opinions on chomsky

BUT!

Chomsky for the husband list, he is grebt.

I like Chomsky sometimes, but I think his political "realism" becomes blinding at times - he seems to assume nations always do what's "in their interest," as though that were easily definable.

Manufacturing Consent is a classic.

The fact that he is not a major public icon is proof that of one of his main theses is true. The major media don't want you to know about him. Why? Because if too many people listened to Chomsky talking about how huge corporations are running the world and especially the major media, people might begin to question of our so-called "freedom."

Some fundamental truths underlying Chomsky's reasoning are:

1. Our government lies to us
2. Corporations and the government unite to create a ruling elite
3. The two major political parties are identical with regard to most issues that affect us because they're really just two factions of "the business party."
4. The news media do not give a full, balanced picture of political events
5. Even though the United States is called a democracy, most of us are locked out of any meaningful participation in the decision-making process.

Check out his book "Necessary Illusions — Thought Control In Democratic Socieities."

Chomsky's propaganda model explains how the people who OWN the country RULE the country, as they believe is their right:

Filter 1: Money - great wealth, media owned by a few conglomerates, which, like other companies, only exist to make a profit.
Filter 2: Advertising is their primary source of income
Filter 3: Reliance on Information provided by the government, business and "experts" with ties to both
Filter 4: Flak - as a means of disciplining the media (tow the company line, if you want to work)
Filter 5: Anti-(fill in the blank) as a national religion and control mechanism. This used to be Anti-Communism but since the fall of the Soviet Union, it's more likely to be Anti-Terrorism.

The media's position is not to inform the public, but to SELL the public. Chomsky asks, "Why is it that the propaganda system is geared to suppressing any inquiry into the role of corporations in foreign policy?"

"and for next week's book club, we'll be reading The Lovely Bones"

"Sheesh, groupies."

By MARC SANTORA
Published: September 22, 2006

At a news conference after his spirited address to the United Nations on Wednesday, President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela expressed one regret: not having met that icon of the American left, the linguist Noam Chomsky, before his death.

Yesterday, a call to Mr. Chomsky’s house found him very much alive. In fact, he was struggling through “10,000 e-mails” he had received since the remarks by Mr. Chávez, who urged Americans to read one of Mr. Chomsky’s books instead of watching Superman and Batman movies, which he said “make people stupid.”

At 77, Mr. Chomsky has joined the exclusive club of luminaries, like the actor Abe Vigoda and Mark Twain, who were reported dead before their time, only to contradict the reports by continuing to breathe.

“I continue to work and write,” he said, speaking from his house in Lexington, Mass.

Mr. Chávez, while addressing world leaders at the United Nations, flagged “Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance,” which Mr. Chomsky published in 2003, as a must-read. Mr. Chomsky said he was glad that Mr. Chávez liked his book, but he would not describe himself as flattered.

“We should look at ourselves through our own eyes and not other people’s eyes,” he said.

Mr. Chomsky said he had taken no offense at Mr. Chávez’s remarks about his being dead. In fact, Mr. Chávez’s promotion of the book propelled it yesterday into Amazon’s top 10 best sellers.

While retired from teaching full time, Mr. Chomsky still goes to his office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, occasionally lecturing and also working on a new book.

At the United Nations, the remarks by Mr. Chávez on Wednesday set off a firestorm that almost overshadowed the visit by Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose country has been under intense global scrutiny for its nuclear ambitions. From the podium of the General Assembly, the Venezuelan leader said he smelled lingering sulfur, left by President Bush, who had spoken there the day before and whom he branded “the devil.”

Mr. Chávez continued mocking Mr. Bush yesterday in Harlem, where he announced the expansion of a program to send cheap Venezuelan oil to poor families in New York. He told a group gathered on the street that the president was an “ex-alcoholic” who had “a lot of hang-ups” and tried to walk “like John Wayne.”

Mr. Chomsky said that he would not choose to use the same harsh oratory, but added that the Venezuelan leader was simply expressing the views of many in the world. And he said Mr. Chávez’s anger was understandable.

“The Bush administration backed a coup to overthrow his government,” he said. “Suppose Venezuela supported a military coup that overthrew the government of the United States? Would we think it was a joke?”

Proving that he was still up for a lively debate, Mr. Chomsky then went on to talk about income inequality in Latin America, the history of the United Nations, Iraq, Iran, Fidel Castro and, finally, the man who so fervently admires him, Mr. Chávez.

“I have been quite interested in his policies,” Mr. Chomsky said. “Personally, I think many of them are quite constructive.” Most important, he said, Mr. Chávez seems to have the overwhelming support of the people in his country. “He has gone through six closely supervised elections,” he said.

So would Mr. Chomsky oblige Mr. Chávez’s wish for a meeting, helping ensure that the South American leader will not have that regret to live with anymore?

“I would be happy to meet him,” Mr. Chomsky said.

But that encounter may have to wait: Mr. Chávez was to return to Venezuela as soon as today.

"There's by now a small industry on the thesis that the administration had something to do with 9-11. I've looked at some of it, and have often been asked. There's a weak thesis that is possible though extremely unlikely in my opinion, and a strong thesis that is close to inconceivable. The weak thesis is that they knew about it and didn't try to stop it. The strong thesis is that they were actually involved. The evidence for either thesis is, in my opinion, based on a failure to understand properly what evidence is. Even in controlled scientific experiments one finds all sorts of unexplained phenomena, strange coincidences, loose ends, apparent contradictions, etc. Read the letters in technical science journals and you'll find plenty of samples. In real world situations, chaos is overwhelming, and these will mount to the sky. That aside, they'd have had to be quite mad to try anything like that. It would have had to involve a large number of people, something would be very likely to leak, pretty quickly, they'd all be lined up before firing squads and the Republican Party would be dead forever. That would have happened whether the plan succeeded or not, and success was at best a long shot; it would have been extremely hard to predict what would happen."

What do you make of that, Dickass?

(as a political guy)

LOL "overwhelming."

The book or the movie? They're very different.

I revered the guy in high school. Out of curiosity, for anyone who would call him classic without qualification (and I realize there's not much of that on this thread): What is your actual opinion of anarcho-syndicalism/libertarian-socialism as a practical political system for global societies? I mean, most academic lefty types I know can't stand (and would be the first to go in) small towns, let alone very small-scale communities where everyone knows everyone and every decision is made by majority opinion/peer pressure. (And that's not even getting into economic or security issues.) Also, do you think the PLO would have made an effective, just, stable, and democratic government in the 80s and 90s?

Classic for bringing attention to the cause of East Timor.

chavez is over-the-top but its a bark/bite thing - he hasnt stopped sending us oil!! its shitty to make moves with casto & abamubenniennijad and i know the 'but they do it too!' argument suxx but honestly - difft from us w/ china?? saudis?? every modern country in the world does this shit. id prefer nobody did, but what can you say. its too bad he mouths off & gets in the news as another crazy pinko commie or whatever while michelle bachelet (who i LOVE) gets virtually no press outside of 'oh a woman president isnt that cute'. my boss at my old job, his wife was venezuealan & from one of the richest families there & she HATED chavez, whined all day 'he iss a COMM-you-nisst!' & how he was making her parents' friends' mansions into homeless shelters & soup kitchens - dont know if this was metaphorical or nude spock conspiracy theory or actually true

* Politically, it was interesting to be in a country not my own where questions of leadership and policy were so central, though in large part this was certainly an accident of timing, visiting as I did between the time of the petitions for a referendum and the actual referendum itself, due on August 15th. Chavez is certainly an astonishingly polarizing figure, and though I abstained from any direct political discussion in favor of observation -- and certainly many citizens are a bit tired of it all as well -- there's little doubt as to the deep-seated emotions on either side. Chavez definitely is playing all his cards as he can in the run-up to the vote -- besides the main 'VOTA NO' campaign and his use of state radio and television for interviews or appearances, of himself or his supporters (more than once I noted great store was placed in speeches from activists or academics from other countries, including the US apparently) are any number of associated campaigns or public testimonials from the various mayors (if that is the best equivalent for alcaldes) of Caracas's many neighborhoods or the governors of the various states. The 'SI' campaigners are no less visible if not in a completely advantageous PR spot, and the vote figures to be extremely close. Chavez certainly emphasizes a leftist approach and aims at a populist image that specifically cultivates poorer voters, while also tying into a general anti-Bush sentiment as well, but there appears to be some question of how much of that latter sentiment is romanticized by either Chavez or his followers. There weren't any street fights or riots or the like that I saw or heard about from others, so the idea that the whole city or country is wracked with turmoil certainly doesn't apply.

I gather that the general atmosphere remains the same, but I'd be happy to be corrected.

http://www.icecreamusa.com/products/images/line/G_NEW.jpg

I just got a call from an MSNBC booker. She wanted to know if I wanted to go on the air to talk about Hugo Chavez. Apparently, he went off on some rant at the UN.

I said, "Why would I? Who cares about Hugo Chavez?"

The booker said, "well, it's all over talk radio and the blogs." Talk radio, of course, being Rush Limbaugh and company. The blogs, of course, being the wingnutosphere, happily promoting the latest Horrible Dictator Who Says Mean Things About Bush (unlike the ones in the Middle East, Uzbekistan, and Pakistan who are our "allies").

I said, "Well, this is a stupid topic. It means nothing. I am focused on things that actually matter to us."

"Is there another liberal blogger who is writing about it?"

"No. We're all focused on important things."

She was incredulous -- "Really?"

"Really. Do you actually think this is important?" I asked, suddenly incredulous myself.

"I don't have time to talk about this," she sniffed.

I'm on the road, so perhaps I had missed some outpouring of pro-Chavez blogging on the left. But a look at my RSS reader doesn't show much of anything, and I've got about 80 blogs on it. The feeds don't always update regularly, so perhaps something was missed.

But really, this is much ado about nothing. So Chavez said mean things about Bush. Bush and his administration has said mean things about Chavez and about lots of other world leaders.

Who gives a shit what Venezuela thinks about the United States? I swear, for a country that goes around invading countries it doesn't like, it sure has a thin skin. Republicans, Democrats, and the media are all freaking out.

Because the president of fucking Venezuela doesn't like Bush.

Sigh...

p.s. Memo to Chuck Rangel -- if you don't like world leaders saying mean things about the United States in your congressional district, then perhaps it's time to move the United Nations somewhere where people aren't such wilting flowers.

So, when Chomsky talks about Chavez as being 'overwhelmingly popular' he's counting this 80% impoverished population as all being pro-Chavez, and then however many of the remaining 20% who support him also. If that's true, that is certainly far more support than any leader in the US or UK could ever hope for. But I don't know whether Chavez actually has total support from the poor he sets himself up as the champion of. It's hard to tell from the results of elections in which so few people voted.

I mean much of Latin America is looking to Chavez, and probably much of the rest of the world too. I think the admin. is upset because it's genuinely concerned Chavez could rally people against it. Yeah, it's not like Venezuela's about to stop selling us oil yet, but I wouldn't take it lightly.

Course maybe that's just me wanting to read the speech into my general feeling of Bush's foreign policy coming back to bite him in the ass.

“We should look at ourselves through our own eyes and not other people’s eyes,” he said.

i have mixed feelings about chomsky's writing and advocacy, but i find his failure to ever admit to anything resembling vanity or even self-interest really ridiculous.

he was a big deal to me in high school/early college. increasingly though i think he sees his role as a polemicist more than a fair-minded analyst of global politics. i think he is like howard zinn, in that he is more interested in portraying a perspective obscured by the mainstream media than he is in portraying an accurate perspective.

lol. poor chomsky lapsing into self-parody in his old age. i don't think the part that mordy posted is that stupid though. there should be other ways of "dealing" with iran besides sanctions, which are really brutal toward the iranian people to say the least.

it's deeply stupid bc it pretends as though the UN and the US have gone immediately into sanctions and not negotiated or met w/ Iranian leaders at all, when in fact they have met numerous times and sanctions became popular specifically as a response to Iranian unwillingness to curtail their program. in chomsky fantasy land though everyone wants to do the right thing, it's just that the great satan won't let them.

you people know fuck all about chavez and the politics of latin america.

but that's always been my problem with Chomsky - he's pretty sharp as an analyst of US policy, but he puts rosy glasses on whenever he looks at "the other side." He acts like only the US applies realpolitik but not other countries.

― i don't even have an internet (Hurting 2), Wednesday, June 5, 2013 9:59 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ding ding ding (he's hardly alone in this though)

i agree with a lot that he has written, of course

but he seems like one awfully haughty, awfully humorless dude. would hate to be at a wedding w/ him at my table

he was a big deal to me in high school/early college. increasingly though i think he sees his role as a polemicist more than a fair-minded analyst of global politics. i think he is like howard zinn, in that he is more interested in portraying a perspective obscured by the mainstream media than he is in portraying an accurate perspective.

― the strange and important sound of the synthesizer (Treeship)

this.

i would agree w/ treeship (tho i never want to read another word of zinn, ugh) except i get the sense that a lot of chomsky's readers aren't really interested in getting different perspectives, they're just taking all their cues from him and no one else. chomsky's benevolent-alien-looking-down-on-earth perspective is interesting and valuable in a lot of ways, but it's also not quite enough.

in a way i agree with him that it's wrong to frame JFK as the hero of cuban missile crisis when it's more like everyone's guilty (and khrushchev, as implicated in stalin's crimes as anyone, turns out to sort of be the only plausible hero). but it's not really fair or constructive to write (as chomsky does) as if the whole incident took place in a vacuum and there hadn't already been a cold war for 15 years and JFK weren't being pushed by everyone in his cabinet to tell the soviets to go to hell -- it wasn't just about him 'maintaining his macho image.'

I sort of feel that a lot of what Chomsky says is vulnerable to degrading into conspiracy theories. Not that he is a conspiracy theorist, but having got hold of his ideas, it is very easy to turn into someone who, at parties for example, talks about how the meeja is evil, yeah, and America is evil, yeah?

I get the impression that a lot of people itt think they were stuck in this stage when they were younger.

otm all of that. he was literally the least macho person in the room. khrushchev probably the most likeable person involved but on the other hand you can see some of the reasons he was removed in two years. he got what he wanted but he had to keep it a secret and meanwhile he freaked everybody out. xp

(xp to me) Not that you couldn't say that about, you know, any writer - but some seem particularly vulnerable to it?

http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/08/13/after_multiple_denials_cia_admits_to_snooping_on_noam_chomsky

wow, i missed chomsky referring to hugo chavez as a representative of an 'indigenous, tribal society.' yeesh.

http://inthesetimes.com/article/15702/obama_doctrine_exceptionalism_isolationism/

well we should organize a big field trip to see this one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9c4xJEP6eI

that looks fun, i'm down http://i44.tinypic.com/j8cx3b.png

http://critical-theory.com/nfl-player-quits-because-know-noam-chomsky/?utm_source=feedly

from the ap story:

Moffitt majored in sociology at Wisconsin and said his world view was really shaped over the last couple of years when he began studying the writings of the Dalai Lama and Noam Chomsky.

He hopes to become a public figure in philosophy and politics.

Moffitt said he’s looking forward to speaking his mind on the radio and in podcasts he’s going to produce.

Gondry film whizzes by in 88 minutes, lotsa surprises. Wonderful.

is it mostly about his language stuff?

i mean language/learning stuff i guess

i can't wait to see it! he's not even my favorite linguist but i am looking forward to brainy ideas + goofy/twee animation

rip

Don't say "rip" unless you mean it

yes, language/learning/linguistics is a big part of it, from reading his father's scholarly work on old Hebrew texts at age ten onward. But other things too.

also about Gondry's language stuff, being misunderstood by Noam and others etc

ooooh yes
must see

If you spell-check Comiskey Park on Word, the first suggestion is Chomsky.

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-limits-of-discourse

wow don't ever answer any of this tool's emails

rofl Sam Harris

LOL can't believe he let that guy troll him for that long. Nearly every sentence from Sam Harris is soaked in aggressive accusations.

Before engaging on this topic, I’d like to encourage you to approach this exchange as though we were planning to publish it.

^ gonna try this line on all interlocutors henceforth to encourage them to have the proper frame of mind

The idea of publishing personal correspondence is pretty weird, a strange form of exhibitionism – whatever the content. Personally, I can’t imagine doing it. However, if you want to do it, I won’t object.

Haaaa

I assume Harris was planning to publish all along? If it wound up being a real discussion, he'd have managed to force the debate he wanted. If not, then it's a "cautionary tale."

I heard Harris on a podcast recently and he's a truly terrible 'moral philosopher' or whatever he's trying to pass himself off as. Awful analogies, constantly begs the question.

yeah jmm - transparently planning, i would say

presumably a rational person would only do that if they were confident it would only score them points with an audience they already had in their pocket, for sticking it to the aloof outmoded authoritah or whatever

I found Harris' approach fairly magnanimous, really.

lol sam harris, what a buffoon. so he basically emails noam to remind him of the accusations sammy boy has written about him, yet expects to be given the benefit of the doubt. can't believe noam took his sheep-act for so long

lol at Sam Harris, with his undergrad philosophy major mind circa 1980 encased in amber

Asked whether he anticipated any major changes in U.S. foreign policy under a new administration, Chomsky predicted a succeeding Democratic administration would likely carry on President Obama’s policy of relying on “primarily the drone global assassination campaign,” which he described as breaking “new records in international terrorism,” but had this even more dire prediction about a Republican as commander-in-chief:

The situation with a Republican administration is much less clear. The party has drifted far off the spectrum of parliamentary politics. If the pronouncements of the current crop of candidates can be taken seriously, the world could be facing deep trouble. Take, for example, the nuclear deal with Iran. Not only are they unanimously opposed to it but they are competing on how quickly to bomb Iran. It’s a very strange moment in American political history, and in a state with awesome powers of destruction, that should cause not a little concern.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/33519-the-empire-of-chaos-an-interview-with-noam-chomsky

I don't think there was anything in Requiem for the American Dream that wasn't in the other two Chomsky documentaries I've seen, but a good introduction/summation (supposedly his last lengthy interview for a film).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI_Ik7OppEI

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/06/09/a-case-against-america/

Chomsky’s book is not an objective account of the past. It is a polemic designed to awaken Americans from complacency. America, in his view, must be reined in, and he makes the case with verve and self-confident assertion, even if factual details are sometimes selective or scarce.

Yet Who Rules the World? is also an infuriating book because it is so partisan that it leaves the reader convinced not of his insights but of the need to hear the other side. It doesn’t help that the book is a collection of previously published essays with no effort to trim the repetitive points that pop up in chapter after chapter. Nor was much attempt made to update earlier chapters in light of later events. The Iranian nuclear accord and the Paris climate deal are mentioned only toward the end of the book, even though the issues of Iran’s nuclear program and climate change appear in earlier chapters.

At times Chomsky’s book suffers from simple sloppiness. For example, he reports that “the Obama administration considered reviving military commissions” on Guantánamo when in fact these commissions have been operating there for most of President Barack Obama’s eight years in office. And in certain places it is simply confused, as when Chomsky quotes from a review by Jessica Mathews in these pages and implies that she subscribes to the view that America advances “universal principles” rather than “national interests,” when in fact she was criticizing that perspective as part of her negative review of a book by Bret Stephens.*

Quelle surprise

He's getting old (87) and should probably retire from the world of heated polemics, which is a bit too strenuous a playing field for someone of his advanced age. But I see he is still capable of infuriating people, so maybe he still serves a purpose after all.

it's unfortunate he's so sloppy because he makes some interesting observations

http://www.theonion.com/article/exhausted-noam-chomsky-just-going-to-try-and-enjoy-17404

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/may/20/noam-chomsky-on-donald-trump-almost-a-death-knell-for-the-human-species

On November 8, the most powerful country in world history, which will set its stamp on what comes next, had an election. The outcome placed total control of the government -- executive, Congress, the Supreme Court -- in the hands of the Republican Party, which has become the most dangerous organization in world history.

Apart from the last phrase, all of this is uncontroversial. The last phrase may seem outlandish, even outrageous. But is it? The facts suggest otherwise. The Party is dedicated to racing as rapidly as possible to destruction of organized human life. There is no historical precedent for such a stand....

It is hard to find words to capture the fact that humans are facing the most important question in their history -- whether organized human life will survive in anything like the form we know -- and are answering it by accelerating the race to disaster....

One of the difficulties in raising public concern over the very severe threats of global warming is that 40 percent of the US population does not see why it is a problem, since Christ is returning in a few decades. About the same percentage believe that the world was created a few thousand years ago. If science conflicts with the Bible, so much the worse for science. It would be hard to find an analogue in other societies.

The Democratic Party abandoned any real concern for working people by the 1970s, and they have therefore been drawn to the ranks of their bitter class enemies, who at least pretend to speak their language -- Reagan's folksy style of making little jokes while eating jelly beans, George W. Bush's carefully cultivated image of a regular guy you could meet in a bar who loved to cut brush on the ranch in 100-degree heat and his probably faked mispronunciations (it's unlikely that he talked like that at Yale), and now Trump, who gives voice to people with legitimate grievances -- people who have lost not just jobs, but also a sense of personal self-worth -- and who rails against the government that they perceive as having undermined their lives (not without reason)....

For many years, I have been writing and speaking about the danger of the rise of an honest and charismatic ideologue in the United States, someone who could exploit the fear and anger that has long been boiling in much of the society, and who could direct it away from the actual agents of malaise to vulnerable targets. That could indeed lead to what sociologist Bertram Gross called "friendly fascism" in a perceptive study 35 years ago. But that requires an honest ideologue, a Hitler type, not someone whose only detectable ideology is Me. The dangers, however, have been real for many years, perhaps even more so in the light of the forces that Trump has unleashed.

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/38360-trump-in-the-white-house-an-interview-with-noam-chomsky

'legitimate grievances' smdh

he just means workers being smashed in the face for 40 years, as someone (Greenwald?) put it. If you think he's trying to excuse Trump voting, read again.

‘I am opposed to any appearance in Israel that is used for nationalistic or other propaganda purposes to cover up its occupation and denial of Palestinian human rights. I’ve been involved in activities to hold Israel accountable for its international law violations since before the BDS movement took shape. While I have some tactical differences with the BDS movement, I strongly support the actions and continue to participate in them.’

‘The oft repeated idea that Israel is a “vibrant democracy” is an absurd one. Unless the qualification is purely symbolic, there can be no “democratic Jewish (Christian, Muslim, white) state”. In the case of Israel, the “Jewishness” is very far from symbolic. There is no need to repeat here what I’ve written in the past, documenting extensively Israel’s discriminatory practices.’

https://artistsforpalestine.org.uk/2017/10/12/chomsky-clarifies-position-on-the-cultural-boycott-of-israel/

well of course

"Manufacturing Consent was severely criticized as having soft-pedaled evidence of genocide in Cambodia, Rwanda and, during the Bosnia war, Srebrenica."

The problem with this statement is that Manufacturing Consent was published in 1988—years before the 1994 Rwandan genocide or the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.

http://fair.org/home/nyts-obit-for-ed-herman-requires-a-correction/