Talk:Noam Chomsky/Archive 5

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Contents 1 Queued images 2 The supposed Radio Hanoi broadcast 3 Views of Asian communism 4 Proposed revisions to criticism section 5 What he knew and when he knew it 6 When did Chomsky become a leading opponents of the Vietnam War? 7 "Nothing wrong with labels"? 8 Anti-Americanism 9 Section breakdown 10 Criticism: personality cult 11 Chomsky on NATO's involvement in Yugoslavia 12 Linguistics criticism 13 Chomsky's influence as a political activist 14 misuse of evidence 15 Chomsky's influence as a political activist - proposed draft 16 Horowitz 17 Propaganda Model 18 Proposal for "Criticism of Chomsky" entry 19 Length/Links 20 Socialist? Objection to intro text. 21 Request for references 22 "almost always Democrats" 23 On Skinner 24 Critical links? 25 Summarising 26 Last Part of Atrribution Without Motives: reference? 27 Is Robert Faurisson a "related" person?

Queued images

Do not archive. See Wikipedia:Image_use_policy#Image_queuing

Some of Chomsky's files

The supposed Radio Hanoi broadcast

I've removed this:

"Similarly, in a speech given on Radio Hanoi on 13 April 1970, Chomsky spoke of his "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".

[1] replace this link with one without the bias"

This 'broadcast' is highly suspect. It reeks of missinformation. Phrases such as "the socialist society" and "The people of Vietnam will win" (emphasis added) are pedantically Marxist and thus highly uncharacteristic of Chomsky's writing and public talks. The whole thing is pretty obviously suspect if you have bothered to read anything by Chomsky. Where are the contemporary sources for this quote? I've only seen it quoted by right-wing ideological opponents of Chomsky who are not known for their honesty. If I'm wrong, please credibly source this. --AW 19:54, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

According to Stephen Denney [2] [3] [4], an archivist with the UC Berkeley Indochina Center, the speech (in English, not a translation) was given by Chomsky on April 13, 1970, broadcast by Radio Hanoi on April 14, 1970, and published in the April 16, 1970 issue of the U.S. government daily, Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Asia-Pacific Daily Report, pages K2-K3.

Denney discusses the reliability of FBIS:

I don't believe it was distorted or mangled, at least not deliberately. The first time I became aware of the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) and its sister Joint Publications Research Service (JPRS) was when I read an article on Vietnam by Gareth Porter for Current History, around 1976 or 1977. He cited extensively from FBIS translated radio broadcasts from Hanoi. So I figure if someone as deeply distrustful of U.S. government sources as Gareth Porter would find FBIS reliable then it is probably reliable. FBIS has been publishing for over 50 years, it monitors broadcasts from all over the world and is a kind of raw primary source material. It is available in the government documents collection on microfiche in most university libraries, although it stopped publishing in 1996 and switched to a web site....

I know of no instance where FBIS has been alleged to have fabricated or distorted a broadcast or article.

The authenticity of the speech has been discussed at length on alt.fan.noam-chomsky. My impression of Denney from alt.fan.noam-chomsky is that he's a level-headed and objective observer; you should also be able to look up the FBIS microfiche yourself.

You can also compare the transcript of the speech with an article Chomsky published shortly afterward in the New York Review of Books, "In North Vietnam" [5].

Elsewhere, Chomsky compared the Asian communist movements in China and Vietnam with the Spanish anarchist movement of the 1930s (!) [6]. Considering that Mao and Ho's parties were dictatorships on the standard Leninist model, this is somewhat surprising. Orwell's comments in "Notes on Nationalism" come to mind: Orwell notes the ease with which romantic nationalist feeling is transferred to an unfamiliar foreign country [7].

I'll put the reference to the speech back in. --Russil Wvong 06:57, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Has anyone checked the primary source? The article in the NYRB is somewhat comparable, but it's much more nuanced and there's none of the schoolboy Marxist rhetoric (which Chomsky rarely if ever uses). --Cadr 14:24, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Seems that most university libraries in the UK only have fragments of the FBIS documents, so it's hard for me to get hold of them. The British Library seems to have the relevant title catalogued [8], but the result doesn't make it very clear how many/which volumes of it they have. --Cadr 14:45, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

This is what I'd like to see. I don't have the resources to check it (I have no way of accessing that microfiche in this country as far as I know). Regardless of that, I still suspect the primary source to be dodgy -embellished with Marxist rhetoric perhaps (note I did not speculate on the origin of the possible missinformation)- although, based on your description of the FBIS, they almost certainly believed it to be genuine. --AW

Maybe we can get someone in the Bay Area to check the FBIS documents at UC Berkeley. (My local university library has FBIS documents, but only going back to 1978.)

If it turns out that the FBIS transcript is the same as the copy that Tim Starr has posted, does that clear up the authenticity of the speech? Or is there still some doubt? From Stephen Denney's description, I think we can assume that the FBIS transcript is an accurate transcript of what Radio Hanoi broadcast. Is there some question as to whether the broadcast is actually Chomsky, or if it's someone pretending to be Chomsky? Or if Chomsky is reading a speech written by somebody else?

The style of the NYRB article is certainly different from that of the speech, but I would have attributed the differences to the fact that one is a speech to a Marxist audience (namely the North Vietnamese) and the other is an article in a liberal American publication. Are there any particular phrases that raise red flags? AW mentions the statement that the Vietnamese people "will win." This also appears in the NYRB article, where Chomsky is paraphrasing Premier Pham Van Dong:

The Premier also expressed confidence in the future. "B-52s and computers can't compete with a just cause and human intelligence," he said. The Vietnamese people and the other peoples of Indochina must still undergo great suffering, but ultimately they will win.

It is, of course, not surprising that the leaders of the country should appear confident before foreign visitors. However, I sensed no deviation from this mood in discussions with other Vietnamese. The people I met exhibited no bravado, only a quiet confidence in the justice of their cause and the eventual achievement of independence and the defeat of foreign aggression.

For the phrase "socialist society," Chomsky's description in the NYRB article appears similar:

My personal guess is that, unhindered by imperialist intervention, the Vietnamese would develop a modern industrial society with much popular participation in its implementation and much direct democracy at the lower levels of organization. It would be a highly egalitarian society with excellent conditions of welfare and technical education, but with a degree of centralization of control which, in the long run, will pose serious problems that can be overcome only if they eliminate party direction in favor of direct popular control at all levels.

At the moment, the leadership appears to be approaching these problems in a flexible and intelligent fashion. But the problems of creating a modern, egalitarian, democratic industrial society are not slight. They have not been solved successfully anywhere in the world as yet, and it will be extremely interesting to see how they will be faced in the future, if the Vietnamese are given the opportunity to deal with their internal problems under the conditions of independence and peace that they are at present struggling to achieve.

Any other phrases that appear false? --Russil Wvong 06:32, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Views of Asian communism

Noticed that Radicalsubversiv has made some NPOV edits to the recent changes I made on Chomsky's view of Asian communist movements. I don't have any objections, except to the word "sometimes" in the first sentence. I don't recall seeing Chomsky criticize any Asian communist government, at any time, in the same harsh terms that he's criticized the Soviet government. And he's often described Asian communist societies in what can only be described as glowing terms -- see the article "In North Vietnam" discussed above. I think it's accurate to describe his assessment of Asian communist movements as generally positive, particularly in contrast to his assessment of both the United States and the Soviet Union.

I'm also not sure it's necessary to include the note on the "Great Leap Forward", since the text doesn't mention the Great Leap Forward. --Russil Wvong 08:15, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I'm fairly certain I recall Chomsky saying some rather nasty things about Mao more recently, but I haven't got the time to look for a quote at the moment. As for the Great Leap Forward comment, it was a (poor) attempt on my part to remind readers that Chomsky's comments in 1968 about China ought to be read in the context of the 1968 (not 2005, as many of his critics would prefer) -- I would welcome an alternative formulation emphasizing westerners' lack of knowledge of Mao's atrocities in the late '60s. --RadicalSubversiv E 08:41, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Chomsky said this in 2000:

Like others, Ryan reasonably selects as Exhibit A of the criminal indictment the Chinese famines of 1958-61, with a death toll of 25-40 million, he reports, a sizeable chunk of the 100 million corpses the "recording angels" attribute to "Communism" (whatever that is, but let us use the conventional term). The terrible atrocity fully merits the harsh condemnation it has received for many years, renewed here. It is, furthermore, proper to attribute the famine to Communism. That conclusion was established most authoritatively in the work of economist Amartya Sen, whose comparison of the Chinese famine to the record of democratic India received particular attention when he won the Nobel Prize a few years ago.

I've made an edit to the article reflecting this. --RadicalSubversiv E 08:50, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

There's been some lengthy discussion of this article on alt.fan.noam-chomsky as well [9] and by Rajeev Advani [10]. Isn't this article primarily an attack on The Black Book of Communism, and a _defense_ of Communist China (via a comparison with India, noting China's achievements in reducing child mortality and improving basic health), despite Chomsky's describing China as a "totalitarian regime"? Elsewhere [11], Chomsky qualifies his description of the Great Leap Forward famines even further: "Of course, no one supposed that Mao literally murdered tens of millions of people, or that he 'intended' that any die at all."

I still think the "sometimes" ought to be taken out, although it'd also be useful to include some discussion of the "Millenial Visions and Selective Vision" article.

Do you know of any other examples of Chomsky criticizing Maoist China, even in passing? Elsewhere he attacks the post-1979 capitalist reforms for reversing Mao's achievements in health care [12]. --Russil Wvong 15:36, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I don’t think it is terribly relevant what Chomsky has to say about Mao in 2005. What he had to say about the beloved chairman in 1960’s and 1970’s is far more important. --TDC 15:50, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)

Why? --Cadr 16:56, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I have to disagree with TDC. I think Chomsky's views of China both in the 1960s and at present are relevant. As RS says, in the 1960s, the human cost of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution were unknown to Westerners. What people saw was a Third World country which was powerful enough to fight the US to a standstill (in Korea) and which had made enormous progress in just a few years. --Russil Wvong 20:15, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The article is not so much a defense of Communism, Chinese or otherwise, as it is an attack on capitalism and American foreign policy. As always, Chomsky is constructing an elaborate comparison to demonstrate the failings of capitalist socieities, but along the way he nevertheless makes very clear his disdain for Chinese Communism as an alternative. As for other critical references, he has said of the activities of Indoneisa in East Timor that "these massacres were comparable to those of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao" [13]. He has also written: "When we estimate the human toll of a crime, we count not only those who were literally murdered on the spot but those who died as a result, the course we adopt reflexively, and properly, when we consider the crimes of official enemies--Stalin, Hitler and Mao, to mention the most extreme cases." [14]. I don't think Chomsky's comment about Mao's lack of murderous intent (in the Great Leap Forward) is the least bit relevant, unless you can point to serious scholars who disagree. --RadicalSubversiv E 03:07, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your further comments, RS. I'd like to propose changing the text to say something like this:

"Though highly critical of the Soviet Union, Chomsky was generally positive in his assessment of Communist movements in Asia during the 1960s and 1970s. ... In recent years, he has become much more critical of Communist dictatorships in Asia; for example, in his 2000 article "Millenial Visions and Selective Vision" [15], he describes China as a 'totalitarian regime', and describes the famine caused by the Great Leap Forward (in which 25-40 million people died) as a 'terrible atrocity.' "

The italics wouldn't appear in the actual text, of course. Any comments? Can we get consensus on this? --Russil Wvong 06:31, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I still have problems with "generally positive" based on two apparently isolated comments. How about "made positive comments about Communist movements in Asia during the 1960s and 19670s"? Also, I'd prefer "later years" to "recent years". --RadicalSubversiv E 22:10, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. I'll change "recent years" to "later years".

The text now says: "Though highly critical of the Soviet Union, during the 1960s and 1970s Chomsky was more positive in his assessment of Communist movements in Asia." Is this acceptable? I don't think it's accurate to say that his comments on China and North Vietnam were isolated. The footnote in "Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship" was isolated, but the discussion at the "Legitimacy of Violence as a Political Act" forum [16] (where he talks about many things meeting Luxembourgian conditions) and the "In North Vietnam" article [17] is quite detailed, and I think it's clear that Chomsky's assessment of both China and North Vietnam was positive. --Russil Wvong 22:24, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Proposed revisions to criticism section

I'd like to expand the criticism section to cover some of Chomsky's earlier writings, during the Vietnam war. Proposed text:

Chomsky's strongly expressed political views have made him an extraordinarily controversial figure: he arouses both intense admiration and intense antipathy. During the Vietnam war, he was a prominent opponent of the war. After the war ended, however, he became a more marginal figure; the mainstream media has tended to either ignore or misunderstand his views.

"Mutilating the truth"

The most common criticism of Chomsky's writings is that he disregards the truth and misuses evidence. Even Stanley Hoffmann, a fellow opponent of the Vietnam War and a sympathetic interlocutor, described Chomsky in a 1969 exchange of letters as having a "tendency to draw from an author's statements inferences that correspond neither to the author's intentions nor to the statements' meaning".

Chomsky's 1967 essay "The Responsibility of Intellectuals" [18] provoked friendly criticism, e.g. from Raziel Abielson [19], acknowledging that Chomsky's account wasn't strictly accurate, but making the point that stopping the war was more important. This illustrates Hans Morgenthau's comment about the conflict between the sphere of scholarship, in which truth is the most important value, and the sphere of politics, in which the consequences of one's actions (including one's words) are most important.

It will be said that Chomsky's account of American foreign policy is drawn in black and white, and that politics is in reality a spectrum of shades of gray. And this objection would be sound, if Chomsky were writing as a detached observer on Mars. Sure, Viet Cong terrorists have murdered, mutilated, and intimidated their opposition. Certainly, Red China has been far more hysterically aggressive than Chomsky admits (so much as to have frightened their Communist allies, as well as half their own population). But I salute Chomsky for not caring to appear fair to the facts on both sides. For the facts are known well enough by now. It is the moral evaluation of our foreign policy and the decision as to what we are going to do about it that is now in order.

Chomsky's essay also provoked less friendly criticism, e.g. from E. B. Murray. [20]

In a 1970 exchange of letters [21], Samuel Huntington gave examples of Chomsky's "mutilating the truth in a variety of ways with respect to my views and activities on Vietnam". Huntington argued that Chomsky pieced together several sentences to make it appear that Huntington advocated the demolition of Vietnamese society, when in fact Huntington was arguing for a compromise peace.

Chomsky himself vigorously disputes any assertion that he has made statements which are misleading or false.

"Maddeningly simple-minded"

Chomsky is also frequently accused of presenting a "maddeningly simple-minded" view of the world (Paul Robinson, New York Times Book Review). Stanley Hoffmann describes the problem as follows [22]:

We do disagree on the subject of American objectives in Vietnam. Professor Chomsky believes that they were wicked; I do not. I believe that they were, in a way, far worse; for often the greatest threat to moderation and peace, and certainly the most insidious, comes from objectives that are couched in terms of fine principles in which the policy-maker fervently believes, yet that turn out to have no relation to political realities and can therefore be applied only by tortuous or brutal methods which broaden ad infinitum the gap between motives and effects. ...

I detect in Professor Chomsky's approach, in his uncomplicated attribution of evil objectives to his foes, in his fondness for abstract principles, in his moral impatience, the mirror image of the very features that both he and I dislike in American foreign policy. To me sanity does not consist of replying to a crusade with an anti-crusade. As scholars and as citizens, we must require and provide discriminating and disciplined reasoning on behalf of our values.

In a 1967 exchange with Chad Walsh [23], Chomsky argued that it was necessary to convince Americans that the Vietnam war was not just against the national interest, but morally wrong.

In 1989, fellow radical historian Carolyn Eisenberg noted that Chomsky's description of US foreign policy during the early Cold War as motivated by economics rather than fear of the Soviet Union didn't agree with the documentary evidence, e.g. NSC 68. In reply, Chomsky argued that despite the evidence, US officials believed in a non-existent Soviet threat because this aligned with their economic motives. [24] If this approach is consistently followed, Chomsky's beliefs are unfalsifiable: that is, because it's not based on any evidence, there's no way to prove that it's incorrect.

The unfalsifiability argument doesn't go through at all. The view expressed in that article (that the writers of official documents believed in the Soviet threat because it was convenient for them to do so) is a completely falsifiable hypothesis (insofar as any hypothesis in the soft sciences is falsifiable). Of course, any theory can be (and frequently is) saved by modifying the assumptions it rests on, or introducing new assumptions. This is true across science: if you're allowed to change you theory in the face of conflicting evidence (which of course you are) then you yourself can never be falsified. You're confusing the falsification of Chomsky whith the falsification of a particular theory. The fact that he is apt to revise his theories in the face of conflicting evidence is only to be expected — that's what any rational person does. All that is necessary is that each revision of the theory is in itself falsifiable. One might object that the particular revision he makes leads to an implausible theory, but this is an entirely different category of criticism from calling the theory "unfalsifiable". --Cadr 17:14, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

As RS noted, I should definitely remove the last sentence regarding unfalsifiability -- it's my own opinion, so it doesn't belong in a reference article.

Nevertheless, I should also say that I'm not convinced by your counterargument. How could Chomsky's revised thesis be falsified? _Any_ evidence that US officials were actually afraid of the Soviet threat can be explained away by this thesis. What sort of evidence would falsify the thesis? --Russil Wvong 19:28, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Given that the hypothesis assumes that US officials were actually afraid of the Soviet threat, it will obviously have no problem explaining the fact that US official were actually afraid of the Soviet threat. There is no issue in that regard. Essentially, there are roughly three elements to the hypothesis:

• US officials were afraid of the (supposed) Soviet threat. This is clearly falsifiable, to the extent that any hypothesis about the mental state of a group of people is falsifiable. Given that the issue in question is the mental state of a group of US government planners, this level of uncertainty is unavoidable.

• US planners were not afraid of the Soviets for a rational reason. Falsifiable to a reasonable extent — it would only be necessary to find evidence of a real Soviet threat, or alternatively, evidence that US planners rationally formed false beliefs on the basis of faulty intelligence.

• (Inference to the best explanation on the assumption that there was no real Soviet threat). The reason US officials were afraid of the Soviet threat was that it was convenient for them to believe this; it legitimised their policies which were in fact carried out for their own economic interest. Again, this is as falsifiable as any claim about the mental state of a group of people.

So, the hypothesis as a whole is falsifiable to a reasonable degree. You have to understand that Popper's requirment of falsifiability applies to hypotheses in isolation. In itself, it has nothing much to say about how one should go about revising theories in the face of new evidence, etc. Now, Popper did suggest that in general, better theories are more falsifiable than worse theories, which rather elegantly derives Occam's razor. Thus, you might make a reasonable argument against Chomsky's theory for being more complex than some alternative theory, and hence less falsifiable. But you can't just flat out say that it's unfalsifiable, because that isn't the case, unless, as Chamaeleon pointed out, you wish to hold historical/political theories to the same standard as theories in the hard sciences. This option would of course reject all current political/historical theories of any significance. --Cadr 20:30, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

One very important thing I forgot. It's generally the predictions made by theories, rather than their actual content, which is falsifiable. For example, the theory of gravity is not falsifiable in itself, but the predictions it makes generally are (e.g. that things don't fall up). So in a sense most of what I said above is irrelevant. It's simply unreasonable to require the assumptions of a theory to be falsifiable in themselves. What you should do instead is look at the predictions made by the theory, in this case predictions about the course of US foreign policy. If it's the case that the theory can be made to predict pretty much any course, then the theory can be said to be unfalsifiable. --Cadr 20:44, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

"The reason US officials were afraid of the Soviet threat was that it was convenient for them to believe this; it legitimised their policies which were in fact carried out for their own economic interest. Again, this is as falsifiable as any claim about the mental state of a group of people."

Sorry, I'm afraid I'm still not following. What would constitute evidence for or against this theory? How would you test this theory to determine if it's correct or not? --Russil Wvong 21:14, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

OK, we start off with the assumption that a group of people have in common a certain mental state (in this case being afraid of the Soviet threat). Now, if we're going to accept Popper's analysis of the scientific method, we realise that no statement can be tested directly. Instead, we have to find out what predictions the statement makes and test them. We do this by finding out what predictions the predictions make, and so on ad infinitum until we get bored. Of course, for this to work, the chain of predictions must get less and less universal (e.g. we might go from the initial assumption that "all men are taller than 3ft" to "any man is taller than 3ft" and then to "John is taller than 3ft", etc.) The statements become easier and easier to test, but they can never be tested directly.

Now that's established, let's get to the example in hand. Chomsky first argues that there was no rational basis for fear of the Soviet threat. This theory makes the prediction that there was in fact no Soviet threat, and so it can be tested fairly easily. Now, given the fact that there was no Soviet threat, we might ask why it should be that a certain group of people were nontheless afraid of it. We could (according to Chomsky) come up with at least two theories. Firstly, that the people in the group are all irrational lunatics. This theory accounts for the data, but since lunatics can believe pretty much anything, it could account for just about any data. The lunatic theory, then, does not make strong enough predictions to be practically falsifiable, since it just predicts that the group of US planners could have pretty much any mental state you can think of.

Second theory; US planners held this irrational belief because it justified some of their rational beliefs, for example that the kind of foreign policy they were advocating would support their own interests. This theory predicts that US foreign policy would primarily be responsive to the economic interests of US elites, and only secondarily responsive to Soviet military and economic posturing. This prediction (which is really a theory in its own right) also makes predictions which can be tested, for example that US foreign policy should probably be more successful in furthering the economic interests of US elites than in countering the Soviet threat. Of course, such predictions are not direct logical consequences, and are not trivially tested; there is plenty of room for disagreement. However, they seem as testable as one can reasonably expect predictions to be in political theories.

Chomsky has essentially added an axilluary hypothesis to his original theory that US foreign policy mostly serves the economic interests of US elites. I.e., that US planners my begin to believe certain elements of their own propaganda. Chomsky is betting that, even with the undesireable addition of this auxilluary hypothesis, his theory is still better at explaining US foreign policy than a theory which assumes that fear of the Soviet threat was the prime motivating force of US foreign policy. He may or may not be right. Whatever the case, foundational issues of falsifiability to not enter in any interesting way. The theory as a whole is in fact eminently falsifiable. One could for example show that there was a real Soviet threat, and that US foreign policy can be analysed as a rational attempt to counter it. --Cadr 21:50, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the detailed explanation, Cadr. That helps. I was thinking primarily of _documentary_ evidence, e.g. internal white papers, telegrams, memos, personal diaries, that diplomatic historians draw upon to try to recreate the mindset of diplomats and statesmen. If I understand Chomsky's theory correctly, all such evidence is irrelevant to the validity or invalidity of his theory: there is no possible documentary evidence which is inconsistent with the theory. To recast my criticism, his theory is unfalsifiable _by documentary evidence_.

Regarding the reality or unreality of the Soviet threat during the early Cold War, here's some discussion: [25]. --Russil Wvong 22:50, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Well, it's not a yes or no answer whether a theory can be falsified by a particular bit of evidence. One can always introduce new assumptionss which prevent a theory from being falsified, so the question becomes whether there is a completely different theory which is better than [old theory + additional assumptions]. If you're inclined to think that a analysis of US foreign policy in terms of the economic interests of elites gives some insight into past and present US foreign policy, then [old theory + additional assumptions] is probably better. --Cadr 01:57, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Having read Chomsky's response more closely, I think there's an emphasis on the nature of the institution the planners operated in. It's surely correct that, whatever their individual beliefs, they would not have risen far up the food chain if their plans were actually based on the sort of lunatic beliefs Chomsky quotes from the documentary record. I think a lot depends on how Marxist you are prepared to be. If you can believe that the nature of an institution has a profound effect on the individuals who operate within it, to the extent that their own beliefs are often somewhat secondary, then Chomsky's analysis is very reasonable. If not, then it's not. Cadr 02:11, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

"If you're inclined to think that a analysis of US foreign policy in terms of the economic interests of elites gives some insight into past and present US foreign policy ..."

"I think a lot depends on how Marxist you are prepared to be. If you can believe that the nature of an institution has a profound effect on the individuals who operate within it, to the extent that their own beliefs are often somewhat secondary, then Chomsky's analysis is very reasonable."

I think you might mean "plausible", not "reasonable."

Isn't this reasoning somewhat circular? Shouldn't the plausibility of a theory be based on the evidence given to support it, rather than one's existing beliefs?

"It's surely correct that, whatever their individual beliefs, they would not have risen far up the food chain if their plans were actually based on the sort of lunatic beliefs Chomsky quotes from the documentary record."

And yet we have the record of what appear to be serious discussions based on exactly these beliefs. [26] Eisenhower and Dulles were concerned about the Czech arms shipments to Guatemala, and believed that there was a danger Guatemala might attack its neighbors, causing them to invoke the Rio Treaty (similar to NATO, an attack on one being regarded as an attack on all): "Secretary Dulles pointed out that Guatemala's military establishment was three times as large as the military establishments of all its neighbors put together. This completely denied Guatemala's allegation that the arms it had imported were for its own self-defense."

Or was it all just rationalization to justify overthrowing the Arbenz government because it threatened US economic interests, particularly its nationalization of land owned by United Fruit? How would you tell?

For a detailed discussion of US policy toward Latin America during the early Cold War, including the invocation of the Monroe Doctrine to oppose Soviet influence in Latin America, see this 1950 report by George F. Kennan: [27]. I have to say that Kennan's discussion, at least, doesn't seem "lunatic" to me. --Russil Wvong 06:54, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

In the field of history, it is quite typical to say that explanations one does not agree with are "unfalsifiable", as no historical claim is ever falsifiable to the standards of, say, physics. Similarly, any attempt to work out what factors determine a certain outcome is called "deterministic" by those who don't like to make more substantial criticism.

To understand whether economic factors were the key or not, it is helpful to look back into history and note how the powerful virtually always carry out actions that they believe will benefit them (economically, etc), and that this historical understanding of motivations is far more illuminating than the explanations that are offered at the time by the offenders. --Chamaeleon 17:47, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

If we look back into history, are you saying that you believe that the US fought the Vietnam War for economic reasons? What economic interests did the US have at stake in Vietnam? (Or the Korean War, or World War II, or World War I?) The explanation may be simple and "illuminating", but I think it's also wrong. For more discussion, see [28]. --Russil Wvong 19:28, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Yes, in all those wars, the US élites entered or started the conflict because they felt it was in their interests. They wanted to stay rich and powerful. Any crap that they may have spouted about good and evil or about being victimised was just stuff they said to convince others and themselves. --Chamaeleon 00:43, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

How can you tell? What evidence is your belief based on? Again, what economic interests were at stake in Vietnam? --Russil Wvong 06:59, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

After these sections, the text on Cambodia would follow.

Any comments? Is this text reasonably NPOV? I'm trying to rely solely on published criticisms. Also, the critics in these sections are all sympathetic to Chomsky, with the exception of Huntington.

The section on "mutilating the truth" could be expanded indefinitely with more examples. I'm not sure if this is useful or not in a reference article. --Russil Wvong 09:10, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Good work. Clearly most of this stuff belongs in our criticism of Chomsky. Below are a few specific concerns, but mostly I think we need to figure out how we want to organize and divide up the criticism of Chomsky generally -- currently there's not a lot of rhyme or reason to it. At some point, maybe now, we should think about creating a sub-article and summarizing.

• Contractions should be expanded, per Wikipedia:Manual of style.
• Even with quotations, I'm concerned about section headings with titles like these. Something like ====Accuracy and scholarship==== and ====Alleged simplicity of worldview==== might be more appropriate.
• In the second paragraph, prefacing Stanley Hoffman with "Even" is POV.
• In the third paragraph, the sentence beginning "This illustrates" is inappropriate unless Morgenthau was commenting on Chomsky, and may lead the reader to believe that the quote that follows is from him, instead of Abelson.
• E.B. Murray's criticism should be summarized if it is to be mentioned in the text. Otherwise, it's just an external link and belongs in that section.
• There should be a more substantial response from Chomsky than a meaningless statement that he disputes such allegations, which is pretty much expected.
• The first sentence about "maddeningly simple-minded" needs to be rephrased so as to make clear that "frequently" refers to the substance of the charge, not the specific phrase.
• Final paragraph: NSC 68 should be explained or linked (creating a stub about it would be great). The final sentence of criticism should either be sourced or removed.

--RadicalSubversiv E 09:52, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments, Radical -- I agree with all your suggested changes. In particular, I should summarize Chomsky's responses to each of the criticisms summarized or quoted in the main text.

I agree that the criticism section is pretty unwieldy. I was thinking it might make sense to reorganize it in a roughly chronological fashion (Vietnam, the Arab-Israeli conflict, Cambodia, Faurisson, Kosovo, post-9/11). But I thought it'd make sense to proceed relatively slowly, making changes to one section at a time, given the controversial nature of the material.

Another criticism sub-heading should probably be "anti-Americanism", that is, the frequently heard charge that Chomsky's criticism of US foreign policy is caused by his being anti-American. I think there's some interesting discussion which could be summarized here (e.g. misunderstanding of Chomsky's position as being pro-Communist, the fact that Chomsky has criticized the Soviet Union, comparison with Nazi Germany, the positive view of China and North Vietnam discussed above, distinction between government and people, post-9/11 criticism that Chomsky has no identification with the US). --Russil Wvong 15:49, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Here's a modified version of the draft text.

Chomsky's prominence and strongly expressed political views have made him an extraordinarily controversial figure: he arouses both intense admiration and intense antipathy. During the Vietnam War, he was a leading opponent of the war. After the war ended, however, he became a more marginal figure; the mainstream media has tended to either ignore or misunderstand his views.

====Misuse of evidence====

The most common criticism of Chomsky's writings is that he disregards the truth and misuses evidence. Stanley Hoffmann, a fellow opponent of the Vietnam War and a sympathetic interlocutor, described Chomsky in a 1969 exchange of letters as having a "tendency to draw from an author's statements inferences that correspond neither to the author's intentions nor to the statements' meaning." [29]

Responses to Chomsky's landmark 1967 essay "The Responsibility of Intellectuals" [30] included a positive response from Raziel Abielson [31], acknowledging that Chomsky's description of US foreign policy was not strictly accurate, but arguing that the moral and political urgency of stopping the war were more important than strict adherence to truth and objectivity.

It will be said that Chomsky's account of American foreign policy is drawn in black and white, and that politics is in reality a spectrum of shades of gray. And this objection would be sound, if Chomsky were writing as a detached observer on Mars. Sure, Viet Cong terrorists have murdered, mutilated, and intimidated their opposition. Certainly, Red China has been far more hysterically aggressive than Chomsky admits (so much as to have frightened their Communist allies, as well as half their own population). But I salute Chomsky for not caring to appear fair to the facts on both sides. For the facts are known well enough by now. It is the moral evaluation of our foreign policy and the decision as to what we are going to do about it that is now in order.

Another response to Chomsky's essay came from E. B. Murray [32], criticizing Chomsky's misuse of evidence in his attempt to downplay Chinese aggressiveness, specifically with respect to the 1950 invasion of Tibet, Chinese infiltration into North Thailand, and Chinese involvement in the Malayan insurrection. Chomsky in turn responded to Murray and other critics, reiterating his earlier arguments [33].

In a 1970 exchange of letters [34], Samuel P. Huntington accused Chomsky of misrepresenting his views on Vietnam.

Mr. Chomsky writes as follows:

Writing in Foreign Affairs, he [Huntington] explains that the Viet Cong is "a powerful force which cannot be dislodged from its constituency so long as the constituency continues to exist." The conclusion is obvious, and he does not shrink from it. We can ensure that the constituency ceases to exist by "direct application of mechanical and conventional power…on such a massive scale as to produce a massive migration from countryside to city…."

It would be difficult to conceive of a more blatantly dishonest instance of picking words out of context so as to give them a meaning directly opposite to that which the author stated. For the benefit of your readers, here is the "obvious conclusion" which I drew from my statement about the Viet Cong:

... the Viet Cong will remain a powerful force which cannot be dislodged from its constituency so long as the constituency continues to exist. Peace in the immediate future must hence be based on accommodation.

By omitting my next sentence—"Peace in the immediate future must hence be based on accommodation"—and linking my statement about the Viet Cong to two other phrases which appear earlier in the article, Mr. Chomsky completely reversed my argument.

With respect to this specific accusation, Chomsky replied as follows:

... I did not say that he "favored" this answer but only that he "outlined" it, "explained" it, and "does not shrink from it," all of which is literally true.

====Attribution of motives without evidence====

Chomsky is accused of presenting a "maddeningly simple-minded" view of the world (Paul Robinson, New York Times Book Review).

In a 1967 exchange of letters with Chad Walsh [35], Chomsky argued that it was necessary to convince Americans that the Vietnam War was not just against the national interest, but morally wrong.

In a 1969 exchange of letters, Stanley Hoffmann, a fellow opponent of the Vietnam War, described the nature of his disagreement with Chomsky [36]:

We do disagree on the subject of American objectives in Vietnam. Professor Chomsky believes that they were wicked; I do not. I believe that they were, in a way, far worse; for often the greatest threat to moderation and peace, and certainly the most insidious, comes from objectives that are couched in terms of fine principles in which the policy-maker fervently believes, yet that turn out to have no relation to political realities and can therefore be applied only by tortuous or brutal methods which broaden ad infinitum the gap between motives and effects. ...

I detect in Professor Chomsky's approach, in his uncomplicated attribution of evil objectives to his foes, in his fondness for abstract principles, in his moral impatience, the mirror image of the very features that both he and I dislike in American foreign policy. To me sanity does not consist of replying to a crusade with an anti-crusade. As scholars and as citizens, we must require and provide discriminating and disciplined reasoning on behalf of our values.

In 1989, fellow radical historian Carolyn Eisenberg noted that Chomsky's description of US foreign policy during the early Cold War as motivated by economics rather than fear of the Soviet Union did not agree with the documentary evidence. In the 1950 document NSC 68 [37], for example, which assessed the world crisis and made recommendations for US foreign policy, it is clear that US officials were sincere in their belief that the Soviet Union was a threat. Chomsky replied that US officials only believed that the Soviet Union was a threat because it was convenient for them to do so, but did not provide evidence supporting this argument. [38]

Perhaps it'd also be useful to have a section on economic determinism. Did a search, found a couple references:

Tom Nichols, The Anti-Chomsky Reader. Refers to Chomsky's "economic determinism" in passing, but doesn't try to refute it.

Editorial in The Dissident [39], which appears to be a student paper associated with Jeffrey Friedman of Critical Review (an interesting cross-disciplinary journal which is skeptical of political ideologies in general).

One problem with economic determinism is that it renders so much of the political world incomprehensible. Volunteer “human shields” for Iraq did not put themselves in harm’s way out of class (or individual) self-interest. Antiwar protestors receive no financial compensation for demonstrating. The activists among us genuinely believe in our causes, and often devote their lives to serving them. How, then, can anyone sustain the conviction that the political world consists solely of self-interested actors?

Economic determinists get around that problem by applying determinism to their opponents, never to themselves. ...

Noam Chomsky, likewise, claims that his conspiratorial analysis of U.S. foreign policy is self-evident. It is a recitation, in his view, of the obvious facts; one needn’t engage in theorizing to come up with his analysis — all one need do is open one’s eyes to reality, so anyone who disagrees with what Chomsky sees must be lying, so as to serve the interests of a capitalist plot.

But what about Chomsky himself? How do we know he is telling us the facts, not lying out of some self-interested motive of his own?

In principle, determinism would have the self-defeating effect of calling one’s own motives into question. In practice, however, it operates as a simple double standard. One’s opponents are bad; oneself and one’s allies are good. ...

Chomsky himself talks about revisionist historians being accused of "vulgar economic determinism" [40]; there's some references (e.g. to John Lewis Gaddis) here [41]. --Russil Wvong 17:58, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

What he knew and when he knew it

Though highly critical of the Soviet Union, Chomsky has sometimes been more positive in his assessment of Communist movements in Asia, particularly in the 1960s and '70s when not all information on them was available in the West.

Is this an assertion that if Chomsky only knew more about the bad things the communists did, he wouldn't have praised them so much? -- Uncle Ed (talk) 16:57, Feb 9, 2005 (UTC)

I think there's more to it than that. During the 1960s and 1970s, Mao was an iconic figure in the West, particularly for those disillusioned with both the US and the Soviet Union; it's hard to recall this today. (Jan Wong, a reporter for the Toronto Globe and Mail, recounts in her memoir Red China Blues that she was a teenage Maoist (!) in Montreal in the 1970s, with her own copy of the Little Red Book, etc.) I don't think it's particularly discreditable to Chomsky that he was subject to the same widespread illusions. But I do think it's worth mentioning in the article, and I don't think the current text captures it exactly.

Some relevant commentary from John Goldsmith's review of the Robert Barsky biography [42]:

From early on in his political writings, Chomsky has rejected this easy connection between a belief in human plasticity and optimistic political utopianism, in favor of the view (one associated in some circles with the early Marx) that humans have a richly definable nature, with natural inclinations towards creativity, constructive and cooperative energy, and egalitarian social relations. Barsky cites on several occasions Chomsky’s first political essay, written when Chomsky was 10, on the Spanish Civil War, and he discusses at some length Chomsky’s view that the anarchist movement in Barcelona during the Civil War, described by George Orwell in Homage to Catalonia, was one of the rare occurrences in modern history where, in Chomsky’s opinion, human political nature was allowed to surface (to use a linguist’s turn of phrase). I remember very clearly as a college student in the late 1960s how much this same view was widely held, and widely seen as being implemented (as well as could be managed) by Castro’s and Mao’s New Economic Man, in only slightly different form. [FN 6]

[FN 6:Ami Kronfeld has raised the question as to whether this is a fair connection to make; were not the policies of Castro and Mao far more hospitable to an avant-gardist view of the revolutionary party, the revolutionary party leading the worker malgré lui? Whoever mistook Castro for a left anarchist, after all? My recollection is rather clear that many people who, like this writer, were in college in the late 1960s had precisely that image, one that was explored at length in socialist publications in this country at that time. This point is not without some considerable relevance, for the image of a utopia founded on workers’ control of their means of production will always be judged by how plausible it is to imagine that system as the principal organizing principle of society. If Israeli kibbutzim (or the short-lived workers’ councils in Barcelona during the Spanish Revolution) can serve as an existence proof for such a view, their existence will undercut the view (compelling, for many, in this day and age) that both historical and essentialist forces conspire to lead non-market-driven societies to economic ruin, to police-state, or both. ]

I don't want to get into an edit war, but I'd like to get some feedback on the text I proposed above. --Russil Wvong 17:30, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Well yes, it is an assertion of that. What's wrong with it? Anyway, I think it's worth pointing out that Chomsky generally praises the achievements of the people in certain Communist countries. I'd be surprised if you could find a quote from him praising the Communists specifically. He has consistently been critical of all the large Marxist-Lenninist/Trotskyist/Stalinist Communist movements. --Cadr 17:56, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

"What's wrong with it?" It's insertion of POV in an attempt to influence the reader. It's also original research. If published Chomsky defenders have stated that he was more positive because he didn't have all the information they should be quoted, but editors here can't make up their own defences for Chomsky. --Jayjg ^(talk) 18:12, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

It's not making up a defense, just putting the remarks in context. This no original research thing is getting far too pedantic. The policy was designed to prevent pages like Cadr's view on Mao's China or My Obscure PhD Thesis, not a few words of context in a political article. Also, the article makes no claim about what Chomsky himself did or did not know, it just notes the relative lack of information in the West at the time. The idea that this constitutes original research in any significant sense seems rather absurd to me. I'm open to being convinced that the phrasing is too POV, but that's a different matter. Bringing up OR just confuses the issue. --Cadr 19:49, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The "context" is an attempted defence of his statements, which in my view is POV; it certainly reads like an apologetic, and I don't think that's a good thing. Using your Mao analogy, it's as if someone were talking about Mao unleashing the Cultural Revolution, and en passant noting that Mao didn't authorize or know about every single action committed by the Red Guards. As for original research, the article should be stating the views of published authors on Chomsky, both his defenders and his critics. If some critics excoriate him for defending Communist governments, while others defend him on the grounds that not much was known about their actions at the time, then both should be put in. However, if some critics excoriate him for defending Communist governments, and you decide that a) little was known about them in the West, and b) this is a mitigating factor for his making the statements and should therefore be mentioned, then this is exactly what the original research policy was intended to stop. --Jayjg ^(talk) 20:10, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

This particular edit was by Chamaeleon, actually, not Cadr.

I tend to agree with Jayjg that the current text reads like an attempted defense. The scale of the Great Leap Forward famine wasn't known, but there was plenty that was known about past terror and atrocities in China and North Vietnam; hence Mao's statement that "a revolution is not a dinner party."

Again, I'd prefer to have the text simply note that Chomsky had a positive view of China and North Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, and that he has criticized China in recent years, without getting into the question of whether his views in the 1960s and 1970s were justified or not.

Unless anyone objects, I'll go ahead and make this edit. --Russil Wvong 20:26, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Not sure we should say that he had a positive view of those countries. He praised the economic achievements of the people of those countires, which isn't really the same thing. He didn't, so far as I know, praise the governments themselves. --Cadr 22:19, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

It's not just the economic achievements, it's the societies themselves which he found admirable: political organization, bottom-up nature of social changes, mass participation. His depiction of the government representatives who he met with in North Vietnam is also quite positive [43]. None of this is to say that he admired these societies because they were Communist dictatorships; rather, he admired them because he believed that they resembled the anarchist model of a decent society, as earlier put into practice by the Spanish anarchists. --Russil Wvong 22:35, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Chomsky's modus operandi is to play up anything good about communism and anything bad about the United States (especially its foreign relations). It's a deliberate strategy to discredit America and democracy in general - and to exalt Soviet-bloc communism (and socialism in general). It's an unfair rhetorical technique, and I'm sure as a linguistics expert Prof. Chomsky knows full well what he's doing.

I'm no fan of Chomsky, but I'd have to disagree. As Chamaeleon notes below, Chomsky has consistently criticized Soviet-bloc communism.

Chomsky is primarily focused on the US and its actions. I'd say that as an American, he believes he has the same responsibility to try to restrain US foreign policy in the Third World (by turning public opinion against it)--the Vietnam War, support for dictatorships in Latin America and elsewhere, the Gulf War, Bosnia and Kosovo, Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq--that a German would have had during the Nazi era. Because of this overriding moral and political responsibility, strict adherence to truth and fairness becomes secondary.

You may find the comparison between the United States and Nazi Germany to be monstrous, but I think he sincerely sees things this way. Remember that he became politically active during the Vietnam War crisis, when the US was doing some truly terrible things. Hans Morgenthau, writing in 1965 [44]:

I have spoken of the prestige of the nation and of the prestige of those who govern it, that is, of the mental image which others have of us. Yet there is another kind of prestige: the image we have of ourselves. That image will suffer grievous blemishes as we get ever more deeply involved in the war in Vietnam. This war is a guerrilla war, and such a war, supported or at least not opposed by the indigenous population, can only be won by the indiscriminate killing of everybody in sight, that is, by genocide. The Germans proved that during the Second World War in occupied Europe, and they were prevented from accomplishing their task only because they were defeated in the field. The logic of the issue we are facing in Vietnam has already driven us onto the same path. We have tortured and killed prisoners; we have embarked upon a scorched-earth policy by destroying villages and forests; we have killed combatants and non-combatants without discrimination because discrimination is impossible. And this is only the beginning. For the logic of guerrilla war leaves us no choice. We must go on torturing, killing, and burning, and the more deeply we get involved in this war, the more there will be of it.

This brutalization of the Armed Forces would be a serious matter for any nation, as the example of France has shown. It is intolerable for the United States. For this nation, alone among the nations of the world, was created for a particular purpose: to achieve equality in freedom at home, and thereby set an example for the world to emulate. This was the intention of the Founding Fathers, and to this very day the world has taken them at their word. It is exactly for this reason that our prestige has suffered so disastrously among friend and foe alike; for the world did not expect of us what it had come to expect of others.

American involvement in the war continued for another eight years.

The problem is that politics exerts a very strong "reality distortion field". There's a conflict between politics and truth: if the truth is complicated, and if by simplifying it you can convince more people, bring the war to an end faster, and save people's lives, should you not do so? (See Chomsky's exchange with Chad Walsh, in which Chomsky argued that it was necessary not only to convince people that the war was unwise, but that it was wrong.)

But once you start down this path, you get a widening gap between your view of the world and reality. To weaken the argument for war against some official enemy, you tear apart the official propaganda which attempts to blacken the image of that enemy; but in the process, you may end up believing in the enemy's propaganda instead. Instead of a simplistic good-guys-vs.-bad-guys view (the "Star Wars script") with the US in the role of the good guys, you get the same simplistic good-guys-vs.-bad-guys view with the enemy in the role of the good guys. Chomsky appears to have fallen for Bosnian Serb propaganda in just this way. This is how you end up with the double standard for the US and for its enemies.

Because Chomsky is so brilliant, he's been able to construct a succession of plausible arguments and rationalizations to accommodate or explain away contradictory evidence, rather than having to admit that his view of the world is wrong. The "propaganda model" of the mass media and the "threat of a good example" explanation of US foreign policy are two examples. (His increasing marginalization since the end of the Vietnam War, so that he's mostly interacting with adoring fans and getting criticism from infuriated enemies rather than receiving serious analysis, probably hasn't helped. Nobody seems to have done a critical Ph.D. thesis on Chomsky's political views. The only book-length treatment, The Anti-Chomsky Reader, is easily dismissed as coming from the apostate David Horowitz.)

In short, I think Chomsky's mistake was to depart from absolute adherence to the truth, the most important value of the intellectual sphere, in the name of moral and political responsibility, the most important value of the political sphere. There's a basic conflict between truth and politics, and once you leave the truth behind, it's very hard to go back. Before making moral and political evaluations, I think it's critical to get the facts straight first.

Note that I'm not going to put this in the article, both because it's somewhat speculative, and because Wikipedia can only present arguments which have been made in print elsewhere.

Some supporting material, regarding Chomsky's view of moral and political responsibility being more important than adherence to the truth:

A posting by Chomsky replying to a fan letter asking him about some criticisms. Chomsky describes websites which criticize his writings as being morally far inferior to neo-Nazi and neo-Stalinist sites, exactly because of their political consequences (criticisms of Chomsky ultimately serve to prop up oppression in Latin America, while neo-Nazi and neo-Stalinist sites have no such consequences), not because of their truth or mendacity. [45]

I should add that I don't pay attention to what appears on the Internet sites that you are referring to. If you want to immobilize yourself by immersion in these sites -- as the participants in them desperately hope you and other activists will -- that's your choice. It's not mine. But if you do find this interesting, I'd suggest that you switch to sites that are at a similar intellectual level but a much higher moral level: I have in mind neo-Nazi and neo-Stalinist sites, which I presume exist. There I suppose you'll find very similar arguments: denunciations of those who condemned Nazi and Stalinist crimes on the basis of the terror and atrocities of resistance forces and the horrible aftermath of the defeat of fascism and the collapse of the USSR. The terror and atrocities were real, and the aftermath was horrendous; I presume I need not review it. Of course, sane people dismiss this with ridicule, just as they would dismiss what you report from the apparently very similar sites that you are spending time on. But the neo-Nazis and neo-Stalinists are on a far higher moral level, for the obvious reason: fortunately, they are in no position to exploit the terror of the resistance and the horrendous aftermath in order to justify, and carry out, terrible crimes. That is, they were unable to sink to the depravity of those whose sites you are reading, who exploit the suffering for which they share considerable responsibility in order to impose misery on others....

There's another instance in which Chomsky talks about the difficult dilemma of whether criticizing and denouncing the official enemy, even in strictly accurate terms, is justifiable when you know that these criticisms will be used to justify war. Afraid I don't have a reference handy. --Russil Wvong 18:45, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Occasionally Chomsky's defenders will say that he criticizes the U.S. so heavily only because (a) it is responsive to criticism and (b) other countries are not so (c) we should focus our attention on there instead of wasting time elsewhere. I don't buy this argument. (1) If sincere, it's not an effective strategy to put one's own country down while praising one's enemies; it sends the wrong message. (2) It's almost certainly insincere (or simply insane), because it employs a double standard which has effectively helped communists win wars.

I think a stronger argument in Chomsky's defense is simply that the US is the most powerful country in the world. --Russil Wvong 18:45, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

So I'd like the article to discuss Chomsky's dichotomous evaluation of the US (and democratic allies) vs. Communist countries and movements. Let's quote people who praise or support Chomsky, as well as his critics. -- Uncle Ed (talk) 15:07, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)

What can "discredit America" mean? America does not have one voice whose claims can be discredited. What Chomsky does is criticise US élites. How can he "discredit democracy" by arguing for it? How can he exalt Soviet-bloc "communism" by opposing it (despite giving some Asian movements the benefit of the doubt for a while a few decades ago)? What argument could support the notion that Chomsky is wrong in thinking that the people of a country are the ones best placed to change the policies of its government? How can Chomsky be said to employ a double standard by pointing out double standards? Vent your right-wing hatred elsewhere. --Chamaeleon 17:26, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

When did Chomsky become a leading opponents of the Vietnam War?

The text currently says: "... from around 1964, he became one of the leading opponents of the Vietnam War."

Shouldn't this be "from around 1967", with the publication of "The Responsibility of Intellectuals" [46] in the New York Review of Books? He was active against the war prior to that, but as I understand it, it was really "The Responsibility of Intellectuals" that brought him national prominence. Robert Asprey, War in the Shadows (1994):

Increasingly influential and strident voices were questioning not only the conduct but the very raison d'etre of the war. In February 1967, Noam Chomsky's explosive essay, "The Responsibility of Intellectuals," appeared in the New York Review of Books and thereafter was widely circulated--one of the "... key documents in the intellectual resistance to the Vietnam War," in that it called for the nation's intellectuals, who passively opposed American participation in the war, to become engage--in David Schalk's term--and even embrigade or counterlegal if necessary "... to speak the truth and to expose lies."

--Russil Wvong 06:23, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

"Nothing wrong with labels"?

A recent edit comment states "nothing wrong with labels". I must point out that labels are often used to poison the well. As well, their usage should be uniform (that is, everyone should be labelled or no-one should be labelled), and one should be careful to distinguish between labels that a person accepts "I am a right-winger" vs. labels ascribed to people by others "he is a right-winger". The latter further need to be attributed, if they are to be NPOV (e.g. "labelled a right-winger by The Guardian newspaper"), leading to no end of additional and superfluous text. In my view they should be used with great caution, if at all. --Jayjg ^(talk) 17:26, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Now who's whitewashing? Windschuttle is clearly a right-winger. We don't need to attribute this. We don't attribute "right-wing" when referring to Hitler. Windschuttle is even directly summarised as a right-winger on the article about him, without attribution. There is even less need to attribute the description here.

Is anyone actually trying to claim Windschuttle as progressive here, or is this just a theoretical point? It's funny that you people have no problem concluding definitely that Faurisson was a nazi because he is a holocaust denier, but try to claim that Windschuttle, who denies the British genocide of Australian Aborigines, is not even on the right. Several people's ideas are labelled in this article. There is no need to make Windschuttle an exception because you want to cover up for him. --Chamaeleon 18:05, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Chamaeleon writes that "Windschuttle is even directly summarised as a right-winger on the article about him, without attribution." I think it appropriate to point out that Chamaeleon is the one who recently added the "right-winger" description to the Windchuttle article. --Kevin Myers 17:49, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

Could you please address the points I have raised? Which other people are labelled in this way in the article? Also, who are "you people", and when did "you people" conclude that Faurisson was a "nazi", and how is it relevant? Regarding my desire to "cover up" for Windschuttle, I have no idea who Windschuttle is, so I'm not sure why I would be motivated to "cover up" for him. And finally, please reserve the use of Talk: pages for discussing article content, rather than attacking Wikipedia editors. --Jayjg ^(talk) 18:39, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Your point is addressed. You might want to cover up for a person's right-wing politics if it serves the purpose of bending an article on Chomsky to your anti-Chomsky opinions. And finally, please reserve the use of annoyingly quoting Wikipedia policies of doubtful relevance instead of finding arguments to support your point to anywhere but here. And sorry for lumping you in with the other Chomsky-haters (if you are not one of them). --Chamaeleon 20:01, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

As I've said before, I don't know who Windschuttle is, so I have no reason to "cover up" anything about him. As well, ad hominem arguments are indeed examples of personal attacks; please avoid them. And finally, you fail to address the problem with the use of labels in an attempt to poison the well; you obviously think your label for Windschuttle is quite damning, since you believe people would want to "cover it up". --Jayjg ^(talk) 20:37, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Since you're only trying to be irritating, I'll skip a long reply. --Chamaeleon 21:03, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Actually, I'm trying to engage you in substantive discussion of the article content. That's what the Talk: pages are for. --Jayjg ^(talk) 21:10, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

David Horowitz is labelled "conservative", for example.

I think it'd be accurate to describe Windschuttle as "a conservative Australian historian."

Windschuttle is certainly a conservative, in the North American sense of the term, and his 1994 book, "The Killing of History", was praised by conservative commentators in the United States. However, it is not at all clear that Windschuttle is properly classified as "right-wing". In its Australian parlance, this is a term of abuse that implies support for reactionary policies and/or regimes. [47]

Nor is there much else in Australian conservatism that justifies the "neo" prefix. Only a handful of conservative commentators - Keith Windschuttle, Christopher Pearson and Michael Duffy - started out on the left, and only Windschuttle was prominent prior to his conversion. [48] --Russil Wvong 19:07, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I think there are two questions here, and we need to answer the first before answering the second. The first question is "Is it good policy to label these people?" If the answer is "No", then we are done. If the answer is yes, then the next question is "what should they be labelled?", and various labels can be proposed (e.g. "right-wing", "conservative"). --Jayjg ^(talk) 19:13, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I think you're right that it's important to be careful when using labels.

At the same time, though, it seems to me that just referring to him as a "historian" implies that he's probably objective, when in fact he's quite controversial in Australia.

One option would be to remove any description of Windschuttle at all, just referring to him by name ("In an article on Chomsky in The New Criterion, Keith Windschuttle asserts ..."); if readers want to know more about Windschuttle, they can click on the link to his stub Wikipedia article. But I think a neutral and accurate descriptor such as "conservative" would also be acceptable.

I don't have a strong opinion one way or the other, so I'll exit the discussion at this point. --Russil Wvong 19:44, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I've just done a search and found 880 pages on Wikipedia using the term "right-wing". Few are quotations. Why is it then so terribly POV to use such a term here? If we can label Windschuttle a historian we can label him a right-winger or conservative. We need to keep the discussion to the question of whether the label is accurate, rather than censoring information on dubious grounds. --Chamaeleon 20:01, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The question is not whether the term is accurate, but whether it is relevant and useful. If it serves a POV purpose, then it is not. --Jayjg ^(talk) 20:37, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Are you seriously contending that it is not useful to know what general sort of political views Windschuttle has when one reads about a political attack he makes on someone? Windschuttle is accurately, usefully and relevantly described as a conservative or right-winger. --Chamaeleon 21:03, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Are his criticisms "political"? A quick scan of the linked article indicates that they seem to be about Chomksy allegedly distorting the truth. --Jayjg ^(talk) 21:10, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Don't feign ignorance. And are you seriously contending that the two criticisms that you insist on censoring are not frequently made? I don't even agree with them, but they are main ones made and need to be included. The fact that they are not yet explicitly attributed is no reason to delete them. There are scores of such unattributed remarks in the article. If they need attribution, then add it. If they don't, them leave them. Isn't this simple enough to understand? If someone like TDC comes along and makes some rabid attack, then we need to delete it until he can attribute it (and even then it may be considered irrelevant). This is clearly not the case here. Refrain from deleting useful factual information from the article. --Chamaeleon 21:44, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Please assume good faith. I'm no expert on Chomsky, but the criticisms I've heard about him have mostly to do with his overblown linguistic reputation (and attacks on people who criticize his linguistic theories), his support of Faurisson, and his attacks on Israel. Since you have said these specific complaints are the "most common" ones against him, it should be trivially easy for you to find people who make them, and back these claims up with sources. Whether this information is "useful" and "factual" remains to be seen; I'll wait till tomorrow to see how you do. --Jayjg ^(talk) 21:53, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I assume good faith, but certain behaviour chips away at my assumption. Now, linguistics and politics are two separate domains. In the domain of politics, the most common whinge by far is that he is anti-American, quite logically given that US élites are his main target. It is difficult to know who to quote on this, since virtually all of his detractors say it. Most of the other criticisms are actually based on this. For example, the section on Sudan is about Chomsky scurrilously distorting the truth to make the US look bad. We have an entire subsection on Horowitz, whose main thing is that Chomsky is an "Ayatollah of anti-American hate". We have an entire subsection on Cambodia, which is all about Chomsky scurrilously making it sound like any atrocities were the US's fault. Etc etc. The external links at the bottom are largely by people who think he is anti-American. Anti-Americanism is the criticism made. Most of the other sections could almost be made subsections under the anti-American one. The evidence for it is already made in the article several times. It is a summary. It can be reworded, improved, re-organised etc, but not removed. --Chamaeleon 00:04, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The Cambodia criticism isn't that Chomsky attributes the atrocities to the US. The criticism is that he argued the atrocities were greatly exaggerated.

He whitewashed the atrocities to make US actions elsewhere look worse, as part of his general plan to attribute all evil in the world to the US, and excuse all official enemies of the US. That's what his critics say. They see it all in terms of patriotism. Ask someone like TDC or Horowitz. They are guaranteed to agree. --Chamaeleon 01:07, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Regarding the idea that "virtually all of his detractors" say he's anti-American -- the web page I have on Chomsky [49] doesn't. --Russil Wvong 00:28, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I am familar with your site. You are the exception that proves the rule. You are also barely a detractor when compared to the likes of Horowitz or TDC. --Chamaeleon 01:07, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Reply below. --Russil Wvong 17:26, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Can I suggest a compromise? One interpretation of assume good faith would be to give Chameleon (or indeed anyone else) a day or two to find sources for these general allegations. Remember that there have been several edit wars/controversies over this before, ironically enough when the anti-Chomsky people wanted them in the article, and the pro-Chomsky people wanted them out. I think it's reasonable to ask for sources, but perhaps not a good idea to take out these criticisms straight away, given that a substantial number of people have argued strongly for keeping these criticisms in, and it's not seriously in doubt that they have been made. --Cadr 22:00, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

As it stands, these two sections look rather silly in comparison to the other criticisms, but you make good points. Do you think the weekend should be long enough to come up with some reasonable sources? I'm all for keeping these criticisms in if they are commonly made and properly sourced. --Jayjg ^(talk) 22:21, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Sorry about that, I didn't realize that deleting these two criticisms (anti-Americanism, personality cult) would be controversial. In particular, I didn't realize there'd been past battles about whether they should be there or not. I was trying to follow the general rule of not including arguments unless they're backed up.

With respect to supporting material, both charges are made by David Horowitz, e.g. attacking Chomsky as an "ayatollah of anti-American hate": the anti-Americanism is obvious, the "ayatollah" label is intended to indicate the quasi-religious nature of his following.

Paul Krugman describes Chomsky as epitomizing "the left-wing view that all bad things are the result of Western intervention". [50]

Michael Walzer's post-9/11 essay, "Can There Be a Decent Left?" [51] contains some sharp criticisms. Walzer doesn't name Chomsky specifically, but his reference to "barely concealed glee" (to paraphrase Chomsky's initial response, at last the guns are turned the other way) seems pretty clear.

The radical failure of the left's response to the events of last fall raises a disturbing question: can there be a decent left in a superpower? Or more accurately, in the only superpower? Maybe the guilt produced by living in such a country and enjoying its privileges makes it impossible to sustain a decent (intelligent, responsible, morally nuanced) politics. Maybe festering resentment, ingrown anger, and self-hate are the inevitable result of the long years spent in fruitless opposition to the global reach of American power. Certainly, all those emotions were plain to see in the left's reaction to September 11, in the failure to register the horror of the attack or to acknowledge the human pain it caused, in the schadenfreude of so many of the first responses, the barely concealed glee that the imperial state had finally gotten what it deserved. Many people on the left recovered their moral balance in the weeks that followed; there is at least the beginning of what should be a long process of self-examination. But many more have still not brought themselves to think about what really happened. ...

Powerlessness and alienation: leftists have no power in the United States, and most of us don't expect to exercise power, ever. Many left intellectuals live in America like internal aliens, refusing to identify with their fellow citizens, regarding any hint of patriotic feeling as a surrender to jingoism. That's why they had such difficulty responding emotionally to the attacks of September 11 or joining in the expressions of solidarity that followed. Equally important, that's why their participation in the policy debate after the attacks was so odd; their proposals (turn to the UN, collect evidence against bin Laden, and so on) seem to have been developed with no concern for effectiveness and no sense of urgency.

--Russil Wvong 22:38, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The first reference seems good, the second, well, I'd be more comfortable if it explicitly named Chomsky. --Jayjg ^(talk) 23:24, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Yes, you're right. I thought Walzer had made it clear elsewhere that he was referring to Chomsky, but I looked it up, and in fact he hadn't. Adam Shatz [52]:

In "Can There Be a Decent Left?", an essay in the spring "Dissent", Michael Walzer--who lent his signature to "What We're Fighting For," a prowar manifesto sponsored by the center-right Institute for American Values--accused the antiwar left of expressing "barely concealed glee that the imperial state had finally gotten what it deserved." (When I asked him to say whom he had in mind, he said: "I'm not going to do that. Virtually everyone who read it knew exactly what I was talking about.")

I still think Walzer was probably referring to Chomsky, but it shouldn't go into Wikipedia based on my personal speculation; nobody's even speculated in print that this was who Walzer was referring to. --Russil Wvong 00:28, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Because of course the truth is politically irrelevant... --Cadr 21:35, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, not sure I'm getting your point. Could you elaborate? --Jayjg ^(talk) 21:40, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

You implied that any criticism of someone for distorting the truth is of neccesity nonpolitical. I would argue that most political debates arise when the opposing parties have different conceptions of the truth. In fact, this is probably true of debates in general. So I don't follow your argument for why the criticisms are not political. If you mean that they are not politically biased, then this would make much more sense, although I think it would be naive to believe such a thing. --Cadr 21:55, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The issue here is that Chamaeleon claimed that Windschuttle's criticisms were a "political attack", and that therefore Windschuttle's own politics were relevant. I think Chamaeleon should explain what he means by a "political attack", since it is central to his defence for keeping in the political label. --Jayjg ^(talk) 22:21, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The issue of John Doe is right wing, or Jane Doe is right wing is one I have been attempting to deal with when I run across it. The problem with labels like these is that they are almost always used in the pejorative, as is the case in this article, and are a not too subtle way of injecting POV into an article.

Hows this for an idea, we say nothing about the political leanings of a source if a wiki article on that source is present and allow the reader to further investigate said source and make up their own mind (what a novel idea!). If no information on the source exists in Wiki, then perhaps we can use a less loaded adjective to describe them. TDC 23:20, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)

Reply to Chamaeleon:

Thank you. (I try pretty hard not to misrepresent Chomsky's views, and to refrain from ad hominem attacks, precisely because those things are what irritate me most about Chomsky's writings.) But there's plenty of critics of Chomsky who aren't as extreme as Horowitz. (See the draft text on "anti-Americanism" below for some examples.) With respect to Cambodia, Bruce Sharp has written up the most detailed discussion of Chomsky's writings on the Khmer Rouge, and he doesn't criticize Chomsky for "anti-Americanism" at all. [53]

Does this indicate that Chomsky supported the Khmer Rouge? It is perhaps also worth noting Chomsky's forward to "Cambodia in the Southeast Asia War" by Malcolm Caldwell and Lek Tan, written in 1972, in which Chomsky predicted that a communist victory in Cambodia would lead to "a new era of economic development and social justice." (Brief footnote: Caldwell was later murdered by the Khmer Rouge.)

Those are, certainly, supportive statements. But Chomsky's "support" for the Khmer Rouge was not rooted in indifference to brutality. It was, I think, rooted in naivete, gullibility, and poor scholarship. Having reread Chomsky's comments on Cambodia, having heard him speak, and having seen the documentary about the good professor, I have no doubt that he is a man of honor and great integrity.

However, he knows nothing about Cambodia.

No... that isn't true. The truth is much worse. He knows just enough about Cambodia to sound knowledgable to all of the people who really don't know anything about Cambodia. (Quick example, from the documentary: Chomsky refers to the US bombing as ending in 1975. It ended in August 1973, over a year and a half before the Khmer Rouge came to power.)

How could Chomsky have so seriously misjudged the nature of the Khmer Rouge? One reason is what I would refer to as the "The Curse of the Generalist." Chomsky writes about events all over the world. Can one person really understand all of the intricacies of the politics and history of any one country? Probably. But can one person understand the intricacies of ten countries? fifty? two hundred? No. There are conflicting accounts of the history of any country and any event. How can a person who does not have specialized knowledge of a given country evaluate which of those accounts is accurate? In Chomsky's case, he does not evaluate all sources and then determine which stand up to logical inquiry. Rather, he examines a handful of accounts until he finds one which matches his predetermined idea of what the truth must be. He does not derive his theories from the evidence. Instead, he selectively gathers "evidence" which supports his theories and ignores the rest. Furthermore, he does not subject sources he regards sympatheticly to the same rigorous critical scrutiny that he applies to conflicting accounts. The book by Hildebrand and Porter provides a perfect case in point.

--Russil Wvong 17:26, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I think this should be included. --Jayjg ^(talk) 17:57, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it's not a published source, it's a posting to a newsgroup. --Russil Wvong 18:15, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Anti-Americanism

Draft text for revised section on Chomsky's supposed anti-Americanism:

Anti-Americanism

In recent years, Chomsky has often been dismissed as anti-American, accused of being reflexively hostile to the United States, exaggerating its crimes and its iniquity, while defending its official enemies against criticism.

Paul Krugman, in a 1999 exchange with Kathleen Sullivan, describes Chomsky as epitomizing "the left-wing view that all bad things are the result of Western intervention" [54].

Adrian Hastings, reviewing The New Military Humanism: Lessons from Kosovo in 2001, writes, "Chomsky just has not entered deeply into what he is talking about and he is not greatly interested in anything except digging out material for anti-American invective."

After the September 11 attacks, when Chomsky's immediate response—while describing the attacks as "major atrocities"—was to talk about Clinton's bombing of al-Shifa, the foolishness of missile defense, and Israel's using American arms against the Palestinians. [55], even liberals and fellow leftists attacked him for his lack of sympathy for fellow Americans who died in the attacks.

In an op-ed published in the Guardian in September 2001, Todd Gitlin referred to "[s]neering critics like Noam Chomsky, who condemn the executioners of thousands only in passing". [56]

In a September 2002 article in The Nation discussing the American left's reaction to the September 11 attacks [57], Adam Shatz described Chomsky's reaction:

The MIT linguist and prolific essayist Noam Chomsky has emerged as a favorite target of those keen on exposing the left's anti-Americanism. Although Chomsky denounced the attacks, emphasizing that "nothing can justify such crimes," he seemed irritable in the interviews he gave just after September 11, as if he couldn't quite connect to the emotional reality of American suffering. He wasted little time on the attacks themselves before launching into a wooden recitation of atrocities carried out by the American government and its allies. ...

Much of what Chomsky said—his argument that the United States should treat the attacks as a crime, rather than an act of war, and that it should apprehend the terrorists and bring them before an international court rather than declare war on Afghanistan—was echoed by more centrist thinkers, including the British military historian Michael Howard in Foreign Affairs and Stanley Hoffmann in The New York Review of Books. The problem was not so much Chomsky's opposition to US retaliation as the weirdly dispassionate tone of his reaction to the carnage at Ground Zero, but, as Todd Gitlin points out, "in an interview undertaken just after September 11, the tone was the position."

"There's a humbling insight into the US pretension of occupying the moral high ground in Chomsky's work," international legal scholar and Nation editorial board member Richard Falk reflects. "Part of what he's saying is true. Objectively viewed, the United States isn't the victim but in many contexts, including its response to terrorism, the perpetrator." But, adds Falk, he's "so preoccupied with the evils of US imperialism that it completely occupies all the political and moral space, and therefore it's not possible for him to acknowledge that even without intending to do so, some US military interventions may actually have a beneficial effect."

Samantha Power, in a sympathetic review of Hegemony or Survival [58] (New York Times Book Review, January 2004), writes:

For Chomsky, the world is divided into oppressor and oppressed. America, the prime oppressor, can do no right, while the sins of those categorized as oppressed receive scant mention. Because he deems American foreign policy inherently violent and expansionist, he is unconcerned with the motives behind particular policies, or the ethics of particular individuals in government. And since he considers the United States the leading terrorist state, little distinguishes American air strikes in Serbia undertaken at night with high-precision weaponry from World Trade Center attacks timed to maximize the number of office workers who have just sat down with their morning coffee.

In response to charges that he is anti-American, Chomsky has argued that the concept of "anti-Americanism" is a symptom of totalitarian thinking [59]. He sees himself as criticizing the American state and its foreign policy, not American society or American citizens.

The concept "anti-American" is an interesting one. The counterpart is used only in totalitarian states or military dictatorships, something I wrote about many years ago (see my book Letters from Lexington). Thus, in the old Soviet Union, dissidents were condemned as "anti-Soviet." That's a natural usage among people with deeply rooted totalitarian instincts, which identify state policy with the society, the people, the culture. In contrast, people with even the slightest concept of democracy treat such notions with ridicule and contempt. Suppose someone in Italy who criticizes Italian state policy were condemned as "anti-Italian." It would be regarded as too ridiculous even to merit laughter.

--Russil Wvong 01:34, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Great draft text; outlines both the claims of anti-Americanism and the attack by Chomsky, and all well sourced.

Thanks, Jayjg. --Russil Wvong 18:15, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

BTW I described Chomsky's statements as a "attack" rather than a "response" or "defence", since he does not actually respond to the specific charges, nor does he defend his statements, but simply attacks those who criticize him. I've noted this to be the case in most areas so far. --Jayjg ^(talk) 17:57, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Putting the counter-attack aside ("totalitarian instincts", lack of "the slightest concept of democracy"), I don't think it's such an unreasonable argument to claim to be opposed to the American state, not the American people. But I think there is still something wrong with being reflexively opposed to a state (e.g., not being careful about getting the facts straight, using double standards, being filled with self-righteousness). Plus, of course, people do tend to identify, at least to some degree, with the state which they are citizens of; we call it patriotism. Without patriotism, nobody (Americans, North Vietnamese, anybody) would be willing to die for their country. And so attacks on one's state do tend to cause anger. --Russil Wvong 18:15, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Exactly, we are not here to parrot propaganda. —Christiaan 12:40, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Actually, I think Chomsky's counter-attack is ridiculous (although of course the article shouldn't say this or imply it). Orwell discusses the phenomenon of "negative nationalism" in his 1945 essay "Notes on Nationalism", including "anglophobia", exactly the same phenomenon as applied to Britain instead of the United States. "Totalitarian instincts" have nothing to do with it. [60]

ANGLOPHOBIA. Within the intelligentsia, a derisive and mildly hostile attitude towards Britain is more or less compulsory, but it is an unfaked emotion in many cases. During the war it was manifested in the defeatism of the intelligentsia, which persisted long after it had become clear that the Axis powers could not win. Many people were undisguisedly pleased when Singapore fell or when the British were driven out of Greece, and there was a remarkable unwillingness to believe in good news, e.g. el Alamein, or the number of German planes shot down in the Battle of Britain. English left-wing intellectuals did not, of course, actually want the Germans or Japanese to win the war, but many of them could not help getting a certain kick out of seeing their own country humiliated, and wanted to feel that the final victory would be due to Russia, or perhaps America, and not to Britain. In foreign politics many intellectuals follow the principle that any faction backed by Britain must be in the wrong. As a result, "enlightened" opinion is quite largely a mirror-image of Conservative policy. Anglophobia is always liable to reversal, hence that fairly common spectacle, the pacifist of one war who is a bellicist in the next.

The entire essay is well worth reading. Russil Wvong 18:15, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

It's a matter of attribution of this POV. Wikipedia should not say:

• Chomsky is anti-American - but rather
• Chomsky's critics have labeled him anti-American

... and that they accuse him of being reflexively hostile to the United States, exaggerating its crimes and its iniquity, while defending its official enemies against criticism. ---- Uncle Ed (talk) 16:46, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

That was my intent, but I'll clarify the text: "In recent years, Chomsky has often been accused of being anti-American: reflexively hostile to the United States, exaggerating its crimes and its iniquity, while defending its official enemies against criticism." Russil Wvong 18:15, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Section breakdown

Any objections if I move the criticism of Chomsky's political views one level up? Instead of being a subsection of "Political views" (6.6), it would be a separate section, renamed "Criticism of political views" (7). Russil Wvong 20:11, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Criticism: personality cult

Chamaeleon mentioned that a Google search on "chomskyite" turns up thousands of hits. I haven't been able to find much that refers back to a print source, though (as opposed to Internet debates).

Here's a draft:

Personality cult

Chomsky's followers are sometimes described as members of a cult.

K. L. Billingsley's 1996 Heterodoxy article "Noam Chomsky, Punk Hero" describes how Chomsky became increasingly marginalized in the 1980s, and developed a cult following at the same time [61]:

... For some of his former leftist comrades, Chomsky was simply an eccentric, a sort of Doctor Dementia of the far left afflicted by a radical logorrhea which seemed embarrassingly passe. But there was also at the same time, the growth of a legend which made of Chomsky a cult hero—"America's leading dissident intellectual," in the words of Manufacturing Consent, an acclaimed two-hour documentary film about his work which was shown widely on college campuses and broadcast recently on PBS, which offered a tape of the show and a copy of The Chomsky Reader as bonus gifts for donors.

Indeed, to his small cult of followers, Chomsky was heroic because he alone had kept up the attack when the rest of the left had lapsed into embarrassed silence. ...

In a 1995 article in REVelation, Alex Burns describes the film Manufacturing Consent as a "double edged sword—it brought Chomsky's work to a wider audience and made it accessible, yet it has also been used by younger activists to idolise him, creating a 'cult of personality.' [62]:

Since September 2001, David Horowitz has frequently asserted that Chomsky is the leader of a secular cult, "the ayatollah of anti-American hate." Horowitz quotes David Barsamian: "Although decidedly secular, he is for many of us our rabbi, our preacher, our rinpoche, our pundit, our imam, our sensei." [63]:

A 2003 article and interview by Liesbeth Koenen includes the following comment (translated from Dutch by Kevin Cook) [64]:

The anarchist in him must find it hard that so many people consider him a guru, idolize him, want him to tell them what to do. Chomsky does indeed dislike the very notion of a personality cult.

Any comments or additions? Is this sufficiently NPOV?

"Chomsky's followers" doesn't seem totally neutral, but I can't think of a more neutral phrase. "Fans" seems about the same. "Readers" would include people who have read him, but who disagree strongly (e.g. me). "People who agree with Chomsky's world view" would include people who hold the same views without ever having encountered Chomsky. Russil Wvong 23:13, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Admirers? Supporters? RadicalSubversiv E 23:34, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Hmm. Good suggestions, but I don't think they capture the connotation of "people who regard/rely on Chomsky as an authority."

The main thing I'm trying to avoid is a negative connotation, of people who aren't thinking for themselves. Maybe "followers" is okay. Russil Wvong 01:28, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

"Supporters". Chamaeleon 01:42, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

sycophants ......... sorry, just joking TDC 03:16, Feb 12, 2005 (UTC)

Okay, let's go with "supporters." Russil Wvong 06:34, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Well done Russil. You have done excellent work building on my stub section. Chamaeleon 23:27, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, Chamaeleon. Next I'd like to make some changes to the Cambodia section. Again, I'll post a draft here for feedback before making any changes to the article itself. Russil Wvong 01:38, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Russil: I agree that this section is much-improved. Perhaps we could even move it out of the criticism section? It's not really a criticism, is it? DanKeshet 02:28, Feb 15, 2005 (UTC)

When it is said, it is meant as a criticism, even though it doesn't make sense. But then, the anti-Semitism stuff doesn't make sense and we keep it. Chamaeleon 04:43, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Hmm. I agree that it's not really a criticism of Chomsky himself.

I was thinking it might be useful to set up a new section discussing Chomsky's influence as a political activist, before the political criticism section. This subsection could be moved there.

* leading opponent of the Vietnam War

* increasing marginalization in the mainstream media, controversies over Cambodia and Faurisson, 9/11

* cult following, Manufacturing Consent movie

* standing-room-only attendance at talks all over the world, bestselling books

* positive quotes from Bono etc., radical historians such as Buzzanco, intro to Naomi Klein's latest book

Russil Wvong 16:33, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I like that idea alot. DanKeshet 22:36, Feb 15, 2005 (UTC)

I do too. Jayjg ^(talk) 23:02, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Okay, I'll see if I can put together a draft. It'll take me a while, though. Russil Wvong 20:24, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Chomsky on NATO's involvement in Yugoslavia

I am surprised not to see anything on Chomsky’s views and the criticisms of these view regarding NATO's involvement in the former Yugoslavia. I was quite taken a back when reading over at ZMag's Blog that Chomsky believed that Milosevic had no knowledge of what was going to happen in Srebrenica. Thoughts opinions on the subject?

Find a link and we can talk about the best way to incorporate it. RadicalSubversiv E 20:55, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Oops, there was a link missing under "Anti-Americanism", to Adrian Hastings' review of Chomsky's The New Military Humanism: Lessons from Kosovo. I've added it.

There's a couple critical articles regarding Chomsky's views on Yugoslavia under the External links section. Russil Wvong 21:15, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[SIGH]. Once again, it's helpful to read what Chomsky actually wrote at the time, rather than some brief description provided by somebody else, or an off-hand comment made in a one-paragraph post, which can be easily misunderstood. His views are accurately described in the following article:

http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199903--.htm

"There has been a humanitarian catastrophe in Kosovo in the past year, overwhelmingly attributable to Yugoslav military forces. The main victims have been ethnic Albanian Kosovars, some 90% of the population of this Yugoslav territory. The standard estimate is 2000 deaths and hundreds of thousands of refugees."

Linguistics criticism

I've removed the following paragraph:

A far more general objection to the various incarnations of Chomsky's theories is that they do not follow the scientific method, that is, that they cannot be falsified. For example, Chomskian grammars incorporate deep structure, transformations (see transformational grammar), and empty categories, but there is no empirical evidence for these elements of the theory, and no way to test them. In fact, it is questionable how these elements can possibly be learned by children acquiring a language, since these structures never come to the surface (i.e., are unspoken).

It's obviously POV, and rather silly. It's not true that deep structures, empty categories, etc. cannot be falsified. Theories incorporating these notions make predictions which can be tested. I've only seen the non-falsifiability argument applied to certain parameters (e.g. the null-subject parameter) which are argued to cover the only two logical possibilities, and hence be unfalsifiable (this argument doesn't work in my view, but it's at least somewhat credible). As for the question of learning, the whole point of Chomskyan linguistics is of course that children don't learn about deep structure or transformations or empty categories, because they have an innate knowledge of them. Finally, none of these ridiculous criticisms are sourced. Cadr 21:08, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Silly? Ridiculous? People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. What's the evidence for any of these? It's all circular: Transformation A exists because it is necessary to change deep structure B into surface structure C. Deep structure B exists because if you take surface structure C and undo transformation A, you find deep structure B. The only thing with any evidence whatsoever is the surface structure--the rest is smoke and mirrors.

Of course it's circular. No scientific theory can offer an independent justification for every individual claim it makes. The question is whether the all the claims made by the theory, taken as a whole, offer a compact and satisfying explanation of an interesting range of phenomena. Many theories in the transformational mould make predictions which are, to some extent, true, and this suggests that the various component parts of the theory may also be on the right track. To ask for evidence for Deep Structure which isn't dependent on other constructs in the theory is like asking for evidence to support F=ma which is independent of the definition of mass and acceleration. DS, transformations and SS come together as a package, and they're all mutually dependent. This is a good thing — if the components of your theory don't interact, you don't really have a theory at all, just a summary of some data.

Circular reasoning is generally considered to be scientifically invalid.

The problem is that transformations, etc., are as "real" as Freudian entities like the ego. They both have as much scientific validity as elves, psychic powers, and the Tooth Fairy. What's the evidence for Chomsky's fantasies? Let's look at a couple of supposed examples:

• I like sports. :: What sports do you like?
• The dog bit John. :: John was bitten by the dog.

I don't see--or hear--any movement or transformations here. What I see/hear are different word orders for different kinds of sentences. Are they related to each other? Yes, of course. Is it necessary to relate them via transformations? Absolutely not.

It isn't actually circular as in a circular argument, though. By factoring out the grammar into deep structures and transformations, you can make the grammar smaller and express the the relationships between sentences like the two examples you give. The justification for a particular transformation is not independent of the justification for a particular deep-structure, but there's no circular argument involved, just mutual dependence between the various mechanisms in the theory. As I said, you want the different bits of your theory to be mutually dependent. That's good. Think about it: transformations are just a component of a particular grammatical formalism. No grammatical formalism, so far as I can see, can be unfalsifiable or circular if it generates a well-defined set of sentences. If it does that, then you can test it. End of story.

I don't understand your point about "necessity". Of course it's not necessary to use transformations. You could use a lexical rule (LFG) or a metarule (GPSG), or any number of other mechanisms, but you have to use something. There's nothing particularly dubious about transformational rules as opposed to any other kind of rule, at least not a priori.

All theories of syntax have to postulate abstract entities which are underdetermined by the available evidence. Those which don't have deep structure (which includes modern theories in the Chomskyan tradition) just postulate some other kind of equally abstract (if not more abstract) underlying structure, such as the feature structures in HPSG and LFG.

Wrong. Some theories are monostratal, WYSIWYG theories. Yes, they have abstract entities like nouns, inflections, and the like, but it is possible to have a robust, explanatorily-adequate theory of syntax without the Chomksyan mumbo-jumbo. Our old friend the Earl of Occam suggests that theoretical entities must not be unnecessarily multiplied. Chomsky seems to enjoy creating them willy-nilly.

Monostratal is a misleading term. HPSG is monostratal, for example, but it's at least as abstract as (modern) transformational grammar -- it's just non-derivational, so you get all the different levels squished together in one uberlevel. I just disagree with you here. I think pretty much every other formal generative theory of syntax uses more or less the same number of abstract entitities as GB/Minimalism. Are you thinking of something like Word Grammar? Perhaps that's a little less abstract, although I only have a cursorary knowledge of it.

If we take your argument to its logical conclusion, science could not be done at all. The only thing which is supported directly by the evidence is the data itself. A theory is almost by definition something which is not trivially derivable from observable pheonomena, hence "not supported by the evidence", in a naive sense. Cadr 15:27, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

If you set me up as a straw man, yes, you're right. Of course a theory is an attempt to account for the data observed, but the entities posited should be testable and falsifiable. The phoneme is an excellent example of just such an entity. Abstract, testable, falsifiable--but shown to exist. Transformations and the like are just like the id, ego, and superego--they're there "because I (an expert) said so."

Well, no. You've asserted that without any argument, and it's not correct. It's also not true that each entity postulated has to be falsifiable. It's only the theory that needs to be falsifiable, not it's components individually. As I just said, any formal grammar is almost by definition falsifiable -- if it enumerates sentences, you can see if it under or over generates.

You're right that Chomskyian theory assumes children are born knowing these things, but that just begs the question. Is there any evidence from biology, evolutionary science, or neurophysiology for this innate knowledege? Nope. But the you're right that the critique should be improved--but deleting it doesn't seem to be the solution.

There's lots of evidence for innate knowledge of language (to at least some extent). Go read something. You may disagree with the evidence, but it's pretty ludicrous to suggest that there isn't any evidence at all for innate linguistic capacity without a bit more explanation.

I admit that I failed to express myself clearly. I did not mean to suggest that children don't have some sort of innate linguistic capacity. In fact, all the linguists I know agree that children have some sort of innate knowledge regarding language. The issue is how much they know. Because Chomskyan theory is excessively complex, a huge burden is placed on innate knowledge. Where did this knowledge come from? Chomskyans are notoriously vague on that issue. The magical Language Acquisition Device has little support from biology or psychology. However, if you posit a simpler theory, the child has to bring less to the table. As for your suggestion that I go read something, I have a Ph.D. in linguistics, and have done original research in acquisition. I'm trying to bring a little balance to what is otherwise a hagiography of Chomsky. Obviously, I'm no fan, and I'm trying my best to be NPOV. If you would helpfully edit, rather than delete, sections that you dislike, working together we can create something better than either of us could create on our own. BTW, there's still plenty of new Chomskyan work on VSO languages like Irish that treat them as as underlyingly SVO. I'll change the page to to include the reference.

Well, there was little in that section worth editing and there's another article where it would be more appropriate. Why not treat Irish as underlyingly SVO? I mean, you can either complicate the base or complicate the transformational component. Neither option is obviously the correct one. I agree that evidence for VPs is slim in most VSO languages, but then again if you can analyse them as having VPs without too much trouble, you may as well do so (see for example David Pesetsky's comments here [65]). If you have in mind some particular analysis of Irish within transformational grammar which you think is really bad, I'm perfectly prepared to believe that someone has done a really bad analysis of Irish in TGG.

The biological/psychological evidence, so far as I can see, doesn't really favour any model of grammar or aquisition very strongly. I mean, psychologists are still debating fundamental issues about the mind (Is it modular? is it a symbolic computer? Is there an abduction problem?...). Psychologists basically don't have a clue how people learn languages. I agree it's not easy to explain how UG could be hardwired into the brain, but is it any easier to explain how children would learn language without UG?

If we're going to get bitchy about qualifications, I'm an 2nd year undergrad linguistics student, so I guess you win on that front. See also my message below (outside all this indentation business). Cadr 20:34, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

I deleted the critique because it misrepresented the theory it was criticising (e.g. by suggesting that children were supposed to be able to "learn" about DS) and I thought any more substantial criticism ought to go on Transformational grammar, which has virtually no critical material at the moment. (I wrote most of it myself, and I think it's NPOV in that it doesn't suggest that the theory is necessarily correct. However, I never got round to adding a criticisms section; I was expecting someone else would...) Cadr 15:27, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Anyway, I'll now try to do something constructive. I don't have any objection to putting a bit of criticism in this article, although I'd rather see it in transformational grammar. Cadr 20:34, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

By the way, I was not the anon who recently reverted the falsifiability paragraph, just in case anyone thinks I was...Cadr 20:40, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Chomsky's influence as a political activist

A draft text for a new section, following "Chomsky's political views." is being worked on and discussed at User:Russil Wvong/Chomsky.

misuse of evidence

We have a section on Chomsky's supposed "misuse of evidence", whatever that means, and very few specific examples of this, we're just given the names of authorities on the opposite end of the political spectrum who claim this, without examples. Someone accusing Chomsky of misusing evidence, and giving no examples, does not deserve one or more paragraphs. Ruy Lopez 03:13, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

"... we're just given the names of authorities on the opposite end of the political spectrum who claim this, without examples."

Isn't this sufficient for Wikipedia? The accusation doesn't need to be convincing to Chomsky fans, it just needs to have been stated in print.

You didn't think the Abielson quote (citing Viet Cong torture, Chinese aggressiveness as examples of evidence that do not appear in Chomsky's article) was an example?

I'm not sure if "misuse of evidence" is the best description. It's intended to indicate that if you look up the evidence which Chomsky presents, you often find that he's engaging in misrepresentation; and also that he omits significant evidence. Maybe "indifference to reality", Orwell's phrase in "Notes on Nationalism"? [66] Orwell's description:

... Much of the propagandist writing of our time amounts to plain forgery. Material facts are suppressed, dates altered, quotations removed from their context and doctored so as to change their meaning. Events which it is felt ought not to have happened are left unmentioned and ultimately denied.

Anyway, can we hash this out here before changing the text? Russil Wvong 04:45, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I didn't say a list of names of people accusing Chomsky without evidence shouldn't appear. I said vague accusations that Chomsky misuses evidence without any evidence do not deserve this much space. It can be said in a sentence - "Raziel Abielson and others claim Chomsky misuses evidence (but didn't cite any specific example of him making a misstatement)." E. B. Murray has some specific examples of what he claims is misuse of evidence, so that remains. As does Huntington's. People citing no evidence do not deserve as much room as those who do.

Again, I don't see why you don't think that Abielson has provided evidence.

I'll draft a new version of the section (perhaps combining it with the following section). Russil Wvong 20:15, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

As far as the Tibet region, prior to the Communist revolution it was considered a part of China so I'm not sure why Chinese troops in Tibet suddenly become an "invasion" in 1950. This is a ridiculous assertion, I wouldn't even call the Nazis going into Austria an invasion, and this doesn't even reach that level. Ruy Lopez 07:49, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Maybe we can bridge the gap here by calling it "occupation". Nevertheless, I feel compelled to register my disagreement with your version of history.

"Considered a part of China" by whom? China? Tibet? The international community? The talk.politics.tibet FAQ [67] cites a 1960 report by the International Commission of Jurists [68]:

THE STATUS OF TIBET

The view of the COMMITTEE was that Tibet was at the very least a de facto independent State when the Agreement of Peaceful Measures in Tibet was signed in 1951, and the repudiation of this agreement by the Tibetan Government in 1959 was found to be fully justified. In examining the evidence, the COMMITTEE took into account events in Tibet as related in authoritative accounts by officials and scholars familiar at first hand with the recent history of Tibet and official documents which have been published. These show that Tibet demonstrated from 1913 to 1950 the conditions of statehood as generally accepted under international law. In 1950 there was a people and a territory, and a government which functioned in that territory, conducting its own domestic affairs free from any outside authority. From 1913-1950 foreign relations of Tibet were conducted exclusively by the Government of Tibet and countries with whom Tibet had foreign relations are shown by official documents to have treated Tibet in practice as an independent State.

"... I'm not sure why Chinese troops in Tibet suddenly become an 'invasion' in 1950."

Here's the Tibetan version of what happened [69]:

On 7 October 1950, 40,000 Chinese troops under Political Commissar, Wang Qiemi, attacked Eastern Tibet's provincial capital of Chamdo, from eight directions. The small Tibetan force, consisting of 8,000 troops and militia, were defeated. After two days, Chamdo was taken and Kalon (Minister) Ngapo Ngawang Jigme, the Regional Governor, was captured. Over 4,000 Tibetan fighters were killed.

... Faced with the military occupation of Eastern and Northern Tibet, the defeat and destruction of its small army, the advance of tens of thousands of more PLA troops into Central Tibet, and the lack of active support from the international community, the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Government decided to send a delegation to Beijing for negotiations with the new Chinese leadership.

Russil Wvong 20:15, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Chomsky's influence as a political activist - proposed draft

Draft text for a new section that DanKeshet and I have been working on, following "Chomsky's political views." Any comments or criticism before it gets added to the article? For past discussion, see User talk:Russil Wvong/Chomsky. Russil Wvong 06:27, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

=== Opposition to the Vietnam War ===

Chomsky became one of the most prominent opponents of the Vietnam War in February 1967, with the publication of his essay "The Responsibility of Intellectuals" [70] in the New York Review of Books.

Allen J. Matusow, "The Vietnam War, the Liberals, and the Overthrow of LBJ" (1984) [71]:

By 1967 the radicals were obsessed by the war and frustrated by their impotence to affect its course. The government was unmoved by protest, the people were uninformed and apathetic, and American technology was tearing Vietnam apart. What, then, was their responsibility? Noam Chomsky explored this problem in February 1967 in the New York Review, which had become the favorite journal of the radicals. By virtue of their training and leisure, intellectuals had a greater responsibility than ordinary citizens for the actions of the state, Chomsky said. It was their special responsibility “to speak the truth and expose lies.” ... [Chomsky] concluded by quoting an essay written twenty years before by Dwight Macdonald, an essay that implied that in time of crisis exposing lies might not be enough. “Only those who are willing to resist authority themselves when it conflicts too intolerably with their personal moral code,” Macdonald had written, “only they have the right to condemn.” Chomsky’s article was immediately recognized as an important intellectual event. Along with the radical students, radical intellectuals were moving “from protest to resistance.”

A contemporary reaction from Raziel Abielson, Chairman of the Department of Philosophy at New York University [72]:

...Chomsky's morally impassioned and powerfully argued denunciation of American aggression in Vietnam and throughout the world is the most moving political document I have read since the death of Leon Trotsky. It is inspiring to see a brilliant scientist risk his prestige, his access to lucrative government grants, and his reputation for Olympian objectivity by taking a clearcut, no-holds-barred, adversary position on the burning moral-political issue of the day....

Chomsky also participated in resistance activities, which he described in subsequent essays and letters published in the New York Review of Books: withholding half of his income tax [73], taking part in the 1967 march on the Pentagon, and spending a night in jail. [74] In the spring of 1972, Chomsky testified on the origins of the war before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chaired by J. William Fulbright.

===Marginalization in the mainstream media===

After the Vietnam War ended, Chomsky became increasingly marginalized by the mainstream media in the U.S., which tended to either ignore or misunderstand his views.

"Misunderstand" is a poor word choice, suggesting Wikipedia editorial omniscience. The media may have "misrepresented" his views, although that is a point of view. The thrust of this sentence suggests that Chomsky was unfairly treated by the mainstream media. Why not shoot for something a bit more objective? Something like: "Since the end of the Vietnam War, Chomsky has received relatively little attention in the mainstream media of the United States." --Kevin Myers 05:07, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

"The thrust of this sentence suggests that Chomsky was unfairly treated by the mainstream media."

Hmm. Thanks for the feedback. That definitely wasn't my intent -- I'm a Chomsky critic, not a fan. The main thing I wanted to get across is that it was the end of the Vietnam War that resulted in Chomsky's marginalization, _not_ hostile intent on the part of the media. I'll try to recast the sentence. Russil Wvong 06:02, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

New proposal:

Despite Chomsky's prominence during the Vietnam War, after the end of the war Chomsky became increasingly marginalized by the mainstream media in the US. Chomsky's supporters, who regard him as a dissident, often question his marginalization. In particular, there was considerable controversy over Chomsky's 1979 comments on the Khmer Rouge; Milan Rai suggests that the controversy was manufactured as part of a propaganda campaign to discredit Chomsky. Russil Wvong 07:03, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

In 1979, Paul Robinson wrote in the New York Times Book Review, "Judged in terms of the power, range, novelty and influence of his thought, Noam Chomsky is arguably the most important intellectual alive today." However, Robinson goes on to describe Chomsky's political writings as "maddeningly simple-minded."

A 1995 Boston Globe profile by Anthony Flint, "Divided Legacy", described Chomsky's increasing marginalization [75]:

The New York Review of Books was one soapbox for Chomsky--but only until 1972 or so. Chomsky says that's because the magazine's editorial policy abruptly shifted to the right around then. But he couldn't seem to find a home with other publications, either. He went from huddling with newspaper editors and bouncing ideas off them to being virtually banned. The New Republic wouldn't have him, in part because of his unrelenting criticism of Israel. The Nation? Occasionally. But for the most part, mainstream outlets shunned him. Today, his articles on social and political developments are confined to lesser-known journals such as the magazine Z.

More succinctly, Paul Berman wrote in Terror and Liberalism (2003): "In the United States, the principal newspapers and magazines have tended to ignore Chomsky's political writings for many years now, because of his reputation as a crank." [76]

Since Chomsky's 9-11 became a bestseller in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, Chomsky has been getting more coverage from the mainstream American media. For example, the New York Times published an article in May 2002 describing the popularity of 9-11 [77]. In January 2004, the Times published a review of Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival by Samantha Power [78], and in February, the Times published an op-ed by Chomsky himself, criticizing the Israeli West Bank Barrier for taking Palestinian land [79].

=== Worldwide audience ===

Chomsky has a large readership and devoted following worldwide, contrasting sharply with his marginalization in the mainstream US media. He is interviewed at length in alternative media [80] and has a brisk schedule of speaking events worldwide, including major events like the keynote speech at the second World Social Forum. Chomsky's lectures routinely draw standing-room-only crowds. Many of his books are bestsellers, including 9-11. [81]

The 1992 film Manufacturing Consent, shown widely on college campuses and broadcast on PBS, gave Chomsky a younger audience. In a 1995 article in REVelation, Alex Burns described the film as a "double edged sword—it brought Chomsky's work to a wider audience and made it accessible, yet it has also been used by younger activists to idolise him, creating a 'cult of personality.'" [82]

Chomsky's popularity has become a cultural phenomenon. Bono of U2 called Chomsky a "rebel without a pause, the Elvis of academia." Rage Against the Machine takes copies of his books on tour with the band. Pearl Jam ran a small pirate radio on one of their tours, playing Chomsky talks mixed along with their music. R.E.M. asked Chomsky to go on tour with them and open their concerts with a lecture (he declined). Chomsky lectures have been featured on the B-sides of records from Chumbawamba and other groups. [83] Many anti-globalization and anti-war activists regard Chomsky as an inspiration--a dissident [84], like Solzhenitsyn or Sakharov in the Soviet Union. Chomsky's supporters often question his marginalization by the mainstream media in the US [85] [86]. They are also quick to react to perceived criticisms of him: for example, Lawrence McGuire's "Eight Ways to Smear Noam Chomsky" [87] attacked Adam Shatz for his article "The Left and 9-11" [88].

Chomsky is widely read outside the US. 9-11 was published in 26 countries and translated into 23 foreign languages [89]; it was a bestseller in at least five countries, including Canada and Japan [90]. Outside the US, the mainstream media gives Chomsky's views considerable coverage. In the UK, for example, he appears frequently on the BBC. [91]

Horowitz

The criticisms section is disproportionately large; we should trim it down and remove less worthy inclusions. Let's start by getting rid of Horowitz: his incoherent ramblings are hardly worthy of serious attention in an encyclopedia article. Most of these criticisms are fairly widespread, but no one outside one small ultra-conservative sect cares the least for what David Horowitz thinks about anything. --Tothebarricades.tk 20:50, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hmm. I'm not sure. It's important to keep a few incoherent criticism, in order that the occasional right-wing nut who surfs through can see his views expressed and not claim bias. I'm not saying that no trimming of pointless crap should be done though. Chamaeleon 21:59, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Cut it down and condense it if you choose, but a complete erasure of chunk of well sourced information will not be tolerated. Toodles.TDC 22:15, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

Is it just me who finds it nonsensical that discussion of how much Horowitz Chomsky has read is "completely relevant when quote from Chomsky claims he read none at all" ? —Christiaan 23:35, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I beleive it is just you. TDC 00:15, Mar 15, 2005 (UTC)

In case anyone hadn't noticed, this is the situation: Chomsky made a dismissive comment about Horowitz which involved saying he hadn't "read" him — a vague statement that could mean anything between "read a single word" and "read the anti-Chomsky reader". It transpires that Chomsky has at the very least read some words by Horowitz, and TDC wants to present this as clear evidence of Chomsky's scurrilous mendacity, as part of a pathological desire to smear him. There are two points here: 1) even if this can be proven, all it means is that Chomsky once told a lie on a rather unimportant issue, which is rather irrelevant trivia; 2) it cannot be proven, because he didn't actually lie.

In case there is anyone here still too dense to grasp how "read" is vague (and I believe there is simply one person pretending to be dense for political ends), then let me point this out: I myself have definitely not "read" Horowitz. I would be, however, quite capable of producing many Horowitz quotations and even making many educated guesses as to his motivations etc., purely based on what I have read on Wikipedia and a couple of other sites. There is no contradiction.

It has been suggested on Wikipedia that it is good to assume good faith, and this is indeed a good initial assumption. However, I believe that TDC has demonstrated bad faith in a large number of edits on different articles. Feeding trolls is a fruitless activity, and so I think that it may be for me at least to heed the ironically good advice given at the top of TDC's user page and cease discussion with him, treating his edits as vandalism, especially since diverting Wikipedians from serious work appears to be one of the aims. Chamaeleon 02:47, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

See, that’s where you are mistaken. If you argue with me, I will drag you down and beat you, that is why you must debate me, engage me, stimulate me. Excuse me for wanting this article to be more that verbal fellatio, but I think Wiki deserves better than a hero worship article for a man that many people think is psychologically unbalanced and intentional deceptive. So now you are going to treat my edits as vandalism, that’s rather childish of you is it not?

Please don’t make the mistake of challenging me to a battle of wills, I rarely lose (as evident by the current form of this article)

And since you found my prior statement interesting, you should like this one as well:

• Arguing with an engineer is a lot like wrestling a greased pig, after a while you get the feeling that the pig likes it.

Toodles. TDC 19:57, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)

Chamaeleon, TDC, what does this have to do with creating a better article? If you all have complaints about each other as users, go through the dispute resolution forum. If you just want to invite arguments or make comments about other users, take it off of the talk page and onto the system we have in place. DanKeshet 05:23, Mar 19, 2005 (UTC)

We have no such effective system. Chamaeleon 12:26, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I agree that the criticism section is quite long, but I'm not sure it's disproportionately long, considering how controversial Chomsky's political views are. Perhaps it's time to create a separate article? Russil Wvong 00:21, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The total criticism section is just under 8 pages long or roughly 30%, of a 26 page article (26 pages excluding the bibliography) with a considerable portion of the 30% devoted to a response of these criticisms. Although this may seem large, it is in no way out of the norm for other controversial subjects (like Fox News for example which has a criticsm section of rougly 1/3rd the total article).I doubt anyone except for the most ardent sycophant would view this article as anything other than controversial. TDC

No, no. It is against policy to chop off controversial sections. They become POV playgrounds. The criticism section should stay right here, and it doesn't matter if it's a bit long, as long as the fat is occasionally trimmed. Chamaeleon 02:47, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Propaganda Model

I removed the criticism of the propaganda model because it struck me as totally out of place. The entry on Chomsky generates a lot of strange posts / reactions, usually from people who disagree with his ideas.

The entry is simply about Chomsky and Chomsky's ideas. It might be worthwhile to include a brief section detailing some of the common criticisms, but this is not the place to refute a person's life work. Einstein was a socialist and pacifist and wrote significantly about both. Yet it would be ridiculous to post lengthy rebuttals of socialism and pacifism (or Einstein's religious views) on the entry about Einstein's life.

The Hoover Institution is a joke, and their study is hardly worth reading. It's not at all clear that the authors cited in these two lengthy paragraphs are even familiar with the propaganda model. But again, that is basically irrelevant: if the author of these two paragraphs feels it's necessary to include them, he should put them on the page describing the propaganda model, where they belong.

And incidentally, though Chomsky co-authored 'Manufacturing Consent,' it was HERMAN, and not Chomsky, who developed the propaganda model. Joe

"Critics of Chomsky and Herman's mass media analysis, including author and historian Victor Davis Hanson of the Hoover Institution severely disagree with Chomsky and Herman’s theories. They see the idea of "Manufacturing Consent" as nothing more than a recycling of the Marxist idea of "false consciousness" in where the masses have been so manipulated that they have neither the perspective or intellect to see beyond the propaganda and require superior intellects like Chomsky's to point out to them the real truth. Arch Puddington of the Hoover Institution also claims there is virtually no empirical evidence in media coverage, specifically with Chomsky and Herman's analysis of the mass media's treatment of Cambodia and East Timor, to back the claims made in "Manufacturing Consent".

Stephen J Morris, a critic of Chomsky's position on Cambodia, evaluates Herman and Chomsky's propaganda model by reviewing their analysis of media coverage during the rule of the Khmer Rouge. Chomsky and Herman's claim that the "flood of rage and anger directed against the Khmer Rouge" peaking in early 1977, was a concrete example of their "propaganda model" in actions. They argued that the media was selectively singling out Cambodia, an enemy of the United States, while under reporting human rights abuses in American allies like South Korea and Chile. Sharp points to a study performed by Jamie Frederic Metzl (Responses to Human Rights Abuses in Cambodia, 1975–80 ) analyzing major media reporting on Cambodia in which Metzl concludes that media coverage on Cambodia was more intense when there were events with an international angle, but had largely disappeared by 1977. Metzl also argues, countrary to Chomsky and Herman's claims, that of all the articles published regarding Cambodia, less than one in twenty dealt with the political violence beng perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge."

It's funny. The fact that the Hoover Institution feels the need to smear the Propaganda Model is evidence for the Propaganda Model. Given the following list of donors...

• Archer Daniels Midland Foundation
• ARCO Foundation
• Boeing-McDonnell Foundation
• Chrysler Corporation Fund
• Dean Witter Foundation
• Exxon Educational Foundation
• Ford Motor Company Fund
• General Motors Foundation
• J.P. Morgan Charitable Trust
• Merrill Lynch & Company Foundation
• Procter & Gamble Fund
• Rockwell International Corporation Trust

... one would almost be shocked if they didn't. Chamaeleon 11:38, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Absolutely. That was one of the reasons for my dismissive attitude. "Think tanks" exist for the purpose of constructing plausible-sounding intellectual rationales for policies that reflect the interests of their financiers and the CEOs who sit on their board of trustees. That is true in effect, even if nobody involved thinks about it in those terms. A professor at a university is, at least in principle, able to analyze the evidence and then publish the conclusions that s/he feels are the most accurate. But if a "researcher" at Heritage analzyed the evidence and reached the conclusion that, for example, food stamps were an effective way to alleviate poverty, or the US shouldn't have invaded Iraq, Heritage would simply not publish the report, and the "researcher" would be out of a job. Some "think tanks" are better than others, and Hoover is not as bad as many others: but the same principles apply.

It's pretty clear that the author of those two paragraphs has not actually read "Manufacturing Consent." Very little of that book has anything at all to do with the Khmer Rouge. In "Worthy and Unworthy Victims," Herman and Chomsky compare the amount of coverage given to the murder of Jerzy Popieluszko, a Polish priest affiliated with Solidarity, with the amount of coverage given to the murder of roughly 100 Catholic priests, nuns, and bishops in Latin America over the same period of time. The analysis is both quantitative and qualitative, and convincing.

In fact, this kind of analysis is commonplace in the sociological literature, and the conclusions are usually the same. It's easy to do this kind of research: count the number of times the word "deadly" is used in the New York Times to describe the actions of some official enemy (Iraqi insurgents, Serbs, etc.), versus the number of times that same word is used to describe the actions of the American military, or some close ally -- even allies with bad reputations, like Colombia. Obviously the actual research is more in-depth, but that's the overall gist. That is called "content analysis," and has been around at least since the 1920s.

A person must only read reports published by human rights organizations like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, or B'Tselem to realize that there is a huge gulf between what gets reported on a consistent basis, and what's actually happening. Or go to your local university library: most have old collections of Time Magazine and other, similar publications. Flip through them. It's enlightening. You'll find, for example, that coverage of Stalin shifts from being basically negative up until Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, to overwhelmingly positive afterwards. When Stalin was a US ally, the media coverage changed *radically*: suddenly it was awash in glowing reports about "Uncle Joe" and the miracle of Soviet industrialization, etc. This was, of course, after Stalin's worst crimes had already been committed. And then there is another 180 degree shift after the war. Read the reports from the early Cold War: they'll make you laugh out loud. It's difficult to understand why current coverage would be radically different in terms of quality or integrity.

I've done research into Iran under the Shah, and looked into the media coverage as part of that research effort. US documents openly stated as early as 1955 that the Shah "rules through his security forces," and, testifying before Congress in 1977, the head of Amnesty described the Shah as "the worst human rights violator in the world." But the coverage that appeared in places like "Time" were practically devoid of criticism. There was a cover story in 1960 that featured the smiling Shah, decked out in his royal garb, with the headline, "Iran: Struggle for Stability." The actual article featured a picture of the Shah with a group of impoverished children with a caption that reads, "The Shah at an orphanage: A benevolent autocrat faces classic problems."

The idea that media structure influences media content is a virtual truism: there is a reason why the BBC differs from MSNBC, why NPR differs from community radio, and why they both differ from talk radio, and why the NYT differs from Pravda. These differences can be demonstrated empirically, and have been. -Joe

Totally out of place? I find this to be puzzling to say the least. First of all there is a great deal of informational overlapping in Wikipedia and deletionism is usually discouraged. With that said, I also find the reasons for removing the criticisms to be patent flat out bullshit. Your evaluation of the Hoover Institute as nothing more than a propaganda arm of the ruling capitalist elite is your opinion and you are most certainty entitled to it, but to dismiss it out of hand because of your own personal opinion is certainly not in keeping with NPOV.

The fact that there are gulfs between what is and is not reported and what is really going on in the world would not be disputed by many people, including myself. I find myself laughing out loud at the news when anything related to my professional specialty is reported on, but I hardly blame this on any sort of “Propaganda Model”. Mass media caters to the LCD in society, complex issues have to be simplified for the average Joe to understand because he either lacks the background knowledge of the subject, or when presented with a complex background he will say forget this, I have better things to spend my time on.

Content analysis is very much subject to the interpretation of the researcher, as is the case in most every soft science. This is specifically addressed by the Metzl study. Turns out Chomsky was wrong about the coverage of human rights abuses (or as Chomsky said at the time “alleged” and “over hyped” human rights abuses) in Cambodia. There were a few articles and a few op-ed pieces about it in the NY Times and Readers Digest, but no where near the level of thought control that was alleged by Herman and Chomsky.

"Worthy and Unworthy Victims" is just another bullshit attempt by Chomsky and Herman to re-write history and re-defend a position that was as disgustingly undefendable in 1988 as it was a decade prior, and they should not have even gone there. Had Chomsky wanted a more appropriate example, they should have compared the killing of clergy in Latin America to the killing of clergy in Vietnam during the same period of time, although the Jesuits got plenty of coverage in western “alternative” press, the killing imprisonment of Degar clergy got virtually no coverage anywhere. It is a much more appropriate comparison.

The media behaved subserviently during Tet? Is this a joke? Walter Cronkite turns a devastating North Vietnamese loss into a victory and this is considered a subservient press fighting for the interests of the elite? The case would have been more convincing except for the 95% relevant information that was left out. But then again, that was the point, leave out information that casts doubt on the argument, no matter how overwhelming, in order to defend an otherwise indefensible position.

Chomsky and Herman are looking at mass media from such a far out of the mainstream position, that of course everything seems like a collusion of powerful elites. These men, or so they and their lackeys claim, are so insightful and so well reasoned (bordering on clairvoyant dare I say), that any views they have which are not routinely endorsed by media outlets, or dare I say it mocked by media outlets, must be proof of a grandiose conspiracy to crush opposition to the elites. After all, that is the only logical explanation for their ideological isolation, a grand conspiracy to conceal the truth.

Chomsky, out of the Bakunin-Proudhon school, implies that people tend to be robots and are incapable of exercising free will. He seems to feel they are either unable or too lazy to search out answers on their own. His model uses the major networks of TV and radio in addition to the major newspapers to suggest that they are run on the model of a Japanese Keritsu. He never mentions the SEC in its role as a regulator. He doesn't mention FASB. He doesn't seem to take economics into consideration. The whole concept of manufacturing consent implies that there would not be support for the system unless an elaborate system of deception and diversion were present to delude the unknowing sheeple.

The fact that certain views are regularly left out of mainstream conversations is perfectly logical. Most people with half a brain now realize that the leftist dogma of Chomsky and Herman is about as valid as the flat earth theory and about as kind and gentile as a jackal. Chomsky and Herman also fail to explain the mainstream nature of individuals like former Black Panther and Kim Jong Il groupie Robert Scheer. Or Gareth Porter being on the staff of John Kerry, not too terribly relevant, but there is a connection.

As for the charge that journalists and media outlets in general act as pseudo cheerleaders for America and were constantly criticizing the Soviets and their third world bitches, yes, to some extent they were, just as rooting for our side against Nazi Germany was considered responsible journalism by George Orwell. The alternative would have been to betray the notion of objective journalism by failing to describe the world accurately; and the world in 1988 could properly be described only as a division between imperfect but civilized democracies in the west, and grotesque if decrepit totalitarian tyrannies in the east. That Chomsky and Herman don’t realize and acknowledge this says more about their own set of values (or lack thereof) than it does about manufactured consent.

Any casual or neutral observer (if such a thing is possible) can look at the media in the US and see two things, great diversity and a continual challenge to powerful interests. Anyone who decries diversity, I would simply ask to walk into any Barnes and Nobles, (or Borders or any other McBook store) and browse the selection. I would even go so far to say that hard left publications like AdBusters or the Utne reader are over represented (maybe that’s why the “National Review” is always sold out but there are always copies of the “Socialist Reader” in stock), but they must be selling them in order to justify this. Coverage of Iran Contra, Watergate, the constant droning about the scary nuclear war Mr Reagan was going to unleash (ala The Day After), highlight of environmental issues (real or imagined), outsourcing etc most certainly challenge the interests of the “elites” in America, and to say otherwise is to simply ignore the obvious.

The Stalin analogy is quite interesting and I wish I had time to go into it, but just remember, Duranty won a Pulitzer, and he wasn’t alone in his admiration. One of the reasons that coverage of the USSR became so negative post war was two fold: a boatload of evidence implicating widespread war time Soviet subversion in the US unfolded, and the fact that the Soviets began turning their tyranny on the rest of the world instead of just keeping it isolated within their borders.

* The fact that the Hoover Institution feels the need to smear the Propaganda Model is evidence for the Propaganda Model. Given the following list of donors

I didn’t want to go here, but let me pose a question to you, ever think that they “smear the Propaganda Model” because they actually believe it to be horse malrky instead of being part of some grand conspiracy to manufacture consent? Can, according to you, a conservative have an honest belief based on his or her experience with the world combined with an education, or do all our beliefs boil down to some sort of dishonest scheme to rob the proletariat?TDC 22:15, Mar 24, 2005 (UTC)

TDC -- Deletion is generally discouraged, unless it's warranted. You included two *lengthy paragraphs* in an already lengthy article, relying on -- for the most part -- one study published by one think tank, in order to critique a sociological model not even developed by Chomsky. And you did so without even bothering to read Chomsky's work, which is obvious by your reference to the Tet offensive.

Again, I have no interest in debating the last fifty years of US history with you, or discussing the propaganda model, beyond a few brief comments. If you want to e-mail me, fine: pythag3@yahoo.de. But this is not the appropriate forum.

Wikipedia is supposed to be an online ENCYCLOPEDIA, and a collaborative effort. Unfortunately, any poor schmuck who wants a quick summary of Chomsky's life work will have to wade through paragraph after paragraph of Horowitz and Hoover. That's preposterous. This is a page about Chomsky and Chomsky's views, regardless of what you think of them. For that reason alone, criticism should be concise -- no more than two paragraphs. If you want to make a page specifically devoted to criticism of Chomsky, and then link to it, FINE: that's where your paragraphs belong. If your paragraphs had been included in the page discussing the propaganda model, I wouldn't have touched them. But they don't belong here, on this page, for obvious reasons. That was the point I was trying to make, pure and simple.

I don't support capitalism, but I would not go crazy with a critique of capitalism on, say, the page devoted to Ayn Rand. That's because it's an entry in an online encyclopedia about Ayn Rand, not a discussion forum for a debate between her supporters and opponents.

That being said, there are a handful of VERY BRIEF, obvious points I would like to make:

1) Either you haven't read Chomsky's work, or you misunderstand it, or you're purposely distorting it. I suspect the first explanation is the most accurate.

2) If "Joe Schmo" is capable of understanding the significance of, say, human rights abuses in Eastern Europe, he is probably capable of understanding their significance in Latin America.

3) There was a wealth of information about Stalin's crimes readily available, and they were well-known. Recall that the Bolshevik revolution led to the first red scare, initiated by the Wilson administration with the help of the media. Note that, by that point, countless, hard-core, leftist radicals, ranging from Emma Goldman to Bertrand Russell, had already written extensively about Bolshevik crimes. The allies split Europe up among themselves at Potsdam: US/British policies towards Greece and Italy are hardly anything to be proud of; Stalin discouraged the communist-rebellion in Greece because he recognized that it belonged to the Western domain. I picked this specific example because I assumed, quite correctly, that we would both agree that Stalin was a ruthless tyrant: and, for the very brief time that he was a US ally, he was also a media super-star. Other US-friendly tyrants are afforded the same treatment.

4) An individual book is likely to reach about 0.0001% of the population, if the book proves to be popular. For that reason alone, books don't pose much of a "threat," and are pretty irrelevant as far as the propaganda model is concerned.

5) Social sciences, whether sociology, history, pyschology, or economics, do indeed depend heavily on interpretation. The point is totally irrelevant. It is still worthwhile to explore issues like, say, the effects of income inequality and/or gun availability on the homicide rate. And we can actually learn quite a bit in the process. Our conclusions will always depend, to an extent, on our interpretations, or whatever. Who cares? And more specifically, what does that have to do with Chomsky?

6) http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/northwoods.pdf

I have no problem with your critique of the propaganda model. But it doesn't belong here, for the reasons already mentioned. -Joe

"This is a page about Chomsky and Chomsky's views, regardless of what you think of them. For that reason alone, criticism should be concise -- no more than two paragraphs."

Chamaeleon, I'm going to suggest again that the criticism of Chomsky's views be moved to a separate article.

By the way, Joe, Metzl's study was published by St. Martin's Press, not the Hoover Institution. Russil Wvong 01:53, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the correction, Russil: I was simply referring to the information provided in TDC's post. I agree that there needs to be a "Chomsky bashing" page, simply because it's a virtual guarantee that those views will be expressed, and they clearly don't belong here.

I admire Chomsky; that doesn't mean that I'm a member of his ficticious "cult." I have always been willing to engage differing political views. I've read all of the reports published by Project for the New American Century, I read the Weekly Standard, I've read Ann Coulter, etc. In that same spirit, I've looked into many of the accusations made by Chomsky's critics. The task is unusually straight-forward: we're not talking about analyzing government policy, when government policy is often influenced by a number of factors and hidden from the public (e.g., "We can't release the documents concerning Indonesia from the 1960s, or figures on the size of the CIA budget from 1947, because it would cause irreparable harm to our national security.") We're discussing books that are still in print, or can be easily obtained through the local library. And the claims made about Chomsky's work borders on outright slander. I can think of no other example of a modern intellectual whose work has been the subject of so many fraudulent counterclaims. Again, differing interpretations and sharp criticism are perfectly acceptable, and should even be encouraged: but we are talking about outright intellectual dishonesty.

It is overwhelmingly clear from TDC's post that he hasn't read "Manufacturing Consent," and hasn't the faintest idea of what the propaganda model actually says. Adopting TDC's criticism, a person who argues that, for example, the caste system in traditional Hindu perpetuates the existing economic structure and guarantees the subjugation of the poor -- that person should be dismissed with contempt, because the caste system reflects a set of religious beliefs, and none of the participants thinks about it in the terms described above. We would be stupid for pointing out that the principle of the "divine right of kings" legitimized the royal-led feudal system -- because that would suggest that the principle was a simple ideological ploy. Joe

"I didn’t want to go here, but let me pose a question to you, ever think that they “smear the Propaganda Model” because they actually believe it to be horse malrky instead of being part of some grand conspiracy to manufacture consent? Can, according to you, a conservative have an honest belief based on his or her experience with the world combined with an education, or do all our beliefs boil down to some sort of dishonest scheme to rob the proletariat?" — I don't concern myself much with personal motivations, because they are too difficult to prove and and not very enlightening. I prefer to look at cause and effect. If a right-wing think-tank (paid by the rich to pump out policies for the rich) looks at the Propaganda Model (which looks critically at that sort of phenomenon), then I would expect them to attack it by any means necessary, including lying. That's just the way the world works. I don't need to look into their heads or your heads and establish the exact levels of sincerity, or whether they believe their own lies (see Cognitive dissonance). It doesn't really change much.

Joe, I object to an article about Criticism of Noam Chomsky. It is unnecessary, against Wikipedia policy, and would encourage silliness. All Chomsky-bashing should be done here in the article, and only here, where we can moderate it. The criticisms of the Propaganda Model, however, should be moved to Propaganda Model. Chamaeleon 10:23, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Proposal for "Criticism of Chomsky" entry

Camaeleon -- First of all, I respect your posts. You are obviously an intelligent guy. But on this specific point, our views diverge.

The article, as it now exists, is oppressively long. Maybe I'm mistaken on this point, but I suspect most people go to Wikipedia as a brief reference for topics they're not familiar with. If I don't know much about Ezra Pound, I check out the entry on Ezra Pound. If I want a brief overview of Turkmenistan, I check out the post on Turkmeninstan. Etc. That does not mean I want to wade through pages of text disputing and/or debating Pound's political views, or whatever. If I want to explore the issue further, appropriate links and references can be provided.

If Chomsky generates a lot of criticism (he does), then I think there should be a separate entry devoted to that criticism. That DOES NOT mean that all criticism should be excised from the current page: but it can be easily summarized in one or two paragraphs.

For example, "anti-Americanism": "Both liberal and conservative political commentators, including Paul Krugman and Christopher Hitchens, have accused Chomsky of 'anti-Americanism.'" Or whatever. We don't need paragraph after paragraph quoting everyone who has ever accused Chomsky of not being sufficiently "pro-American." That is absurd!!

There are other examples of pages devoted exclusively to criticism. If I recall, the Wal-Mart entry includes a link to an entry devoted exclusively to criticism. That is totally appropriate -- we can assume that not everyone who goes to the "Wal-Mart" entry wants to wade through paragraph after paragraph of criticism. So the criticism can be briefly described, and then anyone who wants to learn more can click the link.

Any page devoted to criticism of Chomsky would be subject to the rules governing the Wikipedia project: it would have to adhere to NPOV and the information would have to be accurate (i.e., be based on an actual source.) Of course it would include a lot of outright distortions, but they would have to be at least somehow connected to reality -- which will be a challenge in itself. For example, they won't be able to accuse Chomsky of Satanic ritual abuse unless they come up with some evidence. Joe

Scrolled up a bit and saw TDC's reference to Fox News. I haven't read the article, but I see no reason why criticism of Fox can't be limited to a single paragraph. Devoting one-third of an article to criticism strikes me as absolutely ridiculous. "Criticism" pages don't have to be "playgrounds for POV." Their focus is to convey a specific POV in a neutral manner, which is perfectly fine. I haven't read the abortion page, but I don't think it should contain paragraph after paragraph of responses and counter-responses. It can briefly summarize the different positions in a few paragraphs, and then link to the entries about the 'pro-life' and 'pro-choice' movements. Joe

The thing about Fox news is that it can't be summed up the way the "Chomsky is anti-American" stuff can be. There are a series of substantiated claims of bias involving Fox. It takes a few paragraphs to go through them. There isn't really that much else to say about Fox, so the criticism ends up being a large proportion of the article. So be it.

The Chomsky article is a little different. There is a huge amount to say about the guy: bio, publications, etc. It is a featured article, after all. If a criticism section starts to dominate the article, it's a sign that anti-Chomskyites have been stuffing it full of semi-relevant quotations. I don't think this combination of wheat and chaff should be shifted out into a separate article for it to expand. Instead, the chaff should be shaken out and discarded. Chamaeleon 18:35, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It happens to be a featured article that frequently changes, precisely because the topic generates so much controversy. I think it's reasonable to create a separate entry devoted to that controversy.

Of course any article on Chomsky is going to be long -- which argues in favor of creating a "criticism" entry, rather than against it. Pythag3

Hmmm... Upon further reading, I've decided that this entire article is a worthless piece of crap. It has gone significantly downhill since it was selected as a featured article. I'll make my argument in a couple of days, when I have more time, and post a link to proposed changes.

What's so bad about it? Chamaeleon 12:25, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Ugh. Wanted to work on this tonight, but I was busy: I'm in the process of moving. This article is bad, partially for the reasons you mention, and partially for the reasons I mentioned before... Pythag3

There is work to be done, but I wouldn't label it "bad". It's a very informative article. Chamaeleon 10:07, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Length/Links

This article is very long, and many things are mentioned multiple times, and not always linked on their first occurance. Should we clean this up or just leave it? Should the link go where its most relevant, or where it first appears or both?

Things should ideally be linked on the first occurrence. I don't see what's wrong with the length as long as we trim any pointless bits. Chamaeleon 10:45, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Socialist? Objection to intro text.

I object to the description "socialist" in the sentence "Outside of his linguistic work, Chomsky is also widely known for his activist socialist political views and his criticism of the foreign policy of the U.S. and allied governments."

I wouldn't describe him as a socialist, he doesn't describe himself as a socialist; I've only seen his detractors describe him as a socialist. Maybe save what his detractors say about him for the criticism section?

I'll probably remove that word if there are no objections, or if anyone has something better to replace it with. "Libertarian-socialist?" But then the next sentence is too awkward. Perhaps "anarchist?" --I know who my sister is. 04:41, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It's hard to quote Chomsky saying "I am a..." because he rarely writes about himself, but about the issues. However, it is easy to find a huge number of articles written by him that say again and again that "anarchism" and "libertarianism" are meaningless if they are not forms of socialism, and that Leninism was always fundamentally anti-socialist and anti-liberty. He is a libertarian socialist (anarchist).  :) — Helpful Dave 09:56, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I also object to removing "socialist". Lets be straightforward in presenting him as a he defines himself in his writings. Symes 00:49, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

FWIW, I also think it's accurate to describe him as a socialist. Cadr 14:58, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I understand how he is socialist in one sense of the term, but based on how Wikipedia defines socialism in the article the word links to, I don't think it fits. I think saying libertarian-socialist instead of socialist would be much better. But, if more people think socialist is better, than so be it, it's not too bad, IMO. --I know who my sister is. 03:29, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

"Socialist" doesn't need "libertarian" attached to it all the time. It already refers to the sort of beliefs Chomsky has; "libertarian" just clarifies it. — Helpful Dave 08:17, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well, if "libertarian" clarifies it, surely it should be included? Cadr 10:03, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The word is used in the article isn't it? It doesn't need to be used systematically every time the word "socialist" comes up. — Helpful Dave 10:26, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Request for references

Hi, I am working to encourage implementation of the goals of the Wikipedia:Verifiability policy. Part of that is to make sure articles cite their sources. This is particularly important for featured articles, since they are a prominent part of Wikipedia. The Fact and Reference Check Project has more information. Thank you, and please leave me a message when you have added a few references to the article. - Taxman 20:00, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)

There are a lot of references in the article. Was there any particular piece of information that you wanted us to find a ref for? — Helpful Dave 07:54, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well I have to admit, when checking 150 articles, I didn't have time to read it to see if there were inline references. The best way is to either have them inline using an autonumbering system like Wikipedia:Footnote3, or just collect all works that have been used as references in a ==References== section as the Wikipedia:Cite sources calls for. Thanks, this will be one of the easier ones to fix. - Taxman 13:37, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)

Also, if many or all of the works listed in the Bibliography section were used as reference for material in the article (I suspect many have), and not just a list of works about Chomsky, they should be put in a references section too. - Taxman 16:14, Apr 24, 2005 (UTC)

bad referencing? lots. For example, in the Mass Media analysis section of which the final 30% is criticism of Chomsky and Herman. That part of the section has two paragraphs with negligible referencing. There are no references for papers by two authors cited as authorities from the Hoover Institute, there is also no reference for a text by Stephen J. Morris, someone named "Sharp" is inexplicably mentioned. The only hint of a reference is an incomplete one that does not meet academic standards, namely the reference to "Responses to Human Rights Abuses in Cambodia." Throughout the article the standard of referencing is pretty much abysmal. BernardL

"almost always Democrats"

In the article text, it says that Chomsky has endorsed political candidates "almost always Democrats". I would like a reference for that. When his "endorsement" of candidates was last called to question on the talk page, I gave the only example I know of where Chomsky endorsed a candidate, Paul Lachelier, a Green Party candidate for Massachusetts state representative. In order for the article text to be accurate, Chomsky must have endorsed a slew of Democrats. Could I have references? (And no, Kerry doesn't count; Chomsky might have suggested voting for him, but that doesn't mean he "endorsed" him--as in, allowed his name to be used on campaign literature.) DanKeshet 20:00, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

I'd say it is clear that Chomsky never rarely "endorses" any candidate for office, unless declaring that voting for someone might be the lesser of two evils is "endorsement" these days. I've heard Chomsky make on more than one occasion comments to the effect that people should vote for their local Democrat if it helps to keep the Republicans out. In areas where not voting Democrat wouldn't bring on the risk of the Republicans getting in, he is fine with people voting for smaller, more radical parties such as the Greens.

"Voting for Nader in a safe state is fine. That's what I'll do. I don't see how anyone could read what I wrote and think otherwise, just from the elementary logic of it. Voting for Nader in a safe state is not a vote for Bush. The point I made had to do with (effectively) voting for Bush."[92]

— Helpful Dave 20:24, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Chomksy did endorse Paul Lachelier. Check out the website on the wayback machine: [93] DanKeshet 20:40, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

Didn't know that. Can we get a list of candidates endorsed? — Helpful Dave 21:07, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

On Skinner

Contrary to what the article says, Skinner did not believe that there were no mental states, just that they weren't fit for scientific study. Also, he did not believe that the mind was a blank slate. His theory of operant conditioning draws explicitly from Darwin's theory of evolution. --Heida Maria 11:04, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

Critical links?

Are all of these really necessary? I'm sure most of them are saying the same things. Could someone keep the best ones, or the ones by the best known personalities? --Tothebarricades.tk 22:03, May 28, 2005 (UTC)

Summarising

The MIT linguist and prolific essayist Noam Chomsky has emerged as a favorite target of those keen on exposing the left's anti-Americanism. Although Chomsky denounced the attacks, emphasizing that "nothing can justify such crimes," he seemed irritable in the interviews he gave just after September 11, as if he couldn't quite connect to the emotional reality of American suffering. He wasted little time on the attacks themselves before launching into a wooden recitation of atrocities carried out by the American government and its allies. ...

Much of what Chomsky said—his argument that the United States should treat the attacks as a crime, rather than an act of war, and that it should apprehend the terrorists and bring them before an international court rather than declare war on Afghanistan—was echoed by more centrist thinkers, including the British military historian Michael Howard in Foreign Affairs and Stanley Hoffmann in The New York Review of Books. The problem was not so much Chomsky's opposition to US retaliation as the weirdly dispassionate tone of his reaction to the carnage at Ground Zero, but, as Todd Gitlin points out, "in an interview undertaken just after September 11, the tone was the position." Which prompted Lawrence McGuire, writing in defence of Chomsky in Counterpunch to ask: "since when,in any serious assessment of a person's political position, do you judge a person according to how you perceive their tone rather than by the words they speak?" [94]

"There's a humbling insight into the US pretension of occupying the moral high ground in Chomsky's work," international legal scholar and Nation editorial board member Richard Falk reflects. "Part of what he's saying is true. Objectively viewed, the United States isn't the victim but in many contexts, including its response to terrorism, the perpetrator." But, adds Falk, he's "so preoccupied with the evils of US imperialism that it completely occupies all the political and moral space, and therefore it's not possible for him to acknowledge that even without intending to do so, some US military interventions may actually have a beneficial effect."

This is a rather large chunk of op ed that has been included in the article. We are not a rant repository. I say this needs to be replaced with a summary and a short quotation. — Chameleon 11:56, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

Hold on, the second paragraph is not a quotation, is it? Why is it indented to make it look like one? What a confused mess. I'll see if I can sort it out. — Chameleon 12:00, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

Actually the second paragraph was part of the Shatz quote. It looks like someone didn't realize this, and added the McGuire quote to it. Russil Wvong 19:28, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Oh dear! OK, was everything before the McGuire quotation part of the Shatz quotation? — Chameleon 19:37, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Yes, that's right. Russil Wvong 21:50, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Actually, it doesn't matter. That paragraph was neutrally-worded enough to be inserted directly into the flow of the article without marking it as anyone's quotation.

Er, I don't think we can do that!! If a Wikipedia article includes text that's a direct quote from someone, it has to be attributed.

I've edited the section to shorten the quotes. Russil Wvong 21:50, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The bit that was more subjective has now been paraphrased and attributed. — Chameleon 19:45, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. In fact, most of the article is a confused mess. Here is one example of many from the section on Hitchens and Horowitz criticsm:

"Following the September 11 attacks, Christopher Hitchens and Noam Chomsky debated the nature of the threat of radical Islam (what Hitchens termed "Islamic Fascism") and of the proper response to it. On September 24 and October 8, 2001, Hitchens criticized Chomsky in The Nation, leading to a series of rebuttals and counter-rebuttals. Approximately a year after the September 11 attacks and his exchanges with Chomsky, Hitchens left The Nation, in part, he said, because he believed its editors, its readers, and people such as Chomsky considered John Ashcroft to be a bigger threat than Osama bin Laden [58]."

There's little in the way of substance here. To describe it as a "debate" is wrong, and it really was not concerned with the "nature of the threat of radical Islam." Chomsky's reluctant participation in the form of two responses were for the most part limited to a defence of his comparison of Sudan. It was an interesting exchange, probably worth mentioning and providing the relevant links for. But the second sentence about Hitchen's departure from The Nation does not belong in an article about Chomsky, it belongs in Hitchen's biography.User: BernardL 30 May (UTC)

I'm sure Chomsky is proud of himself, being able to free himself of the shackles of "self-brainwashing" and "institutional indoctrination" unlike the rest of corporate-dupe America. Or, he could just be another holier-than-thou intellectual snob (yeah, that's probably it -- you're either on the far Left or you're a tool of the elite) J. Parker Stone 05:26, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Please don't troll. — Chameleon 08:05, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Last Part of Atrribution Without Motives: reference?

"It was largely due to his perception of this tendency in Chomsky that Paul Robinson declared that Chomsky presents a "maddeningly simple-minded" view of the world."

Since there is no traceable reference to the Robinson sound-bite, one cannot verify that he was alluding to the same general thing whoever constructed this sentence claims he was alluding to.

The Robinson quote is from the "The Chomsky Problem", New York Times Book Review, February 25, 1979; Robinson is describing Chomsky's political writings. It's the same article in which Robinson writes, "Judged in terms of the power, range, novelty and influence of his thought, Noam Chomsky is arguably the most important intellectual alive today." See the "Marginalization in the mainstream media" section. Russil Wvong 22:27, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Yea, I knew the same quote was in “mainstream media” but once again there was no traceable reference. Anyway, now I have it, thanks. [BernardL] June 4,2005

You're welcome! Russil Wvong 22:28, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Note- In Chomsky's reply to Eisenberg he's actually saying that the sincerely held belief of elites on both sides (US and USSR) arises largely from institutional structures and institutional imperatives. This kind of explanation is not so obviously or demonstrably simple-mided.

Isn't it just a form of economic determinism?

No, because "determinism" is an insult and a straw man. — Chameleon 23:01, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Could you elaborate? I'm not sure why you think it's an insult. Russil Wvong 00:58, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Oh, it is. Nobody ever calls themselves a determinist. It's always an accusation hurled at someone else. When this epithet is used, the implication is that the person's thinking is clouded by the idea that thing A is simplistically determined by thing B whereas the accuser sensibly realises that "it's not as simple as that". It is simply an insult. In the street, people call each other dickheads; in universities, academics call each other determinists. There is no way the term can be interpreted in a literal, non-attacking way. I mean, if I ignored the fact that you were basically calling Chomsky a clever, academic word for dickhead, and pretending that you were actually asking whether Chomsky's explanation involved the idea that things are actually determined by other things (instead of just by luck or free will), then it would be impossible to answer you with anything but something along the lines of "duh, yes obviously it's a form of determinism". — Chameleon 01:17, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It certainly wasn't my intent to insult Chomsky. I'm no academic, and in any case academics have no need to resort to special vocabulary to convey insults. (My favorite example is Hans Morgenthau on W. W. Rostow's View from the Seventh Floor: "Mr. Rostow has a powerful, brilliant, and creative mind. How could such a mind produce such trash?")

Putting the specific terminology aside, Chomsky states pretty clearly that in his view, US foreign policy is driven by the economic interests of the elite. From Deterring Democracy: " ... the political leadership has undermined possibilities for political settlement and fostered conflict in regions where such conflict could lead to a devastating nuclear war, and has sometimes come all too close--notably the Middle East. These consistent patterns make no sense on the assumption that security policy is guided by security concerns. Case by case, they fall into place on the assumption that policy is driven by the twin goals of reinforcing the private interests that control the state, and maintaining an international environment in which they can prosper."

As Eisenberg points out, if we look at the documents, these supposed "twin goals" were not conscious goals on the part of the participants. Chomsky's response is that they were unconscious goals. But how would you prove this -- what would constitute evidence for this proposition? And there's considerable evidence against it. As I asked you a few months ago, how were elite economic interests served by the war in Vietnam? Russil Wvong 22:28, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Chomsky isn't quite as narrowly focused on economic interests as you suggest. IIRC, in the case of Vietnam he argued that the war was motivated by the "threat of a good example [of the independent economic and political development of a society]". He's not saying that JD Rockefeller got a dime for every dead Viet Cong. Cadr 17:39, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Regarding the evidence of unconcious motives, you're basically right. However, you have to consider this in the context of the entire theory that Chomsky's advocating. Every theory has some propositions which on their own are implausible and hard to test. The question is whether there's a better theory which has just as much explanatory power, and fewer implausible/hard to test propositions. So considered in itself, the idea of "action at a distance" is pretty implausible (and seemingly untestable). But when it's embedded within Newton's laws of motion, it suddenly seems very respectable.

Also, I don't think Chomsky is really saying that these people have unconcious motives, only that they are selected/conditioned such that collectively they work in the interests of certain institutions. It is incidental what their actual beliefs are, so long as these beliefs cause them to work in the interests of these institutions. Cadr 17:49, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It is a deeper explanation than the "self-brain washing" explanation russil wvong attributes to Chomsky without evidence. (By the way, an important implication of Chomsky's argument is that there is potential for a society to transform institutional structures (ie: the dominant roles and relationships)in directions that motivate propensities within human nature that are consonant with humanitarian ideals such as solidarity, empathy, mutual development, and creativity.)user: BernardL

Regarding the "self-brainwashing" of intellectuals, see Chomsky's interview with James Peck in The Chomsky Reader. I'll see if I can dig up the relevant quote.

Here's the quote. The Chomsky Reader, pp. 34-35: "[The Soviet Union and the United States] are very different societies; the mechanisms of control and indoctrination work in a totally different fashion. There's a vast difference in the use of force versus other techniques. But the effects are very similar, and the effects extend to the intellectual elite themselves. In fact, my guess is that you would find that the intellectual elite is the most heavily indoctrinated sector, for good reasons. It's their role as a secular priesthood to really believe the nonsense that they put forth. Other people can repeat it, but it's not that crucial that they believe it. But for the intellectual elite themselves, it's crucial that they believe it because, after all, they are the guardians of the faith. Except for a very rare person who's just an outright liar, it's hard to be a convincing exponent of the faith unless you've internalized it and come to believe it. I find that intellectuals just look at me with a blank stare when I talk about the American invasion of South Vietnam. On the other hand, when I talk to general audiences, they don't seem to have much difficulty in perceiving the essential points, once the facts are made accessible. And that's perfectly reasonable--that's what should be expected in a society set up the way ours is."

Russil Wvong 04:06, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Maybe it’s just me but having re-read the interview I would never have thought of substituting the term self-brainwashing for a term that Chomsky prefers, just because brainwashing can suggest psychological quackery, conjures up images of the Chinese during the Korean war, mystic cults and so on.

Chomsky himself doesn't shy away from the term "brainwashing": for example, the title of Part 3 of What Uncle Sam Really Wants is "Brainwashing at Home." Russil Wvong 22:28, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

In any case I think it impoverishes our understanding to select only what he straightforwardly describes as “effects” while ignoring his explanations of the causes. In term of causes or underlying determinants of the effects he mentions it briefly in the quote and earlier discusses at some length with Peck the mechanisms of indoctrination that we are subjected to in the early socialization process:

“That’s what schooling is, I suppose. It’s a period of regimentation and control, part of which involves direct indoctrination, providing a system of false beliefs. But more importantly, I think, is the manner and style of preventing and blocking independent and creative thinking and imposing hierarchies and competitiveness and the need to excel, not in the sense of doing as well as you can, but doing better than the next person.” (CR, p.6)

Isn't Chomsky describing methods here, rather than causes? What I find most baffling about Chomsky's view of the world is that it resembles a kind of unconscious conspiracy, ascribing intentions to the system itself ("preventing and blocking independent and creative thinking", for example) without the actors in the conspiracy being conscious of what's going on; indeed, the supposed intentions of the system are directly contrary to the conscious intentions of the people involved. Russil Wvong 22:28, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It’s clearly an institutional explanation, it’s describing a “power structure”, but it certainly cannot be reduced to a simple economic explanation. (as he has explained elsewhere). :As an aside I think there is a notable abscense of both Chomsky's pragmatist views and the influence of Dewey on his thought. Perhaps that could be addressed with a summary of his views on education. [user:BernardL] June 4, 2005)

I'd certainly be interested in seeing such a summary. I haven't seen a lot of discussion of education in Chomsky's writings and lectures. Russil Wvong 22:28, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Personally, I'm skeptical of utopian attempts to transform society. Twentieth-century history is full of disastrous failures. (The US occupation of Iraq looks like it's shaping up to be another one.) For a detailed discussion, see James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State.

To me, the more important implication of Chomsky's view is that you can't assume good faith on the part of intellectuals. This makes it hard for Chomsky readers to accept any sources of information who disagree with Chomsky. Russil Wvong 22:27, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It is clear that, regarding Chomsky, the ones who have a problem with assuming good faith are his detractors. — Chameleon 22:58, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Where have I failed to assume good faith on Chomsky's part??! I think his motives are good: he's trying to restrain US foreign policy in the Third World. It's just that there's a conflict between political and moral responsibility on the one hand, and strict adherence to truth and fairness on the other hand. If the truth is complicated, and if by simplifying it you can convince more people, bring a war to an end faster, and save people's lives, should you not do so?

To Chomsky, political and moral responsibility are what's important. As Chomsky puts it [95]:

Suppose, for example, that some German intellectual chose in 1943 to write articles on terrible things done by Britain, or the U.S., or the Jews. What he wrote might be correct, but we would not be very much impressed.

The same comments hold for a Soviet intellectual who devotes himself to a critical analysis of U.S. atrocities in Southeast Asia or Central America (or to the American support for the Argentine generals).

What he says may be correct; its significance, for people being bombed or terrorized or tortured within the domains of American power and influence is negligible....

I try to concentrate my political activities -- writing included -- in areas where there is some moral significance to these activities, hence primarily in areas where people I can reach may act to change policies that are abhorrent, dangerous and destructive. ...

One can have many reasons for engaging in political action. If the reasons are to help suffering people, to avert threats or catastrophes, and so on, then the criteria are fairly clear.

Russil Wvong 00:58, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I wasn't talking about you. — Chameleon 01:17, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Okay. But do you see what I mean about Chomsky and his supporters assuming bad faith on the part of others? (For example, when you said that I was basically calling Chomsky a dickhead.) Russil Wvong 22:28, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I didn't say you were acting in bad faith. For example, I think Horowitz is a dickhead; that's not bad faith on my part. — Chameleon 10:56, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

When I said that I thought Chomsky is an economic determinist, and you then accused me of insulting Chomsky, attacking a strawman, and calling him a dickhead, you were assuming good faith? Russil Wvong 14:14, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Well, despite seeing that you had done all that, I thought I'd give you the benefit of the doubt. If you prefer, I can assume bad faith, but I don't see how that would help. — Chameleon 14:18, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Is Robert Faurisson a "related" person?

I can see why some people would want this removed (being pretty pro-Chomsky myself), but it seems a reasonable addition. I suppose it depends on whether "related" implies that Chomsky is somehow sympathetic towards Faurisson, which he obviously isn't. Cadr 09:43, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I had a look at the other people in the list, and they were all people similar to Chomsky: radical academics etc. The sole purpose of putting Faurisson in this list was to imply that Chomsky is a holocaust denier. I therefore removed it. If the list is turned into a list of people involved in controversies in which Chomsky has been involved, then of course Faurisson can be on it, but Horowitz etc would also be on the list. There is also the issue of whether there is any point listing people who are already mentioned in the article. — Chameleon 10:53, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Fair enough. Perhaps the title of the list should be clarified a little, if it is limited to people with similar views to Chomsky. Cadr 11:06, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)