Honestly, at this point I'm surprised they're bothering to try and manufacture a pretext for fucking with Cuba. It feels very much like at a certain point they just said fuck it, do the meme.
Inventing some kind of half-baked scare story about drones almost seems like a waste of effort. They've made it repeatedly, abundantly clear that the rogue states of America are going to do what they will and dare the world to do something about it.
Is it just pro forma? Or do they really feel like it's necessary to create a story to give people something to argue back and forth uselessly about?
disclaimer: as opposed to what I usually post, this is a review of a non-fiction book describing real-world atrocities and propaganda. this is a serious and very much political post. my review is not really graphic (as opposed to the source material), but still — beware. I’m also now aware that Chomsky was apparently besties with Epstein (although this still perplexes me: you’d think his ideology would prevent him from defending an elite fixer) and holds a variety of other problematic views. I do think that in this case it’s possible to separate the text from the author, but if you don’t — feel free to skip this post, or block me, or burn me in effigy. I don’t mind.
this is meant to be readable, however, to someone who did not read the book.
let’s do a little exercise in judging a book by its cover. here’s a photo of my copy:
notice something interesting? why is Herman the first author listed, but Chomsky is the one highlighted in red? that is because Herman wrote most of the book, but (allow me a bit of speculation here), Chomsky’s name is much more recognizable. this is a funny thing to do for a book about propaganda. hold that thought.
I think to properly review this book I need to give a bit of personal context. I grew up in a post-Soviet state, in a family of Soviet intelligentsia. my parents’ understanding of US was coming primarily from Radio Liberty, the only real alternative being Soviet propaganda. so, growing up, I internalized the view of US as a land of democracy and freedom — most certainly freedom of speech and press.
when I became older, I learned about US imperialism, the Vietnam war, and some of the awful things US did. I don’t think I’ve properly internalized it, however.
when October 2023 happened (I’m sorry for wording it in a vague way, I’m just trying to avoid summoning political bots), the behaviour of US media quickly started looking bizzare. not only the phrasing and framing were very much biased (we all know the kids/minors thing), but it consistently failed to report the most basic facts of the situation that were known by pretty much everyone and confirmed by major international organizations like Amnesty International or the UN. I knew about the book by this point, but I did not make the connection then.
I decided to read it on accident, when I stumbled into someone on the internet noting something like: “for the Chomskyites out there, technological progress makes manufacturing consent easier just like it makes easier manufacturing everything else”. something clicked. is Chomsky (I did not about Herman at this point) going to explain why this bizzare behaviour happens?
it turns out, the answer is “yes and no”. the book starts by proposing what authors call “the propaganda model”. it is a series of possible explanations for reporting that is biased towards elite interests, mostly (as is proper for a Marxist book) framing it in economic terms. it provides some evidence for these explanations, and in general I find these points reasonable. this section takes up approximately 10% of the book, and the concept later appears mostly in phrases like “this outcome is predicted by the propaganda model”.
the rest of the book is filled with case studies. authors dissect media coverage of various US imperial projects and one bizzare case where they apparently tried to frame USSR for an assassination attempt on the Pope. the first cases they consider concern countries of Central America, and they get incredibly graphic in their descriptions of violence. the rest of the book is much less graphic, although a lot of it still describes horrible war crimes.
the book is well-sourced and I verified some of the claims independently. in general, I find it easy to agree that they faithfully described the events. it is a bit harder to judge with their descriptions of media reaction: they’re prone to writing something like “nobody reported this fact” and then in a footnote “except this one time, which is just an exception”. they do offer some quantitative analysis, though, and overall I think that while specific details might be arguable, it is hard to argue that the effect they are describing does not exist.
it was also very sobering to read some of the quotes, because a lot of them are brazen in a way I did not expect major western media to be. here’s a quote from NBC reporting on Vietnam war: “The whole village had turned on the Americans, so the whole village was being destroyed”. this is, quite directly, admitting a war crime. the US media, it turns out, was quite open in admitting it killed civilians — but they framed it as a just thing. this is, frankly, bizzare. even dictatorial regimes are usually trying to convince the public that they’re only killing combatants. is it just a sign of the times? I guess I’ll need to find some Soviet press from the period to be sure.
I find really interesting one effect they describe in the Vietnam war section. they note repeatedly that in regards to a lot of events, mainstream media position was much more hardline than the position of the State Department. can we take a moment to appreciate that this is really weird?
I live in a country that has real, actual government censorship. just this week top managers of a major publisher were arrested under extremism criminal charges for supposedly having some ties to another, smaller publisher, which published some queer literature back when this was still possible. in my experience of censorship, trying to be holier than the Pope is very much not encouraged. you’re supposed to express sentiments that align closely to the general line of the party — going too far off in either direction makes you a dangerous activist that is better suppressed. why would media, so tightly controlled by various economic means, stray so far?
unless, of course, it is not the State Department that determines the general line of the party. authors dance around this conclusion, but I don’t think they state it directly: in a society that’s so thoroughly captialist as the US, it’s not the state that controls the narrative, it’s the capital. this hints at interesting things should their interests disagree. of course, the system is built to ensure that it mostly doesn’t happen.
so what is Manufacturing Consent about? it’s not about the propaganda model — authors don’t seem very interested in trying to discern the internal workings of this mechanism. textually, we could say that it is about US imperialism — most of the text is retelling of various historical events — but I don’t think it would be fair either. I think the primary message of the text is something like this: “there’s no crime so horrible that mainstream media would abandon their propaganda cause. there’s no lie so brazen that they wouldn’t tell it, if it serves a purpose. the concept of free media is dead, and it brings down with it a possibility of meaningful democracy. we need to build our own media, not beholden to the capital; we need to educate ourselves and our peers — or we lose”. the book is a political message, and its goal is to change how people find and consume information. the propaganda model is a tool towards that end.
I think it was a very useful book for me to read — both because it educated me on some aspects of US imperialism, and because it confirmed that the effect we’re seing now is not novel. the book was written in 1988 and concerns the events that happened more than half a century ago. it was enlightening to compare reporting of today with news of days long gone. it turns out — it was always like this.
I want to end this on a message of hope. the internet changed the economic constraints of journalism. Manufacturing Consent starts with observation that prices of publishing are rising — well, today they’re lower than ever. I think these changing material conditions can change how we perceive the world through press.
I was meaning to end the post there, but this is stupid, of course. the bright future doesn’t happen unless we make it. donate to independent media if you’re able. send them your stories if something important happens. diversify your information sources. the material conditions allow for a possibility of change — but we still need to fight for it to happen.
Neil covers a passel of articles on #Iran, #Ukraine, Philippines, Belarus, the Baltic states, NATO, China, Russia, et cetera, pointing out the spin and outright misinformation being pedalled as the world tumbles recklessly toward a global conflagration. Remember that the #legacymedia is a prime tool for #manufacturingconsent, not for informing the public.
A creeping realization that you start to have living in the United States over the past 5 years or so is that our leaders may have been overly cautious this whole time. Perhaps there never was a need to manufacture consent. Perhaps our capacity for violent revolution eroded away decades ago.
You look at what's happening with Iran and start to wonder whether Bush could have invaded Iraq even before September 11th. Yeah, we might have gotten John Kerry in 2004. But the war profiteering would have almost certainly continued.
Similarly, you start to wonder whether Trump should have just issued a presidential pardon to Jeffrey Epstein. Hell, give him a cabinet position. Biden might have gotten even more votes in 2020, but chances are the political landscape of 2026 would remain largely unchanged.
You can even see a world where there are no lockdowns, stimulus checks, or other precautions around COVID in 2020. Probably more businesses would have to close due to the lack of healthy workers and potential customers in the wake of millions of more dead, disabled, and impoverished. But the real Power Brokers, invested as they became in Crypto, A.I., and other speculative bullshit, would remain largely unaffected.
