The Anti-Chomsky Reader
The Anti-Chomsky Reader is a 2004 critique of the political and linguistic writings of Noam Chomsky. Several authors contributed to it under the editorship of Peter Collier and David Horowitz.
Contents
The Anti-Chomsky Reader contains the following articles:
- Introduction by Peter Collier
- Whitewashing Dictatorship in Vietnam and Cambodia by Steven J. Morris, Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute, Johns Hopkins University, accuses Chomsky of denying repression and mass murder under the communist regimes of Vietnam and Cambodia. Morris claims that Chomsky adheres to a Marxist derived view of the Indochina wars which refuses to acknowledge the totalitarian nature of the regimes in question.
- Chomsky and the Cold War by Thomas M. Nichols, chairman of the Department of Strategy and Policy, U.S. Naval War College, claims that Chomsky has distorted the history of the Cold War in order to minimize the role of Communist ideology and blame the conflict on the United States. He accuses Chomsky of misusing sources and footnoting his books in manipulative and dishonest ways "to create a kind of pseudo-academic smog" often leading back to Chomsky's own work. He discusses a 1990 letter from Chomsky to Alexander Cockburn which Nichols claims laments the defeat of the Soviet Union and other Communist states and movements at the end of the Cold War, particularly singling out Czech dissident Václav Havel for vituperation.
- Chomsky and Holocaust Denial by Werner Cohn of Brooklyn, New York and professor emeritus of sociology at the University of British Columbia, analyzes Chomsky's role in the Faurisson affair through his connections to Faurisson's publisher La Vielle Taupe. Cohn accuses Chomsky of close connections to French anti-semites and Holocaust Deniers through this organization. Chomsky replied in Outlook.[1]
- Chomsky and 9/11 by David Horowitz and Ronald Radosh analyzes a speech given by Chomsky at MIT immediately after 9/11. They particularly attack Chomsky's claim that the US invasion of Afghanistan was planned to 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." They also claim that Chomsky justifies the 9/11 attacks in his speech and distorts American history to make the United States appear to be a terrorist nation.
- Noam Chomsky's Anti-American Obsession by David Horowitz, accuses Chomsky of being an anti-American ideologue who sees the United States as evil and rewrites American history accordingly. Horowitz claims that Chomsky is the intellectual source of left wing anti-Americanism today.
- A Corrupted Linguistics by Robert D. Levine and Paul M. Postal, both professors of linguistics, claims that Chomsky's linguistic work has been largely superseded or abandoned. They also accuse Chomsky of intellectual misconduct in his linguistic writings.
- Chomsky, Language, World War II and Me by John Williamson criticizes Chomsky's linguistic work and recounts a long email debate between Chomsky and the author in which Williamson claims Chomsky repeatedly lied about his own statements and about historical facts and sources.
- The Devil State: Chomsky's War Against Israel by Paul Bogdanor criticizes Chomsky's stance on Israel. Bogdanor charges that Chomsky distorts historical fact and falsely accuses Israel of atrocities and rejectionism while downplaying Arab aggression and violence against the Jewish State.
Reviews
Keith Windschuttle, in a review in the conservative magazine New Criterion, states that "Collier, Horowitz, and their six other authors have produced a book that has long been needed. It provides a penetrating coverage of the disgraceful career of a disgraceful but very influential man, who has so far avoided a criticism as thoroughgoing as this."[2]
Mark Bauerlein, in a generally positive review in the libertarian magazine Reason, claims that "Collier and Horowitz understand well the manufactured reality of political fame, and to dismantle it requires not contrary vitriol or clever rejoinders but direct, fact-based assertions that undermine the authenticity of the image. To that end, the contributors follow a simple procedure: Quote actual statements by Chomsky and test them for evidence and logic. The best contributions to the volume add the effective and timely tactic of citing Chomsky's progressive virtues and revealing how smoothly he abandons them."[3]
Michael Leon, in a review in the now defunct CoreWeekly, weekly arts and entertainment magazine, states that "The Anti-Chomsky Reader is mired in a thick haze of loathing and hard-right ideology, short on verifiable facts and long on ideologically-steeped assertions." and "As for all the weird personal defamations, they do not merit a response."[4]
References
External links
Reviews
Response