Comment by headcanon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by headcanon | Hacker News Reader

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From that article:

> We do not pretend to know where the truth lies amidst these sharply conflicting assessments; rather, we again want to emphasize some crucial points. What filters through to the American public is a seriously distorted version of the evidence available, emphasizing alleged Khmer Rouge atrocities and downplaying or ignoring the crucial U.S. role, direct and indirect, in the torment that Cambodia has suffered.[14]

Having read this and what he wrote about this in "Manufacturing Consent", my interpretation is not so much him downplaying the genocide itself, but calling out US media for downplaying genocides and atrocities committed by US-friendly regimes and emphasizing ones done by non-friendly regimes.

So his whole point is that a supposedly "unbiased" US media in general serves to bolster the "Market Ideology" (his words) that dominates in the US and dehumanize its enemies.

No, his whole point was not that.

>We do not pretend to know where the truth lies amidst these sharply conflicting assessments; rather, we again want to emphasize some crucial points

This is genocide denial.

Would you consider someone claiming not to know if the Holocaust really happened and pleading people to emphasize the crucial point of allied propaganda effects to be doing what, exactly?

Chomsky has a long list of offenses, this is just one and you're misrepresenting how egregious it is to claim we can't really know if 1.7 to 2 million people were executed.

https://youtu.be/VCcX_xTLDIY?si=qtsrDRzQTVwpF9Ri

> No, his whole point was not that.

He says as much - from the same article (next subhead):

As we also noted from the first paragraph of our earlier review of this material, to which we will simply refer here for specifics, “there is no difficulty in documenting major atrocities and oppression, primarily from the reports of refugees”; there is little doubt that “the record of atrocities in Cambodia is substantial and often gruesome” and represents “a fearful toll”; “when the facts are in, it may turn out that the more extreme condemnations were in fact correct,” although if so, “it will in no way alter the conclusions we have reached on the central question addressed here: how the available facts were selected, modified, or sometimes invented to create a certain image offered to the general population. The answer to this question seems clear, and it is unaffected by whatever may yet be discovered about Cambodia in the future.”[28]

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