Edward S. Herman’s Life and Work – Part 10
Ed’s work on Russia, Ukraine, and his life’s end and legacy
Edward S. Herman wrote about Ukraine soon after the American-instigated coup in 2014. Ed’s first political writings were about the USA’s war against communism, but it was really about expanding and maintaining the American Empire. As Ralph McGehee learned the hard way, American anticommunism was a fantasy that was intended to demonize nations that refused to be exploited, to justify the imperial violence that was about to be unleashed on them.
The coup in Ukraine was part of the USA’s war against Russia, ever since Vladimir Putin ended Russia’s doormat status to the West. Life expectancy in Russia plunged after the Soviet Union disintegrated, which Ed wrote about but imperial apologists ignored, as Russia and Putin were demonized. Ed wrote about the PropOrNot smear campaign after Donald Trump was elected, which turned out to have been mounted in Ukraine with CIA assistance. It was an attack on the USA’s independent media.
The last two articles that Ed published to the Internet were about the revived anti-Russian hysteria in the USA and how the American media had been peddling fake news about Russia for a century. If Ed was alive, he would have written at length about the war in Ukraine, as the USA goads Russia toward nuclear war.
In a late-life interview, Ed was asked what he thought his chief contribution to scholarship was, and he said that it was the introduction of a structural model of the media combined with pairing analysis, which could be used in a wide range of applications. Ed noted that while he did not invent those approaches, his efforts may have made them more prominent. Ed also thought that an important contribution was the idea that the American media serves elite interests, just like it does in totalitarian societies, and he said that all of his work had that theme.
Ed was also asked in that interview if he would have done anything differently, with the benefit of hindsight, and he didn’t think so, although it was tempting to think that they could have qualified their Cambodia analysis more, but Ed decided that they did the right thing.
Ed’s output only began flagging at age 91, as he was dying from bladder cancer, which was not diagnosed until after his death.
In the last essay published in his lifetime, Ed’s last words were: “The Propaganda Model is as strong and applicable as it was thirty years ago […]. The Propaganda Model lives on.”
Noam led the eulogies, which poured in from the independent media. At least four academic works were devoted to Ed’s memory in the years after his death.
Noam will likely never engage the public again, not since his massive stroke last year. When Noam passes, it will be the end of an era. The top bookshelf of the figures of Western thought, which includes Newton, Einstein, and Socrates, will have to make room for Noam. Ed’s work won’t reside on that shelf, but I believe that future historians will place Ed in the first ranks of American dissident intellectuals.
I have a little ways to go on these Ed posts.