Well, there are really two books for one in M.C.
The first book, the one I read more than 25 years ago, is a fascinating, if deeply uncomfortable book about how democratic countries manage to arrange a certain consensus of coverage of foreign affairs in their press and that without directly applying pressure on the media. The case study was simple:
CIA-backed right wing regimes in Central America kill many many people? Talk it down, question the victims' integrity and significance, minimize it. Gotta fight Communism!
One Polish priest gets killed by the Communist Polish authorities? Talk it up, glorify and humanize the victim, keep it in the limelight. Gotta fight Communism!
As some of us, for example, squirm to articulate exactly how "Lybia in '11" is different than "Ukraine in '22" this part of MC is quite topical.
I also note that MC has 2 authors, the other being S. Hermann. Perhaps that is what made it more interesting than the rest of the stuff I usually see coming out of Chomsky. Not sure.
This is a very worthwhile book and I encourage anyone interested in foreign policy and politics in general to read it. You might look at the media with different eyes.
Back to the question:
The basic idea is that the opulent minority must be protected from the majority who would obviously choose to reduce wealth inequality.
The second book, the one you seem to be alluding to, I remember considerably less well. Or maybe I just dismissed it as I read it.
Or, like Obie says:
Manufacturing Consent almost entirely deals coverage of foreign events from the American perspective
While the subject of the book's case study is Latin America vs Polish coverage, i.e. very much foreign policy, this question concerns domestic policy - i.e. something very much not examined by said case study.
The notion of "dark forces manipulating the majority" is also quite topical these days. To be frank it reminds me of Trump's dark talk of "the elites".
How and why exactly the "powers that be" would manage to pull the strings of the election of two such radically different politicians as Obama and Trump eludes me. But I am sure Chomsky can explain it quite well to his followers.
There are certainly interesting things to look at in the way certain subjects are covered by the media. Such as, for example, the lower level of taxation imposed on capital gains, as opposed to employment income. Though I haven't read him, I suppose that is partially what Piketty covers. And the persistent tendency of not so well off Americans to vote against their interests in lowering income tax for the wealthy or against universal health care. Surely, a bit of media manipulation - possibly of the type covered in M.C. - assists in achieving this political outcome.
But the formal presentation of such mechanisms is in different books, not Manipulating Consent, which does not really concerns itself all that much with this domestic politics and income distribution. So this claim, if it is indeed made in the book, seems to be riding on the coattails of the, much more acclaimed, foreign policy coverage core of M.C.
p.s. There are widely diverging estimates of Chomsky's net worth. One thing one can safely say is that he's made a lucrative and comfortable living criticizing the democracies he so deplores. And lives in. In fact, for all his criticism, it is rather hard to envision what other political systems would tolerate his kind of criticism (as we should - I am by no means suggesting we should censor Chomsky nor dismissing the value of having dissident voices).
