Noam Chomsky was present on Friday for a screening of his “Requiem
for the American Dream” and a talkback at the Little Theatre. This event
followed two evenings of the linguist, writer, MIT professor emeritus, and social
critic giving lectures hosted by the University of Rochester last week.
This Rochester screening was Chomsky’s first viewing of the
film, which takes the form of a 75-minute documentary built from years of
interviews. The work alternates the sage man’s calm countenance with historical
footage and animations of currency collages by artist Mark Wagner.
In “Requiem,” Chomsky provides a concise outline of how the
United States got into the accelerating social and economic decline it’s in
today. This information is available to all, he explains, but due to a system
of media that’s in bed with the holders of concentrated wealth and power, much
of it may seem like revelations to the average citizen.
The information is organized into 10 principles, in which
Chomsky traces the policies designed to favor the rich and disenfranchise the
poor that have brought the US to this point of historically unprecedented inequality.
These principles kick off with “Reduce Democracy,” in which Chomksy cites founding father James Madison’s proposal
during the Constitutional Convention that the government would need to limit
democracy in order to protect the wealthy from backlash born of inequality.
In the “Shape Ideology” section, he illustrates the systemic backlash
against an “excess of democracy” with the Powell Memo and the Trilateral
Commission’s report, “The Crisis of Democracy,” which expressed the view that
young people over-engaged with civic life were not receiving proper
indoctrination.
The following sections, “Redesign the Economy,” “Shift the
Burden,” and “Attack Solidarity,” outline assaults on the job security of
workers and on movements to organize workers. In “Run the Regulators,” he
describes the enormous growth in lobbying; today it is routine for interests
being regulated to control the regulators.
“Engineering Elections” deals with corporate personhood and
the legal equation of money with free speech under the Citizens United decision.
This Supreme Court ruling is essentially a manipulative reading of the 14th
Amendment to define corporations as persons and grant them those same rights. “Corporations
are state-created legal fictions,” Chomsky says. “Maybe they’re good, maybe
they’re bad, but to call them persons is outrageous.”
In “Keep the Rabble in Line,” Chomsky looks at attacks on
organized labor, including the Taft-Hartley Act and McCarthyism. One of the
most critical sections, “Manufacture Consent,” explores how excessive and
superficial consumerism is created through aggressive advertising that promotes
irrational choices rather than informs. He shows how this tactic is used to
sell everything from beauty products to candidates. And finally, “Marginalize
the Population” describes that what the public wants does not typically impact
what the government does, and cites the Princeton
study that identifies the U.S. as a corporate oligarchy.
During the talkback portion, Chomsky reiterated a much-recited
point of his: Authority must justify its existence and its expression of power.
“Very rarely is it possible to give a justification,” he said. “And if you
can’t, the authority should be dismantled.” But dismantling it is dependent
upon the savvy and will of collective action.
A self-professed anarchist, Chomsky has written and spoken
widely about the bad rap the theory has gotten, that it is often wrongfully
equated with chaos. Contrary to how it is defined, anarchy is not an artless
rejection of all authority, it is a demand that authority and hierarchical systems
prove their worth to those they govern, or be dismantled.
An audience member asked Chomsky which presidential candidate
most closely reflects his understanding of “systemic changes and the corrosion
or perversion of American institutional life,” to which he responded, “It’s exactly
who you’d think.”
After the cheers died down, he spent a few minutes exploring
that though Bernie Sanders is described as a “radical extremist, his views
would not have surprised Dwight Eisenhower. He’s a mainstream, New Deal
Democrat.” Sanders’ views are also strongly supported by public opinion, Chomsky
said, which hardly makes them extreme.
“What that means,” he said, “is the political spectrum has
shifted so far to the right that what the population wants, and what was once
mainstream, now looks radical and extremist.”
Though Chomsky gave lengthy, thoughtful responses to each
question, he resisted providing concise solutions to the problems he explores.
He instead reiterated that the population must force change, and “beat back the
repressive tendencies that have created a pretty ugly situation.”
He reminded the audience of what has been accomplished in the
past through well-organized, unified activism — through fighting together
rather than simply mobilizing in support of politicians.
Another audience member raised a possible criticism of the
film: Though it chronicles the process of decline of democracy, it might place too
much faith in the power of human rationality. “Given that these masters of
mankind have gotten so good at preying on our irrationality, they’ve gotten so
good at perfecting the means and the instruments for keeping people in this
condition where they’re choosing to act in irrational ways, what are the
chances that any of these trends are going to be reversed?” he asked.
Chomsky’s response, a return to his “Manufacturing Consent”
argument, was to point out that the proof of our extant rationality is the
money that is continuously dedicated to suppress it.
“If you think about it,” he said, “the advertising industry —
which spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year to create the kind of
individual who is focused on fulfilling artificial, external wants, and who are
uninformed consumers making irrational decisions, the reason they’re spending
huge funds on that is because they think people are
rational. Otherwise they wouldn’t bother. They’re trying to turn people into
irrational creatures, they’re putting huge efforts into it. I think they’re
right, they’re not wasting their money.”
This article appears in Apr 20-26, 2016.
