It has shown up on the Boston Globe and the Washington Post best-seller lists, and in Canada, it has rocketed to seventh on the best-seller list. According to the Chicago Tribune , Noam Chomsky is cited more than any other living author—and he shows up eighth on the all-time most-cited list, the paper says, right after Sigmund Freud.
Chomsky has achieved rock-star status among the young and hip. Rock groups like Bad Religion and Pearl Jam proudly quote his writings in interviews and in their music. Chomsky, now a year-old grandfather living in suburban Massachusetts, has worked for decades to win that cachet. Avram Noam was born in Philadelphia in His parents, William and Elsie Chomsky, had fled from czarist oppression in Russia to the City of Brotherly Love, where William established himself as a Hebrew scholar and grammarian.
Radical politics aroused the young Noam—at ten, he wrote a school newspaper editorial on the Spanish Civil War, lamenting the rise of fascism, and two years later he embraced the anarchism that he still adheres to today.
By the age of 16, the bright, ambitious youth had enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania, where he eventually earned a Ph.
Passed over for a teaching position at Harvard, he landed in at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he has remained ever since. Most linguistics professors would have toiled in obscurity in a science-and-industry school like MIT. Not Chomsky. In the s, he brashly challenged psychologist B.
This idea—that grammar is hardwired in the labyrinth of DNA—shook the walls of linguistics departments across the globe. Chomsky promoted his theory tirelessly, defending it in countless symposia and scholarly reviews.
With this fame as a base, the professor proceeded to wander far from his area of expertise. Such uses of fame, ironically, are common in the country Chomsky attacks so relentlessly. Instead, the racism of the settlers was the key factor. To this day, Chomsky still speaks positively about the Zionist outposts without really addressing concerns about the class nature of the Israeli state.
Guardian, May 14, Chomsky has never written systematically about how his brand of small-scale socialism will be achieved. This would require a discussion of matters such as human agency and economic policy that seem to matter little to him. For despite his affiliation with a movement that wrote a vast literature on such questions, Chomsky himself often seems content to proclaim its superiority to state socialism on face value.
Understandably, this attitude often veers off into a kind of moralizing that is symptomatic of the mood of the intelligentsia at the beginning of the Cold War, when both "camps" seemed equally evil--the very time indeed that Noam Chomsky was maturing politically and intellectually.
Barsky comments:. Among those figures he was drawn to, George Orwell is especially fascinating, both because of the impact that he had on a broad spectrum of society and the numerous contacts and acquaintances he had in the libertarian left.
Chomsky refers to Orwell frequently in his political writings, and when one reads Orwell's works, the reasons for his attraction to someone interested in the Spanish Civil War from an anarchist perspective become clear. Armed with Orwell's sometimes troubling "pox on both your houses" outlook, Chomsky has often tended to evoke the beleaguered hero of "" who faced a world divided into equally evil totalitarian powers. This mindset shapes his discourse on the double-speak of an entire generation of US administrations.
Unfortunately, this stance cannot do justice to the underlying dynamic of the clash between the superpowers, which is much more of a function of divergent class interests than blind worship of the State. In all fairness to Chomsky, as we shall see momentarily, this perspective has not led him to blur over the dominant and aggressive character of the Anglo-American imperialism, as it did Orwell who eventually collaborated with the British secret police against the "enemies" of freedom.
Indeed, much of the wrath directed against Chomsky seems tied up with his refusal to bend an inch toward the kind of free world triumphalism Francis Fukuyama upheld.
If anything, Chomsky's antagonism toward American imperialism has only deepened since the end of the cold war. For Chomsky, the cold war was essentially a confrontation along North-South lines rather than East-West.
In this year war of conquest against colonized peoples, anarchism or left communism rarely played a prominent role. But this does not prevent Chomsky from identifying with those in struggle, whatever their ideology.
Turning to "World Orders Old and New," based on lectures given at the American University in Cairo in , we find a remarkable analysis of the cold war that, despite Chomsky's hostility to the Kremlin, elucidates the one-sided nature of the conflict.
Indeed, the fearlessness of the Czech students' "Velvet Revolution" might just be explained by the refusal of the Czech army to shoot to kill. Despite his animosity toward the USSR, he is even-handed about its place in history. In contrast to European and American imperialism, the Soviet Union appeared to operate on principles other than profit.
During the period of Soviet "exploitation" of Eastern Europe, the satellite countries actually had a higher standard of living than the mother country. For Chomsky, the collapse of the Soviet Union did not usher in the emancipation of humanity.
Instead, without the USSR as a counter-balance, imperialism has been able to step up the level of exploitation in the third world, including Nicaragua where the Sandinista revolution had been toppled:. It is only fair to add that the wonders of the free market have opened alternatives, not only for rich landowners, speculators, corporations and other privileged sectors, but even for the starving children who press their faces against car windows at street corners at night, pleading for a few cents to survive.
Describing the miserable plight of Managua's street children David Werner, the author of "Where There is No Doctor" and other books on health and society, writes that "marketing shoe cement to children has become a lucrative business," and imports from multinational suppliers are rising nicely as "shopkeepers in depressed communities do a thriving business with weekly refills of the children's little bottles" for glue-sniffing said to "take away hunger.
Although Chomsky has not written much in the way of a theoretical appreciation of the short-lived Sandinista revolution, there is little doubt that this country engaged his sympathies in a way that other countries with Marxist leaderships did not. Chomsky spoke out tirelessly to defend Nicaragua during the late s.
Now, to return to Nicaragua and to return to the real world, I never described the Sandinistas as perfect democrats or whatever your phrase was. What I did was quote the World Bank, OXFAM, the Jesuit Order and others who recognize that what they were doing was to use the meager resources of that country for the benefit of the poor majority.
That's why health standards shot up. That's why literacy shot up. That's why agrarian reform proceeded, the only place in the region. That's why subsistence agriculture improved and consumption of food increased and that's why we attacked them.
It had nothing to do with democracy. Chomsky did not allow his ideological predispositions to interfere with his perception of reality. Anybody who visited Nicaragua during this period, including Chomsky, came away with a deep appreciation for the dedication and honesty of the FSLN. Chomsky's own daughter Avi was a volunteer with Tecnica, an organization that involved hundreds of others, included the author of this article.
After the downfall of the Central American revolution, the enemies of US imperialism have been much easier to demonize. While tens of thousands of US citizens participated in Sister Cities projects for Nicaragua or raised money for the FMLN in El Salvador, solidarity on behalf of Iraq or Yugoslavia has been much more difficult to organize for obvious reasons.
There has been plenty of tampering before. In fact, one case that comes to mind is kind of relevant at the moment: Richard Nixon had pretty good reason to believe that he had won the election.
Nixon, who was not the most delightful person in the history of Presidential politics, decided to put the welfare of the country over his personal ambition. The executive has been almost totally purged of any critical independent voices—nothing left but sycophants. A striking example recently was the firing of the inspectors general when they started looking into the incredible swamp Trump created in Washington.
This kind of thing goes on and on. Well, there are some new things which are not being much discussed. Israel has moved very far to the right. The current so-called peace agreements have nothing to do with peace agreements. Because he says so. The United States brought it to the Security Council and could get virtually no support. The same is true of every international agreement. The arms-control regime has been torn to shreds, with great danger to us as well as everyone else. Well, having an arms-control regime is different than not having one.
Trump has been tearing every piece of it to shreds. It has to be ratified by next February. If Trump wins the election or refuses to leave office, it will be gone by February. The other major threat to human survival in any recognizable form is environmental catastrophe, and, there, Trump is alone in the world.
Most countries are doing at least something about it—not as much as they should be, but some of them rather significant, some less so. The United States has pulled out of the Paris Agreement; is refusing to do any of the actions that might help poorer countries deal with the problem; is racing toward maximizing the use of fossil fuels; and, at the same time, just opened the last major nature reserve in the United States for drilling.
He has to make sure that we maximize the use of fossil fuels, race to the precipice as quickly as possible, and eliminate the regulations, which not only limit the dangerous effects but also protect Americans. Step by step, eliminate everything that might protect Americans or that will preserve the possibility of overcoming the very serious threat of environmental catastrophe.
There is nothing like this in history. Can you think of anyone in human history who has dedicated his efforts to undermining the prospects for survival of organized human life on earth?
In fact, some of the productions of the Trump Administration are just mind-boggling. What leading figure in human history has dedicated policy toward maximizing the use of fossil fuels and cutting down on regulations that mitigate the disaster? Name one.
But, with Trump, it seems like perhaps his personal desire for money is driving American foreign policy now. Not at all. For example, the one real legislative achievement is the tax scam, which was just a giveaway to the very rich and the corporate sector.
We can go right down the list. Take a look at the last Davos conference, in January. There were three keynote speakers. The first, of course, was Trump. But when he spoke, they gave him rousing applause. For example, we just went through two of the quadrennial extravaganzas, the Conventions.
Lots of coverage of them. Although his politics made him famous, Chomsky has made no substantial contribution to political theory. Almost all his political books are collections of short essays, interviews, speeches, and newspaper opinion pieces about current events. The one attempt he made at a more thoroughgoing analysis was the work he produced in with Edward S. This book, however, must have been a disappointment to his followers.
Media studies is a huge field ranging from traditional defenses of the news media as the fourth estate of the democratic system, to the most arcane cultural analyses produced by radical postmodernist theorists. Chomsky and Herman gave no indication they had digested any of it. Instead, their book offers a crude analysis that would have been at home in an old Marxist pamphlet from the s.
This is true, they maintain, whether the media operate in liberal democracies or under totalitarian regimes. The only difference is that in communist and other authoritarian societies, it is clear to everyone that the media are instruments of the dominant elite.
C homsky and Herman argue that these attacks on authority are always very limited and the claims of free speech are merely smokescreens for inculcating the economic and political agendas of the privileged groups that dominate the economy.
There are, however, two glaring omissions from their analysis: the role of journalists and the preferences of media audiences. Nowhere do the authors explain how journalists and other news producers come to believe they are exercising their freedom to report the world as they see it. Chomsky and Herman simply assert these people have been duped into seeing the world through a pro-capitalist ideological lens.
Nor do they attempt any analysis of why millions of ordinary people exercise their free choice every day to buy newspapers and tune in to radio and television programs. Chomsky and Herman fail to explain why readers and viewers so willingly accept the world-view of capitalist media proprietors. They provide no explanation for the tastes of media audiences.
It is also a stance that reveals an arrogant and patronising contempt for everyone who does not share their politics. The disdain inherent in this outlook was revealed during an exchange between Chomsky and a questioner at a conference in reproduced in Chomsky, Understanding Power , :.
In short, Chomsky believes that only he and those who share his radical perspective have the ability to rise above the illusions that keep everyone else slaves of the system. Only he can see things as they really are. Since the European Enlightenment a number of prominent intellectuals have presented themselves as secular Christ-like figures, lonely beacons of light struggling to survive in a dark and corrupting world. This is a tactic that has often delivered them followers among students and other idealistic youths in late adolescence.
The phenomenon has been most successful when accompanied by an uncomplicated morality that its constituency can readily absorb. In his ruminations on September 11, Chomsky reiterated his own apparently direct and simple moral principles. Unfortunately, like his declaration of the responsibility of the intellectual to speak the truth and expose lies, Chomsky himself has consistently demonstrated an inability to abide by his own standards.
Among his most provocative recent demands are for American political and military leaders to be tried as war criminals. He has often couched this in terms of the failure by the United States to apply the same standards to itself as it does to its enemies.
No matter how great the crimes of the regimes he has favored, such as China, Vietnam, and Cambodia under the communists, Chomsky has never demanded their leaders be captured and tried for war crimes. Instead, he has defended these regimes for many years to the best of his ability through the use of evidence he must have realized was selective, deceptive, and in some cases invented. The left was willing to tolerate the most hideous acts of state terrorism by the Saddam Hussein regime, but was implacable in its hostility to intervention by Western democratic governments in the interests of both their own security and the emancipation of the Iraqi people.
This is hypocrisy writ large. T he long political history of this aging activist demonstrates that double standards of the same kind have characterized his entire career. Chomsky has declared himself a libertarian and anarchist but has defended some of the most authoritarian and murderous regimes in human history. His political philosophy is purportedly based on empowering the oppressed and toiling masses but he has contempt for ordinary people who he regards as ignorant dupes of the privileged and the powerful.
He has defined the responsibility of the intellectual as the pursuit of truth and the exposure of lies, but has supported the regimes he admires by suppressing the truth and perpetrating falsehoods. He has endorsed universal moral principles but has only applied them to Western liberal democracies, while continuing to rationalize the crimes of his own political favorites.
0コメント