Understanding Power: The Indispensible Chomsky

Operation MONGOOSE. Right after the Bay of Pigs invasion attempt failed, Kennedy launched a major terrorist operation against Cuba [beginning November 30, 1961]. It was huge—I think it had a $50 million-a-year budget (that’s known);

If you look at the very tail end of the Pentagon Papers, for example, the part that deals with the weeks after the Tet Offensive, the top American military brass said that they were concerned about sending more troops to Vietnam, because they were afraid they wouldn’t have enough troops left over for what they called “civil disorder control” at hom

for the agenda-setting media like the New York Times and the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, they’re in fact selling very privileged, elite audiences to other businesses—overwhelmingly their readers are members of the so-called “political class,” which is the class that makes decisions in our society.

Well, what we’ve been discussing are simply the institutional factors that set the boundaries for reporting and interpretation in the ideological institutions. That’s the opposite of conspiracy theory, it’s just normal institutional analysis, the kind of analysis you do automatically when you’re trying to understand how the world works. For people

In fact, Chile was kind of a normal C.I.A. operation, it was like overthrowing Sukarno in Indonesia [in a 1965 U.S.-backed coup].18 There were some clandestine parts to it—and there are parts that still haven’t come out yet—but it was not really deep covert action.

You want to overthrow a government, who’s going to overthrow it for you? Well, the military, they’re the guys who overthrow governments. In fact, that’s the main reason for giving military aid and training all around the world in the first place, to keep contacts with our guys in the place that counts, the army.

From reading today’s newspapers, I think there’s been a definite shift to the right. See, I don’t agree with that. People do have that illusion, but I think it’s because their perspective has shifted to the left—and that runs across most of the population,

If you ask people, “Do you want new taxes?” they’ll say no; but if you ask them, “Do you want better medical services?” they’ll say yes.

The alternative conception is that the media will present a picture of the world which defends and inculcates the economic, social, and political agendas of the privileged groups that dominate the domestic economy, and who therefore also largely control the government. According to this “Propaganda Model,” the media serve their societal purpose by