Noam Chomsky’s half-truths and distortions are still loved by the British Left
The Guardian has given one of its great heroes a platform to spout forth on the decline of American power and the manifold sins of its past, but it’s all subterfuge
But, coming to the second noteworthy item, look how he presents a veneer of “evidence” to gloss over the absurdity of the comparison. Who says Suharto is like Hitler, Stalin and Mao? Why, none other than the CIA!
Usually, the CIA is presented as a propaganda machine. But when it suits his purpose – to promote Western self-loathing – it has suddenly become a reliable source. And yet, even that doesn’t get to the heart of the matter. Assuming Chomsky didn’t just make it up, who in the CIA said this and under what circumstances? A low level desk officer with left-leaning sympathies? A lone, but more senior staffer, making the comparison for shock value? Chomsky never tells us, rendering the evidential value of an already false proposition useless.
The third noteworthy item completes the picture as he remarks that Suharto’s "staggering mass slaughter", as the New York Times described it, was reported accurately across the mainstream, and with unrestrained euphoria.” This raises the emotional temperature to boiling point: Americans knew about the killings but they are so sick, perverted and sadistic that it made them ecstatic with joy.
Selecting the essential points of ideology with a few highlights, the rest of the two articles are all standard Chomsky fare:
** Climate change induced by capitalist industrialisation is destroying the world, and the “denialists”on the fringes are just lackeys of corporate interests.
Obviously, he ignores the fact that there has been no net global warming for 15 years and that the predictive part of climate science is therefore in total chaos, as many mainstream climate scientists (at least privately) are now forced to acknowledge.
** Modern capitalism as it has developed in America serves the interests of only a tiny minority. It’s the one percent versus the 99 percent etc etc
In reality, America continues to provide one of the highest standards of living for ordinary people in the world.
** The Libya campaign, led by “the three traditional imperial powers” was about securing the country’s resources – oil, but other things too – as well as also possibly gaining a military base for the US Africa Command.
This is almost too stupid to comment on: the US was an obviously reluctant participant, securing oil supplies was an issue after the intervention not before it and was unnecessary while Gaddafi had full control, and the only reason the intervening western powers could motivate themselves to act was humanitarian. If Gaddafi hadn’t set out to massacre his opponents, there wouldn’t have been an intervention.
** America’s fear of democracy cannot be more clearly demonstrated than in its rejection of Hamas (though he doesn’t have the honesty to name the group) following its election victory in 2006. This proves that “the US supports democracy if, and only if, the outcomes accord with its strategic and economic objectives.”
No it doesn’t. It shows that America was aware that the Palestinians elected an Islamo-fascist terror group and quite properly refused to deal with them or legitimise them. He then goes on, and on, and on in his diatribe against Israel making the quite extraordinary statement that “the US has led the rejectionist camp on Israel-Palestine, blocking an international consensus calling for a political settlement in terms too well known to require repetition.”
This is obvious rubbish. The US has made several serious attempts to forge a peace agreement and came within a hair’s breadth of getting one under the Clinton negotiations in 2000 and January 2001. The problem was that the Palestinians rejected the deal, as they always have done and continue to do today.
(By the way, did you spot the classic piece of Chomsky subterfuge in that remark? It’s this: “in terms too well known to require repetition.” In reality, if Chomsky is going to prove his point he would have to explain what those terms are. But since all the evidence points the other way he needs to give his readers something to hang on to, even if they simply have to accept it on the basis of blind faith.)
On Israel, it all culminates in a reference to the “Chosen People” – a classic trope of anti-Zionist fanatics, essentially leaving the implication hanging in the air that Israelis regard themselves as ethnically superior to everyone else, particularly the Palestinians, though in this case it is tied into some waffle about Christian Zionism as well.
** Finally, we come to Iran, the threat from which is largely presented as a mirage, except in the sense that the “primary threat to the US and Israel is that Iran might deter their free exercise of violence.”
The fact that Iran has threatened to annihilate Israel is simply not mentioned. Nor is its support for international terror groups. But who, by this stage, could really be surprised?
I repeat, that I have made no attempt to give a point by point refutation of all of Chomsky’s points since I do not regard Chomsky as intellectually serious. Where he says something sensible it has already been said better by others; the rest is largely a series of ideologically driven incantations devoid of credible evidence and/or essential context.
What I have tried to do is to show how Noam Chomsky, despite the claims of his supporters, is best seen as an anti-intellectual whose arguments do not survive serious analysis, and are not really designed to. But that is not the most important point, which is this: Chomsky remains one of the great heroes of the British, European and American Left.
So what does that say about them?
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