βYouβve said, βYou can lie or distort the story of the French Revolution as long as you like and nothing will happen. Propose a false theory in chemistry and it will be refuted tomorrow.β How does your approach to the world as a scientist affect and influence the way you approach politics? Nature is tough. You canβt fiddle with Mother Nature, sheβs a hard taskmistress. So youβre forced to be honest in the natural sciences. In the soft fields, youβre not forced to be honest. There are standards, of course; on the other hand, theyβre very weak. If what you propose is ideologically acceptable, that is, supportive of power systems, you can get away with a huge amount. In fact, the difference between the conditions that are imposed on dissident opinion and on mainstream opinion is radically different. For example, Iβve written about terrorism, and I think you can show without much difficulty that terrorism pretty much corresponds to power. I donβt think thatβs very surprising. The more powerful states are involved in more terrorism, by and large. The United States is the most powerful, so itβs involved in massive terrorism, by its own definition of terrorism. Well, if I want to establish that, Iβm required to give a huge amount of evidence. I think thatβs a good thing. I donβt object to that. I think anyone who makes that claim should be held to very high standards. So, I do extensive documentation, from the internal secret records and historical record and so on. And if you ever find a comma misplaced, somebody ought to criticize you for it. So I think those standards are fine. All right, now, letβs suppose that you play the mainstream game. You can say anything you want because you support power, and nobody expects you to justify anything. For example, in the unimaginable circumstance that I was on, say, Nightline, and I was asked, βDo you think Kadhafi is a terrorist?β I could say, βYeah, Kadhafi is a terrorist.β I donβt need any evidence. Suppose I said, βGeorge Bush is a terrorist.β Well, then I would be expected to provide evidenceββWhy would you say that?β In fact, the structure of the news production system is, you canβt produce evidence. Thereβs even a name for itβI learned it from the producer of Nightline, Jeff Greenfield. Itβs called βconcision.β He was asked in an interview somewhere why they didnβt have me on Nightline. First of all, he says, βWell, he talks Turkish, and nobody understands it.β But the other answer was, βHe lacks concision.β Which is correct, I agree with him. The kinds of things that I would say on Nightline, you canβt say in one sentence because they depart from standard religion. If you want to repeat the religion, you can get away with it between two commercials. If you want to say something that questions the religion, youβre expected to give evidence, and that you canβt do between two commercials. So therefore you lack concision, so therefore you canβt talk. I think thatβs a terrific technique of propaganda. To impose concision is a way of virtually guaranteeing that the party line gets repeated over and over again, and that nothing else is heard.β βΒ Noam Chomsky,Β On Anarchism
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