards of directors, government officeholders. The center of world power is in America, but it is the aristocracy...

Table of contents

• Coverpage
• Titlepage
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• The File on Chomsky: A Biographical Sketch
• The Shoulders of Giants: Antecedents to the Thinking of Chomsky
• LINGUISTICS
• Noam Chomsky and the MEDIA: Can You Believe What You See and Hear?
• Chomsky on POLITICS
• Chomsky on Fighting Back: What Can One Person Do?
• INTERVIEW with Noam Chomsky
• INDEX