Moonbat alert: Chomksy condemns Bin Laden kill.

Virus said:
Supported a holocaust denier.
Click to expand...
A key precedent in US freedom of speech law was established because someone was willing to defend the Ku Klux Klan, and I'm rather glad they did.

Virus said:
In the 70s he denied the communist's genocide in Cambodia.
Click to expand...
I've never read After the Cataclysm, Chomsky's main book on Cambodia. (It's been on my backlog for over a year) but his other sources that I've read indicate that he takes a view along the same lines as John Pilger who made Year Zero: that the US's cynical policies helped create the slaughter. This amounts to "denying the communist genocide", I suppose, if you are incapable of assigning blame to both of the parties.
 
Last edited:
Gazpacho said:
A key precedent in US freedom of speech law was established because someone was willing to defend the Ku Klux Klan, and I'm rather glad they did.
Click to expand...

Did the guy who defended the KKK call them "apolitical liberals" and write an intro for their book?

Gazpacho said:
I've never read After the Cataclysm, Chomsky's main book on Cambodia. (It's been on my backlog for over a year) but his other sources that I've read indicate that he takes a view along the same lines as John Pilger who made Year Zero: that the US's cynical policies helped create the slaughter. This amounts to "denying the communist genocide", I suppose, if you are incapable of assigning blame to both of the parties.
Click to expand...

I mentioned that in one of my previous posts. When it got to the point that denying the genocide would be a liability, Chomsky changed tack and claimed the US made them do it.

John Pilger is a moonbat cut of the same cloth as Chomsky. I find him even more repugnant since he's quite candid about his support for fascist terror and jihad.
 
Virus said:
Did the guy who defended the KKK call them "apolitical liberals" and write an intro for their book?
Click to expand...
Chomsky said that Faurisson came across as a "relatively apolitical liberal" in the anti-Faurisson material that he had seen. That suggests to me that those attacking him were so caught up in their indignation that they neglected to make their case. I've seen this happen with other heterodox figures so I can believe it happened with Faurisson as well.

As for the "intro," Chomsky says it was inserted without his permission, which is plausible.

Virus said:
John Pilger is a moonbat cut of the same cloth as Chomsky.
Click to expand...
Pilger's documentary was a definitive report on the KR's brutality. If he's willing to cut Chomsky a break for whatever "denial" he engaged in, then maybe, just maybe, Chomsky is being misrepresented. Like I said, I intend to read the book.
 
Gazpacho said:
Much of Chomsky's work is directed at illustrating broad US political tendencies that extend over time and geography. How would one go about that without "making many statements" and "bouncing around"?
Click to expand...

Constructing a narrative that extends over time and geography might just be something a historian could do. We've already established that Chomsky is not well-regarded by other historians.
 
theprestige said:
Constructing a narrative that extends over time and geography might just be something a historian could do. We've already established that Chomsky is not well-regarded by other historians.
Click to expand...
How might an historian illustrate broad political tendencies without "making many statements" and "bouncing around"?

I really don't give a flip whether Chomsky has some "Historians' Association Seal of Approval." Not one bit. What matters is that he backs up his claims with source evidence that checks out, and he does.
 
You see, it's not enough just that Chomsky is wrong on some matters, we must "level up".

So instead of just being "wrong", Chomsky must be a fascist-supporting, Khmer Rouge-loving, Islamic terrorist loving, America-hating and self-hating jew...

The fact that it is nigh-impossible to hold to all these alleged stances at once escapes those most desperate to demonstrate to each other just how much they hate Chomsky...

May I suggest that people can just simply be wrong, or simply disagree with you? Why the need for all this stretching of evidence to make a monster where there is none?
 
Last edited:
Praktik said:
May I suggest that people can just simply be wrong, or simply disagree with you? Why the need for all this stretching of evidence to make a monster where there is none?
Click to expand...

Because we need monsters.
 
Praktik said:
Why the need for all this stretching of evidence to make a monster where there is none?
Click to expand...
To those in a certain political mindset, impugning the noble motives and methods of the United States government is a monstrous act.

This certainly was the case for me the first time I read one of Chomsky's books in the 2002-2004 timeframe. (It might have been Year 501, Deterring Democracy or World Orders, or some combination. I don't remember clearly.) I was reading it so that I could better argue in favor of the wars. Well, I didn't get very far. By the second chapter, I think, I was so angry that threw it across the room. I decided Chomsky was absolutely out of his mind, and so were the people representing him.

All this happened before it became clear that there were no weapons and hadn't been for years, and before Bush stood up in front of the press club to crack jokes about it, and before it became public that the administration managed the evidence to support a desired public conclusion. (That's called propaganda.)

What happened that first time around, was that I read with a little ideological policeman in my head, always reminding me that James Madison, George Kennan, Samuel Huntington and other US policy makers MUST be given the benefit of doubt. Their remarks MUST be interpreted in the most favorable way.

It is much harder to give the benefit of doubt after seeing a guy who received it years ago stand in front of a camera and mock you.
 
Last edited:
Praktik said:
..........

So instead of just being "wrong", Chomsky must be a fascist-supporting, Khmer Rouge-loving, Islamic terrorist loving, America-hating and self-hating jew...

............
May I suggest that people can just simply be wrong, or simply disagree with you? Why the need for all this stretching of evidence to make a monster where there is none?
Click to expand...

it is not enough for many here, to merely accept that mistakes can be made.
if someone disagrees with their pathetically narrow world view, they must be monsters....
 
Gazpacho said:
To those in a certain political mindset, impugning the noble motives and methods of the United States government is a monstrous act.
Click to expand...

Is that significantly different from the other side of the political spectrum? The mindset that always faults the US (or Israel) and traces every "root problem" back to them in some way?

If you think the Bush administration was awful I wont say you don't have good reason for believing that, but to take that experience as a reason to embrace an ideology that always faults the US is still abdicating your ability to reason.
 
Mycroft said:
Is that significantly different from the other side of the political spectrum? The mindset that always faults the US (or Israel) and traces every "root problem" back to them in some way?
Click to expand...
Chomsky doesn't trace everything back to the fault of the US, he just chooses to write about things that might be. And he examines the choices of US administrations as choices, rather that actions that are compelled by a state of war or other irresistable historical forces.
 
Gazpacho said:
Much of Chomsky's work is directed at illustrating broad US political tendencies that extend over time and geography. How would one go about that without "making many statements" and "bouncing around"?
Click to expand...

It would be fairly simple to argue honestly. There exist quite a lot of people who do it. Just pick a topic and stick to it, for a paragraph at least.

You can still put up a case doing that. Thomas E. Ricks does an exemplary job in Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq.

In contrast, Chomsky makes up these little driblets according to the Fairfax procedure. To some people (whom I consider stupid) this gives the impression of a Great Mind at work.
 
chomsky tends to be the polar opposite of the "my country right or wrong" Americans, and portrays the US and Israel as though they were as evil as the Third Reich.
 
NWO Sentryman said:
chomsky tends to be the polar opposite of the "my country right or wrong" Americans, and portrays the US and Israel as though they were as evil as the Third Reich.
Click to expand...


Sounds like you forgot most of what you learned in your own thread on Chomsky from late 2009, which is like a prerunner to this one - same "arguments", even the same Chomsky bashing sources.

At least you didn't claim that he's sloppy with the sources, so that puts you still ahead of some other people who haven't read that thread. ;)
 
epepke said:
It would be fairly simple to argue honestly. There exist quite a lot of people who do it. Just pick a topic and stick to it, for a paragraph at least.
Click to expand...
So, for example, writing a chapter focused on US postwar reconstruction of Europe, and another focused on US involvement in the Central American civil wars, another focusing on Nicaragua specifically, another on the Gulf War, another reviewing news commentator reactions to the end of the Cold War, and binding this with other such focused chapters into a book (Deterring Democracy) could avoid this fallacy?

Or spending a whole essay on the implications of the Osama bin Laden operation would avoid this fallacy, whatever others it might commit?

Or is this complaint, that Chomsky jumps around, more an indication that you happen not to see continuity and parallels where he (and other people) do?
 
Last edited:
epepke said:
It would be fairly simple to argue honestly. There exist quite a lot of people who do it. Just pick a topic and stick to it, for a paragraph at least.

You can still put up a case doing that. Thomas E. Ricks does an exemplary job in Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq.

In contrast, Chomsky makes up these little driblets according to the Fairfax procedure. To some people (whom I consider stupid) this gives the impression of a Great Mind at work.
Click to expand...

While we're on the subject of sticking to a topic, would you like to respond to this post, above?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom