My Chomsky rant

A few readers have written in and asked why I like to bag on Chomsky, a person that I legitimately detest. I am afraid that my answer might be a bit long winded. Here are two letters that I have recently received:

As for Chomsky he is a vital antidote in opposition to the US propaganda machine.....put Iran in its proper historical context.....CIA got "rid" of mos/ad in 50s after his election when he wanted to nationalize the oil.....put the Shah in who was a brutal murdering dictator and then when he was over thrown gave him sanctuary.......imagine the US surrounded by Iranian soldiers and navy violating our air space and supporting a hemispheric Israel ....Iran actually cooperated very closely with US in defeating the Northern Alliance in Afghan and the US since then has designated them to be the requisite enemy......mean while the CIA is financing domestic opposition as legitimate as it is.......Russia..Israel...India...China....Pakistan....et.al have the bomb.....maybe then are not so crazy as a deterrent to US ....remember a presidential candidate .....Beach Boys ....Bomb Bomb Iran......can you imagine if Iranian PM said that..... Sunday talking heads about "surgical strikes" .....Iran has no"problems" with Russians on their border and the rest of the world is trading with Iran today as the US continually demonizes them.....ironically it is US foreign policy that provides the domestic repression  the legitimacy of the domestic repression....and quite frankly why should I give a ....Rhett Butler damm what goes on in a 4000 year old civilization 10,000 miles from here.....it was Goldman and Lehman who almost dy$troyed America while Mr Nobel prize.....I will bring "change"has rehired the same crew.....you need not worry in that Chomsky will never be given access to the end less Talking Head media....
W


hey Bob-
what is the reference about Chomsky?
I've read bits and pieces by him over the years, especially around 9-11 and thought he was ahead of the curve. I know he has a lot of harsh critics and since I am not much of a reader.....fill me in....
thanks!
S

The first letter from W is a bit disassociated but represents the philosophy of the Chomskyite pretty well. The United States of America, in tandem with its zionist co-conspirator Israel, is involved in a hegemonistic struggle to rule the world and turn their peace loving neighbors into vassal states. The second, an honest question that I hope I can answer.

I think that I can safely say that I am no pollyanna in regards to the real and imagined sins committed past and present by my country. We have certainly acted imperialistically, both with our own native population and in places like the Philippines and Central America, courtesy of the Monroe Doctrine. I have no blinders on regarding the somewhat self inflicted nightmare of daily life in Gaza and the West Bank either. I am not a believer in the concept of American Exceptionalism, we are probably not much different than any other industrialized power facing similar circumstances. I remember the wise words of a teacher in high school, Mr. Reagan. He said,"If you learn nothing else in my history class, remember that countries are as moral as economically feasible."

And although we contribute less in foreign aid by percentage than most industrialized countries, I have to say that we Americans are pretty good people. We want to help, are usually first on the scene after a disaster or calamity, and generally try to be good citizens of the world. As I have often remarked, say what you want about America, the methodists aren't shooting at the presbyterians yet. But has the divine power blown a mighty puff of air up our butt and put us in some exalted position over Canada, Norway or New Zealand, I don't really think so. Sometimes we try to do too much and end up in hopeless quagmires like Afghanistan.

Noam Chomsky and his ilk view every ill in the world as the consequence of imperialist U.S. doctrine. He has never met a dictator he did not embrace. He carried water for Pol Pot and mocked and minimized the terrible genocide in Cambodia. Chomsky said "it seems to fair to describe the atrocities committed by the United States and Pol Pot during the decade of the genocide as being in the same range. The reality is that the U.S, is thought to have killed roughly 40,000 Khmer Rouge fighters and Cambodian civilians, while Pol Pot was responsible for an approximate 1.8 million civilian deaths between 1975 and 1979. He makes similar statements regarding stalinist atrocities and those committed post war by the North Vietnamese. Ditto his approval for the policies of Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela and Iran, all countries with sorry records in regards to personal liberty and freedom, including a free press. He even offers excuses for the Chinese behavior towards the Tibetans. The last Stalinist true believer.

Chomsky wrote after 9/11 and I paraphrase: "nothing can justify crimes such as those of September 11, but we can think of the United States as an innocent victim only if we adopt the convenient path of ignoring the record of its actions and those of its allies, which are, after all, hardly a secret." 

He appears to be saying that, yes, it was a terrible thing but you had it coming. And there are quote after quote like this, whitewashing the deaths of thousands of innocent people in the name of his marxist, anti U.S. ideology. It is like saying that the Somali pirates who kidnapped the poor people on the sailboat this week are justified because certain countries have decimated their fishing supply in past decades. A non sequiter that excuses the worst behavior imaginable. He equates the World Trade Center bombings with the bombing of the chemical plant in Sudan that killed one night watchman. A terrible tragedy but certainly a difference in scale. How about a little compassion for the real victims too sometime, Noam? Never for Noam, it does not fit his tried and true narrative.

One of the sickest aspects to Chomsky is his association for holocaust deniers and anti-semites. Chomsky, born a jew, is bedfellows with some of the most venal jew haters and neo nazis in the world like Jacques Vergés and Robert Faurisson. Faurisson wrote an article which declares all witnesses to the Holocaust at Auschwitz to be Jews and liars because they are Jews. When confronted with Faurisson's statement, Chomsky wrote, in a letter to Bill Rubenstein:

I see no anti-Semitic implications in denial of the existence of gas chambers, or even denial of the holocaust. Nor would there be anti-Semitic implications, per se, in the claim that the holocaust (whether one believes it took place or not) is being exploited, viciously so, by apologists for Israeli repression and violence. I see no hint of anti-Semitic implications in Faurisson's work ...

I am not a religious person but I am a person with strong passions regarding my tribe and my country, the United States of America. Most of my grandmother's family from Wyzkow was killed at Auschwitz. To see a person like Chomsky make statements like he does makes my blood boil. It shows a complete lack of respect for his parents, and their parents and a lack of appreciation for a people that suffered through both the pogroms and Zyklon B.

There is a peculiar tendency amongst liberal and secular jews to fall all over each other trying to show their great objectivity, fairness and detachment. Especially if it is contrary to their own best self interest. This reinforces the paradigm of the long suffering victim that many hold so dear to their heart. They bash the Israeli state with no firsthand knowledge of what it would be like to be surrounded by an enemy who has vowed your annihilation. This supposed exercise in liberal freethinking flies in the face of what is in my experience true in regards to Israel, having lived there for a protracted period and through several skirmishes and countless rocket attacks.  Look at the map above, look at the large section of the Sinai that was traded to Egypt in the interests of peace, does this tiny nation really look like an imperialist regime intent on gobbling up a large section of the mideast?

The reality is that it is a tiny land mass of people who returned to their ancestral homeland after a long diaspora, and after several attempts at living peacefully with their neighbors, were forced to pay for their nation and right to exist with their own blood. They are surrounded by religious fundamentalists intent on restoring the caliphate. The Israelis are intent on not handing the implements of their own destruction to those that would kill them.

Israel is a nation whose Palestinian inhabitants and native arab population has more education, freedom and access to medical care than any other neighboring arab country. Where women can drive and wear the clothes of their choice. Where Israeli human right's groups work tirelessly to ensure that all of the population is treated as fairly and equitably as possible, even those calling for the destruction of the state. Where Arabs have a seat on the Knesset, the highest governing body in the land. A land free of the internecine killings between wahabists and salafists, shia and sunni that seem to permeate all the neighboring countries.

Utopian idealists like Chomsky and his brethren have a lot of gall in rapturously defending the enemies of civilization and the United States while living in this country. I think that Noam should move to Caracas or Iran and put his money where his mouth is. Too many of his assertions have been found to be flat out lies, his "blame America for everything" jingo so very shallow and phony when held up to the light for actual inspection.

Please look at some of the links I provide, the Chomsky hoax link is pretty comprehensive. 

The Chomsky Hoax

Chomsky loves Bin Laden

Chomsky and holocaust denial

Deconstructing Chomsky

Chomsky and Indochina

The U.S. is a terrorist state - Chomsky

Chomsky on Iran

Chomsky on Venezuela

Kosovo and North Korea - Chomsky

Chomsky Quotes -

“If it were true that the consequences of not using terror would be that the peasantry in Vietnam would continue to live in the state of the peasantry of the Philippines, then I think the use of terror would be justified.”
(Alexander Klein, ed., Dissent, Power and Confrontation [McGraw-Hill, 1971], p. 119)


“Jews in the US are the most privileged and influential part of the population... privileged people want to make sure they have total control, not just 98% control. That’s why antisemitism is becoming an issue.”
(Variant, Scotland, Winter 2002)


“I see no antisemitic implications in denial of the existence of gas chambers, or even denial of the holocaust.”
(Quadrant, Australia, October 1981)

“in comparison to the conditions imposed by US tyranny and violence, East Europe under Russian rule was practically a paradise.”
(Letter, in Alexander Cockburn, The Golden Age Is In Us [Verso, 1995], pp. 149-151)


(on 9/11) “for the first time in history the victims are returning the blow to the motherland.”
(La Jornada, Mexico, September 15, 2001)