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03/30/2010: "Noam Chomsky: False Moses of The Controlled Media"
http://newrightamerica.blogspot.com/2010/03/noam-chomsky-false-moses-of-controlled.html
by Quagmire
Since 1955, American linguist and MIT professor Noam Chomsky has produced a prolific number of works exposing the unsavory proclivities of the U.S. regime and its moneyed masters. For this, he has enjoyed a kingly status within the American left, with generations of young activists and radicals hailing him as their brightest beacon. This has even spilled over into popular culture, with everyone from rockers U2 and Rage Against The Machine to funnyman Bill Hicks citing him as an inspiration. However, that appreciation is not universal, as the same antiestablishment screeds that earned him his iconic status on the left have embittered him to the american right, who have marked him a "traitor" and dismissed his criticism of our foreign policy as "anti-american." Either way, he has dedciated his life to combating the American imperial regime, and it is in this capacity that I find him somewhat useless. Despite his claiming the title "anarcho-syndicalist" and his publicly stated commitment to anti-authoritarianism, his actual legislative postions belie this. Such as...
(on Ron Paul's isolationism) "He is proposing a form of ultranationalism, in which we are concerned solely with our own wealth and extraordinary advantages, getting out of the U.N., rejecting any international prosecution of US criminals (for aggressive war, for example)etc. Aside from being next to meaningless, this idea is morally unaccpetable, in my view."
I've grown weary of leftists cheerleading for the United Nations, as it demonstrates their profound ignorance when it comes to foreign policy. The U.N. is no check on American military aggression; rather it enables it through a sort of good cop-bad cop partnership with our regime. It's main purpose will be to serve as a front for the American empire, when it finally attains global dominance.
(on gun control) "It's pretty clear that, taken literally, the second amendment does not permit people to own guns. But laws are never taken literally, including amendments to the Constitution or Constitutional rights. Laws permit what the tenor of the times interperets them as permitting." (from Secrets, Lies, And Democracy)
Why does this self-proclaimed "anarchist" take the same postion here as a mainstream liberal would? Whether the constitution allows citizens to possess firearms is irrelevant. What is not irrelevant is the encroaching police state our fearless leaders are imposing upon us, the only bulwark against which is an armed and well trained populace. Incidentally, it's this sort of mental inconsistency that causes young birkenstockers to champion gun control while simultanously denouncing the PATRIOT act as an egregious violation of civil liberites.
The gems continue...
(on federal power)"I'd like to see the power of the federal government increased."
If the power of the federal government was increased any more, it would explode. It's been rapidly increasing in size since it was first instituted, and during this time so has the corporate system, the police state, and the foreign empire. Such developments prove it neccessary that anarchism be a decentralist affiar. Or is Chomsky still an anarchist?
on the draft) "So I was very much involved in the resistance (to the Vietnam War) but I was never against the draft." (
What?
(on the welfare state) "It (classical anarhist thinking) leads directly to support for the people facing problems today: for enforcement of health and safety regulation, for provision of national health insurance, support systems for people who need them, etc."
Actually, classical anarchist thought leads to the realization that such things are minor concessions intended to co-opt and pacify those to whom radicalism has the most appeal. Bakunin predicted this during anarchism's infancy, and, over a century later, he has been proven correct. It has been well-documented by Gabriel Kolko and others that the welfare state he was referring to was initially conceived as a power consolidation mechanism for corporate interests. The health and regulatory agencies he refers favorably to are staffed by a revolving door of lobbyists and insiders, representing businesses for whom the added cost of regulation can be passed effortlessly on to the consumer. Meanwhile, the same costs cause increased difficulty for working people attempting to develop alternative economic systems outside the state-connected and stae-priveleged corproate framework.
It is obvious that Chomsky has been duped into swallowing the managerial-liberal line, somehow failing to realize that the liberal-progressive system he favors is merely the latest front for capitalist class rule. Unfortunately, the budding leftists who take their marching orders from him are drawn through the same trick door, entering the shapeless void of an increasingly wrongheaded and irrelevant left.
Replies: 1 Comment
on Wednesday, March 31st, Ann said
"with generations of young activists and radicals hailing him as their brightest beacon"
That's the problem right there.... young, indoctrinated, ignorant people. Lets hope once they grow up they will gain a little more knowledge than their indoctrination has offered them.
