MCViewPoint

Opinion from a Libertarian ViewPoint

Posts Tagged ‘Noam Chomsky’

Noam Chomsky

Posted by M. C. on May 13, 2024

A quote from Chomsky:

Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media.

Another quote from Chomsky:

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum — even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”

Another:

“Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.”

Be seeing you

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What Noam Chomsky Can Teach Us About Freedom of Speech

Posted by M. C. on July 24, 2023

+ My Conversation with Mickey Z. on the Post-Woke Podcast

“I don’t mind the denunciations, frankly. I mind the lies. I mean intellectuals are very good at lying. They’re professionals at it, in a wonderful technique. There’s no way of responding to it. If somebody calls you, you know, an anti-semite, what can you say? ‘I’m not an anti-semite.’ Somebody says you’re a racist, you’re a Nazi, you always lose. The person that throws the mud always wins. Because there’s no way of responding to such charges.”

Margaret Anna Alice

and

Mickey Z.

“If you believe in freedom of speech, you believe in freedom of speech for views you don’t like. Goebbels was in favor of freedom of speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re in favor of freedom of speech, that means you’re in favor of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of freedom of speech.”
—Noam Chomsky, interview included in Manufacturing Consent

I know what you’re thinking.

Noam Chomsky seems an unlikely companion for a disquisition in defense of civil liberties.

I’m not talking about the authoritarianenemy-definingmenticided Chomsky who in 2021 advocated for the isolation, stigmatization, and deprivation of those who exercise their right to refuse an experimental injection.

https://www.bitchute.com/embed/oyZNqDUnzyJb/

I’m talking about Vintage Chomsky.

The Chomsky who wrote Manufacturing Consent.

The Chomsky who uncloaked the mud-throwing tactic of kafkatrapping:

“I don’t mind the denunciations, frankly. I mind the lies. I mean intellectuals are very good at lying. They’re professionals at it, in a wonderful technique. There’s no way of responding to it. If somebody calls you, you know, an anti-semite, what can you say? ‘I’m not an anti-semite.’ Somebody says you’re a racist, you’re a Nazi, you always lose. The person that throws the mud always wins. Because there’s no way of responding to such charges.”

The Chomsky who defended a Holocaust denier’s right to express his views:

“A professor of French literature was … brought to trial for ‘falsification of History,’ and later condemned for this crime, the first time that a modern Western state openly affirmed the Stalinist-Nazi doctrine that the state will determine historical truth and punish deviation from it. Later he was beaten practically to death by Jewish terrorists. As of now, the European and other intellectuals have not expressed any opposition to these scandals; rather, they have sought to disguise their profound commitment to Stalinist-Nazi doctrine by following the same models, trying to divert attention with a flood of outrageous lies.”

The Chomsky who recognized the don’t-think-of-a-white-bear Streisand effect created by laws that criminalize unpleasant speech and thought:

“I don’t think the way to deal with neo-fascist groups is to try to shut them up forcefully. You should try to win the argument. It’s quite remarkable to see how it works. So take say, Holocaust denial. In a lot of Europe, Holocaust denial is a crime.…

“In the United States, it’s not a crime. The consequence is that in the United States, Holocaust denial is unknown. There’s plenty of it.… Nobody pays any attention to it.…

“In France and a lot of Europe, it’s all over the front pages, ton of publicity. Some guy somewhere does some marginal thing, everybody knows about it. It’s a way of giving publicity to Holocaust denial. If you treat it the sensible way, it’s about like somebody claiming the earth is flat—okay, forget it, it has no impact.

“I just don’t think it’s even tactically the right way to deal with say, neo-fascist groups, and it does give them an argument. As you said, they can claim freedom of speech, which is a value we all uphold.”

The Chomsky who identified the “Stalinist-style technique to silence critics of the holy state” and “the endless lies of the Anti-Defamation League.”

The Chomsky who warned us about the five filters of the mass media machine.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=34LGPIXvU5M%3Fembeds_referring_euri%3Dhttps

The Chomsky who pointed out “the difference between defending a person’s right to express his views and defending the views expressed.”

The Chomsky who condemned the hegemonic State:

“There’s no concern for justice and there never was. States don’t have a concern for justice. States don’t act on moral grounds.…

“They are instruments of power and violence, that’s true of all states; they act in the interests of the groups that dominate them, they spout the nice rhetorical line, but these are just givens of the international system.”

The Chomsky who exposed the hypocrisy of practicing censorship in the name of “protecting” Jews:

“It is a poor service to the memory of the victims of the Holocaust to adopt a central doctrine of their murderers.”

That Chomsky.

But can we learn anything from present-day Chomsky?

We can learn that no matter how awake we think we are, how aware we are of the tricks used to propagandize us, how skeptical we remain of media and the State, or how knowledgeable we are about history, there but for the grace of God go we.

We can learn that we must ceaselessly guard our hearts from the emotional manipulators, our minds from the behavioral psychologists, our souls from the totalitarian morality inverters.

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Calling Chomsky Out: The Riots Are a Full-Fledged Attack by the Hard Left To Topple American Society – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on September 12, 2020

The charge of systemic institutionalized racism against black people is completely false (see here, here and here). The only form of institutional racism that exists in the United States is discrimination against whites and Asians in education and employment.

Please make no mistake. The specious charge of anti-black racism is a mere cover for unleashing violence dressed up as a “social justice movement” whose real purpose is to destabilize our society and bring about the Hard Left’s extra-electoral coup d’état.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/09/vasko-kohlmayer/calling-chomsky-out-the-riots-are-a-full-fledged-attack-by-the-hard-left-to-topple-american-society/

By

Professor Noam Chomsky, formerly of MIT, has the distinction of being the most frequently quoted academic and is arguably the best known public intellectual in the world. He recently gave an interview in which he spoke, among other things, about the BLM sponsored riots that are taking place across the United States. This is what he had to say on this subject:

“The Black Lives Matter protests which is a huge, incredible development: the biggest social movement in American history. A huge number of people involved spontaneously, solidarity black and white together, constructive goals, develop good programs, really great things happening… At the fringes they are people who are breaking windows, intimidating somebody at the restaurant… Things like this shouldn’t be happening, but that’s not what’s going on. What’s going on is a massive, non-violent, constructive social movement.”

As the tennis great John McEnroe used to say to wayward referees, “You cannot be serious. You just cannot be serious, sir.”

Professor Chomsky has made a career of calling out lying and hypocrisy. Today we must call out his own.

Below are some news pieces Professor Chomsky may want to read at his leisure.

From a Fox News report of June 29:

“Nationwide, Floyd related protests and riots lasted 3 weeks in 140 U.S. cities, including Washington, D.C., New York; Chicago, Philadelphia and Los Angeles. By June 4 at least 40 cities in 23 states had imposed curfews. High-end boutiques in Beverly Hills and New York like Gucci and Chanel were looted, luxury stores in Santa Monica and big box retailers like Target and Macy’s across the US have suffered tens of millions in losses.”

And this:

The costliest civil disorder in U.S. history: That’s what insurance experts and city officials say the riots and demonstrations following the death of George Floyd are shaping up to be. From police overtime to losses from fire – as well as theft and other destruction – costs of the unrest are adding up. And for the first time since statistics were collected in 1950, the insurance industry has labeled this a “riot and civil disorder” catastrophe in multiple states. In Minneapolis, where some 400 businesses were damaged, owners and insurance experts estimate costs of the damage to exceed $500 million, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

A quote from another news item: “From police injuries to financial losses from looters, the aftermath from weeks of cross-country protests is bringing some cities to their knees.”

And here is an assessment of those peaceful and constructive protests by an insurance industry journal:

“The civil disturbance that started in Minneapolis after the killing by police of George Floyd spread to 20 other states — an unprecedented property insurance catastrophe that will likely impact policy renewals and could even persuade some insurers to exclude coverage for damage caused by riots, executives for Verisk’s Property Claim Services said. In the U.S., there has been no precedent for a riot catastrophe like this,” Tom Johansmeyer, head of PCS.”

And should we not mention Portland which has been burning for over one hundred days running and New York City which has been essentially hollowed out?

Some people on the “fringes breaking windows?” Is that really what’s happening, Professor?

The above reports are from weeks ago. The damage has only grown much worse since. There can be little doubt that when all is said and done the cumulative costs and losses will run into hundreds of billions of dollars. And that’s if we are lucky enough not to disintegrate in the process.

This catastrophic destruction is not the work of some far-off fringe. After all, how could a small minority on the periphery wreak such immense havoc? No, this kind of violence is the thrust and focus of this criminal enterprise which is being disingenuously portrayed by the Left as a “social justice” movement.

Do you want to know who is on the fringes of this campaign? They are those gullible enough to show up at the protests believing that there will be peaceful marching. These people are what Lenin used to call “useful idiots.”

The real heart of this “peaceful movement” are the violent vandals who have done an excellent job indeed. They have wrecked half the country.

“Constructive” and “non-violent?” Did you really say that Professor Chomsky?

What exactly is “non-violent” about all this terrible violence?

And what is “constructive” about a crusade launched under false pretenses? A sham claim is made – that the US is a racist country – and violence is let loose. This movement is not constructive – it is destructive. The whole travesty is based on a bogus allegation and conducted under a fake guise.

Since he is someone who has always portrayed himself as a scholar of complete intellectual honesty and integrity, we call upon Professor Chomsky to retract his statements about the situation on the ground which run in complete contravention of reality.

It is difficult to believe that anyone in his right mind would describe these devastating riots “non-violent” and “constructive.” But this is what leftists do, for they are masters of reality inversion. To listen to the leftist-speak is to enter a Twilight Zone. To them white is black and black is white. To them a violent insurrection is a gentle demonstration. To leftists a man is a woman and a woman is a man, and if you do not agree to their insanities you get cancelled and fired. And then you get threatened and you have to run for your life. This is the Left’s modus operandi, which is not surprising since psychologically and ideologically they hail from the same root as tyrants and totalitarians. We have shown this in the graphic called the Ideological Pedigree Table of Values and Views. Please do take a look if you have time.

Here is what is happening before our eyes: With America mired in a multi-prong crisis – which, sadly, is largely of our own making – the Hard Left has sensed that our society has been weakened to the point where it can be toppled. Taking advantage of the present weakness, the radicals are now trying to achieve their goal. From the very beginning, they have done all they could to encourage the vandals on the streets who have risen to the task by unleashing brutality that has caused heavy damage on many fronts and levels and shook America to its core. The army of wreckers have beaten and injured countless people, destroyed thousands of businesses and brought ruin to a number of cities. Rowing gangs of looters have terrorized and demoralized large swathes of the American population. The violence and chicanery have shaken this country deeply, pushing it to the brink. These domestic terrorists have been all along cheered on and protected by their enablers and shills in the media, in academia, in the courts and in the Democrat Party. What we are witnessing right now is nothing other than a full-fledged, coordinated assault against America by the elements of the Hard Left. The objective of this attack is the overthrow of our society.

These are no civil rights protests to bring justice and equality to an oppressed minority. The charge of systemic institutionalized racism against black people is completely false (see here, here and here). The only form of institutional racism that exists in the United States is discrimination against whites and Asians in education and employment. Just recently the US Justice Department found a leading IVY League university guilty of gross discrimination against white and Asian applicants whereby such applicants had a ninety percent lower chance of being admitted than black candidates with comparable scores. From a US Department of Justice press release:

“The Department of Justice today notified Yale University of its findings that Yale illegally discriminates against Asian American and white applicants in its undergraduate admissions process in violation of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The findings are the result of a two-year investigation in response to a complaint by Asian American groups concerning Yale’s conduct.”

If this is not racism what is, asks Patrick Buchanan in his column The Progressive Racism Of The Ivy League. This kind of anti-white, anti-Asian racism is the common practice in academia as well as in other spheres of our societal life such as government employment and contracts. The truth is that black Americans are the beneficiaries of reverse discrimination and numerous other forms of preferential treatment.

Please make no mistake. The specious charge of anti-black racism is a mere cover for unleashing violence dressed up as a “social justice movement” whose real purpose is to destabilize our society and bring about the Hard Left’s extra-electoral coup d’état.

 

Be seeing you

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Why I Don’t Criticize Russia, China, Or Other Unabsorbed Governments – Caitlin Johnstone

Posted by M. C. on December 31, 2019

When asked in an interview why he spends the bulk of his time criticizing his own government, Noam Chomsky replied:

“My own concern is primarily the terror and violence carried out by my own state, for two reasons. For one thing, because it happens to be the larger component of international violence. But also for a much more important reason than that: namely, I can do something about it.

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/12/30/why-i-dont-criticize-russia-china-or-other-unabsorbed-governments/

Depending on whose political echo chamber I happen to be arguing with on a given day, one common criticism I run into a fair bit which many of my readers have surely also encountered is that I put all my energy into criticizing the foreign policy of the United States and its allies.

“You’re not anti-war, you’re only anti-AMERICAN wars!” they say, as though they’re delivering some kind of devastating slam-dunk point. “If you’re so antiwar, why don’t you criticize Assad’s war in Syria? If you’re such an anti-imperialist, show me where you’ve ever once criticized Russian imperialism, or Chinese imperialism?”

The argument being that someone who opposes US-led warmongering isn’t really motivated by a desire for peace and an opposition to war unless they’re also voicing opposition to all other violent governments in the world. If you’re only criticizing US imperialism and not the imperialism of other nations, you must be motivated by something far more sinister, perhaps a hatred for the United States of America.

I have three responses to this feeble line of argumentation, which I’ll list here for the benefit of anyone else who’d like to make use of them:

1. People making this argument never apply its own logic to themselves.

Nobody criticizes all misdeeds by all governments everywhere in the world. If you run into someone making this “you have to criticize all bad governments or your criticisms are invalid” argument on Twitter, just do an advanced search for their Twitter handle plus “Duterte” or “Sisi” or one of the other US-allied tyrants who the mainstream media haven’t spent years demonizing, and you’ll find that they’ve never made a single mention of those leaders the entire time they’ve had that account.

What this proves, of course, is that they don’t actually practice the belief that all misdeeds by all governments are equally worthy of condemnation. What they actually practice is the belief that one ought to criticize the governments they hear their television criticizing: Russia, China, Syria, Iran, etc. The governments the US State Department and the CIA don’t like. The disobedient governments. The governments which have resisted absorption into the blob of the US-centralized empire.

They don’t put the logic of their own argument into practice because it is impossible to put into practice. Everyone’s only got so much time in the day, so you have to choose where to put your focus. I personally choose to put my focus on the single most egregious offender in warmongering and imperialism. Which takes us to:

2. The US empire is by far the worst warmongering imperialist force on the planet.

US-led regime change interventionism is literally always disastrous and literally never helpful. This is an indisputable fact. Imperialists get very frustrated when I take my stand there in arguments online, because it is an unassailable position. That’s usually when the ad hominems start flying.

All things are not equal. This isn’t something you should have to explain to grown adults, but such is the nature of propaganda. It is true that other governments do evil things; as far as I can tell this becomes pretty much a given as soon as a government is allowed to have a military force and keep important secrets from its citizenry. Obviously Russia, China and other unabsorbed governments are no exception to this rule. But the US is worse, by orders of magnitude.

No other nation comes anywhere remotely close. No other nation is circling the planet with hundreds of military bases and engaged in dozens of undeclared military operations. No other nation has cultivated a giant globe-sprawling empire in the form of tightly knit alliances with powerful murderous governments like the UK, Israel and Saudi Arabia. No other nation is constantly laboring to sabotage and undermine any government which refuses to be absorbed into military and economic alliance with it using sanctions, staged coups, covert CIA operations, color revolutions, economic manipulations, propaganda, the arming of dissident militias, and launching full-scale military invasions. Only the US and the nations that its cancerous empire has metastasized into are doing anything like that on anywhere near the scale.

So since I, like everyone else, only have enough time in the day to oppose so many different evils in the world, I choose to pour my energy into opposing the single most egregious offender. An offender which doesn’t get nearly enough opposition, in my opinion.

3. I have a special responsibility for the evils of the empire in which I live.

When asked in an interview why he spends the bulk of his time criticizing his own government, Noam Chomsky replied:

“My own concern is primarily the terror and violence carried out by my own state, for two reasons. For one thing, because it happens to be the larger component of international violence. But also for a much more important reason than that: namely, I can do something about it. So even if the US was responsible for 2% of the violence in the world instead of the majority of it, it would be that 2% I would be primarily responsible for. And that is a simple ethical judgment. That is, the ethical value of one’s actions depends on their anticipated and predictable consequences. It is very easy to denounce the atrocities of someone else. That has about as much ethical value as denouncing atrocities that took place in the 18th century.”

When people here in Australia ask about what I do for a living, I sometimes jokingly tell them I write about Australian foreign policy, which means that I write about US foreign policy. I’ve written many times about how Australia functions as Washington’s basement gimp, an impotent vassal which functions as little more than a US military/intelligence asset in terms of meaningful international affairs.

So all I really am doing here is applying Chomsky’s philosophy to the reality of an empire in which sovereign nations do not exist to any meaningful extent; as a member of a state within that empire I focus on US government malfeasance in the same way I would if I were living in Alaska or Hawaii.

All I’m doing is pointing my personal skill set at what I see as the biggest problem in the world: a murderous empire in which I happen to reside and therefore bear special responsibility for opposing. Which is simply the only sane stand for anyone to take, in my opinion.

________________________

Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, checking out my podcast on either YoutubesoundcloudApple podcasts or Spotify, following me on Steemit, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypalpurchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone, or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish or use any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.

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Noam Chomsky: Russian Interference Isn’t Influencing US Elections—But Israel Definitely Is | The Daily Sheeple

Posted by M. C. on August 3, 2018

Last month, The Free Thought Project reported that South Carolina passed a law to legally define criticism of Israel as “anti-Semitism,” showing a concerted effort to stifle criticism of a government that is indiscriminately killing innocent people, and keeping an entire population in poverty and constant terror.

http://www.thedailysheeple.com/noam-chomsky-russian-interference-isnt-influencing-us-elections-but-israel-definitely-is_082018

World-renowned author and lecturer Noam Chomsky pointed out in a recent interview that Israel has actually had far more influence in the United States political system than Russia ever has, in the wake of mass media hysteria about alleged “collusion” in the 2016 election.

In an interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, Chomsky said:

So, take, say, the huge issue of interference in our pristine elections. Did the Russians interfere in our elections? An issue of overwhelming concern in the media. I mean, in most of the world, that’s almost a joke. First of all, if you’re interested in foreign interference in our elections, whatever the Russians may have done barely counts or weighs in the balance as compared with what another state does, openly, brazenly and with enormous support. Israeli intervention in U.S. elections vastly overwhelms anything the Russians may have done, I mean, even to the point where the prime minister of Israel, Netanyahu, goes directly to Congress, without even informing the president, and speaks to Congress, with overwhelming applause, to try to undermine the president’s policies—what happened with Obama and Netanyahu in 2015. Did Putin come to give an address to the joint sessions of Congress trying to—calling on them to reverse U.S. policy, without even informing the president? And that’s just a tiny bit of this overwhelming influence. So if you happen to be interested in influence of—foreign influence on elections, there are places to look. But even that is a joke.

Chomsky went on to point out that: Read the rest of this entry »

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