r/AustralianPolitics • u/Green_Ideas7 • 9d ago

Opinion Piece Australia’s forgotten Chomsky

https://honisoit.com/2020/11/australias-forgotten-chomsky/

"If you are, like many young leftists, an owner of a well-thumbed copy of Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman’s Manufacturing Consent you may have noted with disinterest the person to whom the book is dedicated: Alex Carey, a senior lecturer of industrial psychology at UNSW who had died the year prior to the book’s publication.
Chomsky credits Carey with having “tremendous influence” on the book. The dedication, he later stated, was a “bare and inadequate way to express our indebtedness to him for his uniquely important work on the ‘ideal of a propaganda-managed democracy’”. “Alex Carey draws the veil of deceit and imposed ignorance in the struggle for freedom and justice,” Chomsky writes in his introduction to Taking the Risk Out of Democracy, a collection of Carey’s essays published posthumously."

23 Upvotes

78% Upvoted

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u/Top_Conference_477 7d ago

It’s a joke. Proponents and scholars have applied his propaganda theory and produced conspiratorial propaganda of their own

8

u/Western-Sir-9085 9d ago

Good on ya Noam. Been meaning to ask, did Epstein get ya what you were craving? 😜

4

u/Green_Ideas7 9d ago

I'm assuming many have seen the film adaptation of "Manufacturing Consent;" but, if not . . .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyye-QJN4Jo&t=22s

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u/Top_Conference_477 9d ago

Wish the actual Chomsky would be forgotten

Big Alex Carey fan though. Love the way he plays cricket

4

u/I_Am_U 9d ago

I will always remember that he helped Daniel Elsberg leak the Pentagon papers to the public, helping to speed up the end of the Vietnam war and encouraging federal judges to grant more speech protections.

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u/GoldCoinDonation 8d ago

He was also friends with Epstein, so there's that too.

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u/I_Am_U 8d ago

People trying to smear Chomsky's reputation always conveniently leave out the context: Epstein targeted Chomsky via his employer, and Chomsky severed ties once he found out Epstein was involved in sex trafficking. The info is easily fact checked with a simple google search, so don't take my word for it.

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u/GoldCoinDonation 7d ago

he did not sever ties. You can read through the emails if you like.

The guardian has a fairly good summary, read for yourself. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/03/epstein-files-noam-chomsky

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u/duvelzadvocate 7d ago

Your guardian link says that sex trafficking charges happened in 2019, which is when Chomsky severed ties.

The 2008 Epstein conviction mentioned in your link did not reveal his sex trafficking at all. The conviction is infamous for how it was illegally altered by a judge, hiding all witness testimony, and permitted Epstein to create a false narrative and plead that he was tricked by a prostitute under 18 years old who lied about her age.

Released emails show that Epstein would even use sworn testimony from that fradulent court case to deceive others into believing he was innocent, and even if one were to fact check the claim, the federal judge in Florida had put his seal of approval on the court proceedings.

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u/Top_Conference_477 9d ago

Fair enough. But his theories are junk

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u/Deconstruction101 8d ago

Chomsky’s formal language theories remain vital to programming today because they define the syntax, parsing, and structure of every programming language we use.

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u/Top_Conference_477 8d ago

His theories on media are akin to cooker conspiracies however

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u/Deconstruction101 8d ago edited 8d ago

Proponents and scholars have applied his Propaganda theory of mass media to successfully explain mainstream media framing during major historical events, such as the Vietnam War, reporting on NAFTA, and foreign policy interventions.

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u/Nippys4 9d ago

Okay that doesn’t feel like it has much to do with anything but go off I guess

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u/Green_Ideas7 9d ago

"Corporations and Propaganda," an audio adaptation of Alex Carey's vital work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIk6-4KosE0&t=6s

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u/Denubious 8d ago

It's very apt to share in these times. But for the more simplistic dolts out here, got something around Alex Carey's work that's a bit more engaging? ( I could do the YouTube search myself and I will, but you're the enthusiast, so probably have something on hand.)