Intellectual Cleansing - Part I

Medialens - Keeping the Media safe for Big Business;

The professional, “is an obedient thinker, an intellectual property whom employers can trust to experiment, theorize, innovate and create safely within the confines of an assigned ideology. The political and intellectual timidity of today’s most highly educated employees is no accident.” (Jeff Schmidt, Disciplined Minds, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2000, p.16)

In 1996, Noam Chomsky attempted to explain to an equally bemused Andrew Marr (then of the Independent):

Marr: “This is what I don’t get, because it suggests - I mean, I’m a journalist - people like me are ‘self-censoring’...”

Chomsky: “No - not self-censoring. There’s a filtering system that starts in kindergarten and goes all the way through and - it doesn’t work a hundred percent, but it’s pretty effective - it selects for obedience and subordination, and especially...”

Marr: “So, stroppy people won’t make it to positions of influence...”

Chomsky: “There’ll be ‘behaviour problems’ or... if you read applications to a graduate school, you see that people will tell you ‘he doesn’t get along too well with his colleagues’ - you know how to interpret those things.”

Chomsky’s key point:

“I’m sure you believe everything you’re saying. But what I’m saying is, if you believed something different you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting.” The Big Idea, BBC2, February 14, 1996

The question of trust is crucial - employers must be able to rely on their human property to play by the rules....,