Noam Chomsky - a true genius

I really don't understand how people can be so narrow minded and call a traitor anybody who critique his own society. It's easy to call for war and destruction especially when it's popular thing to do (although that's a sign of sick society), it's hard to go against majority and to say what really needs to be said. That's what real patriots do!

Originally posted by Lucid Lunacy
reply to post by Wrabbit2000

 

All in an educational way, but nothing I'd ever want to see again applied to real world problems. Academics are like that.

I think believing academia to be wholly ineffectual towards solving the World's problems is dangerously apathetic, and is a perfect mindset for being ruled. If not through education, what lens should be look through to solve the issues? Profit $? It seem that is being applied right now, and right now we have real world problems.

The rest of my comment on that is a bit meaningful for saying academics tend not to consider consequence with what looks good on paper, and that's an accurate thing to say in my view. It's not in absolutes and I never meant it to be.

Education is certainly critically important, in fact, it makes or breaks a whole society and that's a fact. Open, honest and two sided presentation of facts while teaching critical thinking to determine for one's self what is accurate and what isn't. That's far from what we have today though, in many ways. Chomsky is one...rather far far side...view of things. To some, he embodies the far left along with a few others around these days.

So in the case of the hippie come latelys that are now running the asylum, I'd say all viewpoints are important to hear and consider.....with some being given far less weight in the end for anything beyond academic interest than others.

Originally posted by Amaeus
Yutz? I don't see you making such an impact that he has with his analysis of modern politics and its effects on society.

Yes .. YUTZ. And yes he made an impact. A bad one.

What reality do you live in where you cannot recognize that the US and Israel are the greatest threat to peace?

What reality do you live in where you cannot recognize propaganda when you see it?

Oh wait, let me guess, you believe a group of nuclear weapon wielding, weak armed, Islamic radicals are the greatest threat to peace, right?

You guessed wrong. You should have read the link I provided instead of ASSuming what you did. If you had read the link you would have seen what I thought was 'the biggest threat'.

Originally posted by FlyersFan

What reality do you live in where you cannot recognize propaganda when you see it?

It's just so ironic considering recognizing propaganda has been such a huge part of Chomsky's "YUTZness"

Propaganda_model

The propaganda model is a conceptual model in political economy advanced by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky that states how propaganda, including systemic biases, function in mass media. The model seeks to explain how populations are manipulated and how consent for economic, social and political policies is "manufactured" in the public mind due to this propaganda.

reply to post by alomaha


You will find more from Noam Chomsky at In These Times. He contributes articles to this publication.

Click here for more information.

I did just the briefest look at Chomsky and found an interview he had in May of this year with Democracy Now. It was a very friendly interview. www.democracynow.org...
Please allow me to quote from the very start, without interuption, the first portion of the interview.

AMY GOODMAN: We return to my conversation with the activist, scholar, author, Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I asked for his assessment of President Obama’s presidency.


NOAM CHOMSKY: In many ways, it’s a little worse than what I expected, but I didn’t expect anything. After I wrote about Obama before the primaries, just looking at his webpage—so, take the Middle East. Take a look at his webpage before the primaries. A lot of stuff about the Middle East. Most of it is how—you know, his undying love for Israel, which just, you know, overcomes everything else. There’s almost no mention of the Palestinians—I mean, a phrase. This was, remember, the time—this was right after the last—the last of the Israeli invasions of Lebanon—actually, the fifth—in 2006. And one of the things he’s proud of about the Middle East and he boasted about is that, he says—in fact, he did very little in the Senate. But one of the things that he did was co-sponsor a resolution in the midst of the war, insisting that the United States do nothing that might impede the Israeli attack on Lebanon until it reaches its objectives, and censuring Syria and Iran because they’re allegedly supporting the resistance to the Israeli attack. That’s his one great achievement with regard to the Middle East. So nothing that’s happened there is any surprise.


With regard to other issues, he was, as he himself put it sometimes, a kind of a blank slate, didn’t say anything. There was vague talk about all kind of nice things. I don’t usually admire Sarah Palin, but when she was making fun of this "hopey-changey" stuff, she was—she was right. There was nothing there. And it was understood by the people who run the political system.

I have to admit that I was a little surprised when he applauded Sarah Palin. Anyway, I hope you find this interesting. Shall I look for more?

The guy is a fraud.
imo


Noam Chomsky’s Puzzling Position on Conspiracies


Morrissey’s essays also cover, at length, his correspondence with American’s pre-eminent dissident Noam Chomsky, regarding the JFK assassination conspiracy and cover-up. Morrisey, who has always been one of Chomsky’s greatest admirers, describes his initial dismay at his hero’s categorical rejection of the mountains of irrefutable evidence that the JFK assassination conspiracy originated at the highest levels of government. He was even more troubled, after their lengthy correspondence (published as Looking for the Enemy in 2008), at Chomsky’s inability to rationally justify his position. He initially tended to side with media critics who believe Chomsky plays some deliberate “left gatekeeping” function (having to do with right wing foundation funding).

open.salon.com...

I think you have to take in consideration that guy is almost a hundred years old. You can clearly see in some later interviews that he lost his edge, which is sad but is very logical. Another sad thing is that I don't see anyone that could take his place, at leastnot anyone of such caliber.

Originally posted by FlyersFan
He's the same YUTZ that said America and Israel are the greatest threat to world peace.
Sorry .. but I'm not impressed with his supposed 'genius'.

Sometimes the truth hurts, but it doesnt make it less true.

The governments of both America and Israel are masters of inciting conflict and wars. If you dont see it, well, then your perception is not very accurate, probably for emotional reasons.

You have people on ATS wanting to go to war a couple of days a week.

reply to post by FlyersFan


And there are many (including me) that agree with that statement. Its pretty obvious to see in fact if you get rid of the indoctrinatoin of having to feel a loyalty to a government or a set of people just because you were born on a certain piece of land.

Originally posted by alomaha
I think you have to take in consideration that guy is almost a hundred years old. You can clearly see in some later interviews that he lost his edge, which is sad but is very logical. Another sad thing is that I don't see anyone that could take his place, at leastnot anyone of such caliber.

Uhhhh...the guy wasn't a 100 in 1963?

Chomsky Declassified

"Before proceeding to more of Batey’s thundering truisms—which inevitably echo Chomsky’s—it is important to reveal some other information about the linguistics professor which his student manages to avoid. The first is the fact that Chomsky has been known to butcher quotations for political advantage. A famous example being a quote by Harry Truman which Chomsky altered in his book American Power and the New Mandarins. This was later exposed by Arthur Schlesinger in a letter to Commentary in December of 1969. Another example would be the misconstruing of the words of Harvard professor Samuel Huntington. Chomsky wrote that the professor said that he advocated demolishing en toto North Vietnamese society. Huntington corrected the record in New York Review of Books (See, 2/26/70)

These two examples are good background to even worse gymnastics by Batey’s mentor. In June of 1977, Chomsky co-wrote (with Edward Herman) a now infamous article in The Nation. It was titled “Distortions at Fourth Hand.” There is no other way to describe this essay except as an apologia for the staggering crimes of the Marxist Pol Pot tyranny that took place in Cambodia after the fall of the regimes of Prince Sihanouk and Lon Nol. At this time a book had been published called Cambodia Year Zero by Francios Ponchaud. It was the first serious look at the terrors that Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge had unleashed on his people. Chomsky and Herman criticized this pioneering work by saying that it played “fast and loose with quotes and numbers” and that since it relied largely on refugee reports, it had to be second hand. (?) They then added that the book had an “anti-communist bias and message.” (?) In this same article, the two authors praised a book by George Hildebrand and Gareth Porter entitled Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution. They wrote that this book presented “a carefully documented study of the destructive American impact on Cambodia and the success of the Cambodian revolutionaries in overcoming it, giving a very favorable picture of their programs and policies, based on a wide range of sources.” This about a murderous regime that was killing off well over one million of its citizens in an attempt to recreate society overnight. Pol Pot’s was one of the greatest genocides per capita in modern history. What makes Chomsky’s performance here even worse is that two years later he and Herman were still discounting and distorting the Khmer Rouge in their book After the Cataclysm. They refer to what Pol Pot did as “allegations of genocide” (p. xi, italics added). On the same page they tried to imply that Western media created the mass executions and deaths. They later added that evidence was faked and reporting was unreliable. (pgs. 166-77) They again attacked Ponchaud’s book by saying “Ponchaud’s ’s own conclusions, it is by now clear, cannot be taken very seriously because he is simply too careless and untrustworthy.” (p. 274) Later, more credible and responsible authors, like William Shawcross, have shown Chomsky’s writing here to be astonishingly false. It is so bad that Chomsky has never let up trying to minimize it. In fact, his whole emphasis on East Timor has been to try and demonstrate that that slaughter was really worse than what happened in Cambodia! The implication being that if that were true it would then somehow minimize his previous pieces of shocking propaganda.

Why is this important? Because besides showing what a poor scholar and historian Chomsky is, it shows that, contrary to his claim of being an anarchist, he went to near ludicrous extremes to soften the shocking crimes of a Marxist totalitarian regime. In any evaluation of Chomsky this episode is of prime importance. Try and find a reference to any of it in Batey’s work.

A second notable aspect of Chomsky’s work is his association with the notorious Holocaust denier Professor Robert Faurisson. When Faurisson’s writing on this subject became public, he was suspended from his position at the University of Lyon. Chomsky then signed a petition in support of Faurisson’s reinstatement. In 1980, he wrote a brief introduction to a book by Faurisson. Chomsky later tried to say that he was personally unacquainted with Faurisson and was only speaking out for academic freedom. But unfortunately for Chomsky and his acolytes—like Batey—this was contradicted by Faurisson himself. For the Frenchman had written a letter to the New Statesman in 1979. It began with: “Noam Chomsky...is aware of the research work I do on what I call the ‘gas chambers and genocide hoax’. He informed me that Gitta Sereny had mentioned my name in an article in your journal. He told me I had been referred to ‘in an extraordinarily unfair way.’”. (This unpublished letter was quoted in the October, 1981 issue of the Australian journal Quadrant.) So again, Chomsky’s later qualifications about his reasons for signing the petition and writing the introduction ring hollow."

www.ctka.net...

Originally posted by BABYBULL24
Why is this important? Because besides showing what a poor scholar and historian Chomsky is, it shows that, contrary to his claim of being an anarchist, he went to near ludicrous extremes to soften the shocking crimes of a Marxist totalitarian regime. In any evaluation of Chomsky this episode is of prime importance. Try and find a reference to any of it in Batey’s work.

That is nothing but an opinion piece. If you actually listened to Chomsky, and understood what Marxism actually is as Chomsky does, you would understand why his comments were not an apology for anyone but simply the facts.

Marxist totalitarian regime? Obviously comments from someone who has zero clue as to what Marxism is. But that is what the state wants you to believe.

The problem is authoritarian regimes have used and abused Marxist ideology for their own agenda, when you understand Marxism you understand who is and who isn't telling the truth. A simple way to understand the truth is to actually read the source, but people rely on other peoples opinions of the source, opinions based on other peoples opinions, opinions going back decades based on out of context quotes.

Chomsky is not a Marxist but it's impossible as a LibSoc to not need a good understanding of it, as anarchism and Marxism are so closely tied in history. Both the Marxists and Anarchists wanted the same thing, the free association of producers, socialism. Both were working class movements for socialism, the workers ownership of the means of production. Both worked together until Marx had Bakunin expelled from the International Working Mens Association.

Originally posted by FlyersFan
He's the same YUTZ that said America and Israel are the greatest threat to world peace.
Sorry .. but I'm not impressed with his supposed 'genius'.

Sounds pretty spot on to me..... and Very smart

reply to post by alomaha


Chomsky is probably one of the greatest debaters you'll ever see.

His views however are not consistent with the 'bigger' picture.

He is only presenting a relatively orthodox view of reality - he is only half way down the rabbit hole so to speak.

Still enjoy listening to him though - a fine intellectual.

Peace

Originally posted by Amaeus
I care not what you have to say.

The truth hurts. Your loss for not wanting to understand it.

Enjoy your life, or lack of it, I should say.

My life is just fine. And your comment is very strange and out of place.

Originally posted by Bodhi911
the governments of both America and Israel are masters of inciting conflict and wars.

If you had bothered to read what I posted ... you'd see that I don't deny that at all.
Chomsky said that Israel and America are the MOST dangerous things on the planet.
That's absurd. I said that STUPIDITY .. EGO .. CORPORATE $$ ... RELIGIOUS FANATICISM ..
they are all equally dangerous and it's impossible to say what the MOST dangerous thing
on the planet is.

If you dont see it, well, then your perception is not very accurate, probably for emotional reasons.

You are failing to understand what I posted. That's you not being accurate.
Probably for your own emotional reasons.


Chomsky ... biased .... and wrong.

And it goes across the board. In fact, it goes through the whole so-called Libertarian ideology. It may sound nice on the surface but if you think it through, it's just a call for corporate tyranny. It takes away any barrier to corporate tyranny.

Noam Chomsky on Ron Paul

He's commenting on a subject that he has no clue of. Libertarian ideology is anti-corporatist. Chomsky is against individualism or individual freedom. He's the quintessential progressive liberal.

/TOA

reply to post by The Old American


Maybe in America...

Chomsky: The term libertarian as used in the US means something quite different from what it meant historically and still means in the rest of the world. Historically, the libertarian movement has been the anti-statist wing of the socialist movement. Socialist anarchism was libertarian socialism.

In the US, which is a society much more dominated by business, the term has a different meaning. It means eliminating or reducing state controls, mainly controls over private tyrannies. Libertarians in the US don't say let's get rid of corporations. It is a sort of ultra-rightism.

Having said that, frankly, I agree with them on a lot of things. On the drug issue, they tend to oppose state involvement in the drug war, which they correctly regard as a form of coercion and deprivation of liberty. You may be surprised to know that some years ago, before there were any independent left journals, I used to write mainly for the Cato Institute journal.

www.zcommunications.org...

Etymology

The word stems from the French word libertaire. The use of the word "libertarian" to describe a set of political positions can be tracked to the French cognate, libertaire, which was coined in 1857 by French anarchist Joseph Déjacque who used the term to distinguish his libertarian communist approach from the mutualism advocated by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.[37] Hence libertarian has been used by some as a synonym for left anarchism since the 1890s.[38] The term libertarianism is commonly considered to be a synonym of anarchism in countries other than the US.[9]

en.wikipedia.org...

en.wikipedia.org...

I love Noam Chomsky though often I drift off listening to him, reading his intellect is much better. The majority of Righties reaction to him always makes me both laugh and feel really sad. And the sad fact is a too large of a portion of the Left has never heard of him or even the concepts (realities) he espouses. On the surface most Westerners never think about Capitalism beyond buying goods at a store, 'job creators' and the Stock Market. They don't understand that for Western Capitalism to work it must be the opposite of a Free Market.

Western Capitalism can only exist in a pyramid built on exploitation, war and propaganda to brainwash people into accepting the notion that we do what we do in the interest of democracy and freedom. One only need look at the history of Latin America and then the outcomes of Western involvement in those countries and the trend of demonizing Revolutionary Leaders that won't play ball, to know what Western Capitalism really is. Or for that matter what we're doing in the ME right now. Hell, even on our own soil.