Noam Chomsky, Exposed

[Ronagon]

For those of you who are convinced that Noam Chomsky can do no wrong, here is a book that has everybody talking about the Svengali fountainhead of the Anti-America world movement:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/189...8004038-7663062 (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/189355497X/qid=1106877528/sr=2-1/ref=pd_ka_b_2_1/103-8004038-7663062)

Product Description:

This description is based on the MIT professor's writings on linguistics in the 1950s; but beginning with his criticism of the Vietnam War in the 1960s, Chomsky became much better known for his radical politics than for his theories of language. Over the past forty years he has gained a devoted following in the United States and Europe for his increasingly bitter--some say hysterical--censure of U.S. "crimes." Chomsky has complained about being ignored by mainstream publications such as the "New York Times," but in fact his steady stream of polemical works, like the best-selling "9-11," have made him the center of a veritable cult.

In "The Anti-Chomsky Reader," editors Peter Collier and David Horowitz have assembled a set of essays that analyze Chomsky's intellectual career and the evolution of his anti-Americanism. The essays in this provocative book focus on subjects such as Chomsky's bizarre involvement with Holocaust revisionism, his apologies for Khmer Rouge tyrant Pol Pot, and his claim that America's policies in Latin America in the 1980s were comparable to Nazism. Scholar Paul Bogdanor writes about Chomsky's hatred of Israel. Ronald Radosh and David Horowitz discuss his gloating reaction to the September 11 attack. Linguists Paul Postal and Robert Levine reevaluate Chomsky's linguistics and find the same qualities there that others see in his politics: "a deep contempt for the truth, descents into incoherence, and verbal abuse of those who disagree with him."

"The Anti-Chomsky Reader" presents a fascinating composite portrait of a man who arguably is our most influential public intellectual.

[Thomas Knierim]

I value Chomsky for his contribution to the field of linguistics and philosophy of mind, which I believe is what he will be remembered for. Of his political works I have read very few. I recall articles about free trade and about the relationship between the U.S. and the United Nations. They seemed accurate and resonable. I don't know about the other stuff.

What exactly did he lie about?

Cheers, Thomas

[Common Sense]

Oh, I don't know, let's see what Chomsky has lied about...

1. He denied the murders that the Khmer Rouge was inflicting when there were exiting eye-witness accounts by hundres to that effect. He then blamed the US for those murders.

2. His linguistic contribution has already been exposed to be founded on lies and deception. Deep structure has always been a theory with serious problems, but more importantly a theory which Chomsky knew has flaws when he published his most famous book about it. And the flaws were known to him because his student Ross pointed them out to him, yet he published his theory without mentioning what he already knew was wrong with it. His universal principles have been found lacking, in that they're not even applicable to all English sentences he tries to apply them to, let alone all natural languages.

3. He published his book with a known neo-Nazi publisher.

4. He won't deny the Holocaust happened, but he will explicitly say that his French buddies who are into denying it are wrong about it. He simply talks as if it's inconclusive and all a matter of opinion.

5. His talks about free trade and the US are always half-truths, because he removes everything from context.

6. Chomsky is a corrupt intellectual. It pains me to call him an intellectual just because he hasn't contributed anything of lasting significance -- and it wasn't even right or good when he offered it.

That you or anyone would champion him, using your own ignorance of his other works, is shameful. Let me just say, "Oh, Hitler wasn't so bad, I mean as far as I know and this is all I know, he tried to improve the life of his people."

Please, tell better lies, Thomas. You've embarrassed yourself.

[Common Sense]

Where's the damned editing option?

I meant that Chomsky won't explicitly say his neo-Nazi Holocaust denying friends are wrong.

He mendaciously says he champions the downtrodden, except when they're Jews, of course.

He calls Hamas and al Qaeda and other terrorists organizations 'freedom fighers' but labels the Israelis and Americans as the true terrorists.

He cites the most obscure periodicals, obviously biased ones, and places more stock in these far left wing publications than he does on eye witness accounts...but only when it suits his purpose.

Which works of his are scholarly? I'd really be damned interested to know what works so influenced your esteemed respect.

I can write a book about his mendaciousness, his intellectual dishonesty, his undeserved reputation for being a scholar or for having contributed anything worthwhile. Oh wait, somebody already wrote that book and many of us have already read it.

Why don't you avail yourself of a copy? Better yet, avail yourself of something besides exculpations of ignorance.

[sonrisa]

Originally posted by Common Sense@Feb 1 2005, 03:46 AM
Where's the damned editing option?


It only lasts or an hour or 2 then goes away

[jesupocaplypse]

sounds like Common Sense has a bit of sand in his crotch about this guy. Your list of 'lies' was quite unspecific, and most weren't lies merely opinions.. speculations.... kinda skirted around the question there...


insults and hostility won't get you anywhere. any one with a shred of common sense would know that... :lol:

[Thomas Knierim]

Common Sense,

I sense a lot of hostility in your comment, and obviously some of that spilled over into your attack on my person. You may have your reasons, but please know that I don't really care what Chomsky writes about American politics. This issue is of no importance to me.

I remember Chomsky mainly from his lingustic works, "Aspects of the Theory of Syntax", "On Nature and Language", "New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind" and I think that his contributions to this field were groundbreaking at the time. Yes, there are flaws in these theories, at least so it appears from today's point of view, but Chomsky did a lot of the groundwork.

What is more, his work had direct practical applications. In the early nineties I was involved in the development and marketing of translation software, not dictionaries, but full text translation systems with a lot of "AI" syntax analysis built in - and these software programs made heavy use of Chomsky's principles.

Cheers, Thomas

[Common Sense]

You'll pardon my attack on your person. This isn't so much an apology as an explanation. You seem a little too informed and intelligent not to know about Chomsky's political opinions. You might not care about them, but that's not saying you don't or didn't know about them. I tend to think you do, so why wasn't condemnation forthcoming on that score when that's mainly the topic?

You want specifics, Jesup Old Boy? From The Anti-Chomsky Reader:
"But Chomsky's 1957 claim that every transitive-looking clause permitted a passive analog was no mere mistake; he was perfectly aware of its falsehood and had himself provided counterexamples in his unpublished 1955 study The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory (finally published in 1975)."

Concerning Chomsky's A-over-A Principle: The Reader:
"Ross's work had already undermined any serious basis for Chomsky's view that the A-over-A Principle was a principle of natural language or even English, and as Ross's Ph.D. dissertation director, Chomsky was inevitably aware of the evidence against it."

So instead of abandoning the principle, what does Chomsky do? The Reader:
"Instead, in work after work, he has until recently either cited the A-over-A Principle as a serious, persisting element of his universal grammar, or referred to it in neutral terms without a hint that grounds for its abandonment were already available to him in 1967."

I hope that was specific enough, Jessup.

And if you want specifics about his political lies, corruption, and neo-Nazism, then there is even more evidence.

I'm not denying that Chomsky at one point was an able linguist. I'm sure he didn't become famous for nothing, but he has always been a mendacious linguist and a unpardonable commentator of political affairs. He has spread lies throughout the world that have contributed to the anti-Americanism in the world. There's a rather good argument that he has helped the enemy recruit people to kill American soldiers, by lending the pretext of justification for the lies they tell themselves.

So I recant my attacks on you Thomas, as I obviously could be wrong about what you did or didn't know. You've yet to deny that you were aware of his political views, by the way. I have my suspicions that you're a little more informed than your average member here, so that you are aware but chose not to comment on that aspect of Chomsky's career. I think that was in poor judgment. But if you do deny any such knowledge, then we'll just have to accept that as true. Or you might say that it's perfectly okay not to comment on that part of his career, though that is less attractive a line, since it is the main topic of this thread, first of all, and I think leaving such information out matters in certain cases. Chomsky is such a case. Either way, the book is there to be read by anyone who cares about the truth on the matter. I think you'll find the arguments and the evidence overwhelming. The citations and footnotes are excellent, and you'll find tracking them not very difficult. Try doing the same with any five Chomsky citations, you'll soon be back at another Chomsky book. It's really all absurd when you take it all in.

Common Sense

[Thomas Knierim]

I am aware that Chomsky is a prominent figure in the U.S., but in Germany and Thailand -the countries where I have lived- the average citizen would probably not even recognise his name. With a literary output of two books a year he is an extremely prolific writer, but his political writings didn't make much of a splash outside America, and perhaps -if things are as you say- for a good reason.

My own knowledge of Chomsky's political stuff is limited to a few articles, in which I did not discern mendaciousness. If he has downplayed the Cambodia genocide, I think that's a grave mistake. I have visited the killing fields and the Phnom Penh war museum myself in 1997. It's there for everyone to see.

Cheers, Thomas

[jesupocaplypse]

that'll do. I'd never heard of this Chomsky fella before, but now my interest is sparked and I shall research him meself.

[Ronagon]

Chomsky has been an MIT professor for decades now, and he's the real reason that so much of the world hates us, including people like Michael Moore.

All anti-American sentiment today -- and all the same condemnations that you hear about America's "secret goal" all over the world -- has its origins in Chomsky. Chomsky is who these people have been reading all along, and are just spouting his platitudes.

And so, if you want to attack anti-Americanism at its source, you have to do nothing more than deal with Noam Chomsky.

[sonrisa]

Elections Run by Same Guys Who Sell Toothpaste
By Noam Chomsky
International Relations Center

Tuesday 08 March 2005

Presidential candidate John Kerry's platform and program were way to the right of popular opinion on just about every issue in the 2004 U.S. elections. To the extent that anybody could even understand the program, people didn't favor it. People who voted for Kerry are people who were concerned about the economy and about health issues. Do you think those people could tell you what Kerry's health program was or what he was going to do for the economy? I mean, I couldn't tell you. You have to do a research project to figure out what the program was. And it's not that people failed to know it because they're stupid. It's because it was not presented as something comprehensible.

Of the people who voted for candidate George Bush, the major categories were people who were concerned about terror and about national security. It's claimed that people who were concerned about values voted for Bush, but that's mostly a statistical artifact. When you asked the further question, "What values do you have in mind?" it turned out that the major values were things like, "I don't like this society because it's too materialistic," and "There's too much oppression." Those are the values. Is that what Bush stands for? Getting rid of that? As far as terrorism is concerned, the administration very consciously chose actions that it was expected would increase the threat of terror and, in fact, did. It's not because they want terror, it's just not much of a priority for them.

People who voted for Bush tended to assume that he was in favor of their views, even if the Republican Party platform was diametrically opposed to them. The same was largely true of Kerry voters.

The reason for this is that the parties try to exclude the population from participation. So they don't present issues, policies, agendas, and so on. They project imagery, and people either don't bother or they vote for the image. The Gallup Poll regularly asks, "Why are you voting?" One of the choices is, "I'm voting for the candidate's stand on issues." That was 6% for Bush, and 13% for Kerry-and most of those voters were deluded about the positions of the candidates. So what you have is essentially flipping a coin. Each candidate got approximately 30% of the electorate. Bush got 31%, Kerry got 29%.

The party managers know where the public stands on a whole list of issues. Their funders just don't support them; the interests they represent don't support them. So they project a different kind of image.

If you listen to the presidential debates, you can't figure out what they're saying, and that's on purpose. The last debate was supposed to be about domestic issues. The New York Times commented that Kerry didn't make any hint about possible government involvement in health care programs because that position has, in their words, "no political support." Well, according to the most recent polls, 80% of the population thinks that the government ought to guarantee health care for everyone, and furthermore regard it as a moral obligation. That tells you something about people's values. But there's "no political support."

Why? Because the pharmaceutical industry is opposed, the financial institutions are opposed, the insurance industry is opposed, so there's "no political support." It doesn't matter if 80% of the population regard it as a moral obligation: That doesn't count as political support. It tells you something about the elite conception. You're supposed to vote for the image they're projecting. That's not surprising really. Just ask yourself, "Who runs the elections?"

The elections are run by the same guys who sell toothpaste. They show you an image of a sports hero, or a sexy model, or a car going up a sheer cliff or something, which has nothing to do with the commodity, but it's intended to delude you into picking this one rather than another one. Same when they run elections. But they're assigned that task in order to marginalize the public, and furthermore, people are pretty well aware of it.

For many years, election campaigns here have been run by the public relations industry and each time it's with increasing sophistication. Quite naturally, the industry uses the same technique to sell candidates that it uses to sell toothpaste or lifestyle drugs. The point is to undermine markets by projecting imagery to delude and suppressing information-and similarly, to undermine democracy by the same method.

In the year 2000, there was a huge fuss afterwards about the stolen election, with the Florida chads and the Supreme Court. But ask yourself who was exorcised about it? It was all among a small group of intellectuals. They were the ones who were upset about it. There was never any public resonance for this. In the current election it's being reiterated. There's a big fuss among intellectuals about the vote in Ohio, how the voting machines didn't work, and other things. But the interesting thing is that nobody cares.

Why don't people care if the election is stolen? The reason is that they don't take the election seriously in the first place. They reacted about the way that people react to television ads. It's a mode of delusion. If the Democrats want to succeed in that game, they're just going to have to figure out better ways of delusion.

There is an alternative, and that is to try to run a program that's committed to developing a democratic society in which people's opinions matter.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Ronagon]

sonrisa,

Yes, impressive excerpt you posted... It shows that Chomsky is indeed capable of being honest when he wants to be.

All you have to do to get Chomsky to stop making up quotes and delusionally misrepresenting the true nature of murderous regimes and dictators, is to publish a denuding expose called The Anti-Chomsky Reader, which has just been done, by David Horowitz.

Once Chomsky gets wind of that, then he says to himself in effect, "Uh oh, my reputation is on the line. I'd better start actually speaking the truth again for awhile... until they trust me again, at which time I can just go back to mixing in my usual, indiscriminate, hate-rousing lies against the successful."

Chomsky basically is driven by envy and resentment; he is what I would call an "underdoggist"... And while this might seem all right and good to do, the problem is that there are many underdogs who are underdogs that cannot advance, because they are basically morally corrupt, malignant people, who know how to hide it well. This includes Chomsky himself.

Chomsky's entire career is based on the delusional "payback" of all those who did not bestow the proper accolades upon him for his "genius". All the groups that Chomsky now supports, he only supports because they seek to destroy those organizations that he himself supported earlier on in his life.

Chomsky hates anyone who has achieved success, and he is a master of rationalizing and manufacturing lies to support the illusion of their "evil". Mind you, sometimes he is actually right about who he labels as evil, but he doesn't have any ability whatsoever to know who he's being right about... he only knows that he hates.

Chomsky has painted himself into a very barren corner, career-wise, you see. He has built his entire career off of demonizing any person or organization that has become established... This is how he puts bread on the table. Now, normally, I support people putting bread on the table, but Chomsky's way typically causes way too much undeserved by-product damage.

Chomsky fails to consider that perhaps American leaders may actually be doing the right thing, and that perhaps the American people see that, and do not pick up their protest signs and start throwing rocks and what-not, for that very reason. If they are behaving as what Chomsky illustrates as basically being complacent sheep, then that might just be because they have no real objections, and that they have actually reached that position through true, cognitive choice, and that their decisions and perspective might actually be more sound than his.

[pnklphnts]

Ronagon-
Chomsky has been an MIT professor for decades now, and he's the real reason that so much of the world hates us, including people like Michael Moore.

That is quite possibily the most ignorant thing i have ever heard. One of common sense's points was that Chomsky said that al quedia were freedom fighters. So Al Quedia hates us because Chomsky says that they are freedom fighters? Logical...
I am not going to go into politics on why the rest of the world hates us, because I don't think I need it in this debate, even from a Conservative's point of view this is straightforward.
They hate our goverment, I'm sure theres no argument there. And you think the rest of the world hates us because of the political dissetents who also hate our goverment?

Find a new scape goat.

[sonrisa]

Hey Ron, sorry I missed your reply. I'd forgotten about this topic til pnklpnts brought it up again. I posted that Chomsky article becuz folx were posting that they had never heard of him, so I thought I'd give them a taste, that's all

The points you made could be correct.... or maybe folx are so fed up with the system they don't give a rat's butt anymore....

When you rant against Chomsky you only quote from one source, David Horowitz, a known bushit who is not above playing fast & loose with the truth himself (click here (http://www.mediatransparency.org/people/david_horowitz.htm) & here (http://horowitzwatch.blogspot.com)) which for bushits, is pretty much par for the course, btw. I wouldn't be surprised if this book is the usual bushit character assassination job. You got a problem with Chomsky that's your perogative, but you'd make your case better if you quoted Chomsky, hung him on his own petard, so to speak. I myself have no opinion on Chomsky, good or bad, but I'm certainly not gonna be swayed by some bushit hatchet garbage. Pnklpnts has a point- sounds like they're using Chomsky as a scapegoat.

[pnklphnts]

The Anti-Chomsky Reader Continues a Soviet-Style Assault
Michael Leon
CoreWeekly, January 13, 2005
Noam Chomsky is typically described as one of the great minds of our time.
The 76-year-old MIT professor has spent a lifetime championing human rights, and is also renowned for his linguistics work.

But Chomsky is reviled by the right-wing and is received not much better by mainstream liberals.

Chomsky’s mortal sin: Asserting that state policies ought always to support human rights and peace.

“One moral truism that should not provoke controversy is the principle of universality: We should apply to ourselves the same standards we apply to others—in fact, more stringent ones,” writes Chomsky (Khaleej Times, August 6, 2004).

Now comes the Anti-Chomsky Reader (Encounter Books, 2004). Editors David Horowitz and Peter Collier have complied an anthology purporting to “offer a response and an antidote to the millions of words Noam Chomsky has emitted. …”

The writers attack him personally and so vehemently that the editors’ ambition of a character assassination project comes through as the perversity of their disdain for the man starts to make you feel sorry not for Chomsky, but for these embittered ideologues.

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.

Consider “Whitewashing Dictatorship in Communist Vietnam and Cambodia,” by Stephan J. Morris. Morris writes that Chomsky’s writing is an attempt “… to reconstruct the anti-Western ideology of the New Left; it also is the most extensive rewriting of a period of contemporary history ever produced in a nontotalitarian society.” (pp. 8–9).

A reader ought to do what any rational person advises and read the source material. Read the Political Economy of Human Rights, Volumes I and II and then reread Morris’ chapter, it will make for an amusing day.

As for all the weird personal defamations; they do not merit a response.

Not content to rain ad hominem attacks on Chomsky’s political analyses, the editors take up Chomsky’s linguistics, enlisting opponents who write that his linguistics demonstrate “a deep disregard and contempt for the truth. . . ..” (ix).

Horowitz and Collier are like two old Soviet commissars ordering the banishing of a nonbeliever for counterrevolutionary work and ideological illness.

Chomsky is condemned for “ferocious anti-Americanism.” Horowitz and Collier do not mean that Chomsky opposes the Bill of Rights and classical liberal notions of autonomy. Chomsky’s crime is not toeing the party line and suggesting that citizens comment on perceived defects in state policy.

In fairness, Horowitz and Collier have plenty of company. Consider journalist Andrew Sullivan. After Chomsky’s appearance on HBOs “Real Time with Bill Maher” on November 5, 2004, guest Sullivan let loose, saying that “people who support the Soviet Union, as Chomsky did for so long … do not deserve fundamental respect. ....”

Anyone who reads Chomsky knows his disdain for the Soviet Union. I sent Sullivan two e-mails challenging him on the point, copying in Chomsky.

Reading a Chomsky reply e-mail, I could imagine him laughing as he wrote about denunciations from noted contemporary totalitarians:

“I don’t know if you are aware of how funny the line about my supporting Russia is. Two minutes research would have shown him that I've been strongly anti-Leninist throughout my life, in fact from childhood. He may not know it, but the Kremlin surely did. I was utter anathema there, so much so that my entire professional field [linguistics] was banned. I couldn’t even send technical papers to colleagues and friends in Eastern Europe because it would get them into trouble. It wasn’t until the mid-80s that there were any openings. One of the favorite weeks of my life was in about 1980, when I received two dailies denouncing me furiously for my work on transformational grammar: One was Izvestia, denouncing it as counterrevolutionary, and the other was Argentina’s La Prensa (at the peak of the neo-Nazi military dictatorship), denouncing it as dangerously revolutionary. They’re all basically alike, and Sullivan fits in probably better than he knows.”

Yes, ideologically, Sullivan does fit it with that crowd, as do Horowitz and Collier.

[pnklphnts]

Alexandria, Va.: Some years ago during the Faurisson matter you were quoted in the New York Times as saying that personally you believed that the Holocaust had occurred.

Are you comfortable stating that the Holocaust occurred without qualifying it with an "I belive"?

Do you believe that the question of whether or not the Holocaust occurred is one over which reasonable minds can differ?

Noam Chomsky: I don't recall anything that idiotic in the New York Times, and if there was such a statement, it's slanderous, because it suggests that there is some possibility to the contrary. Anyone who's looked at what I've written, since my first published political writings almost 40 years ago, knows that any such suggestion is about on a par with my saying that I read a statement in the NY Times that you are personally opposed to torture of children.

I'm comfortable with saying exactly what I wrote almost 40 years ago, and have often repeated: the Holocaust was the most fantastic outburst of collective insanity in human history, and we lose our humanity if we even agree to enter into debate with those who try to deny Nazi crimes. Of course, every factual statement -- e.g., that the moon is not made out of green cheese -- has an implicit "I believe" before it. That's what it means for a statement to be empirical -- and if we are serious about it, the conclusions extend even to a large part of mathematics. But that's utterly irrelevant here.