-Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it’s from Neptune.

-Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media.
-Noam Chomsky

The truth draws people in. They sense something is wrong, sense that somehow they need to wake up- cut through the thick fog of lies, disinformation, advertising, mindless entertainment and the calculated doctrine of empire. Why else would Noam Chomsky be so influential, so in demand? He is truthful and unafraid, and people sense this is a very rare thing.

I recently watched three different shows on youtube on which Chomsky appeared as a guest, one of Bill Maher, another an hour long conversation with Charlie Rose, and a third who’s name I forget. In each of them, the interviewer started out by saying the same thing: we are inundated with emails and requests to have you on. Charlie Rose spoke of this several times during the hour long interview.

This is a white man in his seventies. A linguistics professor, the son of Talmudic scholars who spent his life teaching at MIT, in addition to his activism. He has stated himself that if he knew how to be a dynamic speaker he wouldn’t do it. Does this sound like the kind of personality that draws attention in this culture, in the world we’re living in today? Yet, he is immensely popular and influential.

Chomsky’s tenets are uncomplicated. He notes, for example, that US atrocities appear to be wholly permissable, while their atrocities are a vile crime. He points out what an absurd and vicious doctrine this is. This seems to make mainstream media conglomerates, committed propagandists and many western intellectuals uncomfortable. Mainstream media almost completely shuts Chomsky out. Yet, the people who suffer for those policies are thrilled to hear someone say it.

I think truth, combined with the courage to speak it, draws people in. We have a thirst for it.

Tristan L. Sullivan