Noam Chomsky, Voice of Reason




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subnormal

“The revolution will not be televised optimized”

An Exclusive Interview by Bruce Edwin
The freedom that life demands is found in the freedom of music. And it was during that search for truth and freedom through music and thought with the written word that I discovered at a young age—by way of the genre of music known as punk rock; rooted in the anarchistic, revolutionary ideals of freedom, an intellectual giant by the name of Noam Chomsky. While other revolutionary writers I had read celebrated freedom and demanded it, many were voices that were either soley theoretical, with no specific point of reference with validations of fact, or, they were rational, yet were buried in the dusty pages of ages past—in libraries holding stories of history, now long gone. Noam Chomsky was unique in that, he was not merely radical and modern-tackling modern problems of our day, right out of stories from the daily news—but he was also intellectually sound, to the highest order, and could and did debate any one at any time and—due to his logic and expert research—win, hands down.

While renown for his activism and political theory (in actuality, he does more political whistle blowing of facts than write any unproven politics), he is also further widely known by many academia as the father of modern linguistics. His mind, to this day, is fiercely sharp, insightful, and learned, and is recognized as one of the most widely respected intellectual leaders of our time. And so, when I literally had a dream that I was picking up Noam Chomsky in a limousine in some rainy airport near Boston one morning, I was possessed some months later last year to call this living legend, and to my great excitement, found myself engaging in communication with the man himself. A phone interview followed, and the rest—well, it speaks for itself. I delayed for some reason to release the interview right away—fear of being monitored perhaps? No, we know of course that that fear is paranoia (laughs). Intuition? Maybe. And so with that, I am pleased to bring you here the first of many taped segments of my exclusive interview with Mr. Noam Chomsky—one of the most brave and brilliant voices for freedom alive on this planet today.

The following (abridged) biography of Mr. Chomsky is an excerpt by Christian Garland, which appears on the official Noam Chomsky website, as well as "In International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest, Immanuel Ness, ed., Blackwell Publishing, 2009."

Noam Chomsky is a U.S. political theorist and activist, and institute professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Besides his work in linguistics, Chomsky is internationally recognized as one of the most critically engaged public intellectuals alive today. Over the past five decades, Chomsky has offered a searing critical indictment of U.S. foreign policy and its many military interventions across the globe, pointing out that the U.S.'s continued support for undemocratic regimes, and hostility to popular or democratic movements, is at odds with its professed claim to be spreading democracy and freedom and support for tendencies aiming toward that end.

Indeed, as Chomsky argues, the current concern from Washington with so-called "Rogue States," as much as the stated goal of aiding democratic movements in other countries, is not supported by successive administrations' support (either direct or indirect) for political and military dictatorships across Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia. As Chomsky stated; "As the most powerful state, the U.S. makes its own laws, using force and conducting economic warfare at will." It also threatens sanctions against countries that do not abide by its conveniently flexible notions of "free trade."

On the role of the mass media, Chomsky argues that the vested corporate interests controlling newspapers, television, and radio, no less than the content of what these outlets offer, form what he and Edward Hermann in their seminal study "Manufacturing Consent" call a "propaganda model" supine in the service of power (...) Part one of the interview is on the video at the top of this page. Hear the next parts of this exclusive interview in our next issue of subnormal magazine at The Hollywood Sentinel, featuring Noam Chomsky.

References and Suggested Readings

- Barsamian, D. & Chomsky, N. (1997) Expanding the Floor of the Cage: Noam Chomsky interviewed by David Barsamian. Available at this link .
- Chomsky, N. (1970) Notes on Anarchism. Available here.
- Chomsky, N. (1998) The United States and the "Challenge of Relativity." Available here.
- Herman, E. & Chomsky, N. (1994) Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. London: Vintage.
- www.zmag.org


Visit the official Noam Chomsky website at: www.chomsky.info
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Watch the film

The following video content of an interview with Noam Chomsky regarding his book "Manufacturing Consent" has absurdly been identified by the so called YouTube community as being potentially offensive or inappropriate. Yes, historical motion picture images and the truth can be offensive to some. Deal with it.



All interviews herein and all text above is created (unless otherwise noted) by subnormal magazine / The Hollywood Sentinel. Permission may be granted to re-broadcast or reproduce this page (excluding written content by Christian Garland) with written request from this publication, so long as no profit is made from reproduction, credit is given, and the spirit of freedom is upheld with re-broadcast or reproduction.

- subnormal magazine, 2013