What's the Veeky Forums opinion on Chomsky?
Is he correct in his US foreign policy critique?
Is he correct in his evaluation of who the bad guys are?
Is he correct in his evaluation of the causes of terrorism?
and lastly: how is his historic accuracy? Is he trustworthy when he quotes historic events?
He's a typical American cuckold. To this day I have yet to encounter an American "intellectual" who isn't a bitch, a cuck, or a retard.
>bad guys
he is pretty much right about everything.
>KHMER ROUGE DINDU NUFFIN
obviously i was oversimplifying things. You know what i mean. But i do have the feeling that without any nuance chomsky sees the US indeed as "THE bad guys"
he said the red khmer were quite ok and that viatnamese socialism was pretty much perfect
agree with that?
>Man holding knife to girl's throat, police shoot him to death, one dead body, bystander injured by bullet
>Man barges into old lady's house, shoots her and robs her, runs off into the night
In Chomsky's world, these are morally equivalent, except the police officer might actually be worse because another person was injured :^)
>What's the Veeky Forums opinion on Chomsky?
For such a brilliant man, he can be remarkably stupid. He manages to miss the forest for the trees pretty consistently; and while his quoting of facts in the minute sense is pretty much always spot-on, he manages to weave incredibly dumb macrohistorical narratives out of it; largely because he tends to look at any given situation, try to identify the single biggest actor in that situation, shout loudly that it's that one actor's fault and nobody else's, and ignore everything else. Given that the U.S. is the de facto hegemon of the world and even before the collapse of the Soviet Union was pretty easily the most wealthy and militarily powerful state, that's usually America. But the mere fact that America has agency and a very long reach does not mean no other powers or policymakers have no agency, which is a corollary of his arguments.
Nice strawman
he does admit that other countries have a saying in those matters too: Saudi Arabia and Israel.
So the US, SA and Israel are the causing agents of everything that is wrong with the world according to him.
have any direct examples from something he said regarding your analogy?
On the one hand he's right in saying that the US promotes capitalism and establishes puppet governments around the world.
Where he goes wrong is saying that this is universally bad. He countersignals the US so hard that he literally endorsed the Khmer Rouge as pointed out, which is retarded.
He really should stick to linguistics tbqh.
He needs to shut the fuck up about politics and go back to linguistics and/or computer science.
When he talks about politics he's the epitome of Mount Stupid.
>So the US, SA and Israel are the causing agents of everything that is wrong with the world according to him.
He never said anything like this.
Anyone can say "business interests influence US foreign policy", it is basically true, but how much influence does it have really? How does it work? Why would the soda and electronics lobbies want to support a tinpot dictator? A corrupt unstable country isn't a good place to do business. The remaining oil and arms lobbies who would apparently benefit via some spurious conspiracy theory only compose a fraction of "business interests" which are themselves only a fraction of the machiavellian fuzzball that is WDC. Chomsky kind of glosses over the practical details and the complexities, the lack of hindsight, the lack of options and the various risks and priorities a policymaker has to juggle, who, though a flawed human being, usually isn't quite the devil they are made out to be.
Were he analyzing King Charles I he would rank alongside a 1st year history student only expected to make some kind of inference to flesh out an essay, not take a wider look at things and hold themselves to a critical standard. He doesn't have to go further than this because that is often the level of his target audience.
He can't seem to grasp how global realpolitik works. Or if he does, he's just a laughable moral pygmy
I don't know too much about chomsky, but he's saying that the US should basically just stick to themselves and leave all other countries alone, right?
Sounds good to me.
Maybe some minorities will get killed in some parts of the world without US intervention, but overall it seems to always just escalate when the US does something, with long term negative/destabilizing effects
well he says that the US, SA and israel indirectly fund dictatorships and fuel religious segregation and support terrorist groups.
I can't think of any instance were in the end he hasn't blamed one of those three nations in the end eventually. (Or atleast said that the US had done something equally or even more horrible when confronted with something that wasn't the US's fault)
>how is his historic accuracy? Is he trustworthy when he quotes historic events?
List of lies/stupid bullshit by Chomsky (so far):
paulbogdanor.com
example:
“in comparison to the conditions imposed by US tyranny and violence, East
Europe under Russian rule was practically a paradise.”
His critique of US foreign policy is good.
His linguistics is good.
But he turns a blind eye to the good that capitalism's done and lumps it in with US imperialism. And he ignores all the bad things that happened under communist dictatorships.
>anarchist
>any intellect what so ever
I can't wait for Molyneux to wreck this commie in a debate.
He is correct many times but you can sense that he pathologically hates the US and ignores anything positive or takes things out of context
They're both anarchists though and much as I dislike Chumpsky I don't think Molyneux would fare too well in a debate against him.
He's generally correct on facts but he cherry picks to support a retarded far left, childlishly naive view of international relations.
He also implies US policy makers did X or Y because of their myopic support of capitalism while ignoring all interviews with policy makers, leaks, investigations, etc. that real historians would use.
It's basically undergrad level searching for sources to support what you already think, but he's smart so he does it well.
For instance, you won't see Chomsky breakdown the language in an administrative NSS, or do a deep dive into the works of deputy national security advisors, or read leaked and declassified reports to see how people responded to events in real time.
For him ideology is the primary mover of security policy. Having worked in the field, I can say this often is not true.
On the other hand, the reality of the situation often gets forgotten behind politics.
The United States IS traveling the globe and dropping bombs on people in the name of liberal-capitalism.
Not really. The US has been bombing in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, and Pakistan. In every case except Iraq and Syria the entire focus is eliminating members of groups who attempt to carry our terror attacks in America.
There were broader aims in Iraq and Syria but the main goal has been eliminating hostile forces that have carried out attacks in the West.
That's basic security, not liberal democracy.
No one thinks killing AQI members was making Yemen more democratic or argued that.
>the entire focus is eliminating members of groups who attempt to carry our terror attacks in America.
It's used as a pretext for deeper influence in those countries and entire regions. It would be stupid to only "fight terrorist" when you've already made the decision to send troops and start wars.
It's not exactly about making countries "more democratic". The US is pragmatic, it only cares about democracy in other countries only after their other interests have been taken care of. When the US supported dictators in countries like Greece and Chile it wasn't to make them more democratic, it was to bring them into their geopolitical orbit, just like the Soviets fought to bring other countries under their influence. The issue is that this mindset didn't actually stop when the Soviet Union collapsed and Cold War "ended" and there were plenty of states that were still outside of America's orbit. So you get a victorious and overconfident America making plans to spread their Cold War institutions and liberal values globally and starting threatening those who don't comply with it. But now Russia is back on track again, and things are getting funny.
Scandinavia and Canada are objectively bigger political threats to liberal capitalism than some shithole in the middle of nowhere. Why isn't the US bombing, boycotting and generally fucking with them?
"social democracy" is the highest form of capitalism - the one that makes you think it isn't.
>just look at this pdf by some literal-who!
He reminds me of a very leftist anti-America friend I have.
I love the guy, he's genuinely intelligent and is able to recognize his ideology as a preference and not the standard, but at the same time he has such a massive hate-boner for America it's unreal.
Sometimes I'm genuinely afraid he's going to endorse an IS terror attack, as long as American government workers like police or republican (specifically) politicians are at risk.
disprove the sources actually cited in the article rather than the fact that "nobody of importance" compiled the citations
It's not surprising to note an appeal to authority from someone defending Chomsky.
He never supported Khmer Rouge, he just said that he doubted the sources originally, but then in 93 he admitted that they were evil. His bigger point was that the US was treating it completely different than the stuff that was happening in Indonesia, and also forgetting how the Khmer Rouge came to power. You guyz r dum.
That being said, I think Chomsky can be a bit hypocritical and can have certain blind spots. For example, he criticizes professional sports as he believes they marginalize the average American to become an apathetic moron who throws their entire energy at those athletes, rather than using that energy to dictate actual policies. He's right about this.
But the same exact arguments he uses against professional sports are left by the wayside when discussing organized religion.
He can also be too forgiving to people like Stalin and other Marxist-Leninists, even though he claims to be an anarchist.
>he criticizes professional sports as he believes they marginalize the average American to become an apathetic moron who throws their entire energy at those athletes, rather than using that energy to dictate actual policies.
Typical dweeb opinion
No, I watch sports, but he's completely right. Sport fans are generally incredibly stupid and quite cowardly.
>Shitskins need to be bombed, pay your taxes, and support our troops.
Wow, the pinnacle of intellect right there.
Brilliant political theorist with some good contributions to linguistics as well. He's one of the most consistent and comprehensive critics of imperialism and has done a great job revealing the brutality of many hiearchies -- most notably the US oppression of occupied nations -- to the general public.
He's also the face of libertarian socialism for a hell of a lot of people.
He never said the Khmer Rouge were okay. That is a lie.
While he was pilloried for downplaying the massacres of Bosnian Muslims during the Balkan wars, later evidence vindicated Chomsky's argument that the atrocities were exaggerated.
>Meathead jocks can't into complex civility.
youtu.be
>And to worry about “Mother With Child With Six Heads
youtu.be
That isn't too far off, though. Add Britain and Japan and you're golden.
While Russia and their friends do a lot of bad shit, 9/10ths of this is reactive toward the aggression of Western capital.
Assad was pilloried for taking Aleppo back from the Jihadis who had seized control, yet nobody thought to mention that these terrorists were supported by the US and Saudi Arabia every step of the way.
>go into chomsky thread
>right wing retards lying about chomsky and the khmer again
Why so dishonest? Are you forced to lie because you can't beat his arguments?
He's a genius, but he does appear naive at times. He's the ultimate enlightenment philosopher honestly, in the good and the bad implications.
Also, he has superhuman memory:
>On one occasion I gave him a 500-page book to read on the war in Laos at about 10 at night, and met him the next morning at breakfast prior to our visit to political officer Jim Murphy at the U.S. Embassy. During the interview the issue of the number of North Vietnamese troops in Laos came up. The Embassy claimed that 50,000 had invaded Laos, when the evidence clearly showed there were no more than a few thousand. I almost fell off my chair when Noam quoted a footnote making that point, several hundred pages in, from the book I had given him the night before.
> The US supports ISIS to attack Shia regimes like Assad meme.
T. Abbas
Keeping the masses ignorant but jingoistic is somehow good for society according to reactiotard philosophy.
They literally do you dumbass
>I'm genuinely afraid he's going to endorse an IS terror attack
I know a lot of Stalinists who strongly support ISIS and oppose PKK.
There is reportedly substantial evidence in wikileak cables proving this. Not that it means much since in our world elected officials and administrations and aren't subject to the same laws us regular citizens are.
he massively underplayed the khmer monstrosities, no matter how much people here are saying, that his critizism had some basis.
He was completely wrong and later recognised that, because he just couldn't refute the numbers.
He was right to call out the media on the unequal reporting, and their agenda behind it; but everyone should recognise his agenda in downplaying the khmers role and again blaming the US (indirectly)
He never openly endorsed the Khmer, of course not; but his infatuation with socialism truly blinds him
t. Mehmet
Nothing most opposing journalistic haven't done already. Still has more credibility than them.
*journalistic entities
No they don't. You do realize all the fucking Sunnis blame the US for creating ISIS too, as an excuse to act as Assad's airforce. You know, they can't both be right. ISIS was a Jewish, American, Shia plot to undermine a Sunni revolt.
Actually, ISIS/AQI is the brain child of a pissed off Jordanian slum kid who got radicalized in prison and got really lucky that the Iraq War kicked off when it did.
"I lige gommunism"
"And sonig, lol"
-t. Noam Chompsdicks
um honey...i dont think he said that!
Proofs? There's tons of information alleging the opposite not the least of which is the U.S.'s opposition to all Russian action in the region and continued condemnation of Assad and his allies, support for rival factions, NGO's etc.
youtu.be
It's true that the political revolution was overwhelmed by the polarization between jihadists and regime loyalists and jihadist support is a minority but sizeable enough to cause the problems it has.
>Shias are going to create a huge struggle which will cause millions of deaths of their own and nearly overthrow them just to wipe out the Sunnis for good and Saudis support Sunni factions in good faith.
>not - All sides end up fighting eachother due to the circumstances spurred on by the U.S. invasion and attempted overthrows of regimes.
Bullshit.
Most Stalinists see both ISIS and the PKK/YPG/SDF as western imperialist proxies and only support Assad, Russia, and Hezbollah.
>Is he correct in his US foreign policy critique?
Yes and no.
>Is he correct in his evaluation of who the bad guys are?
Yes and no.
>Is he correct in his evaluation of the causes of terrorism?
Yes.
>and lastly: how is his historic accuracy? Is he trustworthy when he quotes historic events?
Yes.
Chomsky is a bit like a rock band from the 1970s that had one great album, but then everything they wrote afterwards sounds the same. His linguistic and socio-linguistic work, along with his books like Manufacturing Consent, were truly revolutionary, especially at the time when I grew up, that is before the internet, where people really did get all of their views from a few news sources.
Anyone who knows what they're talking about in the social sciences would have looked into Noam Chomsky. But you'll find it difficult to find anyone who claims to be a "Chomskian" thinker. There are many reasons for that.
He's a great critic, and he's certainly worth looking into, but his moral absolutist views and oversimplified method of smashing everything with his hammer of class warfare and anti-Americanism is weak. The simple fact that hasn't been arrested or shot or tortured for his views is enough to signal that there is good in American power. Do you think Chomsky or his followers world be happier if Putin was at the helm of global hegemony? Or take his criticism for American intellectuals, how they're sellouts and traitors who worship corporate and state power - how is that any different than "If you're not with us you're against us".
So, Chomsky is great - but you gotta take him with a grain of salt. He has an overly simple moral code that he bases all of his views on, which makes him attractive as a public intellectual I guess, and he is certainly a force to be reckon with in academia and among intellectuals, but he still has many flaws.
The Stalinist's he talks about are probably current bull prepping agitators with Judaic overlords.
Most stalinists are retarded
Otherwise they wouldn't be stalinist
He wrote about a political crisis in Laos blaming the U.S. for the breakdown in the relations between communists and nationalists and ignored a communist invasion of the country.
That tells you all you need to know about him. He is a liar.
t. anti communist victims defamation league shill
Right let's pay attention to vastly covered issues that are oftentimes erroneously asserted as opposed to more underreported issues. Surely that will help the truth prevail over "might makes right".
He also wrote against the Black Book of Communism arguing that Indian famine deaths equaled Chinese famine deaths, and those should be blamed on democratic capitalism.
Not mentioning the fact that criticizing a historical work that documents crimes of a political movement is bad taste for someone who prizes himself in denouncing these kind of political crimes, not mentioning that there is no citation for the "Indian deaths = Chinese deaths" statistics, saying that India during the Cold War was a "democratic capitalist" society is just plain falsehood, considering that India was a socialist country alligned with the Soviet Union during this period.
But my favorite one is his criticism of the "loss of China" term. According to Chomsky:
>"In 1949, China declared independence, an event known in Western discourse as "the loss of China" – in the US, with bitter recriminations and conflict over who was responsible for that loss. The terminology is revealing. It is only possible to lose something that one owns. The tacit assumption was that the U.S. owned China, by right, along with most of the rest of the world, much as postwar planners assumed. The "loss of China" was the first major step in "America's decline." It had major policy consequences."
Not to mentioning the historical falsehood (China gained independence in 1949), Chomsky reveals himself to be a psychopath here. "It is only possible to lose something that one owns". Chomsky never had a friend? If you lose a friend, you lose something that you didn't owned. It seems like either Chomsky never had a single friend in his remarkably long life, or he is a deliberate liar and spreader of falsehoods.
Not even other commies defend Khmer Rouge
>Not even Chomsky defends the Khmer Rouge
ftfy
They aren't retarded, they just don't care if millions have to die in their crusade of global liberation
I appreciate how meticulously researched his writings are, and that he sources everything. I'm not sure what to make of his personal politics, but he's done an incredible amount of reading, and presents a lot of significant facts in his work.
A lot of people in this thread are saying that Chomsky hates America, but that's not the impression I get. He's repeatedly praised the high levels of political freedom in the USA, and acknowledges that were he living in most other countries he wouldn't be able to be as openly critical of the state as he is.
Chomsky focuses on America because (he claims) he feels a responsibility to hold his own government accountable for their actions, in the interests of helping the country live up to its ideals. He doesn't pretend that other powers don't do terrible things to further their interests, but there's plenty of focus on that in the media as it is.
In any case he considers it largely meaningless to criticise foreign countries from within his own, that's not where his influence is greatest.
are you having a stroke
He's a pretty standard libertarian socialist, probably a little less radical than Murray Bookchin.
Chomsky is considered unusual in his political views because he's the only prominent anarchist given a platform by the popular media. Academic cred, even in a field as far divorced from politics as linguistic psychology, can go a long way.
Chomsky is great at pointing out the flaws with US foreign policy, and any prominent anti-war voice is always good in my book. However, his solution (anarcho-syndicalism) is retarded and his fanbase is usually awful.
They actually did debate once. I haven't seen all of it, but from the segment I did watch it seemed like Chomsky had the upper hand.
>debate
Chomsky just explained the history of libertarianism and called right wing ""libertarians"" a bunch of private tyranny condoning, corporate-dick sucking retards, while molyneux kept nodding too scared to actually engage him.
Sure Chaim I'm sure you'll be there to squeeze every cent from my insurance.
Noam "Pol Pot did nothing wrong" Chomsky
>India was socialist
In its constitution it claims to be a secular socialist republic, but in practice it isn't, with the exception of a few areas.
>hurr Chomsky is a psychopath
Right wing propagandist detected.
Bog standard "hurrrrr Amerikkka is ebil" 'intellectual' who, despite his 16 year old tier opinions, lhas lived and worked his whole life in America.
>when you're so edgy and anti-American you unironically support the Khmer Rouge
He thinks anarcho anything is a viable ideology. Confirmed retard who never got past his edgy college phase and grew up,
Communism is a disgusting broken ideology and needs to be fought and discredited at every step.
>libertarianism is for freedom!
>oh but your not allowed to start a business
>or amass wealth
>or own property
>or employ people
>or or or
Are there a bigger group of retards than left wing lolbertarians?
>inb4 I'm a right wing libertarian
>intellect equates to claudication, appeasement, assimilation and surrender
>most communists are retarded, or else they wouldn't be communists
It's kind of a pre-requisite.
Apparently oppression at the hands of communist nutcases like Pol Pot is a okay, though.
i don't get why he cps so much hate. he just says basic shit that you can't disagree with. his main thing is reciprocity and that what we apply to one side we don't apply to the other.
cops*
commie apologist
Nah lies are what need to be exposed wherever they turn up and liars with them.
You're parroting literal MSM liberal propaganda
Right wing "libertarianism" is incalculably worse
>statist oppression is completely acceptable if it's being done for a profit
holy fuck you really took the red pill didn't you
this guy (the navy seal) says the US is constantly doing good all around the world and that the civilians indeed wanted them to be there; it's just that the critique of US foreign policy is fashionable.
Isn't it morally wrong for someone with the possibility to intervene/help, like the US army, stand aside in world events, do nothing and watch as entire people get genocided?
*tips ten-gallon hat*
has anybody read this book?
just how butthurt is Horowitz? Has he a point?
>the US army intervenes in world events for humanitarian purposes and not to secure resources, bolster regimes which are beneficial to them, and maintain their sphere of influence aka to perpetuate imperialism
those things don't exclude each other
i don't really get what you mean
>imperialism and humanitarianism are the same thing
what did he mean by this?
has chomsky ever lost an open debate?
(i don't know, because i always fall asleep after 10 minutes of him talking)
that's his superpower. i saw him speak once for 2 hours or some shit but i can't remember what the fuck he talked about.
>i don't really get what you mean
I'm implying that you are sucking America's cock