Chomsky wrote the foreword to a French book denying the Holocaust and spoke at the headquarters of Hezbollah - an internationally recognized terror group - amoung other asinine things. Why does anyone respect this guy?
When people ask him about this Chomsky says he has signed hundreds of free speech petitions and free speech should not be removed just because he disagrees with the person, citing Thomas Jefferson. Some people believe in free speech, some think people with certain critical views of Nazi era nationality policy towards Jews should be jailed. In the USA, the free speech view tends to win, and this is where Chomsky is from.
Hezbollah has 12 MPs in the Lebanese parliament. It represents the interests of a section of Shia in Lebanon, many of whom were driven from their homes in Palestine in 1948 by Jewish settlers, and are now barred from returning home (whereas a Jew from anywhere in the world is allowed to settle in the West Bank).
The PFLP is "terrorist", Hamas is "terrorist", Hezbollah is "terrorist", the PLO is "terrorist", the DFLP is "terrorist" - anyone who fights back against Zionist (or sometimes American) aggression is labeled a "terrorist".
Hezbollah was formed because Israel invaded Lebanon and began killing Shia there (or letting their helpers do so in Sabra and Shatila). Hezbollah arose to defend the Shia from this foreign invasion.
>Hezbollah has 12 MPs in the Lebanese parliament. It represents the interests of a section of Shia in Lebanon,
So far so good
>many of whom were driven from their homes in Palestine in 1948 by Jewish settlers, and are now barred from returning home (whereas a Jew from anywhere in the world is allowed to settle in the West Bank).
Nope, you're confusing Palestinians and Shia Lebanese. Not a single Shia was driven from their home by the creation of Israel in 1948. Hezbollah does not represent Palestinians in Lebanon (who were driven out in 1948) because they are not citizens of Lebanon, despite being born there at this point.
>The PFLP is "terrorist", Hamas is "terrorist", Hezbollah is "terrorist", the PLO is "terrorist", the DFLP is "terrorist" - anyone who fights back against Zionist (or sometimes American) aggression is labeled a "terrorist".
Is blowing up a Jewish center in Beunos Aires (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMIA_bombing) or killing 22 school children (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma%27alot_massacre) "fighting back against Zionist aggression"?
>Hezbollah was formed because Israel invaded Lebanon and began killing Shia there (or letting their helpers do so in Sabra and Shatila).
Again, you are confusing Palestinians with Shias. Sabra and Shatila was a Palestinian refugee camp. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabra_and_Shatila_massacre
> The scandal largely dealt with the inclusion of an essay by American linguist Noam Chomsky, entitled "Some Elementary Comments on the Rights of Freedom of Expression", as an introduction to Faurisson's book, without Chomsky's knowledge or approval.
Emphasis mine.
I'll just leave the paragraph from wikipedia here:
>Chomsky granted permission for the essay to be used for any purpose. Serge Thion and Pierre Guillaume then used it as a preface when publishing a book by Faurisson, without Chomsky's knowledge.[9] Later Chomsky requested that the essay not be used in this manner, since he believed the French intellectual community was so incapable of understanding freedom of speech that it would only confuse them further, but his request came too late for the book to be changed.[9] Chomsky subsequently said that asking for the preface to be removed is his one regret in the matter.[9]
Moreover, this whole mess gave Robert Faurisson airtime on national TV, and made him look like a martyr. This is the last thing you want from such person. Let holocaust deniers and KKK member distribute pamphlet at intersection or self publish their book, that going to be the biggest audience they'll ever have. By going after them, you encourage them in their quest and prove their conspiracy theory right.
Same goes with provocateur ala Milo whose only success is based on thin skinned SJW.
The guy is a linguist. I wish he would stick to what he's good at.
Thankfully he didn't follow your advice, hence he revolutionized every domain he touched.
You really should read more about his contributions to various disciplines.
Would be acceptable if we call US army terrorist army?
Of course at this time the US was using its power at the UN to keep the Cambodian UN seat in the hands of the political coalition that the Cambodian communists belonged to.
He also points out the mass murder the US air force carried out in Cambodia, bombing rural peasant villages. That the US media ignored a genocide in East Timor that was happening at the time of the communists taking power in Cambodia.
Insofar as "denial of the Cambodian genocide" by Chomsky - could you give an example of a statement he made about Cambodia which was not true? If you are unable to do that, it is just mud-throwing - in some other thread he's said to be denying Nazi genocide in Europe because he was opposed to the jailing of a French professor accused of being a holocaust denier.
Mud-throwing? I am just siting a wikipedia article, please care to follow the link. Even Chomsky sort of acknowledged that he was wrong on the subject, but you still can't do that.
"Cambodia scholar Bruce Sharp criticized Chomsky and Herman's Nation article, as well as their subsequent work After the Cataclysm (1979), saying that while Chomsky and Herman added disclaimers about knowing the truth of the matter, and about the nature of the regimes in Indochina, they nevertheless expressed a set of views by their comments and their use of various sources. For instance, Chomsky portrayed Porter and Hildebrand's book as "a carefully documented study of the destructive American impact on Cambodia and the success of the Cambodian revolutionaries in overcoming it, giving a very favorable picture of their programs and policies, based on a wide range of sources." Sharp, however, found that 33 out of 50 citations in one chapter of Porter and Hildebrand's book derived from the Khmer Rouge government and six from China, the Khmer Rouge's principal supporter.[8]
Veteran Cambodia correspondent Nate Thayer said of Chomsky and Herman's Nation article that they "denied the credibility of information leaking out of Cambodia of a bloodbath underway and viciously attacked the authors of reportage suggesting many were suffering under the Khmer Rouge."[18]
Journalist Andrew Anthony in the London Observer, said later that the Porter and Hildebrand's book "cravenly rehashed the Khmer Rouge's most outlandish lies to produce a picture of a kind of radical bucolic idyll."[19] Chomsky, he said, questioned "refugee testimony" believing that "their stories were exaggerations or fabrications, designed for a western media involved in a 'vast and unprecedented propaganda campaign' against the Khmer Rouge government, 'including systematic distortion of the truth.'"
Beachler cited reports that Chomsky's attempts to counter charges of Khmer Rouge atrocities also consisted of writing letters to editors and publications. He said: "Examining materials in the Documentation Center of Cambodia archives, American commentator Peter Maguire found that Chomsky wrote to publishers such as Robert Silver of the New York Review of Books to urge discounting atrocity stories. Maguire reports that some of these letters were as long as twenty pages, and that they were even sharper in tone than Chomsky’s published words."[20] Journalist Fred Barnes also mentioned that Chomsky had written "a letter or two" to the New York Review of Books. Barnes discussed the Khmer Rouge with Chomsky and "the thrust of what he [Chomsky] said was that there was no evidence of mass murder" in Cambodia. Chomsky, according to Barnes, believed that "tales of holocaust in Cambodia were so much propaganda."[21]
Journalist Christopher Hitchens defended Chomsky and Herman. They "were engaged in the admittedly touchy business of distinguishing evidence from interpretations."[22] Chomsky and Herman have continued to argue that their analysis of the situation in Cambodia was reasonable based on the information available to them at the time, and a legitimate critique of the disparities in reporting atrocities committed by communist regimes relative to the atrocities committed by the U.S. and its allies. Nonetheless, in 1993, Chomsky acknowledged the massive scale of the Cambodian genocide in the documentary film Manufacturing Consent. He said, "I mean the great act of genocide in the modern period is Pol Pot, 1975 through 1978 - that atrocity - I think it would be hard to find any example of a comparable outrage and outpouring of fury."[8]
That sounds pretty balanced to me.
If you were trying to assess claims of an extraordinary and unprecedented mechanised genocide by Nazi Germany in 1943 or early 1944, when it wasn't obvious what was actually going on, and when all people had to go on were reports from a handful of escapees and refugees, then yes, being careful with the evidence would be the appropriate response to the Holocaust claims available at the time, just as being careful with Cambodian refugee reports would have been appropriate in 1977 or 1978.
Right now he denies that chemical attacks by Assad govt have happened in Syria, so the old man is still in the same denial business - OPCW reports be damned.
Once you believe something, it's harder to go back because you start stacking stuff on top.