Noam Chomsky, ILLUSIONI NECESSARIE, 2010

Chomsky has always wondered about the political role of intellectuals – the “new mandarins” – in western society. Here he analyzes in particular the function performed by the mass media (American but not only) in a system in which the population cannot be disciplined by force and must therefore be subjected to more subtle forms of ideological control. And it tears off the illusory and self-illusory mask that portrays the press as the champion of truth, as the embankment of public opinion towards power.

For Chomsky, the media, despite the progressive / conservative dialectic, are an instrument of power for the control of consensus and dissent.

Noam Chomsky (Philadelphia, 1928), the best known living linguist, has been engaged for decades in all the battles of the American libertarian left.