The system doesn't just manufacture consent. It also manufactures dissent and decides which dissidents you're allowed to hear.
Michael Parenti published "Inventing Reality" in 1986. Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent" came out in 1988.
Chomsky cited Parenti exactly once, for an article, not the book that preceded his own on the same subject.
Same thesis: media serves power. But the books are not the same.
On "conspiracy": Chomsky dismisses structural analysis that names actors as "conspiracy theorism." Parenti: "The alternative to a conspiracy theory is an innocence theory... the CIA is by definition a conspiracy."
Chomsky wanted you to protest... abstractly. Never name the names.
Right-wing anticommunism is obvious. But they needed someone to attack socialism from the left, to gut-punch communism from inside the tent. Enter Chomsky.
Chomsky equates Stalin with Goebbels, called Leninism "counterrevolution."
Parenti documented the real gains: full employment, free healthcare, free education, free housing.
He wrote about how the existence of the USSR forced concessions in the capitalist countries: social programs, worker rights, formal decolonization.
Capital had to compete with an alternative Chomsky made sure you wouldn't defend.
On empire: Chomsky framed US foreign policy as blunders and mistakes. Parenti said "the Iraq war has not been a mistake", it succeeded for the class it serves. Your taxes, your children's lives. Their profits, their reconstruction contracts. Externalized costs, privatized gains.
On intervention: Chomsky supported the NATO no-fly zone over Libya. Parenti opposed it, listed what Libyans would never see again after "liberation."
On elections: Chomsky did the "lesser evil" dance every four years, vote Democrat in swing states. Parenti broke with Bernie Sanders over the bombing of Yugoslavia.
Chomsky got MIT, The Guardian, documentaries, Jacobin. Parenti barely got lecture halls and public access TV.
Parenti was the one they didn't want you listening to, so they put Chomsky in front of you.
