Manufacturing consent is about the media, but it's not necessarily about staging events or false flags or that kind of stuff the way Alex is kind of leading it and presenting this. The general thesis of Chomsky's book, largely co-written by Edward Herman, is that the media engages in self-censoring of ideas that are opposed to the interests of the elite corporations in such a way that encourages acceptance of the policies being put in place by the government, which support those interests, often to the detriment of what's in the interest of normal people. It's more complicated than even what I'm presenting, but that's a large part of what Chomsky and Herman called the propaganda model.

And it grew on the basis of the very sensible assumption that was pretty clearly articulated that we have to somehow make sure that the general public does not make use of the democratic opportunities that are available to them and leaves us to run the place as we've been doing. And the way to do it was you read the business leaders are saying, look, we have to induce what's called a philosophy of utility. They actually use the phrase, we have to just kind of direct people to superficial things like fashionable consumption. We have to regiment something, anything that doesn't bother us. Bread and circus, just anything like that.