One of the neighborhood guys

The United States is unusual among the industrial democracies in the rigidity of the system of ideological control - "indoctrination," we might say - exercised through the mass media.

I can't say I've seen him wandering the streets of Cambridge yet, but here's a selection of quotes from neighbor Noam Chomsky.

• Personally, I'm in favor of democracy, which means that the central institutions of society have to be under popular control. Now, under capitalism, we can't have democracy by definition. Capitalism is a system in which the central institutions of society are in principle under autocratic control. Thus, a corporation or an industry is, if we were to think of it in political terms, fascist; that is, it has tight control at the top and strict obedience has to be established at every level--there's little bargaining, a little give and take,but the line of authority is perfectly straightforward. Just as I'm opposed to political fascism, I'm opposed to economic fascism. I think that until the major institutions of society are under the popular control of participants and communities, it's pointless to talk about democracy.


• All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.


• If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion.


• If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.


• Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.


• Resistance is feasible even for those who are not heroes by nature, and it is an obligation, I believe, for those who fear the consequences and detest the reality of the attempt to impose American hegemony.


• The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people.