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Chomsky ‘safeguards’
Taiwan’s press
PUBLIC SUPPORT: The famed linguist and outspoken
activist posed for a photograph posted on Facebook in support of Taiwan’s
anti-media monopolization movement
By Stacy Hsu / Staff writer
Renowned US linguist and author
Noam Chomsky of the US’ Massachusetts Institute of Technology expresses his
opposition to media monopolization in Taiwan in this undated photograph taken
from Facebook yesterday.
Photo: screen grab from Facebook page
Famed US linguist and activist Noam
Chomsky lent support to Taiwan’s anti-media monopolization movement in a
photograph shared on social networking site Facebook late on Saturday.
Chomsky, an 84-year-old linguistics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT), was seen posing for a picture believed to be taken by a
Taiwanese student abroad, while holding a poster that read: “Anti-Media
Monopoly. Say no to China’s black hands, defend press freedom. I am safeguarding
Taiwan here in MIT.”
The photograph was posted on Facebook at about 8pm on Saturday by a female
netizen who identified herself as Lao Tzu-hung (劉子鳳), and had been shared about
4,000 times as of press time yesterday.
Citing a famous quote by Chomsky, Lao said: “Propaganda is to a democracy what
the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.”
“When the media unanimously creates empty slogans such as ‘harmony’ or
‘stabilizing society’ and leave behind the real problems society should be
facing, the public could easily lose their willingness and capability to think,”
Lao quoted Chomsky as saying.
They could end up being the “onlookers” in democratic societies and fall for the
delusion that “everything will be better tomorrow,” Lao quoted the celebrated
linguist as saying.
Citing another quote by Chomsky to warn against the dangers of media
concentration, Lao said that as long as people are marginalized and distracted
they have no way to organize or articulate their sentiments, and they simply
assume that they are the only people with what are seen as crazy ideas.
In the end, “you just stay on the side and don’t pay any attention to what’s
going on. You look at something else, like the Superbowl,” Lao cited Chomsky as
saying.
The photograph of Chomsky has prompted a fervent response among netizens, with
some expressing gratitude to the famed scholar’s support for the country’s
anti-media monopolization efforts.
An unidentified netizen said: “If a US scholar is aware of the dangers of media
concentration [in Taiwan], the people of this country must not stay silent
anymore.”
Dubbed as “the conscience of America,” Chomsky has strived to bring to light
atrocities committed by the US government since the 1960s, including its support
of the Indonesian regime’s brutal suppression of East Timor between 1975 and
1999.
Chomsky also emerged as a renowned public advocate for press freedom in the US
and worldwide, mainly because of his vehement opposition to the notion of
governments or giant corporations holding control over social media in which the
public is manipulated.
Chomsky first visited Taiwan in August 2010, when he delivered speeches in
Academia Sinica in Taipei and National Tsing Hua University in Hsinchu City.
A number of public figures in Taiwan have recently also expressed their
opposition to media monopolization, including Wu Ching-feng (吳青峰), the lead
singer of the popular band Sodagreen (蘇打綠).
Wu said during his New Year’s Eve performance in Greater Kaohsiung on Monday
that the media should be an open platform through which the truth is conveyed,
rather than something that attempts to monopolize the market or manipulate the
public.
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