SOURCE: “Bewildering the Herd,” in The Humanist, Vol. 50, No. 6, November-December, 1990, pp. 8-17.

In the following interview, Chomsky discusses contemporary world affairs, including U.S.-Iraq tensions shortly before the Gulf War, and the negative influence of the American mass media as a force of institutional propaganda and political misrepresentation.

Reading the mainstream media, you'd never know that, for over 20 years, Noam Chomsky has been considered by many to be the most important political thinker in the United States. He is the author of American Power and the New Mandarins, Towards a New Cold War, On Power and Ideology, The Culture of Terrorism, and Necessary Illusions, to name but a few, and coauthor (with Edward S. Herman) of The Political Economy of Human Rights and Manufacturing Consent. Taken together, these works present an extraordinary critique of state and corporate power in the United States—particularly its influence on the...