Why You Should Read “The Myth of American Idealism” by Noam Chomsky (www.currentaffairs.org)

submitted 2 days ago by return2ozma@lemmy.world to c/politics@lemmy.world

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[-] Keeponstalin@lemmy.world 10 points 2 days ago

I hope you read The Myth of American Idealism. It poses a powerful challenge to conventional wisdom. When I first read Chomsky in high school, it was an eye-opening experience. I knew at the time, for instance, that the Iraq war was wrong, and when George W. Bush came to town, I protested him. But Chomsky helped me understand why the war was happening, putting it in the context of a long series of U.S. attempts to assert dominance through force, which are often branded “well-intentioned mistakes” after they turn into catastrophes. Chomsky provided factual background that I had never been taught (such as the fact that the U.S. supported Saddam Hussein when he attacked Iran in 1980, after Iranians overthrew the brutal dictator we had installed to rule over them). He showed how propagandistic euphemisms were used to sanitize atrocities, and how crucial events (such as the bombing of Laos, or our repeated vetoing of a two-state settlement to the Israel-Palestine conflict, or our support for massacres in East Timor) were simply erased from standard U.S. history. Chomsky’s picture of U.S. conduct was dark and disturbing, but he encouraged readers like me to face the truth squarely and to accept that we have a responsibility as Americans to rein in our government.

Nice article, I'd also recommend Manufacturing Consent and Consequences of Capitalism as incredibly informative works by Chomsky

this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2024

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