Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media Page #17

that Faurisson has anything to say?

How much of the press in France...

What percentage would you say?

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 a lunatic?

I'll try to answer.

- I just follow the case...

- That's a simple question.

I follow the case five or six years ago.

I happened to see

that Noam Chomsky was in for strong criticism

even from some of his supporters

for doing something which 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 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 already to lose one's humanity.

So I don't even think you ought to discuss

the issue, if you want my opinion.

But if anybody wants to refute Faurisson,

there's certainly no difficulty in doing so.

I'm not interested in...

...freedom of speech and all that.

I have to win. And that's the question.

And I shall win.

Cut.

I'm just an ordinary mum

who just thinks in terms of...

I don't want to some day

be holding my grandchildren

and watching something horrible happen

and feel like I didn't do anything.

And I mean, it's obvious what you're doing.

My question is, on a practical level,

where do you see the most practical place

to put your energy?

Tonight, I feel I'm overwhelmed.

I feel like it's too big, it's too much,

to even make a dent in.

The way things change is because

lots of people are working all the time.

You know, they're working in their communities,

in their workplace or wherever they are.

And they're building up the basis

for popular movements

which are going to make changes.

That's the way

everything has ever happened in history.

Whether it was the end of slavery,

whether it was the democratic revolutions,

or anything you want, you name it,

that's the way it worked.

You get a very false picture of this

from the history books.

In the history books, there's a couple of leaders.

You know, George Washington,

or Martin Luther King or whatever.

And I don't want to say

those people are unimportant.

Martin Luther King was important,

but he was not the Civil Rights Movement.

Martin Luther King can appear

in the history books

cos lots of people

whose names you will never know

and whose names are all forgotten

and who may have been killed and so on,

were working down in the South.

When you have active... activists,

and people concerned and people devoting

themselves and dedicating themselves

to social change or issues or whatever,

then people like me can appear.

We can appear to be prominent. But that's only

cos 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 or writing books,

is not directed to intellectuals and politicians.

It's directed to what are called

"ordinary people".

What I expect from them is, in fact,

exactly what they are.

That they should try to understand the world

and act in accordance

with their decent impulses.

And that they should try to improve the world.

Many are willing to do that.

But they have to understand.

As far as I can see, in these things,

I feel that I'm simply helping people develop

courses of intellectual self-defence.

What did you mean by that?

What would such a course be?

I don't mean go to school,

because you'll not get it there.

It means you have to develop

an independent mind and work on it.

That's extremely hard to do alone.

The beauty of our system is

it isolates everybody.

Each person is sitting alone in front of the tube.

It's very hard to have ideas or thoughts

under those circumstances.

You can't fight the world alone.

Some people can, but it's pretty rare.

The way to do it is through organisation.

So courses of intellectual self-defence

will have to be in the context

of political and other organisation.

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 so on,

then we'll try and do the opposite,

bring them together.

So, in your local community,

you want to have sources of alternative action,

people with parallel concerns,

maybe differently focused,

but, at the core, sort of similar values

and a similar interest in helping people defend

themselves against external power

and taking control of their lives

and reaching out your hand

to people who need it.

That's a common array of concerns.

You can learn about your own values

and you can figure out how to defend yourself

in conjunction with others.

Erm... are there one or two publications

that I, as an average person, a biologist,

can read to bypass this filter 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 right answers are what you decide

are the right answers.

Maybe everything I'm telling you is wrong.

It could perfectly well be. I'm not God.

But that's something for you to figure out.

I can tell you what I think happens to be 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 just to define my terms,

by alternative media, I'm referring to media

that are or could be citizen-controlled

as opposed to state or corporate-controlled.

That's what's kept people together.

To the extent that people are able

to do something constructive,

it's because they have some way of interacting.

I've always felt it would be a very positive thing

and it should be pushed as far as it can go.

I think it's going to have a very hard time.

There's just such a concentration

of resources and power that...

...alternative media,

while extremely important,

are going to have quite a battle.

It's true there are things

which are small successes.

But it's because people have just been willing

to put in an incredible effort.

Like, say, take Z Magazine.

I mean, that's a national magazine

which literally has a staff of two

and no resources.

Tell us a little about Z Magazine,

what it is and what makes it different.

Go ahead.

Go ahead? Thank you.

We just wanted to 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

attention to how to not only understand

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