Noam Chomsky - Turning the Tide U.S. intervention in

The Challenge Ahead
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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commitment. In fact, the Democrats are only marginally more responsive
to such “special interests” than the Republicans; rather, the party is
dominated by other sectors of the business and financial communities.
But their slightly greater responsiveness to the population at large makes
them the party of the “special interests.”
Notice that the terminology makes a good deal of sense in a capitalist
democracy, where the interests of owners and managers are indeed
“general interests” that must be satisfied or the society will grind to a
halt. The general population, however, is irrelevant except insofar as it
serves the needs of private power, and therefore constitutes “special
interests.” 18
1.4 The Attack against Independent Thought
The business classes also moved effectively to extend their already
massive dominance over universities and the media—always deemed
inadequate, as business constantly complains. This phase of the
campaign included publications for the general public and in
universities, where well-funded reactionary jingoist (“conservative”)
journals are now widespread in an effort to counter threats of intellectual
independence at the source. The general idea was succinctly expressed
by Walter Wriston, chairman of Citicorp and a fund-raiser for the
American Enterprise Institute: “I write the songs the world sings.” 19 No
other melodies are to be heard.
At the lunatic fringe we have such organizations as Accuracy in
Academia, a spinoff of the reactionary thought-control organization
Accuracy in Media (AIM), which monitors the media for deviations from
the Party Line. The new offshoot alleges that there are 10,000 Marxist
professors on campus (where “Marxist,” in their terms, includes people