Talk:Noam Chomsky/Archive 2

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Chomsky and linguistics, etc.

(10/22/03) hello. i've made some changes to the chomsky article. mostly i rewrote the section on linguistics -- clarified chomsky's ideas and addressed the primary criticisms on the part of other linguists. i also softened the language a bit in the psychology section, and made a small change at the end of the section on Faurisson that imo should try to make it more balanced (though i won't be surprised if it generates controversy :). benwing


(16/09/04) Hi, i made some additions about other alternatives to Chomskyan linguistics, specifically mentioning Lakoff and Johndon and discursive psychology etc. Anyone who disagrees feel free to tamper! BScotland

I think such (and other) alternatives deserve mention, but further information about them should be provided on their own articles. Also, the section seems misplaced considering the current heading levels. A paragraph somewhere in Contributions to Linguistics looks like a better alternative to me. --Glimz 00:54, Sep 16, 2004 (UTC)

What does everyone else think? BScotland

I agree with Glimz that it is misplaced and should be added as a paragraph and not as a section. Note the discussion below that it also might be better to remove the current (political) criticism section and merge the info in other sections instead. Also, I tried a google search on Lakoff, and came up with interesting results. He claimed that Chomsky didn't contribute anything to linguistics in 30 years, just before Chomsky published his minimalist program in 1995. And there's a 1973 NY Review of Books reply by Chomsky where he compares what Lakoff wrote to what he referred to, which looks embarrassing. I also heard Lakoff on a liberal talk show, and I see that he writes articles, where he is much less modest than Chomsky in using his linguistics credentials in order to tell women that they should use terms other than 'pro-choice' etc., unlike Chomsky who always avoids doing this. He seems like quite a windbag... what do you think of him? Nimc 16:07, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

So are we agreed that the subject heading should be changed and that this should become a paragraph? The other alternative is simply to have two entries, one for Chomsky's linguistics and one for his political views. However I do think it's important to note that many linguists (in fact, most) are NOT Chomskyans, and at least have links to alternative 'paradigms', regardless of whether we decide these are the ones that should be highlighted or not. BScotland

With regard to style, I personally prefer incorporating criticism in relevant sections, rather than creating separate criticism sections. With regard to substance, any information that is accurate and relevant should be included in wikipedia. It seems obvious that this info is relevant, though as Glimz said, if further info would be lengthy, then we should decide whether it belongs here or in other articles, but right now it's not lengthy at all. The most important issue is accuracy, so if you use weasel words like "many linguists (in fact, most) are NOT Chomskyans", it might be problematic. My personal opinion is that we should use weasel words as little as possible, and if you do so then the accuracy issue will be simple to handle. The specific info that you added doesn't seem to be the kind that requires weasel words anyway, i.e. it's possible to just name the relevant people and describe what their opinion is. Nimc 18:04, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Ok, it's now just a paragraph (with a heading) and no longer a section. Also I've removed the 'weasel words' of the first sentence and tidied it up a bit. Whether these are the 'opposing views' that ought to be highlighted is of course a moot point. The problems with Chomsky's theories is that they are linguistic theories, but also theories of psychology and philosophy. So they can be attacked on many grounds. I felt it ought to be made clear that there are alternative philosophical paradigms to the ones Chomskyans normally take for granted. BScotland

A compliment and a bit about faurisson

I just want to say that, after all the charge and counter-charge I've just finished reading above, that this is a great article. I knew little of Chomsky before reading it: just the inevitabe stuff that I guess any psychology major picks up along the way, plus a vague awareness that he is a prominent advocate of some unpopular leftish causes. Having read the article, I know more than I did before - which is the whole point of this place after all - and am not left with any nagging suspicion that the substantial stuff (his influence in linguistics and psychology)is unreliable. OK, the anti-semite question stuff goes on at too great a length and shows the scars of too many edit wars, but not greatly so. It's a damn good article, and a credit to its many authors. Tannin

Yea, it is good :) I still think the accusations of anti-semitism is irrelavent and should be deleted, severely croped, or at least moved to a seperate page. I don't want to just go and do this right off, for fear of screams of "anti-semite" in a Big Lebowski fashion... What do people think of the idea? AW
I think it might be wise to move very slowly and carefully on that; bat it around here in talk for a while and rough out a trimmed-down version, but yes, I agree. I don't think it would be right to delete it - the accusations seem to me nonsensical, but they have been made, and should be reported. Nor do I think there is any need to editorialise (as I just did, but only here in talk). As I see it, the facts can speak for themselves. Comments anyone? Tannin 12:15 Jan 22, 2003 (UTC)
I'm not sure that these accusations have been made. Can anyone give a link to this Dershowitz article that you were discussing? It sounds like this article contains some really fantastic claims, apparently based on Dershowitz's recollection and nothing else. But I'm still wondering whether direct anti-Semite accusations have been made. Nimc 09:16, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I think it should definitely stay. It's interesting stuff, to me, anyway. I've brought the affected text (including the Middle East stuff) here to talk and began editing it, slicing away stuff that I thought was unnecessary or excessive. But we do have plenty of links for further reading, so I guess it's okay. DanKeshet
I also think it should stay. The man is a controversial figure, and one of his critics main points of contention, justified or not, needs to be mentioned. It is a bit wordy though, so while it may be getting too much attention currently, it at least deserves some attention.
It's an example of how a controversial subject can generate a great article - we need more examples of this! 2toise 03:02, 3 Oct 2003 (UTC)
About his quote:
"I see no anti-Semitic implications in denial of the existence of gas chambers or even denial of the Holocaust. Nor would there be anti-Semitic implications, per se, in the claim that the Holocaust (whether one believes it took place or not) is being exploited, viciously so, by apologists for Israeli repression and violence. I see no hint of anti-Semitic implications in Faurisson's work"
I think that gives the people accusing him of anti-semitism some ammunition. I'd like to see a quote from him explaining exactly what he meant by that statement, and how "the denial of the existence of gas chambers or even denial of the Holocaust" has "no hint of anti-Semitic implications", if such an explanation exists. I assume he means that you can disagree with generally accepted "facts" on purely truth-seeking grounds without necessarily having an ulterior motive, but I would like to hear it from him. The quote from him later on in that section:
"It seems to me something of a scandal that it is even necessary to debate these issues two centuries after Voltaire defended the right of free expression for views he detested. It is a poor service to the memory of the victims of the holocaust to adopt a central doctrine of their murderers."
Addresses his support for Robert Faurisson, but not the content of his so-called anti-semitic statement. Milquetoast
His reply seems to be available online: "In that context, I made a further point: even denial of the Holocaust would not prove that a person is an anti-Semite. I presume that that point too is not subject to contention. Thus if a person ignorant of modern history were told of the Holocaust and refused to believe that humans are capable of such monstrous acts, we would not conclude that he is an anti-Semite. That suffices to establish the point at issue." Well, all this is pretty much trivial it seems. If a person denies a genocide, that by itself doesn't tell us much. In the specific case of Faurisson, one could argue that he is an anti-Semite, but it appears to be based on stuff that Faurisson wrote after Chomsky defended his right for free speech. Nimc 09:16, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Chomsky and the Middle East

Chomsky "grew up...in the Jewish-Zionist cultural tradition" (Peck, p. 11). His father was one of the foremost scholars of the Hebrew language and taught at a religious school. Chomsky has also had a long fascination with and involvement in left-wing Zionist politics. As he described:

"I was deeply interested in...Zionist affairs and activities -- or what was then called 'Zionist,' though the same ideas and concerns are now called 'anti-Zionist.' I was interested in socialist, binationalist options for Palestine...The vague ideas I had at the time [1947] were to go to Palestine, perhaps to a kibbutz, to try to become involved in efforts at Arab-Jewish cooperation within a socialist framework, opposed to the deeply antidemocratic concept of a jewish state (a position that was considered well within the mainstream of Zionism)." (Peck, p. 7)

He is extremely critical of the policies of Israel towards the Palestinians and ethnic minority Jewish populations within Israel. Among many articles and books, his book The Fateful Triangle is considered one of the premier texts among those who oppose Israeli treatment of Palestinians and American support for Israel. He has also condemned Israel's role in "guiding state terrorism" for selling weapons to Latin American countries that he characterizes as U.S. puppet states, e.g. Guatemala in the 1970s. (What Uncle Sam Really Wants, Chapter 2.4) In addition, he has repeatedly and vehemently condemned the United States for its military and diplomatic support for Israel, and sectors of the American Jewish community (e.g. Anti-Defamation League) for their role in obtaining this support.

Accusations of anti-semitism

Partially because of these criticisms, Chomsky has been accused of being anti-semitic many times. The most outspoken of his critics include journalist David Horowitz, who has toured college campuses distributing anti-Chomsky pamphlets, attorney/professor Alan Dershowitz, with whom Chomsky has engaged in many verbal battles through the media, and sociology professor emeritus Werner Cohn, who has written an entire book on the subject, Partners in Hate. One of the most common charges is that while in theory there may be a difference between the concept of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, in practice anti-Zionism is a manifestation of anti-Semitism. Under this theory, Chomsky's opposition to a Jewish state (or all anarchists' opposition) is thus indicative of anti-Semitism.

Chomsky, a Jew, rejects charges of anti-Semitism and claims that he has always spoken out against bigotry, including anti-Semitism. As he writes in "Thought Control: The Case of the Middle East" [Pirates and Emperors, Old and New, pg. 29]:

My own views, for example, are regularly condemned as "militant anti-Zionism" by people who are well aware of those views, repeatedly and clearly expressed: that Israel within its internationally recognized border should be accorded the rights of any state in the international system, no more, no less, and that in every state, including Israel, discriminatory structures that in law and in practice assign a special status to one category of citizens (Jews, Whites, Christians, etc.), granting them rights denied to others, should be dismantled.

The Faurisson Affair

In 1979, Robert Faurisson, a French professor, wrote a book claiming that the Nazis did not have gas chambers, did not attempt a genocide of Jews (or any other groups), and that the "myth" of the gas chambers had been put forth by Zionist swindlers for the benefit of the state of Israel and to the detriment of Germans and Palestinians. (Hitchens, 1985)

Shortly after, Chomsky signed a petition condemning censorship of Faurisson's works in France. The petition claimed that Faurisson's works were based on "extensive independent historical research." (On Faurisson and Chomsky) Following a controversy regarding this petition, Chomsky wrote an essay entitled Some Elementary Comments on The Rights of Freedom of Expression, which dealt mainly with the freedom to conduct and publish unpopular research, but also stated that he had not found evidence of anti-Semitism in the parts of Faurisson's work that he had reviewed. Chomsky granted permission for this essay to be used for any purpose; it was used as the preface for a book by Faurisson.

Chomsky's writings sparked a great furore. Many people held that Faurisson's statements were the archetype of anti-Semitism, and that the logical conclusion of Chomsky's statement would be that Naziism was not anti-semitic. For example, Deborah Lipstadt wrote in Dimensions, the journal of the ADL:

"Chomsky's example shows why the dangers of free inquiry should be taken seriously. Even the supposed protectors of reasoned dialogue can fall for the convoluted notion that all arguments are equally legitimate. Those who argue that the deniers must be given a fair hearing fail to recognize that the deniers' quest is not a search for truth. Rather they are motivated by racism, extremism, and virulent anti-Semitism."

Chomsky later wrote (His Right to Say It): "Faurisson's conclusions are diametrically opposed to views I hold and have frequently expressed in print (for example, in my book Peace in the Middle East?, where I describe the holocaust as "the most fantastic outburst of collective insanity in human history"). But it is elementary that freedom of expression (including academic freedom) is not to be restricted to views of which one approves, and that it is precisely in the case of views that are almost universally despised and condemned that this right must be most vigorously defended."

Another bit on Faurisson

Can someone please explain to me the logic of the piece in brackets (On Faurisson and Chomsky) from the quoted paragraph from the article (which is the second paragraph under the heading

"Shortly after, Chomsky signed a petition condemning censorship of Faurisson's works in France. The petition claimed that Faurisson's works were based on "extensive independent historical research." (On Faurisson and Chomsky) Following a controversy regarding this petition, Chomsky wrote an essay entitled Some Elementary Comments on The Rights of Freedom of Expression, which dealt mainly with the freedom to conduct and publish unpopular research, but also stated that he had not found evidence of anti-Semitism in the parts of Faurisson's work that he had reviewed."

Does it mean that Faurisson's work is based on historical research by Faurisson and Chomsky? It would be kind of unlogical to call it "extensive independent" then. Thanks, snoyes 00:53 Apr 1, 2003 (UTC)

That was my poor attempt at attribution. Fix as possible. If anybody gets a proper footnote and bibliography method going here, I will be quite happy. DanKeshet 17:32 Apr 1, 2003 (UTC)

Chomsky and socialism

tothebarricades.tk made the following change, commenting that "Bakunin was not a socialist":

He supports the Mikhail Bakunin view of socialism, requiring economic freedom in addition to the "control of production by the workers themselves, not owners and managers who rule them and control all decisions." He refers to this as "real socialism"...
He supports Mikhail Bakunin's anarchist views requiring economic freedom in addition to the "control of production by the workers themselves, not owners and managers who rule them and control all decisions." He refers to this as "real socialism"...

I reverted the change because the second part of the sentence goes on to talk about the socialization of the means of production. The next sentence continues "He refers to this as real socialism." It is true that Bakunin's doctrine was anarchist, but it does not mean that he didn't have socialist views. Chomsky frequently substitutes the term libertarian socialism for anarchism. The whole paragraph needs to be reworked (or atleast the whole sentence) if anarchism is to be substituted here.

--Evan 06:21, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

From a newly-added paragraph:

Chomsky's dislike of the United States is largely a result of his belief in the superiority of socialism over capitalism.
  1. Where has Chomsky said he "dislikes the US", whatever that means?
  2. More specifically, where has he said that he dislikes the US because he "prefers socialism to capitalism"?
  3. Chomsky has spoken out repeatedly and forcefully against, say, Bolshevism. He doesn't speak very fondly of many of the governments in countries that he has criticized US actions in. How can you then infer he criticizes the US because of some characteristic of those countries, and not, say, because of his distaste for state violence?
  4. Indeed, does Chomsky criticize Israel because the PLO is socialist?! Are the people of East Timor "socialist"? Are the Kurds in Turkey "socialist"? These are three of the subjects he talks about most often, but these aren't stunning examples of socialism in action.
Chomsky believes the government of the United States is determined to destroy socialism at all costs, regardless of the cost to human life or the suffering their actions cause. In one of his most famous books on the United States, What Uncle Sam Really Wants, Chomsky writes that the potential success of a socialist or communist government is what the United States is most afraid of, as it may reveal "the truth" that socialism is a more effective economic / political system than the capitalist system practiced by the US and its allies. He calls this the "threat of a good example" and writes that the threat of socialist success has prompted the United States to repeatedly intervene to quell socialist and communist presences in regions of the world where it has no significant economic or safety interests.

He talks alot about the "threat of a good example" in Uncle Sam ([1]). But even in that very chapter he never says the good example is "socialism", but rather "independence" or an "independent path". Where has he said that he thinks "socialism" is a "more effective system"? DanKeshet 21:42 27 Jul 2003 (UTC)

He praises socialism all the time. Chomsky is a fan of hiding behind big terms and so on, but he has stated his belief repeatedly that he believes capitalism is NOT a good system, and that a better alternative would be a system where everyone is equal, everything is shared, etc etc etc. In other words, socialism. He may call it liberal anarchistic neo conservatism or some other didatic term, but the fact remains he is an outspoken opponent of the capitalistic system, and believes much of Americas' foreign policy goals involve quashing opposition to capitalism.
When he talks about "independence" he means independence from capitalism, and the system's various trappings, international business dealings and so forth. Independence is a very broad word, and Chomsky has a specific definition of what true "independence" entails.
On a related note, I would be interested in seeing a passage written by Chomsky in which he offers numerous praises to the United States, in any form. I agree it is unfair to state he "dislikes the US," but I have yet to see any proof he has anything more than a passing acceptance of the country as a state of residence, and little more.

-213.93.29.223

The above critique by 213.93.29.223 is rather simplistic. First of all Chomsky makes marked distinctions between the different flavors of socialism -- say that of Lenin versus that of Bakunin, which he finds more reasonable. And the general arguments Chomsky makes in dealing with socialism vs capitalism are always prefaced by the stipulation that "these are highly idealized concepts" -- idealized concepts (just like many variants of capitalism) are just that, and bear little resemblance to the real world.
Lastly this whole notion of "good USA or bad USA" is supersimplistic and beneath the intelligence of the average Wikipedia reader -- we need not address those issues here -- perhaps you can deal with that on anti-Americanism (which Chomsky historically laughs at -- how vain is the notion that there be such a thing as "Americanism" for to be sentiment against? -- 'is there such a thing as anti-Italianism? Most Italians would probably die of laughter.' (paraphrased quote) -戴;&#30505sv 00:17, 29 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Chomsky is a scholarly figure, so he is very fond of ignoring widely held, common-sense definitions of political terms in favor of his own, convuluted, "no-one-knows-what-these-terms-mean-except-me" explanations. If I was to say "Mr. Chomsky, are you a socialist?" he would likely go off on some long tangent about "what is TRUE socialism?" and so on, expressing fondness for certain parts of the system while condeming other parts of the system's practice. The reaction would likely be the same if I asked him if he was a capitalist.
Anyway, my point is that Chomsky, with his lingustics background and all, has ideas regarding the definitions political terms that are not shared by a lot of other scholars, let alone the general public. This guide to Chomsky should be understandable by everyone, not just Chomsky's fans who share his ideas of what socialism, capitalism, independence et al "really are.".
Thus, it is worth mentioning that his "threat of a good example" business is largely based around his belief that the success of a socialist government (in the generally accepted sense of the word) will be percieved as a threat to the capitalist-driven interests of the United States, who wish to preserve the capitalist system and not have their populations tempted by some rouge state offering a "better alternative." This is the gist of his belief.
As far as this anti-American business goes, this page could at least use a sentence or two mentioning that he is often percieved to be a leading Anti-American American. Again, Chomsky himself may not think much of the term, but many others consider it an apt descripiton.

-213.93.29.223

comments on latest version

Overall, I think we're not that far apart and you're adding good new material about Chomsky's thoughts on the more abstract subjects. However, I still don't understand your reasoning behind some of it and I think some of it needs citations.

1) When specifically has Chomsky called himself a Marxist? Not that it's totally implausible, but this needs a citation. (Leaving this part pending an answer.)

2) Why do you say Latin American and South America? Better would be 'Latin America' or 'South and Central America' (Restoring this part pending an answer.)

3) Saying "the United States' capitalist influence" rather than "the United States' influence" is wrong. Did Chomsky speak out about Soviet imperialism because of the Soviet Union's "capitalist" influence on Afghanistan? (And yes, Chomsky has spoken out against the Soviet influence, although it has been muted compared to his discussion of the US, for the reasons discussed in the article.) (restoring pending answer)

4) Why did you replace the single link to libertarian socialism (Wikipedia's page on Chomsky's style of anarchism) to seperate links to the "disambiguating" page anarchism and the more specific page libertarian socialism? (restoring pending answer.)

5) You consistently attach motives to Chomsky's actions that he himself does not attach, and which seem to be counterfactual. Does Chomsky oppose US meddling in Iran (as described in Uncle Sam) because the Islamic Revolution was "socialist"?! Did Chomsky really oppose Bolshevism because it would disparage socialism, and not because it was authoritarian and brutal? Why not just describe Chomsky's writings, and let others deduce the motives? Or describe the motives which Chomsky himself gives? I am reverting and deleting many instances of this.

I do hope you stick around, and keep working on the page, though, because you are adding good content.


DanKeshet 15:58, 30 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Chomsky holds largely anarchist (or "libertarian socialist") views. Some of the people above should, you know, find out what the hell they're talking about before they make any sort of edits... --Tothebarricades.tk 20:29, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)

faurisson again

I expanded the second paragraph of the Faurisson section to give more context. I also changed the quotation from "extensive independent historical research" to "extensive historical research" which I think is more correct. Both of Chomsky's arch-critics Cohn and Dershowitz give it like that. Actually the critics focused more on the word "findings", so I've quoted that too. There is one thing I'm not completely sure about: whether the court case against Faurisson came later (as I put it) or earlier. If someone knows it was earlier, please correct it. -- zero 06:25, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Forget his politics, what about his science? I understand that in thepast decade there have been many findings in neurophysiology which can be interpreted as lending support to Chomsky's theories about how human grammar. This topic certainly is worth getting into. RK 01:10, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Agreed. A proper article about Chomsky would be 50% about language theory, 30% about media theory, 15% about anarcho-socialism and decentralist politics, and only 5% about the Israel/Zionism stuff. Some of the links *to* the Chomsky article actually get into this in more depth than the present article. EofT
Wow you guys agree on something. Let peace and beauty flow from the mouth of every witness to this day. :) -戴&#30505sv 02:49, Aug 22, 2003 (UTC)
Actually Chomsky has only written one book on media theory that I know of, Manufacturing Consent, which he wrote with Edward S. Herman, who has since written follow-up books. Chomsky himself said Manufacturing Consent was mostly Herman's book, though Chomsky (being more famous) gets more of the mention and credit for it. So, I think the 30% is out of place. He's written far more about Israel/Palestine. I'd say 30% israel-palestine, 15% media, and 5% anarcho-socialism, etc, about which he says precious little unless pressed. Graft 15:56, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Actually Chomsky has written three books that I know of on media theory - Manufacturing Consent, Necessary Illusions and Media Control. As far as a proper split for him, I think linguistics and political stuff should be 50-50. As far as his ruminations on Descartes, philosophy, the human mind, human nature and so forth, I guess that small bit of stuff could be shared slightly by both fields since he approaches that stuff with the scientific manner of his linguistic work on the one hand, but with an enlightenment-based socialist optimism on the other hand.
As far as a breakdown in his politics, I suppose you could divide it into foreign policy (which itself could be broken into many parts - Chomsky's work on behalf of East Timor quite possibly may have altered the course of that country's history, then there's his work on Indochina, Central America, the Middle East etc.); the media, or perhaps a more broad definition like Gramsci's "hegemony" or Debord's "spectacle" which would include the submission of the intelligentsia at universities and so forth; his writings on libertarian socialism, including anarcho-syndicalism, in which I would also include his left tactic/strategies regarding mass movements; and his writings on political economy and the labor movement. -- Lancemurdoch 10:20, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Go for it, Lance. :) DanKeshet 02:11, Dec 16, 2003 (UTC)
This may be true. However, Fateful Triangle, his most-read, most-cited book on Israel/Palestine, has enormous amounts of analysis of the press reaction, as do many of his books. DanKeshet
Fine, whatever the numbers are, but at least let's have that 50% on language. Noam Chomsky's views on language and grammar are uniquely positioned - his opinions on these things are vastly more interesting than anything he might have to say on topics where 95% of the world feels qualified or compelled to take a position. I would say, if it were up to me, let's have *ONE LINE EACH* about his book with Herman, his anarcho-socialism, and Israel/Palestine, since there are articles on those things. But no article other than this one exists on Chomsky's views of language and grammar. So that's what it should be about. EofT
Somewhere in the article it's stated that Chomsky is one of the best known Americans of the left -- and this is true and should be reflected in the article. At the moment, this is the case. Reducing Chomsky to his scientific position would be an act of censorship. Today he is known as prominent speaker on political issues (not only Israel/Palestine, but also media, globalisation and quite some more topics), and this should be reflected in the article. One line each isn't sufficent. And shouldn't there be an extra article about Chomsky linguistic theory? I'd guess that Chomsky grammar exists, doesn't it? -- till we *) 16:52, Aug 23, 2003 (UTC)

Chomsky and socialism

In the expanded section on Chomsky and socialism, 142.158..., you included some direct quotes in quote marks. What are you quoting? DanKeshet

Chomsky has criticized liberal acadamics who condemn socialist countries like Cuba or Vietnam, saying that criticism of any country that "the United States is trying to subvert" merely serves to "buttress these efforts, thus contributing to suffering and oppression."

This has a direct quote in it. What is it quoting? DanKeshet

The full quote is:

American dissidents have to face the fact that they are living in a state with enormous power, used for murderous and destructive ends. Honest people will have to face the fact that they are morally responsible for the predictable human consequences of their acts. One of these acts is accurate criticism, accurate critical analysis of authoritarian state socialism in North Vietnam or in Cuba or in other countries that the United States is trying to subvert. The consequences of accurate critical anal ysis will be to buttress these efforts, thus contributing to suffering and oppression.

It's quoted from an interview in the book "Destructive Generation," which is writen by a Chomsky critic.

I've heard Chomsky speak on this subject a few times, and his views are a lot more nuanced than the paragraph explains. I believe it would be more accurate to say that Chomsky condemns liberal critics who only or disproportionately criticize state enemies (BTW, the "socialism" thing is a canard; he criticizes those who only criticize official enemy regimes whether or not the official enemies are socialist). DanKeshet

Faurisson yet again

I'm moving the Faurisson section to a special article on the Faurisson Affair. I'm justifying the decision on the grounds that this was the criterion adopted with the Dershowitz-Finkelstein Affair.

I moved the following text to here because it is broken analysis:

- - - - - - -

Chomsky's views on terrorism are not unifaceted. On page 76 of his book 9-11, Noam Chomsky defines terrorism:

Wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a war against terrorism.

Chomsky clearly distinguishes between the targeting of civilians and the targeting of military personnel or installations. Thereby placing the definition of terrorism on an objective basis. At other times, Chomsky defines terrorism as being relative:

It is the weapon of those who are against 'us' whoever 'us' happens to be. And if you can find a historical exception to that, I'd be interested in seeing it.

In addition, Noam Chomsky identifies terrorism with low intensity warfare.

The U.S. is officially committed to what is called “low–intensity warfare.” That’s the official doctrine. If you read the definition of low–intensity conflict in army manuals and compare it with official definitions of “terrorism” in army manuals, or the U.S. Code, you find they’re almost the same. Terrorism is the use of coercive means aimed at civilian populations in an effort to achieve political, religious, or other aims. That’s what the World Trade Center bombing was, a particularly horrifying terrorist crime.

- - - - - - -

The problem is that the analysis being presented does not distinguish between what Chomsky thinks terrorism is and what he says other people mean by the word. In the first quotation he is giving an opinion of his own (but it is not a definition since it doesn't say that nothing else could be terrorism also). In the second quotation he is commenting on what he sees as the establishment usage of the word "terrorism". He is not saying he agrees with it and in fact it is obvious that he does not. In the third quotation he is again emphasising the commentary made in the second quotation, and again he does not at all say that he agrees with either of the two usages of the word "terrorism" that he describes. In other words, there is nothing at all contradictory between these three quotations. I find them entirely consistent and entirely Chomskyesque. --Zero 07:23, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)


Chomsky's alleged support for Marxist terrorists; the Al-Shifa controversy

TDC, I think the addition of the quote regarding Chomsky's support of terrorism requires some more information:

  • By what definition were these "insurgencies" and "Marxist"? — both are fairly controversial terms in this context.
  • A reputable source for the quotation.

Also note that Chomsky doesn't say that there should be exceptions specifically for Marxist insurgencies in terms of the use of terror tactics — this is your interpretation of what he said and it shouldn't be stated as a fact on the page. What Chomsky seems to be saying, if the quote is genuine, is that in general, terror can sometimes be justified, depending on whether it has good or bad consequences on balance. This is very different from your summary of Chomsky's views on this matter. I have reverted the edit until a compromise can be reached. Cadr

Update: There appears (according to google) to be a transcript of an interview containing this quote on chomksy.info, his official site (the page is loading slowly for me at the moment: http://www.chomsky.info/debates/19671215.htm). Hopefully this will allow us to see the quote in context and come to some agreement about how it should be discussed in the article. Cadr
Update 2: The quote you used is rendered rather out of context because it omits the first and last sentences of a paragraph! This is the full quote:
As to the NLF terror, I think Dr. Arendt and I agree in conclusion but probably disagree on the reasons. For me, her vision is too absolutistic. I don't accept the view that we can just condemn the NLF terror, period, because it was so horrible. I think we really have to ask questions of comparative costs, ugly as that may sound. And if we are going to take a moral position on this -- and I think we should -- we have to ask both what the consequences were of using terror and not using terror. If it were true that the consequences of not using terror would be that the peasantry in Vietnam would continue to live in the state of the peasantry of the Philippines, then I think the use of terror would be justified. But, as I said before, I don't think it was the use of terror that led to the successes that were achieved.
This makes the whole thing look much more hypothetical, and not actually a statement that the terror was justified (in fact the omitted initial sentence suggests quite the opposite). Here's another quote supporting this: "But, for reasons that are pretty complex, there are real arguments also in favor of the Viet Cong terror, arguments that can't be lightly dismissed, although I don't think they're correct." I'm afraid this seems to be just yet another cynical smear-job on Chomsky. --Cadr

I saw 2 smears in the article. There was a line saying that Chomsky has endorsed terrorism by communist movements. I don't think it is legitimate to put such a line in the criticism section, because it implies that Chomsky did in fact 'endorse terrorism by communist movements', and some people are critical of him doing this. A better try would have been to say that some people accuse Chomsky of 'endorsing terrorism by communist movements', but without any evidence for this it'd sound more critical of the people who make these accusations anyway, so I deleted this line. Second, there's criticism that the claims that USA is responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians in Sudan aren't based, but the corrrect link to the wikipedia article claiming the exact same thing was missing. For now, I just fixed the link to the Al-Shifa plant bombing, and left the criticism as it is. However, the whole incident is more likely to put apologists of USA atrocities in a bad light than anything else, and in fact what Chomsky discussed in his book 9-11 makes this even more troubling, since USA blocked attempts by the UN to inspect the damage in Sudan. Anyway, Chomsky's reply to the questioning of his sources can be found at salon.com --Nimc 12 Apr 2004

The line "Alan Dershowitz, with whom Chomsky has engaged in many verbal battles through the media," seems to imply that Chomsky was on tv together with Dershowitz many times, assuming that 'verbal battle through the media' means tv. This is probably wrong, or to the very least the word 'many' is wrong, though I suspect that no such 'verbal battles' occured at all (Chomsky is not exactly a welcomed guest on tv shows.) All I know of is a university talk by Chomsky in which Dershowitz claims he debated him, and an exchange of letters in the Boston Globe (i.e. not verbal) which Dershowitz wouldn't be delighted to be reminded of. This line was added to wikipedia on 4 Aug 2002, but integrated from another entry, so I guess it's hard to know who wrote it? If anyone has evidence for it, I'd be interested to see it.

Also, the title 'About Chomsky and Chomsky archives' doesn't contain any archives. And, the link for Werner Cohn's sci-fi book appears twice, both there and as [1] in criticism - I'd assume that one link should be more than enough for this particular book... --Nimc 00:24, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

There are too many criticisms. Is this page about Chomsky or criticisms of Chomsky? Just say what he believes and let people decide for themselves. -- Mike W. Orlando, Fl.

Inaccuracies?

There are several places in the article where I'm not sure if the writer maybe just wrote what he felt like, without much relation to reality:

1) "particularly popular among many groups of university students in the United States and Canada" - What's special about Canada, in comparison to other countries? Maybe a Canadian wrote that? Maybe it's correct, I don't know.

This should definitely go. No-one really knows what demographics Chomsky's popular with, so I don't think we should speculate. Cadr 03:19, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

2) "even endorsed candidates for office" - probably the word "endorsed" is a little too strong. For example, in the ZNet forum replies that I added in the external links, he said that "endorsing Kerry" is an invention of headline writers, when answering a question about voting against Bush and tactical voting.

I don't think I added that bit, but I know Chomsky endorsed Paul Lachelier [2], and maybe others. DanKeshet 03:09, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Thanks. The word "endorsed" is accurate then. Nimc 19:29, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

3) The "pre-determined thesis" criticism is too vague, who are these critics that remain unmentioned throughout the paragraph? Could someone mention some reasonable authors who don't just make accusations without evidence, but actually reviewed a book seriously and made claims such as "uses selective quotes and out-of-context facts" and the rest? So we could make this paragraph less mystical...

4) The leftist criticism (which I wrote!) is also not too great. The part about being criticized for not being a good enough anarchist was written in the 'Political views' part of the article, so I moved it here - but I wonder if maybe this is just some internet forums type of criticism that is not even worth mentioning. The anti-Marxist part is probably too strong - it's true that Chomsky is critical of Marxism, he also said something like "any theory named after a single person is probably pathological" - but to say that people accuse him of anti-Marxism is probably too strong.

5) The "lacking credentials" criticism sounds fine, but has anyone actually used such criticism? It sounds like an invention, i.e. someone just woke up one morning and decided it'd be cool to write it here. I tried to look and couldn't find anyone who said anything similar to this - could someone show me an example?

The "lacking credentials" criticism is brought up by questions from the audience at every single lecture of his about Palestine (of the 7 or so I've seen). I agree that it doesn't really belong here, though. DanKeshet 03:09, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Interesting... what did he say in response?:) I only heard recordings of talks, including q&a segments, and never came across anything like this. Anyway, it seems to me that this paragraph gives an impression of something more serious than audience during a talk. Nimc 19:29, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
You can listen to one example, of many, at [3], at 60 minutes and 5 seconds (or so). His answer: "the only place where people care about credentials are in the fields that don't have any substance." Also, he says he doesn't have credentials in anything, linguistics included, but he regularly gives lectures and classes in a wide variety of subjects, including mathematics and perception and the like. I still don't think it goes in the article, but this point is on the talking points of an organized group of people who go to his speeches and hand out fliers against him and ask him hostile questions, etc. DanKeshet 21:31, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Thanks again. Very nice q&a recording... poor Noam and what he has to go through:( I replaced "qa" with "talk" in your link to get the first part too. He indeed discusses the credentials issue and gives several good point, but he wasn't really criticized about that - the criticism came from people who just thought his facts are wrong - you can see for example that he is correct about the timeline of suicide bombers at [4]. Anyway, describing ADL people etc trying to disturb meetings and spread fliers that quote Chomsky saying things that he has never said - doesn't belong in this article, maybe somewhere else. I wonder if such criticism comes from more serious people too? I guess the way to proceed is to delete this part, and if the person who wrote it returns, maybe he'd want to elaborate more about what he had in mind? Nimc 00:08, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I'm not sure that he even has a degree in linguistics, as the article stated before the edit. I've heard various accounts, ranging from having a degree in Maths, Philosophy and Linguistics, and not having ever received a formal degree at all. Cadr 12:47, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Indeed. Chomsky said exactly that in this recording. I advise you to download it, it's very good. Most of the crowd was ok, including an Israeli soldier who generally also sounded nice - too bad he kept trying to insinuate that there were suicide bombings during 2000 etc. Nimc 15:13, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)

6) "The entire Cambodia issue was quite controversial for Chomsky's reputation, with many of his supporters arguing that Chomsky had in fact been wrong in his initial assessments of the Cambodian situation, a charge which Chomsky denies. (See Ear, 1995.)" - I looked briefly at that Ear link, and didn't see there any "Chomsky supporter" who argued that Chomsky was wrong, let alone "many supporters". Could anyone name a few such "Chomsky supporters" please? Nimc 18:54, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I guess that here too the reasonable option is to delete this sentence, and wait for someone with evidence of "Chomsky supporters" who might want to revert it? From the brief search that I've made, "Chomsky supporters" such as John Pilger and Michael Albert very much agree with Chomsky on this issue. Also, the phrase "quite controversial for Chomsky's reputation" seems to mean "quite popular among Chomsky's critics" when decoded. Nimc 19:54, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

7) The "About Chomsky" Lipstadt link is not about Chomsky. In the one paragraph there that discusses Chomsky, she is misleading. But anyway, the relevant point of view from that article is already quoted in Faurisson Affair. Nimc 19:54, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC) Thanks for fixing this. Nimc 23:57, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

8) "Chomsky is also often criticized as being a conspiracy theorist" - This paragraph sounds stupid to me. May I see evidence? Is there someone who wrote this while actually referring to something that Chomsky said, i.e. not just made a wild charge without attributing it to anything. Here is a recent [5] example, the technique here is to use the phrase "planet Chomsky" with no other details. If this criticism is only made by people who don't back it up with anything, I think we can remove it. Also note the word "often" in the quotation. Nimc 23:57, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Is there anyone who likes this paragraph? It was added as "19:04, 29 Jul 2003 213.93.29.223". So far I only managed to find serious criticisms (books by leftists, etc) of Chomsky that accuse him of being an anti-conspiracy-theorist. Please reply here if you think that this paragraph should stay, thanks. Nimc 18:20, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
(In the context of recent edits by J.J.) I decided to leave this one in at the moment, purely because it's an opportunity to present Chomsky's own views on conspiracy theories, which are a fairly important element of his political philosophy (though I think they ought to be integrated into the section on his political views at some point).
The other uncited criticisms I have left in place for the moment, but they really need some cites. J.J. avoids the issue completely, merely informing us that such criticisms are in the mainstream without letting us know where to find them. He might argue that they're so easy to find that cites aren't necessary, but the converse also holds: if they're easy to find, they're easy to cite! Cadr 19:16, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

9) "Accusations of anti-semitism" - I claim that the person who originally wrote this was bluffing. May I see evidence where either Dershowitz or Horowitz "accuse" Chomsky of being an anti-Semite? As for Werner Cohn, he accuses Chomsky of being a neo-Nazi, so I guess anti-Semite is included there. Nimc 23:57, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I believe that dershowitz and horowitz were originally added as "prominent critics", which is true. Somewhere along the way they got moved from "critics" to "accusations of anti-semitism". DanKeshet 16:25, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Maybe they sometimes insinuated anti-Semitism charges, maybe not - I don't know. I didn't find anything by a very brief internet search. But both the title of this section and the first sentence leave no room for doubt that they directly said that Chomsky is anti-Semitic in their opinion. So, maybe someone who reads their books could provide a quote for us, or refer us to article/interview/speech/etc where they said this. Thanks in advance. If these quotes won't be found, I suggest we remove this section and wait for someone to rewrite it accurately. Just swapping 'anti-Semitism accusations' with 'prominent critics' would look ridiculous, maybe it can be rewritten by quoting other people who might seem more reasonable? E.g. Dershowitz signs a letter that calls to impeach Bush, but he's still willing to fabricate evidence in order to defend Israel. Nimc 23:37, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)
If anyone has ideas about what to do with this, please suggest them. It appears that these accusations are wrong, but I'm not sure on how to modify them. And again, if some like J.J., who apparently reads David Horowitz books, could shed light on this, it'd be great. Thanks. Nimc 11:07, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Also, the Sudan Al-Shifa bombing criticism looks more like a criticism of Bill Clinton (and Richard Clarke?) than anything else... --Nimc 23:55, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

I assume there're no objections to remove this? It started as a smear, then modified by npov'ing it. Nimc 23:37, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Quote regarding Cambodia

For J.J.:

you added the quote: "The deaths in Cambodia were not the result of systematic slaughter and starvation organized by the state but rather attributable in large measure to peasant revenge, undisciplined military units out of government control, starvation and disease that are direct consequences of the US war, or other such factors."

A quick search discovers that the quotation marks around the quote you added are a lie.

Here's the full paragraph: "If 2-2.5 million people, about 1/3 of the population have been systematically slaughtered by a band of murderous thugs who have taken over the government, then McGovern is willing to consider international military intervention. We presume that he would not have made this proposal if the figure of those killed were, say, less by a factory of 100--that is 25 000 people--though that would be bad enough. Nor would he have been likely to propose this extreme measure if the deaths in Cambodia were not the result of systematic slaughter and starvation organized by the state, but rather attributable in large measure to peasant revenge, undisciplined military units out of government control, starvation, and disease that are direct consequences of the US war, or other such factors. Nor has McGovern, or anyone else, called for military intervention to cut short the apparent massacre of something like one sixth of the population of East Timor in the course of the Indonesian invasion."

It is quite obvious that you don't have the book from which you're quoting, and you believed some right wing source with this quote to be truthful. Nimc 19:54, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Please also reply to (3) above under ==Inaccuracies?==, as I now noticed that you wrote the paragraph referred to there. Nimc 22:07, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

For 213.7.253.5:

Again, the standard here is that you don't make the criticism by youself. You wrote "Critics often alledge..." - if there are serious people or groups who alledge something, then quote them. Though with regard to Cambodia, I advise you to just read the original article [6] etc, as some of the other people (particularly on the internet) who comment on this issue appear to be mentally instable. The most extreme example seems to be this [7] one.

I'll also remove the paragraphes that correspond to (3) and (4) in ==Inaccuracies?== because they don't meet this standard. I can add some citations for (4), but I regret that I wrote it anyway. Other paragraphes should also be either improved or removed, imho (9) should be modified and (8) should be removed because it's probably not based on anything serious, but maybe I'm wrong. Nimc 08:00, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

For Nimc: I didn't make criticism myself at all! I quoted Chomsky. Furthermore, I did post a link to "serious people or groups" which was promptly deleted by the self-appointed censors. It is bad netiquette, as the FAQ for Wikipedia advises to delete and revert as little as possible. Yet, every addendum, including relevant quotes are immediately censored. Chomsky's denial of Khmer Rouge atrocities and his support for China are clearly pertinent to "Criticism". Chomsky stands by his words to this day, so why censor them?

Furthermore the site linked to which has an extensive review (with full bibliography) of the debate over Cambodia is a site about Cambodia, clearly relevant to the Cambodian genocide, no.

Read again what you just wrote: "I didn't make criticism myself at all! I quoted Chomsky." - does that mean that you quoted Chomsky criticizing himself? The standard here has nothing to do with censorship, you are welcomed to add serious comments that have been made by known people in serious publications, but you shouldn't make the criticism by yourself. NPOV means that you should describe a debate that has encyclopedic value, not give your opinion - that's why you shouldn't just quote Chomsky in the criticism section, instead you should quote what was written on Chomsky in some serious publications. For example, if you check the 'apologist' comment you'll see that Anthony Lewis said that in the Wash Post, which resulted in some exchanges of letters there I think. Suppose I want to make the case that Bill Clinton was a mass murderer comparable to Hitler, claiming that he killed more people in Iraq than any other individual with his sanctions, plus 6000 in Yugoslavia and who knows how many in Sudan and Afghan, do you think I should be allowed to insert this mass murderer criticism into the Bill Clinton article just because this is indeed my opinion? No, I shouldn't be allowed to do that, otherwise wikipedia will soon become a place where all sort of people make wild charges everywhere. Therefore I should wait until someone important would accuse Bill Clinton of being a mass murderer e.g. in the NY Times (probably after his death), and then quote that.
You are naive if you think that the web site you added is truthful. We're keeping here this Sophal Ear site because it somehow managed to get doctorate dissertation for that, even though by briefly looking it seems very lame... making charges in chapter 3 and saying he will "prove" them in chapter 4, and nothing can be found later on except endnotes. I strongly think we shouldn't add internet-created links on such issues - the links here were written for serious newspapers, except the dissertation and the neo-Nazi book. I assume that the internet-created websites selectively quote parts of paragraphes, mix comments from different places, and maybe fabricate quotes too. So please don't add external links like we see in the Micahel Moore article mess. Incidently, the original Chomsky articles on Cambodia were written in order to expose fabrications that were written is serious publications. Besides, if you care so much about Indo-China, why don't you go add criticisms to the Nixon, Kissinger or Pol Pot articles?
To clarify further: even if you had in your hands definite proofs that Chomsky kills rabbits in his house and drinks their blood, by having pictures and a website you created that gives the evidence, still the wikipedia article is not the place to expose this. First submit your evidence to some serious publication, and after they publish it you can quote it here. Wikipedia should be used to describe known issues that took place, not for exposing issues using sources that don't get any peer review to verify them. Nimc 00:52, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)


To Nimc: You uphold an arbitrary self-created burden of proof only in this case. No where else is publishing in a "serious" journal necessary for inclusion. That is totally false. In all other articles, "allegations" are regularly posted. The author of that site is not anonymous and has full references. All we are saying by including it is that "some people says this about Chomsky". IT is pure hypocrisy (and maybe willful) that you demand higher standards for critical sources of Chomksky than in any other case.

You say: "You are naive if you think that the web site you added is truthful." But nothing on Wikipedia purports to be "truthful". That is a misunderstanding. It is at minimum one view of Chomsky. In a npov way, we must tell people what the main views of Chomsky are. This is just one of them. You can add others but we should not censor criticisms of Chomsky.

As for the quotes from Chomsky *himself*, they are not criticism but are evidence of his views at the time. This is directly relevant to the controversy. Are you claiming that Chomsky's own words are not "serious" (a criteria you have apparently invented yourself)????

You are attempting wholesale censorship of both 1) the facts (Chomsky's quotes) and 2)criticisms of Chomsky.

You seem unable to comprehend that you shouldn't make the criticisms by yourself. I suggest you read NPOV, which explains in details that we should describe debates and not give opinions - here is one of the relevant quotes from there: "Wikipedia is devoted to stating facts and only facts. Where we might want to state opinions, we convert that opinion into a fact by attributing the opinion to someone. So, rather than asserting, 'God exists,' which is an opinion, we can say, 'Most Americans believe that God exists,' which is fact, or 'Thomas Aquinas believed that God exists,' which is also fact." You wrote: "In all other articles, 'allegations' are regularly posted" - Please provide then examples of articles where 'allegations' are posted, I'm sure you'll have no problem to find some examples? Note that even the Moore article, with all of the noise right now, still describes in the criticism section debates that Moore himself engaged in, i.e. claims were made by people that Moore thought that they're important enough to reply to. And btw, I didn't bring it up before, but the content of what you added is even more weird - why you added this quote about China as criticism remains unmentioned... Also, as for your claim that the person of that website is not anonymous, would you mind giving him a call and report back to us...? Please don't use the word censorship, I explained to you why this has nothing to do with censorship with my example of Bill Clinton above, but you chose to completely ignore it. And again, please edit the talk page and not the article itself for now. Please start by giving us several examples of articles with 'allegations' as mentioned above. Thank you. Nimc 12:06, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Socrates999,

You're vandalizing wikipedia, don't you have any respect for private property?

Just for the record: the important thing about Wikipedia is that it is not private property - it's public property and belongs to all of us. We are all free to modify and improve it. That's what GFDL means. So Socrates999 cannot display disrespect for private property here, only disrespect for other contributors.pir 08:43, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
The copyrights are public. The equipment that stores the data is private, at least for now. Nimc 10:41, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
The equipement doesn't matter much. Anyone can download Wikipedia, put it on their own server, or burn it on CDs and hand them out on the street. Wikipedia is public in the true sense of the meaning, it belongs to all. Quite a big achievement I think.pir 11:12, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
It's 14 gigabytes of data, and growing. Wikipedia needs to serve anyone who wants to download it, which means that extra network bandwidth is needed as it gets larger. Currently the server is privately owned I think, though donations are welcomed. Anyway, I didn't try to imply that the extra 32k of space are very important, but since quoting from the NPOV article and everything else I said didn't seem to help, I thought that maybe the 'private property' argument would appeal to him, thereby getting him to use the talk page and stop modifying the article while we discuss this. Nimc 20:00, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

You've been constantly ignoring our requests to edit the talk page instead of the main article - each time someone has to revert your edits in the main article it adds another 32k of space to the wikipedia history. Except for this last creative edit of yours, in which you somehow managed to duplicate the entire article twice resulting in a double article, thus adding 64k.

YOU** are vandalizing Wikipedia. You automatically delete anything critical of Chomsky and THEN demand people talk about it. Why not talk first, beofre your deletion campaign? Furthermore, your burden of proof is pure hypocrisy. In other articles (US intervene etc) any allegation is okay, no matter how kooky.
I responded to some of these weird lies you wrote in the talk page of the US interventions list

You should read the help pages for newcomers before you start your adventures here. From there you would have learned that the correct way to revert an article is to click on the desired version in the history, then click 'edit', then click 'save'. Please use this simple method instead of your (imperfect...) copy and paste techniques.

I've explained to you in detail why you should describe public criticism and not make the criticism by yourself in wikipedia. Please don't edit the main page with criticism that you're making by yourself.

I don't I quote Chomksy. And critics of Chomsky abound who make these charges.

Basically ANY criticism made of Chomksy is DELETED because you can always claim it is "my" criticism, despite a plethora of critics who say the same thing, and who I linked to and referenced. Even Chomsky's own quotes are deleted as "my" opinion???

It's probably fruitless, but I'll try one last example in order to try to clarify: suppose I'd like to add the criticism in the Laura Bush article that 'some critics' think that she murdered her boyfriend, and that she should be tried for murder and perhaps executed if found guilty. And suppose I'll back up this criticism using a Bruce Sharp style external link such as this [8] one. Do you see any problem with this?


This is exactly your tactic on the US intervene list. ANY conspriacy theory is okay. Funny, these double-standards.


Also, your "Moss-New York Times" quote is ridiculous.

Then put some counter weight in the statement. "Chomsky defenders claim that these statements were made out of context."


It's referring to a NYT correspondent by the name of Moss who fabricated his sources with regard to "slaughter", read the paragraph. Chomsky and Herman didn't say that there's no "slaughter", they explicitly wrote in the last paragraph that they don't "pretend to know where the truth lies". Also, your "more than 1.7 million" number is higher than the highest estimates - it appears that from your point of view, the more dead Cambodians, the better - which is a really sick behavior. I strongly suggest that you read some articles about Cambodia (here's a recent [9] one) in order to get an impression of what really happened there, and stop playing with the number of deaths in such a sloppy manner as if this is some kind of a game. Also, you keep confusing 1967 with 1977 in your edits.

Furthermore, you delete the China quote which even Chomsky himself doesn't dispute. He still supports it today.

By the way, are you a relative of Ann Coulter or something? This business of whining about censorship sounds awfully similar to this [10] National Review incident. Nimc 18:20, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Grow up. You're politics are informed by demonization of others, not critical thinking.

Here's the paragraph from which he decided to quote the last sentence as being one of Chomsky's 'most infamous' statements:

In the New York Times Magazine, May 1, 1977, Robert Moss (editor of a dubious offshoot of Britain's Economist called "Foreign Report" which specializes in sensational rumors from the world's intelligence agencies) asserts that "Cambodia's pursuit of total revolution has resulted, by the official admission of its Head of State, Khieu Samphan, in the slaughter of a million people." Moss informs us that the source of this statement is Barron and Paul, who claim that in an interview with the Italian weekly Famiglia Cristiana Khieu Samphan stated that more than a million died during the war, and that the population had been 7 million before the war and is now 5 million. Even if one places some credence in the reported interview nowhere in it does Khieu Samphan suggest that the million postwar deaths were a result of official policies (as opposed to the lag effects of a war that left large numbers ill, injured, and on the verge of starvation). The "slaughter" by the Khmer Rouge is a Moss-New York Times creation.

Here's the paragraph in the end of the article:

We do not pretend to know where the truth lies amidst these sharply conflicting assessments; rather, we again want to emphasize some crucial points. What filters through to the American public is a seriously distorted version of the evidence available, emphasizing alleged Khmer Rouge atrocities and downplaying or ignoring the crucial U.S. role, direct and indirect, in the torment that Cambodia has suffered. Evidence that focuses on the American role, like the Hildebrand and Porter volume, is ignored, not on the basis of truthfulness or scholarship but because the message is unpalatable.

Let me get this straight--ANY quote is automatically taken "out of context" because there is further text in the original? LOL. To make you happy, put the quote and link the to full article! Then you can be satisifed about proper context. But in fact, Chomsky, in the entire rest of the article repeatedly calls the atrocities "allegations", "rumors", "senational".... He did his best to cast doubt upon reports of the genocide. Nothing you have shown disputes that.


Perhaps someone else would like to try to explain to him why he shouldn't make criticisms by himself?

Perhaps you can post ONE criticism I made by myself.


I tried to quote from the NPOV article and give him several examples, but I'm giving up for now. Also, he claims that I'm vandalizing wikipedia by reverting his edits on the main article, so I guess it'd be better if others would revert his edits. This individual is a living proof why people should describe public debates and not insert their own criticism into wikipedia articles.

I DO NOT insert my own criticsm. Proof? I thought not.
Socrates999, all the criticisms you added were your own, as opposed to criticism by Anthony Lewis, Alan Dershowitz, etc. Anyone can look at one of your revisions of the article and see what you added, or follow the comments on this talk page. Anyway, you sound like a lunatic to me, so I'm finished talking to you. I tried my best, but it appears that you don't even read what I wrote (most obvious example is that you didn't notice that you keep confusing 1967 with 1977). Perhaps others will do a better job at talking to you. Nimc 20:00, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Again, proof?????????? I thought not. You are a Chomsky fanatic, so you automatically delete any edits or additions. I added 1)quotes from Chomsky himself, which you deleted. 2) Links to these critics I cite, which you also deleted. You are a dishonest vandal/censor.


Nimc 10:41, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

left-wing dershowitz

In a recent edit, Chomsky's critics have been classified by left-wing/right-wing. I agree that under some political spectra in the US, Dershowitz is considered a left-winger, but I don't think it makes sense in this context for two reasons: 1) under almost any accepted political spectrum, Dershowitz is far to the right of Chomsky. In the context of an article on Chomsky, Dershowitz could just as easily be called a right-winger. 2) even on the conventional political spectrum of the US, the disagreements between Chomsky and Dershowitz revolve around Israel and Palestine, an issue that doesn't appear along a political spectrum in the US. Therefore, I would like to remove these labels from Dershowitz and Horowitz (an interesting left/right story himself).

I agree with you.--GD 19:05, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Chomsky on terrorism

That quote could be highly misconstrued by someone not familiar with Chomsky's ideas or writing style.

Well, it is said (note: 'said', not 'written') in a provocative way, but it's clear. Though later in the Q&A session of this talk (given right after 9/11) he did say: "I mean, the Nazis weren't carrying out counter-terror, they were carrying out terror. They called it counter-terror and the U.S. military agreed with them, but for their own reasons." Anyway, I like the way it's quoted right now in the article (it wasn't me who added it), because it seems to me to be provocative in a good way, and it combines well with the previous quote. Maybe you meant that if someone selectively quotes just a few words from this paragraph, he could distort what Chomsky said here - but that is true with just about anything written by anyone. Anyone who tries it with this paragraph would simply be lying, because it's actually very clear and there isn't more than one reasonable way to interpret it. Here's another example from a CBC interview with Chomsky in 2002, though I think that the quote in article is much more appropriate: "Q: The question that arises is if the United States is a leading terrorist state, if as you say, Britain is another example of a terrorist state, how do you distinguish between what you describe as terrorism and what they are saying — Osama Bin Laden who's a terrorist? Make the distinction. Chomsky: It's very simple. If they do it, it's terrorism. If we do it, it's counter-terrorism. That's a historical universal. Go back to Nazi propaganda. The most extreme mass murderers ever. If you look at Nazi propaganda, that's exactly what they said. They said they're defending the populations and the legitimate governments of Europe like Vichy from the terrorist partisans who are directed from London. That's the basic propaganda line. And like all propaganda, no matter how vulgar, it has an element of truth. The partisans did carry out terror, they were directed from London. The Vichy government is about as legitimate as half the governments the US has installed around the world and supports, so yes, there was a minor element of truth to it, and that's the way it works. If somebody else carries it out, it's terror. If we carry it out, it's counter-terror. I think perhaps one of the most dramatic examples right at this moment is a place where I just was a couple of weeks ago, southeastern Turkey. Southeastern Turkey is the site of some of the worst terrorist atrocities of the 1990s." Nimc 15:30, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

This is the sort of "democracy" that Noam Chomsky supports.

Mention this in the main article.

"Yesterday and today, my friends and I visited Tanh Hoa province. There we were able to see at first hand the constructive work of the social revolution of the Vietnamese people. We saw luxurious fields and lovely countryside. We saw brave men and women who know how to defend their country from brutal aggression, but also to work with pride and with dignity to build a society of material prosperity, social justice, and cultural progress. I would like to express the great joy that we feel in your accomplishments.

"We also saw the ruins of dwellings and hospitals, villages mutilated by savage bombardments, craters disfiguring the peaceful countryside. In the midst of the creative achievements of the Vietnamese people, we came face to face with the savagery of a technological monster controlled by a social class, the rulers of the American empire, that has no place in the 20th century, that has only the capacity to repress and murder and destroy.

"We also saw the (Ham Ranh) Bridge, standing proud and defiant, and carved on the bills above we read the words, 'determined to win.' The people of Vietnam will win, they must win, because your cause is the cause of humanity as it moves forward toward liberty and justice, toward the socialist society in which free, creative men control their own destiny.

"This is my first visit to Vietnam. Nevertheless, since the moment when we arrived at the airport at Hanoi, I've had a remarkable and very satisfying feeling of being entirely at home. It is as if we are renewing old friendships rather than meeting new friends. It is as if we are returning to places that have a deep and personal meaning.

"In part, this is because of the warmth and the kindness with which we have been received, wherever we have gone. In part, it is because for many years we have wished all our strength and will to stand beside you in your struggle. We are deeply grateful to you that you permit us to be part of your brave and historical struggle. We hope that there will continue to be strong bonds of comradeship between the people of Vietnam and the many Americans who wish you success and who detest with all of their being the hateful activities of the American government.

"Those bonds of friendship are woven of many strands. From our point of view there is first of all the deep sympathy that we felt for the suffering of the Vietnamese people, which persists and increases in the southern part of your country, where the American aggression continues in full force.

"There is, furthermore, a feeling of regret and shame that we must feel because we have not been able to stop the American war machine. More important still is our admiration for the people of Vietnam who have been able to defend themselves against the ferocious attack, and at the same time take great strides forward toward the socialist society.

"But, above all, I think, is the feeling of pride. Your heroism reveals the capabilities of the human spirit and human will. Decent people throughout the world see in your struggle a model for themselves. They are in your debt, everlastingly, because you were in the forefront of the struggle to create a world in which the chains of oppression have been broken and replaced by social bonds among free men working in true solidarity and cooperation.

"Your courage and your achievements teach us that we too must be determined to win--not only to win the battle against American aggression in Southeast Asia, but also the battle against exploitation and racism in our own country.

"I believe that in the United States there will be some day a social revolution that will be of great significance to us and to all of mankind, and if this hope is to be proven correct, it will be in large part because the people of Vietnam have shown us the way.

"While in Hanoi I have had the opportunity to read the recent and very important book by Le Duan on the problems and tasks of the Vietnamese revolution. In it, he says that the fundamental interests of the proletariat of the people of all the world consists in at the same time in safeguarding world peace and moving the revolution forward in all countries. This is our common goal. We only hope that we can build upon your historic achievements. Thank you."

- Noam Chomsky, originally delivered on April 13, 1970 in Hanoi while he was visiting North Vietnam with a group of anti-war activists. Broadcast by Radio Hanoi on April 14, and published in the _Asia-Pacific Daily Report_ of the U.S. government's Foreign Broadcast Information Service, April 16, 1970, pages K2-K3.

This is the most ridiculous anti-Chomsky propaganda I've ever seen. "Your heroism..." "the proletariat of the people of all the world" ? Ridiculous. Chomsky doesn't talk like a Stalinist. It's interesting that the US government would go to such length to discredit him but know so little about him to make such a blatant falsification. pir 10:23, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I doubt very much that the U.S. gov published this, though nothing is impossible. One possibility is that this speech is internet-only material. Another possibility is that this speech was made by another person, and someone on the internet decided to add Chomsky's name to it. Another possibility is your translations theory. And of course, there's always the possibility that everything else that Chomsky said and wrote was in order to deceive us, and he revealed his true self in this one speech. Nimc 18:20, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I am sending some inquiries to find out more about this text. I will report back here. DanKeshet 18:09, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Seems to have been copied from here [11].pir 18:50, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Here's Chomsky's report of the visit [12]. Haven't had time to read it all but I couldn't find the words radio or broadcast in it. Just thinking: If Chomsky gave an interview to Radio Hanoi, it would have been in English, then translated into Vietnamese, then translated back into English by the Foreign Broadcast Information Service. Both of which would have strong ideological bias. Assuming the transcript is genuine (not invented by [13]), this version would probably be significantly different from the original, and flawed translation or falsification could have occurred at either (or both) translations.pir 19:25, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

The text quotes a Dershowitz book; ignoring for a while that he typically writes nonsensical screeed, we can deal with the book itself as a quotable source, not the blog. Either Dershowitz cites a source for it, or we can maybe ask NC's staff to comment. -Stevertigo 18:09, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Did you mean Horowitz or Dershowitz? OK, so the guy whose website this seems to have been taken from writes the following:
I first came across a quote from this speech in the book "DESTRUCTIVE GENERATION: Second Thoughts About the Sixties", by Peter Collier & David Horowitz. [...]I found the primary source in the book "POLITICAL PILGRIMS: Western Intellectuals in Search of the Good Society", by Paul Hollander. Then, with the irreplaceable help of Stephen Denney, an archivist with the UC Berkeley Indochina Center, I was able to obtain a transcript of the entire speech, which I have provided above.

So basically (assumptions: nobody is lying outright, Chomsky doesn't speak Vietnamese, Radio Hanoi doesn't broadcast in English): Chomsky said something (while in Vietnam) ==> translated by Radio Hanoi ==> translated back by FBIS ==> Paul Hollander's book ==> Collier&Horowitz book It seems to me that it makes no sense to talk about anything else than what Chomsky said initially, and it will be pretty difficult to find out what exactly he said. We can probably dismiss the rest. Christopher Hitchen's article [14] talks about Collier&Horowitz's made up charges btw. pir 23:17, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I spoke to Chomsky (indirectly) about this, and he says 1) "I never gave any speech over

radio Hanoi, or anywhere [while he was in Vietnam]". 2) That transcript has been circulating for 30 years (it is not a recent Horowitz forgery), 3) it's possible he gave informal remarks that were picked up somewhere, but certainly not these ones. DanKeshet 19:07, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Is Chomsky credible source for this information? We might as well as OJ Simpson for what "really happened" with the murder. Talk about uncritical fluff. This page is becoming some Chomsky fan page. In the real world, Chomsky is often criticized. Too bad none of it comes up here since the ditto heads immediately censor it out.
Of course we have to allow for the possibility that Chomsky is not telling the truth, as we have to allow for the possibility that somebody ghosted or mistranslated the piece. But the whole reason the speech would be a revelation is because it contrasts so sharply with everything else he has written. For that same reason, there must be abundant evidence that the speech was actually his to overcome the evidence that it wasn't. There is no such evidence. DanKeshet 18:51, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Request for Socrates999 to explain what he's trying to do

Sample question: why did you remove the "criticism of science culture" section in an edit which purported only to be restoring some of the criticisms of Chomsky edited back in by J.J.? Cadr 18:38, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)


The page was 39 KB, well over 32 KB limit. It is filled with verbose quotes by Chomsky about anything, even subjects not pertinent to his field. This is NOT a fan site. It should concisely introduce the main themes.
Also PLEASE stop reverting. It ruins the process of editing, since all the intermediate edits are lost. This automatic deletion of any edits by a handful of Chomsky fanatics is sheer vandalism and censorship.
The 32KB limit is usually applied to talk pages. There are plenty of articles longer than this one which are not cut down. In any case, you still have to explain why you chose to remove "criticism of science culture", which was only a few paragraphs in length.
Wrong! The software advises under 32 KB. That's Wiki policy. Just because others ignore this (good) advice doesn't make it right. You are wrong and you know it. I have nothing against the Science Culture bit but it is not particularly related. Do we have to put in Chomsky's favorite flavor of ice cream as well? This is not a "Fan page" with every statement Chomsky ever made (with judicious censorship of any embarassing quotes!)
See below; Chomsky has written quite a lot about the philosophy of science and 3 or 4 paragraphs on it is not excessive. The Wikipedia page on page sizes suggests condensing or moving content, not simply deleteing it. If you want to shorten the page, do it properly, and separate your condensing edits from your other edits (e.g. adding "radical" into the intro), so that it's possible to work out what you're doing. Cadr 18:48, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I am forced to revert your edits again because they are not constructive. The list of changes is so large that is is almost impossible to evaluate them, and at no time have you given any kind of explanation for why you are making these edits. Reversion on Wikipedia is only censorship if it is done without good reason. Randomly removing sections of articles which are the product of many people's hard work is destructive, and will only antagonise other Wikipedians.
Oh well, it's all the same. I made minor edits before but they were summarily deleted. So gradual revising doesn't work. Now I will just submit major drafts. Minor editing is immediately lost with the *systematic deletion/reversion* from self-appointed censors like you.
I haven't reverted any minor edits of yours. Anyway, you're not making minor edits now, and we are discussing the edits you are making now, not previous edits. Cadr 18:48, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)
The most ludicrous part of your comment is your complaint that the article "...is filled with verbose quotes by Chomsky about anything, even subjects not pertinent to his field". Firstly, hardly any of the quotes exceed a paragraph in length, and secondly we should surely be covering all areas of Chomsky's thought, not just those which fall within some arbitrary definition of his "field". Cadr 21:07, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Sorry, there are limits (32 KB to be precise). What Chomsky thinks about "deconstruction" is not central to his career or the controveries. If someone could write a concise summary of his views on science, etc. that would be better than these massive quotes.
It was a concise view and there were no massive quotes! (Unless you consider a paragraph massive). Chomsky's actually written quite a lot about the philosophy of science (and he's a professor of Linguistics and Philosophy), so the suggestion that this stuff is insignificant is ignorant. And what's his career got to do with anything? Chomsky's an intellectual figure and it's his thought that's important. I mean, none of his political work has anything to do with his career, but it would be ludicrous to have an article on Chosmky which didn't discuss his poltics. Cadr 18:48, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Also, I've been very careful not to let my reverts remove intermediate edits, so please don't suggest otherwise. Cadr 21:10, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Wrong. Between you and Nimc, virtually all minor edits have been systematically wiped out. Check the history. There are something like *10* reverts recently, despite Wiki policy that reverts and deletion are to be a last resort, and instead people should revise and edit.
I haven't reverted any minor edits! (Or at least when I did, I added them back in with a subsequent edit). I've been very careful about this, and it's quite irritating to keep having these verifiably untrue accusations made about my editing — you check the history! Also note that Wiki policy makes it clear that deleting entire sections of articles which are well-written and informative is a last resort. You cannot barge into an article, chop it about, and then expect other people to pick up the pieces with a smile. You would get a lot less flak if you made some positive edits. Cadr 18:48, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)

BTW, why do you keep editing in the same typos (e.g. "identifed" for "identified" in the intro)? Does it really surprise you that your changes are being reverted when you delete entire sections of an article for dubious reasons, make significant changes without explanation (e.g. qualifying left-wing with "smotimes radical", which has been a point of moderate controversy) and add in typos which other people will have to fix? Could we just discuss the changes you want to make here first and come to an agreement. I promise you I'm willing to compromise (e.g. by condensing some sections of the article, or moving them elsewhere). I know it may be hard to believe that we could come to an agreement in the present climate of edits, but let's give it a go. Cadr 18:57, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Attempting a constructive proposal

For now, how about we create a Criticism of Noam Chomsky article, and link to it in the criticism section of the main article. People like JJ and S999 could edit that page and improve it, and later on we could either re-integrate it back into the criticism section that the main article already has, or leave it as a separate article. This should stop most of the edit wars for now. How about it? Nimc 18:47, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)

But will it stop random sections of the article from being deleted? Cadr 18:53, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
There's only one way to find out... Anyway, I didn't mean to imply that having an additional criticism page is a magnificent idea, but I'm sure you agree that having the main article protected (as it is now) sure isn't a better idea. It seems to me that this proposal is simple enough and can be effective, but of course due to the nature of wikipedia there aren't perfect solutions. Maybe you have alternative ideas to suggest though? Nimc 20:09, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
That article would be totally POV. We should work out disputes and just leave the criticisms on this page.. --Tothebarricades.tk 20:25, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I agree, in principle at least. Cadr 21:38, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
You should look at this as a technical issue. If the separate criticism article would be totally POV, it'd be better if you could work it out by suggesting improvements there (if you wish), instead of here. It'd hopefully stop the constant editing of the main article, at least, and maybe it'd even be productive because the separate page could evolve without reverts. I think it's worth it to try this idea and see how it turns out. Nimc 22:06, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Sorry Nimc, I didn't mean to criticize your suggestion really. I was just wondering whether Socrates999 would agree to leaving in some of the non-criticism stuff that he's deleted. Cadr 21:38, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
You seem to be implying that in your opinion the current situation is better than my proposal. If so, I'm curious to know why... Nimc 22:06, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
No, I think your proposal's OK. In principle I think there is no reason to split up the article, but in practice it might be a good idea. Cadr 22:43, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I dislike the proposal. I'd rather archiive the talk page and use it to discuss the various issues without reversion. DanKeshet 17:10, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)
You mean, discuss issues on the talk page before editing the article? What about people who prefer to first edit the article (using weasel words etc) and then discuss their changes? And what about people (like JJ) who seem to prefer not to discuss their edits? You seem to prefer the 'best' way to handle this, while I'm suggesting to change the framework of editing the article and see if practically it'd improve the situation. Anyway, why not try it and see how it goes? Why all the pessimism that I'm seeing here... Perhaps it will do you guys some good if you join the Bush campaign, which is about optimism... Nimc 18:00, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)
That's why I requested that the article be protected, which it is. Now we don't have to deal with anybody reverting, inserting, etc, until we can agree on how to go forward. I hate the "criticism" sections. Most of that information should be folded into the appropriate section of the article above. Making it an entirely seperate page is even worse. DanKeshet 00:29, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I agree. For example, Chomsky's relation to Marxism should be presented in the 'socialism' or 'political views' sections, and not as criticism of Chomsky by somebody else. However, the problem is not with the people who responded in the talk page so far, but with the people who disagree with you. I suggested to create a separate criticism page in order to improve the situation for now, and see how it goes. What do you suggest we do? Just keep the article locked and meanwhile use the talk page in order to try to convince people who disagree? I doubt that this approach would be productive... In your mind, what exactly should be different once the page is unlocked? Nimc 08:10, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)
What do you suggest we do? Just keep the article locked and meanwhile use the talk page in order to try to convince people who disagree? Well, yes. The atmosphere for improvement is not here right now, but I honestly believe there are chances for improving this article by discussing it with S999 and J.J. Let's at least give it a try before doing something that will make it even harder to bring the article back into good shape. DanKeshet 18:22, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Incidentally, where is Socrates999? I do hope he has not lost interest just because the page is currently protected on his version...Cadr 19:53, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I think most here would agree the article was fine before Socrates999 started messing with it. He has yet and seems unwilling to fully explain himself. Why can't we just call a vote and get this over with? --GD 22:08, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I don't agree that S999 is the only problem. Most of the criticism is full of weasel words, and even criticism without weasel words (in anti-Semitic accusations) might be wrong. Nimc 05:19, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I think the criticism page is a good idea, for once agreeing with Nimc. 1) it will reduce page size, which is too large. 2) It will allow inclusion of criticial views without all the deletion. But the criticism should be linked with a brief summary section, mentioning generally the main criticisms of Chomsky and linking over. Dankeshet's proposal is another alternative, but I am skeptical of some here agreeing to any inclusions of criticisms, since they have so religiously deleted any and all. Maybe Nimc's proposal is a solution.
Can you give a link to a (recent) revison of this article with all criticisms deleted? The criticisms which have been deleted recently were either demonstrably false (e.g. based on mangled quotes and so on) or were heavily weasel-worded (many former supporters of Chomsky said this, many critics said that...) God knows it's easy enough to find criticism of Chomsky on the web, so it's hardly a chore to cite some genuine, specific criticisms with some kind of logical argument behind them. This page is not a clearing house for every single thing which has been said criticising Chomsky — something we have to bear in mind if we wish to decrease the page size. I'll try and be constructive by citing some possible criticisms:
  • [15] -- Brad Delong on Chomsky, Farruson and the Khmer Rouge. We could also link to Ed Herman's response [16] for an alternative opinion. (Note, this response highlights what a load of POV rubbish the paragraph discussing the Khmer Rouge in the present revision of this article is. For example, where is the evidence for Chomsky's views changing? Where is the cite for what Chomsky "ultimately" argued?)
  • [17] Some more random criticism off the web.
I really think all of the criticisms currently in the article could stay, if they were based on cites of specific criticisms, and where appropriate, cites of any relavent material by Chomsky, especially if he has responded to the allegations in any way. But the current state of the criticism section is indefensible. Cadr 21:16, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Who are YOU to judge the falsehood or turh of a statement? That is POV! And this is the reason why you keep vandalizing this page, because you assume your POV is absolutely correct and delete any opposing or dissenting views.
Criticisms are demonstrably false if they're based on innaccurate quotes from Chomsky's writings, hence my examples of "mangled quotes". Unnatributed criticisms have to have some kind of evidence supporting them if the article is to be NPOV. It's OK to include some of the less credible criticisms so long as we attribute them to someone and indicate any responses made to them, but the article generally did not do this. Cadr 12:53, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I for one, don't agree with a separate criticism page because, as stated above by Tothebarricades.tk, it would be totally POV. I don't know of any "separate criticism page" for anyone else on wikipedia, so why should there be one here? PS: I would be nice if everyone would sign their name after they post... --GD 22:41, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I won't stop you all if you think that's the way. DanKeshet 20:23, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I don't know if I like the idea of a whole separate criticism of Chomsky page. There is a precedent for it on some other pages I understand, (Bush has several I believe) but I tend to think doing such a thing tends to "cheapen" wikipedia, making it look like one big internet forum where people make articles just to "counter" existing ones and so forth. Now with all respect, I realize that there are many Chomsky fans involved with this article, as is to be expected. As a result, I'm well aware that you fans may be instinctively skeptical of any criticisms or claims made of Chomsky. At the same time howeverm, from what I gather you seem to want every single sentence of criticism of Chomsky to be followed up by tons of little [1] [2] [3] 's, which in my view (from a mostly stylistic perspective) really makes an article look like it was written by a bunch of petty and partisan people. My main point is, as Chomsky fans you are by definition quite out of tune with what is and isn't mainstream points of Chomsky criticism. Most of what was in the "criticism" chapter were all quite mainstream critiques of Chomsky that thousands of conservative and moderate Democrats commonly use. Yet many of you continually regard these criticisms (ie: the standard critique that Chomsky is needlessly stubborn and biased in his analysis of history, that he omits facts when convienient, etc) as being confusing and strange; you argue they are "weasel words" and generally seem to argue as if they are made up allegations based on nothing. The point is, for wikipedia to work, there must always be a certain willingness to give others "the benefit of the doubt." I am more than willing to give the Chomsky fans who work on this article the benefit of the doubt for the vast majority of this page. I'm not about to demand citations and links after every claim that Chomsky supports this kind of anarchism over this kind of socialism or whatever, and I would hope that you all would in turn be willing to give me and others the benefit of the doubt when we add what we, as critics of Chomsky and readers of conservative pundits, et al, regard to be mainstream criticisms of the man and his beliefs. I hope that is all clear.

Now in the meantime I am going to re-add a couple of links on this page, linking to anti-Chomsky sites. The idea of creating an independent anti-Chomsky entry notwithstanding, there is no reason for this page, in it's current form, to NOT link to at least three pages criticizing Chomsky. user:J.J.

Adding sentences followed by [1][2][3] external links is a very bad style. I told you here before that it'd be good if you cite your sources in the talk page, that includes also sources that do not appear online. For example, it seems that you have David Horowitz books, so if you could quote for us in the talk page a paragraph where he accuses Chomsky of being an anti-Semite, it'd be great. I removed the anti-Semite accusations, I couldn't find online sources with them, except for the Neo-Nazi book. The Cambodia paragraph seems like a reasonable example for not using weasel words. You wrote that critics argue that Chomsky "frequently uses selective quotes and out-of-context facts". I'm interested that you cite some of these criticisms, paragraphs from books or articles of what you consider to be mainstream authors, and not just someone who says it without providing his reasoning why it is "selective" and "out-of-context". Giving you the benefit of the doubt is a meaningless point: if you add information to wikipedia, e.g. about certain people who accuse Chomsky of being "selective" or "anti-Semite", then you're supposed to already know that this information is accurate, and therefore it's reasonable to ask you to cite the source from which you learned this information in case someone doubts whether it is accurate. Whether it should be cited in the article in order to avoid weasel words, or just in the talk page, is another matter. I didn't understand why we should give people the benefit of doubt in order "for wikipedia to work", can you elaborate on this point? And also, what does giving the benefit of the doubt mean exactly in your opinion - that you should be allowed to add what you want and until someone proves that what you added is false (not a reasonable option if you use weasel words), it should stay? I asked you (and others, I think that someone else added the anti-Semtic accusations) to cite sources on the talk page, and only after you didn't respond for several months I deleted it. Please be more responsive this time, because what you added now is again suspicious: where do you get the "conspiracy theorist" criticisms from? I only managed to find anti-conspiracy criticism from serious people so far. Here's an example from another biography of Chomsky, similar to the wikipedia article [18]. As for a separate criticism page, it was supposed to be a practical solution to prevent edits wars, hopefully it's not needed... Nimc 01:22, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I rearranged the external links you added in the 'About Chomsky' section, 3 positive and 3 negative items in that section seem reasonable. But I don't see why all the negative articles should be by right-wingers, it's possible to a add a pro-conspiracy-anti-Chomsky article, and/or pro-Palestinian article that criticizes Chomsky's view on the right of return etc. Anyway, the more important issue in my humble opinion is to stick to articles that appear in recognized publications with peer reviews, as opposed to weird internet-only material. With regrad to the criticism section, I removed that part for now. Again, who criticizes Chomsky for being "selective" and "conspiracy-theorist" ? I'd love to see the moderate Democrats criticism that you mentioned, all I could find is Chomsky criticizing moderate Democrats, not the other way around. My suggestion is that you write it without weasel words as a start, and we could progress from there later on without edit wars, because if there are no weasel words then we can be sure about the accuracy of the information. The only reason I deleted it is because I think that this information is not accurate. If you still think that this is a double standard, then let me clarify further. If for example you think that the current intro, which uses weasel words to say "He is probably one of the most prominent and influential anarchist thinkers", is wrong, then you should delete it and ask for citations on the talk page. Or if you think that using a phrase like "such as" to describe people who called Chomsky a Pol Pot apologist, while in fact it was only one person who used this term, then you should ask for more evidence. But of course, please do this only for information that you indeed believe to be inaccurate. Nimc 16:07, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Interwiki links

Please, can we have the interwiki links to other languages for the article back. They are last seen in the version from 13:58, 28 Jul 2004, and I see no reason whatever to delete them. Byrial 21:10, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Protection

This page has been protected for too long, and I am unprotecting it. Please discuss changes, do not engage in revert wars, and try to reach consensus. Furthermore, you might want to note the standards advocated by WikiProject Philosophy, which states that criticism of a thinker should be made with specific citations to critics instead of a vague "some argue that," thus restricting criticism to noteworthy criticism, and preventing original research. Snowspinner 14:05, Aug 12, 2004 (UTC).

For reference: Original research, Weasel word, Wikipedia:Verifiability (problems that are still here) Nimc 13:00, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Request for feedback: Wiki branches/voting proposal (an alternative to page protection)

This is off-topic for this page, but on-topic for controversial/disputed pages in general, so I hope you don't mind this interjection. I'm looking for a few good veterans of edit wars on frequently controversial pages like this one, who would be willing to look over a design proposal for Wiki branches that I've written up and will probably attempt to prototype in the near future (not likely on wikipedia itself at first, but perhaps on other experimental wikis). The whole thing is long, but I'd be quite happy if you only looked at the much shorter section on "Branches", which is the most important part. I'm particularly interested in hearing whether you think such a branch mechanism (a) would improve Wiki workflow and consensus-building, by allowing alternative approaches to be developed and evaluated side-by-side, or (b) would hinder consensus-building by making it less necessary for the majority to take minority viewpoints into account. But in general, I'm interested in any and all comments, preferably on my talk page. Thanks! - Brynosaurus 09:33, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Are you familiar with this proposal(question 4) ? Is there further discussion of it somewhere ? How does it relate to the branches that you suggest ? Nimc 13:00, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I wasn't familiar with it, but am now - thanks for the pointer! Actually, I already had in mind the idea that a branch facility like the one I outlined could be very useful in building "stable" branches (and I even included a "to-be-written" section for it at the end of my proposal), but hadn't gotten around to writing it up. I've asked on the wikimedia-l list about the draft proposal for the "1.0 stable" release plan that Jimbo promised in this interview question; I would be happy to work on revising my design toward that purpose, but don't want to conflict with something that's he's already done or is working on. - Brynosaurus 02:42, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)


Somewhat unimportant comment

Shouldn't the section in the Chomsky article that is titled Criticism of Science be titled differently? After all, he is the one defending science from other people's criticisms. Maybe the section ought to be titled "Defense of Science."

  • He's also criticized science, namely the attempts to quantitatively explain human nature. But yeah, he's mostly very "rational," arousing criticism from the "postmodern" mystics. --Tothebarricades.tk 22:54, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

To User:192.116.202.36: Why did you delete the list of "critical articles"?

To User:192.116.202.36]: What is wrong with the following list of "critical articles" that you deleted without explanation from the Noam Chomsky page? I find the following list of "critical articles" very useful. Are these articles unfair in some way that I could not detect?

--> Begin deleted list of "critical articles" <--

Critical articles

--> End list of deleted "critical articles" <-- ---Rednblu 21:20, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

    • first, you didnt detect that 2 of these articles are duplicates that are already in the 'about chomsky' section. second, see discussion with S999 above about only including articles that appear in publications that receive peer reviews - what you have here mostly appears on david horowitz's neocon website, so just add these links to his wikipedia article instead, and the other links here are blog entries etc - i can demonstrate some straightforward lies of some of these writers if you wish. third, in my opinion there are already too many external links, so in my edit i also deleted from the 'select speeches' - wikipedia should be primarily about content and not just a lot of external links as if it is a directory service - see the proportion between the external links and the article itself. and fourth, you keep adding more and more to the talk page while it's already way above the proposed size limit - could someone please archive this talk page so we wouldn't increase the history size of wikipedia so much with each edit? 192.116.202.36 21:46, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Please vote for your preference for the leading section of the Noam Chomsky page

Version 1: Sparse summary

<<Dr. Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an Institute Professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and creator of the Chomsky hierarchy, a classification of formal languages. Outside of his linguistic work, Chomsky is also widely known for his radical left-wing political views, in particular his criticism of the foreign policy of United States governments.>>


Version 2: Summarize with one detail from each of two areas--academia and activist

<<Dr. Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) Has followed a dual career as an academic and as a political and media analyst and polemicist. He is an Institute Professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: as a young scholar he put forward the ideas that children have an innate capacity to learn language, and that all languages are based on a universal grammar. He has gone on to develop the Chomsky hierarchy, a system for understanding and improving grammars generally.

Chomsky’s political activities were stimulated by his opposition to the Vietnam war. He has developed a political theory that America, perhaps unconsciously, reacts as a system to suppress and obliterate any "good example" of a politics or economics which appears to function better than America's particular version of democracy and free market capitalism; within the American state, consent is manufactured by propaganda. Criticism of Chomsky’s politics has included allegations that he is an anti-semite, a conspiracy theorist, and/or an apologist for communist despots.>>

  • Prefer. This two-paragraph version fits more the style of the leading sections of the other Featured Articles. For each of the major topics of the article, this Version 2 gives the reader one interesting tidbit and reason to keep reading the rest of the article. ---Rednblu 16:21, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • Count me in for the two paragraph version, due to the same reason stated above. --xDCDx 17:54, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • Neither. The first one is too short, the second one is not very well written (sorry). I would prefer to keep the first one as it is formulated, but add a second paragraph with some more detail. Fredrik | talk 18:26, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)
    • Could you give us an idea of the words in the variation you have in mind below? Just replace the sections of . . . in the "Version 3" stub below, for example?. ---Rednblu 22:33, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)
      • I quite like the current one (version 1, with two additional sentences). Added it as version 3. Fredrik | talk 09:48, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • I'm not wedded to my version (no. 2), though I think it's better than what was there before (too random) and no. 1 (too, too short). Two paras, one each on linguistics and politics, seems to me the obvious way to do it. Markalexander100 00:51, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • I agree that two-paragraph is better, but don't like the text:
    • Polemicist: is this the right word for describing Chomsky? As a non-native speaker I am not sure of the English connotation, but he doesn't seem unreasonably aggressive in most of his books, interviews, talks. Wether he reasons correctly and whether his analyses are provocative/revealing aggression is another matter.
    • Has he gone on to develop the Hierarchy after his UG theories? If I remember correctly, the Hierarchy is one of the first things he has done, before transformational grammar began to be applied in a universal context?
    • The Hierarchy is not a system for understanding and improving grammars generally. In this pharagraph, we didn't define grammar in the transformational sense (and even in this sense this definition has problems). Now, it reads as if Chomky was proposing a prescriptive system for improving grammar/language generally (even though most people will not interprete it in this absurd way). I think classification of formal languages hits the spot much much better.
    • America, perhaps unconsciously, reacts as a system to suppress and obliterate any "good example": does he really say that it's unconscious? I thought that he described it as conscious, but that public opinion is expressly treated to believe that there are no such motives? --Glimz 14:48, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)
I agree with Glimz here. This version of the intro is wildly inacurate regarding linguistics (the description of the Chomsky hierachy is complete nonsense, and the chronology is backwards, as already pointed out). "Polemicist" is not perhaps quite as POV as it might seem. For example, it can be a complement to say that someone is a "superb polemicist", and it does not imply that what they are saying is incorrect. Most of Chomsky's political works could be considered polemical, because they are written quite unashamedly from a POV, and because they seek to persuade people to agree with that POV. Cadr 18:50, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • The two-paragraph format is better, but the text is not very good as it serisouly misrepresents his political views (I don't know anything about linguistics):
    • "polemicist" is definately not the right word. Chomsky does not make statements to be controversial. All he does is he says exactly what he thinks. "analyst" isn't ideal either. I suggest we replace "political and media analyst and polemicist" with "political and media establishment critic and activist" or something like that.
    • "He has developed a political theory..." Chomsky never claims to have done all these things by himself, he always says that he is a part of a network of people who work together on these issues of their interest (e.g. by sending each other press clippings to get information about underreported stories), and that the reason why he gives speeches and writes books is just that this is what he does best. The word network should definately be in there.
    • "which appears to function better than America's particular version of democracy and free market capitalism" I don't think he ever claims that they function better, but that they are different and independent from the US system, and he defends their right to be independent ;
    • "within the American state, consent is manufactured by propaganda": propaganda is uasually taken to be centrally controlled, and that is precisely not what he says ; a formulation that would be much closer to what he actually says is "within American society [or maybe establishment], consent is manufactured by enforcing what he calls "orthodoxy""
    • "allegations that he is an anti-semite, a conspiracy theorist, and/or an apologist for communist despots" ; there are two kinds of criticism: (1) the kind which is based on the content of what a person or an ideology actually says, which is fair crticism, e.g. "communism tends towards dictatorship because of theory of the vanguard of the working class", or "many critics think that anarchism cannot work because the absence of the state enforcing laws would lead to chaos" ; (2) the kind which has strictly no basis on this content, and which is based on misunderstanding, distortion, misrepresentation, falsification, i.e. the kind which is purely malicious. These allegations against Chomsky fall into the second category, they are not based on what he believes, they are the exact opposite of what he believes: re. "anti-semite", Chosmky believes that all human beings are equal whatever their ethnic origin, he defended Faurisson's right to free speech but never even thought Faurisson's views were worthy of comment, he believes that any state/government can be criticised including the Jewish state/Israeli government, he considers himself a "Zionist" before the term came "to mean the opposite", this allegation is extremely malicious and has strictly no basis ; re. "conspiracy theorist", this is obviously a thorough misunderstanding/misrepresntation of what Chosmky says and he has always criticised "conspiracy theories" ; re. "apologist for communist despots" this accusation is also completely baseless, as he has been consistent in his rejection of communist regimes, and he has always stated that he criticises the US government not necessarily because they are worse than other governments, but because as an American it is his responsibility to do so and that there is a way of affecting the US government, while there was no chance of Chomsky influecning e.g. the government of the USSR or the Khmer Rouge.
      Therefore these accusations must not be included in the introduction in this way, because they have implications that have nothing to do with what Chomsky believes. To include them in the introduction would amount to factual inaccuracy and misrepresentation. These accusation are important and relevant and interesting, and they should be dealt with in the article - but not in this form in the introduction, where there is no space to put them in the context of, and contrast them with, what Chomsky believes. I suggest a formulation like "Chomsky's political views are controversial, and have attracted strong criticism especially from anti-communist, conservative American and pro-Israeli groups" ;
    • to make it clear what kind of ideological framwork he belongs to one should probably say that he considers himself a libertarian socialist and supporter of anarcho-syndicalism - pir 10:09, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Version 3: Version 1 extended.

<<Dr. Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an Institute Professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and creator of the Chomsky hierarchy, a classification of formal languages. His works in generative linguistics contributed significantly to the decline of Behaviorism, and led to the advancement of the Cognitive sciences. Outside of his linguistic work, Chomsky is also widely known for his radical left-wing political views, in particular his criticism of the foreign policy of United States governments. He is probably one of the most prominent and influential anarchist thinkers.>>

  • I prefer this one. Fredrik | talk 09:48, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • This one gets my vote. Cadr 18:43, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • I would prefer this one if the word "anarchist" was changed to "libertarian socialist". Use of this term would probably be more accurate, since libertarian socialism is generally considered a form of anarchism but is distinct from other forms, and would better reflect Chomsky's own descriptions of his position. Kev 09:25, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I agree. Chomsky tends to be careful in defining what he means when he says he is an anarchist, but he seems to think that "libertarian socialism" speaks for itself (or at least, he goes to less trouble to define it). Cadr 17:32, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Version 4: Expanded Version 1 Extended (edit at will)

Dr. Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is a linguistics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and probably one of the most prominent and influential libertarian socialist thinkers. His work in transformational grammar revolutionized the study of language, introducing more formal analysis methods and models to the field, such as the Chomsky hierarchy, a classification of formal languages with important ties to automata theory. Chomsky's theory of a Universal Grammar contributed significantly to the decline of behaviorism, and led to the advancement of the cognitive sciences. Chomsky is also widely known for his radical left-wing political views, in particular his criticism of the foreign policy of United States government.

I started doing a 2-para version but I failed, since I couldn't get the defining and important first sentence to exclude any of his activies, hence it flowed together. Nevertheless, it might offer some advantages over the current, shorter version, if someone helps polish it. --Glimz 02:19, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC)

Version 5: <<Stub>>

<<Dr. Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) . . . >>

How is Chomsky pronounced?

Choam-skee? Chahm-skee? (note the ironic lack of formal linguistic notation) Tempshill 17:13, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

In English, Chahm-skee. In the language that the name originally came from, HHHomsky (a strong h, much like the sound that J makes in Spanish). --Sesel 17:49, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

In English, Chahm-skee. American English, maybe. In British English, "Chomsky". ;) Markalexander100 00:51, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Well, he is an American. --Sesel 02:09, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)


Windschuttle artcles

These are complete nonsense and don't deserve to be linked. Can anyone make a convincing case for including them? Anyway, here's some of many issues I have with them:

  • Falsification of Chomsky's political views. For example the assertion that he defended Farruson's research, when in fact all he defended was his right to publish his views without being prosecuted. Chosmky is not a holocaust denier.
  • Complete ignorance of linguistics. For example the extraordinary assertion that "Chomskyan theory has not even developed a rational means of explaining why the sentence John was decided to leave early is ungrammatical." This is completely untrue: it's ungrammatical because "decided" takes a clause as its internal argument, not an NP like John. It's completely trivial to explain why this sentence is ungrammatical in just about any modern grammatical theory.
  • The claim that Chomsky "made no announcement" that he abandoned Deep Structure. The following is a quote from the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1995):
"...there are no levels of linguistic structure appart from the two interface levels; specifically, no levels of D[eep]-structure or S[urface]-structure."
  • Yet more ignorance about linguistics: "But in linguistics, Williamson shows, the results are comparatively trivial. All that Chomskyan grammar can explain is language which is transparent and easily labelled: "first-order" sentences such as The keeper fed the bananas to the monkey. Grammatical formulations of the "second order of difficulty," such as For there to be a snowstorm would be nice, still remain a mystery." The first-order/second-order distinction is completely bogus; many things in linguistics remain a mystery just as many things in physics annd mathematics remain a mystery, so what? Incidentally, the example sentence cited is very easy to analyse in a Chomskyan grammar; it's just an example of topicalization. (There could be some subtle issues incolving case theory and theta theory, but nothing major so far as I can see. No specific criticisms are made so it's hard to respond.)
  • The assertion that "Chomsky and his followers now employ descriptions such as "light" and "heavy" phrases or "weak" and "strong" attraction between words in an attempt to explain the behavior of verbs and adjectives in the same terms as subatomic particles". This is just absurd, really completely absurd. Who comes up with this rubbish? The terms "weak" and "strong" (ditto "light" and "heavy") are simply used as metaphors, no connection with physics is implied. No doubt Chomsky has borrowed terminology from lots of other subjects, so what? It's just terminology. It has no bearing on the quality of his theories whatsoever.
  • Various utterly vague criticisms. For example the supposed email exchange on transitive verbs. Apparently we're simply to take Windschuttle's word for it that Chomsky was shown to be wrong. This sort of problem pervaids the article — we're constantly told that so-and-so has shown such-and-such a theory to be wrong without any evidence to support these claims.
  • The statement (without evidence) that "Of all the major powers in the Sixties, according to Chomsky, America was the most reprehensible." I really doubt this is Chomsky's opinion, a cursory reading of his political works shows that he chooses to concentrate on criticising America because he is American, but he is certainly on record condeming the attrocities of (say) the Soviet Union and saying that collapse of the Soviet Union was something to be celebrated. He's also said that he thinks America is "the greatest country in the world".
  • I would really have to produce a bullet point for every sentence in these articles. Therefore I can only say, if anyone can find a single sentence in either of the two Windschuttle articles that is both interesting/controversial and backed up by some kind of argument, I would be happy to see the links included. Cadr 02:10, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Having a hard time with your idol being criticized? This Wikipedia entry is largely an attempt to dubiously elevate Chomsky to the pinnacle of American itellectuals and I don't think that one critical article in the external links section will undermine the propaganda effort. Amazing how you fly off the handle, considering that there are many more links inserted idealizing Chomsky's bias and status. Doug Sep 30 02:28:28 UTC 2004

Yeah, I don't deny I'm a big Chomsky fanboy. Do you have any responses to the points above, though? The articles are ignorant drivel, not reasoned criticism, which I have no problem with. I also have not removed the links from the article, I'd just like someone to explain why they should be linked. There are several outright lies in these two articles, as I've shown above. Cadr 02:36, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Wow, you actually read the articles. You are a brave person, I commend you:) All I did is google his name, seems like he's being attacked and defended with regard to whether he whitewashes who killed the native people of Australia in a book of his. Funny that he should say that other people are Holocaust deniers. Anyway, my understanding of the wikipedia NPOV criteria is that if one significant party has one POV with regard to some issue, and another significant party has another POV with regard to that issue, then both POVs should be included, i.e. the accuracy of their POVs are not relevant, only their significance. You can debate whether this criteria is a good idea, but note that it is similar to the case where, let's say 60% of Americans believe that WMDs have been found in Iraq, so therefore in a sense WMDs have indeed been found in Iraq, because this belief has major consequences. And note that if you think that such articles shouldn't be included, then it's even more true for the Werner Cohn neo-Nazi book. Also worth noting that disinfopedia uses 'fair and accurate' instead of 'npov' as its criteria. In this specific case, it's an external link and not wikipedia content - I personally think that we should reduce the amount of all the external links, but I guess 3 critical articles is fine in the current form - though as I said above, I don't see why all the critical links have to be by right-wingers and not leftists etc. Nimc 03:13, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I absolutely agree that NPOV allows articles like this to be linked, but given that there are 3 billion artciles criticizing Chomsky on the web, NPOV would surely require that we link a selection of the articles which actually make some sense. Otherwise we're not representing criticism of Chomsky fairly. Cadr 03:18, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Well, anyway I don't want to make too much of a fuss over these links. It just frustrates me that this kind of dross is linked when there is better stuff available (still highly critical). But if Doug Danner still wants to link to them (despite being apparently unable to defend them) I accept NPOV prevents me (or anyone else) doing much about it without causing a nasty edit war or something, which is clearly not worth the trouble in this case. Bummer. Cadr 03:22, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)


Thanks, Cadr. BTW, I would appreciate if you posted those other critique links you've mentioned. Doug Sep 30 03:43:27 UTC 2004
I'd appreciate it if you'd explain why you want to link to these ridiculous articles. Cadr 11:45, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)
there is better stuff available (still highly critical) - just quoting you. If you know of it then why are you keeping it hidden? Wary of countering the image you're trying to assemble for Chomsky? Don't worry about it - I'm aware you try to push Chomsky's propaganda so I'm not expecting you to counter it with critique. Doug
Look, I have seen various bits of writing (not necessarily articles per se) on the net critical of Chomsky which are far more credible than the two links we're discussing here. I have no particular desire to see these linked in the article because there's a fair bit of criticism linked already, the criticism section in the main article is already pretty large, and Wikipedia isn't primarily a links site. Therefore I'm reluctant to bother to searching for them (I don't have them bookmarked because I'm not particularly interested in reading them) unless there's some prospect of getting some return on my effort. There would be some prospect of this if you would acknowledge that the two articles by Windschuttle are, to put it very kindly, of questionable value, as I've demonstrated in my previous comment(s). So far you have completely evaded my criticism of the articles, which are not worthy of being linked IMO. If you refuse to discuss the Windschuttle articles unless I provide links to other critical artciles, then I'll spend some time looking for them — I guess I can understand why you don't believe me. So yes, if you really don't believe me, I'll go find some links. But it would be a waste of my time if nothing will come out of it except the addition of yet more critical links to the article. Btw, I'm not keeping anything "hidden": Google will give you the same results that it gives me, and Chomsky criticism is not exactly scarce on the internet. Cadr 19:40, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I disagree with Cadr, he seems to be making stuff up. I have never seen "highly critical" articles that are better than the ones you posted. In fact, the right-wingers' articles don't seem to be worse than flak by others. Examples: French lunatics who don't seem to understand English [19] [20] ; left-wing pro-Palestinian-right-of-return lunatic who seems to have problems with quotation marks and attributions [21] [22] [23] ; conspiracy theorist lunatic [24] (note that he is linked in F.A.I.R.) ; and progressive linguist [25] [26] [27], who also seems to have an elemental problem with attributions (note that he is the new darling of the liberals [28]). Maybe we should replace one of the right-wingers' articles with one of these? And if Cadr or someone else has examples of better articles (at the very least, articles that don't contain lies), please post them here. Thanks. Nimc 00:25, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I think most of the stuff I'd like to say to Nimc is contained in my response to Doug Danner. I'm not making stuff up, but it would be stupid of me to provide links to other criticism articles if they're just going to get added to the article alongside the Windschuttle articles. I would like some kind of consensus that if some vaguely credible criticism of Chomsky exists (which it obviously does IMO — the man's not infallible), that it would be linked to the article instead of rubbish like the Windschuttle articles, which really only serve to make critics of Chomsky look ridiculous and dishonest.
I take Nimc's point regarding "highly critical". You're right, most of the highly critical stuff does contain lies and is generally of poor quality. But the Windschuttle articles are really a new nadir in Chosmky criticism, we can do better. Cadr 19:40, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I think that having a fixed number of external articles is a reasonable policy, because it prevents people from being lazy and just adding weird articles, instead of adding content to the wikipedia article itself. I personally would prefer to either completely eliminate or reduce further the external links because of this reason, but the current situation with 3 critical links is not too bad, compared to other wikipedia articles. Therefore, if you are familiar with better articles to include, I don't see why you shouldn't post them here in the talk page, and if we agree then we can use them to replace (replace, not add) the links in the wikipedia article - I don't see why it should be stupid of you to provide such links. And btw, it doesn't have to be online links, in case you or someone else knows of a book or other material that isn't online, like the Milan Rai book (I don't have this book, but did find a few excerpts online). Nimc 20:16, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Let me try to provide an example that doesn't contain lies [29], about Chomsky's response to 9/11 and Afghan hunger. Despite the tortured attempt there to say otherwise, his conclusion after reviewing all the information that "what will happen we don't know, but plans are being made, and programs implemented on the assumption that they may lead to the deaths of several million people in the next couple of weeks" - is accurate (in case someone is reading this and wondering... it didn't happen... though smaller scale starvation did happen I guess - the average life expectancy in Afghanistan before the U.S. started to bomb them was 45 according to the CIA, now they say 42.46 [30], and also by conservative estimates the U.S. army killed more civilians in the invasion than the number of civilians killed on 9/11). He also used a loaded term when he said "looks like what’s happening is some kind of silent genocide", it's probably would have been better if he didn't say that, because when you isolate this from the rest of the context, it's inviting flak from apologists of U.S. violence, and thus it's diverting from the substantive issues - but anyway criticizing Chomsky for trying to help prevent starvation is stupid. It's similar in a way to criticizing Kerry for testifying about atrocities in order to get the U.S. out of Vietnam as soon as possible. And also, it's better to criticize someone by using an article in print instead of a recording of a talk, because the way people commonly speak they sometimes use a certain phrase to describe something a little different - and usually people make all kinds of errors when they speak, e.g. in the debate last night Kerry told us about the KGB records that he saw at Treblinka instead of Lubyanka, and Bush... well.. he started the debate by actually saying "I understand everybody in this country doesn't agree with the decisions I've made.", and from there it just went downhill I guess... though admittedly 55 million viewer might put some pressure on you. Anyway, Cadr, do you have better examples...? Nimc 22:38, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)
That all sounds reasonable, I'll get Googling ;) Cadr 20:38, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Some links (more to come). Cadr 21:00, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Blah... after what you wrote about the Windschuttle articles, I thought you'd do better. You're pasting the articles that Socrates999 pasted above, see the discussion with him, particularly the part about only using articles from known publications that get peer reviews. That Bruce Sharp site doesn't fit this description. You were fooled by the "extremely thorough" article you discovered, all you have to do is look at the original articles by Chomsky to see that this person is a wacko, or also there's a link I pasted above with someone who actually bothered to respond to this stuff. We currently have one external link in the wikipedia article by someone else, which is about similar - if you still got some of that bravery left, I challenge you to try to follow his endnotes. As for the antiwar.com article, it also doesn't exactly qualify with regard to being a publication with peer reviews, but it's much better, and in fact better than some of the current links in the wikipedia article in this sense. I even saw on c-span republican congressman Ron Paul, who is one of the very few congressmembers who speaks the truth, say that he visits antiwar.com. But anyway, that link doesn't say anything meaningful about Chomsky if you actually read it... it's just someone who enjoys talking to himself without providing any relevant information, I assume that only he know what he's talking about (I wasn't interested in reading the part about Horowitz). Nimc 22:38, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)
OK, you've got me on this one (at least with regard to the Khmer Rouge article). I should have remembered that I'd posted those two articles previously, and I should have checked them out more thoroughly (I hope I've demonstrated than I can spot nonsensical Chomsky criticism when I put in the effort). All I can suggest in my defense is that despite their mostly lamentable quality, the two articles I posted are better than the Windschuttle articles. My memories of high quality Chomsky criticism were about 50% correct. There is a lot of it on the web, but it's mostly in the form of comments on message boards etc., rather than in linkable articles. I have to disagree with the requirement of peer-review, though. Virtually 0% of political commentary on the web is (formally) peer-reviewed, so this is an unrealistic target.
Isn't that the entire point?! My point is that we should use articles that appear in recognized publications that receive peer reviews, and whether or not these articles also happen to appear online isn't important. In order to argue why this is not a good criteria, one should find an article that appeared online, didn't appear in a recognized publication with peer reviews, and is still worthy to be included. Do you agree? Nimc 03:02, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)
The antiwar.com article isn't great, but it's at least discusses the Chomsky/Horowitz affair from a vaguely neutral position (i.e. the author dislikes both of them about equally) and it provides some balance to the Horowitz criticisms listed in the article.
You claim that this article criticizes Chomsky? What is the criticism exactly? I see zero substance in there, this guy is talking to himself. I remember I once read Chomsky saying about the same thing about someone else, here I found it... [31] Nimc 03:02, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Anyway, I guess I have to accept I was wrong to think I could replace the Windscuttle articles with anything a great deal better, although I would still be more than happy to see them go (we shouldn't link to any old rubbish just to get a meaningless statistic on the balance of pro- and anti- Chomsky articles). Probably [to Nimc] it would be better if we found a more productive way of working on the article than discussing this (not to blame you for the wasted time in discussion here, it's mostly my fault). For the record, I think the Windschuttle links should go.Cadr 01:22, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I still don't see what makes Windschuttle special in your opinion. Can you give me an example for an article that you consider to be better than the Windschuttle articles? It seems to me that the Windschuttle articles are much better than that antiwar.com article that you found, because Windschuttle at least spent some energy and bothered to lie, while that other guy didn't even say anything. Nimc 03:02, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Recent Edits

I didn't want to have to get this labored and specific with the criticisms, but apparently only citing a specific instance of a specific occasion in which Chomsky had done something objectionable was allowed. I honestly believe simply writing a brief summary of mainstream criticisms of him (ie: critics allege he often uses quotes out of context, presents a one-sided view, etc) would have been much more appropriate than me writing paragraphs on which speficic chapters from which books are controversial, or quoting passages from Horowitz or whatever, but apparently this is the only form of criticism of Chomsky on this page that will be permitted by the editing gods. I have played by exactly your rules, so please don't complain that my passage is too long or whatever. I did exactly what I was told, now hopefully what I wrote can stay for longer than five minutes without being edited out.

I also re-added the critical links. I really don't understand this. Look, the point is not that YOU agree with everything presented on the linked articles. Hell, I'm not saying I do. The point is to let the readers of the page decide, and to let the readers of the page realize that websites do in fact exist which are critical of Chomsky. user:J.J.

It would be nice to cut down the criticism section, but there's a danger of the section basically just saying "some people agree with him and some people don't" — criticisms like "quoting sources out of context" are pretty meaningless and uninteresting in the abstract, IMHO. At least if we stick to specific crticisms and responses backed up with quotes we're on pretty solid ground in terms of NPOV. I'm not going to object to more general descriptions of criticism though (at least not on NPOV grounds), I just think they're a bit pointless.
Regarding linked articles, there has to be some standard which linked articles must meet, or we'd have to link every one of the 100s of articles on Chomsky. Either we pick a selection at random, or we try pick the best few, whatever "best" may mean in this context. If an article is genuinely misleading (e.g. using misquotations, making claims which are verifiably false), I think this is grounds for not linking. This applies to a great deal of Chomsky criticism, unfortunately. Whether not linking such articles fits in with NPOV is controversial; my view is that it does. (I'd be happy to explain why in the unlikely case that anyone cares...). Cadr 01:34, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I was under the impression that if an article became somewhat long that it would be fine to create a new article with more detailed information, then summarise this into the article, and place a wikilink to the new article. Can you do this perhaps? - Ta bu shi da yu 15:43, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)
You're misrepresenting my comments, I said above several times that the main issue is accuracy: if your statements that contain weasel words are accurate, then show it by quoting various people who make these statements in the talk page, and edit the article to reflect that. As I said, what you quote doesn't have to be online, if you quote a full paragraph from a book etc it would be great. Though I personally don't like the weasel words style at all, that by itself is not a reason to modify what you added, if it is accurate. If you phrase it in a way that can be neither proved nor disproved, then I think you should modify it by reducing the weasel words or generalizations. I removed weasel words and reinserted your Horowitz stuff, according to what I said above about starting with accurate criticism that can be verified, and progressing from there, so that we wouldn't need to have revert wars. Also, your tone here is a little weird ("I did exactly what I was told..."), you probably know that no one here has a higher authority than you - if you disagree with some of the comments about what the standards should be, then respond to the relevant points in the talk page where it can be discussed. Of course, one can also start edit wars instead of using the talk page, hopefully that won't happen much. Nimc 02:08, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)
With regard to the specific issues: About external links, first note that you keep creating duplicates, please use the 'About Chomsky' section. If you disagree with what Cadr and I discussed right above here about the fixed number of links, respond to that specific point about laziness. About your criticism, can you give a specific example for "ommiting relevant facts"? At least what Horowitz considers to be an example? If you claim that others also claim that, especially the moderate Democrats that you mentioned etc, then please provide more examples. Thanks. Nimc 02:08, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Listen Nimc, I am getting sick of the way you guard and protect this page solely out of blind allegiance to Chomsky. I realize that your brain has a hard time contemplating the fact that Chomsky could ever be wrong about anything and you instinctively regard every single person who criticizes Chomsky as some sort of fringe moron who just pulls random allegations out of his ass. Let me put this as clearly as I can: You will never allow legitimate criticism of Chomsky to appear on this page because you don't believe legitimate criticism of Chomsky exists. I've been trying to get some balance on this page for months, and I've reached this conclusion.

I don't want to write stupid lengthy passages on citing chapter and verse of when Chomsky lied, and when he did the thousands of other deceptive things he does. You believe this is because I'm some sort of ignorant hack, trying to bring Chomsky down with made-up allegations, but in reality I don't want to turn what is supposed to be an "encyclopedia" article into some sort of essay in which I point-by-point critique every point Chomsky has ever made about anything. Your standards are absurd, and you use phrases like "weasel words" to describe perfectly acceptable phrases and practices used on every other page on Wikipedia.

What I wrote is perfectly legitimate. In his book, Chomsky accused Moynihan of bragging that the US had supported Indonesia, and supressed discussion of it in the UN. He selectively pulls a quote out of a large paragraph of text in which Moynihan is discussing the success in which the US undermined Chinese and Soviet sponsorship of Communist movements in Timor and Angola, as I said. You don't believe this because you believe Chomsky. You don't even consider this a remote possibilty because you believe Chomsky. I understand!

You are not the damn king of this page sir. This may be a difficult concept to understand, but how about letting someone else decide what are legitimate additions and what are not? I am putting the "disputed" tags on this page, because frankly it needs them at this point. user:J.J.

I do not decide what is legit content, I removed your East Timor paragraph because of Original research. You wrote it as if some authors who remain anonymous actually said this criticism, though now you imply the it's a criticism by yourself. In addition to original research, I also use the NPOV guidelines, I advise you to look at the excerpts from it that I quoted for Socrates999 above. As for the content itself, I assume that you agree that the UN passed a resolution demanding that Indonesia would withdraw from East Timor, and that Moynihan wrote "The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success." I invite you to paste the paragraph so anyone could read the full context, and I invite you to actually find a person who put his reputation on the line that you can quote saying your criticism. As for 'letter' vs. 'article', I have no idea why you reverted it - it was a letter that Chomsky sent to the organizers of the petition in France. As for the rest of your tantrum, I don't see how it relates to my comments. Nimc 06:11, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

---

Here's what Chomsky wrote in his book,
The guiding principles were well understood from the outset by those responsible for guaranteeing the success of Indonesia’s 1975 invasion. They were articulated lucidly by UN Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan, in words that should be committed to memory by anyone with a serious interest in international affairs, human rights, and the rule of law. The Security Council condemned the invasion and ordered Indonesia to withdraw, but to no avail. In his 1978 memoirs, Moynihan explains why:
"The United States wished things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this about. The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success."
Success was indeed considerable. Moynihan cites reports that within two months some 60,000 people had been killed, “10 per cent of the population, almost the proportion of casualties experienced by the Soviet Union during the Second World War.”
The full passage from Moynihan's book reads:
Such was the power of the anticolonial idea that great powers from outside a region had relatively little influence unless they were prepared to use force. China altogether backed Fretilin in Timor, and lost. In Spanish Sahara, Russia just as completely backed Algeria, and its front, known as Polisario, and lost. In both instances the United States wished things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this about. The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success.

When he says “the United States wished things to turn out as they did” he is clearly refering to the failure of Soviet and Chinese-backed groups in East Timor and Africa. There is a great difference between wishing for the defeat of these groups and wishing for Indonesia to invade East Timor and kill thousands of people. Chomsky uses the phrase "Success was indeed considerable. [..] within two months some 60,000 people had been killed" which is just absurd, considering the "success" Moynihan is refering to has absolutely nothing to do with the amount of Timorese citizens killed.

But I don't care, there this sort of lengthy, chapter-and-verse dispute has no place in an encylopedia article in the first place. I only added it because you demanded I cite something specific, because, as I said, you don't believe legitimate criticism of Chomsky exists, and apparently also refuse to accept the fact that there is a large body of mainstream Chomsky criticism out there, and has been for many years.

Sigh, I am going to re-ad yet another paragraph just summerizing the mainstream points of criticism that critics have of Chomsky. I am sure it will be deleted within seconds by king Nimc, ruler of the Chomsky page. user:J.J.

You're just missing the irony in the Chomsky paragraph. He's not implying that the deaths were Moynihan's idea of success, he's just suggesting that Moynihan's rather narrow claim to success is missing the point somewhat (clearly if Moynihan really regarded that number of deaths as a success, it would merrit more than a snide comment by Chomsky). In any case, if this is the cutting edge of Chomsky criticism these days, it's hardly damning. It's certainly a fairly cheap rhetorical device on Chomsky's part, but he is a polemic writer, and he didn't really quote out of context. Cadr 18:47, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)
JJ, you write that "There is a great difference between wishing for the defeat of these groups and wishing for Indonesia to invade East Timor and kill thousands of people." Absolutely not! the two are indivisible, one could not have achieved the former without the latter. That's the whole point Chomsky makes again and again: you are responsible for the consequences of your actions, and ends don't justify means. It's really not terribly sophisticated, every 5-year old would see it in the same way. - pir 00:23, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
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