Chomsky: Is this man I deeply respect a bigot and a sympathizer for certain acts of genocide?

Great Debates
1

I have never encountered another academic who is so well backed up by evidence in their descriptions of world events. I often rely on Chomsky for information about the areas of world affairs that are his focus. I do this because for every assertion he makes he has a strong source that I can look up. I don’t have to trust him since I can just check the source.

Some people on these forums have attempted to discredit any evidence in a debate that include a cite to Chomsky by attacking the credibility of Chomsky. The two attacks I have heard are that he sympathized with the Khmer Rouge and denied th genocide they committed and that he supported a Holocaust denier, Faurisson, and sympathize with his positions.

I’m sure that there are many more meaty sources to bring to inquiry about these criticisms. Go ahead and provide those if you find them and want to discuss them. My apprehension here is that people will not read the sources as they are long and dense. However I would like to come to some conclusions about whether Chomsky is a good source for information and characterizations about various issues or not credible. Any time I bring him up the thread I bring him up in degenerated into an argument about Chomsky and not Chomsky’s evidence. For a man widely considered to be the most cited living author I find it troubling that people can’t tolerate references to him in posts in the forum without violent reaction.

It is my opinion that Chomsky is not perfect but is as an academic and author in the area of politics and world affairs on a large scale is highly credible. I do think that there is a slight learning curve to reading his writings as the way he speaks about evidence does not use the usual political pretenses that in every passage inform you to his preference of involved parties. He will discuss the problems with sources and evidence both for those he favors and those he does not. Taken out of context it’s easy to paint him as for or against any side you want. He is also highly leftist and extremely critical of corporations, US and it’s allied foreign policy, Israel, globalization, organized religion and any number of other popularly supported entities and ideas. He is also known for taking the side of our declared enemies on many occasions that people find distasteful. I believe he does these things out of objectively applying his principles to each situation regardless of the parties involved. Such as if the US government attempts to stage a coup in a sovereign nation who is not threatening the US militarily he finds that just as offensive and illegitimate as if some other country tried to do that to us.

Here’s a link that holds the position that Chomsky is a sympathizer with any anti-western force including going into some detail the contentions about his comments on the Khmer Rouge.

I will not be responding to your posts Ibn Warraq that are character attacks, petty and absurd questions about what books I’ve read and how many and what my gpa is or whether I studied with the grand poobah in Tibet. If you want me to respond to you argue with substance, and I will do the same. Anything else will be ignored.

http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomsky/wma.html

On Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge I think this article does a pretty good job in detail of tearing apart the characterization of Chomsky’s comments and writings at the time about the situation.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2779086.html

Link to a good and I think balanced critique/argument that concludes against Chomsky being a monstrous holocaust denier: http://www.amptoons.com/blog/2006/01/16/chomsky-and-holocaust-denial/

Here’s a link to an article that attacks Chomsky for both the Cambodian and Faurisson subjects.

http://www.jochnowitz.net/Essays/ExtremistPolReg.html

Interesting quote from this source. “The Chicago Tribune describes Chomsky as “the most cited living author.” At the same time, he has been characterized as a writer whose work has been suppressed “because the gentlemen who own the major media don’t want you to know about Noam Chomsky.” 1 It is paradoxical that such a well-known figure has trouble finding a publisher.”

Here’s an interesting one. A 66 page PDF dedicated to presenting 200 of “Chomsky’s Lies”. It’s nice that the guy gives cites for each one, maybe I’ll select a few at random at some point to check.

The link to the PDF comes frim This page: http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomskyhoax.html A website that seems dedicated to attacking Chomsky, promoting Israeli policy, attacking the far left, attacking holocaust deniers and antisemitism. This all seems fine enough, I’m just a little puzzled by why Chomsky is so prominent and central to the site. Though I can guess, the most credible critic is likely to become the biggest target of people that support Israel at the strongest end of the spectrum.

http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomskyhoax.html
Here is a link to his bibliography: http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/chomsky/chomskybiblio.html His works are divided between his linguistics research and his political research and advocacy.

Chomsky has received innumerable awards and accolades for humanitarian contributions, though I can’t find a comprehensive list anywhere I know that its ridiculously long.

The Justice Studies association has an annual award given out in his honor http://www.justicestudies.org/Justice-About-Awards-Chomsky.htm

Articles: http://www.chomsky.info/articles.htm

Talks: http://www.chomsky.info/talks.htm

Interviews: http://www.chomsky.info/interviews.htm

debates: http://www.chomsky.info/debates.htm

A list of links to some other’s wrtings about Chomsky http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky.htm

Universities he has honorary degrees from

University of London
University of Chicago
Loyola University of Chicago
Swarthmore College
University of Delhi
Bard College
University of Massachusetts Amherst
University of Pennsylvania
Georgetown University
Amherst College
University of Chicago
Loyola University of Chicago
Swarthmore College
University of Delhi
Bard College
University of Massachusetts Amherst
University of Pennsylvania
Georgetown University
Amherst College
University of Cambridge
University of Colorado[153]
University of Buenos Aires
McGill University
Rovira i Virgili University
Columbia University
Villanova University
University of Connecticut
University of Maine
Scuola Normale Superiore
University of Chicago
Loyola University of Chicago
Swarthmore College
University of Delhi
Bard College
University of Massachusetts Amherst
University of Pennsylvania
Georgetown University
Amherst College
University of Cambridge
University of Colorado[153]
University of Buenos Aires
McGill University
Rovira i Virgili University
Columbia University
Villanova University
University of Connecticut
University of Maine
Scuola Normale Superiore
University of Western Ontario
University of Toronto
Harvard University
Universidad de Chile
University of Bologna
Universidad de La Frontera
University of Calcutta
Universidad Nacional de Colombia
Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Santo Domingo Institute of Technology
University of Chicago
Loyola University of Chicago
Swarthmore College
University of Delhi
Bard College
University of Massachusetts Amherst
University of Pennsylvania
Georgetown University
Amherst College
University of Cambridge
University of Colorado[153]
University of Buenos Aires
McGill University
Rovira i Virgili University
Columbia University
Villanova University
University of Connecticut
University of Maine
Scuola Normale Superiore
University of Western Ontario
University of Toronto
Harvard University
Universidad de Chile
University of Bologna
Universidad de La Frontera
University of Calcutta
Universidad Nacional de Colombia
Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Santo Domingo Institute of Technology
Uppsala University
University of Athens
University of Cyprus
Central Connecticut State University
National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM)
Peking University[154]
National Tsing Hua University

2

Geez, how many times did McGill honour him?

3

Well, nobody’s perfect.

4

If you want to remain blind, that’s your choice. Chomsky has a political agenda that deeply skews his world view, plays fast and loose with the truth and cites, and I hate to inform you, denied that there was genocide happening in Cambodia comparing the Khmer Rouge to the Free French and any deaths happening there being very few and no different than revenge murders of those French who had been Nazi sympathizers.

And Bard, U of Chicago, Layola U of Chicago, Swarthmore, Villanova… hey, it’s a Chomsky cite!

5

If you want to poison the well or pick a fight with another poster, I can move this to The BBQ Pit for you.
Announcing that you are going to ignore a specific poster for a range of bad behaviors looks a lot like declaring that you are stocking up a list of accusations that you intend to prepare, in advance, to dismiss anything he posts as well as looking a lot like an accusation of bad behavior, generally.

Do not do this again. (Or, as I noted, I can move this to the Pit for you.)

[ /Moderating ]

6

Okay, so I haven’t read much of Chomsky (although I have 2 or 3 books of his on my reading list), I have a soft spot for anarchists (because they’re often the best at critiquing libertarians, whose evangelism annoys me), and I loved him on Firing Line. But I also used to be an Orthodox Jew, and since those Orthodox Jews who know who he is all despise him, I ran across some tidbit critiques which I’ve seen around that seemed rather compelling to me, although I didn’t do any in-depth research:

I did read this little rebuttal from Eric Alterman on how his position was grossly mischaracterized in one of Chomsky’s articles, and found it rather compelling. I also kept up with the Chomsky-Hitchens back-and-forth…at the end, Chomsky claimed that Hitchens had said the Sudan bombing was worse than 9/11, and in concert with Hitchens’ claim that this was false, I was unable to find any such source. And I know he cowrote a book with Ilan Pappe, who has a bad reputation among historians of Israel. Whatever you think of Benny Morris’s political opinions, he’s done yeoman’s work in researching the history and he’s very very critical of Pappe.

7

I’ll respond to the evidence in the text you linked omitting the assertions.

The first several paragraphs are not using any evidence about Chomsky, only about Hitchen’s defense of Chomsky, which I don’t think is all that relevant but in any case:

“Hitchens then proceeds to repeat the politically expedient claim that the violence of the Khmer Rouge (or, as he puts it, the “derangement of Cambodian society”) was caused by the US bombing. This claim, however, does not withstand any scrutiny: Among the countries of Indochina, both Vietnam and Laos were bombarded more heavily than Cambodia. Neither of those countries, however, resorted to the massive violence of the Khmer Rouge”

This argument doesn’t bear out to the test of logic. One nation does not need to be more harmed by an outside aggressor to be prompted to a more extreme reaction. A large civil war backed on one side by China and North Vietnam supporting the Khmer Rouge and the US supporting the the establishment Cambodian government through an intense bombing campaign. I am trying to find figures for total ordinance dropped on Laos and Vietnam and Cambodia and their at the time population numbers to do an apples to apples comparison of per capita bombing. I’m having a heck of a time with it at the moment, I’ll keep looking online, if anyone else finds these figures from a good source please post it. I don’t think it’s really all that important anyway however as it’s not a strong argument to say that with Q stimulus to x and y unique populations with unique situations that in z unique population/situation the results will be xQ = yQ = zQ. plenty of well respected historians make a similar case that the US bombing gave teh Khmer Ruge the opportunity and environment to thrive. Maybe that argument is wrong and the Chinese and N. Korean influence was solely responsible but it’s hardly a fringe viewpoint Hitchens is asserting here.

I’ll rebut the next portion in another post

8

I’ll admit I don’t have a lot of respect for Chomsky.

Here’s a quote from him about the invasion of Cambodia:

The writer who referred to this quote gave it as evidence that Chomsky had made accurate predictions about Cambodia.

That was a prediction? The prediction seems to be that things might tend to happen in this way keeping in mind there may be other factors. He didn’t predict whether that American invasion would succeed or fail (a pretty important point). He didn’t predict whether the American forces would stay in Cambodia or leave. His bold prediction was that the Americans would claim some successes and their claims might or might not be accurate. Now try to imagine what outcome could have occurred in Cambodia that wouldn’t have had some resemblance to what Chomsky said.

Here’s another Chomsky quote:

Notice again how he remains vague. He implies the reports of Communist atrocities are false but he carefully never says it explicitly. If the reports are eventually found to be false, Chomsky can then step forward and claim he knew it all along. If it turns out the atrocities did occur and the reports were true, Chomsky can claim he never said otherwise and he was making a different point.

Here’s some of his quotes about the Khmer Rouge and the reports of their killings in Cambodia:

Again, Chomsky strongly implies the reports of genocide are false but he carefully never says it. He’s leaving his options open.

And he was wise to do this. Ten years later, nobody would listen to anyone foolish enough to deny the Khmer Rouge’s terrible history. Chomsky eventually got on board with this without ever acknowledging he had been wrong - the closest he’ll come is conceding he was “slow to learn the truth”. But it wasn’t an issue of learning the truth - Chomsky was aware of all of the reports of genocide at the time because he was calling them propaganda. The issue was how long it took Chomsky to realize the reports he had dismissing were true.

But, as noted, Chomsky finally admitted the Khmer Rouge had committed genocide. Then he simply incorporated this into his new version of reality - the Khmer Rouge had been forced to commit genocide by American actions in Southeast Asia.

9

Good luck with that. Try reading Distortions at Fourth Hand without having to do contortions trying to find it remotely defensible. One of my favorite bits is how he declares information from the US state department as useless, but manages to quote information from the Cambodian government, i.e. the Khmer Rouge without the slightest hint of skepticism.

Sadly, I still can’t find the original article by Commander David Carlson in the USNI Proceedings online, but if you want a perfect example of Chomsky playing so fast and loose with the truth and cites that it’s impossible to not conclude he is deliberately lying, there’s this:

The obvious conclusion from this paragraph is that Commander David Carlson believed the Vincennes knew they were shooting down an airliner. This is a gross misrepresentation of what Carlson wrote.

Commander Carlson was the CO of a frigate near the *Vincennes *when it shot down IA 655, and in the article published in Proceedings he utterly lambasts the commander of the Vincennes for negligence and positively contributing to the misidentification and accidental shoot down. He notes that the commander and crew of the Vincennes had developed a reputation for wanting to prove themselves and Aegis system and over aggressiveness resulting in the nickname ‘Robocruiser’. Just prior to the shoot down, a helicopter from the *Vincennes * had taken fire from several Iranian small boats, which *Vincennes * aggressively moved to engage, closing on the Iranian shore and compressing the action space and time to make well reasoned decisions and identifications of aircraft. When Carlson “wondered aloud in disbelief,” it wasn’t because he thought Vincennes knew it was firing on an airliner and willfully committing mass murder. At no point in the article does he even remotely imply that Vincennes knew it was firing on a civilian airliner, but that is the only logical conclusion to draw from Chomsky’s gross misrepresentation and misuse of a cite.

10

You seem to think the objective of his writing is to be prophetic. To predict outcomes. That has never been something eh attempts. He very correctly describes in somber description the horror of what we did in that part of the world at that time. There is no disputing that he was accurate in both his characterization of that and it’s emphasis.

In regard to the skepticism he has about US based and allied reports of genocide and atrocities he was in a time when there was vast propaganda regarding all our operations there. Not being skeptical about US claims would reveal a lot of personal naiveté. That he questioned what was mixed in with exaggerations, fabrications and other propagandistic distortions is nothing to be ashamed of. The real crime he commits here is lacking in absolute national loyalty in not being quiet about what was obviously an egregious abuse of media by the parties invested in the military “adventures”.

In regard to his comments about Communist atrocity he is saying that taking the worst offenses by some communist actors to paint an entire political movement as fundamentally evil is an abuse of hypocrisy. And that one could make the same case against capitalist democracies with the same sort of evidence. Obviously in many cases these governments were absolutely evil and I think communism’s tendency towards fascism tilts them in a bad direction but again he is speaking in periods of time of great change when many outcomes were possible. The turn toward fascism was not certain or universal and our wars against these nations probably ensured the outcome.

If he were trying to be the next Nostradamus this would be damning, but he’s not whatsoever. He wanted to defang the propaganda apparatus to promote peace and informed participation by the domestic and foreign democracies.

11

I’m afraid you might have missed the point here. The point is not that there’s anything wrong with being skeptical of the U.S. Government information. The point is that someone who is skeptical of official U.S. information, but uncritically parrots another country’s “propoganda” has failed any reasonable test of neutrality. In other words, he is just as much at fault for spouting propaganda as the U.S. Government he openly despises.

Either he predicts and takes the credit and hits for his predictions, or he is simply another guy saying: “Could be like this, maybe like that. Who can tell?” I think it’s also worthwhile to point out that informed participation does not always lead to peace.

12

I’m not saying Chomsky’s trying to predict the future - although I did debunk one supporter’s claim that he had done so. I’m saying that when Chomsky talks about present events, he always makes sure to do so in a way that he can maintain plausible deniability. If it turns out that what he said was wrong, he left himself enough room that he can claim he never actually said it.

And there’s nothing wrong with skepticism. But Chomsky doesn’t use it well. He skeptically dismisses everything he hears from sources he doesn’t like and he naively believes everything he hears from sources he does like. This makes it easy for Chomsky to miss the truth and believe lies.

13

In your previous quotes I’m not seeing him accepting without skepticism reports from sources he “likes” on subjects he simultaneously dismisses reports from sources who’s evidence that disagree with his narrative. Can you find me an example?

14

Why, yes. Yes he is.

15

From your cite, which again is fairly indirect as a damnation of Chomsky, at worst it proves that Hitchens defended Chomsky badly, to prove Chomsky needed defending we have to look at Chomsky’s writing directly. I’ve never been a huge fan of Hitchens myself. I find that he gets a bit more credit than he deserves just from his stage presence. To me he seems to assert more than he can back up with documentation and takes his opinions as more important than documentation. Which is fine, I disagree with a lot of his opinions but it’s clear that he is not coming to all of them based on rigorous data or rather that he imbues a great deal of cultural jugement on the data that he then uses as a cudgel to justify his favored actors and unfavored ones.

"Hitchens then suggests that Shawcross was remiss in not quoting a couple carefully-chosen sentences from Chomsky’s “Distortions at Fourth Hand,” in which Chomsky writes: “Ponchaud’s book is serious and worth reading, as distinct from much of the commentary it has elicited. He gives a grisly account of what refugees have reported to him about the barbarity of their treatment at the hands of the Khmer Rouge.”

And yet Hitchens neglects to mention that the very next paragraph claims that “Ponchaud’s book lacks the documentation provided in Hildebrand and Porter and its veracity is therefore difficult to assess. But the serious reader will find much to make him somewhat wary. For one thing, Ponchaud plays fast and loose with quotes and with numbers.”"

Chomsky is saying both positive and negative things about this source it appears much as he always does as an overall rating of it. He thinks it’s worthy of considering and relevant but that it shouldn’t be taken as whole fact since there are problems with the scholarship and verifiability. I don’t see any problem with this, it’s what he often does and something I appreciate. Saying a source only good or bad with nothing in between is not an approach that will get you far in the research of history or current events.

16

That’s a lotta honorary degrees!

You da man, Chomsky!!!

17

I don’t care what you say my vote is still with the tigers.

18

So Louisiana State honoured him too, then?

19

I thought you were going to rebut the rest of my post. I’m still waiting, and I even wished you good luck with trying. There’s nothing indirect about the damnation of Chomsky in the first cite I gave; and I gave you a direct link, on Chomsky’s own website no less, to the atrocity that is the original article of Chomsky’s claiming (in 1977!) that the genocide happening/that had already happened in Cambodia was unproven and propaganda by the evil US to discredit the success of the glorious people’s revolution brought about by the Khmer Rouge. As I said, good luck with that.

Oh, and one other thing about his deliberate misrepresentation of Commander Carlson that I forgot to mention. Chomsky said

which is flatly untrue. The USNI makes it very, very clear that they are not directly affiliated with the US Navy in any way, nor are they an official journal of the USN. The mission statement from their webpage, which is also in the first pages of the print edition of each monthly volume which Chomsky choose to overlook:

20

Since you seem to not want to wade through Distortions at Fourth Hand, here:

The photo in question that Chomsky is questioning the authenticity of being a man under an ox-yoke being forced to plow a field watched over by men with guns in the glorious year zero. As Pol Pot said, “To keep you is no benefit, to destroy you is no loss.” His absurd reasoning for this being that savage American bombing was apparently killing more oxen than people. To prove this he quotes the Hildebrand and Porter book that he lauds throughout his article for its extensive and wonderful sources, which is another load of horse shit, much like the Hildebrand and Porter book. The ‘extensive sources’ in the book are the same as the one that this uses: the Khmer Rogue. Who do you think the Cambodian Government was in April 1976? Now contrast this entirely unskeptical use of the Khmer Rouge as a source, who had killed or were in the process of killing at least 1 million with some estimates of up to 2 million of their own people with Chomsky’s evaluation of the US Embassy as a source of information:

Ponchaud’s book being the one that Chomsky tries to discredit throughout the article as Ponchaud was a leftist who had reacted with horror to what he saw the Khmer Rogue doing. By the by, Ponchaud’s book isn’t hard to find a copy of, the Hildebrand and Porter book so lauded by Chomsky was never published in much volume as there was little demand for what it actually was: a worthless propaganda rag extolling the Khmer Rouge. The kind of warped political agenda it takes to have denied genocide was happening in 1977 is frankly revolting. I feel fairly ill having had to wade though that piece of filth Chomsky wrote for you despite having already read it in the past, so I guess it’s no surprise you don’t want to read it either.