Critical Review Chomsky

Noam Chomsky: The Spectacular achievements of Propaganda. A Critical Review
In this essay, Noah Chomsky questions the traditional concept of democracy as something that involves the participation ofthe citizen in the public life thanks to the (no longer) neutral information published by the media, which nowadays “must be kept narrowly and rigidly controlled” (pp. 2). On the contrary, theAmerican philosopher states that we live in a contemporary form of dictatorship where people are given the illusion of a choice, whilst they are deeply alienated by political (or rather economic) groupswhich use the media apparatus in order to produce consensus (Lippman, 1922).
The first experiments about propaganda, overtaken by the Creel Committee (which tried to persuade people that the World WarI was necessary), had already shown how the public opinion was easily influenced through the press. This press was to be managed by the intellectual community defined by Dewey, for only them knew thecommon goals of the nation and had the responsibility to lead the stupid masses, capable of destroying the system if they tried to participate (“the common interests elude the general public”(Lippman, 1992, cited on page 6)). As Chomsky accurately states, “State propaganda, when supported by the educated classes…can have a big effect”; he has also written several essays on the role of influentintellectuals in society (page 5). This “bewildered herd” does not know how to use their freedom, so they only have the possibility of choosing its leaders. However, the use of violence is no longerlegitimate, so, in order to prevent people from taking their own decisions, subtle and sophisticated methods are required.
Nowadays society is more similar to Huxley’s Brave New World than to thetotalitarian nightmare foreseen by Orwell (1984), as Neil Postman and Chomsky both describe. Propaganda, increasingly undetectable disguised as entertainment, has the same function in democracies as the...