Today this blogger has re-posted two articles (one of which I am posting on this website) from last year on the various disinformation methods used by the ruling capitalist class to "manage consent". His introduction that follows is especially important if working people are to have any chance of replacing this barbaric system:
Here are two essays I wrote...explaining why media is so bad, and why we need to "be the media" ourselves . [My emphasis]But, what about the internet? Doesn't it allow for many dissident views? Noam Chomsky's answer to that was as follows:
The Internet now allows dissident voices to be heard and offers a wider range of perspectives and information as well. But for the large majority of the population that doesn’t mean much. People do not have the time or background even to know what to look for, and we should not underestimate the effectiveness of the dedicated programs of atomization of the population. Anyone in the sciences knows that what you can do alone is limited, and easily strays into error. Serious work generally requires interaction among a community of researchers. The same is true in trying to understand something about what is happening in the world. One of the reasons for the intense hostility to unions on the part of business and other power centers is that they are a democratizing force, offering ways for working people with limited resources and opportunities to join together to develop their own ideas and a sensible framework for interpreting what pours out in an incessant flow from the ideological institutions. That’s [impeding union activity] only one of the many devices employed to create what is an ideal society from the perspective of the masters: one in which the basic social dyad is you and the tube. So the term “readily available” is accurate in a narrow sense, but availability in principle does not suffice for understanding and action. [My emphasis]
