Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> But you can't exactly
> say Chomsky is ignored. As Zizek said in my interview with him, it's
> not that people don't "know" things - ideology is a harder nut to
> crack than that.
>
"Ideology" is used in so many different senses (legitimately so -- I don't argue over word usage) that in any given context its sense needs to be specified. This sentence seems true to me using "Ideology" in the sense I give it -- roughly, common sense generalization from unexamined experience. Chomsky has since he began to write on Vietnam consistently identified one fundamental feature of ideology in the U.S.: The United States _never_ intends evil, and that arguments that suggest as much are simply not legitimate arguments. Note: _No_ one is apt to admit to believing that if faced with it directly, but I think it is only by (a) extended experience in anti-intervention or anti-war activity and (b) consciously willed rejection of the premise that its effects can be overcome. (This is analogous to the fact that no white person in the United States can throw off racism except through consistent conscious awareness that his/her initial reactions are almost always racist.)
This is roughly my basis for claiming for many years that persuasion only works on those who have already (on some random basis) become engaged in activity that presupposes agreement with the position one wants to convey to them. One can't even _listen_ to descriptions of u.s. imperialism until one has already in one way or another become involved in activity that is objectively anti-imperialist. (And there is _no_ general formula for becoming involved in such activity: it is contingent and, for all practical purposes, random for each individual who gets involved in such activity.)
I'm back to what has been more or less central to everything I've written on maillists for five years. Arguments have to be directed at those who already accept them but don't know they do. Put otherwise, the first task of agitation or organizing is not in forming a persuasive message; it is in creating an action which involves people before they know why they are involved.
Chomsky, as Yoshie has already pointed out, is an invaluable resource for those who are engaged in generating the kind of activity which in turn will generate a wider audience for Chomsky and/or his populizers.
Carrol