The bolded portion is mine, the rest the cited article in full. I’ll go ahead and just do actual work rebutting and substantiating my position instead of simply asserting and citing websites dedicated to attacking Chomsky or anyone who describes a pet issue in a way they dislike. (I’m sure they exist but I think you’ll have a hard time finding such a media outlet on any subject or with any so narrowly defined target that is reliable in their facts or objective whatsoever. These remind me of anti-gay websites or anti-bush websites or pro-Anorexia websites. It’s hard to be such a diehard as to create a media group soley for the purpose of that one subject and also not be taking massive liberties with the available evidence)
In 1985, Christopher Hitchens wrote a lengthy essay (“The Chorus and the Cassandra”) defending Noam Chomsky against several accusations. One of the criticisms leveled against Chomsky was the charge that he had supported the Khmer Rouge.
The question of whether or not it is fair to say that Chomsky “supported” the Khmer Rouge is discussed in detail elsewhere on this site, in the article entitled Averaging Wrong Answers: Noam Chomsky and the Cambodia Controversy.
Those who admire Chomsky may find Hitchen’s defense of the Professor very comforting. Those who lack the patience to compare Chomsky’s comments to the factual record will likely believe that Hitchens’ article exonerates Chomsky.
**Simply assertions, I felt no need to have Chomsky exonerated as nothing has been proven about his sympathy for genocide. Even the critics that claim this leave themselves the outs by complaining that Chomsky is never specific and only infers his support by questioning reports of the number of deaths and conditions. This is the crux of their argument, that Chomsky questions reports/ characterizes them as not being consistent or reliable. This is not a very strong argument. It assumes he does this knowingly which I don’t believe whatsoever and also sumes those reports were good reports, or that he preferentially offers other reports as good that should not be. An argument never really gets to why these reports should be or shouldn’t be trusted. It’sjust a bit of hand wringing in anger about reports that favor the preferred conclusions vs unfavored conclusions. For this argument to stick you have to in a very detailed way look at all the cites he gives for and against and the spcific time and context in which he does it. Then on top of that you have to make some very strong assumptions about someone who never ever explicitly endorsed any act of non-defensive violence anywhere.
chomsky.info : The Noam Chomsky Website (chorus and the cassandra link)**
The reality, however, is that Hitchens’ article merely contains more of the errors and misrepresentations that characterize Chomsky’s original writings.
The first third of Hitchens’ essay is a long-winded introduction, in which he rambles on about the Professor’s eminence, tossing in sundry references to Oxford University, razor blades, Dr. John Arbuthnot’s 1714 “Treatise on the Art of Political Lying,” airplane propellers, eschewed principles, and, of course, Ryszard Kapuscinski. Regrettably, I’ve never heard of Ryszard Kapuscinski, but I am sure is equal in esteem to Dr. Arbuthnot, of whom I’ve also never heard.
Since I clearly lack the Oxfordian breadth of Mr. Hitchens, I will confine my comments to the subject of Cambodia… for in spite of my lack of education, I have managed to learn a few things about Southeast Asia.
This guy doesn’t exactly give himself a ringing endorsement here. “I don’t know much, but here’s something I have an opinion on and by the way, if I haven’t heard of someone they’re a big stupid-head.” + more assertions without evidence.
Cambodia, it seems, is not really something Hitchens has ever bothered to study. How else can we explain the fact that he begins his defense of Chomsky with a falsehood? He notes that Chomsky was criticized for suggesting, in 1972, that a Khmer Rouge victory might lead to “a new era of economic development and social justice.” This comment, according to Hitchens, appeared in “Dr. Malcolm Caldwell’s collection of interviews with Prince Norodom Sihanouk.” Hitchens clearly never bothered to read the book: it is not a collection of interviews with Sihanouk, but a history of events leading to the Cambodian civil war, written by an avowed Communist. By misrepresenting the content of the book, Hitchens imbues Chomsky’s preface with an aura of apolitical neutrality.
**I’m not defending Hitchen’s. I haven’t read that much of his stuff. If he mischaracterizes something here it’s really not relevant. In fact this whole article is fairly irrlevant fo how derivative it is for evidence. However I am demanded to be thorough in my rebuttals even if people in the forum are only citing chomsky attack mills of strange and extreme quality. In any case if you look at the charges of Chomsky criticizing US propaganda being the basis of his bias that somehow becomes him endorsing genocide (which is absurd), its all based on him not believing certain sources of information, which last time I checked is not the same as endorsing the party impuned by that information.
It’s funny how this article criticizes Hitchens about context when it lifts these out of context rebuttals out of ource material that makes it look laughable. But then theyre probably correct in assuming no one will actually read Hitchen’s article:
“to say that Chomsky hailed the advent of the Khmer Rouge as “a new era of economic development and social justice.” The Khmer Rouge took power in 1975. In 1972, Chomsky wrote an introduction to Dr. Malcolm Caldwell’s collection of interviews with Prince Norodom Sihanouk. In this introduction, he expressed not the prediction but the pious hope that Sihanouk and his supporters might preserve Cambodia for “a new era of economic development and social justice.” You could say that this was naive of Chomsky, who did not predict the 1973 carpet-bombing campaign or the resultant rise of a primitive, chauvinist guerrilla movement.”
I heard once that blueberries cure cancer, I think that’s an exageration promoted by the blueberry industry, doesn’t mean I don’t like blueberries or think they’re not good for you (minus pesticides). The leap here is the reaction of someone wh can’t hadle any downtalk of media that promotes a US war. It’s the reaction of a non-serious person with a loyalist agenda, who is not all that interested in objectivity.**
To be continued, no not all tonight, again, I have a life and my responses require actual work to produce.