Noam Chomsky is one of the most hysterically abused figures in the world today. Even his critics have to concede that his work inventing the field of linguistics -- and so beginning to decode the structure of how language is formed in the human brain -- makes him one of the most important intellectuals alive. But when he applies the same rigorous scientific method to figuring out the structure of how power -- especially the American government's - works, he is pepper-sprayed with smears. He is a self-hating Holocaust denier, a jihad-loving traitor, a Pol Pot-licking communist, and on and on.
If all you know of his work is the smears, then his new book Hopes and Prospects will be a revelation. In his rather dry understated way, he excavates the reality behind the babbling Babel of 24/7 corporate news, and places long-buried truths on the table for us to examine. Every one is sourced to the leading academic journals, the best experts, the sharpest medical advice -- yet each one is a shock if you rely on news brought to you by corporations and corrupt right-wing billionaires.
So, for example, he uncovers the story of why Haiti is so poor, and could be shaken to pieces by an earthquake that would have killed only a handful in California. It's a story of man-made earthquakes, one after another. The country was the first to rebel against slavery and to successful cast off the whip-hand -- and so it was brutally punished by the French Empire. Every time it has begun to rise onto its feet, it has been kicked back down, with the American Empire taking over to topple its elected leaders (the last was put on a plane at gunpoint in 2008) and stifle any moves towards development.
But who knows? Who has heard about it? Who ties to hold our leaders accountable for it? Chomsky is trying to rescue crimes from the memory-hole, so we can remember them. He explains that Ronald Reagan -- the great hero of the American right -- was a great champion of jihadism. It was Reagan who encouraged Pakistan to simultaneously become viciously fundamentalist, and acquire nuclear weapons. Chomsky coolly condemns "the global jihad launched by Zia and Reagan," launched for geopolitical reasons, with no concern for the after-effects.
But Reagan remains unstained. Chomsky quotes the great American historian Francis Jennings, who noted of early twentieth century leaders: "In history, the man in the ruffled shirt and gold-coated waistcoat levitates above the blood he has ordered to be spilled by dirty-handed underlings." Instead, Chomsky says, history is too often ruled by the maxim spelled out by Thucydidies: "The strong do as they wish, while the poor suffer as they must."
But it doesn't have to be this way. This is a book weaved through with hope and awe at all the people who have managed to slip beyond imperial control and establish real democracy. Chomsky's strongest model -- and the world's -- is Bolivia's experiment with radical democracy. After thirty years of having neoliberalism forced on them by the West, including the cost of water being pushed beyond their grasp, the Bolivian people rose up and elected the first indigenous leader since the European conquests. Since then, it has had the fastest fall in poverty and the most rapid growth in Latin America.
In his cool blizzard of facts and academic sources, the hot air of his critics seems to melt away. To pluck one example, the leftist-turned-neoconservative journalist Nick Cohen has accused Chomsky of being soft on jihadism (as well as of "not being bothered" by "the crimes of Adolf Hitler"). Yet Chomsky points out that an analysis of official data for the government-supported RAND corporation found that the invasion of Iraq caused a "seven-fold increase in jihadism." If you really hate jihadism, you have to figure out what actually reduces it, rather than engage in bluster. Chomsky supported the path that produces fewer jihadis, while Cohen supports the path that produces more.
Chomsky presents all this plainly, and with -- and this is often overlooked -- a sly sense of humour. Describing the growing rebellions in Afghanistan, he notes: "People have the odd characteristic of objecting to the slaughter of family members and friends." He picks through the Wonderland of U.S. propaganda-speak for the most comical examples. To pluck just one: Kennedy courtier Hans Morgenthau said that the "reality" of U.S. foreign policy lies in its "transcendent ideals", and when the historical record suggested the U.S. had fallen short of it, this was merely "an abuse of reality." He sternly warned that we must not "confound the abuse of reality with reality itself."
When I was shamefully wrong about the war in Iraq myself, it was an email exchange with Noam Chomsky -- where he laid bare the best evidence about what was motivating the U.S. government -- that helped me figure out where I had gone so badly wrong. Hopes and Prospects is a book that can do the same for many more people - a treasure-trove of truths that shouldn't be left buried in our over-flowing sandpit of propaganda and lies.
Johann Hari is a writer for the Independent. To read more of his articles, click here or here.
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Cambodia.” Radical Priorities (rev. ed., AK Press, 2003), p80.
Chomskism :“None of the witness accounts of killings will apparently bear any resemblance to the mass executions that had been predicted by Westerners” Distortions at Fourth Hand Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, The Nation, June 25, 1977
The “slaughter” by the Khmer Rouge is a Moss- New York Times creation. ( Ibid)
Return to reality
Fact: Genocide investigators have determined that the Khmer Rouge perpetrated 1.1 million violent killings and murdered 2.2 million victims overall.36
P.S. of course, if this were one of the Chomsky bete noir-- U.S. or ANY of its allies, an immediate sanctimonious and astonishingly long essays on how the causalities are under-reported due to ( no doubt) conspiracy of the neo-colonialist, neo-imperialist American minions of the world capital....
The second quote is from Sydney Shanberg.
at least 0-10 by now... keep trying buddy, im learning as i correct your misrepresentations.
indeed take over a country that did not want to be taken over.’ This is by no means the general
view of Western scholarship.” Letters, New York Review of Books, April 20, 1967.
Fact:” The Chinese invasion provoked massive popular uprisings. Up to 500,000 Tibetans were killed or died of forced starvation by the mid-1960s.”
http://www.zcommunications.org/scruton-smears-chomsky-by-alex-doherty
http://www.counterpunch.org/herman07262003.html
... as well as this article by Christopher Hitchens, who might be considered impartial in the matter, and commented that :
Chomsky and Herman wrote that "the record of atrocities in Cambodia is substantial and often gruesome." They even said, "When the facts are in, it may turn out that the more extreme condemnations were in fact correct." The facts are now more or less in, and it turns out that the two independent writers were as close to the truth as most, and closer than some.
Chomsky "That one bombing [of a factory in Sudan], according to the estimates made
by the German Embassy in Sudan and Human Rights Watch, probably led to tens of
thousands of deaths.” Interview, Salon January 16, 2002."
Back to reality:
Human Rights Watch publicly denied giving any estimate.
" Human Rights Watch has conducted no research into civilian deaths as the result of U.S. bombing in Sudan and would not make such an assessment without a careful and thorough research mission on the ground. "
Carroll Bogert, Communications Director of Human Rights Watch ( “Noam Needs a Fact-Checker,” Salon.)
And in the parting stinger on Chomsky false attribution::
"In our experience, trenchant and effective criticism of U.S. military action requires factual investigation. "
-- Carroll Bogert, Communications Director, Human Rights Watch
Brava!!!
"many relief efforts have been postponed indefinitely, including a crucial one run by the U.S.-based International Rescue Committee where more than fifty southerners are dying daily"
That such a small error can find its way into the mainstream of "Chomsky criticisms" is quite strong testimony as to the impeccability of his work.
Until I discovered just how massive his falsification of facts, evidence, sources and statistics is.
Post a link to any of his lectures or essays, and I'll pledge to find at least 5 factual errors or mistaken citations or flubbed statistics.
It is inexcusable for a academic.
Carroll Bogert ( Human Rights Watch) got it right in her article “Noam Needs a Fact-Checker,”
I am no longer a fan. If you paid close attention neither would you.
Typical Chomskiist negligent and cynical cartoonish appraoch to hsitorical evidence. Reality of course is that USSR supported Mao first and foremost but tried to play the middle by sending a very, very limited assistance to Nationalists, just in case.
In fact U.S. Marines were in Beiping and Tianjin just in case Mao and Soviets try to invade.
Chomsky “The harshest critics claim that perhaps 100,000 people have been slaughtered in
Cambodia.” Radical Priorities (rev. ed., AK Press, 2003), p80.
Chomsky:“None of the witness accounts of killings will apparently bear any resemblance to the mass executions that had been predicted by Westerners” Distortions at Fourth Hand Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, The Nation, June 25, 1977
Chomsky:"The “slaughter” by the Khmer Rouge is a Moss- New York Times creation." ( Ibid)
Back to reality--
Truth: Genocide investigators have determined that the Khmer Rouge perpetrated 1.1 million violent killings and murdered 2.2 million victims overall.
Conclusion: Chomsky was categorically wrong. Chomsky refused to acknowledge or apologize for such gross misstatement of facts.
http://www.counterpunch.org/herman07262003.html
Cut-and pasting of links to article you haven't even read is an indolent way to argue and a futile one.
I
He slices through lies like a knife through hot butter.
"Some Elementary Comments on The Rights of Freedom of Expression."
by Noam Chomsky
Preface to Robert Faurisson, Mémoire en défense, October 11, 1980
"is it true that Faurisson is an anti-Semite or a neo-Nazi?... But from what I have read, I find no evidence to support either conclusion."
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/19801011.htm
Astonishing (but not surprising) surfeit of reading comprehension from an esteemed linguistics professor!!!
Article by Mr. Faurisson:"The Gas Chambers of Auschwitz Appear to be Physically Inconceivable.'
Journal of Historical Review, 2, 4, Winter 1981, p. 311-17.
Faurisson:"It will remain for European citizens to choose between the petrol pump (something concrete) and the gas chamber (which is hot air and brainwash)."
Faurisson in letter to Mrs Deborah LIPSTADT about Jews and Holocaust :' I told you that my worst enemies were the Jewish organizations and I gave you many proofs of their impudent activities which aim to protect what I consider, after so much research, as a historical lie."
http://www.vho.org/aaargh/engl/FaurisArch/RF890628.html
Will Chomsky ever retract his support for Faurisson-- don't count on it.
"I made it explicit that I would not discuss Faurisson's work, having only limited familiarity with it (and, frankly, little interest in it). Rather, I restricted myself to the civil-liberties issues and the implications of the fact that it was even necessary to recall Voltaire's famous words in a letter to M. le Riche: "I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write."
One can easily take out the name of Khmer Rouge and insert any U.S. ally into it.
Keep all the other 60s lingo and bombast the same:
"In Cambodia, allegations of genocide are being used to whitewash Western imperialism, to distract attention from the “institutionalized violence” of the expanding system of subfascism and to lay the ideological basis for further intervention and oppression. We have seen how the Western propaganda system creates, embroiders, plays up, distorts, and suppresses evidence according to imperial needs." Dr. Chomsky.
P.S. To this day Chomsky refuses to acknowledge or address his seriously misplaced support for Khmer Rouge.
In academia refusal to acknowledge and amend one's mistakes in research quickly results in severe reduction of one's credibility.
Now he might well have been seriously in error in estimating the scale of their crimes but at no point did he indicate that he supported them and frankly as an anarchist it would be an astonishing position for him to have taken at any point. It simply didn't happen.
Of course the U.S. and British governments did materially support the Khmer Rouge but best of luck getting them even to acknowledge that now let alone apologize for it.
Another comment from a citizen of Planet Khmer Chomsky.
Now--Truth---
"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."
Noam Chomsky-- "Distortions at Fourth Hand" in Nation magazine, (25 Jun 1977, pp. 89-94)
Next subject
I do not find any trace of this except in the delusional hallucinations of the believers.
"The fact that Moslems adopted India's number system belies the claim that Islam lacks "curiosity" about foreign cultures."
No. Read this admirable explanation.
The author Aldous Huxley, who lived in North Africa in the 1920s, made the following observation: "About the immediate causes of things - precisely how they happen - they seem to feel not the slightest interest. Indeed, it is not even admitted that there are such things as immediate causes: God is directly responsible for everything. 'Do you think it will rain?' you ask pointing to menacing clouds overhead. 'If God wills,' is the answer. You pass the native hospital. 'Are the doctors good?' 'In our country,' the Arab gravely replies, in the tone of Solomon, 'we say that doctors are of no avail. If Allah wills that a man die, he will die. If not, he will recover.' All of which is profoundly true, so true, indeed, that is not worth saying. To the Arab, however, it seems the last word in human wisdom. ... They have relapsed - all except those who are educated according to Western methods - into pre-scientific fatalism, with its attendant incuriosity and apathy."
It of course in no way shape of form comes anywhere close to answering the questions posed but as with seemingly everything in life for you just presents another opportunity to spew vaguely connected anti Muslim quotes.
Are you not running out of quotes from the 'Big Bumper Book of Anti Muslim Bigotry' mummy bought you for Christmas yet?
Your comment: “And you do this by attributing all attacks by Muslims on others to jihad and not just basic empire building”
My quote: “Islam wishes to destroy all states and governments anywhere on the face of the earth which are opposed to the ideology and program of Islam regardless of the country or the nation which rules it. The purpose of Islam is to set up a State on the basis of its own ideology and program.” — Syed Abul A’ala Maududi
Your comment: “Than's for the second paragraph Nostradamus but if I want to hear a sooth sayer I'll go to one with either a track record or at least some bells and whistles.”
My quote: " 'We're the ones who will change you,' the Norwegian imam Mullah Krekar told the Oslo newspaper Dagbladet in 2006. 'Just look at the development within Europe, where the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes. Every Western woman in the EU is producing an average of 1.4 children. Every Muslim woman in the same countries is producing 3.5 children.' "
Oh and why not follow the conventions and reply to posts in the normal manner using the reply function? Is that too tough for you to follow?
But what happened to celibate saints?
Oh and I don't find his writing dry. It's rather enjoyable. To me it's like if cable news heads wrote academic, researched nonfiction.