Propaganda and control of the public mind [cd-audio] / Noam Chomsky ; an AK Press Audio release ; produced by David Barsamian of Alternative Radio.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Since the first stirrings of America's constitutional system, the framers wished to assure that the rights of private property prevailed. "The primary responsibility of government is to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority," said James Madison, and he warned that the government might not always be able to control the public with force. Political critic Noam Chomsky takes the listener through a loose history of American propaganda on this two-CD set from the wealthy landowners worried about agrarian reform who designed the U.S. government to the creation of the public relations industry in the '20s. Unsettling to listen to, Chomsky's research shows a very undemocratic country doing everything it can to keep workers from organizing, including beating them to a pulp and jailing them during the '20s, and more recently using propaganda to mobilize the community against them. He talks about how after World War II many Americans had basic social democratic ideas and there was enormous support for social programs, so the public-relations industry realized it had to "indoctrinate people with the capitalist story," and by the '50s a third of the material in America's schools was coming straight out of corporate propaganda offices. In one of Chomsky's more interesting tangents, he talks about how the CIA from its inception was trying to upset Italy's popular labor movement after World War II. Since Chomsky's main subject is often wrongs the U.S. has committed abroad and at home, he sometimes stretches his arguments and makes questionable statements like, "The U.S. is probably more fundamentalist than Iran." But generally he backs up his opinions with facts and his thesis is one that needs to be heard. His arguments are in fact so well put, contrary to mainstream media blabbing, and slightly dangerous that listeners shouldn't expect to see him on TV talk shows any time soon. ~ Adam Bregman