Does Noam Chomsky Hate America?

[dudeness]

Nah. Just imperialism


It's said that you can judge a man by who his enemies are and what they're willing to say about him to shut him down. With that in mind, it might be instructive to examine what the political enemies of Massachusetts Institute of Technology Linguistics professor Noam Chomsky have said about him.

David Horowitz, reformed leftist turned Likudnik shill, describes Chomsky as "a pathological ayatollah of anti-American hate – and the leader of the treacherous fifth-column Left." Werner Cohn put his poison-pen to work, crafting the subtly titled Partners in Hate: Noam Chomsky and the Holocaust Deniers, a 1995 book which trafficked in hysterical innuendo and specious speculation. Todd Gitlin, who never lets anyone impeach his leftist credentials by forgetting that he was President of Students for a Democratic Society a few decades back, claimed that Chomsky was "irritable" in the wake of 9/11/01; to Gitlin, Chomsky "wasted little time on the attacks themselves before launching into a wooden recitation of atrocities carried out by the American government and its allies."

more..http://www.antiwar.com/gancarski/gan-col.html

[JackSwift]

1. Chomsky is a Great American

He has provided another point of view for over 30 years in the face of constant crude put downs and threats. I don't agree with a lot of his positions, but boy do I value the insight and fearlessness he brings to presenting a non-mainstream point of view. And that point of view is that the USA is sometimes a corrupt capital imperialist. He's made quite a case for it. His detractors never come close to refuting the facts and arguments he marshalls, they just engage in petty ad hominem attacks.

Chomsky is a national treasure. His attackers are professional poison pens, not thinkers.

[izzie]

4. Wish I had said that.

He is a great Am and like us, would just like it to stop doing these War like things. Bush's War is just the fool doing the fools thing. I love Bush going to England. Maybe we could take his re-entry papers away and let the Brits have him?

[La_Serpiente]

2. I respect Chomsky

One of the main problems after 9/11 is that many people just looked at the act of terrorism, but didn't look underneath it.

Why did we get bombed on 9/11? Why did people try to hurt America?

I am glad to know that I now have a pretty good understanding as to why it happened.

However, many people didn't teach themeselves why it happened and didn't really care. Much of that hatred was generated by America's use of military force against everyone and the policies of the IMF.

They think we are traitors. We are not traitos. We are just trying to make some sense out of something so cruel.

[joshdawg]

3. Read an interview with Chomsky

in the October issue of Sun magazine. The man was right on target on all issues concerning this (mis)administration. I wish I could provide a link to the interview.

[Friar]

5. Chomsky's a god

I'm in wonderment and awe at the man's intellect. I feel lucky to understand 1/2 of what he says.

[Caution]

6. Th attack on Chomsky as a holocaust "denier" is crap

It's been made before. Chomsky was defending another person's right to make the argument, not the argument itself. It's called the first amendment and though sometimes people will write abhorrent things, they have the right to do so. It's the same reason DU and Free Republic aren't shut down. Neither of them is politically expedient. (And that is where the similarity ends!). As for 9/11, I've done extensive reading on Noam Chomsky's views on 9/11 and he certainly doesn't take the tack that this was a good thing or anything like that, on the contrary he frequently uses the word abhorrent to describe the attacks. He does however, look deeper into the reasoning behind them and examines ways in which to prevent teh type of thinking that leads to these actions. Some of the things that lead up to terrorist action is poor foreign policy by our leaders. Anyone who denies this simply refuses to believe that the United States could ever act poorly or misunderstand other cultures.

[RaulGroom]

7. I always wonder why mainstream critics give Noam so much press

What percentage of the population reads or pays attention to Chomsky? One tenth of one percent? Maybe? Mainstream folks - on the left and right - LOVE to bash Noam. Why do they bother? Could it be his analysis makes them unconfortable? Through their childish reactions to Noam's work, they increase its effect.

Nice work losers!

:D :D :D

[ixion]

8. Chomsky is excellent

The Dem candidates would be wise to take a lesson from him in how to refute the bogus garbage put forth by this mal-administration. He effortlessly uses their own definitions to show that the US is one of the largest purveyors of terrorist acts in the world.

[Wetzelbill]

11. I always think this too

If only the Dems would call Bush using some of Chomsky's arguments. Ouch that would be a beat down.

I'm no Chomsky, but I've been attacked badly by a few people who didn't like my definition of the concept of terrorism in my writing. Half the idiots on earth attack Chomsky. One brave man. I couldn't imagine being a target for ad hominem attacks at the level he is.

[jonoboy]

9. he has impeccable credentials

as a researcher. When he finds the official policy of the US is in the wrong he simple states it as a matter of fact and shows how certain acts lead to consequences that can be horrific.

[Room101]

10. Chomsky never denied the Holocaust !!

He has documented it in detail. Chomsky wrote a free speech piece, which a Holocaust denier used in his book. David Horowitz exercises the ghost of Joseph Goebbels on a regular basis. One can only laugh at David’s modern day impersonation of Goebbels.

[groovedaddy]

12. He is a "truth teller" but, why then, is he allowed to live?

"manufacturing consent" is the bible on the use of the media to control the flow of information and setting policy.
But really, is anyone who is perceived as a major threat to the status quo allowed to live? Call me paranoid!

[IrateCitizen]

18. You're only dangerous when people begin to listen to you

So long as the establishment can keep Noam Chomsky marginalized, out of sight and mind of the great unwashed masses, he really in no more than a nuisance to them. A consistent decrediting from an endless supply of detractors on the right helps them in this aim, whether it is coordinated or not.

Ever stop to think why Chomsky is featured regularly on Canadian and European TV, but is almost invisible in the American media?

[FrancoUnamerican]

13. Anyone have a link to any of his stuff?

Your favority compsky maybe?

[dudeness]

16. heres one

http://www.geocities.com/dspichtinger/Uni/chomsky.htm

[Say_What]

17. Znet, where he regularly contributes, has a list of his works.

Here's an article about his new book, Hegemony or Survival, America's Quest for Global Dominance

<clips>

In his new book, Hegemony or Survival, America's Quest for Global Dominance, Noam Chomsky continues his powerful analysis of state violence and state terror, reminding us that "terror" isn't primarily what small stateless bands of fanatics deliver to large and powerful states. Rather, as Chomsky argues, history is, in a sense, a history of state terror and the United States has long been a practitioner of the form. One of the United States' favorite targets has been Cuba, which for nearly half a century has been the victim of an unrelenting campaign of U.S. state terrorism.

The world experienced "the most dangerous moment in human history" during the Cuban missile crisis. For Cuba, that most dangerous moment actually began soon after Fidel Castro's guerrilla forces overthrew the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista and never really ended. Now that the Bush administration, pursuing its "war against terrorism," has once again elevated Cuba into America's cross-hairs as a newly anointed member of the Axis of Evil, this excerpt from Chomsky's new book which first appeared on TomDispatch.com seems especially relevant.

http://zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=11&ItemID=4394

Link to the entire Chomsky collection of articles, interviews, books, etc: <http://www.zmag.org/biochomsky.htm?Fname=Noam&Lname=Chomsky&commentary=3&article=5>

[LawDem]

14. What about Cambodia?

Okay, what's your response to the claim that he denied the Cambodian holocaust? Some good folks -- Alterman for example -- make this accusation.

[dudeness]

15. chomskys retort

Chomsky's reply to "Chomsky Lies".
You asked me to comment on material by a critic distributed on the net. If you like, I'll run through it in detail, but it is just a joke. Take the first example to illustrate. I hope you still have it. That had to do with "the case of the missingbloodbath."

Herman and I were clear and explicit about this, not only in the article cited, but elsewhere repeatedly. In brief, from the early days of the Vietnam war, the standard justification across the spectrum (as far to the left as "Dissent" and democratic socialists) was that the US had to keep up the aggression (called "defense," just as in Russia the attack on Afghanistan was called "defense") because if the US pulled out of Vietnam the Communists would carry out a bloodbath. Therefore we had to carry out a bloodbath (currently estimated by US sources at about 3.5 million dead Vietnamese, another 600,000 or so in Cambodia, and probably comparable figures in Laos, where no one counts). As we pointed out in this early 1977 article, no one even pretended that there was a bloodbath in Vietnam; this was a brief article, so we didn't review the data carefully, but we did so shortly after, in our two-volume study "Political Economy of Human Rights" (1979).

So what happened to the "missing bloodbath"? Did those who advocated invading in the first place and fighting on in order to prevent the inevitable bloodbath say, "sorry folks, we were wrong, we didn't have to kill millions of people in unprovoked aggression against South Vietnam (later the rest of IC) to prevent an inevitable bloodbath"? No, not at all. There was not a word of that. That's the "case of the missing bloodbath."

What the apologists for state violence did do was interesting: they turned to Cambodia, where no bloodbath had been predicted at all, and no argument had ever been given that in order to prevent a bloodbath, the US had to continue massacring people there (as noted, 600,000 according to the CIA during the first phase of the "decade of genocide" -- 1969-1979 -- I borrow the phrase from the title of the one independent governmental inquiry, Finland). In a marvellous illustration of how a well-oiled propaganda system can work when it is protected from any critical discussion, the atrocities in Cambodia were used (more accurately, exploited with great joy and passion) to yield retrospective justification for the US invasion of Vietnam. That's pretty neat. In a totalitarian state, it's unlikely that they could have gotten away with it -- probably would have aroused well-merited ridicule.

EDITED BY ADMIN: COPYRIGHT

[realFedUp]

21. Do you have a link to this?

It will need to be edited if it's copyrighted.
rfu, moderator

[IrateCitizen]

19. Chomsky is a truth-teller in a world of lies and false realities

Noam Chomsky is perceived as dangerous because he talks about things that are basic truths, yet largely ignored (or glossed over) by the powers that be. While I don't necessarily agree with all of his conclusions, he sheds light on an important topic, and that is the reality of how POWER operates.

The only counter to the ruthlessness of power is sunlight. Perhaps that is why Chomsky dedicates so much energy to producing layer upon layer of evidence to back up his assertions. In any case, his message boils down to a pretty simple one. Power cannot be trusted. Those who pursue power are those who are most ill-equipped, morally, to wield it. Nation-states are inevitably immoral because they are run by people who are most attracted to power. It is the right and responsibility of citizens throughout the world to actively question and confront power at every opportunity. The United States is simply the most powerful nation, and thereby, the least trustworthy to act in the best interest of people.

And so on.

The reason that so many have a visceral knee-jerk reaction toward him is simple -- when confronted with the kind of thought he puts forth, coupled with the mountain of evidence, people see their own realities as challenged. The only options are to consider Chomsky's views as the true reality, with regards to power relationships specifically; or to cast his views away. There is no middle ground. By casting his views aside, you can return to the realm of false realities and blissful ignorance. By accepting his views as a viable explanation of the true reality, you are opening yourself up for a world of disappointments and disillusionments, one in which you can NEVER return to the views of blissful ignorance you held before.

[fjc]

20. Whoreowitz and his ilk love America.

It's democracy they can't stand.

[smallprint]

22. Another great chomsky link

http://monkeyfist.com/ChomskyArchive

I like his interviews and lectures better than his essays, because he really lets loose and is easier to understand.

They are put together in book form in Understanding Power, which has the footnotes on the web, www.understandingpower.com. I don't know of anyone else who has done that-- it's a really good idea, and since his statements are so challenging and hard to believe at first, I end up reading a lot of footnotes!