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Noam Chomsky is a widely known intellectual, political activist, and critic of the foreign policy of the United States and other governments. Noam Chomsky describes himself as a libertarian socialist, a sympathizer of anarcho-syndicalism and is considered to be a key intellectual figure within the left wing of American politics.

Contents 1 Political views 1.1 Chomsky on terrorism 1.2 Criticism of United States government 1.3 Criticism of United States democracy 1.4 Views on globalization 1.5 Views on socialism and communism 1.6 Views on anarchism 1.7 Views on the welfare state 1.8 Mass media analysis 1.9 Chomsky and the Middle East 1.10 Views on anti-Semitism 1.11 Criticism of intellectual communities 2 Chomsky's influence as a political activist 2.1 Opposition to the Vietnam War 2.2 East Timor activism 2.3 Chomsky and his publishers against the Turkish Courts 2.4 Marginalization in the mainstream media 2.5 Worldwide audience 3 Bibliography 4 References 5 See also 6 External links 6.1 Speeches and interviews 6.2 Articles

[edit] Political views

Chomsky is one of the best-known figures of the left although he doesn't agree with the usage of the term. He has described himself as a "fellow traveller" to the anarchist tradition, and refers to himself as a libertarian socialist, a political philosophy he summarizes as challenging all forms of authority and attempting to eliminate them if they are unjustified for which the burden of proof is solely upon those who attempt to exert power. He identifies with the labor-oriented anarcho-syndicalist current of anarchism in particular cases, and is a member of the IWW. He believes that libertarian socialist values exemplify the rational and morally consistent extension of original unreconstructed classical liberal and radical humanist ideas to an industrial context.^[1]

Chomsky has further defined himself as having held Zionist beliefs, although he notes that his definition of Zionism would be considered by most as anti-Zionism these days, the result of what he perceives to have been a shift (since the 1940s) in the meaning of Zionism (Chomsky Reader).

Chomsky is considered "one of the most influential left-wing critics of American foreign policy" by the Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers. ^[2]

[edit] Chomsky on terrorism

In response to U.S. declarations of a War on Terrorism in 1981 and the redeclaration in 2001, Chomsky has argued that the major sources of international terrorism are the world's major powers, led by the United States. He uses a definition of terrorism from a U.S. Army manual, which defines it as "the calculated use of violence or threat of violence to attain goals that are political, religious, or ideological in nature. This is done through intimidation, coercion, or instilling fear."^[3] In relation to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan he stated:

"Wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a war against terrorism." (9-11, p. 76)

On the efficacy of terrorism:

"One is the fact that terrorism works. It doesn't fail. It works. Violence usually works. That's world history. Secondly, it's a very serious analytic error to say, as is commonly done, that terrorism is the weapon of the weak. Like other means of violence, it's primarily a weapon of the strong, overwhelmingly, in fact. It is held to be a weapon of the weak because the strong also control the doctrinal systems and their terror doesn't count as terror. Now that's close to universal. I can't think of a historical exception, even the worst mass murderers view the world that way. So take the Nazis. They weren't carrying out terror in occupied Europe. They were protecting the local population from the terrorisms of the partisans. And like other resistance movements, there was terrorism. The Nazis were carrying out counter terror".

As regards support for condemnation of terrorism, Chomsky opines that terrorism (and violence/authority in general) is generally bad and can only be justified in those cases where it is clear that greater terrorism (or violence, or abuse of authority) is thus avoided. In a debate on the legitimacy of political violence in 1967, Chomsky argued that the "terror" of the Vietnam National Liberation Front (Viet Cong) was not justified, but that terror could in theory be justified under certain circumstances:

"I don't accept the view that we can just condemn the NLF terror, period, because it was so horrible. I think we really have to ask questions of comparative costs, ugly as that may sound. And if we are going to take a moral position on this— and I think we should—we have to ask both what the consequences were of using terror and not using terror. If it were true that the consequences of not using terror would be that the peasantry in Vietnam would continue to live in the state of the peasantry of the Philippines, then I think the use of terror would be justified. But, as I said before, I don't think it was the use of terror that led to the successes that were achieved".^[4]

Chomsky believes that acts he considers terrorism carried out by the U.S. government do not pass this test, and condemnation of U.S. policy is one of the main thrusts of his writings which he has explained is because he lives in the United States, and thus holds a responsibility for his country's actions.

He has also criticized stay-behind operations such as Gladio, NATO's secret paramilitary anticommunist organizations during the Cold War.

[edit] Criticism of United States government

"If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged."

— Noam Chomsky (around 1990) ^[5]

Chomsky has been a consistent and outspoken critic of the United States government, and criticism of the foreign policy of the United States has formed the basis of much of Chomsky's political writing. Chomsky gives reasons for directing his activist efforts to the state of which he is a citizen. He believes that his work can have more impact when directed at his own government, and that he holds a responsibility as a member of a particular country of origin to work to stop that country from committing crimes. He expresses this idea often with a comparison of other countries holding that every country has flexibility to address crimes by unfavored countries, but is always unwilling to deal with their own.

He also thinks that the United States as the world's remaining superpower acts in the same offensive ways as all superpowers. One of the key things superpowers do, Chomsky argues, is try to organize the world according to the interests of their establishment, using military and economic means. Chomsky has repeatedly emphasized that the overall framework of U.S. foreign policy can be explained by the domestic dominance of U.S. business interests and a drive to secure the state-capitalist system. Those interests set the political agenda and the economic goals that aim primarily at U.S. economic dominance.

His conclusion is that a consistent part of the United States' foreign policy is based on stemming the "threat of a good example." This 'threat' refers to the possibility that a country could successfully develop outside the U.S. managed global system, thus presenting a model for other countries, including countries in which the United States does have strong economic interests. This, Chomsky says, has prompted the United States to repeatedly intervene to quell "independent development, regardless of ideology" in regions of the world where it has little economic or safety interests. In one of his works, What Uncle Sam Really Wants, Chomsky argues that this particular explanation accounts in part for the United States' interventions in Guatemala, Laos, Nicaragua, and Grenada, countries that pose little or no military threat to the U.S. and have few economic resources that could be exploited by U.S. business interests.

Chomsky claims that the U.S. government's Cold War policies were not primarily shaped by anti-Soviet paranoia, but rather toward preserving the United States' ideological and economic dominance in the world. In his book Deterring Democracy he argues that the conventional understanding of the Cold War as a confrontation of two superpowers is an 'ideological construct.' He insists that to truly understand the Cold War one must examine the underlying motives of the major powers. Those underlying motives can only be discovered by analyzing the domestic politics, especially the goals of the domestic elites in each country:

"Putting second order complexities to the side, for the USSR the Cold War has been primarily a war against its satellites, and for the U.S. a war against the Third World. For each, it has served to entrench a particular system of domestic privilege and coercion. The policies pursued within the Cold War framework have been unattractive to the general population, which accepts them only under duress. Throughout history, the standard device to mobilize a reluctant population has been the fear of an evil enemy, dedicated to its destruction. The superpower conflict served the purpose admirably, both for internal needs, as we see in the fevered rhetoric of top planning documents such as NSC 68, and in public propaganda. The Cold War had a functional utility for the superpowers, one reason why it persisted." ^[6]

Chomsky understands the U.S. economic system as being primarily a state-capitalist system, in which public funds are used to research and develop pioneering technology (the computer, the internet, radar, the jet plane etc.) largely in the form of defense spending, and once developed and mature these technologies are turned over to the corporate sector where civilian uses are developed for private control and profit.^[7]

Chomsky often expresses his admiration for the civil liberties enjoyed by U.S. citizens. According to Chomsky, other Western democracies such as France and Canada are less liberal in their defense of controversial speech than the US. However, he does not credit the American government for these freedoms but rather mass social movements in the United States that fought for them. The movements he most often credits are the abolitionist movement, the movements for workers rights and union organization, and the fight for African-American civil rights. Chomsky is often sharply critical of other governments who suppress free speech, most controversially in the Faurisson affair but also of the suppression of free speech in Turkey.

[edit] Criticism of United States democracy

Chomsky maintains that a nation is only democratic to the degree that government policy reflects informed public opinion. He notes that the US does have formal democratic structures, but they are dysfunctional. He argues that presidential elections are funded by concentrations of private power and orchestrated by the public relations industry, focusing discussion primarily on the qualities and the image of a candidate rather than on issues.^[8] Chomsky makes reference to several studies of public opinion by pollsters such as Gallup and Zogby and by academic sources such as the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland (PIPA). Quoting polls taken near the 2004 election, Chomsky points out that only a small minority of voters said they voted because of the candidate’s "agendas/ideas/platforms/goals."^[8] Furthermore, studies show that the majority of Americans have a stance on domestic issues such as guaranteed health care that is not represented by either major party.^[9] Chomsky has compared U.S. elections to elections in countries such as Spain, Bolivia, and Brazil, where he claims people are far better informed on important issues.^[10] In the 2000, 2004, and 2008 presidential elections, Chomsky has advised, “if it's a swing state, keep the worst guys out. If it's another state, do what you feel like.”^[10]

[edit] Views on globalization

Chomsky made early efforts to critically analyze globalization. He summarized the process with the phrase "old wine, new bottles," maintaining that the motive of the élites is the same as always: they seek to isolate the general population from important decision-making processes, the difference being that the centers of power are now transnational corporations and supranational banks. Chomsky argues that transnational corporate power is "developing its own governing institutions" reflective of their global reach.^[11]

According to Chomsky, a primary ploy has been the co-opting of the global economic institutions established at the end of World War II, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, which have increasingly adhered to the "Washington Consensus," requiring developing countries to adhere to limits on spending and make structural adjustments that often involve cutbacks in social and welfare programs. IMF aid and loans are normally contingent upon such reforms. Chomsky claims that the construction of global institutions and agreements such as the World Trade Organization, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the Multilateral Agreement on Investment constitute new ways of securing élite privileges while undermining democracy.^[12] Chomsky believes that these austere and neoliberal measures ensure that poorer countries merely fulfill a service role by providing cheap labor, raw materials and investment opportunities for the first world. Additionally, this means that corporations can threaten to relocate to poorer countries, and Chomsky sees this as a powerful weapon to keep workers in richer countries in line.

Chomsky takes issue with the terms used in discourse on globalization, beginning with the term "globalization" itself, which he maintains refers to a corporate-sponsored economic integration rather than being a general term for things becoming international. He dislikes the term anti-globalization being used to describe what he regards as a movement for globalization of social and environmental justice. Chomsky understands what is popularly called "free trade" as a "mixture of liberalization and protection designed by the principal architects of policy in the service of their interests, which happen to be whatever they are in any particular period."^[11] In his writings, Chomsky has drawn attention to globalization resistance movements. He described Zapatista defiance of NAFTA in his essay "The Zapatista Uprising." He also criticized the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, and reported on the activist efforts that led to its defeat. Chomsky's voice was an important part of the critics who provided the theoretical backbone for the disparate groups who united for the demonstrations against The World Trade Organization in Seattle in November of 1999.^[13]

[edit] Views on socialism and communism

Chomsky is deeply critical of what he calls the "corporate state capitalism" that he believes is practiced by the United States and other western states. He supports many of Mikhail Bakunin's anarchist (or libertarian socialist) ideas. Chomsky has identified Bakunin's comments regarding the totalitarian state as predictions for the brutal Soviet police state that would come in essays like The Soviet Union Versus Socialism. He has also defined Soviet communism as "fake socialism," particularly because any socialism worthy of the name requires authentic democratic control of production and resources as well as public ownership. He has said that contrary to what many in America claim, the collapse of the Soviet Union should be regarded as "a small victory for socialism," not capitalism.^[14] Chomsky was also impressed with socialism as practiced in Vietnam. In a speech given in Hanoi on April 13, 1970, and broadcast by Radio Hanoi the next day, Chomsky spoke of his "admiration for the people of Vietnam who have been able to defend themselves against the ferocious attack, and at the same time take great strides forward toward the socialist society." Chomsky praised the North Vietnamese for their efforts in building material prosperity, social justice, and cultural progress. He also went on to discuss and support the political writing of Le Duan.^[15]

In his 1973 book For Reasons of State, Chomsky argues that instead of a capitalist system in which people are "wage slaves" or an authoritarian system in which decisions are made by a centralized committee, a society could function with no paid labor. He argues that a nation's populace should be free to pursue jobs of their choosing. People will be free to do as they like, and the work they voluntarily choose will be both "rewarding in itself" and "socially useful." Society would be run under a system of peaceful anarchism, with no state or other authoritarian institutions. Work that was fundamentally distasteful to all, if any existed, would be distributed equally among everyone.

Though Chomsky was critical of the Soviet Union's approach to implementing socialism, he was less critical of Communist movements in Asia, noting what he considered to be grassroots elements within both Chinese and Vietnamese communism. In December 1967, during a forum in New York, Chomsky responded to criticisms of the Chinese revolution as follows, "I don't feel that they deserve a blanket condemnation at all. There are many things to object to in any society. But take China, modern China; one also finds many things that are really quite admirable." Chomsky continued: "There are even better examples than China. But I do think that China is an important example of a new society in which very interesting positive things happened at the local level, in which a good deal of the collectivization and communization was really based on mass participation and took place after a level of understanding had been reached in the peasantry that led to this next step."^[4] He said of Vietnam: "Although there appears to be a high degree of democratic participation at the village and regional levels, still major planning is highly centralized in the hands of the state authorities."^[16] This, however, does not mean blanket endorsement of the policies of the People's Republic of China. In the context of remarks on the topic of peak oil in April 2005, Chomsky stated "China is probably the most polluted country in the world - you can't see. It's kind of a totalitarian state, so they kind of force it on people, but the level of pollution is awful..."^[17]

[edit] Views on anarchism

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In practice Chomsky has tended to emphasize the philosophical tendency of anarchism to criticize all forms of illegitimate authority. He has been reticent about theorizing an anarchist society in detail, although he has outlined its likely value systems and institutional framework in broad terms. According to Chomsky, the variety of anarchism which he favors is

"... a kind of voluntary socialism, that is, as libertarian socialist or anarcho-syndicalist or communist anarchist, in the tradition of, say, Bakunin and Kropotkin and others. They had in mind a highly organized form of society, but a society that was organized on the basis of organic units, organic communities. And generally, they meant by that the workplace and the neighborhood, and from those two basic units there could derive through federal arrangements a highly integrated kind of social organization which might be national or even international in scope. And these decisions could be made over a substantial range, but by delegates who are always part of the organic community from which they come, to which they return, and in which, in fact, they live."

On the question of the government of political and economic institutions, Chomsky has consistently emphasized the importance of grassroots democratic forms. Accordingly current Anglo-American institutions of representative democracy "would be criticized by an anarchist of this school on two grounds. First of all because there is a monopoly of power centralized in the state, and secondly -- and critically -- because the representative democracy is limited to the political sphere and in no serious way encroaches on the economic sphere." ^[18]

[edit] Views on the welfare state

Chomsky is scathing in his opposition to the view that anarchism is inconsistent with support for 'welfare state' measures, stating in part that

One can, of course, take the position that we don't care about the problems people face today, and want to think about a possible tomorrow. OK, but then don't pretend to have any interest in human beings and their fate, and stay in the seminar room and intellectual coffee house with other privileged people. Or one can take a much more humane position: I want to work, today, to build a better society for tomorrow -- the classical anarchist position, quite different from the slogans in the question. That's exactly right, and it leads directly to support for the people facing problems today: for enforcement of health and safety regulation, provision of national health insurance, support systems for people who need them, etc. That is not a sufficient condition for organizing for a different and better future, but it is a necessary condition. Anything else will receive the well-merited contempt of people who do not have the luxury to disregard the circumstances in which they live, and try to survive.^[19]

[edit] Mass media analysis

Another focus of Chomsky's political work has been an analysis of mainstream mass media (especially in the United States), which he accuses of maintaining constraints on dialogue so as to promote the interests of corporations and the government.

Edward S. Herman and Chomsky's book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media explores this topic in depth, presenting their "propaganda model" of the news media with several detailed case studies in support of it. According to this propaganda model, more democratic societies like the U.S. use subtle, non-violent means of control, unlike totalitarian systems, where physical force can readily be used to coerce the general population. In an often-quoted remark, Chomsky states that "propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state" (Media Control).

The model attempts to explain such a systemic bias in terms of structural economic causes rather than a conspiracy of people. It argues the bias derives from five "filters" that all published news must pass through which combine to systematically distort news coverage.

1. The first filter, ownership, notes that most major media outlets are owned by large corporations.
2. The second, funding, notes that the outlets derive the majority of their funding from advertising, not readers. Thus, since they are profit-oriented businesses selling a product — readers and audiences — to other businesses (advertisers), the model would expect them to publish news which would reflect the desires and values of those businesses.
3. In addition, the news media are dependent on government institutions and major businesses with strong biases as sources (the third filter) for much of their information.
4. Flak, the fourth filter, refers to the various pressure groups which go after the media for supposed bias and so on when they go out of line.
5. Norms, the fifth filter, refer to the common conceptions shared by those in the profession of journalism.^[20]

The model therefore attempts to describe how the media form a decentralized and non-conspiratorial but nonetheless very powerful propaganda system that is able to mobilize an "élite" consensus, frame public debate within "élite" perspectives and at the same time give the appearance of democratic consent.

Chomsky and Herman test their model empirically by picking "paired examples" — pairs of events that were objectively similar except in relation to certain interests. For example, they attempt to show that in cases where an "official enemy" does something (like murder a religious official), the press investigates thoroughly and devotes a great amount of coverage to the matter, but when the domestic government or an ally does the same thing (or worse), the press downplays the story. They also test their model against the case that is often held up as the best example of a free and aggressively independent press, the media coverage of the Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War. Even in this case, they argue that the press was behaving subserviently to "élite" interests.

[edit] Chomsky and the Middle East

Chomsky "grew up... in the Jewish-Zionist cultural tradition" (Peck, p. 11). His father was one of the foremost scholars of the Hebrew language and taught at a religious school. Chomsky has also had a long fascination with and involvement in Zionist politics. As he described:

"I was deeply interested in... Zionist affairs and activities — or what was then called 'Zionist,' though the same ideas and concerns are now called 'anti-Zionist.' I was interested in socialist, binationalist options for Palestine, and in the kibbutzim and the whole cooperative labor system that had developed in the Jewish settlement there (the Yishuv)...The vague ideas I had at the time [1947] were to go to Palestine, perhaps to a kibbutz, to try to become involved in efforts at Arab-Jewish cooperation within a socialist framework, opposed to the deeply antidemocratic concept of a Jewish state (a position that was considered well within the mainstream of Zionism)." (Peck, p. 7)

He is highly critical of the policies of Israel towards the Palestinians and its Arab neighbors. His book The Fateful Triangle is considered one of the premier texts on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict among those who oppose Israel's policies in regard to the Palestinians as well as American support for the state of Israel. He has also accused Israel of "guiding state terrorism" for selling weapons to apartheid South Africa and Latin American countries that he characterizes as U.S. puppet states, e.g. Guatemala in the 1980s, as well as U.S.-backed paramilitaries (or, according to Chomsky, terrorists) such as the Nicaraguan Contras. (What Uncle Sam Really Wants, Chapter 2.4) Chomsky characterizes Israel as a "mercenary state," "an Israeli Sparta," and a militarized dependency within a U.S. system of hegemony. He has also fiercely criticized sectors of the American Jewish community for their role in obtaining U.S. support, stating that "they should more properly be called 'supporters of the moral degeneration and ultimate destruction of Israel'" (Fateful Triangle, p.4). He says of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL):

"The leading official monitor of anti-Semitism, the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, interprets anti-Semitism as unwillingness to conform to its requirements with regard to support for Israeli authorities.... The logic is straightforward: Anti-Semitism is opposition to the interests of Israel (as the ADL sees them).... The ADL has virtually abandoned its earlier role as a civil rights organization, becoming 'one of the main pillars' of Israeli propaganda in the U.S., as the Israeli press casually describes it, engaged in surveillance, blacklisting, compilation of FBI-style files circulated to adherents for the purpose of defamation, angry public responses to criticism of Israeli actions, and so on. These efforts, buttressed by insinuations of anti-Semitism or direct accusations, are intended to deflect or undermine opposition to Israeli policies, including Israel's refusal, with U.S. support, to move towards a general political settlement".^[21]

See also Middle East Politics, a speech given at Columbia University in 1999

In a 2004 interview with Jennifer Bleyer published The Ugly Planet, issue two^{[22] [23] [24]} and in Heeb magazine,^[25] Chomsky stated:

"It ends up that about 90% of the land [in Israel] is reserved for people of Jewish race, religion and origin. If 90% of the land in the United States were reserved for people of white, Christian race, religion and origin, I’d be opposed. So would the ADL. We should accept universal values."

Chomsky's statistics seem to refer to the fact that only about 6.5 percent of the land in Israel is privately owned (some by Arab Israelis). Of the rest, almost 80 percent is owned by the governmental agency called the Israel Land Administration.^[26] ILA land is not sold but leased; by law, it is available to be leased by all Israelis, Jewish, Arab and others. About 13 percent is owned by the Jewish National Fund (JNF). ^[27] In September 2007, an Israeli high court ruled that the JNF must allow non-Jews to buy its land.^{[28][29] [30] [31]}

Nonetheless, it is true that a long-running dispute existed over the right of Arab Israelis to build homes on ILA land, a situation that was eventually resolved in favor of equality by the Israeli Supreme Court. As reported in the BBC:

"The Jewish character of the state does not permit Israel to discriminate between its citizens. In Israel, Jews and non-Jews are citizens with equal rights and responsibilities," the court said in a ruling made public by the justice ministry. It said such action was "impermissible discrimination."

According to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in a speech delivered in South Africa in February 2006:^[32]

"The Israel Land Administration had denied the asserted right of Arabs to build their homes on land in Israel open to the general public for home construction. The Administration defended reservation of permission to build to non-Arab applicants on the promise that it would allocate land to establish an exclusively Arab communal settlement. Citing Brown, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that such allegedly separate-but-equal treatment constituted unlawful discrimination on the basis of national origin."

Arab Israelis, who make up about 20 percent of Israel's population, possess roughly half of the 6.5 percent of land that is privately owned. (As of 2002, Arabs owned 713,000 dunams — or 48 percent — of the total 1,480,000 dunams of privately-owned land, according to Arab Israeli geographer Rassem Khamaisi.^[33]

It is however worth noting that all Israeli Supreme Court rulings and rights of ownership mentioned apply to Israeli citizens of Arab origin, who make up a small minority of the total Palestinian population. Chomsky is also known for his criticisms of the Israeli settlement activity, which transfer ownership of land within the occupied Palestinians territories to Israeli settlers. Critics call this transfer illegal, citing the Geneva conventions and other international law.

[edit] Views on anti-Semitism

In a controversial 2004 interview with Jennifer Bleyer published in Ugly Planet, issue two^[22][23][24] and in Heeb Magazine,^[25] Chomsky engaged in the following exchange:

Q: What about recent incidents in Europe and the Arab World? It would seem to involve rather acrobatic leaps of logic to say that these are not anti-Semitic.

Chomsky: What's talked about in Europe is something quite different. In Europe, there's a large Muslim population, and much of it has been driven to fundamentalist Islam. They display hatred towards Jews that is a reflection of Israeli practices. I mean, if you carry out a brutal and vicious occupation for thirty-five years, subject the people to humiliation and degradation, break their bones and steal their land and resources, it has consequences. Sometimes the consequences can be quite ugly and among them is the burning of synagogues in France. Yes, it's anti-Semitism. But Israel insists on it. Remember, Israel does not call itself the state of its citizens. The high court in Israel declared over forty years ago that Israel is the sovereign state of the Jewish people in Israel and the Diaspora. That means Israel is my sovereign state, but it's not the sovereign state of its Palestinian citizens. Well, if that's what you declare yourself to be, then you can hardly blame critics of Israeli policy for having negative attitudes towards Jews. After all, it's my sovereign state-why shouldn't they go after me? This is one of many respects in which insisting on a state that is fundamentally racist in its basic character and declares itself to be the state of Jews everywhere is harmful to Jews. So to call these manifestations, 'anti-Semitism' is misleading.

[edit] Criticism of intellectual communities

Chomsky has at times been outspokenly critical of scholars and other public intellectuals; while his views sometimes place him at odds with individuals on particular points, he has also denounced intellectual sub-communities for what he sees as systemic failings. Chomsky sees two broad problems with academic intellectuals generally:

1. They largely function as a distinct class, and so distinguish themselves by using language inaccessible to people outside the academy, with more or less deliberately exclusionary effects. In Chomsky's view there is little reason to believe that academics are more inclined to engage in profound thought than other members of society and that the designation "intellectual" obscures the truth of the intellectual division of labour: "These are funny words actually, I mean being an 'intellectual' has almost nothing to do with working with your mind; these are two different things. My suspicion is that plenty of people in the crafts, auto mechanics and so on, probably do as much or more intellectual work as people in the universities. There are plenty of areas in academia where what's called 'scholarly' work is just clerical work, and I don't think clerical work's more challenging than fixing an automobile engine—in fact, I think the opposite.... So if by 'intellectual' you mean people who are using their minds, then it's all over society" (Understanding Power, p. 96).
2. The corollary of this argument is that the privileges enjoyed by intellectuals make them more ideologised and obedient than the rest of society: "If by 'intellectual' you mean people who are a special class who are in the business of imposing thoughts, and framing ideas for people in power, and telling everyone what they should believe, and so on, well, yeah, that's different. These people are called 'intellectuals'—but they're really more a kind of secular priesthood, whose task is to uphold the doctrinal truths of the society. And the population should be anti-intellectual in that respect, I think that's a healthy reaction" (ibid, p. 96; this statement continues the previous quotation).

Chomsky is elsewhere asked what "theoretical" tools he feels can be produced to provide a strong intellectual basis for challenging hegemonic power, and he replies: "if there is a body of theory, well tested and verified, that applies to the conduct of foreign affairs or the resolution of domestic or international conflict, its existence has been kept a well-guarded secret," despite much "pseudo-scientific posturing." Chomsky's general preference is, therefore, to use plain language in speaking with a non-elite audience.

The American Intellectual climate is the focus of "The Responsibility of Intellectuals," the essay which established Chomsky as one of the leading political philosophers in the second half of the twentieth century. Chomsky's extensive criticisms of a new type of post-WW2 intellectual he saw arising in the United States were the focus of his book American Power and the New Mandarins. There he described what he saw as the betrayal of the duties of an intellectual to challenge received opinion. The "new Mandarins," who he saw as responsible in part for the Vietnam War, were apologists for United States as an imperial power; he wrote that their ideology demonstrated

"the mentality of the colonial civil servant, persuaded of the benevolence of the mother country and the correctness of its vision of world order, and convinced that he understands the true interests of the backward peoples whose welfare he is to administer."

Chomsky has shown cynicism towards the credibility of postmodernism and poststructuralism. In particular he has criticised the Parisian intellectual community; the following disclaimer may be taken as indicative: "I wouldn't say this if I hadn't been explicitly asked for my opinion — and if asked to back it up, I'm going to respond that I don't think it merits the time to do so" (ibid). Chomsky's lack of interest arises from what he sees as a combination of difficult language and limited intellectual or "real world" value, especially in Parisian academe: "Sometimes it gets kind of comical, say in post-modern discourse. Especially around Paris, it has become a comic strip, I mean it's all gibberish ... they try to decode it and see what is the actual meaning behind it, things that you could explain to an eight-year old child. There's nothing there." (Chomsky on Anarchism, pg. 216). This is exacerbated, in his view, by the attention paid to academics by the French press: "in France if you're part of the intellectual elite and you cough, there's a front-page story in Le Monde. That's one of the reasons why French intellectual culture is so farcical — it's like Hollywood" (Understanding Power, pg. 96).

Chomsky made a 1971 appearance on Dutch television with Michel Foucault, the full text of which can be found in Foucault and his Interlocutors, Arnold Davidson (ed.), 1997 (ISBN 0-226-13714-7). Of Foucault, Chomsky wrote that:

... with enough effort, one can extract from his writings some interesting insights and observations, peeling away the framework of obfuscation that is required for respectability in the strange world of intellectuals, which takes on extreme forms in the weird culture of postwar Paris. Foucault is unusual among Paris intellectuals in that at least something is left when one peels this away.^[34]

[edit] Chomsky's influence as a political activist

[edit] Opposition to the Vietnam War

Chomsky became one of the most prominent opponents of the Vietnam War in February 1967, with the publication of his essay "The Responsibility of Intellectuals" ^[35] in the New York Review of Books.

Allen J. Matusow, "The Vietnam War, the Liberals, and the Overthrow of LBJ" (1984):^[36]

"By 1967 the radicals were obsessed by the war and frustrated by their impotence to affect its course. The government was unmoved by protest, the people were uninformed and apathetic, and American technology was tearing Vietnam apart. What, then, was their responsibility? Noam Chomsky explored this problem in February 1967 in the New York Review, which had become the favorite journal of the radicals. By virtue of their training and leisure, intellectuals had a greater responsibility than ordinary citizens for the actions of the state, Chomsky said. It was their special responsibility "to speak the truth and expose lies" ... [Chomsky] concluded by quoting an essay written twenty years before by Dwight Macdonald, an essay that implied that in time of crisis exposing lies might not be enough. "Only those who are willing to resist authority themselves when it conflicts too intolerably with their personal moral code", Macdonald had written, "only they have the right to condemn". Chomsky's article was immediately recognized as an important intellectual event. Along with the radical students, radical intellectuals were moving "from protest to resistance."

A contemporary reaction from Raziel Abielson, Chairman of the Department of Philosophy at New York University:^[37]

"... Chomsky's morally impassioned and powerfully argued denunciation of American aggression in Vietnam and throughout the world is the most moving political document I have read since the death of Leon Trotsky. It is inspiring to see a brilliant scientist risk his prestige, his access to lucrative government grants, and his reputation for Olympian objectivity by taking a clearcut, no-holds-barred, adversary position on the burning moral-political issue of the day...."

Chomsky also participated in "resistance" activities, which he described in subsequent essays and letters published in the New York Review of Books: withholding half of his income tax ^[38], taking part in the 1967 march on the Pentagon, and spending a night in jail.^[39] In the spring of 1972, Chomsky testified on the origins of the war before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chaired by J. William Fulbright.

Chomsky's view of the war is different from orthodox anti-war opinion which holds the war as a tragic mistake. He argues that the war was a success from the US point of view. According to Chomsky's view the main aim of US policy was the destruction of the nationalist movements in the Vietnamese peasantry. In particular he argues that US attacks were not a defense of South Vietnam against the North but began directly in the early 1960s (covert US intervention from the 1950s) and at that time were mostly aimed at South Vietnam. He agrees with the view of orthodox historians that the US government was concerned about the possibility of a "domino effect" in South-East Asia. At this point Chomsky diverts from orthodox opinion - he holds that the US government was not so concerned with the spread of state Communism and authoritarianism but rather of nationalist movements that would not be sufficiently subservient to US economic interests.

[edit] East Timor activism

In 1975, the Indonesian army, under the command of President Suharto invaded East Timor, occupying it until 1999, which resulted in between 80,000 and 200,000 East Timorese deaths^[40], (A detailed statistical report prepared for the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in East Timor cited a lower range of 102,800 conflict-related deaths in the period 1974–1999, namely, approximately 18,600 killings and 84,200 'excess' deaths from hunger and illness.^[41]) a death toll which is considered “proportionately comparable” to the Cambodian genocide.^[42]

Chomsky argued that decisive military, financial and diplomatic support was provided to Suharto’s regime by successive U.S. administrations; beginning with Gerald Ford who, with Henry Kissinger as Secretary of State, provided a ‘green light’ to the brutal invasion. Prior to the invasion, the U.S. had supplied the Indonesian army with 90% of its arms, and “by 1977 Indonesia found itself short of weapons, an indication of the scale of its attack. The Carter Administration accelerated the arms flow. Britain joined in as atrocities peaked in 1978, while France announced that it would sell arms to Indonesia and protect it from any public "embarrassment". Others, too, sought to gain what profit they could from the slaughter and torture of Timorese.”^[43] This humanitarian catastrophe went virtually unnoticed by the international community.^[44]

Noam Chomsky attempted to raise consciousness about the crisis at a very early stage. ^[45] In November 1978 and October 1979, Chomsky delivered statements to the Fourth Committee of the U.N. General Assembly about the East Timor tragedy and the lack of media coverage.^[46]

In 1999, when it became clear that the majority of Timorese people were poised to vote in favour of their national independence in U.N. sponsored elections Indonesian armed forces and paramilitary groups reacted by attempting to terrorize the population. At this time Chomsky chose to remind Americans of the three principal reasons why he felt they should care about East Timor:

"First, since the Indonesian invasion of December 1975, East Timor has been the site of some of the worst atrocities of the modern era -- atrocities which are mounting again right now. Second, the US government has played a decisive role in escalating these atrocities and can easily act to mitigate or terminate them. It is not necessary to bomb Jakarta or impose economic sanctions. Throughout, it would have sufficed for Washington to withdraw support and to inform its Indonesian client that the game was over. That remains true as the situation reaches a crucial turning point -- the third reason."^[47]

Weeks later, following the independence vote, the Indonesian military drove "hundreds of thousands from their homes and destroying most of the country. For the first time the atrocities were well publicized in the United States."^[48]

Australian historian Clinton Fernandes, writes that “When Indonesia invaded East Timor with US support in 1975, Chomsky joined other activists in a tireless campaign of international solidarity. His speeches and publications on this topic were prodigious and widely read, but his financial support is less well known. When the US media were refusing to interview Timorese refugees, claiming that they had no access to them, Chomsky personally paid for the airfares of several refugees, bringing them from Lisbon to the US, where he tried to get them into the editorial offices of The New York Times and other outlets. Most of his financial commitment to such causes has – because of his own reticence – gone unnoticed. A Timorese activist says, “we learnt that the Chomsky factor and East Timor were a deadly combination” and “proved to be too powerful for those who tried to defeat us”.^[49]

Standing before The UN Independent Special Commission of Inquiry for Timor-Leste whose major report was released in 2006 ^[50], Arnold Kohen a U.S activist vitally important to the raising of western consciousness of the catastrophe since 1975, testified that,

"Chomsky’s words on this matter had a real influence, sometimes indirect, and history should record it, because it was of vital importance in helping alter the state of widespread ignorance about East Timor that then existed in the United States and elsewhere."^[51]

When José Ramos-Horta and Bishop Carlos Belo of East Timor were honored with the Nobel Peace Prize, Chomsky responded "That was great, a wonderful thing. I ran into José Ramos-Horta in Sao Paolo. I haven’t seen his official speech yet, but certainly he was saying in public that the prize should have been given to Xanana Gusmao, who is the leader of the resistance to Indonesian aggression. He’s in an Indonesian jail. But the recognition of the struggle is a very important thing, or will be an important thing if we can turn it into something."^[52]

[edit] Chomsky and his publishers against the Turkish Courts

In 2002 the Turkish state indicted a Turkish publisher, Fatih Tas, for distributing a collection of Chomsky’s essays under the title ‘American Intervention.’ The state charged that the book “promoted separatism” violating Article 8 of the Turkish Anti-Terror Law.^[53] One essay in the book was a reprint of a speech that Chomsky had made in Toledo, Ohio containing material claiming that the Turkish state had brutally repressed its Kurdish population. Prosecutors cited the following passages as particularly offensive:

”In 1984, the Turkish government launched a major war in the Southeast against the Kurdish population. And that continued. In fact it's still continuing.

If we look at US military aid to Turkey-which is usually a pretty good index of policy-Turkey was of course a strategic ally so it always had a fairly high level of military aid. But the aid shot up in 1984, at the time that the counterinsurgency war began. This had nothing to do with Cold War, transparently. It was because of the counterinsurgency war. The aid remained high, peaking through the 1990s as the atrocities increased. The peak year was 1997. In fact in the single year 1997, US military aid to Turkey was greater than in the entire period of 1950 to 1983 when there were allegedly Cold War issues. The end result was pretty awesome: tens of thousands of people killed, two to three million refugees, massive ethnic cleansing with some 3500 villages destroyed-about seven times Kosovo under NATO bombing, and there's nobody bombing in this case, except for the Turkish air forces using planes that Clinton sent to them with the certain knowledge that that's how they would be used.”^[54]

At the request of Turkish activists, Chomsky petitioned the Turkish courts to name him as a co-defendant. He testified at the court trial in Istanbul in 2002. Fatih Tas was acquitted. After the trial The BBC reported Tas as saying, “If Chomsky hadn't been here we wouldn't have expected such a verdict.”^[55]

While Chomsky was in Turkey for the trial he traveled to the southern city of Diyarbakir, the unofficial capital of the Kurdish population in Turkey, where he delivered a controversial speech, urging the Kurds to form an autonomous, self-governing community.^[56] Police handed recorded cassettes and translations of the speech over to Turkish courts for investigation a few days later.^[57]

In June 2006, Turkish publisher Tas was again prosecuted, along with two editors and a translator, for publishing a Turkish translation of Manufacturing Consent, authored by Chomsky and Ed Herman. The defendants were accused “under articles 216 and 301 of the Turkish Penal Code for "publicly denigrating Turkishness, the Republic and the Parliament" and "inciting hatred and enmity among the people".^[58] The courts disallowed the authors from testifying on behalf of the defendants. In December 2006, the four defendants were acquitted by Turkish courts. Tas still has several cases pending for the publishing of other books.

In 2003, in the New Humanist, Chomsky wrote about repression of free speech in Turkey and “the courage and dedication of the leading artists, writers, academics, journalists, publishers and others who carry on the daily struggle for freedom of speech and human rights, not just with statements but also with regular acts of civil disobedience. Some have spent a good part of their lives in Turkish prisons because of their insistence on recording the true history of the miserably oppressed Kurdish population.”^[59]

[edit] Marginalization in the mainstream media

Chomsky has rarely appeared in popular media outlets in the United States such as CNN, Time Magazine, Foreign Policy and others, however his recorded lectures are regularly replayed by NPR stations in the United States that carry the broadcasts of Alternative Radio, a syndicator of progressive lectures. Critics of Chomsky have argued his mainstream media coverage is adequate, and not unusual considering the fact that academics in general often receive low priority in the American media.

When CNN presenter Jeff Greenfield was asked why Chomsky was never on his show, he explained that Chomsky might "be one of the leading intellectuals who can't talk on television. […] If you['ve] got a 22-minute show, and a guy takes five minutes to warm up, […] he's out".^[60] Greenfield described this need to "say things between two commercials" as the media's requirement for "concision". Chomsky has elaborated on this, saying that "the beauty of [concision] is that you can only repeat conventional thoughts". If you repeat conventional thoughts, you require zero evidence, like saying Osama Bin Laden is a bad guy, no evidence is required. However, if you say something that is true, although not a conventional truth, like the United States attacked South Vietnam, people are going to rightfully want evidence, and a whole lot of it as they should. The format of the shows do not allow this type of evidence which is one of the reasons concision is critical. He's continued that if the media were better propagandists they would let dissidents on more because the time restraint would stop them properly explaining their radical views and they 'would sound like they were from Neptune.'" For this reason, Chomsky rejects many offers to appear on TV, preferring the written medium.

Since his book 9-11 became a bestseller in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, Chomsky has attracted more attention from the mainstream American media. For example, The New York Times published an article in May 2002 describing the popularity of 9-11^[61]. In January 2004, the Times published a highly critical review of Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival by Samantha Power^[62], and in February, the Times published an op-ed by Chomsky himself, criticizing the Israeli West Bank Barrier for taking Palestinian land.^[63]

[edit] Worldwide audience

Despite his marginalization in the mainstream US media, Chomsky is one of the most globally famous figures of the left, especially among academics and university students, and frequently travels across the United States, Europe, and the Third World. He has a very large following of supporters worldwide as well as a dense speaking schedule, drawing large crowds wherever he goes. He is often booked up to two years in advance. He was one of the main speakers at the 2002 World Social Forum. He is interviewed at length in alternative media^[64]. Many of his books are bestsellers, including 9-11.^[61]

The 1992 film Manufacturing Consent, was shown widely on college campuses and broadcast on PBS. It is the highest grossing Canadian made documentary film in history.^[65] Chomsky's popularity has become a cultural phenomenon. Bono of U2 called Chomsky a "rebel without a pause, the Elvis of academia". Rage Against the Machine took copies of his books on tour with the band. Pearl Jam ran a small pirate radio on one of their tours, playing Chomsky talks mixed along with their music. R.E.M. asked Chomsky to go on tour with them and open their concerts with a lecture (he declined). Radiohead has recommended Chomsky's works on their various websites and Thom Yorke in particular is an admirer. Chomsky lectures have been featured on the B-sides of records from Chumbawamba and other groups.^[66] Many anti-globalization and anti-war activists regard Chomsky as an inspiration.

Chomsky is widely read outside the US. 9-11 was published in 26 countries and translated into 23 languages;^[67] it was a bestseller in at least five countries, including Canada and Japan^[61]. Chomsky's views are often given coverage on public broadcasting networks around the world—in marked contrast, supporters say, to his rare appearances in the US media. In the UK, for example, he appears periodically on the BBC.^[68]

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez is known to be an admirer of Chomsky's books. He held up Chomsky's book Hegemony or Survival during his speech to the United Nations General Assembly in September 2006.

[edit] Bibliography

Main article: Bibliography of Noam Chomsky

[edit] References

[edit] See also

• Operation Gladio
• Military Keynesianism

[edit] External links

• ZNet: Noam Chomsky Archive
• A-Infos Radio Project: Talks by Noam Chomsky (MP3)
• OneBigTorrent.org - Chomsky — Chomsky filesharing section on OneBigTorrent.org. Talks, interviews. (BitTorrent)
• Libertarian Communist Library Noam Chomsky Archive
• chomsky.info: The Official Noam Chomsky Website

[edit] Speeches and interviews

• Noam Chomsky in a interwiev with Serbian television
• Government in the Future. Poetry Center, New York. February 16, 1970. (MP3, transcript)
• Talk and Q&A at UC Berkeley, on the massacres in Indonesia and East Timor, 1982 (MP3)
• WGBH Debate, Noam Chomsky vs. John Silber, on the Sandinistas and Contras in Nicaragua, January 1, 1986 (transcript)
• Ohio State University Debate, Noam Chomsky vs. Richard Perle, 1988 (MP3)
• Prospects for World Order, Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Memorial Lecture for Peace, Oregon State University, October 24, 1995. (Transcribed flash video)
• Interview about NAFTA, by Zack de la Rocha as part of the The Battle of Mexico City video, 1999 (transcript)
• Noam Chomsky on "Talk of the Nation"; interviewed by Ray Suarez, January 20, 1999
• CNN Debate, Noam Chomsky vs. Bill Bennett, May 30, 2002 (transcript)
• Talk and Q&A at Boston College, March 23, 2003 (RealVideo)
• C-SPAN Book TV In-Depth, 3-hour interview from June 1, 2003 (RealVideo)
• Noam Chomsky on The Tavis Smiley Show, November 19, 2003
• Noam Chomsky on Charlie Rose, November 20, 2003 (RealAudio)
• Noam Chomsky lecture at the University of Edinburgh, March 22, 2005
• John F. Kennedy School of Government Israel-Palestine Debate Noam Chomsky V Alan Dershowitz, November 29, 2005. (Real Player video)
• No one's listening, podcast interview, December 7, 2005 (MP3)

[edit] Articles

• Chomsky on Socialism
• Chomsky on Anarchism

v • d • e Noam Chomsky Politics · Bibliography · Criticism · Chomsky hierarchy · "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" Select bibliography Linguistics Syntactic Structures (1957) · Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965) · Cartesian Linguistics: A Chapter in the History of Rationalist Thought (1966) · The Sound Pattern of English (1968) · The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory (1975) · Lectures on Government and Binding (1981) · The Minimalist Program (1995) Politics The Responsibility of Intellectuals (1967) · American Power and the New Mandarins (1969) · The Soviet Union Versus Socialism (1986) · Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media * (1988) · Necessary Illusions (1989) · Deterring Democracy (1992) · Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance (2003) · Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship (2003) · Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy (2006) Interviews Class Warfare (1996) · Imperial Ambitions (2005) Filmography Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (1992) · Last Party 2000 (2001) · Power and Terror: Noam Chomsky in Our Times (2002) · Distorted Morality – America's War On Terror? (2003) · Noam Chomsky: Rebel Without a Pause (2003) (TV) · Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land (2004) Related articles Carol Chomsky(1930-2008) · Aviva Chomsky(1957-) * with Edward S. Herman