Propaganda and Control of the Public Mind by Noam Chomsky

Author:Noam Chomsky [Chomsky, Noam]
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

24. The Crisis Of Democracy

But yes, they do get together, and sometimes, when things get scary, they really do things. So, say, take the Trilateral Commission. There is one publication which really IS interesting and worth reading. This is the commission that was put together by David Rockefeller around 1973, and this is the one that people refer to when they talk about this secret nexus of the rulers and so on. In 1975 their first publication was very interesting, and I urge you to read it, if you haven't done it at school, "The Crisis of Democracy". It's very much in line with the stuff that I was talking about before. Remember, this is the first getting together after the 60s. All this fermenting went on in the 60s, when women and minorities and all kinds of people that were supposed to be kept in their place, were suddenly trying to get into the public arena to do something about their interests. That, again, drew people crazy, just as as did the working-class struggle in the 30s. So here you have a gathering of elites. "Trilateral" means United States, Europe and Japan. So these are elite elements, mostly liberal, on liberal side. If you look at the composition, its roughly speaking, something like the Carter Democrat. In fact the whole Carter demonstration, including Carter himself, was drawn from this group. That's roughly the complexion, in all three of these countries. And they were concerned about, what they called, the ''crisis of democracy''. It's interesting to read what they said, because at that point they were concerned. The ''crisis of democracy'' is the fact that normally passive and marginalized parts of the population, the overwhelming majority, are suddenly trying to get into the public arena to press their demands. Well, you know, if you believe the stuff they teach in the civics classes, that's supposed to be democracy. But if you're ''smart'' enough to make it to Harvard, you know that that's the crisis of democracy, and we're gotta stop it. And, in fact, the American reporteur, the guy who wrote the US part of it, is a professor at Harvard. Shortly after he got one of my favorite titles, he was called ''professor of the science of government'' – always liked that one. He's now a university professor or something. And he wrote the American side of this trilateral thing. But the others are more or less the same, I don’t mean to suggest he is different. I think he's the kind of like a 'New Deal' Democrat or something. He gave his ideal, described the 'good old days'. He said, in the 'good old days', before the crisis of democracy, he said that Truman, and this is almost quote, Truman ''had been able to run the country with the help of a few Wall Street lawyers and financiers". Now, that's that alleged conspiracy, of course its exaggerated, it wasn't just Truman and a bunch of the Wall Street lawyers and financiers.

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