Chomsky: Oracle of the State

First of all, we get it, Chomsky has been important. He might have been your gateway drug to radicalism. He has written vast amounts about the terrifying realities of U.S. imperialism, the Israeli occupation of Palestine, the threat of nuclear war, or the surveillance state, there are many useful books published with Chomsky’s name on them. His small publication “9/11,” published in 2001, in which he calls the United States “a leading terrorist state” sold hundreds of thousands of copies and damns the militant response to 9/11 by the U.S. That booklet played a major role in shaping people’s perspectives on the world-shifting emergencies of that decade. Of course, there is also “Manufacturing Consent,” co-authored with Edward Herman, a book that remains almost biblical as a resource for understanding media as a means for selling wars of empire. So what could be the problem?