{"article":{"id":74563,"heading":"Collateral Language (Chomsky Interview, July\/August '03 Z mag)","author":"open source","created":"2003-07-26 09:44:31","modified":"2005-08-15 01:37:22","last_modified":"Mon, 15 Aug 2005 08:37:22","article":"

Collateral Language

An Interview With Noam Chomsky

David Barsamian

July\/August 2003 issue of Z Magazine

------------------------------------

Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor in the Department of Linguistics and

Philosophy at MIT. He is the author of scores of books-his latest are

Power and Terror and Middle East Illusions. His book 9-11 was an

international bestseller.

BARSAMIAN: In recent years, the Pentagon, and then the media, have

adopted this term \"collateral damage\" to describe the death of

civilians. Talk about the role of language in shaping and forming

people's understanding of events.

CHOMSKY: Well, it's as old as history. It has nothing much to do with

language. Language is the way we interact and communicate, so,

naturally, the means of communication and the conceptual background

that's behind it, which is more important, are used to try to shape

attitudes and opinions and induce conformity and subordination. Not

surprisingly, it was created in the more democratic societies.

The first coordinated propaganda ministry, called the Ministry of

Information, was in Britain during World War I. It had the task, as they

put it, of controlling the mind of the world. What they were

particularly concerned with was the mind of America and, more

specifically, the mind of American intellectuals. They thought if they

could convince American intellectuals of the nobility of the British war

effort, then American intellectuals could succeed in driving the

basically pacifist population of the United States, which didn't want to

have anything to do with European wars, rightly, into a fit of

fanaticism and hysteria, which would get them to join the war. Britain

needed U.S. backing, so Britain had its Ministry of Information aimed

primarily at American opinion and opinion leaders. The Wilson

administration reacted by setting up the first state propaganda agency

here, called the Committee on Public Information.

It succeeded brilliantly, mainly with liberal American intellectuals,

people of the John Dewey circle, who actually took pride in the fact

that for the first time in history, according to their picture, a

wartime fanaticism was created, and not by military leaders and

politicians but by the more responsible, serious members of the

community, namely, thoughtful intellectuals. And they did organize a

campaign of propaganda, which within a few months did succeed in turning

a relatively pacifist population into raving anti-German fanatics who

wanted to destroy everything German. It reached the point where the

Boston Symphony Orchestra couldn't play Bach. The country was driven

into hysteria.

The members of Wilson's propaganda agency included people like Edward

Bernays, who became the guru of the public relations industry, and

Walter Lippmann, the leading public intellectual of the 20th century,

the most respected media figure. They very explicitly drew from that

experience. If you look at their writings in the 1920s, they said, We

have learned from this that you can control the public mind, you can

control attitudes and opinions. That's where Lippmann said, \"We can

manufacture consent by the means of propaganda.\" Bernays said, \"The more

intelligent members of the community can drive the population into

whatever they want\" by what he called \"engineering of consent.\" It's the

\"essence of democracy,\" he said.

It also led to the rise of the public relations industry. It's

interesting to look at the thinking in the 1920s, when it got started.

This was the period of Taylorism in industry, when workers were being

trained to become robots, every motion controlled. It created highly

efficient industry, with human beings turned into automata. The

Bolsheviks were very impressed with it, too. They tried to duplicate it.

In fact, they tried throughout the world.But the thought-control experts

realized that you could not only have what was called on-job control but

also off-job control. It's their phrase. Control them off job by

inducing a philosophy of futility, focusing people on the superficial

things of life, like fashionable consumption, and basically get them out

of our hair. Let the people who are supposed to run the show do it

without any interference from the mass of the population, who have no

business in the public arena. From that come enormous industries,

ranging from advertising to universities, all committed very consciously

to the conception that you must control attitudes and opinions because

the people are just too dangerous.

It's particularly striking that it developed in the more democratic

societies. They tried to duplicate it in Germany and Bolshevik Russia

and South Africa and elsewhere. But it was always quite explicitly a

mostly American model. There is a good reason for that. If you can

control people by force, it's not so important to control what they

think and feel. But if you lose the capacity to control people by force,

it becomes more necessary to control attitudes and opinions.

That brings us right up to the present. By now the public is no longer

willing to accept state propaganda agencies, so the Reagan Office of

Public Diplomacy was declared illegal and had to go in roundabout ways.

What took over instead was private tyrannies, basically, corporate

systems, which play the role of controlling opinion and attitudes, not

taking orders from the government, but closely linked to it, of course.

That's our contemporary system. Extremely self-conscious. You don't have

to speculate much about what they're doing because they're kind enough

to tell you in industry publications and also in the academic

literature.

So you go to, say, the 1930s, perhaps the founder of a good bit of

modern political science. A liberal Wilsonian, Harold Lasswell, in 1933

wrote an article called \"Propaganda\" in the Encyclopedia of Social

Sciences, a major publication, in which the message was, \"We should not

[all of these are quotes, incidentally] succumb to democratic dogmatisms

about men being the best judges of their own interests.\" They're not, we

are. And since people are too stupid and ignorant to understand their

best interests, for their own benefit-because we're great

humanitarians-we must marginalize and control them. The best means is

propaganda. There is nothing negative about propaganda, he said. It's as

neutral as a pump handle. You can use it for good or for evil. And since

we're noble, wonderful people, we'll use it for good, to ensure that the

stupid, ignorant masses remain marginalized and separated from any

decision-making capacity.

The Leninist doctrines are approximately the same. There are very close

similarities. The Nazis also picked it up. If you read Mein Kampf,

Hitler was very impressed with Anglo-American propaganda. He argued, not

without reason, that that's what won World War I and vowed that next

time around the Germans would be ready, too, and developed their own

propaganda systems modeled on the democracies. The Russians tried it,

but it was too crude to be effective. South Africa used it; others,

right up to the present. But the real forefront is the United States,

because it's the most free and democratic society, and it's just much

more important to control attitudes and opinions.

You can read it in the New York Times. They ran an interesting article

about Carl Rove, the president's manager-basically his minder, the one

who teaches him what to say and do. It describes what Carl Rove is doing

now. He was not directly involved in the war planning, but neither was

Bush. This was in the hands of other people. But his goal, he says, is

to present the president as a powerful wartime leader, aimed at the next

presidential election, so that the Republicans can push through their

domestic agenda, which is what he concentrates on, which means tax

cuts-they say for the economy, but they mean for the rich-tax cuts and

other programs which he doesn't bother enumerating, but which are

designed to benefit an extremely small sector of the ultra-wealthy and

privileged and will have the effect of harming the mass of the

population. But more significant than that-it's not outlined in the

article-is to try to destroy the institutional basis for social support

systems, try to eliminate things like schools and Social Security and

anything that is based on the conception that people have to have some

concern for one another. That's a horrible idea, which has to be driven

out of people's minds. The idea that you should have sympathy and

solidarity, you should care whether the disabled widow across town is

able to eat, that has to be driven out of people's minds.

Clearly, there is a huge gap on the Iraq war between U.S. public opinion

and the rest of the world. Do you attribute that to propaganda?

There is just no question about it. The campaign about Iraq took off

last September. This is so obvious it's even discussed in mainstream

publications, like the chief political analyst for UPI, Martin Sieff,

has a long article describing how it was done. In September, which

happened to be the opening of the midterm congressional campaign, that's

when the drumbeat of wartime propaganda began. It had a couple of

constant themes. One big lie was that Iraq was an imminent threat to the

security of the United States. We have got to stop them now or they're

going to destroy us tomorrow. The second big lie was that Iraq was

behind September 11. Nobody says it straight out; it's kind of

insinuated.

Take a look at the polls. They reflected the propaganda very directly.

The propaganda is distributed by the media. They don't make it up, they

just distribute it. You can attribute it to high government officials or

whatever you like. But the campaign was reflected very quickly in the

polls. By September and since then, roughly 60 percent, oscillating

around that, of the population believes that Iraq is a threat to our

security. Congress, if you look at the declaration of October, when they

authorized the president to use force, said Iraq is a threat to the

security of the United States. By now about half the population, maybe

more by now, believes that Iraq was responsible for September 11, that

Iraqis were on the planes, that they are planning new ones.

There is no one else in the world that believes any of this; there is no

country where Iraq is regarded as a threat to their security. Kuwait and

Iran, which were both invaded by Iraq, don't regard Iraq as a threat to

their security. Iraq is the weakest country in the region, and as a

result of the sanctions, which have killed hundreds of thousands of

people-about probably two-thirds of the population is on the edge of

starvation-the country has the weakest economy and the weakest military

force in the region. Its economy and its military-force expenditures are

about a third those of Kuwait, which has 10 percent of its population,

and well below others. Of course, everybody in the region knows that

there is a superpower there, offshore U.S. military base, Israel, which

has hundreds of nuclear weapons and massive armed forces and totally

dominates anything.

But only in the United States is there fear or any of these beliefs. You

can trace the growth of the beliefs to the propaganda. It's interesting

that the United States is so susceptible to this. There is a background,

a cultural background, which is interesting. But whatever the reasons

are for it, the United States happens to be a very frightened country by

comparative standards. Levels of fear here of almost everything, crime,

aliens, you pick it, are just off the spectrum. You can argue, you can

inquire into the reasons, but the background is there.

What is it that makes it susceptible to propaganda?

That's a good question I don't say it's more susceptible to propaganda;

it's more susceptible to fear. It's a frightened country. The reasons

for this-I don't, frankly, understand them, but they're there, and they

go way back in American history. It probably has to do with conquest of

the continent, where you had to exterminate the native population;

slavery, where you had to control a population that was regarded as

dangerous, because you never knew when they were going to turn on you.

It may just be a reflection of the enormous security. The security of

the United States is beyond anyone else. The United States controls the

hemisphere, it controls both oceans, it controls the opposite sides of

both oceans, never been threatened. The last time the U.S. was

threatened was the War of 1812. Since then it just conquers others. And

somehow this engenders a sense that somebody is going to come after us.

So the country ends up being very frightened.

There is a reason why Carl Rove is the most important person in the

administration. He is the public relations expert in charge of crafting

the images. So you can drive through the domestic agendas, carry out the

international policies by frightening people and creating the impression

that a powerful leader is going to save you from imminent destruction.

The Times virtually says it because it's very hard to keep hidden. It is

second nature.

One of the new lexical constructions that I'd like you to comment on is

\"embedded journalists.\"

That's an interesting one. It is interesting that journalists are

willing to accept it. No honest journalist would be willing to describe

himself or herself as \"embedded.\" To say \"I'm an embedded journalist\" is

to say \"I'm a government propagandist.\" But it's accepted. And it helps

implant the conception that anything we do is right and just; so

therefore, if you're embedded in an American unit, you're

objective.Actually, the same thing showed up, in some ways even more

dramatically, in the Peter Arnett case. Peter Arnett is an experienced,

respected journalist with a lot of achievements to his credit. He's

hated here precisely for that reason. The same reason Robert Fisk is

hated.

Fisk being British, Arnett is originally from New Zealand.

Fisk is by far the most experienced and respected Middle East

journalist. He's been there forever, he's done excellent work, he knows

the region, he's a terrific reporter. He's despised here. You barely

ever see a word of his. If he's mentioned, he's denounced somehow. The

reason is he's just too independent. He won't be an embedded journalist.

Peter Arnett is condemned because he gave an interview on Iraqi

television. Is anybody condemned for giving an interview on U.S.

television? No, that's wonderful.

The attack on Afghanistan in October 2001 generated a couple of these

interesting terms, and you've commented on them. One was the Operation

Enduring Freedom and the other is \"unlawful combatant.\" Truly an

innovation in international jurisprudence.

It's an innovation since the post-war period. After World War II there

was a relatively new framework of international law established,

including the Geneva Conventions. And they do not permit any such

concept as enemy combatant in the way it's used here. You can have

prisoners of war, but there is no new category. Actually, it's an old

category, pre-World War II, when you were allowed to do just about

anything. But under the Geneva conventions, which were established to

criminalize formally the crimes of the Nazis, this was changed. So

prisoners of war are supposed to have special status. The Bush

administration, with the cooperation of the media and the courts, is

going back to the pre-World War II period, when there was no serious

framework of international law dealing with crimes against humanity and

crimes of war and is declaring not only to carry out aggressive war, but

also to classify people it bombs and captures as some new category who

are entitled to no rights.

They have gone well beyond that. The Administration has now claimed the

right to take people here, including American citizens, to place them in

confinement indefinitely without access to families and lawyers, and to

keep them there with no charges until the president decides that the war

against terror, or whatever he wants to call it, is over. That's unheard

of. And it's been to some extent accepted by the courts. And they're, in

fact, going beyond the new, what's sometimes called PATRIOT 2 Act, which

is so far not ratified. It's inside the Justice Department, but it was

leaked. By now there are a couple of articles by law professors and

others about it in the press. It's astonishing. They're claiming the

right to remove citizenship, the fundamental right, if the Attorney

General infers-they don't have to have any evidence-just infers that the

person is involved somehow in actions that might be harmful to the

United States. You have to go back to totalitarian states to find

anything like this. An enemy combatant is one. The treatment of

people-what's going on in Guantanamo is a gross violation of the most

elementary principles of international humanitarian law since World War

II, that is, since these crimes were formally criminalized in reaction

to the Nazis.

What do you make of British Prime Minister Tony Blair being quoted on

\"Nightline\" on March 31 saying, \"This is not an invasion.\"

Tony Blair is a good propaganda agent for the United States: He's

articulate, sentences fall together, apparently people like the way he

looks. He's following a position that Britain has taken,

self-consciously, since the end of World War II. During World War II,

Britain recognized-we have plenty of internal documents about it-what

was obvious; Britain had been the world-dominant power and it was not

going to be after World War II-the U.S. was going to be. Britain had to

make a choice: Is it going to be just another country, or is it going to

be what they called a junior partner of the United States? It accepted

the role of junior partner. And that's what it's been since then.

Britain has been kicked in the face over and over again in the most

disgraceful way and they sit there quietly and take it and say, \"Okay,

we will be the junior partner. We will bring to what's called the

coalition our experience of centuries of brutalizing and murdering

foreign people. We're good at that.\" That's the British role. It's

disgraceful.

Often at the talks you give, there is a question that's always asked,

and that is, \"What should I do?\" This is what you hear in American

audiences.

You're right, it's American audiences. You never hear it in the Third

World.

Why not?

Because when you go to Turkey or Colombia or Brazil or somewhere else,

they don't ask you, \"What should I do?\" They tell you what they're

doing. It's only in highly privileged cultures that people ask, \"What

should I do?\" We have every option open to us. None of the problems that

are faced by intellectuals in Turkey or campesinos in Brazil or anything

like that. We can do anything. But what people here are trained to

believe is, we have to have something we can do that will be easy, that

will work very fast, and then we can go back to our ordinary lives. And

it doesn't work that way. You want to do something, you're going to have

to be dedicated, committed, at it day after day. You know exactly what

it is: it's educational programs, it's organizing, it's activism. That's

the way things change. You want something that's going to be a magic key

that will enable you to go back to watching television tomorrow? It's

not there.

You were an active and early dissident in the 1960s opposing U.S.

intervention in Indochina. You have now this perspective of what was

going on then and what is going on now. Describe how dissent has evolved

in the United States.

Actually, there is another article in the New York Times that describes

how the professors are antiwar activists, but the students aren't. Not

like it used to be, when the students were antiwar activists. What the

reporter is talking about is that around 1970-and it's true-by 1970

students were active antiwar protesters. But that's after eight years of

a U.S. war against South Vietnam, which by then had extended to all of

Indochina, which had practically wiped the place out. In the early years

of the war-it was announced in 1962-U.S. planes are bombing South

Vietnam, napalm was authorized, chemical warfare to destroy food crops,

and programs to drive millions of people into \"strategic hamlets,\" which

are essentially concentration camps. All public. No protest. Impossible

to get anybody to talk about it. For years, even in a place like Boston,

a liberal city, you couldn't have public meetings against the war

because they would be broken up by students, with the support of the

media. You would have to have hundreds of state police around to allow

the speakers like me to escape unscathed. The protests came after years

and years of war. By then, hundreds of thousands of people had been

killed, much of Vietnam had been destroyed. Then you started getting

protests.

But all of that is wiped out of history, because it tells too much of

the truth. It involved years and years of hard work of plenty of people,

mostly young, which finally ended up getting a protest movement. Now

it's far beyond that. But the New York Times reporter can't understand

that. I'm sure the reporter is being very honest. The reporter is saying

exactly what I think she was taught-that there was a huge antiwar

movement because the actual history has to be wiped out of people's

consciousness. You can't learn that dedicated, committed effort can

bring about significant changes of consciousness and understanding.

That's a very dangerous thought to allow people to have.







----------------------------------

David Barsamian founder and director of Alternative Radio. He is the

author of Decline & Fall of Public Broadcasting as well as a number of

books, such as Propaganda & the Public Mind with Noam Chomsky,

Confronting Empire with Eqbal Ahmad and Culture & Resistance with Edward

Said. He is a regular contributor to Z, the Progressive, and other

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