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Comment by gajomi | Hacker News Reader

>Chris Knight explores “the Chomsky problem” — the paradox of a thinker who belongs to the “professional and scientific elite” even as he espouses populist political ideas.

Ok, this work is not the substance of the interview, but what is the paradox? Should I believe that it is strange that scientists studying fluid dynamics use conventional toilets and sinks outside of the lab?

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I think one of the preeminent examples was his initial and sustained support for Pol Pot [ignoring evidence of wrongdoing [1]] while there existed much evidence for not supporting them [the KR] because it clashed with his sympathies for the Communist movement in SEAsia at the time.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide_denial#Chom...

This is a total mischaracterization and unsupported by the citation. Chomsky and Herman examined mass media coverage of U.S. enemies vs friends, finding that similar atrocities by enemies would be trumpeted and exaggerated beyond their already atrocious reality (e.g. Cambodia), while those by friends would be ignored or downplayed (e.g. East Timor). To call this "support" or "sympathy" for enemies is a commissar mentality.

>> Chomsky and Herman examined mass media coverage of U.S. enemies vs friends

That is not exactly how Wikipedia discuss the Pol Pot and Chomsky subject?

(Also, a later quote by Chomsky, at the end of that discussion of him, notes that Pol Pot's atrocities were "I think it would be hard to find any example of a comparable outrage and outpouring of fury." which directly contradicts comparing with East Timor. But sure, during the Cold War lots of dictators that was needed got off easy for human rights violations.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide_denial#Chom...

You misunderstand. That directly supports the comparison with East Timor. When enemies commit atrocities there is outrage and fury in the mass media, and when friends commit similar atrocities there is silence and downplaying. Also, the Wikipedia article does not support the claim that Chomsky offered "support for Pol Pot".

What?!

This is the early international reaction of Pol Pot criticism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide#Internation...

Chomsky, according to the w-pedia link I gave in the GP, criticize that and call it probable anti communist propaganda. And then they write supportive/neutrally of communist Pol Pot defenders.

He wrote that with the information he could get at the time. Later when the evidence of the genocide was better known, he criticised the US government for its recognition and support of the DK government. https://chomsky.info/199903__/

  The US recognized the expelled DK as the official government of Cambodia, because of its “continuity” with the Pol Pot regime, the State Department explained.

According to w-pedia, Chomsky wrongly dismissed the eye witnesses as an anti communist propaganda conspiracy...

And evaluated as more trustworthy the supporters of dogma/regimes that already before the "Killing Fields" had a history of mass murderers.

If you dismiss whatever you want as a conspiracy, you can motivate any conclusion. (Here: "Country X used propaganda in a war, I'll assume they do exactly the same amount of propaganda when not in a war.")

Mind the context: The Vietnam invastion of the U.S. happend just then, with massive atrocities committed by the U.S. (2 million civilians were killed in North Vietnam alone, Agent Orange killed an additional 400000 after the war ended). At that time, that was hardly mentionened in the press, or, if mentioned, framed as a necessary price to pay to archieve freedom.

In 1969, Nixon also dropped over 100.000 tons of bombs over Laos and Cambodia (Operations MENU and Freedom Deal), killing many thousands of civilians.

Even now, 40 years later, the English Wikipedia entry for the Vietnam War and the casualities portrays a completely different image than e.g. the German entry (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamkrieg#Tote_und_Verletzt...). The english entry downplays the U.S. atrocities and e.g. doesn't mention the Agent Orange aftermath. The majority of pictures in the U.S. entry show Viet Cong victims, despite the fact that the U.S. killed way more civilians.

Of course Chomsky and Herman, being aware of that, were sceptical about the Pol Pot press coverage in 1977. And, according to your link, they reverted their scepticism when the facts became clearer, calling it the "great act of genocide in the modern period".

Context is very important in understanding commentary written in the 1970s. In today's world, people on various parts of the political spectrum are writing things about various Middle Eastern actors which they are sure to regret in future. I have a certain degree of sympathy for someone like Hildebrand - the coauthor of a book heavily dependent on Khmer Rouge sources which one of Chomsky's more controversial articles on Cambodia praised - who subsequently admitted that he'd been guilty of "intellectual arrogance" in being too quick to assume based on his Vietnam experiences that popular media accounts were fabrications and Southeast Asian leftist groups were relatively honest about the situation. I have somewhat less for Chomsky, who switched from insisting that Cambodian refugee reports were unreliable, casualties owed more to US bombing than the Khmer Rouge and that nitpicking over mainstream estimates of death tolls was entirely appropriate if they were out by a "factor of 1000" to accusing the CIA of Cambodian genocide denial (by deliberately misrepresenting a report which actually attributes 1.2-1.8m deaths to "the savagery of that regime") almost as soon as Cambodia was successfully invaded by North Vietnam, and who continues insist to his commentary in the 1970s was entirely balanced and justifiable.

>> people on various parts of the political spectrum are writing things about various Middle Eastern actors which they are sure to regret in future.

Interesting, what do you think will be heavily reevaluated? Frankly, I have no clue. The whole place seem too complex to have a serious opinion.

Do you expect that ~ friends of different democratic groups will do genocides? [Edit: It ought to be quite a time before a US president flirts with the Brotherhood in Egypt again, right?]

Do you think the acceptance of extremists will be embarrassing? When the whole "don't be a friend of a non believer" etc gets through to the left?

Or the opposite, that the Middle East will be less intolerant and easier to live with and gets modernized?

He never supported Pol Pot. I do not understand why everybody keeps saying that and keeps relying solely on those who have no evidence to support that position. Let's go the source: I have the book Manufacturing Consent in front of me. I have used it on a few occasions for two research projects and am pretty familiar with its contents. I have emailed him directly regarding this book, too.

So, with the book in front of me, I will quote the one statement that has everybody's dicks hard for hating Chomsky: "The victims of Pol Pot, a Communist leader, were worthy, although after he was ousted by the Vietnamese in 1978, Cambodians ceased to be worthy, as U.S. policy shifted toward support of Pol Pot in exile. The East Timorese remained unworthy in the 1990's, as the table suggests." So, without reading the book, you would think he's talking about worthy and unworthy the way that we normally mean it. However, he munificently describes the difference: "Our prediction is that the victims of enemy states will be found 'worthy' and will be subject to more intense and indignant coverage that those victimized by the United States or its clients, who are implicitly 'unworthy'."

But, it's a lot easier for all of you with single digit IQ's to look up secondary-source material like Wikipedia which is essentially a mashup of opinions and has never been considered a reliable academic medium. No book or publication can ever be sourced by Wikipedia yet you all do this all day long.

Manufacturing Consent is not an easy read, but if you would actually read the entire thing you would understand that he never even closely supported Pol Pot.

The problem is Chomsky claims that the "professional and scientific elite" are compromised by their role in society, and end up taking up self-serving political views that seek to preserve this role. So the natural question is what make Chomsky different.

He's not different, and he openly acknowledges that a lot of his linguistic research was funded by the Pentagon.

Edit: He also thought that his activism would get him fired, and so his wife started going back to school.

>Edit: He also thought that his activism would get him fired, and so his wife started going back to school.

No, not get him fired. Get him imprisoned!

His wife went back to school so she would be able to support the family, if he ended up in stir.

I always find this criticism silly. It's a form of normalization. "Elites must have elitist opinions or they and their opinions are not elite." No, there's usually more than one way to arrive at the same position. Not all paths will be equally complicated or well founded.

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