Siddiq Khan's Reviews > Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies

Chomsky is the greatest living heir of George Orwell in his exposure of the methods of mind control through which the ruling classes brainwash the masses. He is more relevant, and more radical than Orwell in emphasizing how these methods are applied not merely in totalitarian and blatantly authoritarian regimes, but precisely in those capitalist democracies that so advertise themselves as bastions of free speech, open debate, critical inquiry, and independent thinking. On the contrary, the necessity of the ruling classes to manipulate the masses using non-violent means results in a machinery of propaganda far more sophisticated, far more insidious, far more effective, and far more totalitarian in its complete elimination of even the possibility to make public dissenting alternative perspectives, than anything yet invented by explicit dictatorships.

An excellent complement to the series of Massey lectures on the forms of conditioning to which we are subject starting with Paul Goodman and continuing with R.D. Laing and Dorris Lessing.