Read time: 3 mins
At a time where politics is polarised and distrust is at an all time high, it’s good to look back and understand some of the events that have fertilized the chaotic and bewildering landscape we find ourselves in today.
The following is a story told by Noam Chomsky about his experiences trying to publish a book in 1973. It is a troubling exposé of the power of large corporations when it comes to censorship.
At the time, companies such as Amazon, Apple, Samsung and Google were barely even getting started. Censorship had to be done the old fashioned way, i.e. book burning or pulping. The story is still poignant now, with big tech corporations able to censor and silence in new and more comprehensive ways. Chomsky’s story was a forewarning and a stark look at how absolute power can corrupt absolutely.
pulp (noun)
A soft moist shapeless mass of matter.
On the 14th February 1989, the Supreme Leader of Iran Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against Salman Rushdie, author of the novel The Satanic Verses. The death threats and demands for book burnings were decried internationally as an example of the worst kind of attack on freedom of speech.
Around the same time, something else happened. Two of the world’s largest media corporations, Time Inc. and Warner Communications, merged. Together they formed a monolith of media influence, which was lightly criticised by the public for its potential influence on freedom of expression.
To highlight why this was so important, Noam Chomsky delivered a speech at the University of Wisconsin in 1989. The speech contained troubling details about his experience with Warner Communications nearly a decade earlier in 1973. Chomsky – a professor, author, liberal and intellectual, had published his first book with co-author Edward Herman, with whom he later published his famous book, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media.
The book in question was a detailed and brutal analysis about American foreign policy called Counter-Revolutionary Violence: Bloodbaths in Fact & Propaganda (1973). It’s relatively unknown and Chomsky’s speech gave compelling reasons as to why.
The publisher for Chomsky’s book at the time happened to be a subsidiary of Warner Communications. On seeing the advertising for the book for the first time, one of the executives didn’t much like what he saw.
The executive ordered a copy of the book to be sent to his New York office. When he read it, he liked it even less. So, in the spirit of free speech, the executive took the executive decision to immediately shut down the publisher. The 20,000 copies of Chomsky & Herman’s book which had been printed were pulped. Not only that, the executive also pulped every other book the publisher had released.
There are three things that make this story remarkable. The main difference between the mass pulping of these books and the propaganda threats made by the Ayatollah against Rushdie is that this actually happened. The books were actually pulped and the publisher shut down indefinitely. Rushdie remains un-fatwa’d.
Secondly, the pulping was not limited to a single book. Every single publication which had been contaminated by Chomsky’s book; contaminated by virtue of simply being held in the same stock room, was pulped as well.
Finally, the Satanic Verses scandal received huge publicity. The UK broke diplomatic relations with Iran and the mass media decried the affair as a savage attack on freedom of speech, something deemed as sacrosanct at the time. In contrast, the pulping and dissolution of an entire publishers was barely covered in the media.
Fast forward to now. We live in a time where there are incredible levels of distrust in the mainstream media, corporations, communities and even in other individuals. It’s important to pay attention to stories like Chomsky’s because they help make sense of the recent surge in conspiracy theories and anti-establishment movements. These have not come from a vacuum. Rather they are the result of endemic distrust in governments and corporations, fuelled by decades of scandal and misinformation.
When you read stories like this, its hard to avoid compassion with those people who have abandoned all hope and seek comfort in conspiracies. Compassion, kindness and tolerance will be the key to trying to undo the damage of decades of mass deceit and manipulation.
So, next time that you speak to someone who doesn’t believe in vaccines or thinks the pope eats babies, just consider that their distrust is deep rooted and that their cynicism may come from the same place as yours – just pointed in a different direction.
There is a recording and transcript of Chomsky’s 1989 speech that can be read in full below: https://chomsky.info/19890315/
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