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Is Noam Chomsky a good source?

WhiteLion said:
I recommend people email Chomsky and ask him about these matters personally. I generally try to do that, when possible, if I find myself with enough curiosity and/or ample interest to hear it from the horse's mouth as it is.
Also, in my experience Chomsky gladly replies to emails, within reason.
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I have had email correspondence with Chomsky. Rather than hearing from the horse's mouth, I got the other end of the horse.
 
Marc39 said:
I have had email correspondence with Chomsky. Rather than hearing from the horse's mouth, I got the other end of the horse.
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Not sure I understood that pun. You mean simply to say he bs'ed you? Good for you either way I guess.
 
NWO Sentryman said:
Excuse me, Chomsky is guilty of more intellectually dishonesty than RJ Rummel and Ward Churchill combined. Srebrenica, Darfur, Faurisson etc.

His citations usualy return to his earlier writings
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As opposed to your claims which, I note, do not contain any citations at all.
 
WhiteLion said:
Not sure I understood that pun. You mean simply to say he bs'ed you? Good for you either way I guess.
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Chomsky revealed himself as a broken record in email correspondence. He turns a deaf ear, two deaf ears, to contrary POVs.

As Dershowitz characterizes it, it's Planet Chomsky.
 
WhiteLion said:
I recommend people email Chomsky and ask him about these matters personally. I generally try to do that, when possible, if I find myself with enough curiosity and/or ample interest to hear it from the horse's mouth as it is.
Also, in my experience Chomsky gladly replies to emails, within reason.
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I have posted his response about his claim that Jews control 98% of America. He claims it was 'an ironic reference to people who would not be satisfied even if they had only 98 per cent control'.

That is, frankly, BS.
 
gtc said:
Is this like his 'fact' that Jews control 98% of America?
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Yeah. I just don't read it that way. To me, it refers to a 'privileged class, which now accepts Jews without prejudice.' Then again, perhaps it requires familiarity with Chomsky's other writings to read it that way.

I have mixed feelings about the guy. However, I believe you have misread the passage.
 
NWO Sentryman said:
Excuse me, Chomsky is guilty of more intellectually dishonesty than RJ Rummel and Ward Churchill combined. Srebrenica, Darfur, Faurisson etc.

His citations usualy return to his earlier writings
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Not in my experience. His citations usually refer to journalists, academic historians, political theorists, or historians. Whether or not one finds his conclusions or choice of sources to be valid, he doesn't just write pages of endnotes referring to his own work.
 
Doc Daneeka said:
Yeah. I just don't read it that way. To me, it refers to a 'privileged class, which now accepts Jews without prejudice.' Then again, perhaps it requires familiarity with Chomsky's other writings to read it that way.

I have mixed feelings about the guy. However, I believe you have misread the passage.
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I don't see how you can read it that way.

He starts off by saying that 'By now Jews in the US are the most privileged and influential part of the population. ' and then says that 'it's raised because privileged people want to make sure they have total control, not just 98% control' and then 'they want to make sure there's no critical look at the policies the US (and they themselves) support in the Middle East.'

It seems pretty clear to me that the '98% control' is placed in the context of his complaints about the power and influence of Jews in America.
 
gtc said:
Is this like his 'fact' that Jews control 98% of America? Or his 'fact' that the US invaded Lebanon in 2006? Was he paying meticulous attention to the facts when he made those claims?
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Your link in Chomsky's own words:
You misunderstood. It was an ironic reference to people who would not be satisfied even if they had only 98 per cent control. Of course there is nothing even remotely like that.
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It's clear you are the one lying about Chomsky or at a minimum, misinterpreting what he has actually said. And that is what I said. When you seek out actual quotes or answers by Chomsky, you find the claims about his factual errors are lies or mistakes.
 
skeptigirl said:
Your link in Chomsky's own words:


It's clear you are the one lying about Chomsky or at a minimum, misinterpreting what he has actually said.
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It is clear that you ignored this quote for the same reason that you are now accusing me of lying. Your ideological blinkers prevent you from actually thinking for yourself. Did you even read the original quote or are you too afraid to do so?

Yet again, here is what he wrote in 2003:

By now Jews in the US are the most privileged and influential part of the population. You find occasional instances of anti-Semitism but they are marginal. There's plenty of racism, but it's directed against Blacks, Latinos, Arabs are targets of enormous racism, and those problems are real. Anti-Semitism is no longer a problem, fortunately. It's raised, but it's raised because privileged people want to make sure they have total control, not just 98% control. That's why anti-Semitism is becoming an issue. Not because of the threat of anti-Semitism; they want to make sure there's no critical look at the policies the US (and they themselves) support in the Middle East. With regard to anti-Semitism, the distinguished Israeli statesman Abba Eban pointed out the main task of Israeli propaganda (they would call it exclamation, what's called 'propaganda' when others do it) is to make it clear to the world there's no difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. By anti-Zionism he meant criticisms of the current policies of the State of Israel. So there's no difference between criticism of policies of the State of Israel and anti-Semitism, because if he can establish 'that' then he can undercut all criticism by invoking the Nazis and that will silence people. We should bear it in mind when there's talk in the US about anti-Semitism.
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Where is the evidence that Jews are the most privileged and influential part of the population? Where is the evidence that anti-Semitism is only mentioned as a problem 'because privileged people want to make sure they have total control, not just 98% control'?

If he is not suggesting that Jews have '98% control' why did he call them the most priveleged and influential part of the population and then talk about 'privileged people' holding 98% control?

His statement in 2006 that:
You misunderstood. It was an ironic reference to people who would not be satisfied even if they had only 98 per cent control. Of course there is nothing even remotely like that.
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This is patently false. There was no suggestion that the privileged people would want 98% control; the statement was referring to a current state of the world - these people have 98% control.

He was saying that they have 98% control but want more. He was not saying that they do not have 98% control but want 98% and even then would not be happy.

But even if he was suggesting that American Jews are a powerful and privileged group using claims of anti-semitism to strive for complete control of the US - how is that much better?

Face it skeptigirl, he was wrong in 2003, he was wrong in 2006 and his two statements don't match.
 
Marc39 said:
Chomsky revealed himself as a broken record in email correspondence. He turns a deaf ear, two deaf ears, to contrary POVs.

As Dershowitz characterizes it, it's Planet Chomsky.
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That's all well and good I suppose. However the pot calling the kettle black in Dershowitz' case imo.
 
gtc said:
If he is not suggesting that Jews have '98% control' why did he call them the most priveleged and influential part of the population and then talk about 'privileged people' holding 98% control?
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Personally I had never seen either of the given quotes. However he's not saying jews control 98% of anything. To me it reads as if he's talking about the typical behaviour of priviliged people wanting to have 100% control, not just 98%. I.e, they are overzealous in seeking control/influence.
With this meaning, in that context, he's basically saying that jews in the US generally do little half-arsed but all the way in terms of aspiring for influence and control of the discussed issues.

I'm not claiming he's an oracle of truth here, but the above mentioned sentiments are what he appears to state as I can see.

As an example with a less controversial comparison (which I tend to use to help see the point), if I were to say that danish people in Sweden are amongst the most priviliged, and like privileged people they do not want just almost-control (98) but total control, then I wouldn't be claiming that danish people have 98% control. If someone said I did, they would be misinterpreting what I had said.
 
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As a side comment related to gtc's post, it seems that Antisemitism is not that marginal in the US. A short Google search lead me to the 2007 hate crime table. Anti Jewish hate crime are the second most common ones, behind anti-Black ones. I would say Chomsky did not do his homework in that instance.
 
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Prometheus said:
I'm still reading all the follow-on links, but am quite busy right now, so I'll have to come back to this later. For now, I'll just say that I don't yet see anything impressive in these criticisms of Chomsky.
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Em, there is "Chomsky's Srebrenica Shame", which is quite a big one. IT was written by War crimes Investigator (i stand corrected on the prosecutor point) Marko Hoare who was in the prosecution team in Milosevic's trial.

As well as that, there is this link

http://ww4report.com/node/1239

Don't be thrown off by the far left jazz.
 
Chomsky v. Barrett

whatnot said:
...truther Kevin Barrett posted a longish email thread between himself and Chomsky a while back, it's a pisser. Sadly, it's MIA in the wake of Barrett's abortive run for elected office. Not sure why Barrett would want to publicize it; when Chomsky thinks you're paranoid, you might want to get a neuropsych eval.
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sott[DEL]net/articles/show/157773

Njoy that.
 
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