In early summer 1992 I caught the documentary film Manufacturing Consent when it opened in San Francisco’s Castro Theater. That film changed my life. It showcased Noam Chomsky, an accomplished linguistics professor, and his analysis of corporate media propaganda. Manufacturing Consent convinced me that the American academy could tolerate, and indeed celebrate, serious social criticism.... Read More

Watch on Rumble Watch on Bitchute Read my email correspondence with Chomsky This talk was delivered at the Left Forum in New York City on May 21, 2016. It accumulated thousands of views before YouTube nuked the Truth Jihad Radio channel last year. This talk led to my being banned from the Left Forum the... Read More

While the so-called liberal and conservative corporate mainstream media – all stenographers for the intelligence agencies – pour forth the most blatant propaganda about Russia and Ukraine that is so conspicuous that it is comedic if it weren’t so dangerous, the self-depicted cognoscenti also ingest subtler messages, often from the alternative media. A woman I... Read More

How things have changed since Donald Trump came and went as US president. Until then, I was able to identify myself as firmly on the progressive left. Now – with the Covid pandemic only reinforcing the post-Trump trauma – I find myself in some weird no-man’s land, trapped and squeezed between two ballooning ideological tribes... Read More

Noam Chomsky is, as this documentary notes, “widely regarded as the most influential intellectual of his time.” Given that Chomsky is on the left, it might seem that he has little to offer. But in many respects, his comments here reinforce many of the ideas linked to the populist right, although, as with the influence... Read More

I can think of only one thing which unites Adolf Hitler and Noam Chomsky: a shared contempt for and critique of capitalist mass-media democracy. Concerning Hitler’s speeches, we usually think of rapturous exhortations to his party-comrades. However, the Führer could sometimes strike a more pedagogical note. Such was the case in a December 1940 speech... Read More

I am often asked why I have this “thing” about Israel, with friends suggesting that I would be much more respected as a pundit if I were to instead concentrate on national security and political corruption. The problem with that formulation is that the so-called “special relationship” with Israel is itself the result of terrible... Read More

After Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines issued their poll last month of the top intellectuals in the world I broached to Noam Chomsky the notion that CounterPunch might compile an alternative list. The plan was to dismiss FP/Prospect readers' pick of mostly lumpen non-thinkers in favor of real intellectuals like Levi-Strauss, or Baudrillard, or Laura... Read More