vxnxnt rated The Art of War: 4 stars

The Art of War by Sun Tzu
Written in the 6th century BC, Sun Tzu's The Art of War is a Chinese military treatise that is still …
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33% complete! vxnxnt has read 2 of 6 books.
Written in the 6th century BC, Sun Tzu's The Art of War is a Chinese military treatise that is still …
I found this to be quite an interesting read which, although published in 1988, is still fairly relevant and now has helped me gain a new perspective on the inner workings of the mass media and the political economy encompassing it.
In the first chapter, Herman and Chomsky describe the political economy and derive their "propaganda model" from it. This propaganda model has "five filters" as follows: 1. Size, ownership, and profit orientation; 2. The advertising license to do business; 3. Sourcing mass media news; 4. Flak and the enforcers; 5. Anti-communism as a control mechanism. All of these aspects come together as filters for a system of self-censorship and deceit, whether conscious or unconsciously, directed towards the population to sustain the prevalent narrative of the U.S. government and the elite class.
The following six chapters are case studies in which the authors take a look at various topics, how …
I found this to be quite an interesting read which, although published in 1988, is still fairly relevant and now has helped me gain a new perspective on the inner workings of the mass media and the political economy encompassing it.
In the first chapter, Herman and Chomsky describe the political economy and derive their "propaganda model" from it. This propaganda model has "five filters" as follows: 1. Size, ownership, and profit orientation; 2. The advertising license to do business; 3. Sourcing mass media news; 4. Flak and the enforcers; 5. Anti-communism as a control mechanism. All of these aspects come together as filters for a system of self-censorship and deceit, whether conscious or unconsciously, directed towards the population to sustain the prevalent narrative of the U.S. government and the elite class.
The following six chapters are case studies in which the authors take a look at various topics, how they were reported by the mass media and what happened in reality. These studies includes comparisons between the regimes and elections in El salvador/Guatemala and Nicaragua, the supposed plot to kill the pope and the war in Vietnam.
In each of these examples it becomes clear that the mass media closely adheres to the government's narrative, elite consensus and the exclusion of dissident opinion. Additionally, a dichotomy reveals itself in which the media unneedingly villianizes the enemies of the state whilst blatantly defending repressive dictatorships backed by the U.S. . While Herman and Chomsky analyze various news articles and TV broadcasts covering the topics, they also dive into many extensive statistics, backing their thesis.
Moreover, the book is also quite the valuable repository of history. It covers the dictatorships and elections of El salvador and Guatemala and U.S. atrocities and war crimes committed in Indochina. Particularly, the invasion of Vietnam and the bombing of Laos and Cambodia, which I knew only very little about until now.
After reading Manufacturing Consent, I often came to notice fragments of this progaganda model myself. I can't help but think of the relevancy found in the media concerning the war in Ukraine. When a missle first landed in Poland, the media was quick on their feet to report that it was a russian attack, according to "government officials". A few days later it was quickly established that it was most likely a Ukrainian missle that had malfunctioned, however. Furthermore, when Russia first invaded and it was extensively reported on, many people were quick to call it systematic racism. This was because other wars and tragedies from the global south were not being reported on. Instead I now believe that Herman's and Chomsky's propaganda model provides a much better answer as to why these tragedies aren't being reported on. Part of it is the difference between "worthy" and "unworthy" victims. That is, the mass media claims the victims of the global north as worthy since they fit best into the picture of the government's foreign policy and serve elite interest. All the while, the victims of the global south are deemed unworthy since they are either harmful to the manufacturing of consent to be governed or they outright have no use in the business model of the media.
Even so, although the given case studies and examples were necessary to convince the reader and to back their thesis, they were quite detailed and extensive. Of course details and vast amounts of information are important to make their case and to have the reader get a proper picture of the individial topics, however it also led to the problem of having the book become a bit boring after a while. Aside from that, the language used was also a bit difficult at times with some complex sentence structures and unique choice of words.
Finally, I very highly recommend this book to anyone as it brings forth an immensely important topic of how our beloved "free" and "independent" media is anything but that. Manufacturing Consent will have you thinking critically when looking at any sort of media by the end of it.
The organization and self-education of groups in the community and workplace, and their networking and activism, continue to be the fundamental elements in steps toward the democratization of our social life and any meaningful social change. Only to the extent that such developments succeed can we hope to see media that are free and independent.
— Manufacturing consent by Noam Chomsky, Edward S. Herman (Page 307)
Imperialism is the epoch of finance capital and of monopolies, which introduce everywhere the striving for domination, not for freedom. Whatever the political system, the result of these tendencies is everywhere reaction and an extreme intensification of antagonisms in this field. Particularly intensified become the yoke of national oppression and the striving for annexations, i.e., the violation of national independence.
— Imperialism by Vladimir Ilich Lenin (Page 139)
An Unabridged Edition with all charts, tables, and original footnotes, to include: Preface – Preface to the French and German …
The book has a large variety of topics concerning the Consequences Of Capitalism. This includes hegemonic common sense, militarism, the environment, neoliberalism (& globalization, financialization) and possible social change. All of which is given with relevant historical evidence, examples and context. The book also takes multiple ideas and concepts from other authors and implements them pretty well. This would include Karl Marx, Shoshana Zuboff and Mark Fisher (just to name a few). Aside from reading how much Capitalism effects our lives and in what way, I'm absolutely blown away by how much history this book has taught me and the amount of detail it went into!
So, if you're interested in learning the Consequences of Capitalism and a ton of history, then I would highly recommend it.
Belief that struggle is futile and that change is impossible is itself paralyzing and debilitating. This is one of the most potent elements in the naturalized common sense. That is, it rules everything in opposition to it as nonsense, quite literally. Demonstrating the fragility of this claim is the first step to change, I would say.
— Consequences of Capitalism by Noam Chomsky, Marv Waterstone (Page 314)
Available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License: www.marxists.org/deutsch/archiv/marx-engels/1848/manifest
Das Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei wurde von …
The manifesto is mostly just interesting as a historical piece for me, especially in terms of leftist history. Ideologically it's still pretty interesting to read, however some parts of it have naturally become a bit outdated which has even been acknowledged by Marx and Engels some 25 years later.
The edition of the manifesto I read even includes multiple prefaces by Engels throughout the years which further gave an amazing insight into history and what they felt and thought at the time. Additionally the book also included Engel's The Principles of Communism which practically functioned as an FAQ to fully illustrate what exactly Communism is and it stands for.
Available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License: www.marxists.org/deutsch/archiv/marx-engels/1848/manifest
Das Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei wurde von Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels …
Jason Hickel rechnet mit dem Kapitalismus ab: Statt alle Menschen aus den Fängen der Armut zu befreien, hat unsere Art …
Available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License: www.marxists.org/deutsch/archiv/marx-engels/1848/manifest
Das Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei wurde von Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels …
Which One Will YOU Be IN the Year 1984?
There won't be much choice, of course, if this book's predictions …
Really readable introduction to degrowth. Covers the current state of climate change (which is, inevitably, pretty grim, but nowhere near Wallace-Wells), mentions the Anthropocene but then makes it clear that the term is misleading as it suggests we're all equally to blame. This segues into a history of capitalism through enclosure and colonialism which I found much more understandable than my previous attempts to read up on this. There's so much great stuff in here -- not necessarily new, but just well written -- about artificial scarcity and the growth imperative and the failings of GDP and so on. Also a nice discussion of ontology and the shift from animism to dualism, and how that makes exploiting the natural world seem, well, natural. The chapter on technology includes a disquieting explanation of BECCS and how that's the basis for so many mitigation plans, and also covers the problems of just …
Really readable introduction to degrowth. Covers the current state of climate change (which is, inevitably, pretty grim, but nowhere near Wallace-Wells), mentions the Anthropocene but then makes it clear that the term is misleading as it suggests we're all equally to blame. This segues into a history of capitalism through enclosure and colonialism which I found much more understandable than my previous attempts to read up on this. There's so much great stuff in here -- not necessarily new, but just well written -- about artificial scarcity and the growth imperative and the failings of GDP and so on. Also a nice discussion of ontology and the shift from animism to dualism, and how that makes exploiting the natural world seem, well, natural. The chapter on technology includes a disquieting explanation of BECCS and how that's the basis for so many mitigation plans, and also covers the problems of just greening growth by, say, extracting huge amounts of lithium for all the batteries we'd need.
The book turns much more positive/hopeful towards the end, as it points out how little value growth, past a certain point, provides for well-being. Really, it all becomes a matter of distribution and public services at that point, and that's what's missing under neoliberalism.
It's perhaps indicative of my experience of reading this book that I borrowed the ebook from the library and then realised that I'd highlighted about half the text! That might just be a failing in my highlighting technique, but I prefer to think that it's because I kept reading paragraphs and thinking "yes! that's it!".
Anyway, highly, highly recommended.