Since Noam Chomsky was voted the world’s top public intellectual last year, another backlash has been gathering force. The problem, for anyone who would like to see a substantive conversation, is that Chomsky’s critics too often mix concrete observations with wild, unfocused accusations – exactly, indeed, what they accuse Chomsky himself of doing.
Reviewing Chomsky’s new book, Failed States, in the Observer a couple of weeks ago, for example, foreign editor Peter Beamont congratulated himself on applying “a Chomskian analysis to [Chomsky’s] own writing”. Let’s see some of this Chomskian analysis:
But what I find most noxious about Chomsky’s argument is his desire to create a moral – or rather immoral – equivalence between the US and the greatest criminals in history. Thus on page 129, comparing a somewhat belated US conversion to the case for democracy in Iraq after the failure to find WMD, Chomsky claims: ‘Professions of benign intent by leaders should be dismissed by any rational observer. They are near universal and predictable, and hence carry virtually no information. The worst monsters – Hitler, Stalin, Japanese fascists, Suharto, Saddam Hussein and many others – have produced moving flights of rhetoric about their nobility of purpose.’
Plainly, Chomsky’s use of the superlative “worst”, in calling Hitler, Stalin and Saddam etc “the worst monsters”, is grammatically doing the opposite of creating an “equivalence” between them and other leaders. To note uncontroversially that there is one point of comparison between all leaders – they profess benign intent – is not to assert an overarching “equivalence” between them, any more than it would be to note accurately that they are all human beings. Still, the reactionary narrative of “moral equivalence” is evidently too attractive to abandon.
Oliver Kamm recently took a more forensic approach to the book. On Kamm’s account, Chomsky misused a study on pre-intervention Kosova deaths by Nicholas Wheeler, attributing to Wheeler the claim that “Serbs were responsible for 500 of the 2,000 killed” pre-bombing, and concluding that the KLA killed the rest. According to Kamm, Wheeler nowhere makes this claim in the referenced study.
This looks like a strong empirical case. (I haven’t checked it myself.) Kamm goes on to claim that it is an example of deliberate falsification, that Chomsky
distorts his source material in order to generate a predetermined conclusion about the iniquities and cynicism of Western policy. His fabrications and elisions are an intellectual scandal. His political writings are an affront to the notion of scholarship.
It is an interesting question, how we decide on the critical mass of examples that would make such a charge plausible. How many errors (if you are feeling generous) or fabrications (if not) in a scholar’s large body of work need to be tallied up to count as evidence for deliberate distortion? In the case of a systematic liar and Holocaust-denier like David Irving, the evidence is vast and overwhelming (as shown in Deborah Lipstadt’s excellent History on Trial). But demonstrating intent must be harder in less massively egregious cases. Kamm answered this objection explicitly in an earlier post:
When the “errors” are all in the same direction – namely a determination to prove that the United States is morally equal or inferior to Nazi Germany – then something more is involved.
How this characterization of Chomsky’s “determination” is to be squared with the subject’s well-known assertions that the US is “in many respects” the “freest” and (without qualification) the “greatest” country in the world is mysterious. Reasonable questions about possible bias or subjectivity in Chomsky’s writing are sidelined by the exaggeration. If his errors really are all in the same direction, whatever direction it really is, that should indeed be a warning flag.
What can be shown of Chomsky’s writing, rather than asserted of his intent, is sometimes bad enough. Kamm and others demonstrated how Chomsky argued, in an email to supporters in Sweden, that one only has a “right” to call Srebrenica an act of “genocide” if one simultaneously denounces his favoured examples of killing in East Timor. There is no question of some conditional “right” to use the word, depending on what else you say about other crimes. “Genocide” has a legal definition, albeit little consulted, and Srebrenica was found to fit it. Such facts are not easily admitted by the kind of Chomsky acolyte who wraps himself up in the propaganda model as though it were a comfort blanket.
Yet Chomsky’s critics appear to consider that such scattered observations are not sufficiently wounding blows to the Chomsky hydra. So it must be further asserted that he thinks Bush is a new Hitler, etc. The more generalized accusations are prone to dilute the force of the specific ones. This is illustrated compellingly when, in another post, Kamm links enthusiastically to a document by Paul Bogdanor called “The Top 100 Chomsky Lies” (pdf). How “useful” (Kamm’s word) this screed is may be measured by the following extract, rebutting Chomsky’s “lie” with Bogdanor’s “truth”:
The Lie: “European powers conquered much of the world with extreme brutality. With the rarest of exceptions, they were not under attack by their foreign victims… It is not surprising, therefore, that Europe should be utterly shocked by the terrorist crimes of September 11.”
The Truth: Arab-Islamic conquests included the territories of Portugal, Spain, Sardinia, Sicily, Crete, and the southern areas of France and Italy. The Ottoman Empire expanded as far as Hungary and southern Poland, as well as the whole of central Europe, including parts of Greece, the former Yugoslavia, Romania and Bulgaria.
So, an elementary truth (as Chomsky would say; but who could reasonably argue?) about European colonial violence is apparently a “lie” because those scary “Arab-Islamic” guys also conquered some territory. This doesn’t even qualify as “an affront to the notion of scholarship”, as Kamm says of Chomsky: it’s just farcical. I haven’t checked Chomsky’s references against the counter-references supplied in aid of Bogdanor’s attempted rebuttals, but some readers may be suspicious of Bogdanor’s appeals to books with hagiographic titles such as Sharon: An Israeli Caesar.
So this round of Chomsky wars rumbles on, lately between Michael Bérubé and Dennis Perrin, among others. Chomsky’s detractors are certainly right on one point: his renown and influence are such that his work demands an updated, reasoned critique, which would cover more than the familiar arguments over Cambodia and the Faurisson affair. But in these debates, substance is too often compromised by hyperbole.
{ 345 comments }
Randolph Fritz 07.03.06 at 9:59 am
Is it not possible to believe Chomsky is a radical who sometimes gets things wrong? He seems to me rather like the a zealous prophet of anarchism at times, a Jeremiah, perhaps. And yet sometimes he shows geniune compassion and moral conviction, and is willing to speak it, and keep speaking it. And so he has followers and opponents.
Aidan Kehoe 07.03.06 at 10:10 am
Is it not possible to believe Chomsky is a radical who sometimes gets things wrong?
I believe sincerely that Pol Pot was a radical who sometimes got things wrong. Happily, Chomsky has been making a comfortable living off the military-industrial complex for his working life, and tangentally poisoning the field of linguistics, rather than exercising political power.
Ron F 07.03.06 at 10:13 am
Kamm –
Steven Poole –
Well perhaps you should, Steven? Five minutes searching Hansard would have been five minutes well spent. You might also check Kamm’s deluge of book reviews at Amazon and come to your own conclusions as to whether he is unwell.
Secretary of State for Defence, George Robertson
24 MARCH 1999
Phil 07.03.06 at 10:15 am
Plainly, Chomsky’s use of the superlative “worst”, in calling Hitler, Stalin and Saddam etc “the worst monsters”, is grammatically doing the opposite of creating an “equivalence” between them and other leaders.
Eh? The structure of Chomsky’s point, as quoted, seems to be:
[Western leaders make professions of benign intent]
but
“Professions of benign intent by leaders should be dismissed by any rational observer.”
because
“They are near universal … The worst monsters … have produced moving flights of rhetoric”
Paraphrased: “It wouldn’t be rational to infer benignity from professions of benign intent by Western leaders, since similar professions are made by many other leaders, ‘the worst monsters’ included”.
Or: “there are no more compelling reasons for taking Bush or Blair seriously when they talk about democracy than there were for taking Hitler or Stalin seriously when they did the same”.
From which it’s a bit clearer where Beaumont gets his ‘moral equivalence’ line. I’m not particularly interested in debating that, but I am curious as to whether Steven thinks my reading of the point quoted is incorrect – and, if so, what he thinks it says.
abb1 07.03.06 at 10:24 am
…that one only has a “right” to call Srebrenica an act of “genocide” if one simultaneously denounces his favoured examples of killing in East Timor.
I don’t think this is what he’s saying there. And it’s really quite obvious what he’s saying there.
He’s simply accusing US/UK apologists (including Mr. Kamm, of course) of exaggerating crimes committed by the official enemies, while ignoring crimes committed by neutral actors, while whitewashing often much more serious crimes committed by the friends and allies.
You’ll find this theme in his almost every book and article, expressed in a number of different ways, and I don’t see any reason whatsoever to pretend that he is saying something different here.
engels 07.03.06 at 10:26 am
I believe sincerely that Pol Pot was a radical who sometimes got things wrong.
Who had number 2 for Chomsky and Pol Pot are “morally equivalent”?
Ray 07.03.06 at 10:28 am
Re. 4
As I understand it, the point is different – “Should we attach any importance to the fact that leader X professes benign intent? No, we should not, because every leader professes benign intent. These claims do nothing to distinguish one leader from another.”
You’re second paraphrase “there are no more compelling reasons for taking Bush or Blair seriously when they talk about democracy” (my emphasis) attempts to reach beyond the claims made by Bush and Blair. You are not saying that we can distinguish their rhetoric from that of other leaders, you are saying that we have reasons other than their rhetoric for believing they are benign.
Ray 07.03.06 at 10:29 am
“you’re”??
Jaysus.
Steven Poole 07.03.06 at 10:37 am
RonF: Hansard does not contain Nicholas Wheeler’s book. It is the disagreement between Chomsky and Kamm as to what Wheeler says that I haven’t checked.
Phil: I agree with your first paraphrase, but not your second, which misses out “worst” and explicitly posits an equivalence: “no more reason”. Chomsky did neither in the passage quoted.
abb1: it’s exactly what he’s saying there:
Zaoem 07.03.06 at 10:37 am
“his renown and influence are such that his work demands an updated, reasoned critique”
I don’t really think that Chomsky is taken seriously by scholars of international politics, whether they be conservative or not. When you do a scholar.google search, you’ll see that all his frequently cited pieces are his linguistic writings, not his political writings. This does not strike me as much of an omission: whether you agree with him or not, these are opinion pieces not scholarly works and thus they may be critized and discussed as such. I am not saying that opinion pieces are less useful than scholarly writings, just suggesting that opinionated writings are usually countered by other opinionated writings.
roger 07.03.06 at 10:39 am
Phil, that is not how I read Chomsky’s statement. Rather, the announcement of benign intent is not proof of benign intent. Pretty simple. For proof, one looks at the past actions of a particular nation’s leadership—then one tries to get a view of the material interests of the nation—and finally one looks at the ideologies professed by the leadership. In the case of Hitler, for instance, one would look at the past domestic actions, such as the internment, torture and death of communists, union leaders, gays, pacifists and dissenters from 1933 onward; then one would look at the German interest in agriculture, oil, etc. And then one would try to understand the ideology of Naziism. In the case of Bush, one would look at the past actions of his cabinet—say, Rumsfeld’s role in propping up Saddam Hussein as he was slaughtering Kurds; then one would look at possible American material interests in the Middle East; then one would look at the ideology associated with the Bush administration’s foreign policy, neo-conservatism. The site of equivalency, here, is in the method of evaluating moral action, which is the same for all nations. Paradoxically, without that ideal equivalency on the level of method, you do get moral equivalency on the level of judgment—that is to say, every statement of benign intent would be treated as equivalent if you had no way of judging them. It is, in fact, Chomsky’s critics who have the moral equivalency problem.
Brendan 07.03.06 at 10:45 am
Chomsky’s point (and he has made this point in so many words elsewhere) is that we should hold leaders (or anybody) accountable not (or not wholly) for what they say but for what they do. This is a thought so obvious, so banal, and such a truism that the fact that anti-Chomskyans even bother to question it is a sign of their fundamental unseriousness. It is not in any sense an accusation of ‘moral equivalency’.
To repeat, it is a truism. In other words, if I am beating someone unconscious (or worse) with a baseball bat, and tell people even as I am saying it: ‘I don’t have a baseball bat, I am a pacifist, and there is absolutely no one suffering under the blows I am not adminstering’ it is self-evident that one should not listen to, should not even be interested in what I am saying, but what I am doing. Equally (in a not so morally charged atmosphere) if I claim I can run a mile in under three minutes, this is clearly irrelevant to the fact of whether I can do it or not. The question is: under observation, without mechanical help, can I actually run a mile in under three minutes?
So, in a less morally charged way, one can paraphrase the Chomskyan argument thus: ‘There is no more reason to believe that Bush and Blair are bringing to democracy to Iraq (i.e. without empirical evidence) than there is to believe that I can fly, or that I have three arms, or that I have a cure for cancer, or that I have solved the Riemann hypothesis, merely because I say so.’
Now the next question is an empirical one: have Bush and Blair actually brought democracy to Iraq? That is an empirically solvable question that I have no intention of getting into here. But to repeat, the idea that we should discount politician’s (or anyone’s) fine sounding rhetoric is a pre-requisite for serious political discussion.
If you deny it you are, frankly, out to lunch.
engels 07.03.06 at 10:48 am
There is no question of some conditional “right” to use the word, depending on what else you say about other crimes.
If you are talking literally about the “right” to free speech then of course this is true, but I’m equally sure it is not what Chomsky meant.
If you mean rather that it’s perfectly acceptable to apply the word, using a certain definition, to a particular case even though, one refuses to apply it to other cases which also fall under the defintition, then I don’t think your claim is true.
RobW 07.03.06 at 10:49 am
Reading Kamm’s post, the problems seem to be as follows:
Chomsky takes either or both of Wheeler’s actual quotes “What about a case where only a few hundred have been killed but intelligence points to this being a precursor to a major campaign of killing and ethnic cleansing? This appears to have been the story in Kosovo… ” and “It is estimated that some 500 Kosovars had been killed… “, and transforms them into the quote (not paraphrase) “though only a few hundred Albanians were killed”. Unless Kamm is wrong that the latter quote does not appear in Wheeler’s book, this would seem to be a significant error, which Kamm argues is a deliberate distortion.
Chomsky also gives the impression (as SP mentions) that Wheeler implied this figure meant the majority of deaths during the period were attributable to the KLA, but Wheeler does not so imply, although Wheeler’s figures taken by themselves might, depending on your interpretation of a word like “Kosovar”.
Note that the Wheeler citation accompanies the citation of a British parliamentary enquiry, although Kamm calls this enquiry “unnamed” perhaps implying it does not exist.
If anyone thinks that adds up to “Noam Chomsky … distorts his source material… His fabrications and elisions are an intellectual scandal. His political writings are an affront to the notion of scholarship”, good luck to ‘em.
William Goodwin 07.03.06 at 10:53 am
Ron F, Steven’s line about Kamm’s “strong empirical case” is clearly a reference to Chomsky’s use of Wheeler’s study, which is, just as Kamm says, a complete misrepresentation. Instead of quoting Robertson, show us where Wheeler says (or even implies) that the KLA killed 1500 people pre-bombing. Otherwise, stop berating Steven for making a claim that he didn’t actually make.
Brendan 07.03.06 at 10:58 am
Incidentally, CF Oliver Kamm. I would argue strongly that one should not even begin to argue with Kamm unless you have the Nicholas Wheeler study in front of you, the text of Chomsky, and some background knowledge on the subject under discussion. I wouldn’t believe Kamm if he told me it was sunny outside without confirming evidence from at least three independent meteorologists, and even then I would probably want to go and check for myself.
imag 07.03.06 at 11:02 am
What can be shown of Chomsky’s writing, rather than asserted of his intent, is sometimes bad enough….
…Yet Chomsky’s critics appear to consider that such scattered observations are not sufficiently wounding blows to the Chomsky hydra. So it must be further asserted that he thinks Bush is a new Hitler, etc.
Although I admit to not having read more than a few snippets of Chomsky, this strikes me as the oddest aspect of his fame. All of the prominent attacks that I see are against this straw boogeyman with apparently limitless power and influence – I’ve heard someone accuse him of causing poverty in countries that have probably never heard of him – while his actual opinions, although different in every way, strike me as significantly wrong, but in a way that would require actual thought to rebut.
abb1 07.03.06 at 11:15 am
abb1: it’s exactly what he’s saying there
Steven, I agree that this quote taken separately sounds like what you say it sounds like.
But there is also a body of works there. And this is not a minor point in his body of works, in fact this is one of his central points being rehashed over and over, in respect to the Khmer Rouge and central America and Vietnam and on and on.
And so in 2006 there’s absolutely no need to parse his words to figure out what Chomsky is talking about, even if it sounds a bit off.
And at this point, indeed, it’s up to Mr. Kamm to explain why he tends to come out on the side that has all the power and the biggest megaphone and an army of paid propagandists – or perhaps to admit that he is one of them?
Aidan Kehoe 07.03.06 at 11:17 am
Engels, #2:
“I believe sincerely that Pol Pot was a radical who sometimes got things wrong.”
Who had number 2 for Chomsky and Pol Pot are “morally equivalent”?
Explain yourself. I understand both Mancunian English and Westphalian German, and that doesn’t parse in either.
Steven Poole 07.03.06 at 11:26 am
abb1, it’s not really a question of parsing words. I know what he means, and I reject the validity of the argument-structure, just as I reject it when his opponents use it too.
engels 07.03.06 at 11:37 am
Explain yourself.
Do I have to? Hmm, let’s see. This is a web blog. Aidan Kehoe is not my boss. Nope. It seems I don’t.
that doesn’t parse
Nor does “tangentally poison” but I didn’t complain at you, Aidan.
Barry 07.03.06 at 11:43 am
Phil: “From which it’s a bit clearer where Beaumont gets his ‘moral equivalence’ line. I’m not particularly interested in debating that, but I am curious as to whether Steven thinks my reading of the point quoted is incorrect – and, if so, what he thinks it says.”
It’s not clearer to me how anybody could honestly think that. I see that rephrasing as a step along the road to dishonesty.
abb1 07.03.06 at 11:44 am
Well, Steven,
This sounds about right, but I’m simply baffled as to how you manage to find equivalency here.
Yes, you’re right – argument is precisely the opposite. What the Euston Manifesto does is called ‘hypocrisy’. So, what’s the opposite of ‘hypocrisy’ – ‘honesty’, I suppose?
Okay, what about this argument:
are you rejecting this one too as an equivalent to the Euston Manifesto?
a 07.03.06 at 11:48 am
What I find ironic about Chomsky is just how American he is. Americans see the world full of good guys and bad guys. So does Chomsky – it’s just he differs who are the good and who are the bad guys.
Steven Poole 07.03.06 at 11:50 am
abb1, I said their reasons were opposite. But the form of the argument, “You can’t say A if you don’t also say B”, is the same in each case. As explained immediately following the passage you quote, I find it bogus.
engels 07.03.06 at 12:03 pm
Steven – I haven’t read all of your Unspeak post, but I shall do later. But it seems that we all know what we mean by “mass murder”. The definition of “genocide” is contested, though, so when someone denounces an act of genocide, according to a given definition, it seems a reasonable question to ask of her whether she is willing to apply that definition in a uniform way.
It seems like a bit of caricature to say Chomsky was demanding a “simultaneous” denunciation of all genocides. Or as you say here “You can’t say A if you don’t say B.” I agree this is false. The more defensible view which I take him to be holding is “You can’t say A if you are not prepared to say B.” Or, to put it another way, if you define X as Y, you have to be prepared to call everything which is Y an X. Is this wrong?
Steven Poole 07.03.06 at 12:11 pm
engels, your “if you are not prepared to say B” is fine with me. It is perhaps what Chomsky meant, but it is not what he said (“Perhaps they have issued . . . if so, they have a right . . .”).
abb1 07.03.06 at 12:13 pm
OK, Steven, fair enough, I guess.
“A”:
Americans see the world full of good guys and bad guys. So does Chomsky…
Nah, I think it’s exactly the opposite: he is almost always taking about institutionalized phenomena. Here’s a quote on “good guys and bad guys” paradigm:
Not bad, huh.
Brendan 07.03.06 at 12:34 pm
Nah, I think it’s exactly the opposite: he is almost always taking about institutionalized phenomena. Here’s a quote on “good guys and bad guys” paradigm:
…the only way to justify having your boot on someone’s neck is that you are uniquely magnificent and they are uniquely awful.
For what it’s worth this is almost exactly a paraphrase of Just World Theory (sometimes called the Belief in a Just World hypothesis: BJW).
http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v3n2/justworld.html
Because we cannot accept the fact (and it is a fact) that the world is completely amoral, and that it is neither just, nor good, nor fair, we invent little moral stories such that it makes sense to us. So if we see someone suffering we work out a reason as to why they must have deserved it really. For psychological reasons, this impulse is probably even stronger when we are causing the suffering: we work out reasons why they must have ‘deserved it’. Likewise, the idea that ‘we’ are acting immorally is not an easy one to take, so we work out little stories as to why we ‘had to’ take the ‘difficult decisions’ because you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, or it’s for the greater good, or you have to be cruel to be kind, or sometimes people just don’t know what’s best for them (and ‘we’ do), and so forth.
Randolph Fritz 07.03.06 at 12:48 pm
However little his critics like Chomsky, his critics do themselves no service in implying that he is the moral equivalent of a mass murderer; that is gross intellectual dishonesty. And his contributions to computer science, at least, are real and valid, so sneering at those, also, is dishonest. It seems to me that Chomsky’s strongest critics secretly perceive his critique as at least partly valid, or why do they seem so stung by it, and so willing to abandon all honesty and good sense in their responses?
engels 07.03.06 at 12:52 pm
Steven – It may be literal minded, but what Chomsky wrote was
You read him as implying the converse: that if they haven’t done so, then they don’t have the right. But he doesn’t actually say this.
Perhaps Chomsky’s point is that if they have issued such condemnations then this would be evidence that they are prepared to use the term consistently. But I don’t see a reason in this quotation for assuming that he thinks this is the only permissable evidence. I certainly think that weaker evidence would be acceptable, but I think that some evidence is required that people are prepared to use a term consistently, especially when it is one with a contested definition, like genocide.
Now it’s true that, just above in the same passage, he says that his opponents have a responsibility to denounce genocides in which their allies have been complicit, but I can’t see him making the strong claim you pin on him that if they fail in this responsibility then they forfeit their right to speak out.
Ron F 07.03.06 at 12:53 pm
Steven: “Hansard does not contain Nicholas Wheeler’s book. It is the disagreement between Chomsky and Kamm as to what Wheeler says that I haven’t checked.”
Have you checked ANY of Kamm’s points? I suspect not. Why not start with the bogus opening sentence? Then proceed with Brendan’s above comments in mind [16]. I think you’ll find it very good advice.
Steven Poole 07.03.06 at 12:58 pm
Update: Oliver Kamm has written to me claiming grounds for his assertion that Chomsky thinks “the United States is morally equal or inferior to Nazi Germany”. I was already aware of his specific arguments on this point and considered them too weak to spend time on in the post. Nonetheless, for what it’s worth, he directs me to his 2005 article in Prospect:
First, “a kind of denazification” evidently signals a partial analogy. Second, to say that US “pretences” are “no more convincing than Hitler’s” is not to say that US conduct is as bad as Hitler’s. One might well find Chomsky’s choice of comparisons tasteless, but none of this adds up to Chomsky thinking that “the United States is morally equal or inferior to Nazi Germany”. It remains obfuscatory hyperbole.
Adam Kotsko 07.03.06 at 12:59 pm
Critiques of Chomsky usually seem to focus on piddling little points, or else on broad outlandish claims that he’s supposedly making (“Bush is Hitler,” whatever). Why can’t someone take on his primary point, namely that US foreign policy has been really destructive in many parts of the world and that we should stop doing such bad things? That strikes me as an arguable but not initially implausible point. Why not take that head-on?
(I think I know why—it’s because conservative critics of Chomsky are morally bankrupt and liberal critics of Chomsky are trying to distance themselves from “radicalism.”)
abb1 07.03.06 at 1:13 pm
The ‘denazification’ reference, IIRC, was made in response to an exhibition in some museum where children were invited to get into a model of a military chopper and shoot some Vietnamese peasants from a machine-gun. So, it was, of course, completely justified.
previously pre 07.03.06 at 1:14 pm
Why can’t someone take on his primary point, namely that US foreign policy has been really destructive in many parts of the world and that we should stop doing such bad things?
Adam, how exactly would someone take on that point? Usually I’ve seen conjured up, “well don’t forget US foreign policy has been really productive in many parts of the world and we should continue to do such good things.” Which is inevitably true in some sense or other, just like “has been really destructive in many parts of the world” is inevitably true in some sense or other.
At which point the argument near-instantly shifts to, which actions were the good ones, which actions were the bad ones, and how do we identify the goodness of an action?
At which point Chomsky takes an unpopular and contrived yet well-disseminated stance, and there is much piddling on all sides.
engels 07.03.06 at 1:15 pm
I think I know why—it’s because conservative critics of Chomsky are morally bankrupt and liberal critics of Chomsky are trying to distance themselves from “radicalism.”
I don’t think it’s just this. I think the reason Chomsky pisses of American liberals is more visceral: a combination of patriotism and the Just World hypothesis. As I see it, mainstream liberals do share these sentiments, albeit in a weaker form than conservatives.
Steven Poole 07.03.06 at 1:15 pm
Engels, we are in danger of spending the rest of the thread parsing the word “If” ;-) I admit I cannot read Chomsky’s “If so” otherwise than as “If so, and only if so”. But if Chomsky really meant what you offer as a softer interpretation, I agree with that. Indeed I argue in the Unspeak post that there may be a democratic duty to denounce the crimes of one’s own polity.
rilkefan 07.03.06 at 1:16 pm
Chomsky has a long track record of being too wrong on Yugoslavia for it to be an accident. Presumably this is because he’s unwilling to accept the existence of counterevidence to his the-US-sucks thesis.
“One might well find Chomsky’s choice of comparisons tasteless”
This seems strained. If I said, “You’re the freest and best poster on CT, and you are writing for your own pure self-interest to the detriment of the blogosphere, and the rhetoric in your posts reminds me of Goebbels’s”, that would surely be beyond tasteless.
“Why can’t someone take on his primary point, namely that US foreign policy has been really destructive in many parts of the world and that we should stop doing such bad things?”
Because US foreign policy is a complicated reaction to complex events and can’t be analyzed in the simplistic terms Chomsky demands? I rather suspect there’s a pretty big field of US foreign policy studies which might be consulted on such questions, if you care to look it up.
abb1 07.03.06 at 1:19 pm
And what’s with this silly taboo: ‘nothing here can ever be as bad as in Nazi Germany’? Sorry, that’s just not a rational thought.
Scott Martens 07.03.06 at 1:20 pm
There can be no “reasoned critiques” of Chomsky because any effort to do so devolves first into an argument about exactly what it is that Chomsky said, then into an argument about the meanings of words (which is so not Chomsky’s branch of linguistics); then into a discussion of what constitutes moral equivalency. By the time its over, his critics and supporters are calling each other names, each one firmly believing that the other is an apologist for something or other without either side being clear about anything.
It’s the same every time – a waste of breath.
previously pre 07.03.06 at 1:21 pm
It remains obfuscatory hyperbole.
It would help if Chomsky would stop issuing useless hyperbolic comparisons. It’s possible to say “we shouldn’t bother to naively accept the goodwill statements of our politicians any moreso than we would naively accept the goodwill statements of our perceived enemies” without directly referencing Hitler Stalin et al. After all, I just did. And I made the exact same point, just in a rather more accessible way, with far less potentially-misleading implicature.
Of course, criticizing Chomsky for sloppy and/or poorly phrased writing isn’t nearly as self-promotional as the alternative(s).
engels 07.03.06 at 1:23 pm
Steven – I suspect we are in broad agreement and I agree there are more important things to argue about. I also don’t feel entirely comfortable with the way Chomsky’s argument comes across in the passage you quote.
Steven Poole 07.03.06 at 1:23 pm
If I said, “You’re the freest and best poster on CT, and you are writing for your own pure self-interest to the detriment of the blogosphere, and the rhetoric in your posts reminds me of Goebbels’s”, that would surely be beyond tasteless.
Maybe so. But I still wouldn’t think you had actually accused me of being “morally equivalent or inferior” to Goebbels.
previously pre 07.03.06 at 1:23 pm
Because US foreign policy is a complicated reaction to complex events and can’t be analyzed in the simplistic terms Chomsky demands?
You put it so much more sensibly using “simplistic” than I did using “contrived”.
previously pre 07.03.06 at 1:27 pm
Maybe so.
Stop right there. Definitely so, and that’s the whole point. If things got that tasteless without absolutely needing to get that tasteless, there would no longer be much purpose in continuing the discussion.
Chomsky’s use of Hitler/Stalin/etc as examples implies he feels there is a need to use Hitler/Stalin/etc as examples. Accordingly, Chomsky just lost a good portion of his potential audience, who perceive his statements as not meaningfully, necessarily offensive, but rather deliberately, arbitrarily offensive.
For what? Was the “what” worth turning so many people off his message?
rilkefan 07.03.06 at 1:29 pm
“Of course, criticizing Chomsky for sloppy and/or poorly phrased writing isn’t nearly as self-promotional as the alternative(s).”
The claim is that Chomsky’s phrasing isn’t sloppy, but calibrated to be as offensive to America’s self-image as possible (objective balanced truth be damned) while maintaining sufficient credibility or plausible deniability not to be dismissed out of hand by everyone. He’s a lot like Ann Coulter in this.
abb1 07.03.06 at 1:33 pm
…simplistic terms Chomsky demands
They are not simplistic at all.
Most people – vast majority, most of the present company included – can not completely separate rational analysis from rhetoric when it concerns their own nationality. This ‘don’t call me a Nazi’ taboo is a proof.
There is nothing simplistic there. Rather: you have to invent all this non-exiting complexity to survive your cognitive dissonance.
Adam Kotsko 07.03.06 at 1:34 pm
The problem with appeals to “complexity” is that they normally are used only to dismiss the overly simple analyst, without a demonstration of the appropriate level of complexity or nuance.
(I suppose that I should have stated Chomsky’s main point more strongly: “US foreign policy has been so near-uniformly destructive that our first instinct when we hear about a new foreign-policy initiative should be strong distrust.”)
Steven Poole 07.03.06 at 1:35 pm
Stop right there.
Well, no; I repeat: I still wouldn’t think you had actually accused me of being “morally equivalent or inferior” to Goebbels, which was the accusation under consideration.
Accordingly, Chomsky just lost a good portion of his potential audience, who perceive his statements as not meaningfully, necessarily offensive, but rather deliberately, arbitrarily offensive.
That’s a good point. I don’t have an answer to your question as to why he does it.
previously pre 07.03.06 at 1:38 pm
The claim is that Chomsky’s phrasing isn’t sloppy, but calibrated to be as offensive to America’s self-image as possible
That’s a plausible interpretation of the fact I stated: Chomsky makes comparisons that produce implicature unrelated to the advancement of his comparisons’ stated purpose. That’s really all this thread boils down to—some ignore the implicature altogether, some focus upon it exclusively, and some form of heated conflict ensues. [That’s the trajectory nearly every re:Chomsky back-and-forth follows.]
I won’t claim that Chomsky is slipping this acrimonious implicature into his statements for sensational purposes. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt and call them untalented unless they confirm explicitly they are acting knowingly and maliciously.
Steven Poole 07.03.06 at 1:41 pm
I think there is some room for distinction between malice and polemic.
engels 07.03.06 at 1:42 pm
The trouble is it is not possible to tell the truth about some things without offending large numbers of Americans.
abb1 07.03.06 at 1:45 pm
That’s just nonsense, Previously. He makes comparisons because they are good meaningful comparisons. If they seem shocking to you – that’s your problem, go see a shrink.
previously pre 07.03.06 at 1:47 pm
US foreign policy has been so near-uniformly destructive
At which point you’ve lost your claim to credibility, of course. Now, perhaps you will further clarify by saying US military policy after World War Two has been so ineffective at Saving The World, and has produced so many undesirable consequences, that we should critically assess our reasoning before throwing our support into a new military venture, your assertion would become a kind of tautology.
If that’s truly all Chomsky means to say, it shouldn’t have taken him more than a pamphlet’s worth of writing to say it, and he wouldn’t be the subject of a CT thread today.
a 07.03.06 at 1:47 pm
“Why can’t someone take on his primary point, namely that US foreign policy has been really destructive in many parts of the world and that we should stop doing such bad things?” Well, maybe because if this is his primary point, then many of us would agree with it? Hello – Iraq, Central America. And by that I mean; Iraq, complicated situation, but on the whole we should have stayed out. But (again) Chomsky is a simplistic moralist; he sees the world in terms of good guys and bad guys, in black and white. He just doesn’t see many situations as complicated. Very American.
previously pre 07.03.06 at 1:50 pm
He makes comparisons because they are good meaningful comparisons.
In your opinion, does involving Hitler/Stalin/etc specifically manage to refine and illustrate his point with a minimum of additional/unnecessary implicature? If he replaced “Hitler” with “perceived opponent” would it detract from his explicit point, which is that we shouldn’t take statements of goodwill for granted?
P.S. The “see a shrink” ad hominem wasn’t necessary or appreciated. You’re usually far more respectful than that.
tennin 07.03.06 at 1:52 pm
Personally, reading on Japanese history and seeing how Japan’s leaders presented its brutal conquest of Asia—- to the world, to the Japanese people, and even to themselves—- as a benign exercise in spreading Japanese civilization and fighting Western imperialism has done as much as anything to make me skeptical of all political rhetoric and self-justification. So with regards to the passage quoted by Beamont at least, I don’t see why Chomsky should avoid the most effective and compelling examples.
Steven Poole 07.03.06 at 1:53 pm
previously:
I rather doubt Chomsky would have written that US military policy since WWII has been all about “Saving the World”.
previously pre 07.03.06 at 1:54 pm
The trouble is it is not possible to tell the truth about some things without offending large numbers of Americans.
See above #42. I “told the truth” making the same point that Chomsky explicitly made, without including unnecessarily offensive implicature.
I think there is some room for distinction between malice and polemic.
Ah, yes. Sorry about that, let me retract the word “malicious” in all forms. I’m not the best writer either, and I make errors too. Of course, a book goes through a more thorough editing & redacting process than an online comment post.
engels 07.03.06 at 1:54 pm
“pre” – Your first sentence is false as a matter of fact: as a third party I can objectively state that Adam’s “credibility” is intact.
“a” – So who does he think are the “good guys”? Pol pot, I presume?
Actually, forget it: this is a waste of time.
rilkefan 07.03.06 at 1:55 pm
“The problem with appeals to “complexity” is that they normally are used only to dismiss the overly simple analyst”
Say what? Is there any thinkers out there (well, any more sophisticated that say abb1) who claim there are clear ways of determining the right foreign policy in Africa, the ME, Asia, etc. etc.? That one can try to do X and expect X to happen and bad consequences Y and Z not to follow? Given that US policy is some unknown and varying mix of idealism and self-interest, and data about what happened why are hard-to-impossible to come by? Well, there’s Chomsky, and he has an easy prescription – repeat over and over it’s 0% idealism, and if that doesn’t work (see TFY) then lie.
What’s even worse about the Chomskian paradigm is that it has to assume that decisions made in a messy democracy arise from a monolithic intentional stance while denying that individual leaders might have benign intentions leading to imperfect decisions.
The worst thing is that US policy could be a lot better and smarter, and if Chomsky had come up with a solid critique instead of trying to fill an iconoclastic niche and playing to an audience predisposed to find his message thrilling, we might be in a better world.
abb1 07.03.06 at 1:57 pm
Sorry, Pre, I got carried away.
Steven Poole 07.03.06 at 1:58 pm
What’s even worse about the Chomskian paradigm is that it has to assume that decisions made in a messy democracy arise from a monolithic intentional stance
I’m having trouble remembering what was messily democratic about the decision to invade Iraq.
previously pre 07.03.06 at 1:59 pm
“pre” – Your first sentence is false as a matter of fact: as a third party I can objectively state that Adam’s “credibility” is intact.
(sigh) Misphrased and withdrawn. The claim that US foreign policy has been near-uniformly destructive is flatly false unless “foreign” gets mentally blotted out and replaced with “military” (which I think is what Adam more or less meant; we’re all typing fast).
rilkefan 07.03.06 at 2:03 pm
“Are there”, argggh.
‘Accordingly, Chomsky just lost a good portion of his potential audience, who perceive his statements as not meaningfully, necessarily offensive, but rather deliberately, arbitrarily offensive.’
“That’s a good point. I don’t have an answer to your question as to why he does it.”
Clearly he’s not aiming at influencing the main stream of thought – somewhat as (according to my extremely limited understanding) in linguistics, he’s staked out the extreme possible territory and defended it vociferously – probably if other thinkers had taken up positions similar to his then he would have switched to a completely different one.
previously pre 07.03.06 at 2:04 pm
Sorry, Pre, I got carried away.
Hey, no problem, it’s a Chomsky discussion, everybody gets carried away. See my especially silly use of “maliciously” earlier.
Actually that’s what I always find spectacularly interesting about these discussions. Chomsky could be taken apart in a sensible way by looking at each explicit claim he makes, and asking, could this have been said with equivalent specificity, but with less provocation? Nobody does this, and the discussion devolves into a bickering in which one side claims “yes Chomsky did actually say this or came close enough to saying it” and the other side says “if you look at what he is literally actually saying…”
rilkefan 07.03.06 at 2:09 pm
“I’m having trouble remembering what was messily democratic about the decision to invade Iraq.”
Do you claim that the Bush admin is typical? That the Iraq invasion is relevant for understanding our Korea policy? Our Japan policy? Our aid-to-the-third-world policies? Our stance wrt the Balkans or the Baltic countries? Our trade policies?
It’s easy to be snide – it’s hard to understand how to act in the world.
abb1 07.03.06 at 2:15 pm
…varying mix of idealism and self-interest
If I told you that a used-car dealer or a banker or a repo-man are motivated by a mix of idealism and self-interest – you’d just laugh, yet the foreign policiy is somehow completely different – Cheney & Co just have to have benign intentions and idealism.
Well, why not, maybe they do indeed have tons of idealism and benign intentions, but that’s irrelevant because as soon as they start acting on it – they are out of business, just like the hypothetic kind and gentle repo-man.
tennin 07.03.06 at 2:19 pm
What’s even worse about the Chomskian paradigm is that it has to assume that decisions made in a messy democracy arise from a monolithic intentional stance while denying that individual leaders might have benign intentions leading to imperfect decisions.
Does he deny this? I haven’t read much Chomsky but my impression was that he followed something like the Marxist view here in regarding the intentions (or rationalizations) of individual leaders as ultimately irrelevant to the objective institutional (or class-interest, etc.) reasons for their policies. It’s kind of like evolutionary psychology: people don’t get up in the morning and consciously think “OK, which course of action will maximize the expected future prevalence of my genetic makeup?” but that is allegedly a good heuristic for predicting their behavior. If anything, a messy democratic (or other) decision-making process would seem to make this sort of analysis more plausible, not less.
Steven Poole 07.03.06 at 2:25 pm
It’s easy to be snide – it’s hard to understand how to act in the world.
I don’t disagree. I quite liked the rest of your comment, but the democratic figleaf is a poor resort in many cases.
previously pre 07.03.06 at 2:27 pm
It’s easy to be snide – it’s hard to understand how to act in the world.
A motto for the ages.
Steven Poole 07.03.06 at 2:29 pm
Chomsky could be taken apart in a sensible way by looking at each explicit claim he makes, and asking, could this have been said with equivalent specificity, but with less provocation?
Would that be a taking-apart? It might demonstrate that Chomsky could be less polemical if he wanted to. But clearly he doesn’t want to.
Brad DeLong 07.03.06 at 2:29 pm
Well, consider the argument that the United States was doing a good thing in trying to keep the Khmer Rouge from conquering Cambodia. Of this argument, Noam Chomsky argued in 1977 in the Nation:
“Go back to your Nation of 1977, and consider the paragraph:
…there are many other sources on recent events in Cambodia that have not been brought to the attention of the American reading public. Space limitations preclude a comprehensive review, but such journals as the Far Eastern Economic Review, the London Economist, the Melbourne Journal of Politics, and others elsewhere, have provided analyses by highly qualified specialists who have studied the full range of evidence available, and who concluded that executions have numbered at most in the thousands; that these were localized in areas of limited Khmer Rouge influence and unusual peasant discontent…”
Chomsky lies: There were, of course, no highly qualified specialists who had studied the full range of evidence available and concluded that executions have numbered at most in the thousands writing for the Far Eastern Economic Review. There were, of course, no highly qualified specialists who had studied the full range of evidence available and concluded that executions have numbered at most in the thousands writing for the London Economist. Ben Kiernan—then a graduate student with many Maoist illusions—did write Khmer Rouge apologetics for the Melbourne Journal of Politics, but was neither a highly-qualified expert nor a man who had studied the full range of evidence.
Steven: Do you think Chomsky was both (a) sane and (b) trying to tell the truth about the Khmer Rouge in 1977? Given that, is there any reason to think that he is (a) sane and (b) trying to tell the truth about Milosevic and company today?
a 07.03.06 at 2:31 pm
“Cheney & Co just have to have benign intentions and idealism.”
Yes but wouldn’t Chomsky assert that no American President since and including Roosevelt did not have benign intentions? So we’re not just talking about Cheney and Co.
r4d20 07.03.06 at 2:36 pm
I have always felt that the reason Chomsky attracts so much ire (as well as reverence) is his mastery of language. He has the ability to make good points rooted in facts as well as to make bullshit look and smell like roses from a short distance.
rilkefan 07.03.06 at 2:42 pm
“my impression was that he followed something like the Marxist view here in regarding the intentions (or rationalizations) of individual leaders as ultimately irrelevant to the objective institutional (or class-interest, etc.) reasons for their policies.”
As pointed out above, ignoring who was president in 2002/3 vs say 1978 will leave one in a bad way analyzing our foreign policy.
Or consider our actions in TFY - we didn’t like the slaughter, and we didn’t like the instability on the borders of our friends/important trading partners. We weren’t too distracted by other matters and had a president and Sec. of State inclined to make modest efforts at improving the world, esp. in neighborhoods we had some knowledge of – and this seemed like a good time to set a good example. So for a mix of reasons we intervened, with Nato but not the UN (so lawlessly according to some). To keep his viewpoint consistent Chomsky has to ascribe the above to plain imperialistic squashing of uppity innocent Serbia. He has (as described in a 2003(?) New Yorker article not online) to shout down a student who asks him if the US intervention in WWII was a positive act. He has to flirt with a holocaust denier like Faurisson and a tyrant like Pol Pot. He has to make bizarrely unuseful comparisons to Hitler. He leaves, as far as I know, no academic impact in policy analysis, else we could be arguing about work by his peer-reviewed epigones. (If any such exist, I’d love to take a look.)
previously pre 07.03.06 at 2:43 pm
It might demonstrate that Chomsky could be less polemical if he wanted to.
Exactly. Notice how much of the Chomsky discussion centers around whether Chomsky is actually being polemical, or whether (as supporters would suggest) many of the implications found in his writing are more-or-less incidental.
Consider the question, “Is Chomsky trying to deliberately draw parallels between US foreign policy and fascist foreign policies for sensational effect?” Each in their own way, some will say yes, some no—who falls on either side will largely pattern after who takes each ‘side’ in any Chomsky-related discussion.
So what we’re really debating is whether or not Chomsky is polemic at the expense of objectivity.
r4d20 07.03.06 at 2:44 pm
“There can be no “reasoned critiques” of Chomsky because any effort to do so devolves first into an argument about exactly what it is that Chomsky said, then into an argument about the meanings of words (which is so not Chomsky’s branch of linguistics)”
Exactly. His statements usually strike me as having multiple possible interpretations that are all potentially valid. I think he does this on purpose – the typical “imply a radical message while maintaining plausible deniability” strategy, but I dont know for sure. Either way, committed haters and fanboys will always interpret his words to mean exactly what they want them to mean.
abb1 07.03.06 at 2:52 pm
…Chomsky assert that no American President since and including Roosevelt did not have benign intentions
I’m saying that benign intentions don’t matter much; there are other more important factors, mechanisms, forces, trade-offs – objective reality that doesn’t usually leave them much choice to exercise idealism. Basically, they have to keep their backers happy.
The backers want different things – some want stability, others want to spend some ammo, to blow up and wear off some tanks so that new ones have to be ordered; some want oil prices low, others high, etc. Most want good relations with China at the moment, for example, so there’s very little talk about dreaded Evil Red China. Politicians operate within these constrains. And they use rhetoric and lies to justify their actions. That’s their job.
rilkefan 07.03.06 at 2:59 pm
“I have always felt that the reason Chomsky attracts so much ire (as well as reverence) is his mastery of language.”
I’ve argued with liberal japonicus of the Obsidian Wings meta-site Hating on Charles Bird, a partial proponent of Chomsky, and he says Chomsky’s worst attribute is his awful prose. If he wrote more clearly he’d be easier to discuss – and it would be harder to read one’s biases into what he says.
“Cheney & Co just have to have benign intentions and idealism”
It’s hard to say it, but I think Cheney does have benign intentions – for example I’ve little doubt he thought post-intervention Iraq would be a much better place than under Saddam – but power, arrogance, and a willingness to deceive and be deceived are a bad mix. That this was followed post-invasion by (in my view) war crimes is another issue. Whether a satisfying solution to the Iraq situation (e.g., Saddam’s use of the sanctions regime [which I on the whole approved of] to punish his people) existed is yet another issue – the kind of question that’s much more interesting and important than the Chomskian reduction.
Jon 07.03.06 at 3:07 pm
rilkefan:
I would claim what Chomsky does: that the Bush administration is at the extreme end of a pretty narrow spectrum.
Yes, of course I’d claim it’s relevant. Moreover, that would rationally be the default belief. Any claim it’s not relevant—that somehow the Bush administration appeared out of nowhere and suddenly got almost the entire foreign policy class of the U.S. to go along with it without having any significant overlap in worldview and aims—is so strange that it would require extensive evidence.
For a long time most Americans thought George Washington did a pretty good job in his Farewell Address. I still do, though if you read it now, you’ll see he’d today be considered far outside the spectrum of acceptable opinion.
Fair enough. Chomsky doesn’t do that, however. What he has said is that due to institutional forces the differences in administrations are pretty narrow—but that nevertheless when you multiply that difference by the power of the U.S. you get pretty big differences in the lives of people elsewhere. This seems like a reasonable, empirically-supported perspective to me.
previously pre 07.03.06 at 3:20 pm
Yes, of course I’d claim it’s relevant. Moreover, that would rationally be the default belief.
It’d be anachronistic. When you continued on with your paragraph, you turned the statement around. “X is relevant to understanding Y” is not a symmetric statement, so “Iraq is relevant to understanding Korea” is not the same statement as “Korea is relevant to understanding Iraq”.
Robin 07.03.06 at 3:34 pm
“Iraq is relevant to understanding Korea” is not the same statement as “Korea is relevant to understanding Iraq”.
Meaning … Iraq is irrelevant to understanding Korea? In all possible ways irrelevant to understanding Korea?
spartikus 07.03.06 at 3:38 pm
Call me crazy, but aren’t the Korea and Iraq policy of the United States primarily about projecting American power?
soru 07.03.06 at 3:45 pm
I have a theory that the letter-pattern ‘Chomsky’ is some kind of deep-structure cheat code built into the firmware of the human brain. Anyone hearing or seeing it switches into a mental state where they lose the ability to parse non-trivial English sentences.
For example, look at this :
The Lie: “European powers conquered much of the world with extreme brutality. With the rarest of exceptions, they were not under attack by their foreign victims…
So when ‘Portugal, Spain, Sardinia, Sicily, Crete, the southern areas of France and Italy, Hungary southern Poland, the whole of central Europe, parts of Greece, the former Yugoslavia, Romania and Bulgaria’ are listed, a normally-smart person is genuinely unable to see which part of the paragragh quoted that is about. To them, it is a non-sequitor, because the part of the brain that sequits is switched off.
previously pre 07.03.06 at 3:45 pm
Meaning… Iraq is irrelevant to understanding Korea?
A high degree of ambiguity entered that discussion some place and it’s hardly worth unravelling. However, I feel like engaging for a bit.
So, let’s not be silly. In all possible ways? You could take the stance that everything is relevant to understanding everything else. I wouldn’t even go so far as to claim the brand of shoe on your left foot is “in all possible ways irrelevant to understanding Korea”—where there’s a will, there’s a way.
But if I wanted to spend 20-30 hours of research getting a better handle on what happened in Korea circa 1951, I wouldn’t be researching shoe sales, neither would I be researching what’s happened in 21st-century Iraq. That was, more or less, the point of the earlier assertion.
r4d20 07.03.06 at 3:48 pm
I’ve argued with liberal japonicus of the Obsidian Wings meta-site Hating on Charles Bird, a partial proponent of Chomsky, and he says Chomsky’s worst attribute is his awful prose. If he wrote more clearly he’d be easier to discuss – and it would be harder to read one’s biases into what he says.
You dont think his choice of language is deliberate? If he wanted to make his point clear, he could.
previously pre 07.03.06 at 3:52 pm
Anyone hearing or seeing it switches into a mental state where they lose the ability to parse non-trivial English sentences.
We shouldn’t have to parse. The writer should employ enough talent to minimize or eliminate all unnecessary ambiguity.
I could say out of the blue, “if you hunt down and slay your next online opponent, you should be prosecuted and go to prison, just like Charles Manson” and it would be a defensible, literally true statement. If you parse that statement, I:
(1) didn’t accuse you of being a murderous type
(2) didn’t say you were like Charles Manson
But what did I do? I brought all sorts of unnecessary comparisons into the mix when all I really meant to say is “I think you should be nicer to people who disagree with you online.” For that, as a writer, I should be held accountable. Maybe I’m a terrible comparison-writer, or maybe I really meant to provocatively compare you to Manson, but either way it’s reprehensible.
Louis Proyect 07.03.06 at 3:57 pm
Noam Chomsky and His Critics
In the aftermath of September 11th, certain sectors of the US left buckled under ruling class pressure and turned against Noam Chomsky. His uncompromising anti-imperialism might have been acceptable during the 1980s when the Sandinistas were under Washington’s gun, but in today’s repressive atmosphere no quarter is given to the dissident intellectual. Of course, no quarter is asked from Chomsky, who remains fearless and principled as ever.
To the chagrin of ruling class pundits and weak-kneed leftists, a collection of interviews with Chomsky, which has been published under the title “9/11,” has become a best seller. According to a May 5th Washington Post article, the book had already sold 160,000 copies and been translated into a dozen languages, from Korean to Japanese to two varieties of Portuguese.
In an attempt to warn people away from the book, the Post cites Brian Morton, supposedly “a novelist and essayist of the left,” who regards Chomsky as an important intellectual whose arguments have suffered a sclerotic hardening. He says, “Chomsky sees the world in a very stark way and gets at certain truths in that way, but ultimately his view is so simplistic that it’s not useful. He’s become a phase that people on the left should go through when they are young.”
It should come as no surprise that the Washington Post failed to identify the segment of the left Morton is associated with. As it turns out, he is an editor of Dissent Magazine, a publication that might be described as social democracy in a state of advanced rigor mortis. Irving Howe, the founder of the magazine, was a critical supporter of the Vietnam War who reserved most of his animosity for the antiwar movement rather than imperialism. The current editor, Michael Walzer, stumped for Bush’s war against terrorism in the Fall 2001 issue, stating: “We have to defend our lives; we are also defending our way of life. Everyone says this, but it is true. The terrorists oppose and hate our way of life—and would still oppose and hate it even if we lived our lives far better than we do.”
full: http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/fascism_and_war/chomsky.htm
previously pre 07.03.06 at 4:05 pm
Louis Proyect, in general, quotations longer than ten lines or so should at least be accompanied by some comments of your own. As it stands it looks like you haven’t read through the CT discussion to this point, and were merely advertising the article instead of engaging in discussion.
That the Columbia article criticizes closed-mindedness and unwillingness to engage Chomsky makes your action seem a little hypocritical. Addressing the conversation, or appending your thoughts, would have gone a long way toward winning over link-clickers & engaged readers.
rilkefan 07.03.06 at 4:07 pm
The sttempted point re Korea was that we got into the Korean War for a variety of reasons, and we supported South Korea for a variety of reasons; and South Korea is a success story for US foreign policy. Saying “Because the US invaded Iraq for systems-emergent reason R [ignoring incredible contigencies like Bush fils’s oedipal problems and Saddam’s assassination attempt against his father] we can see that the US support of SK was blah” seems silly to me.
Again – I thought the Iraq War was a terrible mistake, but there were good reasons to want to go in – to end Saddam’s repression, to establish an exemplary democracy in the Arab world, to protect access to the oil our economy (and hence to a large degree our lives) depends on, to convince the world we’re so strong and dangerous killing 3k of our civilians is unthinkable, etc. etc. That many of these reasons were dumb or based on deception contigently unquashed or just plain mistaken doesn’t fit into the Chomskian reduction. Consider that the alternative to liberal interventionism is sitting on our couches watching the next Rwanda – well, actually, we’re doing that already, hope everyone’s happy.
previously pre 07.03.06 at 4:19 pm
That many of these reasons were dumb or based on deception contigently unquashed or just plain mistaken doesn’t fit into the Chomskian reduction.
I like this statement more than the rest of what you said. Most opinion for-or-against the war in Iraq was centered around whether the ‘facts’ asserted by war proponents were indeed factual—for example, debating whether there really was an imminent danger of Iraq using Weapons of Mass Destruction against the United States. There wasn’t much debate about whether the U.S. had a moral responsibility to wait until those hypothetical WMD were actually used, although I’ve seen the topic meekly brought up from time to time among academics.
Verification was (and is) the crux dividing opinion.
abb1 07.03.06 at 4:22 pm
we supported South Korea for a variety of reasons
Hmm, what do you think some of these reasons were, considering that till 1988 South Korea was a brutal fascist dictatorship and ‘we’ authorized and supported brutal and bloody suppression of several attempts to overthrow it?
spartikus 07.03.06 at 4:29 pm
South Korea is a success story for US foreign policy.
I know I’m going to regret this, but some might say South Korea was a success story despite US foreign policy. SK was a pretty brutal dictatorship for decades and that the democracy SK enjoys today has owes a lot more to the 1988 Olympics (and the fear of the Generals of an international backlash if the suppressed the student movement on the Olympic eve) than to US encouragement.
Given this decades long support of dictatorship, why did the U.S. bail out South Korea if not to project American power onto the border of China and the Soviet Union? And is the American occupation of Iraq not similar?
engels 07.03.06 at 4:30 pm
I thought the Iraq War was a terrible mistake, but there were good reasons to want to go in… to protect access to the oil our economy (and hence to a large degree our lives) depends on, to convince the world we’re so strong and dangerous killing 3k of our civilians is unthinkable, etc. etc.
Rilkefan, just to clarify: you are arguing that these last two are potentially good reasons for invading a sovereign state? And you think of yourself as a kind of liberal?
minneapolitan 07.03.06 at 4:37 pm
I’m not a big Chomsky fan, partly because, as an anarchist-communist myself, I don’t see most of his writing as aimed at me. Frankly, from what I’ve read, the apparent audience for his polemical writings are undergraduate Poli Sci majors who haven’t decided much about their own ideological stance yet.
And of course, he’s always trying to prick the most sensitive parts of the academic foreign policy establishment by including these invidious comparisons as discussed above. Frankly, I agree with those of you who’ve said that this makes him less effective as a foreign policy critic, but given his ideological background, did he really ever have any hope of becoming a truly effective one? Chomsky has tried to sit on the fence between respectable academic writing and anarchist agitation, and predictably this has failed to ingratiate him much with either side. His most vicious critics are the leftmost Zionists and the rightmost anarchists, which again, should surprise no one, since he’s been havering in the DMZ between the two for four decades.
So yes, OF COURSE he’s trying to get your goat with the Hitler/Stalin stuff, some of which he probably believes and some of which is inserted more for the pleasure of irritating those who are setting themselves up to be irritated by it.
On a smaller point: Korea/Iraq, maybe not; Mossadegh/Iraq, definitely.
a 07.03.06 at 4:38 pm
abb1: Do you recognize any differences between the respective governments of North and South Korea in 1950? Or were they, in your eyes, equivalent?
rilkefan 07.03.06 at 4:39 pm
“There wasn’t much debate about whether the U.S. had a moral responsibility to wait until those hypothetical WMD were actually used”
I’m a physicist and feel the slightest tinge of responsibility for Trinity etc., and Iraq’s progress towards getting an atomic bomb at the time of the Gulf War was shocking to me. I had little doubt the post-war post-sanctions Iraq had no such capability – but if I had mistakenly thought it did, that would have been a good reason to invade in my view. It’s an unfortunate historical fact that the “WMD” category is confusing to many or even most people – but even gods fight in vain against stupidity (another lack in Chomskian analysis I think).
In any case, I don’t think we would have wanted to wait to act until Haifa or Al Shuayba port was destroyed – in that non-existent world where Saddam was anywhere near getting nukes.
Iran is run by relatively sensible folk – even Pakistan is – and they are adding a great deal of danger to the world with their nuclear programs. I really wouldn’t want Saddam to have the ability to put an atomic bomb into a ship.
rilkefan 07.03.06 at 4:45 pm
“Rilkefan, just to clarify: you are arguing that these last two are potentially good reasons for invading a sovereign state?”
Not sufficient reasons perhaps, but reasons. The chaos, poverty, and violent conflicts arising from a true oil crisis or a nuclear 9/11 should matter to anyone with a soul – perhaps that doesn’t include you.
“And you think of yourself as a kind of liberal?”
Yes, a non-idiotic liberal. But it’s hard to know oneself.
abb1 07.03.06 at 4:56 pm
Do you recognize any differences between the respective governments of North and South Korea in 1950? Or were they, in your eyes, equivalent?
There was a war there in 1950. After the war, I do recognize the difference: one was communist and the other fascist; like, say, the USSR and Italy in 1937.
What’s your point? What does it have to do with the US leaders’ reasons for maintaining a fascist regime there – were the reasons idealistic or not?
engels 07.03.06 at 4:59 pm
Not sufficient reasons perhaps, but reasons. The chaos, poverty, and violent conflicts arising from a true oil crisis or a nuclear 9/11 should matter to anyone with a soul – perhaps that doesn’t include you.
I didn’t ask you whether you thought they mattered, rilkefan. So let me ask you again, and let me quote what you said. Do you stand by the claim you made above that
(1) protect[ing] access to the oil our economy (and hence to a large degree our lives) depends on, (2) convinc[ing] the world we’re so strong and dangerous killing 3k of our civilians is unthinkable
are potentially good reasons for starting a war, by invading a sovereign state? Are you further claiming that they are good reasons for any liberal to hold, and that any liberal who thinks otherwise is “idiotic”?
rilkefan 07.03.06 at 5:03 pm
engels: “So let me ask you again”
No, you may not, not until you’ve learned to read.
Steven Poole 07.03.06 at 5:10 pm
Soru, are you seriously claiming that the occasions on which European countries attacked “Arab-Islamic” territory while simultaneously being under attack from “Arab-Islamic” people are not rare exceptions in the context of the global colonial enterprise? If I have misunderstood you, I apologise: it must be the Chomsky rootkit.
engels 07.03.06 at 5:12 pm
Rilkefan, I have to say, your last two comments haven’t been terribly informative. I asked you, very politely the first time, whether you really meant it when you said
good reasons to want to go in [to Iraq included] to protect access to the oil our economy (and hence to a large degree our lives) depends on, to convince the world we’re so strong and dangerous killing 3k of our civilians is unthinkable
and if so, whether you thought of yourself as a liberal. You responded by (i) answering a different question, (ii) saying I didn’t have a soul, (iii) calling me an idiot and (iv) telling me I can’t read.
If it’s not too much to ask, could you just answer my question?
If you want to say you didn’t actually mean what you said at first, that’s fine. But if you keep avoiding the question by changing the subject and insulting me, you will start to look a bit silly.
Louis Proyect 07.03.06 at 5:13 pm
previously pre: “Louis Proyect, in general, quotations longer than ten lines or so should at least be accompanied by some comments of your own. As it stands it looks like you haven’t read through the CT discussion to this point, and were merely advertising the article instead of engaging in discussion.”
We obviously have different approaches. You have posted over a dozen times on this thread but everything you have written is empty opinion. I prefer to write longer and more substantial items that are obviously not the sort of thing that most blog commentators have either the patience or the committment to write. To be quite honest, I think that mailing lists are much better for serious exchanges but the average academic blog, like this one, is designed to put the blogger in a position hierarchically superior to the commenter. So I try to keep my interventions to a minimum. Thank you for the advice, anyhow, even though it was worthless.
Oliver Kamm 07.03.06 at 5:23 pm
As Steven says, I’ve been corresponding with him on this and related issues over a little while. As we seem to have reached an impasse, I’ll post my comment here directly, and leave it at that. I should stress, however, that we have discussed only the substantive issue raised in this thread, and that’s what I’ll stick to. I generally try to stay out of internet discussions of my mental instability and services as a paid agent of imperialism, however great the autobiographical interest.
Chomsky’s invocation of comparisons to Nazi Germany is not mysterious. If you suggest, as Chomsky did in his first political book, that the US needs “a kind of denazification”, you are attributing Nazi-like characteristics of a non-trivial nature to US society. This heavily qualifies the notion that the US is a free, let alone the freest, society. When I pointed out this aspect of his political thinking, Chomsky claimed that I had misquoted him and also omitted crucial context. His first point was a falsehood and his second sophistry (the context that was so crucial was tha