Comment by JumpCrisscross
4 days ago
> They didn't even try very hard to manufacture consent
Chomsky was smart and influential. But he was a linguist. Not a political scientist. The manufacturing-consent hypothesis sort of worked under mass media. But even then, it wasn't a testable hypothesis, more a story of history.
In today's world, unless you're willing to dilute the term to just persuasion in general, I'm not sure it applies.
Instead, the dominant force here is apathy. Most Americans historically haven't (and probably won't) risk life, liberty or material wealthy on a foreign-policy position. Not unless there is a draft. (I'm saying Americans, but this is true in most democracies.)
Most of Manufacturing Consent is about ideological alignment in media and government being an emergent property, not the product of deliberate conspiring. People seek out jobs with people/organizations they already agree with. People hire people they already agree with. People are more likely to get promoted if their boss thinks they have good opinions, etc. It's not a conspiracy, at least there doesn't need to be a conspiracy, because Manufacturing Consent describes an anti-conspiracy. All of this obviously still happens today, there hasn't been any fundamental change in human behavior, people still have special affinity for people they agree with. Always have, and always will.
Chomsky, as a linguist, was probably better equipped to understand the implications of emergent behavior than more mainstream political scientists.