Noam Chomsky: "The Last Totalitarian"

Writing about Chomsky as a totalitarian, Kerstein says:

"Fourth—and this may be most important—he makes people stupid. In this sense, he's more like a cult leader or a New Age guru than an intellectual. He allows people to be comfortable with their prejudices and their hatreds, and he undercuts their ability to think in a critical manner. To an extent, this has to do with his use of emotional and moral blackmail. Since he portrays everyone who disagrees with him as evil, if you do agree with him you must be on the side of good and right. This is essentially a kind of secular puritanism, and it's very appealing to many people, for obvious reasons, I think. We all want to think well of ourselves, whether we deserve it or not."

Sounds exactly like Obama.

Sounds like enviro-NAZI's

Sounds like the moral authority of the CBC

Benjamin Kerstein: "Well, the greatest of them all is his claim that there was (and possibly still is) an alliance between the United States and the Nazis. It's so blatantly deranged that several Chomsky admirers I've spoken to simply denied outright that he ever said it.

But it's right there in his book 'What Uncle Sam Really Wants'. Obviously, the United States never had an alliance with Nazi Germany, and the Nazi regime hasn't existed since 1945, so it would be rather difficult to conclude an alliance with it."

In short, the US, according to Chomsky, is little short of Star Trek's "The BORG!" who will assimilate any and all...run for your lives!

According to Chomsky, we are all fascists now, which is trite if you want to hurl epithets; but lacks the seriousness of intellectual rigor. Save perhaps intellectual rigor mortis.

Cheers

Hans Rupprecht, Commander in Chief

1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group “True North”

Someone needs to ask Noam about the Obama campaign's Selling of Fear, since he wrote so much on it during the Bush years, but has been eerily silent since Obama came to office.

The amazing thing is that blowhards like this guy Chomsky, like PETA, etc... get given the time of day, and aren't just laughed out room.

I mean, I understand for a few years they can get away with it, but they must be getting a lot of cover from people who find them useful idiots, when they go on for decades with their pernicious and vicious little operations.

He may be the 'last' one but Obama would dearly love to be the next one. As long as the left is alive there is the threat of totalitarianism. Growing up, I never expected to have to be worried about that. Interesting times.

Actually, Chomsky is the fascist....after all, the fascist regime of Nazi Germany was Strasserite socialist.

// My apologies for the length of this answer //

That's alright, Mr. Totten; it was a quick read.
Since all these essays have been blogged [from 2004 to 2007] I imagine that any response would already have been made.

Any one who cares to check Totten's spiel against the truth. I will be happy to refer to the transcript of the debate he refers to. In it, Foucault comes across with the totalitarian tendencies "dictatorship of the proletariat" type stuff, & Chomsky quickly replies against that view --

//
FOUCAULT:
But I would merely like to reply to your first sentence, in which you said that if you didn't consider the war you make against the police to be just, you wouldn't make it.
I would like to reply to you in terms of Spinoza and say that the proletariat doesn't wage war against the ruling class because it considers such a war to be just. The proletariat makes war with the ruling class because, for the first time in history, it wants to take power. And because it will overthrow the power of the ruling class it considers such a war to be just.
CHOMSKY:
Yeah, I don't agree.
FOUCAULT:
One makes war to win, not because it is just.
CHOMSKY:
I don't, personally, agree with that.
For example, if I could convince myself that attainment of power by the proletariat would lead to a terrorist police state, in which freedom and dignity and decent human relations would be destroyed, then I wouldn't want the proletariat to take power. In fact the only reason for wanting any such thing, I believe, is because one thinks, rightly or wrongly, that some fundamental human values will be achieved by that transfer of power. //

Shortly after the earthquake in Haiti,Chomsky was interviewed,possibly it was on cbc,and asked about the U.S. response.

This POS said that the USA was wrong to send the hospital ships,and should have sent the equivalent money to the NGO's on the ground.

Those ships saved many lives immediately,and eased a lot of suffering immediately.
Chomsky's daughter is very high up in one of the NGO's,I think it is Oxfam.

That is the left's hero,a vile,despicable,and likely racist,man who would leave the poor to die if it could enrich his family.
Chomsky allows stupid people to enjoy and justify their stupidity.

I haven't read the whole thing yet, so sorry if something along these lines is mentioned in the piece.

A few years ago I watched a (sympathetic) documentary on Chomsky. Much of it consisted of footage of his lectures. I remember that the university-age attendees (he himself was quite old - it wasn't that long ago) were largely female and rather creepy. In an earlier century these were the kind of girls who would be psyching themselves into stigmata and religious hallucinations (I don't mean to be offensive to the genuinely religious here at SDA; just that hysteria has different manifestations in different ages).

Cult-like, yes. Extraordinarily so. That was my impression.

Chomsky came off (from the footage) as hyper-articulate but delicate and sort of wistful. Kind of a totally unfunny Woody Allen. I think that's a big part of the attraction, somehow.

I look forward to this being an obituary.

Why do people continue to refer to idots like Chomsky as "intellectuals"? The one thing that their very makeup lacks is intellect. and that clearly shows in their speeches and writings.

Chomsky is a career accademic .... the intellectual part comes from living in his own head.

In Chomsky's case this also means a life of inhaling his own assgass.

He is also a paranoid.

Perfect lefty.

Yeah Mamba, that's Chomsky. As with everything lefty it's a cult of personality.

To be fair, he has done the right thing on occasion: http://westernstandard.blogs.com/shotgun/2008/10/noam-chomsky-ca.html

Chomsky went off the rails long ago. Even in the overhyped heady days of Vietnam war protest, he was out to lunch in spades at best, at worst he was all the way round the bend. I never worked out what his position was, and I don't think he knew himself. If I had to I'd characterize him as a true loony left-field doctrinaire academic marxist or an extreme case of parlour pink.

Chomsky went off the rails long ago. Even in the overhyped heady days of Vietnam war protest, he was out to lunch in spades at best, at worst he was all the way round the bend. I never worked out what his position was, and I don't think he knew himself. If I had to I'd characterize him as a true loony left-field doctrinaire academic marxist or an extreme case of parlour pink.

I wonder if the reverence for Chomsky comes, in part, from the very real value of his non-political academic work in linguistics. Chomsky essentially transformed the science of linguistics with his theory of Transformative Grammar. It really was and remains, a remarkable analysis of language construction and how a language is learned.

I don't know if this is valid for I don't know if people are aware of this basic academic research and instead know of Chomsky only from his political writings. These are all so anti-American that they are astonishing in their malice and yes, ignorance. Strange that he remains living in America yet proclaims his hatred for it!

I'm sure that many on the left share his anti-Americanism but I also wonder how many know of his early work, which had nothing to do with politics, and was focused only on linguistics.

I saw the documentary version of Manufacturing Consent in 1992 when it was first broadcast. I was 32 at the time (which frustrates me a bit because I thought my political awakening was solidified by the time I was 30). I remember being very impressed by Chomsky because he was extremely literate and soft spoken.

He IS good at that type of thing. I remember also seeing him interviewed after 9/11 addressing the 'truthers' by saying something along the line of "If any government was ever found to be responsible for such a thing it would be the end of the party" (in this case the GOP). Of course, he still managed to blame the GOP indirectly a few minutes later but that's his schtick.

An very well spoken individual, but definitely on the wrong side of the spectrum for me.

A brilliant interview and quite the knock at one of the left's "heroes" (some hero...). One must note that those whom the left elevate are actually quite ordinary to say the least. They become extraordinary to a mob after espousing vile hatred and lies. What does this say of the human intellect and morality if one is so easily swayed by a man such as Chomsky?

The error of Chomsky was to assume that the enemies of my enemies are my friends. That's wrong.

You can be both anti american and anti Khmer rouge.

Just like today.. Israel will soon start an unprovoked war against Iran. Do I have to pick a side? no. I wish both side to lose... let them destroy each others and the world will be a better place.

Noam Chomsky, the modern day Bertrand Russell?

Thomas Riggens, who appears to be a Marxist, writes about Russell, "The year 2010 will see the ninetieth anniversary of Bertrand Russell’s book “The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism.” Russell was one the twentieth century’s greatest philosophers and keenest social critics".

Riggens closes by saying and adding his own thoughts, "He (Russell) then says, Russian Communism "may fail and go under, but socialism itself will not die." True then, true now. The Great War, Russell says "proved the destructiveness of capitalism" and he hopes that the future will not show the "greater destructiveness of Communism" but rather the healing powers of socialism. What came was another world war of even greater destructiveness and the entrenchment of capitalism and its destructiveness. It now threatens the very Earth itself-- its atmosphere, its oceans, and its rain forests and all life on Earth. Now more than ever we need "the power of socialism to heal the wounds which the old system has inflicted upon the human spirit."

Link: http://philosophicalnotes.blogspot.ca/2010/07/bertrand-russell-on-practice-and-theory.html

Riggens closing thoughts clearly show the philosophy behind AGW supporters and what is being taught the university students of today.

"Just like today.. Israel will soon start an unprovoked war against Iran. Do I have to pick a side? no. I wish both side to lose... let them destroy each others and the world will be a better place.
Posted by: Quebecois NDP separatiste at August 20, 2012 9:27 PM"

Being a Jew hating jackal comes naturally to you Quebec folk it seems. Part of your magnificent heritage they say.

BL@KBIRD: why did you call me a jew hater but not a muslim or an Iran hater?

Because hating muslims is ok but hating jews is wrong? is that what you imply?

I don't hate jews. I hate the aggressive military government of Israel who occupy and threaten wars.

I am pro Haaretz. Haaretz is jewish too.

Perhaps Quebecois NDP separatiste could inform the readers here. Tell us, why is it always about the Jews? What did the Jews ever do to the Quebecois to instill such deep seated fear and paranoia in their population? Inquiring minds would actually be interested in a response.

nold said "What did the Jews ever do to the Quebecois to instill such deep seated fear and paranoia in their population?"

They probably had a great worth ethic and paid their own way. They didn't expect "the government" to provide for them. Yep - that would be an alternate reality for the Quebecois. No wonder they're pissed.

The NDP quebec fellow has a problem.

He equates Israel defending itself to Iran's aggression and does not take facts into account.

The little separatists hate for Israel and the jews that live there has emboldened him to declare that he would willingly sacrifice Iran to rid the world of those who he doesn't like. That's a shame.

Australian writer and historian Keith Windschuttle observed:

Two essays about linguistics reveal Chomsky’s output in that field to be not the work of a rare, great mind but the product of a very familiar kind of academic hack. His reputation turns out not to have been earned by any significant contribution to human understanding but to be the product of a combination of self-promotion, abuse of detractors, and the fudging of his findings.
...
Robert E. Levine and Paul M. Postal, in an essay appropriately entitled “A Corrupted Linguistics,” are equally critical of Chomsky’s puffed-up promises. They write:

'Much of the lavish praise heaped on his work is, we believe, driven by uncritical acceptance (often by nonlinguists) of claims and promises made during the early years of his academic activity; the claims have by now largely proved to be wrong or without real content, and the promises have gone unfulfilled.'

Commentators who are not linguists often discern a fundamental contrast between Chomsky’s academic work on linguistics and his non-academic writings about politics. They take the former to be brilliant, revolutionary, and widely accepted, but recognize the latter as radical and controversial.

Levine and Postal, however, both academic linguists, don’t see it this way. Rather than a great divide between his scholarly and popular writings, they find both share the same key properties: “a deep disregard and contempt for the truth, a monumental disdain for standards of enquiry, a relentless strain of self-promotion, remarkable descents into incoherence, and a penchant for verbally abusing those who disagree with him.”

www.newcriterion.com/articlepdf.cfm/A-disgraceful-career-1111

"The NDP quebec fellow has a problem".
Yes and his problem is usually the same. There is a nice thread going about the detestable Chomsky and he throws in an unrelated comment about wanting the Jews to lose. He's NDP so he wants capitalism to lose, he's separatist so he wants Canada to lose, and he wants our only trusted friend and ally in the middle east to lose. His whole life revolves around wanting something to lose. Must be tough for a guy like him to face the dawn each day.

nold, that is because Bolsheviks instinctively hate themselves.

OPEN CHALLENGE TO QUEBECKIE NDP ETC: show how the government of Israel is an oppressive, militaristic one.

Come on, Quebeckie. It should be pretty easy. Was Israel militaristic when it was attacked on all sides during the Six Day War or the Yom Kippur War or when suicide bombers killed people on buses?

How many alleged Catholics go to Mass in Quebec during the Christmas and Easter seasons? I know churches are heavily attended in Israel, the Jewish state. Are there Masses in Tehran?

I'm sure you'll floor everyone with solid arguments and evidence, Quebeckie. I know you can do it.

"Chomsky's “morality” is in fact a form of nihilism."

Just like all the lefties "They convert and then read the dogma from their non intellectual propagandist." to justify their stupidity.
It's why he can't ever admit he's murderously wrong on everything.

Linguistic POS's nothing but a shell game street corner grifter with millions of dead souls in his back pocket.

@rizwan 11:28 -

I'd add another similarity between Chomsky's academic and political contributions - an inordinately fanatical effort to shoehorn reality into his theory.

http://westernstandard.blogs.com/shotgun/2008/12/question-period.html

Chomsky: "Rand in my view is one of the most evil figures of modern intellectual history"

Ayn Rand was the most principled defender of reason, truth, justice and freedom in the history of mankind. The comment tells you a lot more about Noam Chomsky than it does about Ayn Rand.

rizwan, that's not a review or even outline of Chomsky's linguistic work. It's an attempt by someone to focus on his reprehensible political and societal views and declare that they MUST be aligned with his linguistics.

The article and comments you cite don't prove that. Wanting to link the two doesn't make it a factual connection.

The fact remains, that Chomsky's Transformational Grammar was and remains, a stellar contribution to linguistics and cognitive processes. It is recognized as such and has resulted in a whole school of linguistic research.

The authors, academically, reject Chomsky's linguistic Minimalist theories and debated with those who support it, in an academic journal on linguistics about ten years ago.

Again, it is a weak and unsound argument to link someone's political views with their scientific views; the two are not 'naturally' connected.

FrenchDip said: "I wish both side to lose... let them destroy each others and the world will be a better place."

Yes! Because a world without a prosperous Western democracy in the Middle East will be better, right?

Oh, wait...

dizzy at August 20, 2012 6:20 PM said: "Any one who cares to check Totten's spiel against the truth."

The problem with your premise here is that Foucault was every bit the jerk0ff that Chomsky is. Foucault's PoMo "theories", if one can dignify them as such, have set back Anthropology about a hundred years. That would be 50 years of advancement to catch up on and 50 years worth of wrong thinking to un-learn.

In a meeting between Foucault and Chomsky you pray for a asteroid.

Phantom, hmm.

I wouldn't call Foucault a postmodernist; that is, someone who views knowledge from the individual subjective experience. Nor was he a cultural relativist, who views truth as irrelevant and considers that reality exists only within the perception.

His focus, like that of Thomas Kuhn, was on the societal structure( not individual perspective) of the knowledge base. That is, he suggested that collectives develop and share a common pattern of interaction and understanding that forms how they understand the world.

He wasn't focusing on whether or not people arrived at some objective truth but on how and even why, groups or societies develop 'paradigms' of belief and how they function within these knowledge bases.

ET, you must admit that PoMo "deconstructionism" has thoroughly infested the modern Anthropology departments. Even though I studied it and kept up after I graduated, I stopped reading in the late 1980's because it was just getting to be gibberish. And all of it quoting Foucault. How people understand the world doesn't change -the world-, it changes the people. If they have sub-optimal understanding then they get sub-optimal results. As in, high infant mortality, nasty brutish and short lives, stupid leaders who create disasters, that sort of thing.

Pet hate of mine, I admit to being non-rational and quite unfair on the subject. ~:0 Me head's a-flame!

Phantom, I fully agree with you. The Postmodernist fetish swept through the social sciences and humanities. I loathe, loathe and loathe postmodernism. Loathe its 'method' of deconstructionism. All garbage.

Most of the 'inhabitants' of the departments in the social sciences and humanities now, are postmodernists. Junk.

It's an incredibly easy stance. Effectively, you say that 'whatever I FEEL is valid, IS valid. Because that's how I perceive it. So there'. It rejects objective reality, rejects truth, rejects the scientific method. Pure Obama style.

So, they publish their meaningless papers, filled with nonsense; teach their two to three courses equally filled with nonsense. Quite the easy life. No requirement for proof, evidence, accountability. Just say anything.

I think that most of them misuse Foucault who really wasn't interested in objective reality but was wondering how and why people, in collectives, come up with a cultural (not scientific) knowledge base. And stick to it for generations.

Such as the belief that your insanity is caused by your being possessed by evil spirits. What about the current belief that criminality is caused by poverty? There's a whole parasitic bureaucracy and employment based around that theme.

I'd better stop. Don't get me started on postmodernism.

After two semesters of x-bar theory and one semester of minimalism, the only thing Chomsky gave me was a headache and an understanding of why 50 years of linguistic research hasn't resulted in anything practical in the field of language acquisition (aka applied linguistics, aka what the 99% of the population unfamiliar with the academic discipline of linguistics believes it to be). Granted, the syntax portion of generative grammar, if not rock solid theoretically, could be considered useful as an analysis tool.. if that's what you're into.. but it's NOWHERE NEAR deserving the fawning guru worship of Chomskyites.

ET said: "What about the current belief that criminality is caused by poverty?"

Oh.YEAH. You don't have to travel to Bongo Bongo anymore if you're looking for stupid magical beliefs. Just pick up a copy of JAMA or The Lancet... maybe visit a city planning session in Hamilton Ontario...

Agreed, we should stop now. Before my brain explodes.

Wonderful (and characteristically modest: "The speed with which I was able to kill Lacanian feminism amazes even me") short piece by Camille Paglia on deconstructionism in academia from 1998 (ET's contention that Foucaut was not a deconstructionist aside for a moment).

Well, as a student of linguistics in my salad days, I do think Chomsky deserved every credit in his day. But the field has moved on,* and so has he.

Politically, I have never viewed him as much more than a fringe crank. However, he did provide a notable soundbite once which is no less valid because he was the one who said it:

"If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all."

* And not for the better, in my view. I sadly have to agree with "marco" on "why 50 years of linguistic research hasn't resulted in anything practical in the field of language acquisition". These days, when I read anything on linguistics, the first word that usually comes to mind is "impenetrable".

Black Mamba, I just read that Paglia piece. Its funny how often Paglia agrees with The Phantom. I suspect her of being a closeted Conservative acting as agent provocateur in the Leftie's ranks.