Great Counterpunch Interview with Ed Herman of Manufacturing_Consent

cryofan

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Sat Dec-13-03 05:16 PM
Original message

Great Counterpunch Interview with Ed Herman of Manufacturing_Consent

Excellent new interview on CounterPunch with Edward Herman, who co-authored with Chomsky the revolutionary book _Manufacturing_Consent. He is a leading icon of the Progressive Left.

Some excerpts:

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

HERMAN: You are overlooking the fact that the electoral system now in place in this country is so plutocratic, so skewed, so anti-populist that even a populist Democrat like Kucinich doesn't have a chance to win a nomination let alone a final electoral triumph. The left is essentially outside the system, small, fragmented and even beyond marginalization. So if leftists want to participate in the election at all they can run (or support) a populist candidate who will be competing with the two major parties, and get smashed, or they can try to throw their puny weight toward getting a lesser evil Democrat nominated and a lesser evil Democrat elected to national office. They have a third option-steering entirely clear of the elections and going about other business like grass roots organization, trying to build alternative media and other projects focused on long-term objectives. The Nader campaign and crushing defeat was an important testimonial to the contemporary hopelessness of running an alternative candidate. Given his limited exposure to the population I don't think his campaign's educational value was very great, and the outcome was a moral defeat for those hopeful of alternative candidacies.

....

HERMAN: The system can't be counted on to return to normal if we were to let the Bush "virus" play itself out. The analogy is not a good one, as the Bush phenomenon is rooted in structural facts whose strength is likely to be reinforced by Bush policies. For example, the further concentration of the media will serve rightwing interests in the future, just as the further growth of the military establishment and police, and further Bush appointments to the courts, will do the same.

....

HERMAN: Recent developments suggest that the DNC is very unhappy about Dean, and Gore's endorsement has put them in a rage over the betrayal of a true DNC man, Lieberman. The New York Times has been equally enraged, after their front page accolade to that "centrist" Lieberman, and this regrettable shift to "the left"! These creeps can't stand the slightest trace of populism or any lightening up of the imperial thrust. They pretend that the people want a centrist, which Lieberman is not, and that such a move to the left will be fatal electorally. The DNC crowd and mainstream media have been playing this game for years, even as their preferred centrist and center-right candidates get eviscerated (Clinton excepted, though his terms coincided with crushing losses for Democrats in the states and federal legislatures). I believe the DNCers prefer a Republican to even a mildly liberal and centrist Democrat like Dean, and they might sell him out as they did McGovern in 1972. They would surely never support a Kucinich, and of course the Free Press would savage Kucinich, and they have been pretty nasty to Dean as well, just as they have been kissing Bush ass as he moves from one looting and murder operation to the next.

....

So our effective political choices are narrow, and the DNC crowd would make them even narrower if they could, and they are trying hard. We always face a lesser and great evil choice, and in my lifetime, while I've occasionally voted for third party sure losers as a conscious protest vote, I've also consciously voted for several lesser evil scoundrels who I considered to be war criminals. The greater evil scoundrels clearly threatened even more massive war crimes, as George Bush does today. This reflects a gruesome political system, that has reached new lows in the last few years.