The Homo Economicus takes on Noam Chomsky A friend of mine, who goes by the online pseudonym Homo Economicus (he is an enthusiastic economics graduate student), has been engaged for the past week in an email argument with the infamous anti-Israel professor Noam Chomsky. You can see a full blow by blow account of the debate here on his blog (http://blogaboutnothing.net).
What is striking about the exchange is the delusionary nature of Chomsky’s analysis. Any facts that do not suit his thesis that Israel and America are the only obstacles to peace are ignored or dismissed off hand as irrelevant. Hypocritically of course he goes to great lengths to find and publicize any crumb that could under certain circumstances perhaps maybe in isolation present Hamas or Iran in a favorable light. Also the arrogance and rudeness of his replies are quite staggering.
The email exchange was sparked by a panel ‘debate’ that Chomsky took part in at Boston University for Israel Apartheid week. I place debate in inverted commas because the term implies some disagreement of views. But with other well known Israel critics on the panel like Stephan Walt of the Israel/Jewish/Zionist-lobby-controls-American-foreign-policy thesis or Duncan Kennedy of the Israel-is an-Apartheid-state school, it was more of an anti-Israel echo chamber than a debate. Although the moderator took great pains to bill the event as balanced with views that would both offend the Israeli consulate and Hamas equally, unsurprisingly there was nothing said that the Islamist regime in Gaza city would not have whole heartily endorsed.
The Homo Econimicus decided to write to Chomsky about some of the more outrageous claims he made during the speech. These included among others:
- that the disengagement from Gaza was staged as was Israel’s withdrawal from Sinai in the 1980’s.
- that Hamas, Iran and Hezbollah support a 2 state solution and
- that Hamas lived up to its ceasefire commitments fully and it was Israel who was responsible for the renewal of hostilities in the recent Gaza conflict.
Chomsky did respond with sources for quotes from Iranian and Hamas leaders saying they would supporting a ‘two state’ solution but of course not 2 states for 2 peoples. Given their explicit demand that all Palestinian refugees return to Israel and not the future Palestine, this effectively means support for 2 Arab states (one with a sizable Jewish minority) in the historical land of Israel, hardly the international consensus Chomsky claims. He also provided evidence that between June and November last year Hamas did not fire rockets at Israel—although other Palestinians factions did. But he could not also resist taking a few wild personal pot shots at my friends.
He claimed that my friend as a Zionist, who supports historic Jewish acts of terrorism against the British and condones the current Israeli occupation, was hardly in a position to condemn the acts of the elected government of Palestine. The only trouble is that the Homo economicus is not one of the ‘bad Jews’. He is a card carrying member of Peace Now, is active in Meretz and probably hates the occupation and the Likud/the Irgun more than even Chomsky. But Chomsky and, as we have seen here in South Africa as well, many Israel critics never let facts like that get in the way. No matter what our positions on the Zionist spectrum we are all fascists and racists that have no right to even engage in debate on the topic.
The irony of all of this is Chomsky and his anti-Israel friends are actually hurting the peace process and the Palestinians they claim to care so much about. When the conflict is presented in black and white; good and evil terms there is no way that any mainstream Israeli, even one as far left as the Homo Economicus cannot be offended. While, of course, it is reasonable to disagree with Israeli government policies and actions, it is important to try and understand why they made the choices they did and show at least some modicum of empathy for the dilemmas they face. If not all you do is push Zionist Israelis to the right making the chances of any real comprise ever more unlikely.
Those that care about genuine peace including in South Africa should rather be reaching out to mainstream Israelis and trying to find out how to create the necessary guarantees that will allow for compromise. Rather than calling for boycotts and insulting them, Chomsky and co should be engaging and strengthening those on the mainstream left like Homo Economicus. They would do well to remember that real peace is not something that can be imposed.
Let me be very blunt here, your friend is making a mistake even debating Chomsky, what is there to debate? Chomsky just lies and keeps on lying. Have you ever debated a religious fanatic? it's a waste of time. They just dismiss what you
have to say as the word of the Devil, and that is that. Also by debating a Jew-hating liar like Chomsky, whose books on Israel and the like are promoted by neo-Nazis and Muslim radicals, it gives him a kind of legitimacy, as if he can be reasoned with, as if his opinions matter. Now you may object that Chomsky has a large credulous following and his opinions are listened to, this is true; but the solution is not to debate him since he just lies and goes on lying, but to expose his lies and leave it there.
Instead your friend engages in a "dialogue", addressing a Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran apologist with respectful consideration and politeness, "thank your prof Chomsky for taking..." blabla. Hamas, Hezbollah and the Iranian regime call for the liquidation of Jewry (when not doing so they are simply lying. After all fanatical terrorists lie all the time, it is second nature of them to lie, since their beliefs in totality and way of life is nothing but a lie) and their rhetoric on Jewry is identical to the Nazis, Chomsky denies this completely and says the reason there is no peace
between Israel and these Nazi-like terrorists is because of Israel. Now let us be clear, this is no different to saying the Nazis themselves wished no ill upon Jewry, and accepted their right to exist and any conflict between the two groups was the fault of the Jews. So Chomsky is delusional, somewhat insane, pernicious and pathologically anti-Semitic. Yet what to expect from Chomsky? The fact that he was given this platform at Boston U only reveals how endemic and respectable anti-Semitism has become in places of higher learning.
The fact is this, almost thirty years ago Chomsky was exposed as having close and friendly relations with Holocaust Deniers in France, Robert Faurisson, Pierre Guillaume and Serge Thion. Faurissson denies the Holocaust, believing it to be a Jewish racket, a fabricated myth to extort money from Germany and Protocols of Zion conspiracy stuff is standard fare for Faurisson. Chomsky WROTE the approving preface to one of Faurisson's nazi books making it clear Faurisson doesn't believe in the Holocaust. Chomsky's preface was entirely respectful to Faurisson. Chomsky wrote that he saw Faurisson as a "relatively apolitical liberal". Chomsky wrote in a letter to Australian historian Bill Rubinstein in response to Rubinstein's queries in this regard, the following:
"I SEE NO ANTI-SEMITIC IMPLICATIONS IN DENIAL OF THE EXISTENCE OF GAS CHAMBERS, OR EVEN DENIAL OF THE HOLOCAUST. Nor would there be anti-Semitic implications, per se, in the claim that the holocaust (whether one believes it took place or not) is being exploited, viciously so, by apologists for Israeli repression and violence. I see no hint of anti-Semitic implications in Faurisson's work ...".
This was way back in 1981.
He has since had the gall to repeat the above, in so many words, to historian Lucy Davidowicz and Alan Dershowitz when challenged by them on Faurisson. In fact Chomsky said to one of them,"everybody knows there is nothing anti-Semitic about Holocaust Denial"!!! It gets worse, once Chomsky was exposed on all this, see Werner Cohn's "Partners in Hate; Noam Chomsky and the Holocaust Deniers", he simply lied, pretending it was about defending Faurisson's right to freedom of speech, when of course it wasn't - it was legitimising Faurrison's deranged Jew-hatred (as Cohn and Pierre Verdal-Niquet have shown), and what does saying Holocaust Denial is not anti-Semitic have to do with freedom of speech? Chomsky's defenders lie about the whole Faurisson affair to this day as a freedom of speech issue.
Posted by: Lawrence | March 12, 2009 at 11:31
Chomsky also denied the Cambodian Khmer Rouge Holocaust in an essay he wrote for the Nation in 1977, entitled "Discretion at Fourth Hand". Killing fields, what killing fields? A year later with the vietnamese toppling of the Khmer
Rouge, the killing fields were exposed to the world, and Chomsky was exposed as a dupe for Pol Pot. So why is he still taken seriously? He denied the atoricities of Srebeniza during the Yugoslav civil war, and then lied about denying it.
His lies on Israel are more than three or four decades old, one could fill a massive book with all Chomsky's lies on Israel alone. So why the politeness and the assumption that Chomsky can be reasoned with, why the appeal to civility and
a sense of fair play by Homo Economicus? Chomsky clearly has no reason, and he is a viscious liar and Jew-hater. What your friend should have done is simply expose him and leave it there, not "debate" him, and by extension expose Boston U for their legitimization of a lying Jew-hater who was discredited nearly thirty years ago as a serious commentator on Israel and international affairs for that matter with the whole Faurrison and Guillaume affair in France. And what does that tell us about Boston U? Well by the very fact that they were hosting the Jew-hate libel of "Israel apartheid week", they endorse Jew-hatred as legitimate.
here is one link
http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomskyhoax.html
to so many scholarly links on Chomsky's endless lies about Israel and international affairs, it would take weeks to go through it all. Oliver Kamm's exposés of Chomsky's lies alone is a must read, and is extensive.
Do you think Chomsky who has given us these choice pearls on Jewry can be debated and reasoned with?
“Israel’s ‘secret weapon’… is that it may behave in the manner of what have sometimes been called ‘crazy states’ in the international affairs literature… eventuating in a final solution from which few will escape.”
(Fateful Triangle [rev. ed., Pluto Press, 1999], pp468-9)
ON Jews in the US…
“The Jewish community here is deeply totalitarian. They do not want democracy, they do not want freedom.”
(Interview, Shmate: A Journal of Progressive Jewish Thought, Summer 1988)
“Jews in the US are the most privileged and influential part of the population... privileged people want to make sure they have total control, not just 98% control. That’s why antisemitism is becoming an issue.”
(Variant, Scotland, Winter 2002)
Posted by: Lawrence | March 12, 2009 at 11:38
Tip for anyone following the link: start reading UP from near the bottom - the "Dear Prof. Chomsky..." post. Confused me completely...
Posted by: Benjamin | March 12, 2009 at 14:57
"The irony of all of this is Chomsky and his anti-Israel friends are actually hurting the peace process and the Palestinians they claim to care so much about."
Chomsky and his ilk dont really care about Palestinians or the peace process. They just care about hating Jews.
Posted by: Dee | March 12, 2009 at 16:20
I figured out Chomsky watching this debate against Dershowitz in 2005:
http://www.democracynow.org/2005/12/23/noam_chomsky_v_alan_dershowitz_a
Dershowitz says:
That is simply false. I can tell you that President Clinton told me directly and personally that what caused the failure of the Camp David-Taba accords was the refusal of the Palestinians and Arafat to give up the right of return.......
Now given Clinton's role in this, one has to at least consider this piece of evidence.
Chomsky's response:
You can believe one of two things: the extensive published diplomatic record, which I gave you a sample of and you can find in detail in books of mine and others, or what Mr. Dershowitz says he heard from somebody.
Notice how he references his own work as proof then dismisses the US President as "somebody."
Never again .... will I believe Chomsky.
(You can watch it, listen to it, buy the DVD and read the transcript at the URL.)
Posted by: greenmamba | March 12, 2009 at 16:36
the sionists will never reign the world.
Posted by: fateh | March 13, 2009 at 15:16
Oh yes we will. Just you watch!
Posted by: Ariel | March 13, 2009 at 22:00
**Notice how he references his own work as proof then dismisses the US President as "somebody."**
Bahahaha... if you think that the United States President is more than "somebody", and furthermore than their word is worth more than ass-wiped toilet paper, I don't know what to say to you.
Of course Clinton will lie. Of course Bush lied a million times. Your naivety is astonishing.
Posted by: revhh.org | March 23, 2009 at 18:37
This whole page is a joke... to slander a world renowned intellectual with such contempt and myopia is just asinine. His documented record is overwhelming, and the amount of scholars in accord with him is astonishing.
Norman Finkelstein, Jonathan Cook, Naomi Klein, Alan Sears, Judy Rubeck... the list would go on for days. Why do so many Jews "hate themselves", an incredibly absurd and laughable concept in itself. Along the same totalitarian lines as "anti-American".
Chomsky did not deny the atrocities of the Khmer rouge, just accurately illustrated how crimes of enemies are blown out of proportion, while crimes of allies are invisible (Indonesia hardly ever hit the news as we supported 200,000 deaths under Suharto, offering this mass murderer economic, military, and diplomatic support to facilitate this "genocide"). So this is a fabrication that has been debunked over and over and over... but idiots like you use it as vacuous slander.
As for denying atrocities in Yugoslavia, that is not true. He defended an author's right to freedom of speech, nothing to do with the atrocities. Get your facts straight.
Chomsky has Jewish family in Israel. To say that he is anti-semitic is just... insane.
Posted by: revhh.org | March 23, 2009 at 18:48
**your friend is making a mistake even debating Chomsky**
Very true, very insightful. There's no point debating him. Chomsky is not interested in truth through dialectic. He's just a polemicist, albeit a polemicist with staggering intellectual ability. Anyone debating him is overrun by the "facts" he can produce, "facts" couched in rhetoric so subtle that one can't help believe they are true. Only when one starts chasing down the REFERENCES he gives for these "facts" are his feet of clay exposed. It turns out that most of Chomsky's "facts" are slanted by being presented out of context, distorted by being given with an unbalanced historical background, or fabricated through outright deception.
Here is a single example:
http://oliverkamm.typepad.com/blog/2005/01/chomsky_and_the_1.html.
Try going through just one of his speeches or essays point by point, chasing down all the "evidence" he gives for his assertions. It can take days. Longer, if he pulls one of his favorite stunts of citing as a reference something that he himself has previously published. And when you chase down the reference from THAT publication, you may find he has cited himself AGAIN from an EARLIER publication. Or the citation may lead to a dead end.
In the comments above, greenmamba asserts that Chomsky's dismissal of a comment from President Clinton is proof that Chomsky only presents facts that are favorable to his own argument. Alas, nothing with Chomsky is ever that simple. As revhh.org points out, what Clinton told Dershowitz may or may not be true. The ONLY way to refute Chomsky's assertion in the debate with Dershowitz is to wade through what Chomsky calls the "extensive published diplomatic record," and then what you will PROBABLY find is that Chomsky has drawn a dubious conclusion from something implied in a quotation from some minor official.
But who is going to work that hard to obtain such an equivocal victory over just one of Chomsky's assertions? Chomsky knows.
Whether Noam Chomsky is anti-semitic or not is moot. What's important is the validity of his ideas and his conclusions. Yet how valid can his ideas and conclusions be when they all rest on these "facts" he spews at us, "facts" that are mostly half-truths and distortions? I don't present any other examples here because Chomsky is not easy to refute. I know that sounds like I'm trying to weasel out of backing up my claims, but unraveling the webs of his sophistry can require several pages of historical background and a long list of references. BOOKS could be written on debunking Chomsky. Actually, I think they have.
Noam Chomsky has a magnificent mind, and he seems to speak with authority on world affairs. But in the words of another great mind from the 20th century, Albert Einstein, we must "question authority." Careful questioning of Chomsky's authority, at least as far as political issues go, reveals that he is no authority at all. Seductive as his polemics are, we're just going to have to learn to think for ourselves.
Posted by: jadoube | March 25, 2009 at 08:56
These are mindless diatribes.
The accusations of genocide denial are contrived by his opponents. The Khmer Rouge incident has been tended to countless times:
You were heavily criticized for some of your views of the KR, and some accused you of being favorable to the KR. Were you unfairly criticized?
It's ridiculous - in fact, there has been a massive critique of some of things that Edward Herman and I wrote - and my view is that they were some of the most accurate things that were written in history.
Nobody has been able to find a missed comma, which is not surprising. Before we published the chapter - we had it reviewed by most of the leading specialists on the topic, who made some suggestions, but basically nothing.
Our main conclusion was: You have to tell the truth - don't lie about our crimes denying them, and don't lie about their crimes exaggerating them. In fact, what we actually did ... the main thesis is a comparison between Cambodia and East Timor. And it's a natural comparison - massive atrocities going on in the same part of the world - the same years - East Timor went on for another 25 years afterwards, and relative to population, they were about at the same scale. And what we found was that there was massive lying, but in opposite directions. In the case of East Timor, it was ignored and denied. In the case of Cambodia, it was wild accusations without a particle of evidence. So what was the fundamental difference between the two cases - in Indonesia we were responsible, and we could have done something. But in the other case, an enemy was responsible.
Utterly accurate.
Posted by: revhh.org | April 03, 2009 at 20:36
this revhh.org idiot is like a spambot, ignoring facts and just repeating Chomsky's lies as if they are pearls of wisdom. I think there are Chomsky cultists who go around trawling the web for any insulting references to their great leader and setting the heretics straight by repeating Chomsky's lies and distortions as unquestionable sacred truths. As if by merely repeating Chomsky's lies and calling them truths, they become truths through repetition. Kind of like a religious cult.
As the economist Brad de Long put it, arguing with a Chomsky cultist is like discussing Plato's Republic with a pig, it wastes your time and angers the pig. Although I don't think this comparison of de Long's is fair to pigs, they are animals after all, and they are both intelligent and capable of a lot of affection.
Posted by: Lawrence | April 04, 2009 at 16:56
jadoube you are right in what you say re Chomsky's references, this is so true he references his own work, and then when you check up on that, it is nothing but rabbit out of a hat stuff!
I disagree with you though when you write that Chomsky has a magnificent mind, his mind is riddled through with psychopathology, he is a real headcase. And he is very easy to refute and expose as a liar. He lies all the time. For example anybody can read what he actually wrote in his essay on the Khmer Rouge, "Discretion at Fourth hand", and then see how he lies about what he actually wrote - see above. (re revhh.org the fawning acolyte pasting excerpts of a Chomsky interview above, where Chomsky just breezily lies about what the whole controversy was actually about). Chomsky knows he can get away with his lies, because he has an audience of fawning believers who are not concerned with truth but the gospel according to Chomsky.
Posted by: Lawrence | April 04, 2009 at 17:12
Thanks for pointing me towards that exchange :)
Posted by: modernityblog | April 05, 2009 at 00:37
you know. I don't take everything Chomsky says as Gospel and I find his all too frequent knee jerk responses annoying. But I have to say I find the comments here utterly instructive. The amount of bold face lying is incredible. Thank you providing substantial, although uintentional, support of Chomsky's view of the manufacture of consent.
Posted by: Pacal | April 14, 2009 at 01:42
Chomsky killed Jesus,this I know because this Web Site told me so.
the devil
Posted by: wiepu | June 24, 2009 at 01:01
No one hasn't read chomsky and gone through the footnotes will understand what he's saying. I bought 'the essential chomsky' just to see why people disliked him so much. His footnotes are almost flawless. A huge majority are just released pentagon docs. Its hard to ignore the blatent American involvement in Latin America. There's less on our cooperation with Israel, but i figure If we're willing to kill people everywhere else why not help Israeli terrorism?
Posted by: Glen | September 02, 2009 at 07:32
I condemn violence committed against the people of Israel by certain members of Palestine. I condemn violence committed by certain members of Israel against the people of Palestine. Palestine and Israel can and must commit to permanent cease-fire; forgive each other for past wrong-doings; and the States of Israel and Palestine can and must enter into a permanent commitment to peaceful coexistence.
Posted by: Victor Eating Cake | September 29, 2009 at 01:48
Could I please get some feedback ck on my prior comment?
Posted by: Victor Eating Cake | September 29, 2009 at 01:52
Here's feedback:
Your speech sounds like Obama at the UN.
Posted by: Religious Fundamentalist 1 | September 29, 2009 at 05:06
Victor
Israel has offered said peace. It offered it in 1947, 1948, 1993 and most dramatically in 2000 when Barak offered 97% of the west bank and a shared jerusalem.
The palestinians have rejected, on every occassion the Israeli offers. Not only rejected, but a rejection without counter offer.
Vic, your speech was the same of all bunny hugging, painfully ignorant bleeding heart liberals everywhere.
The will be peace in the middle east when the palestininas want peace. Its just that simple. And when they do they will also get that bran-spankjing new state they keep talking about.
Regarding Chomsky - Anyone who quotes himself as a reliable reference is a bit of a joke. But the points made here are both truth and scary. These intelligent anti Israel activists rely on drowning the listeners/readers in unmanagable amounts of semi truths and lies. Extensive referencing and name dropping gives the illusion of truth. It is for this reason that debating such people, in any forum other than perhaps blogging, is so dangerous. Any form of debate, where the one does not have time to investigate claims and references will ALWAYS end in the likes of Chomsky looking superior - they can claim what they like. Only blogging, where one expects a delayes response, can one debunk lies and distortions. That said even blogging is not immune form such tactics. Those regulars who remember the Isaacs/pollack debate will remember that Isaacs simply repeated the same claims in every post, did not adress questions posed to him nor criticism of his facts.
And to steve - it is a poor indictment on you that there is nothing new on the blog that we have to go back to discuss threads from 6 months ago.
Posted by: RF2 | September 29, 2009 at 08:41
Easy on Steve, he has responsibilities.
Posted by: Religious Fundamentalist 1 | September 29, 2009 at 10:09
it was a friendly joke
Posted by: RF2 | September 29, 2009 at 11:50
Gee, why don't any of the people coming onto this site to defend Chomsky actually ADDRESS the comments being made, instead of simply attempting to wish away the argument by sticking your fingers in your ears, shutting your eyes and repeating "That's all Lies!" over and over?
Oh, right. because they're Chomsky readers.
Posted by: Cody | January 08, 2010 at 10:51
wow this thread still going! Cody you are right. It is important to point out though that Chomsky readers means Jew-haters who worship a Jew-hating liar supreme, Chomsky himself, so facts be damned. Since when did Jew-hating bigots and apologists for the Jihad against the Jews care for facts?
What I write in my comments about Chomsky, that he cannot be debated since he just lies, he must just be exposed for the Jew-hating liar that he is, applies as much to his Jew-hating fandom. The Jew-haters commenting on this thread (quite a few of them) cannot be debated with likewise since as Cody points out they don't address the comments being made and stick their fingers in their ear and shut their eyes.
To acknowledge the facts about the Faurisson affair alone (never mind much else) means acknowledging the fact that Chomsky is a deranged anti-Semite, and this is why his fandom can't acknowledge the actual facts here, other than lying about it. For his fandom to acknowledge the facts here would be to admit that they take seriously a Jew-hating liar on the Israel/Palestinian conflict, which would mean they are at best gullible fools and at worst anti-Semites like Chomsky himself. For obvious psychological reasons that ain't gonna happen.
Posted by: Lawrence | January 08, 2010 at 11:43