The West's Leftist Male 'Intellectuals' Who Traffic in Genocide Denial
January 21, 2018 7:29 AM Subscribe
There was no wave of mea culpas from the 'anti-imperialists' who denied the Bosnian genocide after Ratko Mladic's guilty verdict (Previously, Previouslier, yet Previouslier). That's because conclusive evidence, even criminal convictions, wont stop those war crimes deniers, who are now actively whitewashing Assads war crimes
How fucking hard is it to understand that genocide is bad? Doesn't matter who does it.
posted by evilDoug at 8:12 AM on January 21, 2018 [10 favorites]
posted by evilDoug at 8:12 AM on January 21, 2018 [10 favorites]
Why does the history start with Bosnia? Have people forgotten Chomsky's whitewashing of Cambodia in the '70s? Fuck him, and all deniers.
posted by languagehat at 8:44 AM on January 21, 2018 [48 favorites]
posted by languagehat at 8:44 AM on January 21, 2018 [48 favorites]
No mention of Russia. Not that every contrarian who goes down the the-west-is-bad-therefore-everything-it-opposes-is-good rabbit hole is automatically aligned with Russia, but boy do the causes they end up supporting line up.
posted by Artw at 9:10 AM on January 21, 2018 [19 favorites]
posted by Artw at 9:10 AM on January 21, 2018 [19 favorites]
the-west-is-bad-therefore-everything-it-opposes-is-good
Sadly you see this even here on MetaFilter. It's like people's brains break on certain topics. It's weird that the title qualifies this as male because I've seen this behavior from men and women. It's not a gender thing, it's an ideology thing.
I get that these people don't like western intervention, or the west in general, but at least stick to your political judgments in light of the actual evidence.
If a conservative says something like Pinochet was a monster but he turned Chile around they'll be rightfully shouted down by left-leaning people. Yet a surprising (nor not) number of those same people will praise left-leaning dictators, (oh, say, Castro) who murdered their political enemies and set up vast prison camp systems because those dictators aligned with their own views and goals.
posted by Sangermaine at 9:36 AM on January 21, 2018 [40 favorites]
Sadly you see this even here on MetaFilter. It's like people's brains break on certain topics. It's weird that the title qualifies this as male because I've seen this behavior from men and women. It's not a gender thing, it's an ideology thing.
I get that these people don't like western intervention, or the west in general, but at least stick to your political judgments in light of the actual evidence.
If a conservative says something like Pinochet was a monster but he turned Chile around they'll be rightfully shouted down by left-leaning people. Yet a surprising (nor not) number of those same people will praise left-leaning dictators, (oh, say, Castro) who murdered their political enemies and set up vast prison camp systems because those dictators aligned with their own views and goals.
posted by Sangermaine at 9:36 AM on January 21, 2018 [40 favorites]
I've read the Nation weekly since I was a teenager, but for the last few years I've developed a habit of skipping articles by Stephen F. Cohen.
posted by homerica at 9:44 AM on January 21, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by homerica at 9:44 AM on January 21, 2018 [4 favorites]
Ah, Living Marxism! LM lives on as Spiked Online, home of Brendan O’Neill and his [CW: abuse, racism] delightful views. It’s never been entirely clear to me to what degree their positions are genuinely held, and to what degree they’re trying to attract attention by espousing the most unpleasant views they possibly can.
posted by doop at 10:43 AM on January 21, 2018 [6 favorites]
posted by doop at 10:43 AM on January 21, 2018 [6 favorites]
Brendan O’Neill is simply a professional contrarian wanker. His entire game is about arguing against some status quo position, so he appeals to those who think that by reading him, they somehow obtain deeper knowledge, whereas all that happens is that they end up stupider than when they went in.
posted by daveje at 11:15 AM on January 21, 2018 [8 favorites]
posted by daveje at 11:15 AM on January 21, 2018 [8 favorites]
I'm also somewhat aware of the RCP/LM/Spikes guys but just for fun I googled Brendan O'Neill and apparently now he's going on Dave Rubin's show, describing himself as a Marxist Libertarian (to be fair "libertarian socialism" is a thing but this guy has long seemed like the other sort of libertarian anyway) and saying he was going to vote Tory to get Brexit. Delightful guy.
posted by atoxyl at 11:20 AM on January 21, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by atoxyl at 11:20 AM on January 21, 2018 [2 favorites]
There’s a non-zero chance of any of these guys turning Nazi at any time if it’s the most contrarian thing they can do.
posted by Artw at 11:23 AM on January 21, 2018 [20 favorites]
posted by Artw at 11:23 AM on January 21, 2018 [20 favorites]
There’s a non-zero chance of any of these guys turning Nazi at any time if it’s the most contrarian thing they can do.
*cough*
Žižek
posted by leotrotsky at 11:32 AM on January 21, 2018 [22 favorites]
*cough*
Žižek
posted by leotrotsky at 11:32 AM on January 21, 2018 [22 favorites]
It's worth pointing out that Oz Katerji (the author of the main linked article) is explicitly pro-military-intervention and a well-known online fight-picker. But he's right that guys like Chomsky have a history of being selective about this stuff. And I've said before there's a certain approach to anti-imperialism that seems itself unable to perceive events except through the lens of their relation to the U.S.
posted by atoxyl at 11:45 AM on January 21, 2018 [12 favorites]
posted by atoxyl at 11:45 AM on January 21, 2018 [12 favorites]
Recently (in the thread about the open letter in Le Monde from a group of women) a distinction was drawn between the Left in the US (which is becoming comfortable with the word socialism again, after years of Cold War aversion) and the European Left, which still has uninterrupted historical ties to Marx. It was argued that European Liberals were less likely to embrace intersectionality, because race and gender et al are ancillary to CLASS. This and other traditions were (for good and ill) carried down from Marx and Lenin, and the worst of it looks like LM.
I’ve seen Chomsky talk in Cambridge as part of a series put on by Massachusetts Peace Action, an organization largely of no-nuke seniors, and I was surprised at how pro-Russia the whole thing was. If there’s a thruline to Marxism alive in US liberalism, the Ivory Tower Intelligentsia is ironically its caretaker. But even us young folks with a vague reverence for Chomsky aren’t often familiar with this side of him.
While it was argued in that thread that the US Left is at a disadvantage for not having this sense of Socialist history, I sometimes think the only reason to know it is to eschew it. Embracing the best parts of socialism is easier if you don’t have to apologize for the sins of the nominally socialist states of the past. It’s only the Us vs Them hardline philosophy phy of the Cold War that forces one to lump the sensible social welfare of most developed nations in with the fascist imperialism of the USSR and the dictators it suported (or that Putin still supports).
I’m not trying to downplay the sins of the US here, either. Chomsky is a brilliant man and he made the point that NATO has never stopped pouring money into the military, even after the Cold War ended. Putin’s a dick, but he’s right to be made anxious by our insane devotion to ‘defense’ spending.
posted by es_de_bah at 11:45 AM on January 21, 2018 [14 favorites]
I’ve seen Chomsky talk in Cambridge as part of a series put on by Massachusetts Peace Action, an organization largely of no-nuke seniors, and I was surprised at how pro-Russia the whole thing was. If there’s a thruline to Marxism alive in US liberalism, the Ivory Tower Intelligentsia is ironically its caretaker. But even us young folks with a vague reverence for Chomsky aren’t often familiar with this side of him.
While it was argued in that thread that the US Left is at a disadvantage for not having this sense of Socialist history, I sometimes think the only reason to know it is to eschew it. Embracing the best parts of socialism is easier if you don’t have to apologize for the sins of the nominally socialist states of the past. It’s only the Us vs Them hardline philosophy phy of the Cold War that forces one to lump the sensible social welfare of most developed nations in with the fascist imperialism of the USSR and the dictators it suported (or that Putin still supports).
I’m not trying to downplay the sins of the US here, either. Chomsky is a brilliant man and he made the point that NATO has never stopped pouring money into the military, even after the Cold War ended. Putin’s a dick, but he’s right to be made anxious by our insane devotion to ‘defense’ spending.
posted by es_de_bah at 11:45 AM on January 21, 2018 [14 favorites]
It's weird that people still regard Chomsky as significant in relation to anything but linguistics; it's like people who still think that Dawkins has anything interesting to say outside of evolutionary biology.
posted by howfar at 12:03 PM on January 21, 2018 [14 favorites]
posted by howfar at 12:03 PM on January 21, 2018 [14 favorites]
Here's an archived copy of the article in case Ha'aretz puts it behind a paywall.
posted by Joe in Australia at 12:11 PM on January 21, 2018
posted by Joe in Australia at 12:11 PM on January 21, 2018
And while we're on the subject of Spiked and the spawn of LM, here's Spiked Watch.
posted by daveje at 12:42 PM on January 21, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by daveje at 12:42 PM on January 21, 2018 [1 favorite]
It's weird that people still regard Chomsky as significant in relation to anything but linguistics; it's like people who still think that Dawkins has anything interesting to say outside of evolutionary biology.
My impression is that some of his big ideas are nowadays out of fashion in linguistics and cognitive science, though his importance in the history of those fields is not to be understated. I suppose that may go for Dawkins, too (except he's probably more influential as a popularizer anyway?) But nonetheless I wouldn't go that far - Chomsky has written a lot of significant things. He just has, you know, kinda the one angle on global events.
posted by atoxyl at 1:22 PM on January 21, 2018 [4 favorites]
My impression is that some of his big ideas are nowadays out of fashion in linguistics and cognitive science, though his importance in the history of those fields is not to be understated. I suppose that may go for Dawkins, too (except he's probably more influential as a popularizer anyway?) But nonetheless I wouldn't go that far - Chomsky has written a lot of significant things. He just has, you know, kinda the one angle on global events.
posted by atoxyl at 1:22 PM on January 21, 2018 [4 favorites]
I can't say a thing about linguistics, but I'm in political science and no one gives a shit about what Chomsky says or pays attention to him or even talks about him.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 1:58 PM on January 21, 2018 [6 favorites]
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 1:58 PM on January 21, 2018 [6 favorites]
a series put on by Massachusetts Peace Action, an organization largely of no-nuke seniors, and I was surprised at how pro-Russia the whole thing was.
and then there's the Holodomor denial coming from so-called leftists, which I first started encountering about a year ago. They weren't young. They just seemed invested in thinking of Stalin-era Russia as "really not that bad" or whatever. They were some of the same people that kept posting pro-Assad stuff from RT.com on Facebook. I remember having to explain to a guy (an old art scene acquaintance) that RT.com wasn't Reuters. He un-friended me.
posted by philip-random at 2:42 PM on January 21, 2018 [8 favorites]
and then there's the Holodomor denial coming from so-called leftists, which I first started encountering about a year ago. They weren't young. They just seemed invested in thinking of Stalin-era Russia as "really not that bad" or whatever. They were some of the same people that kept posting pro-Assad stuff from RT.com on Facebook. I remember having to explain to a guy (an old art scene acquaintance) that RT.com wasn't Reuters. He un-friended me.
posted by philip-random at 2:42 PM on January 21, 2018 [8 favorites]
> It's weird that people still regard Chomsky as significant in relation to anything but linguistics
This isn't well enough known, but he ruined linguistics in the '60s, at first singlehandedly and then with the assistance of the cohorts of Chomskybots he sent out in all directions to take over linguistics departments across the land. It would be a pointless derail to go into it here, but I wanted to mention it because I'm tired of seeing the ritual kowtowing to his supposed greatness as a linguist. (I and others have ranted about this plenty at LH; if anyone's interested, drop me a MeMail and I'll dig up a link or two.)
posted by languagehat at 2:59 PM on January 21, 2018 [24 favorites]
This isn't well enough known, but he ruined linguistics in the '60s, at first singlehandedly and then with the assistance of the cohorts of Chomskybots he sent out in all directions to take over linguistics departments across the land. It would be a pointless derail to go into it here, but I wanted to mention it because I'm tired of seeing the ritual kowtowing to his supposed greatness as a linguist. (I and others have ranted about this plenty at LH; if anyone's interested, drop me a MeMail and I'll dig up a link or two.)
posted by languagehat at 2:59 PM on January 21, 2018 [24 favorites]
and then there's the Holodomor denial coming from so-called leftists, which I first started encountering about a year ago.
These are more or less the contemporary incarnation of "tankies:" a classic intra-Left epithet which goes all the way back to the 1956 Hungarian Uprising, attacking the subset of Western communists who were happy to see the Soviet tanks rolling in to crush it. So definitely not new, though some of them are younger - you'll find some kids who are into Soviet power-porn the way a more familiar type is into the Wehrmacht.
(Some people call the "I stand with the legitimate government of Syria/North Korea/etc." people "tankies" as well and there's certainly overlap.)
posted by atoxyl at 3:05 PM on January 21, 2018 [8 favorites]
These are more or less the contemporary incarnation of "tankies:" a classic intra-Left epithet which goes all the way back to the 1956 Hungarian Uprising, attacking the subset of Western communists who were happy to see the Soviet tanks rolling in to crush it. So definitely not new, though some of them are younger - you'll find some kids who are into Soviet power-porn the way a more familiar type is into the Wehrmacht.
(Some people call the "I stand with the legitimate government of Syria/North Korea/etc." people "tankies" as well and there's certainly overlap.)
posted by atoxyl at 3:05 PM on January 21, 2018 [8 favorites]
This isn't well enough known, but he ruined linguistics in the '60s, at first singlehandedly
Hence his significance. I don't rate him either, but he's significant, as your own comment proves. Please, LH, don't read your bugbears into my comments and infer "kowtowing" based upon nothing but your own current grump with metafilter.
posted by howfar at 4:02 PM on January 21, 2018
Hence his significance. I don't rate him either, but he's significant, as your own comment proves. Please, LH, don't read your bugbears into my comments and infer "kowtowing" based upon nothing but your own current grump with metafilter.
posted by howfar at 4:02 PM on January 21, 2018
Uh, howfar, I didn't read languagehat's comment as an accusation that you're kowtowing.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 4:11 PM on January 21, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 4:11 PM on January 21, 2018 [4 favorites]
If I'm mistaken, then I apologise. However, he did say he made his comment because of being tired of seeing endless kowtowing. That would seem like a non sequitur unless he thought he was observing it somewhere in the thread.
Anyway, night all!
posted by howfar at 4:16 PM on January 21, 2018
Anyway, night all!
posted by howfar at 4:16 PM on January 21, 2018
I can't stop saying "kowtowing" now.
Kowtowing.
posted by howfar at 4:16 PM on January 21, 2018 [5 favorites]
Kowtowing.
posted by howfar at 4:16 PM on January 21, 2018 [5 favorites]
If a conservative says something like Pinochet was a monster but he turned Chile around they'll be rightfully shouted down by left-leaning people. Yet a surprising (nor not) number of those same people will praise left-leaning dictators, (oh, say, Castro) who murdered their political enemies and set up vast prison camp systems because those dictators aligned with their own views and goals.
Yes. This can not be emphasized enough.
In college, I had friends in the Spark, the Revolutionary Communist Party, and even (briefly) one in the Sparticist League. More or less my whole friend group identified as leftist, and were sort of confused at how the Spark and RCP seemed oddly chill about the killings under Lenin and Mao. We figured, "these are educated, passionate people who certainly did their Marx reading, and the university lets them rent rooms and organize events, so surely we're missing some historical subtlety."
We were not. And it has taken my years to accept that no, people I considered friends were in fact apologists for political genocide. And they were enabled by leftist university administrators and a warped academic culture that said held far-left views as fundamentally benign and above reproach.
That was a culpable and baseless belief.
Those of us who are more on the Bernie Sanders left than the Bob Avakian left have a duty to denounce and extricate the latter. I don't like that we do, but we do, because their language, their ideologies, and their seething hatred frequently infect our ranks. As correct as we are about healthcare, progressive taxation, and criminal justice reform, it is wholly understandable that we are widely distrusted as long as we can call Maoists and Stalinists friends.
posted by andrewpcone at 4:31 PM on January 21, 2018 [19 favorites]
Yes. This can not be emphasized enough.
In college, I had friends in the Spark, the Revolutionary Communist Party, and even (briefly) one in the Sparticist League. More or less my whole friend group identified as leftist, and were sort of confused at how the Spark and RCP seemed oddly chill about the killings under Lenin and Mao. We figured, "these are educated, passionate people who certainly did their Marx reading, and the university lets them rent rooms and organize events, so surely we're missing some historical subtlety."
We were not. And it has taken my years to accept that no, people I considered friends were in fact apologists for political genocide. And they were enabled by leftist university administrators and a warped academic culture that said held far-left views as fundamentally benign and above reproach.
That was a culpable and baseless belief.
Those of us who are more on the Bernie Sanders left than the Bob Avakian left have a duty to denounce and extricate the latter. I don't like that we do, but we do, because their language, their ideologies, and their seething hatred frequently infect our ranks. As correct as we are about healthcare, progressive taxation, and criminal justice reform, it is wholly understandable that we are widely distrusted as long as we can call Maoists and Stalinists friends.
posted by andrewpcone at 4:31 PM on January 21, 2018 [19 favorites]
Thank goodness there is a sane, non-marxist Left that is not the victim of ideology but pure facts and information.
posted by R.F.Simpson at 4:35 PM on January 21, 2018
posted by R.F.Simpson at 4:35 PM on January 21, 2018
Thank goodness there is a sane, non-marxist Left that is not the victim of ideology but pure facts and information.
Do what now?
posted by thelonius at 5:03 PM on January 21, 2018 [2 favorites]
Do what now?
posted by thelonius at 5:03 PM on January 21, 2018 [2 favorites]
> It's weird that people still regard Chomsky as significant in relation to anything but linguistics; it's like people who still think that Dawkins has anything interesting to say outside of evolutionary biology
I admired Chomsky's research in the late 1980s when I studied political economy, and I admit I haven't kept up with him at all. I'm glad I saw the comments here, so I could update my mental image of him.
posted by The corpse in the library at 5:25 PM on January 21, 2018
I admired Chomsky's research in the late 1980s when I studied political economy, and I admit I haven't kept up with him at all. I'm glad I saw the comments here, so I could update my mental image of him.
posted by The corpse in the library at 5:25 PM on January 21, 2018
Sorry, I was being sarcastic and disingenuous. I just bristle at the idea of center-leftists or even Sanders-adjacent leftists acting like Europe's marxist Left invented fake news as a way to stand by their rigid ideology when American democrats (like all political parties/affiliations) have been doing this for decades.
Consider me unoffended if some marxist academics (with little to no real influence on anything resembling mainstream politics) over-corrected with regard to genocidal western imperialism. Especially when the USA war machine has gone to inexplicable lengths to promote pro-imperialistic ideology.
Liberals (who have a tendency to line up behind policies and candidates that have murdered thousands of innocent people) can tend their own fucking garden.
posted by R.F.Simpson at 5:25 PM on January 21, 2018 [4 favorites]
Consider me unoffended if some marxist academics (with little to no real influence on anything resembling mainstream politics) over-corrected with regard to genocidal western imperialism. Especially when the USA war machine has gone to inexplicable lengths to promote pro-imperialistic ideology.
Liberals (who have a tendency to line up behind policies and candidates that have murdered thousands of innocent people) can tend their own fucking garden.
posted by R.F.Simpson at 5:25 PM on January 21, 2018 [4 favorites]
> If I'm mistaken, then I apologise. However, he did say he made his comment because of being tired of seeing endless kowtowing. That would seem like a non sequitur unless he thought he was observing it somewhere in the thread.
No, no, I've seen it lots of other places, but not in this thread—sorry you took it personally!
Also, "kowtowing" is indeed a great word.
posted by languagehat at 5:39 PM on January 21, 2018 [4 favorites]
No, no, I've seen it lots of other places, but not in this thread—sorry you took it personally!
Also, "kowtowing" is indeed a great word.
posted by languagehat at 5:39 PM on January 21, 2018 [4 favorites]
Lots of (perhaps justifiable) criticism for Chomsky in the comments, but are we all to accept that Hersh is simply fabricating his sources? Furthermore, questioning the official narrative - Assad decided one day to use chemical weapons to kill a few dozen rebels, inviting the direct intervention of the US and allies - does not mean that Assad is a saint or even innocent of war crimes, only that he is smart enough not to do the one thing that would unite the world against him.
Painting Hersh as a "genocide denier" or Assad apologist for questioning the official (and military-intervention-justifying) narrative is intellectually dishonest, and this piece feels like an attempt to quash anti-war dissent.
posted by Mechashiva at 8:33 PM on January 21, 2018 [5 favorites]
Painting Hersh as a "genocide denier" or Assad apologist for questioning the official (and military-intervention-justifying) narrative is intellectually dishonest, and this piece feels like an attempt to quash anti-war dissent.
posted by Mechashiva at 8:33 PM on January 21, 2018 [5 favorites]
Might as well link it directly since the post seems to be in response to it:
The Rational Destruction of Yugoslavia
"Both sides are bad" is so often a terrible thought-terminating cliche, but this is a really good piece to read if your thoughts about what happened in Yugoslavia came from consumption of main stream news at the time.
posted by Space Coyote at 8:48 PM on January 21, 2018 [1 favorite]
The Rational Destruction of Yugoslavia
"Both sides are bad" is so often a terrible thought-terminating cliche, but this is a really good piece to read if your thoughts about what happened in Yugoslavia came from consumption of main stream news at the time.
posted by Space Coyote at 8:48 PM on January 21, 2018 [1 favorite]
Painting Hersh as a "genocide denier" or Assad apologist for questioning the official (and military-intervention-justifying) narrative is intellectually dishonest.
You seem to be implying that the people claiming Assad used chemical weapons are motivated by justifying military intervention, and that this claim stems from a single "official" line, which one imagines to be the US. In fact, it is nearly a consensus position, substantiated in a UN report, that Assad used chemical weapons in April 2017. The belief that he did not is a fringe view more akin to Alex Jones' denial of Sandy Hook than opposition to, say, the Iraq war.
And, like, that is how we should relate to it morally. Somehow, when right wing asshats say "Sandy Hook didn't happen," MeFi gets all high and mighty, but when Seymour Hersh says some nerve gas attack that happened didn't happen, we get rules lawyering about exactly what constitutes "Assad apologist" or "genocide denial."
I don't much care what names you want to call Seymour Hersh for his baseless FUD. What he has done has been shitty, and it is shitty to defend it.
posted by andrewpcone at 8:57 PM on January 21, 2018 [20 favorites]
You seem to be implying that the people claiming Assad used chemical weapons are motivated by justifying military intervention, and that this claim stems from a single "official" line, which one imagines to be the US. In fact, it is nearly a consensus position, substantiated in a UN report, that Assad used chemical weapons in April 2017. The belief that he did not is a fringe view more akin to Alex Jones' denial of Sandy Hook than opposition to, say, the Iraq war.
And, like, that is how we should relate to it morally. Somehow, when right wing asshats say "Sandy Hook didn't happen," MeFi gets all high and mighty, but when Seymour Hersh says some nerve gas attack that happened didn't happen, we get rules lawyering about exactly what constitutes "Assad apologist" or "genocide denial."
I don't much care what names you want to call Seymour Hersh for his baseless FUD. What he has done has been shitty, and it is shitty to defend it.
posted by andrewpcone at 8:57 PM on January 21, 2018 [20 favorites]
over-corrected with regard to genocidal western imperialism
R.F.Simpson
That's a funny thing to call minimizing or outright denying genocide and other war crimes. Do you apply this same standard to Holocaust deniers?
This seems to be the case in point: when other people do it, it's disgusting and terrible. When "our guys" do it, it's just a little harmless stretching of the truth, no big deal.
I just bristle at the idea of center-leftists or even Sanders-adjacent leftists acting like Europe's marxist Left invented fake news as a way to stand by their rigid ideology
Bristle all you want, but it is a matter of historical fact that European and American Marxist parties and organizations acted to minimize, suppress, or deflect information regarding the crimes committed by the Soviets. Whether or not they "invented" fake news, they absolutely did peddle it in furtherance of their ideology. To claim otherwise is to be either mistaken or lying.
posted by Sangermaine at 9:13 PM on January 21, 2018 [14 favorites]
R.F.Simpson
That's a funny thing to call minimizing or outright denying genocide and other war crimes. Do you apply this same standard to Holocaust deniers?
This seems to be the case in point: when other people do it, it's disgusting and terrible. When "our guys" do it, it's just a little harmless stretching of the truth, no big deal.
I just bristle at the idea of center-leftists or even Sanders-adjacent leftists acting like Europe's marxist Left invented fake news as a way to stand by their rigid ideology
Bristle all you want, but it is a matter of historical fact that European and American Marxist parties and organizations acted to minimize, suppress, or deflect information regarding the crimes committed by the Soviets. Whether or not they "invented" fake news, they absolutely did peddle it in furtherance of their ideology. To claim otherwise is to be either mistaken or lying.
posted by Sangermaine at 9:13 PM on January 21, 2018 [14 favorites]
This author is well known for smearing any anti interventionist as pro assadist.
posted by mikek at 9:26 PM on January 21, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by mikek at 9:26 PM on January 21, 2018 [2 favorites]
This author is well known for smearing any anti interventionist as pro assadist.
Is this intended as some sort of reflexive joke? You do realize this comment is itself an ad hominem, and arguably a smear?
I don't care if he mugs orphans for giggles. The points in the article stand on their own.
posted by andrewpcone at 9:39 PM on January 21, 2018 [6 favorites]
Is this intended as some sort of reflexive joke? You do realize this comment is itself an ad hominem, and arguably a smear?
I don't care if he mugs orphans for giggles. The points in the article stand on their own.
posted by andrewpcone at 9:39 PM on January 21, 2018 [6 favorites]
for the last few years I've developed a habit of skipping articles by Stephen F. Cohen.
You know he's vanden Heuvel's husband right? (Which is interestingly left off of her bio on The Nation's website.)
Those of us who are more on the Bernie Sanders left than the Bob Avakian left
I am extremely curious: How do you believe those can be distinguished? Cuz they look like the same people to me.
posted by PMdixon at 9:44 PM on January 21, 2018 [2 favorites]
You know he's vanden Heuvel's husband right? (Which is interestingly left off of her bio on The Nation's website.)
Those of us who are more on the Bernie Sanders left than the Bob Avakian left
I am extremely curious: How do you believe those can be distinguished? Cuz they look like the same people to me.
posted by PMdixon at 9:44 PM on January 21, 2018 [2 favorites]
It was argued that European Liberals were less likely to embrace intersectionality, because race and gender et al are ancillary to CLASS.
One thing that came out of the recent thread on the French backlash to #metoo, was that many European Marxists still very much cling to the idea that "Once we have the revolution, all those other lesser problems (sexism, racism, etc.) will be solved."
I'll go further: quite a few classic socialists focus on CLASS to the exclusion of all else, because it helps enable bad behavior. This included gaslighting people complaining about sexual harassment and assault in Occupy, and telling people on Metafilter in threads on feminism that they should concentrate on the Revolution instead.
I basically call the attitude "Shut up and spread your legs for the Revolution."
posted by happyroach at 11:39 PM on January 21, 2018 [15 favorites]
One thing that came out of the recent thread on the French backlash to #metoo, was that many European Marxists still very much cling to the idea that "Once we have the revolution, all those other lesser problems (sexism, racism, etc.) will be solved."
I'll go further: quite a few classic socialists focus on CLASS to the exclusion of all else, because it helps enable bad behavior. This included gaslighting people complaining about sexual harassment and assault in Occupy, and telling people on Metafilter in threads on feminism that they should concentrate on the Revolution instead.
I basically call the attitude "Shut up and spread your legs for the Revolution."
posted by happyroach at 11:39 PM on January 21, 2018 [15 favorites]
Liberals (who have a tendency to line up behind policies and candidates that have murdered thousands of innocent people) can tend their own fucking garden.
This is essentially the problem with paying attention to politics (and ethics) only through the lens of my team v your team. You are presenting the dead purely in terms of which team can be blamed for more, numerically—like a kind of score-keeping. This is pretty perverse. I don’t want to come over all John Donne, but there are no separate gardens; we all live in a single interconnected world that is fucked up in multiple ways, and we all have an obligation to ensure our political choices are properly informed and therefore responsive to the actual needs of actual people living in that world. Dismissing a concentration camp as a “refugee camp, people can leave if they want” is a pretty monstrous thing to do, full stop. Dismissing a teenage victim of a drone stroke as “probably a terrorist anyway” is a pretty monstrous thing to do, full stop. There’s absolutely no reason, in the non-team-sports-world that is adult political choice, to trade one off against the other and say one is acceptable and the other is not. Anyone doing either should stop.
posted by Aravis76 at 1:02 AM on January 22, 2018 [24 favorites]
This is essentially the problem with paying attention to politics (and ethics) only through the lens of my team v your team. You are presenting the dead purely in terms of which team can be blamed for more, numerically—like a kind of score-keeping. This is pretty perverse. I don’t want to come over all John Donne, but there are no separate gardens; we all live in a single interconnected world that is fucked up in multiple ways, and we all have an obligation to ensure our political choices are properly informed and therefore responsive to the actual needs of actual people living in that world. Dismissing a concentration camp as a “refugee camp, people can leave if they want” is a pretty monstrous thing to do, full stop. Dismissing a teenage victim of a drone stroke as “probably a terrorist anyway” is a pretty monstrous thing to do, full stop. There’s absolutely no reason, in the non-team-sports-world that is adult political choice, to trade one off against the other and say one is acceptable and the other is not. Anyone doing either should stop.
posted by Aravis76 at 1:02 AM on January 22, 2018 [24 favorites]
In fact, it is nearly a consensus position, substantiated in a UN report, that Assad used chemical weapons in April 2017. The belief that he did not is a fringe view more akin to Alex Jones' denial of Sandy Hook than opposition to, say, the Iraq war.
The consensus position in 2003 was that Saddam possessed WMDs. Later we learned otherwise. It seems reasonable to be skeptical about any events that could justify the US going to war. Also Hersh has decades of investigative reporting experience; he's not perfect but he's no Alex Jones.
posted by Mechashiva at 1:41 AM on January 22, 2018 [1 favorite]
The consensus position in 2003 was that Saddam possessed WMDs. Later we learned otherwise. It seems reasonable to be skeptical about any events that could justify the US going to war. Also Hersh has decades of investigative reporting experience; he's not perfect but he's no Alex Jones.
posted by Mechashiva at 1:41 AM on January 22, 2018 [1 favorite]
"The consensus position in 2003 was that Saddam possessed WMDs."You do remember how laughably pathetic the Coalition of the Willing/Billing was right? The Bush Administration was able to convince Republicans and the New York Times about WMDs, and it privately staking the credibility of the Executive branch to ever say anything inherently credible about its intentions regarding foreign threats ever again was able to convince a lot of Senate Democrats that he was just saber rattling, but the world was not remotely fooled. The rest of the world believed Hans Blix.
posted by Blasdelb at 1:50 AM on January 22, 2018 [14 favorites]
Mod note: A couple deleted. Discuss the topic, don't make personal attacks. "Help maintain a healthy, respectful discussion by focusing comments on the issues, topics, and facts at hand—not at other members of the site."
posted by taz (staff) at 2:37 AM on January 22, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by taz (staff) at 2:37 AM on January 22, 2018 [1 favorite]
Furthermore, questioning the official narrative - Assad decided one day to use chemical weapons to kill a few dozen rebels, inviting the direct intervention of the US and allies - does not mean that Assad is a saint or even innocent of war crimes, only that he is smart enough not to do the one thing that would unite the world against him.
This line of argument for Hersh/Assad has always blown my mind. There's been dozens of chemical attacks. This isn't anything out of the ordinary for Assad.
posted by Dalby at 4:01 AM on January 22, 2018 [10 favorites]
This line of argument for Hersh/Assad has always blown my mind. There's been dozens of chemical attacks. This isn't anything out of the ordinary for Assad.
posted by Dalby at 4:01 AM on January 22, 2018 [10 favorites]
The consensus position in 2003 was that Saddam possessed WMDs.
This is false.
posted by PMdixon at 4:18 AM on January 22, 2018 [14 favorites]
This is false.
posted by PMdixon at 4:18 AM on January 22, 2018 [14 favorites]
These anti-imperialist “intellectuals” are currently helping prop up a truly vile online propaganda campaign and conspiracy theory against the White Helmets volunteer rescue workers in Syria.
posted by faineg at 4:21 AM on January 22, 2018 [12 favorites]
posted by faineg at 4:21 AM on January 22, 2018 [12 favorites]
Bristle all you want, but it is a matter of historical fact that European and American Marxist parties and organizations acted to minimize, suppress, or deflect information regarding the crimes committed by the Soviets. Whether or not they "invented" fake news, they absolutely did peddle it in furtherance of their ideology. To claim otherwise is to be either mistaken or lying.
I'd trace the modern impulse to do this back to the 1930s, and the intense ideological fracturing that followed the end of the pre-WWI liberal consensus - "fake news" is just a technologically more proficient version of propaganda, as with the manufacture of atrocities during, for example, the Spanish Civil War (which had plenty of real atrocities, which were inflated or minimized depending on who was doing the reporting). But the idea that you're supposed to tell lies in the service of a greater cause - well, that goes all the way back to Plato, and has been attractive to intellectuals across the political spectrum ever since. Being an advocate is generally less work and better rewarded than digging for the truth.
posted by AdamCSnider at 4:24 AM on January 22, 2018 [5 favorites]
I'd trace the modern impulse to do this back to the 1930s, and the intense ideological fracturing that followed the end of the pre-WWI liberal consensus - "fake news" is just a technologically more proficient version of propaganda, as with the manufacture of atrocities during, for example, the Spanish Civil War (which had plenty of real atrocities, which were inflated or minimized depending on who was doing the reporting). But the idea that you're supposed to tell lies in the service of a greater cause - well, that goes all the way back to Plato, and has been attractive to intellectuals across the political spectrum ever since. Being an advocate is generally less work and better rewarded than digging for the truth.
posted by AdamCSnider at 4:24 AM on January 22, 2018 [5 favorites]
Consider me unoffended if some marxist academics (with little to no real influence on anything resembling mainstream politics) over-corrected with regard to genocidal western imperialism.LOL
This kind of mindset, which sees truth as the result of some kind of mad horse race that one side can win if it just bullshits convincingly enough, was batshit already during the cold war, and its indefensible now. That Chomsky and this long list of leftists have climbed so far up their own asses that denying genocide and borrowing from the holocaust denial playbook like this can be described as an 'over-correction' only demonstrates that - at best - nothing you or they have to say is of any real value or grounded in any real foundation. It shows that if they ever happen to be right about anything it is only the result of a happy accident where the real world just happens to align with the stars in their eyes, and that they probably wouldn't even know the difference. You do see how you are literally right here apologizing for very real, very non-figurative, Serbian genocidal imperialism here right? Is your argument really that this cast of clowns can be safely ignored for their head-storage-preferences like some kind of perverse four legged meat doughnut because their demented wiggling is harmlessly un-influential?
Because that is plainly not the case. We are living in a world that is increasingly dominated by bullshit artists like Chomsky, Putin, and Trump as apologists for them begin to spend more time in the warm, wet illusion of safety and control that their cults of personality and bullshit provides. They plainly don't care whether what they say is factual or false, harmful or helpful, or even it seems genocidal. All three men only say what is convenient for the 'struggle' that conveniently happens to provide them with platforms and power, and the way out of their world is not further up their asses.
If we are ever going to bend the long arc of history towards justice, rather than wiggle around at best harmless to the powers that really oppress us, these men will have no part in the effort
posted by Blasdelb at 4:31 AM on January 22, 2018 [21 favorites]
"fake news" is just a technologically more proficient version of propaganda, as with the manufacture of atrocities during, for example,
I'm pretty sure The Crusades were justified via "fake news".
posted by philip-random at 9:32 AM on January 22, 2018
I'm pretty sure The Crusades were justified via "fake news".
posted by philip-random at 9:32 AM on January 22, 2018
things I love: when some of my socially conscious non-Chinese, mostly white activist friends start talking about how great Mao was
things I also love: pointing out that I have direct, familial ties to people who died in labor camps or due to starvation, that if they understood the suffering people faced going through famine and then over-zealous political re-revolution so that the increasingly disordered Mao could consolidate his power, they might be able to start seeing the sweet words of Mao as posturing and signalling more than actual committed revolution
things I definitely love so much: when that doesn't matter to them because he was great and so thus my family probably deserved to be punished because they were bougie right
reasons why I have anger issues: see above
posted by runt at 11:13 AM on January 22, 2018 [24 favorites]
things I also love: pointing out that I have direct, familial ties to people who died in labor camps or due to starvation, that if they understood the suffering people faced going through famine and then over-zealous political re-revolution so that the increasingly disordered Mao could consolidate his power, they might be able to start seeing the sweet words of Mao as posturing and signalling more than actual committed revolution
things I definitely love so much: when that doesn't matter to them because he was great and so thus my family probably deserved to be punished because they were bougie right
reasons why I have anger issues: see above
posted by runt at 11:13 AM on January 22, 2018 [24 favorites]
I am extremely curious: How do you believe those can be distinguished? Cuz they look like the same people to me.
You can't tell the difference between social democrats with slightly more radical pretensions and Mao-style cults around some Armenian dude?
I mean if you'd said you can't tell Chairman Bob from other revolutionary communist sects that would be fairer - the knowledge that even they don't particularly respect him is something of an injoke.
posted by atoxyl at 12:44 PM on January 22, 2018 [4 favorites]
You can't tell the difference between social democrats with slightly more radical pretensions and Mao-style cults around some Armenian dude?
I mean if you'd said you can't tell Chairman Bob from other revolutionary communist sects that would be fairer - the knowledge that even they don't particularly respect him is something of an injoke.
posted by atoxyl at 12:44 PM on January 22, 2018 [4 favorites]
"things I definitely love so much: when that doesn't matter to them because he was great and so thus my family probably deserved to be punished because they were bougie right"
With friends like those... also, why don't they understand that a good deal of the famine was rural?
posted by Selena777 at 12:51 PM on January 22, 2018 [3 favorites]
With friends like those... also, why don't they understand that a good deal of the famine was rural?
posted by Selena777 at 12:51 PM on January 22, 2018 [3 favorites]
I'm pretty sure The Crusades were justified via "fake news".
Lying as a means of sway people to your side is indeed an old and venerable tactic. At the risk of being pedantic, though, I think that the idea of "fake news" necessarily requires the idea of "news" as an established feature of everyday society. I don't think that the idea of "news" implicit in the concept of "fake news" could be said to have meaningfully existed before the advent of newspapers, at the very earliest. And I'd further argue that the modern conception of "news" in the sense of its use in the term "fake news" -- i.e. a rolling stream of daily updates from across the world with little to no time delay -- only dates to the advent of widespread radio adoption in the 1930s.
So I think if you described Nazi radio propaganda as "fake news", I wouldn't bat an eye, and I'd certainly grant some liberties around describing "Remember the Maine!"-style yellow journalism as fake news as well. But I think pushing it as far back as the Crusades is a stretch. "The Pope said jump, so I asked how high" is a bit different than manipulating a supposedly free press in an attempt to sway ostensibly-democratic institutions in a particular direction.
posted by tobascodagama at 1:06 PM on January 22, 2018 [5 favorites]
Lying as a means of sway people to your side is indeed an old and venerable tactic. At the risk of being pedantic, though, I think that the idea of "fake news" necessarily requires the idea of "news" as an established feature of everyday society. I don't think that the idea of "news" implicit in the concept of "fake news" could be said to have meaningfully existed before the advent of newspapers, at the very earliest. And I'd further argue that the modern conception of "news" in the sense of its use in the term "fake news" -- i.e. a rolling stream of daily updates from across the world with little to no time delay -- only dates to the advent of widespread radio adoption in the 1930s.
So I think if you described Nazi radio propaganda as "fake news", I wouldn't bat an eye, and I'd certainly grant some liberties around describing "Remember the Maine!"-style yellow journalism as fake news as well. But I think pushing it as far back as the Crusades is a stretch. "The Pope said jump, so I asked how high" is a bit different than manipulating a supposedly free press in an attempt to sway ostensibly-democratic institutions in a particular direction.
posted by tobascodagama at 1:06 PM on January 22, 2018 [5 favorites]
With friends like those... also, why don't they understand that a good deal of the famine was rural?
US education system, their own barrier to curiosity, and a small part their ideological zealousness, the instinct of which drives them to do really cool things like organize protest marshals and such but also leads to some... distasteful beliefs
only really ever an issue when it's more than one of them together which brings out a kind of instinctive virtue signalling :/
posted by runt at 1:12 PM on January 22, 2018 [4 favorites]
US education system, their own barrier to curiosity, and a small part their ideological zealousness, the instinct of which drives them to do really cool things like organize protest marshals and such but also leads to some... distasteful beliefs
only really ever an issue when it's more than one of them together which brings out a kind of instinctive virtue signalling :/
posted by runt at 1:12 PM on January 22, 2018 [4 favorites]
like some kind of perverse four legged meat doughnut
Favorited for (among other things) the phrase "some kind of perverse four legged meat doughnut."
posted by octobersurprise at 1:16 PM on January 22, 2018 [1 favorite]
Favorited for (among other things) the phrase "some kind of perverse four legged meat doughnut."
posted by octobersurprise at 1:16 PM on January 22, 2018 [1 favorite]
Yep, Noam Chomsky is no doubt an Assad apologist:
The linked article is rife with other problematic statements as well. It begins by conflating Mladic's then (November) recent indictment with the question of the veracity of a particular photograph. No one doubts that there was a masssacre in Srebrenica. Certainly not Chomsky. People to this day doubt that the photo of Alic was a photo of a man interred in a concentration camp, but that Mladic was a war criminal there is very little dissent. He dismisses legends like Seymour Hersh, the journalist that broke the Mai Lai Massavre and the Abu Ghraib horrors among many others, always and despite the best efforts of the US government, proven more often than not right. So yeah I'll give him the benefit of the doubt...
But it is the underlying idea presented in the article whuch is seriously problematic: one does not need to be pro-Assad to be very uncomfortable with the Syrian Rebels - dominated as they are militarily by Al Qaeda and (until a few months ago) ISIS - and one has to be blind not to see what happenned to Iraq after (the equally horrendous as Assad) Saddam Hussein was toppled by the American Invasion, or not notice the slave-peddling islamist warlords dominating post-Gadaffi Libya. The author I see, has targeted virlulently and ad-hominem people like As`ad Abukhalil who most definitely is NOT an Assad apologist, which is not a sign of clear reasoning I think.
Finally a. I would insist that being anti-imperialist is a virtue, b. why the emphasis on the male intellectuals etc? Among the most vilified "genocide deniers" on Bosnia was Diana Johnstone, a close friend of Herman's. Among the "Assad apologists" targeted by the author is Rania Khalek.
posted by talos at 2:19 PM on January 22, 2018 [6 favorites]
NOAM CHOMSKY: Syria is a horrible catastrophe. The Assad regime is a moral disgrace. They’re carrying out horrendous acts, the Russians with them.And here is his full position on Syria last April, along with the reasons he had reservations regarding the chemical attack and which makes eminent sense to me: "We Must Help Fleeing Refugees & Pursue Diplomatic Settlement".
AMY GOODMAN: Why the Russians with them?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, pretty simple reason: Syria is their one ally in the whole region. Not a close ally, but they do have—their one Mediterranean base is in Syria. It’s the one country that’s more or less cooperated with them. And they don’t want to lose their one ally. It’s very ugly, but that’s what’s happening.
The linked article is rife with other problematic statements as well. It begins by conflating Mladic's then (November) recent indictment with the question of the veracity of a particular photograph. No one doubts that there was a masssacre in Srebrenica. Certainly not Chomsky. People to this day doubt that the photo of Alic was a photo of a man interred in a concentration camp, but that Mladic was a war criminal there is very little dissent. He dismisses legends like Seymour Hersh, the journalist that broke the Mai Lai Massavre and the Abu Ghraib horrors among many others, always and despite the best efforts of the US government, proven more often than not right. So yeah I'll give him the benefit of the doubt...
But it is the underlying idea presented in the article whuch is seriously problematic: one does not need to be pro-Assad to be very uncomfortable with the Syrian Rebels - dominated as they are militarily by Al Qaeda and (until a few months ago) ISIS - and one has to be blind not to see what happenned to Iraq after (the equally horrendous as Assad) Saddam Hussein was toppled by the American Invasion, or not notice the slave-peddling islamist warlords dominating post-Gadaffi Libya. The author I see, has targeted virlulently and ad-hominem people like As`ad Abukhalil who most definitely is NOT an Assad apologist, which is not a sign of clear reasoning I think.
Finally a. I would insist that being anti-imperialist is a virtue, b. why the emphasis on the male intellectuals etc? Among the most vilified "genocide deniers" on Bosnia was Diana Johnstone, a close friend of Herman's. Among the "Assad apologists" targeted by the author is Rania Khalek.
posted by talos at 2:19 PM on January 22, 2018 [6 favorites]
one does not need to be pro-Assad to be very uncomfortable with the Syrian Rebels[...] Among the "Assad apologists" targeted by the author is Rania Khalek.
This is related to why I thought pointing out the author's own biases was worthwhile. Rania Khalek is one of Katerji's frequent targets. She undoubtedly takes a position on Syria that's slanted toward the regime/against "rebels." She is also a member of an ethnoreligious group which has a mixed history with Assad but a very bad history with Sunni militants. So fundamentally do I blame her for being skeptical of the factions opposing Assad? Well, maybe on specific points, but not so much in general, and it seems like a lot about Syria is tied up with complicated regional politics or doesn't necessarily have a straightforwardly "right" side.
But on the other hand there is lot of stuff going around that just seems conspiracy theorish.
posted by atoxyl at 3:31 PM on January 22, 2018 [1 favorite]
This is related to why I thought pointing out the author's own biases was worthwhile. Rania Khalek is one of Katerji's frequent targets. She undoubtedly takes a position on Syria that's slanted toward the regime/against "rebels." She is also a member of an ethnoreligious group which has a mixed history with Assad but a very bad history with Sunni militants. So fundamentally do I blame her for being skeptical of the factions opposing Assad? Well, maybe on specific points, but not so much in general, and it seems like a lot about Syria is tied up with complicated regional politics or doesn't necessarily have a straightforwardly "right" side.
But on the other hand there is lot of stuff going around that just seems conspiracy theorish.
posted by atoxyl at 3:31 PM on January 22, 2018 [1 favorite]
Well... I could go against the big hate-on Noam Chomsky pile-on here today.
I don't agree with everything that Chomsky says, and I don't think that he's perfect, but I mostly agree with the basics of his essential political project: his critique of American Govt Foreign Policy and the American News Media support/interpretation of American Govt Foreign Policy. Some of the criticisms of Chomsky mentioned above are valid criticisms, but they tend to shed nuance and turn into false binaries when the outrage gets all fired up.
To think that he supports dictatorships perpetuating atrocities and human rights violations is an egregious misinterpretation of his views. In the geopolitical situations addressed here (Syria, Serbia, Cambodia, Palestine) he has always argued that flawed American interference in these places has made bad things worse and helped to create the imbalances, dictatorships, and horrors. The various politics are always pretty complex, but blaming Chomsky for this lacks subtlety. Chomsky is not a Marxist, and I don't think he loves Russia. (Pilger leans more that way I think.)
posted by ovvl at 3:44 PM on January 22, 2018
I don't agree with everything that Chomsky says, and I don't think that he's perfect, but I mostly agree with the basics of his essential political project: his critique of American Govt Foreign Policy and the American News Media support/interpretation of American Govt Foreign Policy. Some of the criticisms of Chomsky mentioned above are valid criticisms, but they tend to shed nuance and turn into false binaries when the outrage gets all fired up.
To think that he supports dictatorships perpetuating atrocities and human rights violations is an egregious misinterpretation of his views. In the geopolitical situations addressed here (Syria, Serbia, Cambodia, Palestine) he has always argued that flawed American interference in these places has made bad things worse and helped to create the imbalances, dictatorships, and horrors. The various politics are always pretty complex, but blaming Chomsky for this lacks subtlety. Chomsky is not a Marxist, and I don't think he loves Russia. (Pilger leans more that way I think.)
posted by ovvl at 3:44 PM on January 22, 2018
"It begins by conflating Mladic's then (November) recent indictment with the question of the veracity of a particular photograph. No one doubts that there was a masssacre in Srebrenica. Certainly not Chomsky."As the article notes, while The Politics of Genocide by Herman and Peterson, which carries a forward by Chomsky, wasn't coherent or comprehensive enough to address Mladic specifically it categorically denies that any genocide took place claiming among other things that Serb forces "incontestably had not killed any but 'Bosnian Muslim men of military age.'
"People to this day doubt that the photo of Alic was a photo of a man interred in a concentration camp"Weasel words won't hide the real horror of what this statement is doing. Fikret Alic was interned in a Serb-run concentration camp at Trnopolje whose purpose was the systematic and industrialized torture, rape, and murder of Bosniak Muslims. This was unambiguous then, but particularly today with the publicly available evidence provided at the libel trail over exactly this issue, the evidence documented at trials in The Hague of those responsible, the testimony of survivors and guards, and clear documentation of high level direction - it is way beyond any remotely reasonable dispute what happened to this man. There is no factual argument to be had here about the context of what is depicted in that photo, there is only the question of why Chomsky, others, and now you continue to feel safe repeating genocide denial in public as this article addresses.
The conflict in Syria is so complex, and so functionally impossible to generalize in any meaningful way, that understanding it through the lens of some entitled old white male asshole who changes his facts to fit his ideas rather than the other way around is just not possible to do in any coherent way. What the fuck does an 'anti-war stance' even mean in the context of a conflict like this? The author of this piece clearly has his biases, but they really aren't remotely relevant to his point that these men who to this day refuse to even apologize for the what you repeated here have nothing of any value to contribute to the conversations we need to be having as a global community about this conflict. The factors caused and then exacerbated the war in Syria cannot even be seen while we're stuck in the model of a horse race coursing through twin Soviet and American human centipedes with ideologies like Chomsky's discarding facts and context to speed faster, much less addressed.
"He dismisses legends like Seymour Hersh, the journalist that broke the Mai Lai Massavre and the Abu Ghraib horrors among many others, always and despite the best efforts of the US government, proven more often than not right. So yeah I'll give him the benefit of the doubt..."The idea that " the US government" is some monolithic entity that is even capable of a single coherent stance towards this notably gullible journalist with an apparent penchant for genocide denial is now utterly anachronistic if it ever made sense. He also isn't some kind of scrappy underdog who should be excused for denying genocide because he is fighting vague conspiratorial puppet masters, he is a Pulitzer Prize wining journalist with the backing of all the resources he might feel he needs who has significant influence on US politics. He used that influence to deny genocide then, and does not have the credibility to address genocide and civil war now.
posted by Blasdelb at 2:53 AM on January 23, 2018 [8 favorites]
> I don't agree with everything that Chomsky says, and I don't think that he's perfect, but I mostly agree with the basics of his essential political project
But that's just a rephrasing of "I like his politics, so I'm going to give him a pass on his bad stuff." The whole point of the linked article, and of the comments by people like me, is that it is a moral imperative to be just as hard on people whose politics we like as on the bad guys when it comes to this stuff. "I don't think he's perfect" doesn't cut it. Nobody thinks he's perfect.
posted by languagehat at 9:14 AM on January 23, 2018 [14 favorites]
But that's just a rephrasing of "I like his politics, so I'm going to give him a pass on his bad stuff." The whole point of the linked article, and of the comments by people like me, is that it is a moral imperative to be just as hard on people whose politics we like as on the bad guys when it comes to this stuff. "I don't think he's perfect" doesn't cut it. Nobody thinks he's perfect.
posted by languagehat at 9:14 AM on January 23, 2018 [14 favorites]
No-one's immune from criticism. My main point was that Chomsky's critics cited above are misrepresenting his ideas. But my added thought now is that his critics are also palpably excited by the thrill of cutting down to size a former leader for ideological impurity, a rather lefty thing.
posted by ovvl at 11:07 AM on January 23, 2018
posted by ovvl at 11:07 AM on January 23, 2018
Those of us who are more on the Bernie Sanders left than the Bob Avakian leftI am extremely curious: How do you believe those can be distinguished? Cuz they look like the same people to me.
If you can't tell the difference between the left wing of the Democratic Party, which reconciled itself to a candidate with pretty lousy foreign policy, but solid rhetoric on the defense and expansion of the welfare state, and weirdos too pure for any politics beyond stalking Vice journalists to prove they get paid by the State Department, then that's on you.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 11:25 AM on January 23, 2018 [7 favorites]
afaik, the only difference between Avakian and Sanders is that Avakian is the white guy whose anti-social personality has driven him to a white, Marxist purity tests while Sanders is just an old white idealist who can't see past class issues. either way, white people who organize in vacuums need to learn how to shut up more - not a single Atlanta organizer I've talked to is a fan of those Resist Fascism marches that Avakian has inspired. their group here is insular to a point of toxicity and don't give a single shit about supporting the work of others - actually having a real damn campaign besides organizing marches for the singular purpose of getting picked up by local news media might be a first step but it's been a year and a half and they've done literally nothing but those with decreasing returns. all they are is a burnout factory for newbie activists in my town, accountable to nothing but their own, self-defined dogma
posted by runt at 12:13 PM on January 23, 2018 [5 favorites]
posted by runt at 12:13 PM on January 23, 2018 [5 favorites]
"In the geopolitical situations addressed here (Syria, Serbia, Cambodia, Palestine) he has always argued that flawed American interference in these places has made bad things worse and helped to create the imbalances, dictatorships, and horrors."Thats kind of his problem though isn't it? That he is so ideologically pure, acting like a repairman who only possesses a hammer but is convinced he can fix everything with it from toilets to marriages. Sure he occasionally has prescient things to say when the problem is a nail being so practiced at hammering, but why should anyone really give a shit when he so routinely says such horrifying things? Surely we should have better things to discuss than how [X] position fits into [Y] white male ego project masquerading as an ideology in [Z] context even if that didn't lead these deuchebags into calling the survivors of genocidal violence liars so as to justify doing nothing about it.
"But my added thought now is that his critics are also palpably excited by the thrill of cutting down to size a former leader for ideological impurity, a rather lefty thing."...It seems to me that repeatedly working to cover up ideologically inconvenient genocides is markedly different from ending up on whatever the wrong side is today in questions of whether a proper revolutionary vanguard for Minnesota is proletarian, 'proletarian,' or more openly milking their trust funds. Given that Chomsky has no political power, and will thankfully never be given the opportunity to be embarrassed with it, he is perfectly free to state all manner of mutually exclusive ideas about how Western states should relate to imbalances, dictatorships, and horrors. As a result he can simultaneously claim to be opposed to genocide as well as genocide deniers, and at the same time write the forward for The Politics of Genocide, which makes it awfully convenient to just point to other empty bullshit he has said when confronted with how Chompskian policies would have resulted in the extermination of entire nations of people. However, ala Jay Smooth, the question of whether Chomsky is a genocide enabler deep down in his heart of hearts is a stupid and meaningless one to ask. Those things he said and did enabled genocide. He lied about the experience of Fikret Alic and he wrote the forward for a book that really was just Serbian themed Holocaust denial, there is no subtlety to that, he did it.
posted by Blasdelb at 12:24 PM on January 23, 2018 [6 favorites]
not a single Atlanta organizer I've talked to is a fan of those Resist Fascism marches that Avakian has inspired. their group here is insular to a point of toxicity and don't give a single shit about supporting the work of others - actually having a real damn campaign besides organizing marches for the singular purpose of getting picked up by local news media might be a first step but it's been a year and a half and they've done literally nothing but those with decreasing returns. all they are is a burnout factory for newbie activists in my town, accountable to nothing but their own, self-defined dogma
That jibes with what I know about the Avakian cult, which I've never heard described as anything other than a laughable and small gang of fruitcakes. If the Sanders-associated people in Atlanta are just like that, then that's a real shame.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 12:35 PM on January 23, 2018 [3 favorites]
That jibes with what I know about the Avakian cult, which I've never heard described as anything other than a laughable and small gang of fruitcakes. If the Sanders-associated people in Atlanta are just like that, then that's a real shame.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 12:35 PM on January 23, 2018 [3 favorites]
They just seemed invested in thinking of Stalin-era Russia as "really not that bad" or whatever. They were some of the same people that kept posting pro-Assad stuff from RT.com on Facebook.
That the Baathist Party is explicitly Stalinist in its conception is likely not a coincidence.
These are more or less the contemporary incarnation of "tankies:" a classic intra-Left epithet which goes all the way back to the 1956 Hungarian Uprising, attacking the subset of Western communists who were happy to see the Soviet tanks rolling in to crush it. So definitely not new, though some of them are younger - you'll find some kids who are into Soviet power-porn the way a more familiar type is into the Wehrmacht.
(Some people call the "I stand with the legitimate government of Syria/North Korea/etc." people "tankies" as well and there's certainly overlap.)
My brother-in-law went from mild political consciousness under Bush II to joining a RevCom cell under Obama to blocking me on Twitter for my "imperialist criticism" of the DPRK about a year ago. My brother has lived in South Korea for about a decade, is married to a Korean woman, and both my brother and his wife are decidedly left for South Korea, but just because North Korea calls itself a Democratic People's Republic doesn't mean it's any of those things, nor that it hasn't regularly engaged in provocative aggression as its main foreign policy attribute. That's not "imperial propaganda," it's an acknowledgement that shelling civilians or kidnapping people is, you know, fucking belligerent.
I'm glad to learn the term "tankies," since pretty regularly doctrinaire leftists @ me on Twitter, and it's fucking infuriating. (Like, the way that Cuba achieves its fantastic infant mortality numbers are pretty brutal, including forced abortions and involuntary confinement in "maternal villages." From the top, it looks impressive — once you get into details, much less so.) For a significant portion of the activist left, there's this weird dialectical fork where the actual legitimate critiques of Marx and Communist political programs get abandoned for a purity of theory — Western imperialism is certainly part of why Venezuela is fucked, but let's not pretend that it's been a great pro-nationalization outcome either. And Chomsky gets so far up his own ass about the "manufactured consent" that he can't acknowledge that the US isn't the ultimate villain in every crime across the globe. It coincides with the pernicious bullshit of "false consciousness" that denies people agency in their own decisions and keeps imagining that the only disagreements are caused by a suprastructure of Western imperialism preventing the public from truly understanding left political programs, which they'd inherently embrace if they grokked. I get particularly frustrated by this approach because I think that it distracts from meeting people where they are and working to persuade them on their own terms — and because it's the ultimate in unfalsifiable excuses. From pretending Ukrainian famine was a Western invention to the self-justifying myth that it was the "establishment" that illegitimately prevented Sanders from winning, it's an abdication of intellectual honesty and responsibility. And one that, taken to its idiotic extreme, leads to justifying genocide because the West is worse.
Weasel words won't hide the real horror of what this statement is doing. Fikret Alic was interned in a Serb-run concentration camp at Trnopolje whose purpose was the systematic and industrialized torture, rape, and murder of Bosniak Muslims. This was unambiguous then, but particularly today with the publicly available evidence provided at the libel trail over exactly this issue, the evidence documented at trials in The Hague of those responsible, the testimony of survivors and guards, and clear documentation of high level direction - it is way beyond any remotely reasonable dispute what happened to this man. There is no factual argument to be had here about the context of what is depicted in that photo, there is only the question of why Chomsky, others, and now you continue to feel safe repeating genocide denial in public as this article addresses.
Really, denying Assad's responsibility for the chemical attacks in Syria is like denying the global consensus on climate change. Every bit of "well, the consensus was wrong before" is like "well, in the '70s they said global cooling might happen." It's just an inability to critically evaluate evidence. (Maybe, in Chomsky's case, the inability to resist the pull of critical evaluation into solipsism — he's basically just two steps too grouchy to go full Baudrillard and deny that Assad even exists.)
"things I love: when some of my socially conscious non-Chinese, mostly white activist friends start talking about how great Mao was"
I will cop that a significant portion of my attitudes toward Mao are cribbed directly from Zhang Yimou's To Live.
posted by klangklangston at 12:39 PM on January 23, 2018 [12 favorites]
That the Baathist Party is explicitly Stalinist in its conception is likely not a coincidence.
These are more or less the contemporary incarnation of "tankies:" a classic intra-Left epithet which goes all the way back to the 1956 Hungarian Uprising, attacking the subset of Western communists who were happy to see the Soviet tanks rolling in to crush it. So definitely not new, though some of them are younger - you'll find some kids who are into Soviet power-porn the way a more familiar type is into the Wehrmacht.
(Some people call the "I stand with the legitimate government of Syria/North Korea/etc." people "tankies" as well and there's certainly overlap.)
My brother-in-law went from mild political consciousness under Bush II to joining a RevCom cell under Obama to blocking me on Twitter for my "imperialist criticism" of the DPRK about a year ago. My brother has lived in South Korea for about a decade, is married to a Korean woman, and both my brother and his wife are decidedly left for South Korea, but just because North Korea calls itself a Democratic People's Republic doesn't mean it's any of those things, nor that it hasn't regularly engaged in provocative aggression as its main foreign policy attribute. That's not "imperial propaganda," it's an acknowledgement that shelling civilians or kidnapping people is, you know, fucking belligerent.
I'm glad to learn the term "tankies," since pretty regularly doctrinaire leftists @ me on Twitter, and it's fucking infuriating. (Like, the way that Cuba achieves its fantastic infant mortality numbers are pretty brutal, including forced abortions and involuntary confinement in "maternal villages." From the top, it looks impressive — once you get into details, much less so.) For a significant portion of the activist left, there's this weird dialectical fork where the actual legitimate critiques of Marx and Communist political programs get abandoned for a purity of theory — Western imperialism is certainly part of why Venezuela is fucked, but let's not pretend that it's been a great pro-nationalization outcome either. And Chomsky gets so far up his own ass about the "manufactured consent" that he can't acknowledge that the US isn't the ultimate villain in every crime across the globe. It coincides with the pernicious bullshit of "false consciousness" that denies people agency in their own decisions and keeps imagining that the only disagreements are caused by a suprastructure of Western imperialism preventing the public from truly understanding left political programs, which they'd inherently embrace if they grokked. I get particularly frustrated by this approach because I think that it distracts from meeting people where they are and working to persuade them on their own terms — and because it's the ultimate in unfalsifiable excuses. From pretending Ukrainian famine was a Western invention to the self-justifying myth that it was the "establishment" that illegitimately prevented Sanders from winning, it's an abdication of intellectual honesty and responsibility. And one that, taken to its idiotic extreme, leads to justifying genocide because the West is worse.
Weasel words won't hide the real horror of what this statement is doing. Fikret Alic was interned in a Serb-run concentration camp at Trnopolje whose purpose was the systematic and industrialized torture, rape, and murder of Bosniak Muslims. This was unambiguous then, but particularly today with the publicly available evidence provided at the libel trail over exactly this issue, the evidence documented at trials in The Hague of those responsible, the testimony of survivors and guards, and clear documentation of high level direction - it is way beyond any remotely reasonable dispute what happened to this man. There is no factual argument to be had here about the context of what is depicted in that photo, there is only the question of why Chomsky, others, and now you continue to feel safe repeating genocide denial in public as this article addresses.
Really, denying Assad's responsibility for the chemical attacks in Syria is like denying the global consensus on climate change. Every bit of "well, the consensus was wrong before" is like "well, in the '70s they said global cooling might happen." It's just an inability to critically evaluate evidence. (Maybe, in Chomsky's case, the inability to resist the pull of critical evaluation into solipsism — he's basically just two steps too grouchy to go full Baudrillard and deny that Assad even exists.)
"things I love: when some of my socially conscious non-Chinese, mostly white activist friends start talking about how great Mao was"
I will cop that a significant portion of my attitudes toward Mao are cribbed directly from Zhang Yimou's To Live.
posted by klangklangston at 12:39 PM on January 23, 2018 [12 favorites]
@Rustic Etruscan
the Sanders people here are very... into craft beer, if you know what I mean
posted by runt at 12:45 PM on January 23, 2018 [3 favorites]
the Sanders people here are very... into craft beer, if you know what I mean
posted by runt at 12:45 PM on January 23, 2018 [3 favorites]
the Sanders people here are very... into craft beer, if you know what I mean
At risk of ranging too far afield, there was a recent Radio Open Source episode about the housing crisis in Somerville, Massachusetts, and the new Board of Aldermen's efforts to resist the rising prices that would evict the current population in favor of rich newcomers. One of them is a fresh-faced white democratic socialist - not, as far as I know, a DSA man - whose first appearance in the show comes as he spots someone at his Crossfit gym, which certainly doesn't give the listener much confidence in his politics's interest in the actual poor and working class of Somerville. But he just as certainly doesn't come off as an insular kook in the style of Avakian, and I don't know what I'd say to someone who asserted that he did.
With that, I'll see myself out. I've certainly dragged this derail out too long.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 1:01 PM on January 23, 2018 [2 favorites]
At risk of ranging too far afield, there was a recent Radio Open Source episode about the housing crisis in Somerville, Massachusetts, and the new Board of Aldermen's efforts to resist the rising prices that would evict the current population in favor of rich newcomers. One of them is a fresh-faced white democratic socialist - not, as far as I know, a DSA man - whose first appearance in the show comes as he spots someone at his Crossfit gym, which certainly doesn't give the listener much confidence in his politics's interest in the actual poor and working class of Somerville. But he just as certainly doesn't come off as an insular kook in the style of Avakian, and I don't know what I'd say to someone who asserted that he did.
With that, I'll see myself out. I've certainly dragged this derail out too long.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 1:01 PM on January 23, 2018 [2 favorites]
@Rustic - that sounds like the Sanders people here, too - a lot of them are very white, basic, hipsterish but a decent minority of them actually do show up regularly and organize responsibly. There have been a few folks who came up in running the Fort campaign here who are still on the scene. I have no beef with them, I just hate IPAs lol
posted by runt at 1:13 PM on January 23, 2018 [5 favorites]
posted by runt at 1:13 PM on January 23, 2018 [5 favorites]
The Politics of Genocide by Herman and Peterson, which carries a forward by Chomsky [...]
Chomsky also, notoriously, wrote a foreword to a book by a noted Holocaust denier, saying of the author that
Chomsky also, notoriously, wrote a foreword to a book by a noted Holocaust denier, saying of the author that
[...] is it true that Faurisson is an anti-Semite or a neo-Nazi? As noted earlier, I do not know his work very well. But from what I have read — largely as a result of the nature of the attacks on him — I find no evidence to support either conclusion. Nor do I find credible evidence in the material that I have read concerning him, either in the public record or in private correspondence. As far as I can determine, he is a relatively apolitical liberal of some sort.You can find any amount of material by Robert Faurisson by Googling his name; Chomsky didn't have that resource available to him, of course, but he presumably had something to go on. How he could describe Faurisson as an "apolitical liberal" is beyond me, unless Chomsky actually believes his own conspiracy theory about Jewish hyper-power:
Jews in the US are the most privileged and influential part of the population. You find occasional instances of anti-Semitism but they are marginal. There's plenty of racism, but it's directed against Blacks, Latinos, Arabs are targets of enormous racism, and those problems are real. Anti-Semitism is no longer a problem, fortunately. It's raised, but it's raised because privileged people want to make sure they have total control, not just 98% control. That's why anti-Semitism is becoming an issue. Not because of the threat of anti-Semitism; they want to make sure there's no critical look at the policies the US (and they themselves) support in the Middle East.posted by Joe in Australia at 11:52 PM on January 23, 2018 [4 favorites]
[source]
I will cop that a significant portion of my attitudes toward Mao are cribbed directly from Zhang Yimou's To Live.
hey now here's a person who knows quality cinema ;)
posted by runt at 6:29 AM on January 24, 2018 [2 favorites]
hey now here's a person who knows quality cinema ;)
posted by runt at 6:29 AM on January 24, 2018 [2 favorites]
I apologize for the tone of my comments, and I regret my contrarian rhetoric on this sensitive issue. The critique of Chomsky's views is valid, and deserves insight.
posted by ovvl at 5:01 PM on January 24, 2018 [6 favorites]
posted by ovvl at 5:01 PM on January 24, 2018 [6 favorites]
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I get that these people don't like western intervention, or the west in general, but at least stick to your political judgments in light of the actual evidence.
posted by Dalby at 7:50 AM on January 21, 2018 [27 favorites]