The event, organised by the Middle East Study Centre (MESC) at Hull University, was chaired by Glenn Burgess and CMES visiting professor Raphael Cohen-Almagor acted as discussant.
Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. His research revolutionized the field of linguistics by treating language as a uniquely human, biologically based cognitive capacity. Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He is one of the USA's most prominent public intellectuals. Since the Vietnam War, Chomsky has been a prolific critic of American politics and foreign policy, a fierce critic of capitalism and a staunch defender of freedom of speech and of the press.
Orwell is famous for his critique of thought control in totalitarian states. Less familiar, but more pertinent to us, is his condemnation of the practice in free societies, where “unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban,” in part thanks to control over means of expression by concentrated private power, in part — more subtly and effectively — “because of a general tacit agreement that `it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact”. This is a tacit agreement that can become so deeply internalized that Gramscian hegemonic common sense is entrenched beyond question. The right of private power to control expression is considered inviolate. Options to escape such controls exist, but are limited. New questions arise with social media that hover ambiguously between private property and public utilities, and are readily subject to other forms of control in the digital world. Authentic free expression is under severe threat.
