awake & reading: noam chomsky
The following is just a segment of an interview that is featured in the incredible documentary,
"Manufacturing Consent - Noam Chomsky and the Media". I highly recommend you score a copy through your city's library loan (if they don't have a copy on hand) or, talk to me and I'd be happy to let you borrow my copy for a couple days.
You know, it's a very simple ethical point: You're responsible for the predictable consequences of your actions. You're not responsible for the predictable consequences of somebody else's actions. The most important thing for me and for you is to think about the consequences of your actions. What can you effect? These are the things to keep in mind. These are not just academic exercises. We're not analyzing the media on Mars or in the 18th century or something like that. We're dealing with real human beings who are suffering and dying and being tortured and starving because of policies that we are involved in. We, as citizens of democratic societies, are directly involved in and are responsible for. And what the media are doing is insuring that we do not act on our responsibilities, and that the interests of power are served, not the needs of the suffering people, and not even the needs of American people who would be horrified if they realized the blood that is dripping from their hands because of the way they are allowing themselves to be deluded and manipulated by this system.
What about the Third World? Well, despite everything, and it's pretty ugly and awful, these struggles are not over. The struggle for freedom and independence never is completely over. Their courage, in fact, is really remarkable and amazing. I've personally had the privilege, and it is a privilege, of witnessing it a few times in villages in Southeast Asia and Central America, and recently in the occupied West Bank, and it is astonishing to see. It's always amazing, at least to me it's amazing, I can't understand it, it's also very moving, and very inspiring, in fact, it's kind of awe-inspiring. Now, they rely very crucially on a very slim margin for survival that's provided by dissidence and turbulence within the imperial societies. How large that margin is, is for us to determine.
technorati tags: NOAM CHOMSKY, MANUFACTURING CONSENT
6 comments:
"We're dealing with real human beings who are suffering and dying and being tortured and starving because of policies that we are involved in."
This is coming from the same person that has continually insisted that communism is humane?
I've never heard him make the blanket statement, "Communism is humane."
Even if he had, would the quote you include in your comment be less true? Maybe Chomsky would have some reconciling to do (which I still hold that he does not), but before dismissing what he's saying here with a flip, "Eh, he's a commie." why not wrestle with it and see if it means something in your life?
I was by no means dismissing the above excerpt simply by claiming that Chomsky is a "commie." I was merely pointing out that his standards of what is morally acceptable are severely distorted (last time I checked, consistency is a necessary criterion for rationality). But I must admit one error: I claimed that Chomsky has repeatedly claimed that communism is humane when in fact he has made the claim that Marxism is humane. Though these two movements are closely tied together, I regretted my mistake after I made the post.
Yet my objection still remains the same: Chomsky holds what seems to be two contradictory positions regarding the actions of the West and the atrocities committed by the rest (for instance, his dismissal of the Cambodian massacres and his later attempts to cast doubt on the atrocities themselves). I could spend paragraphs citing this hypocrisy but believe that George Jochnowitz (Professor Emeritus of Linguistics, College of Staten Island, CUNY) has already done the job for me in his recent essay "The trouble with Chomsky," featured in the Open Republic (here).
I will give Chomsky this: besides being a brilliant linguist he also has an incredible ability to foster feelings of sincerity while professing his watered down version of Marxism. You therefore claim that instead of dismissing him I should “wrestle with it and see if it means something in [my] life?” But whether or not the post fosters some subjective emotional experience that causes my eyes to tear up and whether or not the essays objective claims make sense are two completely different things.
I think it's a pretty grand overstatement to say that Chomsky's moral standards are severely distorted. But, having been a fan of his for years and having read and heard plenty of what his critics say, I've gotten used to hearing that common complaint. Interestingly enough, those critiques very rarely come from those in the Third World struggling for survival in an economy or under a regime that our policies are enabling.
Also, I'm not sure what you mean by "dismissal of the Cambodian massacres". I've heard him speak at length on the atrocities committed by Pol Pot. In fact, he's called it the great act of genocide in the modern period. How is that a dismissal?
It's no doubt that Chomsky is more critical of the West's actions considering he believes that, "You're responsible for the predictable consequences of your actions. You're not responsible for the predictable consequences of somebody else's actions."
In that light, I'm not less appauled by our country's oppressive policies just because someone else may in fact be more oppressive. That is of no consolation to me whatsoever.
Anyway, thanks for the link to that essay. I'll print it out and give it a read.
Thanks for visiting!
I hardly see how it would be a "grand overstatement" to say that Chomsky's moral conceptual scheme is drastically distorted. For one thing, Chomsky exalts Marxism which is diametrically opposed to the locus of authority and morality which democracy prescribes. Place Marx and Engles (or Chomsky for that matter) alongside Locke, Burke, Elliot, Hayek, Adams, or even Newman and the difference is undeniable.
I believe that the essay I cited earlier provides direct quotes and citations from Chomsky on the Cambodian massacres.
Lastly, just because Chomsky's critics rarely come from Third World countries does not mean that his ideas are somehow legitimized or that his critics are wrong.
I have no doubt that America does have much room for growth when it comes to our foreign policy. Some of the consequences of our actions have been foreseen and others could not have been imagined. But I hardly think that the answer is to turn to an individual that constantly critiques the freedoms that he enjoys and asks Americans to understand their moral obligation to Third World Countries all the while retreating behind the veil, "The government does not have the right to legislate morality," when the conversation changes to another issue.
Anyway, I enjoyed the discussion. Keep up the good work!
The difference between Marxism and democracy is certainly undeniable, but a person's preference for either doesn't immediately mean they're morals are distorted. Marxism isn't fascism. It isn't totalitarianism.
I read the article and still disagree that Chomsky has dismissed Pol Pot's atrocities in Cambodia. What he has done is to point out that U.S. media and interests dismissed Indonesia's atrocities in East Timor. While he may believe that one act was ultimately worse than the other, he places them on the same tier because that is his whole point. Because our interests were being served by Indonesia's invasion of East Timor, there was no press. Because we were the good guys in Cambodia, there was plenty of coverage.
If Cambodia was a non-event (which it was not and which he does not claim) then his point is moot.
I agree that we have a lot of room for growth in our foreign policies, and I'm not suggesting that our only answer is to turn to Chomsky alone. I think it's helpful to be aware of the faults that he is pointing out and it's also helpful not to falsely claim that he is critiquing our freedoms. In word and deed, he advocates for free speech for those who do not have it. In word and deed, he advocates for the provision of the down-trodden. For my money, he's a refreshing alternative to what passes for an objective media.
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