Reviews and Comments

This book went into a lot of detail, from which I was able to learn quite a lot. It mainly covers the inner workings of the current global economy and answers the question of how poor countries came to be poor and why they will stay poor. In this sense, the book pretty much outdid itself in every regard.

The Divide covers the history of Colonialism and Capitalism as to show how europe enriched themselves by underdeveloping the global south. Hickel takes a look at various sources and historical data to show just how many natural resources (e.g. Gold and Silver) were stolen and the genocide of the indigenous population that followed. Additionally, the author takes a look at many military coups supported by the West and the consequences as such. Hickel goes into great detail explaining how Neoliberalism was born and its first trial in Chile after a coup, which resulted in mass poverty, hyperinflation and mass unemployment. Moreover, the book discusses international institutions such as the WTO, World Bank and IMF. Hickel goes on to write how these undemocratic institutions utilized the global south's national debt to force Neoliberal reforms onto them, which previously employed keynesian economic policies. These reforms are known as Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) which privatized, liberalized and deregulated their economies and took the states control of their own economies away. Which of course resulted in more poverty and inequality.

Lastly, Jason Hickel goes into even finer detail discussing the UN's Millennium Development Goals and various statistics. He examines the tactics used to make the results of the statistics as favorable as possible. As a result it would seem as if poverty and inequality are being reduced, while in reality it's becoming much worse. Some of these tactics include not properly adjusting for inflation, setting the bar for absolute poverty much too low and some other faulty methods of gathering and portraying data.

The writing of The Divide was well done and even a bit entertaining, while still giving a good insight into the problems of our current globalized economy. However, I find that the solutions the book provides aren't enough. They are mostly just reforms and suggest taking measures, such as simply democratizing international institutions and cancelling all national debt. Sure, these are good solutions, but they don't really solve the root of the problem, which is an undemocratic economy that presupposes the use of colonialism, imperialism and exploitation of others to guarantee its own existence. For that reason a democratization of the entire economy is a necessity, and not just simple reforms that operate within the current system. Nonetheless, I still find the book to be crucial and I couldn't recommend it enough. It even pairs quite well with Hicklel's second book, Less is More.

I found this to be quite an interesting read which, although published in 1988, is still fairly relevant and now has helped me gain a new perspective on the inner workings of the mass media and the political economy encompassing it.

In the first chapter, Herman and Chomsky describe the political economy and derive their "propaganda model" from it. This propaganda model has "five filters" as follows: 1. Size, ownership, and profit orientation; 2. The advertising license to do business; 3. Sourcing mass media news; 4. Flak and the enforcers; 5. Anti-communism as a control mechanism. All of these aspects come together as filters for a system of self-censorship and deceit, whether conscious or unconsciously, directed towards the population to sustain the prevalent narrative of the U.S. government and the elite class.

The following six chapters are case studies in which the authors take a look at various topics, how they were reported by the mass media and what happened in reality. These studies includes comparisons between the regimes and elections in El salvador/Guatemala and Nicaragua, the supposed plot to kill the pope and the war in Vietnam.

In each of these examples it becomes clear that the mass media closely adheres to the government's narrative, elite consensus and the exclusion of dissident opinion. Additionally, a dichotomy reveals itself in which the media unneedingly villianizes the enemies of the state whilst blatantly defending repressive dictatorships backed by the U.S. . While Herman and Chomsky analyze various news articles and TV broadcasts covering the topics, they also dive into many extensive statistics, backing their thesis.

Moreover, the book is also quite the valuable repository of history. It covers the dictatorships and elections of El salvador and Guatemala and U.S. atrocities and war crimes committed in Indochina. Particularly, the invasion of Vietnam and the bombing of Laos and Cambodia, which I knew only very little about until now.

After reading Manufacturing Consent, I often came to notice fragments of this progaganda model myself. I can't help but think of the relevancy found in the media concerning the war in Ukraine. When a missle first landed in Poland, the media was quick on their feet to report that it was a russian attack, according to "government officials". A few days later it was quickly established that it was most likely a Ukrainian missle that had malfunctioned, however. Furthermore, when Russia first invaded and it was extensively reported on, many people were quick to call it systematic racism. This was because other wars and tragedies from the global south were not being reported on. Instead I now believe that Herman's and Chomsky's propaganda model provides a much better answer as to why these tragedies aren't being reported on. Part of it is the difference between "worthy" and "unworthy" victims. That is, the mass media claims the victims of the global north as worthy since they fit best into the picture of the government's foreign policy and serve elite interest. All the while, the victims of the global south are deemed unworthy since they are either harmful to the manufacturing of consent to be governed or they outright have no use in the business model of the media.

Even so, although the given case studies and examples were necessary to convince the reader and to back their thesis, they were quite detailed and extensive. Of course details and vast amounts of information are important to make their case and to have the reader get a proper picture of the individial topics, however it also led to the problem of having the book become a bit boring after a while. Aside from that, the language used was also a bit difficult at times with some complex sentence structures and unique choice of words.

Finally, I very highly recommend this book to anyone as it brings forth an immensely important topic of how our beloved "free" and "independent" media is anything but that. Manufacturing Consent will have you thinking critically when looking at any sort of media by the end of it.