User:Russil Wvong/Criticism of Noam Chomsky

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1 Criticisms of Chomsky's political views
2 Criticisms of Chomsky's linguistics
3 External links

[edit] Criticisms of Chomsky's political views

Chomsky's political views are highly controversial, and have provoked criticism and debate across the political spectrum. The specific criticisms discussed below are presented in roughly chronological order.

[edit] Distortion of truth, misuse of evidence

A common criticism of Chomsky's writings is that he distorts the truth and misuses evidence.

A response to Chomsky's essay the Responsibility of Intellectuals came from E. B. Murray [1], criticizing Chomsky's alleged misuse of evidence to downplay Chinese aggressiveness, specifically with respect to the 1950 occupation of Tibet, Chinese infiltration into North Thailand, and Chinese involvement in the Malayan insurrection. Chomsky in turn responded to Murray and other critics. [2].

In a 1970 exchange of letters [3], 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:

Mr. Huntington further claims that I said he "favors" eliminating the Viet Cong constituency by bombardment, whereas he only states that such "forced-draft urbanization" may well be "the answer to 'wars of national liberation'" that we have stumbled upon in Vietnam. The distinction is rather fine. One who insists on it must also recognize that 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.

[edit] Attribution of motives without evidence

In a 1969 exchange of letters, Stanley Hoffmann, a fellow opponent of the Vietnam War, characterized Chomsky as believing that "American objectives in Vietnam [...] were wicked" and that he was guilty of "uncomplicated attribution of evil objectives to his foes". They disagree in that Hoffman focuses on the idea that US policy-makers had goals based on "fine principles in which the[y] fervently believe[d]" and Chomsky "tries to determine their real objectives on the basis of their behavior in this instance, and in its evolving pattern". [4]

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.

In 1989, historian Carolyn Eisenberg argued that Chomsky's description of US foreign policy during the early Cold War as motivated by the interests of the elite class rather than an actual fear of the Soviet Union did not agree with the documentary evidence. In the 1950 document NSC 68 [5], 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. In a reply in the Spring 1989 Radical History Review, Chomsky agreed that US officials were typically sincere in their beliefs, but he argued that, "[s]tate managers are doubtless convinced that they are working for the good of the common people. Typically, they are working in the interests of domestic power -- in the US, [they are working for] business interests. If they fail in this task, they will be displaced." [6]

[edit] Cambodia

Much of the early accounts of Khmer Rouge atrocities were provided by François Ponchaud, in his book Cambodia Year Zero published in 1977. After several favorable reviews in the US media, Chomsky began to write critically about what he saw as the media's slanted coverage of the Cambodian revolution. Chomsky and Edward Herman wrote Distortions at Fourth Hand [7] for The Nation in 1977. It was a joint review of three books: Cambodia: Year Zero by Ponchaud, Murder of a Gentle Land by Barron and Paul, and Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution by Gareth Porter and George Hildebrand. The review was embedded in the framework of a wider discussion of bias in news coverage of events in Southeast Asia. In the context of discussing a piece in the New York Times which relied upon Barron and Paul, the authors argued that there was no credible evidence of a million deaths from genocide: "The 'slaughter' by the Khmer Rouge is a Moss-New York Times creation." This statement, and the article itself, has precipitated some criticism.

According to Chomsky and Herman, Ponchaud's book was "serious and worth reading" but contained several critical errors, that were in turn perpetuated and amplified in a feature NYRB review by Jean Lacouture. They also disdained Barron and Paul's book, saying it portrayed pre-revolution Cambodia as a "Gentle Land" that ignored the impact of several years of heavy bombardment by U.S. military forces. Finally, the two view Porter and Hildebrand's book as a detailed, well-sourced analysis of the human toll and economic devastation resulting from the American bombing campaigns, but received negligible attention from the US media. Distortions at Fourth Hand is thus criticized for relying heavily on Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution by Hildebrand and Porter. While the duo's work was praised at the time by Indochina scholar George Kahin, others have accused it of being a largely uncritical and sympathetic treatment of the Khmer Rouge which rationalized the evacuation of Phnom Penh and glossed over the forced labor imposed on peasants in the countryside, which resulted in massive starvation and death from overwork. Porter distanced himself from Starvation and Revolution in 1978 when in an interview with CBS he lamented the atrocities being committed in Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge.

Describing the media coverage of Southeast Asia as a "farce", Chomsky and Herman contrasted the grim reports on Vietnam by New York Times reporter Fox Butterfield with the more favorable comments of the members of a handful of non-governmental groups, international reporters, and non-American professors who had first-hand experience of conditions in Viet Nam. While Butterfield culled his evidence from "diplomats, refugees and letters from Viet Nam" and his reports were distributed to 800,000 readers; comprehensive first-hand reports from The War Resisters League and The American Friends Service Committee that claimed relative social and economic progress were accessible to just 2,500 readers. For Chomsky and Herman this exemplified the workings of an American propaganda system - the public is indoctrinated even as "the illusion of an open press and free society is maintained." [8]

In After the Cataclysm: Postwar Indochina and the Reconstruction of Imperial Ideology, Chomsky and Edward S. Herman claim that the American media used unsubstantiated refugee testimonies and distorted sources with regard to the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge to serve US government propaganda purposes in the wake of the Vietnam War. He also denied that the Cambodian violence was inspired by Marxist ideology, maintaining that it was "the direct and understandable response to the violence of the imperial system." Chomsky argued that he had acknowledged the atrocities. In Manufacturing Consent (also co written with Ed Herman), Chomsky responds:

As we also noted from the first paragraph of our earlier review of this material [i.e. After the Cataclysm] [...] "when the facts are in, it may turn out that the more extreme condemnations [of the Khmer Rouge] are in fact correct", although if so, "it will in no way alter the conclusions we have reached on the central questions addressed here: how the available facts were selected, modified, or sometimes invented to create a certain image offered to the general population. The answer to this question seems clear, and it is unaffected by whatever may yet be discovered about Cambodia in the future."

Because the stakes in guessing how "it may turn out" in terms of lives lost were so high, Chomsky has been criticized for decades for being irresponsibly, even callously skeptical with regards to evidence of mass atrocities in Cambodia.

[edit] The Faurisson affair

Robert Faurisson

Main article: Faurisson affair

In 1979, Robert Faurisson published a book which claimed the gas chambers at Auschwitz did not exist. Faurisson's political views are not clear and conventional ("I am nothing politically", he has said), as he has ties to groups both on the left and right in France. He has been labeled a neo-Nazi by opponents both in France and America for his Holocaust denial but he has also spoken of "heroic insurrection of the Warsaw [Jewish] ghetto" and praises those who "fought courageously against Nazism" in "the right cause". Some of his claims regarding the Holocaust, survivors of the Holocaust, and the Second World War have been interpreted as defense of Nazism, and he was suspended from teaching by his university.

He was then convicted of defamation and subjected to a fine and prison sentence. Chomsky was one of many who signed a petition to give Faurisson "free exercise of his legal rights". Chomsky then wrote an essay called "Some Elementary Comments on The Rights of Freedom of Expression" in defense of freedom of speech. He claimed that Faurisson did not seem in his eyes to be a Nazi, saying he seemed to be "a relatively apolitical liberal of some sort". He admitted to ignorance on the content of Faurisson's work, saying that "I do not know his work very well." Nonetheless, he concluded, "largely as a result of the nature of the attacks on him" that there was no basis for claiming Faurisson was either a neo-Nazi or an anti-Semite. He also argued that not believing in the Holocaust is not in itself proof of anti-Semitism (he later elaborated: "[for example,] if a person ignorant of modern history were told of the Holocaust and refused to believe that humans are capable of such monstrous acts, we would not conclude that he is an anti-Semite"). Faurisson subsequently used this essay, without asking Chomsky, as a preface to his Mémoire en défense, a defense of his own views.

Chomsky was attacked by various individuals and groups for the position he took: he was accused of supporting Faurisson's ideas and not just his right to express them. His impression of Faurisson as "a relatively apolitical liberal of some sort" was taken to be a cover-up for Faurisson's anti-Semitism. The wording of the petition he signed was criticized for speaking of Faurisson's "research" and "findings" in uncritical terms. He was criticized for his personal friendship with Serge Thion (who has links with Holocaust-deniers), as well as for the fact that Noontide Press, the publishing arm of the revisionist Institute for Historical Review, published The Fateful Triangle -- a move that saved the beleaguered publisher and institute. He was accused of writing his essay on freedom of speech specifically as a preface to Mémoire en défense. In another essay, "His Right to Say It", Chomsky contends that Faurisson's views are contrary to his own and presents his version of the affair.

Chomsky's statement that "I see no anti-Semitic implications in denial of the existence of gas chambers or even denial of the Holocaust." has resulted in some critics describing him as sympathetic to holocaust denial. Werner Cohn's book "Partners in Hate: Noam Chomsky and the Holocaust Deniers" (ISBN 0964589702) [9] being a prime example. Chomsky has replied to Werner Cohn's allegations once, in a thousand-word open letter that concludes: "That Cohn is a pathological liar is demonstrated by the very examples that he selects." [10] Cohn maintains his view of Chomsky [11] and has on his website responded to this letter as well as provided a link to a piece by Guillaume which concerns Chomsky's relationship to him. [12]

In the 1992 film "Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media", Professor Chomsky defends himself, explaining that he took up defense of Faurisson when he was taken to court: "I do not think the state ought to have the right to determine historical truth and to punish people who deviate from it. I'm not willing to give the state that right..." A student, interrupting, asks: "Do you deny that gas chambers existed?" Chomsky replies: "Of course not, but I'm saying that if you believe in freedom of speech then you believe in freedom of speech for views you don't like, I mean Goebbels was in favour of freedom of speech for views he liked, right, so was Stalin. If you're in favour of freedom of speech that means you're in favour of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise, otherwise you're not in favour of freedom of speech." In the same film, debating with Yossi Olmert, a professor from Tel Aviv University, on a show "Speaking Out" in 1985, Chomsky asks Olmert "...what percentage of the world press believes that Faurisson actually has anything to say", and if he is viewed by the press "to be anything other than a lunatic?" Olmert answered that "... this is something that can only be interpreted as a case against Israel." Chomsky finishes a lecture citing some of his earliest work: "Even to enter into the arena of debate on the question of whether the Nazis carried out such atrocities is already to lose one's humanity. I don't think you ought to discuss the issue if you want to know my opinion, but if anybody wants to refute Faurisson there is certainly no difficulty in doing so."

[edit] Anti-Americanism

Since the advent of his political activism, Chomsky has routinely been accused of being anti-American. Critics accuse him of being reflexively hostile to the United States, exaggerating its alleged crimes and iniquity, while downplaying the crimes of its enemies. 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" [13]. 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." [14]

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, a number of center-leftists criticized Chomsky's immediate response to the attacks [15], alleging that he showed little sympathy for the victims. In an opinion piece 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". [16] In a September 2002 article in The Nation discussing the American left's reaction to the September 11 attacks [17], Adam Shatz allowed that Chomsky had denounced the attacks, but claimed that 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", and described Chomsky's subsequent references to atrocities carried out by the American government and its allies as "a wooden recitation".

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 ([18] [19] [20] [21] [22]).

Samantha Power, in an otherwise sympathetic review of Hegemony or Survival [23] (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."

In a talk given in 1997, Chomsky ridiculed the concept of "anti-Americanism" as a symptom of totalitarian thinking: "It's the kind of term you only find in totalitarian societies, as far as I know. So like in the Soviet Union, anti-Sovietism was considered the gravest of all crimes."

"But try, say, publishing a book on anti-Italianism and see what happens on the streets on Rome or Milan -- people won't even bother laughing, it's a ludicrous idea. The idea of Italianism or, you know, Norwayism, or something like that would just be objects of ridicule in societies that have some kind of residue of a democratic culture inside people's heads. I don't mean in the formal systems. But in totalitarian societies it is used, and as far as I know the United States is the only free society that has such a concept." [24] (audio [25])

[edit] Criticisms by Horowitz

Conservative author David Horowitz is one of Chomsky's more vocal critics. He has described Chomsky as the "Ayatollah of Anti-American Hate" and "the most treacherous intellect in America" claiming Chomsky has "one message alone: America is the Great Satan", in a series of articles along with historian Ronald Radosh [26]. Horowitz claims "It would be easy to demonstrate how on every page of every book and in every statement that Chomsky has written the facts are twisted".

Peter Collier and David Horowitz compiled a set of critical essays in 2004, called The Anti-Chomsky Reader, that analyze some of Chomsky's more popular work. The Anti-Chomsky Reader argues that many of the sources in Chomsky's works are himself. Thomas Nichols' essay Chomsky And The Cold War discusses Chomsky's attitude towards anti-communists after the Soviet Union fell apart. There is also extensive criticism of Chomsky's claim that the US invasion of Afghanistan might result in millions of deaths, labeled by some critics as the "Silent Genocide" claim, named after his quote, "Looks like what's happening is some sort of silent genocide". [27]

[edit] Charges of anti-Semitism

Although a Jew and a self-described Zionist (though he claims his definition of Zionism is usually considered anti-Zionism today), Chomsky is highly critical of the behavior of the state of Israel. Because of this criticism of the Israeli government, the Faurisson affair, and for other such reasons, Chomsky is often accused of being a self-hating Jew or of representing "left-wing fascism", charges which Chomsky strenuously denies.

In 2002, the president of Harvard University Lawrence Summers drew attention by claiming that the "Noam Chomsky-led campaign" to have universities divest from companies with Israeli holdings is "anti-Semitic in effect, if not in intention". Although Chomsky signed a petition in support of divestment, which states in part, "We also call on MIT and Harvard to divest from Israel", [28] he has expressed reservations about the boycott campaign [29]. In response to the decision of the Association of University Teachers in April 2005 to boycott Haifa University and Bar-Ilan University, Chomsky commented: "Both Ilan Pappe and Baruch Kimmerling are friends, and I regard their work very highly, as well as their courage and integrity. In general, I do not think that academic boycotts are a good idea, except in circumstances far beyond what is reported here. It's far too blunt an instrument. There are also much worse cases: e.g., the complicity of US universities in state terror and aggression. I don't doubt that inspection would show reasons to severely censure British universities. But I don't recommend boycotts in these cases either. Principle aside, as a tactic it is, I think, likely to be counterproductive." [30]

[edit] Criticism from pro-Palestinian activists

Although he regularly condemns the Israeli government's actions in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, Chomsky has recently come under fire from some pro-Palestinian activists for his advocacy of the Geneva Accord, which it is argued rules out a one-state solution for Israel-Palestine and negates the Palestinian Right of Return. Chomsky responds to this by arguing that the Right of Return, while inalienable, will never be realized, and stating that proposals without significant international backing - such as a one-state solution - are unrealistic (and therefore unethical) goals:

"I will keep here to advocacy in the serious sense: accompanied by some kind of feasible program of action, free from delusions about "acting on principle" without regard to "realism" -- that is, without regard for the fate of suffering people."

[edit] Criticism from anarchists

Generally Chomsky is respected among anarchists; some, however, have occasionally characterized Chomsky as being too reformist and failing to articulate a fully anarchist critique of society. The anarcho-primitivist John Zerzan, for example, states that "[t]he real answer, painfully obvious, is that he is not an anarchist at all" [31]. Zerzan views Chomsky's focus on U.S. foreign policy as being representative of a certain conservative "narrowness" for "being motivated by 'his duty as a citizen'".

His qualified support for John Kerry as president in 2004 was controversial amongst anarchists, who tend to be critical of all political parties. Chomsky referred to Kerry as "Bush-lite"--a term coined early in the 2004 Democratic primary by Howard Dean. He argued that there was not much of a difference between the two candidates or the two parties they represent but that, "both domestically and internationally, there are differences. In a system of immense power, small differences can translate into large outcomes." [32]

[edit] Criticisms of Chomsky's linguistics

While Chomsky's is the best known position in linguistics, his views have been criticized. Current linguistics literature boasts many important alternatives to Chomsky's specific models of syntax, though most owe much to Chomsky's work. Prominent among these are Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar and Lexical Functional Grammar. These proposals differ from Chomsky's principally in the types of structures assumed, and in the search for "representational" alternatives to step-by-step computation (called "derivation" in Chomskyan work). Another more radical alternative to Chomsky's position is that proposed by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. Their cognitive linguistics was developed out of Chomskyan linguistics but differs from it in significant ways. Specifically, they argue against the neo-Cartesian aspects of Chomsky's theories, and state that Chomsky fails to take account of the extent to which cognition is embodied.

Another strong source of criticism of Chomsky's linguistics comes from some researchers who study language acquisition. Many researchers in this field do not take a Chomskyan approach, and some, such as Michael Tomasello and Elizabeth Bates, have been very critical of the Chomskyan approach to language learning. Most of this criticism surrounds Chomskyan concepts of innateness. Controversy surrounds the extent and nature of evidence for the principles and parameters approach to language acquisition (which suggests that a significant portion of language learning involves setting a finite and predetermined set of parameters). Tomasello has argued that children's early utterances lack syntactic structure, and Bates suggests that early linguistic behavior is far more compatible with connectionist or emergentist views of learning, which do not need to posit any preexisting structure. In reply, researchers such as Kenneth Wexler and Lila Gleitman disagree with the assertion that children's early utterances have no syntactic structure and argue that there is in fact evidence for the acquisition of syntactic parameters in early speech -- for example, acquisition of the "verb second" property of German in the second year of life.

Some researchers in computational linguistics are also critical of Chomsky's approach to language learning. Chomskyan theories of syntax (since they are concerned with modelling linguistic competence) have very little to say about the actual process of language acquisition, and most research in language acquisition has had to rely on statistical modelling to produce working models of syntactic comprehension. Some have argued that such models are hard to integrate with Chomskyan theories of linguistic competence (in particular, theories in the principles and parameters framework).

In a much more radical way, philosophers in the tradition of Wittgenstein (such as Saul Kripke) argue that Chomskyans are fundamentally wrong about the role of rule following in human cognition. In a similar way philosophers in the phenomenological/existential/hermeneutic traditions oppose the abstract neo-rationalist aspects of Chomsky's thought. The contemporary philosopher who best represents this view is, perhaps, Hubert Dreyfus, also famous (or notorious) for his attacks on artificial intelligence.

Another common criticism of Chomskyan analyses of specific languages is that they force languages into an English-like mold. There might once have been justice to this criticism. English (Chomsky's native language) was the first language whose syntax was subjected to serious investigation from a Chomskyan perspective. English-specific results were thus the natural starting point for the investigation of other languages. Since the late 1970s, however, as the field assimilated data from a wide variety of languages (and the field itself was increasingly internationalized), this criticism has been heard with decreasing frequency -- especially as it has become clear that in many respects, English is a typological outlier among languages.

The "autonomy" of syntax has received much criticism. In particular the work of Anna Wierzbicka argues that syntax is semantically motivated. Chomsky's own position on the relationship between syntax and semantics is somewhat unclear, since he thinks that much of what is called semantics is actually syntax (since it involves the rule-based manipulation of abstract symbols). However, Chomsky is often regarded as an advocate of an autonomous syntax.