Chomksy Blog

what’s “chomksy”?

I should also make clear that I don’t know that all of Chomsky’s recent books are done this way, and I don’t know the exact details of how they are done. Only, this is my understanding of how his political writings are often done.

Chomsky is full of affectations, which is probably why I’ve never jumped on his bandwagon.

Joe, I agree there’d be fireworks. That’s why it would be so exciting!

As I might have mentioned before here, _Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax_ is one of my favourite books. But it’s also one of the most dangerous I’ve ever read. My worst blogging missteps have come from aiming for the style Geoff has in that book, and falling about a million miles short. Well, that and writing drunk.

Noam Chomsky, whatever else has and will be said about him, has revealed himself as a man burdened with a remarkably empathetic heart.

His errors of thought, if errors they are, can reliably be set at the feet of a blinding humanitarianism. (As much cannot be said, it must be said, of the vast majority of America’s critics, so-called “humanitarians” who often betray themselves as not-as-subtle-as-they-suspect totalitarians in their own right.)

And whatever Chomsky’s virtues and/or vices as a political thinker, the prospect of him slipping, at long last, through the looking glass and into blog Brobdingnag is a delicious one.

Assuming the man remains interested enough to keep his posts at all current, academia’s favorite leftist curmudgeon will undoubtedly provide enough provocative posts to sate the blogoshpere for many months to come. (At least until the Law of Diminishing Contrarian Returns inexorably sets in, or his once-promising posts degenerate, as seems to happen too often among lefty sites these days, into mindless rants about Halliburton and sinister Straussian Jews, and so on. In which case nonpartisan bloggers and blog readers will naturally first sigh, and then remind themselves to avoid him.)

To my mind, no other prominent leftist intellectual in American history has observed America “Through a Glass, Darkly” as entertainingly as Chomsky.

Despite (or on account of) his accentuate-the-negative-in-all-circumstances perspective, Chomsky’s pious political criticism (and he never offers anything but pious criticism in any political context that I’ve noticed) is always breath of bracing air.

Even when Chomsky regurgitates the most one-sided and scurrilous of all anti-American cliches, he manages to be novel.

In perspective, if not, sadly–especially for a linguist–in style.

ogged: I’d be surprised if comments last more than a month. A pity, actually.

From the latest post at the Chomsky blog:

People in the more civilized sectors of the world (what we call “the third world,” or the “developing countries”)

Don’t quite get it. Is he being ironic?

andrew, I believe Chomsky is more like Saruman (with apologies to the late Ahmed Yassin). After all, Saruman did attempt to convince Gandalf (who represents the West) to support Sauron (of the East). And Saruman was known for his voice — his silver-tongued ability to demagogue.

“Most couldn’t remember afterwards the words they had heard, and if they did, the words seemed empty by themselves. Mostly they remembered the delight of hearing the voice speak to them. All that was said by the voice seemed “wise and reasonable.” A desire was roused in them to be swift in agreement, even to seem wise themselves.

“Oh, who doesn’t want to appear wise? And for those who would speak against the voice, their speech seemed rough. Anger was kindled towards them in the others’ heart. Such was the nature of the spell that Saruman cast on them in the ‘song’ of his voice. For many the sound of the voice itself was enough to maintain the spell.

“For some, the spell lasted only for as long as the voice spoke to them directly. If it spoke to another, they smiled as if they could see through a juggler’s trick that others gape at. For those who were “conquered” however, the spell endured. Its soft whispering kept on whispering, urging them to comply.”

Apt, don’t you agree?

Inkling, you can turn in your membership card. The Inklings seem to have been the kind of conservative who realized that Western society often betrayed Christian values, and they didn’t simply mean sexual ethics either (which is what modern Christian conservatives seem to mean by values)–they were critical of greed, arrogance, and imperialism.

Here is Tolkien in the introduction to LOTR, denying that it was meant to be an allegory for WWII–

“The real war does not resemble the legendary war in its process or its conclusion. If it had inspired or directed the development of the legend, then certainly the Ring would have been seized and used against Sauron’ he would not have been annihilated, but enslaved, and Barad-dur would not have been destroyed, but occupied. Saruman, failing to get possession of the Ring, would in the confusion and treacheries of the time have found in Mordor the missing links in his own researches into Ring-lore, and before long he would have made a Great Ring of his own with which to challenge the self-styled Ruler of Middle-earth. In that conflict both sides would have held hobbits in hatred and contempt; they would not long have survived even as slaves.”

Sounds sort of like Chomsky commenting that if you looked at the Western Hemisphere, where the US held sway, one might have thought the fascists won the war.

Lewis was Tolkien’s pal in the Inklings, and though I can’t find my copy of “Mere Christianity”, I remember where he says that a Christian society would probably seem conservative in its attitudes on sex, but very leftist in its attitudes towards the economy and advertising. And I remember him making a few comments about the hypocrisy of imperialism somewhere, but can’t give a citation.

Christian conservatives of that ilk don’t seem to be especially common these days, but I think Tolkien, Lewis, and Chomsky had some opinions in common (though not necessarily on linguistics, where I have the vague sense that Tolkien’s and Chomsky’s interests have virtually nothing in common.)

Donald,I have a feeling that not a single inkling would be anything other than horrified at Chomsky’s anarcho-syndicalism. The paradise that Dr. Chomsky believes possible here on earth can only come about through a lot of dead bodies.

Yes, communism (in all of its forms) is basically what happens when you take the Christian social consciousness and remove God. But hell, if you take Christian epistemology and remove God, you get deconstructionism. The thing is, though, that removing God makes quite a large change in the big picture.

Chun, some people have been referring to the post structuralists as having “neo-scholastic qualities” for quite awhile.. so feel free.

>… conspiracy theorist …

Noam Chomsky gets attacked by portions of the left fairly often for his dismissals of conspiracy theories -including his (justified IMO) critisim as nonsense the idea that administration officials planned or deliberately allowed 911, and his dismissal of the idea of a broader conspiracy behind the Kennedy assasisation. Noam is the ultimate structurualist; the anti-Stone.

>…leading academic defender of Pol Pot….

Christopher Hitchens wrote an excellent piece crticizing demolishing this.

Seems a sign of intellectual weakness to attribute views to an opponent he does not hold, rather than deal with his actual arguments.

real email Garlpublic at comcast dot net.

This reminded me of the Capitol Steps Follies skit that made fun of Bob Dole’s constant allusions to himself as “Bob Dole”—to the point, in the skit, that he was incapable of saying “I.” In a send up of the short-lived 60 minutes debates, the Clinton character gets him to talk about that country we were about to invade
Bob Dole: “Bob Dole raq.”
Clinton: “That’s right. And what’s the country right next to that?”
Bob Dole: “Bob Dole ran.”
Clinton: “That’s right. Bob Dole ran. But Bob Dole didn’t win.”

I leave just cleverness regarding Chomsky to the better linguists among us.

I must admit to having some trouble understanding Chomksy’s following. It is true that he is rarely incorrect in the historical facts and quotations he uses. It is true that he is not a conspiracy theorist. But is that enough ? What is exactly that Chomsky brings to the situation that others do not ?

He isn’t a reporter or researcher. He rarely visits anywhere he writes about, and he elides or ommits information that does not support his views. But what exactly are those views ? Although I know he is an anarchist, it would be hard to tell that from his political writing. The only consistent theme that emerges is opposition to American (and very occasionally, other Western) policies. No program to cover the situations at which those policies are directed is ever presented – in some cases Chomsky incredibly claims the problems concerned do not exist.

On what is that opposition based ? No insight is offered into the foundations of Chomsky’s own views, but the case made in his writings is always based on the harmful effects of American policies. This is in itself extraordinary. No government policy of any kind ever has no harmful effects, and to present the harms without the benefits, as Noam does, is no way to evaluate policy. Of course, Chomsky actually opposes the whole idea of policy, because he opposes government and therefore all politics, but it is similarly unreasonable to contrast actual politics with a utopia.

Someone above described this as empathy at work: Chomsky’s empathy seems remarkably concentrated on the victims of the West and its allies, and rather dilute when it comes to the victims of the dictators who rule many of the “civilised sectors of the world” when the oppose the West. Similarly, it is hard to see it as a pointing-out of hypocrisies. Many of the harms Chomsky points out are well known and accepted, either as accidents, errors, unpleasant consequences or exceptional cases, by those he blames for them.

Of course, it is true than in many cases the public is tragically ignorant. Chomsky blames the media, but his media criticism, while certainly factually accurate, reflects the problems with his reportage. He omits and elides the distortions that do not fit his views. The model proposed in “Manufacturing Consent” is inadequate as an explanation of what actually happens in newsrooms, and similarly the supposed motivations of those doing the distorting are not examined in detail. I suspect that last point is why he is often (imprecisely) accused of conspiracy theory.

Although I may have been harsh in places, I don’t think it is possible to claim that anything above is factually inaccurate. Why then does anyone pay Noam Chomsky attention ? The only conclusion that I can draw is that he is filling a role very similar to that he accuses others of filling: he is primarily a propagandist for an anti-American view.

Chomsky is appealing to me because he’s an antidote to the endless stream of dishonest pro-American jingoistic bullsh** that one finds in the so-called liberal media. It’s easier in the age of the Internet to find alternative sources of information about American foreign policy and human rights violations than it was a few years ago, but reading Chomsky is still a quick way to find out what some of the sources are. That ought to be easy to understand.

As for being a Pol Pot apologist, I used to think he was one because everyone seemed to say so. Then I actually read him. Chomsky, IMO, did initially think that Pol Pot was merely a mass murderer, not a full-fledged genocidal maniac. He left open the possibility in his 1979 book that Pol Pot was a genocidal maniac, but you can tell if you read him that he thought it more likely that he was merely a mass murderer. After the Vietnamese invasion toppled Pol Pot (an invasion Chomsky initially condemned as aggression), he quickly realized that the death toll under Pol Pot was high enough to justify the term “genocide”, though he also thinks that the term should also be applied to the American war.

Before I read Chomsky, I thought that being an apologist for Pol Pot meant saying that Pol Pot was a good guy, so imagine my surprise to find that it meant saying that Pol Pot was guilty of gruesome atrocities, comparable in scale though not in per capita killed to what was going on in East Timor. As it turns out, the per capita death rate was similar and Cambodia’s death toll much larger in absolute terms, so Chomsky was underestimating it, but when he’d spent a chapter denouncing the US record in East Timor, it was startling to see Cambodia compared to it. I’m understating my reaction–I was naively astonished when I started reading the Cambodia chapter in “The Political Economy of Human Rights”, because, though I think it is Chomsky at his worst, it was nothing like what I’d been led to believe and at that time (I can barely remember what it was like to think this) I didn’t think pundits lied or misled their readers in order to discredit someone they despised. Since that time, when someone is accused of being an apologist for this or that, I’ve realized it’s a good idea to see that person’s writings at first hand before believing it. Cuz, you know, mainstream political intellectuals in a self-righteous mood can’t seem to be trusted any more than those nasty radical types.

I see it didn’t take long for the Fascist Footballers to shit all over Chomsky’s blog. In the wake of this denial of service attack, commenting is suspended and the comments have been removed. Personally, I would’ve have left them up as a display of pathology.

Sleep easy, Sebastian dear.

Just because the term “conspiracy theory” is misued does not mean there is not such a thing, nor that it is not worthy of dimissal. In it’s classic form “conspiracy theory” is a way the mildly liberal admit that horrible things happen without admitting there is something fundamental wrong with the system.

It is only small groups of shadowy figures who do the horrible things; putting good people in charge would solve everything.

Yes there are really such things as conspiracies. But the worst evils are done publicly or as “open secrets” (widely known, but not admitted).

I hate to seem more ignorant than you already think me, but I really wasn’t specifically aware of Chomsky’s views on Israel. (Though I bet I could guess what they are).

The fact that you believe I’m trying to covertly attack his views on Israel (of which I am unaware) by drawing attention to his well published views on Pol Pot is rather revealing I must admit. The winding ‘logic’ of it is precisely something Chomsky would engage in, so I’m firmly convinced you are a committed reader.

” Chomsky, IMO, did initially think that Pol Pot was merely a mass murderer, not a full-fledged genocidal maniac. He left open the possibility in his 1979 book that Pol Pot was a genocidal maniac, but you can tell if you read him that he thought it more likely that he was merely a mass murderer. After the Vietnamese invasion toppled Pol Pot (an invasion Chomsky initially condemned as aggression), he quickly realized that the death toll under Pol Pot was high enough to justify the term “genocide”, though he also thinks that the term should also be applied to the American war.”

I would be amused by the fact that you think “Chomsky, IMO, did initially think that Pol Pot was merely a mass murderer” counts as a good defense of the man, but frankly it just sickens me.

And with all this talk about conspiracy theories: Don’t you think if they really existed, I would have been ordered to kill Chomsky–revealer of secrets–and then forced to kill myself to protect the Gnomes of Zurich?

Boo!

Sebastian, merely telling me that you’re sickened doesn’t impress me one bit, because it’s been my experience that most Chomsky-haters carefully pick and choose what sickens them–otherwise they’d have to admit that Chomsky is right about the issues which concern him the most. There’s a kind of hysterical vindictive reaction to Noam’s writings in some people that makes me think of a guilty conscience–otherwise people could read him calmly, say he’s right here, wrong there, and not tell idiotic and vicious lies about him. I think it’s wrong (bearing false witness, one could say) to say that Chomsky was an apologist for Pol Pot, because to people unfamiliar with his writings, it sounds as if Chomsky had said Pol Pot was a good man. It’s a funny sort of apologist who compares Pol Pot’s record of killing to the mass slaughter that was going on in East Timor. But as is Chomsky’s point, most mainstream Americans care little or nothing about America’s role in East Timor in the 70’s, so if Chomsky compares Pol Pot’s record to East Timor, perhaps to your typical Chomsky-hater it sounds like he is uttering praise.

In reality, Chomsky said in 1977 and 1979 that Pol Pot was guilty of serious and gruesome atrocities. He was not at that time sure that Pol Pot was a full fledged genocidal killer. He started using the term genocide by the 80’s.

Well, guess what? It’s now coming out that the Tutsis who took over Rwanda after the Hutu genocide in 1994 might themselves have murdered 450,000 people, from what I’ve just read. People who reported on the Hutu genocide of the Tutsis knew that the Tutsi had killed a bunch of people when they took over, but it now appears there were two genocides, not one. So in effect, people had mistakenly thought the second full-scale genocide was only a set of atrocities.

I thought that myself. I bet you thought so. Most people did. I hope you’re sickened by it. Say, Sebastian, does this mean we’re all evil, just like ole Noam? Yup, no doubt.

Msg, I learn things from your posts too, though we definitely are on opposite sides on some things.

Good heavens, Chomsky is an apologist because he wanted to avoid the fact of Cambodian genocide to make his ‘greater’ point about the fact that all evil comes from the US (only very very mild exaggeration on the word ‘all’). And what is this Hutu, thing? Chomsky didn’t ‘confuse’ two acts of genocide. He denied the existance of Pol Pots genocide far beyond the time when it became clear.

Sebastian, your comment regarding Chomsky’s “point” is silly. This is clear to anyone who reads him and figures out what his point is by doing the remarkable and revolutionary new thing of, well, noticing what point he says he is trying to make. He concentrates on US crimes because he thinks it’s his duty as a US citizen to do so, and because he thinks the mainstream press either does a miserable job or actively covers up such crimes. He says this over and over again and tells people that they should read the mainstream press and that he isn’t a source of information for other kinds of atrocities. He doesn’t even cover all US crimes, something he pointed out to me in a letter many years ago when I suggested he could reach more people by writing books on human rights violations in general, so that he couldn’t be accused of what you’re accusing him of doing.

I could and have offered real criticisms of him–criticisms based on actually reading him, understanding his point, and still disagreeing. On the Cambodia issue, I think he was more skeptical of the larger death toll estimates than he should have been, probably because so many lies had been told in that war before, but the impression given by his critics when they say “apologist” is that he was a Pol Pot supporter. It’s certainly what I expected to see when I picked up the second volume of “Political Economy of Human Rights” many years ago and started browsing through the Cambodia chapter. It’s IMO Chomsky at his worst (as I said in my sickening post), but it was shockingly different from what I’d been led to expect.

Actually, in a sense Chomsky did confuse two genocides in Cambodia. He thought that much of the suffering under Pol Pot was the aftereffects of the horrific civil war (and US bombing campaign). I don’t have a source handy, but I think there were literally millions of people uprooted by the bombing campaign, out of a country of 7 million people and around 500,000 died. There were warnings at the end of the civil war that Cambodia was on the brink of famine. So it was natural for Chomsky to think that some of the suffering in the postwar period was due to the war, though as it turns out the bulk of it was the fault of the Khmer Rouge.

The point of the Tutsi example and others I could cite (the estimates I’ve seen for the death toll of the Bangladesh killings by Pakistan in 1971 varies by two orders of magnitude, from tens of thousands to 3 million) is that it is often impossible to know even to an order of magnitude how many people have been murdered in some atrocity until a careful study is done, though it certainly doesn’t stop people from putting numbers in print. So while Pol Pot was in charge, it was clear to Noam that terrible things were happening, but not that it would turn out to be genocide. The odd thing about the Tutsi case is that it’s been ten years now and we’re just starting to hear that there was a second genocide.

The criticisms of Noam on Cambodia seem particularly hypocritical when the whole point of his writing on that subject was to compare coverage of the Cambodian atrocities to those in East Timor, and yet while everyone “knew” what a terrible person Noam was, no one seemed to know anything or care much about what was happening in East Timor. Until late 1999, when Clinton finally stopped backing Indonesia.

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