Keeping the Rabble in Line: Interviews with David Barsamian by Noam Chomsky (PDF)

Description

Interviews from the early 1990s discuss issues such as health care and crime, foreign affairs, and the role of business in society, provide recommendations for change, and explain Chomsky’s theories

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: From Publishers Weekly Barsamian, the founder of Alternative Radio, and Chomsky, allegedly the most quoted author in the modern era, have forged a symbiotic relationship that manages to distill Chomsky’s political philosophies and make them accessible. Barsamian’s historically grounded, well-informed and probing questions prompt Chomsky to deconstruct concepts of class, media and economics. Chomsky deftly addresses domestic and foreign conundrums including health care, the recent crime bill and NAFTA. While these interviews span a two-year period and end early in 1994, they remain provocative and timely, with Chomsky’s insights on Haiti, Northern Ireland and the Middle East proving especially resonant. Ultimately, Rabble serves as a Chomsky primer that is without condescension, and the question-and-answer format shows him at his most concise and adroit. His criticism exposes democracies as business-run societies that render the general population isolated from politics, persuasively suggesting that we are on the verge of a social breakdown. What sets this work apart from other reluctant messiahs who simply intellectualize suffering, is that Barsamian and Chomsky discuss avenues for activism-strengthening unions, following grassroots organizations or simply reading between the lines. Together they act as a lens, enabling the reader to see what has been there, hidden in plain sight. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. Review “Together they act as a lens, enabling the reader to see what has been there, hidden in plain sight.” — Publishers Weekly About the Author Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and is the author of many books on U.S. foreign policy. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. KEEPING THE RABBLE IN LINE is a sequel as well as a departure from CHRONICLES OF DISSENT. In this latest collection Noam Chomsky focuses on economic trade issues and the emerging global economic order. While an increasingly spectacle-driven media wine and dine us on a menu of O.J. Simpson, Tonya Harding, or whatever the current diversion is, major shifts in the international scene are occurring. As Chomsky points out, nation-states are becoming increasingly challenged by the power and reach of transnational corporations. The latter may be the defining feature of the coming era. Our response will be crucial. Again and again in these interviews and elsewhere Chomsky suggests the need to organize and become active. Passive consumption of information is not enough. RABBLE will hopefully get people moving in a practical direction, be it direct action protests, getting involved with or establishing a community radio station, producing and distributing a video, starting a bookstore, publishing a newsletter or having discussions in your living room with a few friends. I think Chomsky’s contribution lies in the fact that he constantly stresses not just the need to be informed and act, but that we are all capable of doing so. His own commitment, involvement and accessibility is a concrete example. He is a cartographer. He provides a detailed road map to assist in figuring out where things are and in charting out routes. And in another sense he is a memory bank. So while the punditocracy engineer history, Chomsky is there as a constant corrective to remind us about the concerted U.S. effort to destroy popular organizations in post-war Europe or the monstrous crimes of the Indochina War or the real accomplishments of the Nixons, Kissingers, Clintons and other luminaries who direct the global pillage. -David Barsamian, from the Introduction Read more

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Ok, so I read the longish review a couple down from this, and although it seemed to be well laid out, there is one point of reference missing. Noam Chomsky takes no “political” stance against “conservatives”, “liberals”, “communists”, “libertarians” or any other names one can come up with. He seems only to be interested in defending human beings not their ideas, whatever they may be; capitalism, communism or any other faction (I am using “faction” here deliberatly, as all political thought seems to stem from a faction of the larger thought of “control”). Which, if your studying foreign policy, can be very confusing at first, because those classes work under a set of assumptions which includes pitting one abstraction against another. That thought process has one conclusion; death of individuals. Chomsky is patiently repeating this idea to us; giving us example after example of atrocities committed all over the world. This book is a great introduction to understanding how the world works.Chomsky is an observer, and gives no real answers as to what to do except for this: Individuals need to find out what is wrong and try to fix it. Work on a grassroots level in your community for whatever injustice you witness; and don’t give up.Now, late-capitalism has bloated itself to covering most areas of the earth, either by economic control (i.e. controlling dictatorships with our purse-strings) or out right absorption of every aspect of an individual culture, so I can understand how one may assume that Chomsky aligns himself with an “other.” If you read his stuff, and listen to him talk his only alliance (that with humanity) becomes self evident. Find out for yourself.

⭐I thought I should mention that about 66% of the material in this book is also contained in the smaller volumes SECRETS, LIES, AND DEMOCRACY and THE PROSPEROUS FEW AND THE RESTLESS MANY. I’m giving RABBLE here 4 stars since that’s what I would give the two micro-volumes.Chomsky has published an impressive quantity of political material, so if you have already read those two micro-books (which I think are easier to find), you might want to skip this one in favor of another.

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