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[Music] in today's on the spot assignment we're going to see just what's behind the making of movies the director and the crew are shooting a documentary film let's take a
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closer look okay fine Bob um this word documentary what would you say is the difference between a documentary film and a a feature movie well there good many differences one would be length generally speaking documentar is a good
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deal shorter than feature films also uh documentaries have something to say in the way of a message they are informational films also another term that's used interchangeably with documentary is the word actuality actuality
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films Bob is this the thing you uh hold up in front of the camera before each scene this a Clapper board yes this uh identifies on the visual camera uh the scene number and the take number and
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also as you heard on the soundtrack the editor back at the studio puts the two pieces of film together matches where the lips of The Clapper come together and there you are in sync before the break you were mentioning the media
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putting forth the information that they powerly want I'm not sure if I understand how does the power elite do this and why do why do we stand for it why does it work so well okay well I
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think here we have to I mean there there really two questions here one is this picture of the media true and there you have to look at the evidence I mean I've given one example and that shouldn't convince anybody uh one has to look at a lot of evidence to see whether this is
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true I think anyone who investigates it will find out that the evidence to support it is simply overwhelming in fact it's probably one of the best supported conclusions in the social sciences but the other question is how does it
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work I'm the uh I'm the media guy you're the media what would you like I got you an international hero tribute anything in a western language doesn't Financial Times
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absolutely that's the only paper who tells the truth you get the one now where they've been debating back NRC hundle blood H
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[Music] blood well this evening's U program is scheduled as a debate which puzzled me
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all the way through uh there are some problems one problem is that no proposition has been set forth as I understand debate people are supposed to Advocate something and oppose something uh rather more sensibly a topic has been
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proposed for discussion uh the topic is manufacturer of consent it's somewhat unusual for a member of the government to debate with a professor in public uh it hasn't happened in Holland before I
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don't think it's of often happens elsewhere Mr bastein the floor is yours now we all know that the theory can never be established merely by examples it can only be established by some by
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showing some internal inherent logic Professor chsky has not done so Professor chsky he's quite right when he says you can't just pick examples you have to do them in a rational way that's
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why we compared examples the truth is that things are not as simple as Professor chsky maintains another of Professor chomsky's case studies concerns the treatment that
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Cambodia has received in the western press here he goes badly off the rails we didn't discuss Cambodia we compared Cambodia with East teimour two
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very closely paired examples and we gave approximately 300 pages of detail covering this in political economy of Human Rights including a reference to every article we could discover about
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Cambodia many Western intellectuals do not like to face the facts and bulk at the conclusions that any untutored person would draw many people are very
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irritated by the fact that we exposed the extraordinary deceit over Cambodia and paired it with the simultaneous suppression of the US supported ongoing atrocities and teamwork that people
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don't like that for one thing we were challenging the right to lie in in defense of the state for another thing we were exposing the act the Apologetics and support for actual ongoing
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atrocities that doesn't make you popular where did he learn about the atrocities in east theour or in Central America if not in the same Free Press which he so derides you can find out
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where I learned about them by looking at my footnotes I learned about them from Human Rights reports from church reports from Refugee studies and extensively from the Australian press oh there was nothing from the American Press because it was
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silenced chairman this is an attempt at intellectual intimidation these are the ways of the bully Professor chsky uses the oldest debating trick on record he erects a man
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of straw and proceeds to hack away at him professor chsky calls this the manufacturer of consent I call it the creation of consensus in Holland we call
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it draak which means Foundation Professor chsky thinks it is deceitful but it is not in a representative democracy it means
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winning people for one's point of view but I do not think that Professor chsky believes in representative democracy I think he believes in direct democracy with Rosa Luxembourg he Longs
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for the creative spontaneous self-correcting force of mass action that is the vision of the anarchist it is also a boy's
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dream uh those who believe in democracy and freedom uh have uh serious task ahead of them what they should be doing in my view is dedicating their efforts
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to helping the despised common people to struggle for their rights and to realize the Democratic goals that constantly surface throughout history uh they should be serving not power and
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privilege but rather their victims freedom and democracy are by now not merely values to be treasured they are quite possibly the prerequisite to
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survival it's a conspiracy theory pure and simple it is not born out by the facts Mr chairman I have to go to Amsterdam if you excuse me I'm [Music] leaving one thing is
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sure their consent has not been manufactured tonight there is nothing more remote from what I'm discussing or what we have been discussing than a conspiracy
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theory if I give an analysis of say the economic system and I point out the general Motors tries to maximize profit and market share that's not a conspiracy theory that's an Institutional analysis
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I has nothing to do with conspiracies and that's precisely the sense in which we're talking about the media the phrase conspiracy theory is one of those that's constantly brought up to and I think its effect simply is to discourage
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institutional analysis you think there's a connection somehow about what the government wants us to know and what the media tell us it's not communism but I think to a certain point uh it is
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sensitized they don't always always tell I guess John they don't always tell the truth the way it goes huh got that right you think that the information you're getting from this this paper is biased in any way or oh yeah I think by and
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large it's a it's a Well Done you get both sides of the stories you get the liberal and the side and the conservative side so to speak but I don't think you get a very balanced
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picture because they only have 20 seconds 30 seconds for for a news item or whatever and they're going to pick out a highlight and every network is going to cover the same highlight and that's all you're going to see you get
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the what they want you to hear you think they buy us some way there yeah here we go see you
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later is it possible for the lights to get a little brighter so I can see somebody out there yeah for the last uh hour and 41 minutes you've been whining about how the elite and how the government have
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been using thought control to keep radicals like yourself out of uh the public Limelight now uh you're here I don't see any CIA men waiting to drag you off you were in the paper they that's where everyone here heard you
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were coming from in the paper and I'm sure they're going to publish your comments in the paper now a lot of countries you would have been shot for what you have done today so what are you whining about this is we are allowing you to speak and I don't see any thought
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control first of all I haven't been saying I haven't said one word about my keep my being kept out of the Limelight the way it works here is quite different now I don't think you heard what I was saying but the way it works here is that there is a system of shaping uh control
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and so on which gives a certain perception of the world I gave one example I'll give you sources where you can find thousands of others that's and it has nothing to do with it has to do with marginalizing the public and ensuring that they don't get
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in the way of Elites who are supposed to run things without interference in a review of the chsky reader it was written that as he's been forced to the margins he's become
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strident and rigid do you feel this categorization of your later writings is accurate and that you've been a victim of this sort of process you've been describing well the business about being forced to the other people will have to
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judge about the stency I won't talk I don't believe it but anyway that's for other people to judge however the matter of being forced to the margins is a matter of fact and the fact is the opposite of what is claim the fact is
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it's much easier to gain access to even the major media now than it was 20 years ago you've dealt in such unpopular truths and have been such a lonely figure as a consequence of that do you ever regret either that you took the
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stand you took have written the things you have written or that they we had listened to you earlier uh I don't I mean there are particular things which I would do differently because you think about things you do them differently but in
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general I would say I do not regret it I mean you being controversial no it's a nuisance because this Mass medium pays little attention to the views of descenders not just n jonky but but but most descenders do not get much of a
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hearing in this media No in fact that's again completely understandable they wouldn't be performing their societal function if they allowed favored truths to be challenged now notice that that's not true when I
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cross the border anywhere so that I have easy access to the media in just about every other country in the world there's a number of reasons for that and one reason is I'm primarily talking about the United States and it's much less
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threatening your view there is that the military militarization of the American economy essentially has come about because there are not other means of controlling the American population in a Democratic Society I mean it may be
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paradoxical but the Freer the society is the more it's necessary to resort to devices like induced fear okay I'll go along with that arguably he is the most important
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intellectual alive today and if my program can give him 500,000 people listening or 3/4 of a million people listening I'll be delighted okay professor in your own
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time wartime planners understood that actual War aims should not be revealed part of the reason why the media in Canada and Belgium and so on are more open is that it just doesn't matter that
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much what people think it matters very much what the politically articulate sectors of the population those narrow minorities think and do in the United States because of its overwhelming dominance on the world scene but of
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course that's also a reason for wanting to work here what we might call the fifth Freedom the freedom to Rob EXP explo and dominate and to curb Mischief by any feasible
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means conclude not include to [Music] the the United States is ideologically narrower in general than other countries furthermore the structure of the
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American Media is such as to pretty much eliminate critical discussion our guests are as far apart on the Contra question as American intellectuals can be now if we had the
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slightest concern with democracy which we do not in our Foreign Affairs and never have we would turn to countries where we have influence like El Salvador now in El Salvador they don't call the uh Archbishop bad names what they do is
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murder him they do not uh rep they do not censor the Press they wipe the press out they sent the Army in to blow up the church radio station the editor of The Independent Newspaper was found in a ditch mutilated and and cut the pieces
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with machete I did not interrup ever want to put time value on anything you saying I'm talking about 198 systematic liar did these things happen or didn't they these things did not happen in the context in which you suggest it all you
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are a phony mister and it's time that the people read you CR correctly it's clear it's clear why you want to divert me from the discussion that no it's not get tired of rubbish but let's continue with except we can't I'm afraid we're
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out of time we thank you both John Silver and N Chomsky okay last time you were here um you spoke about how when you go overseas you are given access to the mass media but here
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that doesn't seem to be the case has that changed at all have you ever been invited to appear on Nightline or Brinkley yes I have a couple times been invited to speak on Nightline uh
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couldn't do it I had another talk and something or other and to tell you the honest truth I don't really care very much Fair the media monitoring group published a very interesting study of Nightline it shows that their conception
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of a spectrum of opinion is ridiculously narrow at least by European or World
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[Music] standards
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let me tell you a personal experience I happened to be in Madison Wisconsin on a listener sported radio station Community radio station a very good one I was having interview with news director I've been on that program dozens of times
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usually by telephone and he's very good he gets to all sorts of people and he started the interview by playing for me a u tape of an interview that he had just had and had broadcast with the guy
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who's U some mcky mck in night line I think his name is Jeff Greenfield or some such name if that name mean anything I'm Jeff Greenfield for Nightline in New York what about uh just
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in the selection of guests to analyze things why is gome Chomsky never on Nightline right I couldn't begin to tell you he's one of the leading intellectuals in the entire world I have no idea I mean I can make some guesses
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uh he may be one of the leading intellectuals who uh can't talk on television you know that's a standard that's very important to us if you got a 22-minute show and a guy takes 5 minutes to warm
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up now I don't know whether Chomsky does or not uh he's out one of the reasons why Nightline has The Usual Suspects is one of the things you have to do when you book a show is know that the person can make the point within the
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framework of television and if people don't like that they should understand it is about as sensible to book somebody who will take 8 minutes to give an answer as it is to book somebody who doesn't speak English but in the normal given flow that's another culture bound
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thing we got to have english- speaking people we also need concision So Greenfield or whatever his name is hit the nail on the head the US media are alone in that that it is you must meet the condition of concision you got to
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say things between two commercials or in 600 words and that's a very important fact because the beauty of concision you know saying couple of sentences between two commercials the beauty of that is
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that you can only repeat conventional thought I was reading chsky 20 years ago I think his notion he doesn't he have a didn't he co-author a new book called engineering consent or the manufacturing consent I mean some of that stuff to me looks like it's from Neptune this is the
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first time the Neptune system has been seen clearly by human eyes these pictures taken only hours ago by Voyager 2 are its latest contribution you know he's perfectly entitled to say that I I'm seeing it
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through of prism too but my view of that of of his Notions about the limits of debate in this country is absolutely whacko suppose I get up on Nightline say I'm given whatever it is 2 minutes and I say
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Gaddafi is a terrorist H is a murderer you know etc etc the Russians you know invaded Afghanistan all this sort of stuff I don't need any evidence everybody just nods on the other hand suppose you say something that just
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isn't regurgitating conventional pities suppose you say something that's the least bit unexpected or controversial suppose you say I mean the biggest International Terror operations that are known are the that are run out of
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Washington or suppose you say what happened in the 1980s is the US government was driven underground suppose I say the United States is invading South Vietnam as it was the best political leaders are the ones who
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are lazy and corrupt if uh the nberg laws were applied uh then every post-war American president would have been hanged the Bible is one probably the most genocidal book in our total Canon
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education is a system of imp ignorance there's no more Morality In world affairs fundamentally than there was in the time of genas Khan they're just different you know they're just different factors to be concerned with
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now J thank you well you know people will reason quite reasonably expect to know what you mean why did you say that I never heard that before uh if you said that you better have a reason you know you better have some evidence in fact
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you better have a lot of evidence because that's pretty startling commment uh you can't give evidence if you're stuck with cons Vision you know that's the genius of these of this structural constraint and in my view if people like
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say Nightline and McNeil L and so on were smarter if they were better propagandists they would let pance on let them on more in fact the reason is that they would sound like they're from Neptune then comes our special
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conversation on the Middle East crisis tonight's is with the activist writer and Professor gome Chomsky and there is has been an offer on the table which we rejected an Iraqi offer last April okay to
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eliminate their chemical and other unconventional arsenals if Israel were to simultaneously do the same re it but I think that should be pursued as well sorry to interrupt you I have to end it there that's the end of our time Professor chsky thank you very much for
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joining us AT&T has supported the McNeil era NewsHour since 1983 because quality information and quality Communications is our idea of a good connection AT&T
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the right choice oh AK if you just can you just for half half a second it's just for two shot that's all then we can do everything else yeah what about the uh think there's hang around right the
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idea of this one is it's just a shot where I'm seeing talking to you and you're seeing listening to me I'll ask you though if you don't speak to me or move your lips so that I can be seen to be asking you a question the reason for the shot is simply this okay just don't talk to me and I'll keep Ying that's the
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thing uh the reason for the shot I'll explain it through because I usually find that's the easiest way to do it the reason for the shot is I need a shot where you're sitting and seeing listening to me while I'm asking you a question we can use the shot to introduce you explain who you are where
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you fit into the piece I'm doing but if you don't speak to me I can also use go okay thanks for your time right out if there is a narrow range of opinion in the United States and it is harder to express a a variety of of different
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opinions why do you live in the US I think it's well first of all it's my country and secondly it's in many ways I as I said before it's the freest country in the world I mean I think there's more possibilities for change here than in
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any other country I know but again comparatively speaking it's the country where the state is probably most restricted but isn't that what you should be looking at comparatively rather than in absolute terms but you don't create that impr on the cont well
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maybe I don't give the impression I certainly say it often enough what I've said over and over again and I've been saying it all tonight I've written it a million times is that the United States is a very free Society uh it's also a very rich Society of course the United
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States is a scandal from the point of view of it wealth I mean given the natural advantages that the United States has in terms of resources and uh lack of enemies and so on the United States should have a level of Health and
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Welfare and so on that's you know order of magnitude Beyond anybody else in the world we don't the United States is last among 20 industrialized Societies in infant mortality that's a scandal of
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American capitalism and it ends up being a very free society which does a lot of rotten things in the world okay there's no contradiction there I mean you know Greece was a free Society by the standards of that of Athens you know
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it's also a vicious Society from the point of view of Imperial Behavior there's virtually no correlation between the in maybe none between the internal freedom of a society and its external Behavior Uh you you you start your line
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of discussion at a moment that is historically useful for you you that's I you Pi the you the beginning post war world is that the Communist communist imperialist by the use of terrorist
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by the use of by deprivation of Freedom uh have contributed to the continuing Bloodshed and the sad thing about it is not only the Bloodshed but the fact that they seem to dispossess you of the power of rational I say something I think
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that's about 5% true and about or maybe 10% true it certainly is why do you give that may I complete a sentence it's it's perfectly true that there were areas of the world in particular Eastern Europe
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where where stalinist imperialism uh uh very brutally uh took control and still maintains control but there are also very vast areas of the world where we were doing the same thing and uh there's
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quite an interplay in the Cold War you see the what you just described as a I believe a mythology about the Cold War which might have been tenable 10 years ago but which is quite inconsistent with contemporary scholarship ask a check ask
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ask a Guatemalan ask a Dominican uh ask president of the Dominican Republic ask you know ask a ask a person from South Vietnam you know ask obviously we can't get if you can't distinguish between the nature of our Venture in Guatemala and the nature of the Soviet unions in
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Prague then we have real diff explain the difference uh now what about making the media more responsive and Democratic well they're very narrow limits for that it's kind of like asking how do we make
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corporations more democratic well the only way to do that is get rid of them you know I mean if you have concentrated power you can I mean I don't want to say you can do nothing like you can you know like the church can show up at the
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stockholders meeting and start screaming about not investing in South Africa and sometimes that has marginal effects I don't want to say has no effects but you can't really affect the structure of power because if you I mean to do that
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would be a social Revolution and unless you're ready for a social Revolution that is power is going to be somewhere else uh the media are going to have their present structure and they're going to represent their present interests now that's not to say that one shouldn't try to do things I mean it
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makes sense to try to push the limits of a system it only takes one or two people that think they have integrity as journalists to give you some good press see that's important and that goes back to something came up before I mean there's
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a lot you know there are contrad you know things are are complex it's not monolithic I mean the mass media themselves are complicated institutions with internal contradictions so on the one hand there's the commitment to
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indoctrination and control but on the other hand there's the sense of professional Integrity she works alone as her own boss writing newspaper columns and producing radio commentaries for a hodgepodge of small clients across
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the country this so-called leather lung Texon has been firing questions at our chief executive for almost 40 years and many a young man in this country is being disillusioned totally by his government these days well this is a
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question which you very properly bring to the attention of the nation it's not that we haven't been holding press conferences I was just waiting for Sarah to come back Mr President that's very nice of you and I appre appreciate it
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sir I want to call your attention a real problem we've got in this country today those unique and often terrifying McLendon questions reflect her desire to dig out information and I want to ask your new man what he
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feels with enough knowhow and persistence she usually gets her man what would you do if you were in a situation where you were trying to be an honest reporter and you were worried sick about your country and you saw how
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sick it was and uh you uh facing this weak White House and a weak Congress uh as a reporter what would you do I think there are a lot of reporters who do a very good job in fact I have a lot of friends
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in the Press who I think do a terrific job what you I know they are but I mean they want to but now what well you got you have to first first I mean first of all you have to understand what the system is and smart reporters do
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understand what it is you have to understand what the pressures are what the commitments are what the barriers are and what the openings are like right after the Iran Contra hearings a lot of good reporters understood well things
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are going to be a little more open for a couple of months so I get Ram through stories that they knew they couldn't even talk about before and the same after Watergate and then you know it closes up again and so on most people I imagine simply
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internalize the values uh that's the easiest way and the most successful way you just internalize the values and then you regard yourself in a way correctly as acting perfectly freely all right let's get to the White House now where I
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think veteran correspondent Frank cesno could tell us a little bit about self-censorship that that that inertial guidance system is always going on is is there any formal censorship there well there's no self-censorship Reed if
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somebody tells me something I'm going to pass it on unless there's a particular and compelling reason not to I can't deny that I wouldn't like to have access to the Oval Office and all the same maps and charts and graphs that the president's looking at but that's not possible it's not realistic and it's
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probably not even [Music] desirable [Music] hello how are you Hi can sit down there please welcome to
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Holland I'll introduce you first in a few lines uh Professor chsky no chsky chsky has been called the Einstein of modern Linguistics the New York Times has said he's arguably the most
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important intellectual alive today but his presence here has sparked a protest this book that has has poisoned the world and old liar in there and as a Vietnamese people we come here to war the book
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Vietnam Vietnam he said that in Vietnam there's no violation of Human Rights and no crime in Cambodia is wrong j is using he's a professor he using that to poison
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the world and we we come here to protes I don't mind the denunciations frankly I mind the lies I mean intellectuals are very good at lying there are professionals at it you know vilification is a wonderful technique there's no way of responding to it if
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somebody calls you you know an anti-semite what can you say I'm not an anti-semite you somebody says you're you're a racist you're a Nazi or something there you always lose I mean the person who throws in the mud always wins because there's no way of
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responding to such charges Professor chonky seems to believe that the people he criticizes for into one of two classes Liars or dupes consider what happens when I
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discussed the case of Rob for let me recall the facts uh let's not go into details please because the details happen to be important yes but I have only one question on before we s question do the facts matter or don't
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they matter of course they do let me tell you what the facts are then for says that the that the massacre of the Jews in the Holocaust is a historic lie we have the next question
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no no this is an this is an important one it has a lot to do with the topic your views are extremely controversial and perhaps one of the one of the things that has been most controversial and you've been most strongly criticized for was your defense
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of a a French intellectual who was suspended from his university post for contending that there were no Nazi death camps in World War II my name is Robert foris I am 160 I am
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University professor in France behind me you may see the courthouse of Paris the P Justice in this place I was convicted
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many times at the beginning of the'80s I was charged by nine associations mostly Jewish Association
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for uh inciting hatred racial hatred for racial defamation for damage by falsifying his
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story professor chsky and a number of other intellectuals signed a petition in which fison is called a respected professor of literature who merely tried
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to make his findings public perhaps we can start with just the story of uh Robert fores and uh your
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involvement more than 500 peoples sign maybe 600 uh mostly uh University and what happened to the
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other 499 of them how come we only hear about chumsky signature well I think it's because chsky has in himself a kind of political power I signed a petition calling on the
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tribunal to defend his civil rights at that point The French Press which apparently has no conception of freedom of speech uh concluded that since I had called for his civil rights I was therefore defending his thesis foron
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then published a book in which he tried to prove that the Nazi gas Chambers never existed what we deny is that there was
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an extermination program and an extermination actually especially in gas Chambers or gas vs the book contains a preface written by
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professor chsky in which he calls for a relatively apolitical sort of liberal a communist is a man a Jew is a
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man a Nazi is a man I am a man are you a Nazi I am am not an aing how would you describe yourself politically nothing preface that you
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wrote whether you that's not the pre preface that I wrote Because I never wrote a preface and you know that I never wrote a preface uh he's referring to a statement of mine on civil liberties which was
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added to a book in which for excuse me you are the language you use has meaning that's right iuse any political liberal or as someone whose views can be
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signified by the words findings or conclusions that is a judgment and that is a favorable Judgment of his youth on the contrary can I continue with the fact yes you can continue with the fact for hours but but I
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mean that yeah okay let's get the so-call preface uh I was then asked by the person who organized the petition to write a statement on freedom of speech Just banale comments about freedom of
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speech pointing out the difference between defending a person's right to express his views and defending the views expressed so I did that I wrote a rather banan statement called some Elementary remarks on freedom of
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expression uh and I told him do what you like with it so uh Pierre produced a book which all the arguments of hor were to be put in front of the court and we
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thoughts uh wise uh to use the text of nor ch as a kind of warning a forward uh to say that it was a matter of freedom of expression freedom of thought freedom of
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resarch why did you try at the last moment to get it back from the book that's the one thing I'm sorry about but that's the real that's the really important thing the fact that I tried to because with that you said it was wrong
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of you do it see in fact take a look at what I I I wrote a letter which was then published Us in which I said look things have reached the point where the French intellectual Community simply is
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incapable of understanding the issues at this point it's just going to confuse matters even more if my uh comments on freedom of speech happen to be attached to this book which I don't didn't know existed so just to clarify things you
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better separate them now in retrospect I think I probably shouldn't have done that I should have just said fine then let it appear because it ought to appear but that's apart from that uh I regard this as not only trivial but as compared
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with other positions taken on freedom of speech invisible I do not think that the state ought to have the right to determine historical truth and to punish people to deviate from I'm not willing to give the state that right even if they happen to you denying that the gas
00:35:40
Chambers ever existed but I'm saying if you believe in freedom of speech you believe in freedom of speech for views you don't like I mean Geral was in favor of freedom of speech for views you like right so was Stalin if you're in favor
00:35:52
of freedom of speech that means you're in favor of freedom of speech precisely for views you dispise otherwise you're not in favor of freedom of speech there's two positions you can have on freedom of speech and you can decide which position you want with
00:36:05
regard to my defense of the utterly offensive the the the people who Express utterly offensive views I have the slightest doubt that every commissar says you're defending that person's views no I'm not I'm defending his right
00:36:18
to express them the difference is crucial and the difference has been understood outside of fascist circles since the 18th century is there anything like OB ity scientific objectivity
00:36:30
reality as a scientist I'm not saying I defend the views I look if if if somebody publishes a scientific article which I disagree with I do not say the state ought to put him in jail right all right but you don't have to support him
00:36:42
right away say you know I support him for the sake of everybody saying that suppose this guy is taken to court and charged with falsification then I'm going to defend them even I disagree to
00:36:55
oh you're wrong but but when did you right to support I mean when he was brought to court supp and in fact the only support that I gave him is to say he has a right of freedom of speech period there is no doubt in my mind that
00:37:07
the example that I gave about this story is the hoca did not exist is very very typical how much give you another example about how much of the American Press believes that has anything to say or any press how much of the press in
00:37:20
France since I follow what percentage would you say is is it higher than zero is it higher than zero have you ever seen anything in any newspaper or any Journal saying that this man is anything other than I'll try to answer I'll try
00:37:33
to answer I think that I just follow the cas simple question I followed the case five or six years ago and I happen to see that nosky was in for strong criticism even from some of his supporters for doing something which
00:37:46
could be interpreted only in terms of a campaign against Israel going back years I am absolutely certain that I've taken far more extreme positions on people who
00:37:58
deny the Holocaust than you have for example you go back to my earliest articles and you will find that I say that even to enter into the arena of debate on the question of whether the Nazis carried out such atrocities is
00:38:12
already to lose one's Humanity so I don't even think you would to discuss the issue if you want to know my opinion but if anybody wants to refute foran there's certainly no difficulty in doing [Music]
00:38:26
so I'm I'm not interested in uh freedom of speech and all that I have to win and that's the question and I shall win
00:38:58
[Music] I'm I'm just an ordinary mom who just thinks in terms of I don't want to someday be holding my grandchildren and watching something horrible happen and
00:39:25
feel like I didn't do anything and I mean it's obvious what what you're doing and my question is on a practical level where do you see the most practical place to put your energy I
00:39:39
mean tonight I feel an overwhelm like I feel like it's too big it's too much to to even make a denten the way things change is because lots of people are working all the time
00:39:50
and you know they're working in their communities in their workplace or wherever they happen to be and they're building up the basis for popular movements which are going to make changes that's the way everything has
00:40:02
ever happened in history you know whether it was the end of slavery or uh whether it was the Democratic revolutions or anything you want you name it that's the way it worked uh you get a very false picture of this from
00:40:14
the history books in the history books there's a couple of leaders uh you know George Washington or Martin Luther King or whatever and I don't want to say that those people are unimportant like Martin Luther King was
00:40:27
certainly important but he was not the Civil Rights Movement Martin Luther King can appear in the history books because lots of people whose names you will never know and whose names are all forgotten and who may have been killed
00:40:39
and so on were working down in the South when you have U active activists and people concerned and people devoting themselves and dedicating themselves to social change or issues or whatever then
00:40:55
uh people like me can appear and we can appear to be prominent but that's only because somebody else is doing the work my work whether it's giving hundreds of talks a year or spending 20 hours a week writing letters
00:41:08
or writing books is not directed to uh uh intellectuals and politicians it's directed to what are called Ordinary People yeah uh and what I expect from them is in fact exactly what they are
00:41:22
that they should uh try to understand the world and act in accordance with they decent impulses uh and that they should try to improve the world and many people are willing to do that but they have to understand in fact as far as I
00:41:34
can see in in these things I feel that I'm simply helping people develop the courses of intellectual self-defense what did you mean by that what would such a course well be I don't
00:41:47
mean go to school cuz they're not going to get it there uh it means uh you have to develop an independent mind and work on it now that's extremely hard to do
00:41:58
alone the beauty of our system is it isolates everybody each person is sitting alone in front of the TU it's very hard to have ideas or thoughts under those circumstances you can't fight the world
00:42:11
alone uh some people can there prare the way to do it is through organization so courses of intellectual self-defense will have to be in the context of political and other
00:42:25
organization and it makes sense I think to look at what the institutions are trying to do and to take that almost as a key what they're trying to do is what we're trying to combat if they're trying to keep people isolated and separate and
00:42:38
uh you know uh and so on well we're trying to do the opposite we're trying to bring them together so when your local community you want to have uh sources of alternative action people with parallel concerns maybe differently
00:42:51
focused but at the core sort of similar values and a similar interest in helping people learn how to defend themselves against external power and taking control of their lives and you know reaching out your hand to people in need
00:43:03
it that's a common array of concerns you can learn about your own values and you can figure out how to defend yourself and so on in conjunction with others um are there one or two Publications that I as an average person a biologist can
00:43:17
read to bypass this filter of our of our press now if you ask what media can I turn to to get the right answers first of all I wouldn't tell you that because I don't think there's an answer the
00:43:30
right answers are what you decide are the right answers maybe everything I'm telling is wrong okay could perfectly well be a God but that's nothing for you to figure out I mean I could tell you what I think happens to be more or less
00:43:42
right but there isn't any reason why you should pay any attention to it what impact do you feel alternative media is currently having or could potentially have I'm actually a little more interested in its potential and I just
00:43:54
to Define my terms by alternative media I'm referring to to media that are or could be citizen controlled as opposed to state or corporate control you know that's what's kept people together to the extent that people are able to do
00:44:07
something constructive it's because they have some way of interacting I mean I've always felt it would be a very positive thing and it should be pushed as far as it can go uh I think it's going to have a very hard time uh there's just such a
00:44:19
concentration of resources and power that uh uh alternative media while extremely important are going to have quite a battle it's true there are
00:44:32
things which are small successes but it's because people have just been willing to put in incredible effort like say take Z magazine I mean that's a national magazine which literally has a
00:44:45
staff of two and no resources tell us a little about Z magazine what it is and what makes it different go go ahead thank you we just wanted to
00:44:58
do a magazine that would address all the sides of political life economics race gender Authority political relations and we wanted to do it in a way that would incorporate an
00:45:10
attention to how to not only understand what's going on but how to make things better what to aim toward and uh to provide at the same time humor culture a kind of a magazine that people could
00:45:23
relate to and could get a lot out of and could participate in and what we wanted to do which we didn't think was provided by the existing magazines was to give it a real activist slant so that it could
00:45:35
be very useful to the variety of uh movements in the country and we just felt there wasn't a magazine that reflected that that inspired people and that gave people sort of a strategy and perhaps even a vision of how things
00:45:49
could be better South End press has sort of made it that is they're surviving it's a small Collective again with no resources and they put out a lot of books including quite a lot of good books but
00:46:08
for a Southend book to get reviewed is almost impossible editorially and um business-wise we make decisions based on um a politics that no corporate publisher can really um Advocate because
00:46:21
of their ties to Corporate America we can solicit manuscripts B based on what we feel is the relevance for the movement and we can make our business decisions based on whether we feel
00:46:34
people can afford our books whether we feel that a book uh might not make that much money but it needs to be out there and maybe there's a thousand people who would buy it and those are criteria that
00:46:46
we feel are very precious in this day of of corporate mergers well and likewise our structure about sharing work and continuing our training process as long as we're at the
00:46:59
Press there are losses there in terms of productivity but in terms of empowerment all of us are then able to say my perspective is different from
00:47:11
yours then all of our intelligence gets used in making those decisions and not just whoever happens to have done it the longest whoever happens to uh have graduated from the best schools in order
00:47:24
to be the best editor making all the decisions and only using his or her intelligence listen supporting radio in the United States has undergone a remarkable growth in the last decade uh
00:47:37
it's perhaps the fastest growing alternative media uh there are many reasons for this uh first and foremost is that it's enormously economical and it reaches communities that have not
00:47:49
been served by Community radio before and in Boulder particular we see with someone like Noom Chomsky who's been been there I believe three times in the last 6 years uh he has a tremendous audience and kgnu is partly responsible
00:48:04
for that because we play his tapes on a regular B basis we play his lectures and his interviews so when he does come to Boulder and people hear what he has to say they're able to tune in it's not
00:48:16
something exotic or esoteric that he's talking about it's material that they're very familiar with and he's noted this incidentally I me if there's a listener supported radio station you're it means
00:48:27
that people can get daily every day a different way of looking at the world not just what the corporate media want you to see but a different picture a different understanding not only can you
00:48:39
hear it but you can participate in it you can add your own thoughts you know and you can learn something and so on well that's the way uh people become uh human you know that's the way you become
00:48:51
human participants in a in a social and political system hello I'm Ed Robinson and this is non-corporate news what is non-corporate news and why is it necessary I didn't want to just show another film at a
00:49:05
library or something I wanted to make my own statement I thought it' be more fun to do and perhaps I get other people involved in in a project besides showing a film we could we could make a film or a video the local cable stations hooked
00:49:19
up to three communities Lynn swamp Scott and Salem so that's 30,000 people it or 30,000 homes I'm not sure but I'm sure a lot of people will see it and
00:49:31
it'll be the kind of people who don't go out to to see a film they'll go right into their houses so if they're flipping through the channels they might be able to get a completely new idea of the
00:49:49
world so this kind of networks of cooperation developed which I mean like here for example is a collection stuff from a friend of mine in Los Angeles who uh does careful monitoring of the whole
00:50:02
press in Los Angeles and a lot of the British press which you read uh and SEL does selection so I don't have to read the you know the movie reviews and the local gossip and all this kind of stuff but I get the occasional nugget that
00:50:15
sneaks through and that you find if you're carefully and intelligently and critically reviewing a wide range of press well there are a fair number of people that do this and we exchange information we wrote this two volume
00:50:27
work which we saw one another for a couple weeks when we were getting started but then we wrote two volumes essentially without seeing one another just uh By Phone by by mail and uh
00:50:41
exchanging manuscripts and but this takes a lot of a lot of uh communication by now my my chsky file is a couple of feet thick the end result is that you do have access to resources in a way which
00:50:55
I doubt that any National Intelligence Agency can duplicate a little on scholarship so there are ways of compensating for the absence of resources people can do things like for
00:51:07
example I found out about the arms flow to Iran by reading transcripts of the BBC uh and by reading uh an interview somewhere with an Israeli Ambassador in one city and reading something else in
00:51:20
the Israel press now okay the information is there but it's there to a fanatic you know somebody to uh spend a substantial part of their time and energy exploring it and comparing
00:51:32
today's lies with yesterday's leaks and so on that's a research job and it's you know it just simply doesn't make any sense to ask the uh general population to dedicate themselves to this task on
00:51:44
every issue I'm not given to false modesty there are things that I can do and I know that I can do them reasonably well uh including U uh analysis and uh
00:51:56
you know study research I mean I know how to do that sort of thing and I think I have a reasonable understanding of the way the world works as much as anyone can and that turns out to be a very useful
00:52:08
resource for people who are U uh who are doing active organizing uh uh uh trying to U engage themselves in a way which will make it a little bit of a better world and if you can help in those
00:52:22
things or participate in them well that's uh you know that's rewarding I wonder if you can Envision a time when people uh like myself uh again the naive people of this world can again take
00:52:35
pride in the United States and is that even a healthy dis wish now because it may be this hunger uh for pride in our country that makes us more easily manipulated by the powers that you talk
00:52:49
about uh I think you first of all have to ask what you mean by your country now if you mean by the country the Govern government I don't think you can be proud of it and I don't think you could ever be proud of it or could you be
00:53:01
proud of any government it's not our government you know uh and you shouldn't be states are violent institutions they the government of any country including ours represents some sort of domestic
00:53:14
power structure and it's usually violent states are violent to the extent that they're powerful that's roughly accurate you look at American history it's nothing to write home about you know why are we here we're here because say 10
00:53:26
million Native Americans were wiped out that's not very pretty until the 1960s it was still Cowboys and Indians in the 1970s for the first time really it became possible
00:53:39
even for scholarship to try to deal with the facts as they were for example to deal with the fact that the Native American population was Far higher than had been claimed Millions higher maybe as many is 10 million higher than had
00:53:51
been claimed and that they had an advanced civilization and that there was something that in the genocide that took place now we went through 200 years of our history without facing that fact uh one of the effects of the 1960s is it's
00:54:04
possible to at least begin to come to to think about the facts well that's in advance do you think that this activism 20 years ago has made a difference in how our society operates now uh it has
00:54:18
not changed the institutions in the way they function but it has led to very significant cultural changes remember these movements of the 60s U expanded in the 70s and expanded further in the 80s
00:54:31
and they reached into other parts of the society and different issues these a lot of things that seemed U outrageous in the 60s are taken for granted today uh so for example take the feminist
00:54:44
movement for example which barely began to exist in the 60s now it's part of General Consciousness and awareness uh the ecological movements began in the 70s uh the solidarity third world
00:54:57
solidarity movements were very limited in the 60s it was really Vietnam uh and in the' 60s also it was a student movement as you say now it's not now it's mainstream
00:55:10
America if there is more dissonant now than you can remember why do you go on to write that the people feel isolated because I think much of the general population recognizes that the organized
00:55:25
institutions to do not reflect their concerns and interests and needs they do not feel that they participate meaningfully in the political system they do not feel that the media are telling them the truth or even reflect
00:55:37
their concerns uh they go outside of the organized institutions to act we see more and more of our elected leaders and know less and less of what they're doing as this medium does that very striking in fact the presidential elections have
00:55:51
been almost removed from the point where the public even takes them seriously as involving matter of choice so what do you think about what goes on in that white house it's kept too private I think yeah they should come out people
00:56:04
yeah who should talk to George Bush well it means that the political system increasingly increasingly functions without public input uh it means to an increasing
00:56:16
extent not only do people not ratify decisions presented to them but they don't even take the trouble of ratifying them they assume that the decisions are going on independ L of what they may do in the polling Booth ratification would
00:56:30
would be what well ratification would mean a system in which there are two positions presented to me the voter I go into the polling booth and I push one or another button depending on which of those positions I want that's a very
00:56:42
limited form of democracy really meaningful democracy would mean that I play a role in forming those decisions and M and creating those positions and that would be real democracy we're very far from that but we're even departing
00:56:55
from the point where there is r ification when you have stag managed elections with the public relations industry determining what words come out of people's mouth candidates decide what to say on the basis of tests that
00:57:07
determine what the effect will be across the population somehow people don't see how profoundly contemptuous that is of democracy the solemn moment is near but first the swearing end of Van
00:57:25
qu [Music] please move to your seats for the first time in this Century for the first time
00:57:37
in perhaps all history man does not have to invent a system by which to live we don't have to talk late into the night about which form of government is better
00:57:50
we don't have to rest Justice from the King we only have have to summon it from within ourselves this is a time when the future sees a door you can walk right through
00:58:03
into a room call tomorrow great nations of the world are moving toward democracy through the door to Freedom people the world agitated for
00:58:14
free expression and free thought the of the moral and intellectual saac that only Li last we know how to secure a more just
00:58:28
and prosperous life for man on Earth through free market free free Fe free elections and the exercise of Free Will unhampered by the state I've spoken the
00:58:42
thousand points of Life of all the community organizations that are spread like stars throughout the nation doing good to the world too we offer new
00:58:54
engagement and a V we will stay strong to protect the peace the offered hand and The Reluctant
00:59:09
F America is never holy herself unless she is engaged in high moral principles we as a people have such a purpose to
00:59:21
death it is to make Kinder the face of the na and gentler the face of the [Music] [Applause] world referring back to your earlier
00:59:36
comment about uh escaping from or doing away with capitalism I was wondering what scheme workable scheme you would put in its place me or well what I would suggest to others who might be in
00:59:50
a position to set it up and get it going well I mean I I think that uh what used to be called called centuries ago wage slavery is intolerable I mean I don't think people ought to be forced to rent themselves in order to
01:00:03
survive I think that the Economic Institutions ought to be run democratically by their participants by the communities in which they exist and so on and uh I think basically through
01:00:15
various kinds of free association historically have there been any sustained examples on any substantial scale of uh societies which approximated to the anarchist
01:00:31
ideal there are small societies uh small in number that have I think done so quite well and there are a few examples of large scale uh libertarian
01:00:44
revolutions which were largely Anarchist in their structure uh as to the first small societies extending over a long period I myself think the most dramatic example is perhaps the Israeli kibuts
01:00:56
which for a long period may or may not be true today really were constructed on Anarchist principles that is of direct worker control integration of agriculture industry service personal
01:01:08
life on an egalitarian basis with direct and in fact quite active participation in self-management and were I should think extraordinarily successful a good example of a really large scale Anarchist Revolution or
01:01:20
largely Anarchist revolution in fact the best example to my knowledge is the Spanish revolution in 1936 and in fact U you can't tell what would have happened that Anarchist Revolution was simply destroyed by force but during the period
01:01:33
in which it was alive I think it was a inspiring testimony to the ability of uh poor working people to uh organize manage uh their Affairs extremely successfully without coercion and
01:01:44
control how far does the success of uh libertarian Socialism or anarchism as aw really depend on a fundamental change in the nature uh of man both in his
01:01:56
motivation his altruism and also in his knowledge and sophistication I think it not only depends on it but in fact the whole purpose of libertarian socialism is that it will contribute to it uh it
01:02:09
will contribute to a spiritual transformation precisely that kind of great transformation in uh in the way humans conceive of themselves and their uh ability to act to decide to create to
01:02:23
produce to inquire precisely that spirit ual transformation that uh social thinkers from the left Marxist tradition from LX Luxembourg say on over through anaros syndicalists have always
01:02:35
emphasized so on the one hand it requires that spiritual transformation on the other hand the its purpose is to create institutions which will contribute to that [Music]
01:02:49
transformation you've written that in looking at contributions of gifted thinkers one must make sure to understand their contributions but also to eliminate the errors in
01:03:00
them um and of your ideas what would you guess would be discarded and what would be assimilated by future thinkers well I mean I would assume virtually everything would be discarded
01:03:13
uh for example in here here we have to distinguish I mean the work that I do in my professional area I mean if I still believed what I believed 10 years ago I'd assume the field is dead uh so I
01:03:24
assume that when next time you read a student's paper you're going to see something that has to be changed and you continue to make progress in dealing with social and political issues in my view what is at all
01:03:36
understood is pretty straightforward I don't think that there there may be deep and complicated things but if so they're not understood uh the uh uh the basic ways to the extent that we understand Society at all it's pretty
01:03:50
straightforward and I don't think that those simple understandings are likely to undergo much change the point is that you have to work and that's why that's why the propaganda system is so successful uh very few people are going
01:04:02
to have the time or the energy or the commitment to carry out the constant battle that's required to get outside of the you know McNeil a or you know band
01:04:14
rather or somebody like that the easy thing to do you know you come home from work you're tired just had a busy day you know not going to spend the evening carrying out a research project so you turn on the tube and say it's probably right you look at the headlines in the
01:04:27
paper and then you watch the sports or something uh cuz CU and that's that's basically the way the system of indoctrination Works sure the other stuff is there you're going to have to work to find [Applause]
01:04:38
it modern industrial civilization has developed within a certain system of convenient myths the driving force of modern industrial civilization has been
01:04:51
individual material gain which is accepted as legitimate uh even praiseworthy on the grounds that private vices yield public benefits in the classic
01:05:03
formulation now it's long been understood very well that a society is that is based on this principle will destroy itself in time it can only persist with whatever suffering and
01:05:17
Injustice it entails as long as it's possible to pretend uh that the destructive forces that humans create are limited that the world is an infinite resource and that the world is
01:05:30
an infinite garbage can at this stage of History either one of two things is possible either the general population will take control of
01:05:43
its own destiny and will concern itself with Community interests Guided by values of solidarity and sympathy and concern for others or alternatively
01:05:55
there will be no Destiny for anyone to control as long as some specialized class is in a position of authority it is going to set policy in the special interests that it serves but the
01:06:09
conditions of survival let alone Justice require rational social planning in the interest of the community as a whole and by now that means the global Community the question is whether
01:06:22
privileged Elites should dominate mass communication and should use this power as they tell us they must namely to impose necessary Illusions to manipulate and deceive the stupid majority and
01:06:35
remove them from the public Arena the question in brief is whether democracy and freedom are values to be preserved or threats to be avoided in this possibly terminal phase of human
01:06:47
existence democracy and freedom are more than values to be treasured they may well be essential to survival thank you he's up there thinking for himself and he's deciphering this
01:07:05
tremendously overweighted body of information which he puts into an order and gives you the feeling that you can do the same thing that the whole thing is
01:07:18
decipherable and he also gives you the sense that there is a source there's a center to the um to a dissenting population although we feel that there's no
01:07:30
Center and I think that is what reactivated in me um a desire to get back get reacquainted with the political
01:07:43
scene after 30 years of alienation from it you do hundreds of interviews and lectures and I'm and you're dealing with massacres in East Tour and and uh
01:07:56
invasions of Panama Etc pretty horrific stuff death squads what keeps you going I mean don't you get burned out on this material uh well you know it's mainly a matter of
01:08:08
whether you can look yourself in the mirror I think oh got to go get these people in town okay maybe you can say all board for us okay
01:08:34
byee there's a train com somewhere down way ready better step in all this train has been running since
01:08:52
time is running on the L couldn't see it just hit the microphone thank you Hi can goodbye I come past hour that you age to
01:09:16
Inu I heard that oh yes that is true B it sorry about making your answer that so short did we hit it in 2 minutes or well we we we did pretty well actually that means less Sports and that's fine
01:09:31
with me you know people out there they don't know what's going on if the people knew what you say here today there'd be a he of a change thank you on that optimistic note Professor
01:09:44
chsky thank you very much indeed so how did it go Oh I thought it was sort of sort of technical sounding but um there was there wasn't much of a
01:09:57
a did you ever think of running for president if I ran for president first thing I do is tell people not to vote for me this guy gotes and people still people still
01:10:14
believe that the Celtic the world champion thanks room for that whole [Music]
01:10:29
my must on their tenses grow th but there won't be no hiding from the kingom thr all
01:10:46
the all you better get on all all God now you better get on
01:10:59
all now you better get on and the train is been R and and all all
01:11:36
get take it get on got train all on better get [Music] on e
End of transcript