I like Chomsky, but I'm no fanboy.
This is the second book of Chomsky-Barsamian conversations I've read. The first was How the World Works, which I read back in 2014 when I was very, very ignorant about global politics. The content shocked me and made me realise how little I knew.
I came to this collection with more knowledge and was therefore able to be more critical.
Firstly: the positives. The conversational format makes the book very easy to read - I've ended up buying two more Chomsky-Barsamian books for quick, light reading. Chomsky is very knowledgeable: I did learn a lot, and some of his insights made me stop reading, look around for a bit, and think 'Shit, the guy's got a point.' Given how easy it is to read, I would recommend picking it up cheap and blitzing through it. The book is very short and won't take you very long - my edition is 224 pages, only 179 of which is the conversational content, the rest is the notes and index - and it's worthwhile reading to gain some knowledge and understanding.
Now for the negatives.
The conversational format - the book consists of edited interview transcripts - means that Chomsky sometimes goes off on an boring tangent or doesn't answer the question well. A lot of topics are discussed, but none in much depth.
Chomsky has a tendency to state things without proper explanation or citation. To me, the most glaring example was on page 77:
A national health care system would, incidentally, eliminate the deficit, among other things - not that the deficit is all that important.
There is no explanation as to why an American NHS would eliminate the budget deficit, nor is there any citation for this claim: there are 17 pages of citations, but nothing to back this up.
When I bought How the World Works back in 2014, a friend of mine told me (I'm paraphrasing): 'Chomsky's political output is very different to his empirical linguistic work. He knows an awful lot, but doesn't have much understanding of how it all fits together.' Nearly 3 years later I understand this statement.
Chomsky is extremely knowledgeable about the crimes and injustices committed by America and its allies, but he doesn't synthesize this knowledge into a complex understanding of the world: everything comes down to a simplistic Good&Evil narrative. America is an Evil Empire oppressing the world. Perhaps the human mind is too limited to process so much information into a complex global narrative: we all love a compelling Good vs Evil story, possibly a hangover from the old tribal way of life, We the Good Tribe versus Them the Baddies. This worldview can get a bit tiring and repetitive - it is almost the equal opposite of the mainstream American Good&Evil narrative: American the Good Guys spreading the joys of democracy and capitalism around the world. Both narratives are too simplistic. The world is a very complex place.
I came to this book having recently watched a lot of John Pilger documentaries: I highly recommend them; most can be watched for free on Pilger's website. Like Chomsky, Pilger is of the anti-imperialist Left, who oppose Western economic and military imperialism. Like Chomsky, Pilger's view is Manichean: the Evil Western Powers vs The World's Suffering Poor. It is a narrow view, but a very important narrow view because it highlights the crimes of the West and its allies, which should be more well known, better reported, and better understood.
I expect Chomsky and Pilger's Manichean worldview is strengthened by how relatively little-known Western crimes are: their frustration over people being ignorant, and being kept ignorant by a complicit media, feeds back into their outrage about imperialist crimes, making America and its allies seem even more evil. The Internet makes information about these crimes more readily available, but they are still little known. Chomsky and Pilger are both veteran dissidents from before the Internet; they've been outraged about American crimes for a long time.
Conversational Chomsky is worth reading for easy knowledge and insight, despite his flaws and the hit&miss conversational format. I haven't read technical Chomsky yet, though I will probably give Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media a go. The documentaries of John Pilger, who has a very similar worldview to Chomsky, are certainly worth watching.
