Noam Chomsky

Gringo180

Have been listening to alot of his stuff on youtube recently and I seem to agree with most of the stuff he says, especially about U.S foreign policy and Capitalism in general. Why is it that one of the greatest minds and most cited scholars in history never gets any air time on the big news channels in America? Is it because he speaks the truth about American society and its moral decline in recent decades or do yous think hes just too far to the left?

Hes a genius in my opinion.

biko

He is one of the most famous people in America and gets a lot of air time.

Gringo180

biko wrote: »

He is one of the most famous people in America and gets a lot of air time.

Have never seen him on any of the big news channels in America? Any links to him on CNN or Fox for instance?

Earthhorse

biko wrote: »

He is one of the most famous people in America and gets a lot of air time.

No he doesn't.

Chomsky is rarely invited on to the bigger networks because his politics are too far left and because he refuses to do sound bites. That is, by choice, he dislikes giving short interviews because he lacks the time to sufficiently explain his position.

OP, if you're watching his videos he actually touches on this fairly regularly.

biko

Maybe you need to spell his name right - Chomsky

I don't know what you definition of "never gets airtime" is but Noam is mentioned and interviewed many times if you look.
https://www.google.ie/search?q=Noam+Chomsky+site%3Acnn.com
https://www.google.ie/search?q=Noam+Chomsky+site%3Afoxnews.com

Of course these are not the only two networks and if he was so suppressed, how come everyone here knows who he is?

F1fan

I wouldn’t have expected him to ever be on Fox, but a quick google seems to confirm your suspicions that he does not appear often on Us networks. However, I can recall several interviews and response pieces featuring him, so there is definitely material out there.

https://www.alternet.org/media/noam-chomsky-unravels-political-mechanics-behind-his-gradual-expulsion-mainstream-media

Richard Hillman

A contrarian that feeds off the contrarious nature of other folk.

biko

Fox are a right-wing network and probably not very interested in left-wing politics of Noam
Yet they has at least an article or video interview with Noam at least once a year.

I don't think that is what's known as "no airtime"...

brevity

He's in a heap of documentaries on Netflix.

I think he could do well on Joe Rogan's podcast or Sam Harris maybe? Bring Peterson on as well for the laughs. Although I think I've had enough of Peterson.

Earthhorse

He had an email exchange with Harris at one stage and it was pretty acrimonious. Doubt he'll ever do the show.

ceadaoin.

I went to an IT in west Dublin and even there I learned about Noam Chomsky ffs.

Edit: almost 20 years ago.

suicide_circus

He's 89 years old, how much air time do you want him to have?
Without capitalism Noam Chomsky wouldn't have the freedom or resources to be able to to theorize about how awful capitalism is.

Mountainsandh

I remember being taught Chomsky's in school (lycée) back in France in the late 80s into 90s. He's a real interesting man, I'm always curious and impressed listening to him, yet one day I decided to fact check a little bit of what he was saying on a particular topic, and he had finely chopped and selected bits out of some studies he was referencing.
The biased editing above turned me off him somewhat. The grandfather look inspires wisdom and trustworthiness but I felt a bit let down tbh.

I'm still interested, but always a bit dubious now listening to him.

Roger Hassenforder

Taking the US military dime, to make more money givng about about the US military.

biko

New York Times is a big news outlet and mentions him almost monthly
https://www.nytimes.com/topic/person/noam-chomsky

Charmeleon

Used to have enormous respect for Chomsky, but when you look at his past denial of the genocide in Cambodia and his questioning of the motives of refugees fleeing it, you realise he's just as blind to the dangers of radical politics as he is blind to the enormous progress social democracy has brought us, built on capitalism.

JohnnyFlash

Never heard of the dude. Must not be that famous.

Koala Sunshine

Gringo180 wrote: »

Have been listening to alot of his stuff on youtube recently and I seem to agree with most of the stuff he says, especially about U.S foreign policy and Capitalism in general. Why is it that one of the greatest minds and most cited scholars in history never gets any air time on the big news channels in America? Is it because he speaks the truth about American society and its moral decline in recent decades or do yous think hes just too far to the left?

Hes a genius in my opinion.

Captilism is the best known method of allocating capital efficiently.

Gringo180

Koala Sunshine wrote: »

Captilism is the best known method of allocating capital efficiently.

Capitalism in its early days was fine but it has now evolved into Corporationism. The rich are getting richer and the poor poorer. Big difference.

bnt

Chomsky's views on free markets are a bit more nuanced than "capitalism is bad". Here's something he said back in 1999, and events since then have only backed it up, in my opinion:

I should say that when people talk about capitalism it's a bit of a joke. There's no such thing. No country, no business class, has ever been willing to subject itself to the free market, free market discipline. Free markets are for others. Like, the Third World is the Third World because they had free markets rammed down their throat. Meanwhile, the enlightened states, England, the United States, others, resorted to massive state intervention to protect private power, and still do. That's right up to the present. I mean, the Reagan administration for example was the most protectionist in post-war American history. Virtually the entire dynamic economy in the United States is based crucially on state initiative and intervention: computers, the internet, telecommunication, automation, pharmaceutical, you just name it. Run through it, and you find massive ripoffs of the public, meaning, a system in which under one guise or another the public pays the costs and takes the risks, and profit is privatized. That's very remote from a free market. Free market is like what India had to suffer for a couple hundred years, and most of the rest of the Third World.

There have been a few threads on "neoliberalism" recently, the definition of which can be a bit fluid: the definition I've settled on is an over-emphasis on or over-application of "free markets" in cases where there isn't actually a free market. Examples of this would be the privatisation of the railways in the UK or the Healthcare system in the USA: industries playing at free markets but not really being exposed to free market competition - instead enjoying cartels or monopolies in practice.

DickSwiveller

Chomsky's most interesting work is in the field of Linguistics, Cognitive Science, Philosophy etc. He completely transformed the entire field of linguistics in the 1950's. I don't care much for his political stuff, but he is an extremely intelligent person, no doubt.

dd972

He's the archetype adult in the room, each day we've still got him is a good one.

Franz Von Peppercorn

suicide_circus wrote: »

He's 89 years old, how much air time do you want him to have?
Without capitalism Noam Chomsky wouldn't have the freedom or resources to be able to to theorize about how awful capitalism is.

I’m pretty sure he would.

Whatever about capitalism he’s solid on US imperialism.

Franz Von Peppercorn

bnt wrote: »

Chomsky's views on free markets are a bit more nuanced than "capitalism is bad". Here's something he said back in 1999, and events since then have only backed it up, in my opinion:

There have been a few threads on "neoliberalism" recently, the definition of which can be a bit fluid: the definition I've settled on is an over-emphasis on or over-application of "free markets" in cases where there isn't actually a free market. Examples of this would be the privatisation of the railways in the UK or the Healthcare system in the USA: industries playing at free markets but not really being exposed to free market competition - instead enjoying cartels or monopolies in practice.

Neo liberalism is the policy that abandoned Keynesian theory in the 70’s and went back to more laissez faire ideology of the 19C.

Franz Von Peppercorn

JohnnyFlash wrote: »

Never heard of the dude. Must not be that famous.

I’d say he wouldn’t be your cup of tea.

Donald Trump

ceadaoin. wrote: »

I went to an IT in west Dublin and even there I learned about Noam Chomsky ffs.

Edit: almost 20 years ago.

Ah Jaysus, ffs is right. Morto for ya :pac:

Eamonn Dunphy used to have him on his radio program all the time. That is probably why people had heard his name then


(Going off on a serious tangent, and speaking of Dunphy, anyone remember the genius of Zig and Zag doing the "Amoan Grumpy" and "Johnny Styles" pisstakes)

Donald Trump

JohnnyFlash wrote: »

Never heard of the dude. Must not be that famous.

Doesn't get his baps out on instagram or appear on Celebrity Big Brother you mean?


Although he was rumoured to have released a lot of homemade sex tapes. Don't google them though unless you want to be permanently scarred

Cheerful Spring

American establishment does like hearing their country is not the greatest country on Earth. They still can not believe a reality TV host beat Hilary Clinton the establishment politician. They had to blame Russia for it to make themselves feel better.

Ajsoprano

He says stuff I been saying for years but people call him a genius and me an idiot.

Must be in the delivery.

I read here people talking about car finance and how if they didn’t do x people wouldn’t be buying new cars and something needed to be done.

This got me thinking.

Should we all live in a system where pulling resources out of the ground and making jobs for people and hoovering more money to corporations is a good thing and people being happy with the cars they have a bad thing.

Surely we should be saying there’s not as work to be doing this is great cut the working week by a few hours and stash off all that steel Incase we need it in the future.

What if they realise they can harness to power of steel to fuel space travel in a few years and it’s all rusted in scrapyards.

Say ten people landed on an island and had enough food and a luxury life and somebody tried to trick them into thinking they needed to work 40 hrs a week writing their name in the sand. Then when all when all the sand was wrote on panicked because the people had no jobs so he decided they needed to write their names on the trees until the sand got a wash.
This is pretty much society.

People worry about robots taking jobs because people would have no jobs.

Can’t there be a system where the robots can do all the work and we can cruise around to the robot shop and buy what we want for free with a don’t take the piss rule.

No there can’t be that system because it’d be too fair and I want to have more than my neighbour.

Cheerful Spring

Gringo180 wrote: »

Have been listening to alot of his stuff on youtube recently and I seem to agree with most of the stuff he says, especially about U.S foreign policy and Capitalism in general. Why is it that one of the greatest minds and most cited scholars in history never gets any air time on the big news channels in America? Is it because he speaks the truth about American society and its moral decline in recent decades or do yous think hes just too far to the left?

Hes a genius in my opinion.

George Carlin was a great thinker even though he day job was being a comedian. I love his comedy about capitalism and not much has changed in 2018..

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

Koala Sunshine wrote: »

Captilism is the best known method of allocating capital efficiently when you're filthy rich and don't have a conscience...

FYP

s7ryf3925pivug

There is a small group of people in control of economic decisions. They use this power at the expense of the larger group. If the larger group recognise this and relentlessly push for change then change is possible, as evidenced by the rejection of slavery and the establishment of equal rights for women. That's my simplistic summary of Chomsky on politics.

It's not so much anti-Capitalist as anti-cnutist. Pretty much any social system tends to suffer from bad people gaining too much control.

I think he's accurate. I don't think many people in this country wanted to cripple themselves contributing to massive bailouts for other people's bad decisions.

Gringo180

Cheerful Spring wrote: »

George Carlin was a great thinker even though he day job was being a comedian. I love his comedy about capitalism and not much has changed in 2018..

Carling is another genius.

Duckworth_Luas

Never understood the big deal. It's just a monkey!

s7ryf3925pivug

Duckworth_Luas wrote: »

Never understood the big deal. It's just a monkey!

Chimps aren't monkeys

DickSwiveller

Duckworth_Luas wrote: »

Never understood the big deal. It's just a monkey!

You should go to youtube and listen to to a few talks Chomsky gives about project Nim. He predicted it would be a complete disaster and was proved right. He had a funny line about Nim's death. Something like "Poor Nim died alone in a zoo, presumably reciting the Lord's prayer as he passed away".

Pero_Bueno

He's too far to the left tho, always apologising for Islamic terrorism, don't care how bad US foreign policy is, when you start making excuses for the Jihad you can just f*ck right off.

His stuff on linguistics is excellent though.

Duckworth_Luas

Briggs Straight Stack wrote: »

Chimps aren't monkeys

OK Dian Fossey.

Tom Mann Centuria

Chimps are evil, cruel cannibals. Not Baboon level evil, but still dodgy pieces of work.

ger vallely

Thee hee

King of Kings

I like him he is reasoned on foreign policy
also a jew that upsets Israel (the government and state apparatus) can't be a bad person

Wibbs

Ajsoprano wrote: »

He says stuff I been saying for years but people call him a genius and me an idiot.

Must be in the delivery.

I read here people talking about car finance and how if they didn’t do x people wouldn’t be buying new cars and something needed to be done.

This got me thinking.

Do not get me started AJ... I've a neighbour who bought a new hybrid Prious a good few years back and became converted overnight to how green he was and forward thinking he was. He now has a BMW battery car. In the interim he has bought new three other "green" cars and that gobsh1te is convinced he's doing his bit for the environment, with extra bragging rights of new car syndrome and green with it. To be fair he's otherwise not a gobsh1te, but on this matter and all his other consumer crap he buys he is. Doesn't begin to want to think about the environmental costs of those new cars he keeps buying, or any of the other stuff. It would be too much of a mind reboot.

Last year a mutual elderly neighbour popped their clogs and what struck me was how much of their stuff was going to end up in landfill. The vast bulk of it. Save for a couple of pieces all the furniture ended up in a hole in the ground(and most of it was near new BTW). Same for out of date electronics, decorative items, clothes etc(the charity shops will only take so much). I asked the guys doing the clearing out and they told me that these days most stuff in house clearances unless it's antique type stuff or brand new and current goes to the dump. People don't want it. They'd rather traipse zombie like and corralled around Ikea, credit cards burning a hole in their pockets buying new tat made from the finest Chinesium. And then dump that in a couple of years. Sh1t, Ikea's catalogue runs alone must be chewing up forests like wildfire.

I pointed this out to battery buggy boyo and the sheer criminal fcuking waste involved repeated throughout the western world and the penny started to drop with him, but he could only take it so far. Bemoaned the folly of it and then went off to work to help him buy more tat on his credit card, because the headspace wouldn't take a major shift and he'd find it hard to forego the dopamine hit of the smell of new Chinesium. He's the norm pretty much. I know right on vegans who will protest about the environment at the drop of a ethnically sourced organic bobble hat while buying two new phones a year, filling their gaffs with tat from Amazon and flying to far flung places to chant Ommmm with their fellow smelly fart brigade. Rinse and fcuking repeat.

I am not suggesting hair shirts and grey communist Russia here, but for god's sake there is a balance and we're well past it. That's the joke; we're about the most environmentally aware generation ever, yet it's all surface, as we're the most consumerist generation too.

Greentopia

Love his work on anarchism and American foreign policy. His books are the reason I became interested in anarcho-communism and anarcho-syndicalism.

Very down to earth and accessible too. Lots of anarchists email him with questions at his office in MIT and get personal responses.

Sand

I'm always bemused that people think anything new can be learnt from the political insight of a linguist. Chomsky has a certain audience who wants to hear bad things about America, and in fairness he has become a millionaire by giving people what they want. So I guess I cant criticise him for following the money.

Ajsoprano

Sand wrote: »

I'm always bemused that people think anything new can be learnt from the political insight of a linguist. Chomsky has a certain audience who wants to hear bad things about America, and in fairness he has become a millionaire by giving people what they want. So I guess I cant criticise him for following the money.

Man is so smart he changes the whole landscape of his profession.
Man is so close minded he refuses to listen to his views on anything else.

BuilderPlumber

I agree with Noam Chomsky on a lot of issues but one cannot help feeling he made a career out of just how awful American foreign policy is in a VERY CAPITALIST way! The 2003 American invasion of Iraq made hating America mainstream and as all anyone had to do during that time to make money was to write an anti American book.

American foreign policy rightly deserves as much criticism as possible. It has directly and indirectly lead to all the problems we have today especially the Frankenstein's monster we know as 'militant radical Islam'. But hating America and been obsessed with it is as bad as those horrible members of America's government who hate and stereotype the Middle Eastern nations.

Chomsky has written many good articles and has talent. But he also is a biased commentator. In all the pandering to audiences, sometimes the truth gets lost or distorted. He does though sound much better than the likes of Mark Humphrys who is supposed to be a teacher (his views do not sound like those from an educated person) but shares very biased, pro-American war views. Anyone who still supports American foreign policy warmaking does not understand that it is this very policy that has resulted in the mess the world is in today.

20Cent

Not everyone is motivated by money some want to make the world a better place.

Chrongen

Gringo180 wrote: »

Have been listening to alot of his stuff on youtube recently and I seem to agree with most of the stuff he says, especially about U.S foreign policy and Capitalism in general. Why is it that one of the greatest minds and most cited scholars in history never gets any air time on the big news channels in America? Is it because he speaks the truth about American society and its moral decline in recent decades or do yous think hes just too far to the left?

Hes a genius in my opinion.

Chomsky doesn't appear on TV or is rarely referenced because he tells the truth.

That makes him a dangerous man.

Why endanger the status quo with a scholar like Chomsky when you can numb people's senses with the verbal diarrhoea from the likes of Tom Friedman.

Hector Savage

Greentopia wrote: »

Love his work on anarchism and American foreign policy. His books are the reason I became interested in anarcho-communism and anarcho-syndicalism.

Very down to earth and accessible too. Lots of anarchists email him with questions at his office in MIT and get personal responses.

Anarchists ?
So what it's a good thing that he engages with this absolute and utter scum ???

I see these scum squatting in cities I have lived in, saying they are against the banks and big corps but at the end of the day they are kicking a family out of their apartment so they can live for free - absolute SCUM.

And of course they have iPhones and drink coffee in Starbucks.

Tom Mann Centuria

Hector Savage wrote: »

Anarchists ?
So what it's a good thing that he engages with this absolute and utter scum ???

I see these scum squatting in cities I have lived in, saying they are against the banks and big corps but at the end of the day they are kicking a family out of their apartment so they can live for free - absolute SCUM.

And of course they have iPhones and drink coffee in Starbucks.

Squatters tend to move in after bailiffs have kicked a family out of their home. Don't hear of many squatter gangs carrying out forced evictions.

BuilderPlumber

Chrongen wrote: »

Chomsky doesn't appear on TV or is rarely referenced because he tells the truth.

That makes him a dangerous man.

Why endanger the status quo with a scholar like Chomsky when you can numb people's senses with the verbal diarrhoea from the likes of Tom Friedman.

Chomsky is intelligent and he knows what he is talking about. America's blatant propaganda to sell its wars is something we have been seeing with years. The main way was to overexaggerate the importance and threat from a third world dictator and then blacken him as much as possible. In the 1960s, it was Fidel Castro. Then, it was Ho Chi Minh In the 1980s, it was Daniel Ortega, Ayatollah Khomeini and Colonel Gaddafi. Then it was Saddam. Each one we were told posed a threat to the entire world despite not being from a superpower. Saddam especially was blackened and he was supposed to have WMD that could be delivered in 45 minutes to hit most parts of the West. He was also said to have terrorist cells ready to attack. He had nothing of the sort. And that's why he was attacked. Chomsky and others have woken people up to the myth of America being the world's policeman protecting us from 'evil mass murderers' akin to Dirty Harry protecting San Francisco from Scorpio.