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

The Challenge Ahead
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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who would be regarded as mainstream moderates in European industrial
democracies) out of a total number of 600,000 professors. To combat
this threat, they propose to monitor these dangerous creatures, using
student spies, the aim being “to promote greater balance,” according to
director Laslo Csorba. 20 The idea that an advantage of 60 to 1 does not
suffice for “balance” captures well the totalitarian mentality of these
elements, as does the very idea, which would be abhorrent to people
who had even the most remote conception of the notion of a free
society.
One might observe, however, that the paranoid vision of Marxistcontrolled
universities, which barely merits the term “comical,” is not
limited to the totalitarian right. One can read in the New York Times
Book Review that Marxism “has come close to being the dominant
ideology in the academic world”; this, from a respected liberal
intellectual historian who has surely set foot in American universities
more than once. 21 The concept is so remote from reality as to defy
rational discussion. It can only be understood as a reflection of the fear
that if heresy is granted even a tiny opening, then all is lost.
Such groups as AIM and its offshoots, however ludicrous their antics,
have an effect. Consider the question of critique of the media, a crucial
activity in a free society. There are, in fact, two forms of such critical
analysis. One is lacking in factual substance, ridiculous in its parody of
argument, and extremely significant: the “conservative” critique, of
which the activities of AIM provide an instructive example. The other is
based on extensive factual analysis, carefully argued, often devastating,
and wholly without influence: for example, Edward Herman’s study of
Times coverage of the Central American elections (chapter 3, section
6.4). There are thousands of pages of similar material. The
“conservative” critique is “on the agenda”; the “left-wing” critique is not.
Thus, when Public Television produced a series on the Vietnam war, it