Orwell was watching the movie “Manufacturing Consent” the other day. It occurred to me that Chomsky’s critics could only muster the following arguments (at least in this movie):

1. If things are as bad as you say how come the CIA hasn’t arrested you?
2. It is all a conspiracy theory.
3. You don’t understand how the newspaper industry works.
4. Chomsky is an anti-Semite holocaust denier

Maybe there are some articulate critics out there whom Mark Archbar chose not to feature in the movie, but it does strike the casual viewer just how lame the counter-arguments sound. The answers are:

1. Noam has never said that the US is a Police State. In fact he has said it is the free-est society on earth which is why such subtle & sophisticated forms of propaganda are used to control what people think… Not what they say.
2. Noam has specifically said and written on many occasions that there is no “conspiracy theory”. He has never pointed to any individuals or groups who meet to concoct the conspiracies. To him there is no more a conspiracy that then there is when General Motors decide to make a profit. It doesn’t need a conscious “conspiracy” – that is just the way things are. It is structural. The powerful dominate the weak because they can. It would take conscious effort to stop behaving in a way that is largely programmed.
3. “Not understanding how the newspaper industry works” is not a valid counter-argument as it doesn’t address the criticism that points to certain stories being suppressed. In fact such an argument is tacit admittance that this is reality due to murky & mysterious industry mechanisms that we mere mortals couldn’t possibly understand. In “Manufacturing Consent” Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky attempt to build a ‘model’ of what is going on in the media. They strip away the mystery as outsiders. If the media have a better model let’s hear it.
4. Noam Chomsky is Jewish. He once defended the freedom of speech of a Holocaust Denier on principle but he never agreed with that person’s ideas. To suggest otherwise is a smear and adds nothing intelligent to the debate.

So, what are we to conclude by the ineptness of these lines of defense? Firstly they are simplistic in a way I find quite insulting. Secondly they are amazingly poor in comparison to the strength of Chomsky’s argument. These criticisms seem to be trotted out as a way of closing down debate. They add nothing useful to our understanding. The critics might as well stand up and say “I am not taking you seriously so there is no point talking about it”. It is also enlightening that these points are obviously made by people who don’t seem to have read or listened to Chomsky since he clearly makes the OPPOSITE argument in two of the cases.

So, what should we be asking? How about getting him to explain how he thinks anarcho-syndicalism could be applied to a modern Globalised industrialised society? Without a genuine debate you just get the idea that Chomsky is so close to the truth that his critics seem genuinely rattled that they should have to defend something so core to their believe system. That is just the way it is so no further understanding is required. Just do as you are told and stop questioning it. Go and consume something – maybe you’ll feel better and shut up. They don’t have an argument because there is none.