This is how the American liberal used to think before its authoritarian wing that supports censorship, Big Tech control of political discourse, and the US security state and its various narratives about Russia became dominant.
Chomsky has never wavered an inch in his unyielding defense of free speech and contempt for censorship. That value was once central to liberals.
I'm pretty sure I still get RT, bro, unless it has been all of a sudden censored recently. I'm not down on Russia like many. We love us some Pute, as my wife calls him. It's kinda tongue in cheek but still, suffice to say, we're not the most down on Russia household. With that said, to call our country more authoritarian than Russia is comical.
Headline:
RT America, the Russian state-funded cable news network in the US, was shut down on Thursday and all 120 of its employees were laid off.
Quote about his quote:
I don't think people who have not traveled outside of the United States will understand just exactly what Chomsky is talking about here
In Pakistan, you get news networks including BBC, BBC world, CNN (USA), CNN international, Fox News, Bloomberg, Sky News UK, RT, Al Jazeera, and other Saudi, Chinese, and European networks that play, and that's all on regular cable and not including the multiple Pakistani networks. And this is true in Europe as well. You get news from multiple countries.
In America? It's literally JUST US networks on cable, and unless you get satellite television, the choices are limited to whatever outlet you're aware of.
And if you've learned anything from Chomsky, reading ALL news outlets is best practice. That includes Der Spiegel, Al Jazeera, and all the US news outlets. And it's not like Chomsky hasn't remarked on how journalism is practiced outside of the US (He's explicitly stated that the US has the best, flaws notwithstanding).
For example, paypal has also been freezing accounts of alternative press like mintpress news; fakebook has also banned their page. RT america has been forced to close down all its operations and fire all its employees. Youtube has blocked all Russian news outlets.
It's a co-ordinated attack by the corporate states of America on any dissenting voices, not just Russian media outlets.
This should be extremely troubling to any honest Americans who care about their freedoms.
It's because the US tends to only focus on what we would describe as the Fox News level of nationalism in Russian media. I hate just reading the quote in the title, because Chomsky usually provides more context with what he's talking about. Imagine if all you ever heard from US media was the bullshit that Tucker Carlson said. How skewed of an opinion is that?
They'll just say he's spouting Russian propaganda, you can't win, at the heart of this is the conspiracy theory of Russiagate, which was basically invented to cover up the underhanded practices of the Democrat party in dealing with Bernie Sanders leadership campaign, but it took on wings and became a kind of second McCarthyist event, Julian Assange became a Russian spy for revealing it, and can now rot for eternity, and so can anyone else who helped Orange Hitler into power, when the most obvious lesson was to respect democracy and allow Democrat voters to make their own choice, then your enemies won't have anything to work with, not that this was even remotely why the dull Hilary Clinton failed anyway.
And on the back of this, American liberals are allowing 600 Ukrainians to be butchered every day because they have been coaxed into hating Putin more than they love humanity. Sorry but if you don't accept every single bad thing said about Putin like it was written by God and censorship and all the rest, you won't be taken seriously by this mass Jim Jones style cult
The above were quotes from another forum about what he was talking about. Basically 1970s-ish SU.
The guy is somewhat of a nut and I don’t agree with most of his political views. But is an extremely sharp guy and has done good work in various fields, including philosophy. A lot of his writings are not for everyone and certainly have to be parsed. But he is very sharp.
So, he certainly has a point.
For sure, some folks see a lot more censorship with the US media lately.
You can look at Ukraine, Wuhan Flu, Global Warming, and various other Leftist political ideas as examples.
On March 1, in an act of anti-Russian hysteria, the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences suspended the general membership of T&R Productions manager Solodovnikov and removed him from its board of directors. A representative of the organization told Deadline, “Due to the ongoing invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the International Academy is suspending Mikhail Solodovnikov’s membership and board position, as well as the membership of Elizaveta Brodskaya.”
You see a lot of this with sports as well. There was a big push to ban Russian athletes and chess players from events. Take the rich Russian’s possessions, whether they had anything to do with Putin or not did not matter. What was the reasoning behind punishing folks that have to go back to their home country? Why make them denounce Putin? What does that accomplish? It was never going to change Putin’s mind.
The US media by-and-large has gotten to the point now that they push a certain political view and will absolutely ban or shutdown anyone that dares disagree. So, of course, Chomsky has a legitimate point. He may be wrong and maybe he could have worded it differently — but still he is somewhat correct in his assessment.
In wikipedia lists of censorship by country, Russia is worser than the US. Freedom house rates US 18 and Russia 80. Reporters without border freedom index rates US 18+ and Russia 43.
Rand research calls Russian propaganda "a firehose of falsehood." Russia has a long history of disinformation warfare. Many people are often poor judges in discriminating between truths and lies from. Now countries must fight back. European union has banned Russia's disinformation outlets RT and Sputnik. Media freedom coalition of 50+ countries condemn Putin's invasion of Ukraine and assault on media freedom.
Yes. Instead of summarizing the guy's quotes, since it is so nuanced, it was easier just to quote the whole thing.
Since, there were so many points, my portion simply tried to touch enough on all of them. This is not a one-point issue.
For sure is wordy and most folks attention span is not very long. 
Reporters Without Borders called for immediate pardons of Assange and Snowden.
Hillary Clinton said that Assange needs to “answer for what he has done”. Charles Schumer said he hoped Assange “will soon be held to account for his meddling in our elections on behalf of Putin and the Russian government”. Dianne Feinstein has been calling for Assange to be brought here and prosecuted since 2010. Joe Biden’s administration stated that it intended to continue efforts to extradite Assange from Britain and compel him to stand trial in the United States for espionage.
We know. We saw the way you were tricked with the lab leak theory, Rittenhouse, and the Hunter Biden laptop.
I don’t think outlets like MSNBC and CNN should be censored even though they have people like Brennan and Clapper working for them.
You could have added "bounties on Afghan troops", Russian Collusion, and the non-visit to Normandy graves in 2018. Am sure the list goes on and on.
Ukraine has a large Russian speaking population (1/3). Day after talking to President Biden in Feb. 2021, and with his approval rating dropping to 40% Zelensky bans Russian TV.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/2/5/ukraines-president-bans-pro-russian-networks-risking-support
And you wonder why Putin invaded.
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