You are being very vague, if you want me to admit he’s a human being, sure, he admits it himself. He recounts saying (in the 60’s or 70’s) that he would support free speech rights(no retaliation/dismissal ect) for professors who wanted to teach about anti-insurgency on campus elaborating that he doesn’t know that he could support that anymore. (Not sure if that has actually come up for him)
People in this thread are accusing him of highly charged, vilifying stances. These are not simple disputes over academic positions. These people are calling him anti-semitic and pro-genocide as long as it’s in the name of communism. Theres a big leap between reasonable disagreements or mistakes and the man being an evil monster.
People that make sites specifically to attack Chomsky clearly hate him. Many other less prolific critics on non-absurd criticisms are fine, you can disagree with the guy, that’s fine.
In any case, if you have a specific complaint against him then offer it with a cite. I’m not going to expand on whether he’s “shown considerable bias” or what “…criticism is valid.”
If it helps I disagree with Chomsky on the assassination of Bin Laden. I don’t care if it was illegal. The guy needed to be killed and his ongoing life was an insult to the dignity of humanity. These are values questions though. I don’t think Chomky’s position on it is not at all ridiculous. It’s valid and I simply disagree with it.
Hi, Untoward_Parable. You’re doing a decent job. Don’t get suckered into sidetracks about trivial remarks. You want to discuss the big issues, and posters are bringing up errors about the status of Navy publications, doing guilt by association, or making comments like, “someone who is skeptical of official U.S. information, but uncritically parrots another country’s “propoganda” has failed any reasonable test of neutrality” without offering evidence about that uncritical parroting.
I’m pretty indifferent toward Chomsky --the books I’ve read about him were poorly organized-- but value his independence. Since the OP seems to be standing alone at the moment (and not good at message formatting) I’m hoping posters will make an effort to offer substance rather than sniping.
That is a big issue, for several reasons.
First it wasn’t a Navy publication at all. Second it wasn’t the “official” magazine of record that Chomsky claimed it was. Third, calling something an official publication grants weight to it and automatically ties its claims to its publishers’ ideas unless explicitly stated otherwise in that magazine.
So Chomsky claimed that an opinion was the Navy’s, and that the Navy had officially claimed that not only was it theirs, but that it was one they’d publicly endorsed.
This is not minor.
If by that you mean supporting one rather notable Holocaust Denier, specifically in his acts of Holocaust denial? If that’s the case, you’re using “guilt by association” to mean something it doesn’t.
That Chomsky denied US statements out of hand and endorsed those of the Kemer Rouge is a matter of public record and shows that the above claim was correct.
If your argument is “Sure, Chomsky was shown inventing an official endorsement for a magazine, rejecting claims out of hand and accepting at face value the claims of a murderous regime of butchers, and also supporting a Holocaust Denier in his work of denying the Holocaust… but let’s talk about the meat of his reliability as a scholar.” Then you may have missed the point.
Enlighten us, then, what calculus did you use to determine this?
“Semantic subterfuge”? “Semantic”? I hope you’re more clear on the concept of irony than you are on what is and what is not an official publication of an organization.
Care to explain to us what your concept of surrogate is? I mean, you do seem to have a different definition than the generally-accepted ones for a number of other terms, so it wouldn’t really be all that far out of the realm of possibility that your semantics may be a bit different here also.
FTR, I know a tad more about the field of Semantics than Joe Layman. Do you care to take a guess as to why that might be?
By the way, you wouldn’t happen to know what “(Ret.)” means, would you? I certainly do and I daresay every other poster besides you in this thread more likely than not does. I’m asking you because, to be frank, it doesn’t seem to me that you do.
This statement is almost as odd as your decision to try and make Chomsky look more impressive than he is by listing the colleges he received honorary degrees from and listing the same college several times.
Chomsky has always been notorious ever since the 60s for citing sources that are extremely difficult to track down and verify.
In almost all of his books and writings, when not citing his own work, he regularly cites obscure papers, book, magazines and other publications that aren’t available at any by a tiny fraction of libraries. Moreover, many of the magazines and book he cites aren’t published in English but are instead published in French, Hebrew, German, or some other language.
Even today, with the advent of the internet, it’s almost impossible to find many of the works he cites either online or at a library, or at least not to find an English translation of it.
He’s actually been credibly accused of doing this so people will have difficult time checking his work to see if he misrepresented his sources, which he’s been caught doing repeatedly.
For your above statement to make sense, one of two things has to be true. A)you have to speak multiple languages other than English and have access to a number of obscure books and magazines, or B)you have read few if any of Chomsky’s books.
So, I don’t mean to embarrass you, but I do feel that it’s fair based on your claim to ask you to tell us which of Chomsky’s books you’ve read, what languages you speak other than English, and how you have access to so many obscure academic journals and books that have never been published in English.
Ibn Warraq: You left off one question for Untoward_Parable. Why does said poster not dismiss Chomsky’s sources as quickly as he dismisses the USNI’s Journal?
As someone who doesn’t really have an opinion on the subject and was hoping to learn a bit about Chomsky, I find it odd (and tremendously disappointing) that so many people are fixating on this truly minor point. Something like this would warrant a minor correction if it were in a newspaper, and you guys are acting like it’s enough of an error to taint a man’s entire career.
I get it, you guys want to paint the guy in as poor a picture as you can, but you would be doing yourselves a huge favor if you made convincing arguments rather than pouncing on minor details.
He’s not saying anything that different from what any leftist with a large vocabulary and the intelligence to hedge his bets says. He has a built-in platform because he is well-regarded in a nonpolitical field, and has the good sense to keep his politics out of that field, and for some reason he encourages absolutely fanatical devotion from teenagers discovering left-wing politics, as if Noam Chomsky friggin’ INVENTED socialism or the notion that the U.S. does bad things in the world.
He is a master of saying things without saying them, such that both his supporters and his opponents know exactly what is being said, but there is never a “gotcha” quote and so plausible deniability is maintained. The Cambodia business is a good example–Chomsky never said “there is no genocide happening in Cambodia.” He said, in several ways, “anyone who says there is genocide happening in Cambodia is a liar,” but never even that in anything close to so many words. His supporters know he was apologizing for the Khmer Rouge, his opponents know it–but since he doesn’t come out and say it in soundbite form, he can always walk it back later when the mainstream left wants to abandon the logical extreme of its principles.
Tx. I don’t mind being in the minority on an academic issue, very rarely is the general majority able to interpret the available evidence to reach anything approximating a clear perspective. If one were to take the preferred perspective of world elites as a predictor of general opinion on any incidental matter I imagine you’d see the reflective majority view come into focus. If any other prolific political writer were so feverishly scrutinized as Chomsky I don’t think they would survive their first book’s digestion by an attack mill. Let alone if their off the cuff interviews were also transcribed into books (as many of Chomsky’s are) being so intensely mediated on.
Of course I don’t take your reply as proof of a symmetrical conclusion on this issue, but I appreciate your ability to tell the difference in quality between some forms of argument and others. Especially when the issues in debate are over matters of public record.
The problem is that they don’t have any good arguments, at least not ones that do anything other than express a difference of opinion/conclusion from Chomsky. But that’s not good enough if your objective is to make sure most people don’t regard him as a credible source of evidence and opinion. To make sure that the public doesn’t enter into the process of making their own opinions based on exposure to the man’s work. Even if they can taint the perspective of a new reader beforehand it is not enough. The objective of the Chomsky attack mills and by proxy their dupes/accomplices is to prevent people from even reading what he says.
Chomsky is especially dangerous because of his easy understandability. Unlike someone like Hitchen’s he makes no obscure allusions. He gives you the facts in clear context of issues he finds of importance and assumes that as a human being you will be outraged and horrified. We live in an age with the most powerful media enterprises ever to exist. A man who cuts through the style and misinformation with relatively vast dissemination is a threat that makes the powerful and their proxies angry and afraid.
On one of Bill Maher’s(blowhard) shows he had Chomsky on as a video guest saying that by far he got more requests for him than anyone else. He let him on for maybe 3 minutes before cutting him off and ending the video stream. This guy that gets requested so much and will do pretty much any interview he’s asked to do has been seen on major television how many times?: An incredibly small number. Why? If it were because of being something posters in this thread accuse him of there are plenty of other public figures that would also not have gotten much exposure. Of course the media are generally happy to have as guests people of controversy as long as they are well known. People don’t like attention being drawn to things Chomsky draws attention to. They like even less that he will not be bullied in an interview or debate. (Look up his debates, they’re all awesome). They like even less that he’s easy to understand and sounds like a normal person.
Now, you made this when anyway who’s read his books can testify to the fact that he’s notorious for using as sources obscure books and journals that extremely difficult to get ahold of and are often completely unavailable in English and he’s often been criticized for doing this by people who’ve suggested that he deliberately does so to prevent people from checking his sources to see how he misrepresented them.
The only way your comment makes sense is if you’ve read a large number of his books and you have access to a number of obscure book and academic journals, many of which haven’t been published for decades and are unavailable online and that you also speak a number of languages other than English.
So, once again
Which of Chomsky’s books have you read?
What languages other than English do you speak?
How do you have access to so many obscure books and journals that aren’t available online or at most libraries?
Once more, I’m not doing this to embarrass you or insult you, but to make sense of your claims so please do me the courtesy of answering my quite reasonable questions.
It’s rather obvious that you either didn’t bother reading Alterman’s response linked to in Bpelta’s post and just decided to take the word of one of Chomsky’s apologists to what Alterman was doing.
Here is Alterman’s response that Bpelta linked to.
Congratulations for finally finding the absurdity of that post, only took you what 72 hours and you don’t even notice that I already referenced doing so 48 hours ago. This was my test and now my evidence that you and other critics of mine on the thread are debating in bad faith, by not actually reading my responses and evidence. It is a little disappointing but by the time I ran the experiment I figured what the result would be. I enjoy good honest debate and it is a little sad to know that it won’t be found here.
The actual flaw in alterman’s accusation is that he mischaracterizes himself within his own article. After making his wonderfully solemn appeal to modesty via his religious reference he goes on to exalt how wonderful the Obama style of assassination is and how lovely it is to now have such a modest and diplomatic executioner.
For Chomsky to say alderman was “rejoicing in the manner of his (Osama’s) demise” is absolutely accurate. He is specifically reveling in the way everything was handled. Just because Alterman’s has a problem being cited by Chomsky in this regard is his problem not Chomsky’s. I’m sure if he looked harder he could have found better examples of Americans rejoicing about the incident, but that’s irrelevant.
Of course I am probably writing this in vain as you have already shown your disdain for reading other people’s posts before criticizing them in the strongest language you can summon.
Of course this is one incident I disagree with Chosky about. Sometimes justice outweighs the law, and Osama’s ongoing life was an affront to all decent people.
Oh, so then you are saying that you see no anti-Semitic implications in denial of the existence of the gas chambers or even denial of the Holocaust.
Would you mind explaining that, because I can see it being possible to believe the Holocaust was a hoax without being an anti-Semite but I don’t see how any person can believe that there aren’t at least anti-Semitic implications in denying it.
Thanks
Anyway, you have yet to answer my questions as to what books Chomsky has written that you have read, what languages other than English that you speak, and how you’re able to get ahold of so many obscure books and academic journals not available online(at least not in English) or even at all but a handful of libraries(again at least not in English).
I ask because you claim that you like Chomsky because he always uses sources that you can easily check, whereas anyone familiar with his books knows he has a habit of regularly citing obscure books and journals that aren’t published in English.
So please, explain how you’re able to do this.
Finally, you haven’t quoted anything that shows that Chomsky didn’t misrepresent Alterman. All you’ve done is misrepresent him even clumsier than Chomsky did.
Actually, you are now crowing about the fact that you have been argung in bad faith. And you are using that act of bad faith as an excuse to make jabs at other posters, something I explicitly told you to refrain from doing.
You are no George Orwell and your prose is about as clear as the Missouri River after a hard rain, so it would not be difficult for anyone who was studying your posts to miss small disclaimers or to think that any deliberate contradiction you posted was simply one more of the accidental ones that have popped up in your submissions.
Instead of making snide remarks about other posters, try this: set forth a clear argument, quoting Chomsky directly, with direct links to original sources, to defend him against the worst accusations. Then discuss those actual statements.
The next time that you “set a trap” you will earn another Warning.
= = =
EVERYONE: back off on the personal remarks. Address Chomsky’s actions or words and leave the sniping against other posters for the BBQ Pit.
I responded to this charge extensively in post #59, respond to it and I’ll respond to your rebuttal and/or other proposals you have. Until you do I will not repond to anything else you have.
“In his other writings before and after this Chomsky had reiterated that the Holocaust was probably the worst crime of the century and that even entering into discussion about the truth of it is shameful.” From my post
Really vague. He isn’t really known for leaning on a large vocabulary to legitamize himself, sure his stuff is no Anne Romney RNC speech but ya…
Being well regarded in a non-political field is the only reason he is well regarded in the political one? He hasn’t demonstrated his chops via his almost 100 published books, which are extensively sourced, his articles, interviews, numerous debates, traveling to meet with leaders of political groups and leaders all over the world, ect ect? If you want to prove he’s some sort of fraud you’re going to need more than this “evidence”.
Jealousy about his popularity or scorning the kind he receives is again proof of nothing other than you wanting to paint anyone who is a fan of him in a negative light. (not a very enlightened form of debate to put it mildly). In the US the majority of Noam’s visible support may come from young people, I’m not sure about the proof of those demographics except to say that anything that the mainstream media don’t cover is going to relegated to youth support as they feel less danger due to their adolescent minds of retribution by employers or customers or voters ect and their social community by taking a strong stance of support for a man routinely villainized. I am not a person in the age category you describe not that one person is proof of anything.
No one reliable thinks he invented socialism, in any case he subscribes more to anarchism or what’s known in Europe as libertarian socialism, which is nothing like the socialism we think of that actually exists in Europe now.
The bit about his supposed crimes in regard to Cambodia is understandable in the publics modern inability to understand academic work and history in it’s timeline. The bit about Chomsky always leaving an opening for himself but having everyone know what he means is a kind of circular argument. I could prove the guilt of any person with this standard on any number of issues. That because one presents a truth which is beneficial to an enemy or repugnant person that proves you support the enemy or repugnant person. During most of the time the Cambodia massacre was occurring The US government and the Allied media had very bad intelligence of it and had discredited itself with massive amounts of deceptive and fabricated propaganda, this is not controversial. Chomsky was not going to put up with that and believed the whole warfront was a massive sin against humanity. The argument seems to be that if Chomsky had not provided academic criticisms of the quality of evidence about the Khmer Rouge that somehow the US would have had the support to go in and save the day, because you know, in that time period we ha a really good track record of keeping the civilian death count down and preserving the foundations of economy for countries in which we intervened… People saying at the time that genocide was happening in Cambodia on the allied side were liars, they just happened to also be correct in the thrust of their fabrications at the same time. This isnt even just a case of Crying wolf, its a case where we knew we were lying because we didn’t know much of anything, much like the weapons of mass destruction situation in Iraq, if there had been weapons it wouldn’t have made the lying about it any less of lies if the liars had no way to know they were correct when they were lying. It’s really not that complicated.
Of course it makes it pretty easy to attack someone after the fact, doesn’t make the attacks any good of course but it certainly is effective for defamation.
None of that addresses Chomsky’s moronic claim that he saw no anti-Semitic implications in denial of the gas chambers or denial of the Holicaust.
Nobody doubts Chomsky claims the Holocaust was a horrible crime, though he certainly minimizes it when he compares Jimmy Carter to Adolph Hitler.
What is the question is whether his claim that he saw no anti-Semitic implications in denial of the Holocaust constituted apologia for Holocaust deniers.
I think it unquestionably does as do most reasonable people.
Similarly, most reasonable people would argue that him writing a foreword to the book by the notorious anti-Semite and Holocaust Denier Robert Faurisson in which he insisted that Faurisson “is not an anti-Semite” but was merely “a rather apolitical liberal.”
Once again, some who claims that Holocaust Deniers are not anti-Semites but “apolitical liberals” are apologists for Holicaust Deniers.
That doesn’t mean that the apologists don’t think the Holocaust was horrible and bringing forth claims that they consider the a Holicaust a crime does not weaken the self-evident charge that they are apologists for Holocaust Deniers.
So, since you claim that the only thing you disagree with Chomsky on was his claim regarding Bin Laden.
So then, do you think that Chomsky was wrong when he claimed he saw no anti-Semitic implications in denial of the Holocaust and do you agree with Chomsky that the notorious Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson was “not an anti-Semite” but rather “a relatively apolitical liberal”?