Noam Chomsky Is Not Dead

June 18, 2024 5:24 PM

Earlier Tuesday, Chomsky was trending on X as false reports of his death abounded.

“Dismantle All of This Stuff: A Conversation with Noam Chomsky,” from back in 2021, when he was also still alive.

“ One Planet, One Language: How Realistic Is Science Fiction Linguistics?” is from 2014, when Chomsky was still alive, prior to 2021.

posted by cupcakeninja (71 comments total)

...
posted by biogeo at 5:27 PM on June 18 [4 favorites]

<strikethrough>.</strikethrough>
posted by allegedly at 5:35 PM on June 18 [12 favorites]

Noam Chomsky Is Not Dead

We await the off-Broadway musical.
posted by y2karl at 5:35 PM on June 18 [22 favorites]

you know, I feel like Grice would have a thing or two to say about stating, unprompted, that Noam Chomsky is not dead
posted by DoctorFedora at 5:46 PM on June 18 [9 favorites]

BREAKING NEWS!
Nothing happened today.
posted by dg at 5:47 PM on June 18 [3 favorites]

"undead, undead, undead,
The count"
posted by clavdivs at 5:53 PM on June 18 [10 favorites]

Any chance Abe Vigoda is still with us after all?
posted by Reverend John at 6:01 PM on June 18 [6 favorites]

Yeah, I know it’s a little weird to report “water still wet,” but my social feed has been full of Chomsky paeans, arguments about eulogizing prematurely, and death etiquette. I thought of MeFi obit threads, of course, and then JHarris’ “celebrate them while they’re alive” long posts from a while back. So, you know, “here’s this guy who isn’t dead, and some related stuff.” (I’d just been reading LARB, so…)
posted by cupcakeninja at 6:03 PM on June 18 [7 favorites]

No doubt the fascists on X were receiving the news somberly and with respect.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:05 PM on June 18 [1 favorite]

Noam Chosmky is not dead...
...according to the (colorless) green.
posted by Calvin and the Duplicators at 6:08 PM on June 18 [5 favorites]

!
posted by HearHere at 6:11 PM on June 18

On the other hand, Willie Mays did pass away today at the age of 93.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 6:13 PM on June 18 [13 favorites]

I guess those incorrect death posts were an attempt to (takes off sunglasses) manufacture consensus? [YEEEEEEAAAAAHHHHH...]
posted by zaixfeep at 6:22 PM on June 18 [16 favorites]

Again, Noam Chomsky struggles with the effects of disinformation
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 6:25 PM on June 18 [17 favorites]

Any chance Abe Vigoda is still with us after all?

Go Fish.
posted by Greg_Ace at 6:33 PM on June 18 [10 favorites]

Tommy Beecham dead? And I'm still alive?
posted by ovvl at 6:39 PM on June 18

Well, the guy has been officially out of circulation for a little while now.

This is not exactly news, except for this death denial thing.

(insert Mark Twain quote here)
posted by kozad at 6:40 PM on June 18 [2 favorites]

Noam Chomsky Is Not Dead

unlike Generalissimo Franco who is most definitely still dead
posted by philip-random at 6:44 PM on June 18 [13 favorites]

chomsky died when the first kid said
'noam's not dead, noam's not dead'
posted by dismas at 6:45 PM on June 18 [5 favorites]

I've thought he must not be well not to have heard what he might have to say about Gaza.
posted by jamjam at 6:59 PM on June 18 [1 favorite]

Don't be nasty
posted by jy4m at 7:01 PM on June 18 [1 favorite]

Manufacturing Lament
posted by New Frontier at 7:05 PM on June 18 [16 favorites]

I thought Yanis Varoufakis wrote a nice memorial, although it was taken down pretty quickly.
posted by mittens at 7:05 PM on June 18 [1 favorite]

He’s not well - it recently came out that he had a stroke a year ago and it sounds like he’s not terribly likely to be returning to public life. But it seems like someone may have got wires crossed in reacting to that news and turned it into news of his demise.
posted by atoxyl at 7:07 PM on June 18 [1 favorite]

Mod note: One comment removed. Please avoid wishing for someone's passing.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 7:22 PM on June 18 [9 favorites]

Jacobin went early, then rewrote their headline but didn't fix the URL. It's a nice piece.

Last year I finally stumbled across the Chomsky/Foucault debate on YouTube and that was so immensely clarifying in terms of understanding a lot of the tensions and fissures in the modern left.
posted by mph at 7:53 PM on June 18 [8 favorites]

Noam Chomsky Is Not Dead

He just smells funny?

------------------

. for Willie Mays. He was my baseball hero when I was playing in my teens.
posted by Pouteria at 7:57 PM on June 18

This news of Chomsky's death reminds me of the Bitcoin Crash of June 2024.
posted by SaltySalticid at 8:05 PM on June 18

Unfortunate he has been in Brazil recovering from a significant stroke that left him partially paralyzed and unable to speak. He was discharged from the hospital on Tuesday and is said to be continuing his recovery at home.. Another article in Time Magazine seems to have more details and presents a positive report on his recovery.
posted by interogative mood at 8:49 PM on June 18 [3 favorites]

Can't believe someone would wish for Chomky's death in this thread. Seems a weird target for that kind of ire!

On the other hand, a totally uncalled for and random Silver Jews reference? This is Internet behavior I support, dismas.
posted by kensington314 at 9:51 PM on June 18 [3 favorites]

I've thought he must not be well not to have heard what he might have to say about Gaza.

It is easy to find his writings on this. He first wrote about it decades ago, in fact. You may want to substitute different names for the current batch of politicians, but very little of substance has changed.
posted by dsword at 9:56 PM on June 18 [2 favorites]

On the other hand, Generalissimo Franco...
posted by The Ardship of Cambry at 10:16 PM on June 18

Raising a glass to salute our Universal Grampa.
posted by flabdablet at 12:25 AM on June 19 [2 favorites]

His van, meanwhile, could use a bit of fender work.
posted by Smart Dalek at 3:07 AM on June 19 [2 favorites]

Is Noam Chomsky dead?

No, am no(t)
posted by chavenet at 4:26 AM on June 19 [1 favorite]

Philly’s own Noam Chomsky
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 6:00 AM on June 19

For wars of conquest; for empire; genocide revisionist; for dictatorship. Alive yes, but morality and good judgement have long passed. A shame, his work was interesting.
posted by UN at 6:58 AM on June 19 [2 favorites]

Just 10 years ago.
posted by ocschwar at 7:13 AM on June 19 [1 favorite]

Just 10 years ago.

He has quite the hate for "dissidents in Eastern Europe" due to them supposedly having it easy when they were suppressed under communism. Which is odd, considering he's from the United States where someone like him can, for example, write books about, and have a career built on, expressing his opinions openly and freely.

One of the biggest hypocrites of our time.
posted by UN at 7:41 AM on June 19 [3 favorites]

I have to admit, I'm vaguely surprised to discover that not only is Noam Chomsky not dead but that he has been not dead for the past several years.
posted by jacquilynne at 7:41 AM on June 19 [2 favorites]

One of the biggest hypocrites of our time.

If you were to believe even half the lazy horseshit written about him, it would be easy to form that impression. Actually reading the man's own writings and listening to his lectures and interviews, not so much.

The boring truth about Chomsky: he does not support Pol Pot

Perhaps one way of explaining the fury Chomsky evokes from the mildly progressive to the reactionary right, is his guiding moral philosophy. Chomsky applies the same moral standards to all atrocities and repression, but he focuses primarily on those for which his country is responsible, because he has the most power to stop them. In 1979, Herman and Chomsky published a two-volume study, The Political Economy of Human Rights. Their major case studies were East Timor and Cambodia. They documented at length that the media ignored evidence of atrocities committed by the West and its client states, whilst expressing enormous outrage at crimes of official enemies, fabricating evidence as needed to prove wrongdoing.

This is considered outrageous, because the respectable Western intelligentsia regards it as morally courageous and important to devote all their attention to denouncing the crimes of official enemies, and even fabricating evidence when needed for such purposes. At the same time, it is their duty to ignore or downplay crimes for which we are responsible, or share responsibility.

posted by flabdablet at 7:55 AM on June 19 [9 favorites]

If you were to believe even half the lazy horseshit written about him,

I posted video of him. 10 years ago. Still casting aspersions at Central European dissidents.

Vaclav Havel and his wife chose not to have children so that they would not have to worry about their children being taken by the government as retaliation for his writing. And yet in 2014 Chomsky was still at it. Still bitter at those people.
posted by ocschwar at 8:22 AM on June 19 [3 favorites]

We did lose James Chance though.
posted by gtrwolf at 8:31 AM on June 19

He has quite the hate for "dissidents in Eastern Europe" due to them supposedly having it easy when they were suppressed under communism.

In the piece you linked he's clearly called Havel a hypocrite for failing to criticize US imperialism. He draws a contrast with Jesuits of Central America who are critical of both US power and Soviet power. That's his main criticism.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 8:32 AM on June 19 [2 favorites]

Just 10 years ago.

HOLY SHIT DID YOU SEE THAT HATE SPEECH? He said dissidents in central europe were not... omg I can't believe I'm going to type this... "THEY ARE NOT INTERNATIONAL ORIENTED". Fuck a what a hypocrite.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 8:36 AM on June 19 [3 favorites]

Thanks for posting this. My google news feed had that New Statesman article and I tried to get facts. It's nice that he's still alive, he's made a big contribution, so obv. there's something for anybody to disagree with.
posted by theora55 at 9:14 AM on June 19 [1 favorite]

If you were to believe even half the lazy horseshit written about him,

So Chomsky is writing lazy horseshit about himself? Because I linked to his own writing.
posted by UN at 9:54 AM on June 19 [1 favorite]

you accused him of being a hypocrite, then linked to a lengthy correspondence (roughly twenty thousand words, so over one-third of a small novel) which apparently proves this. I think you have to work harder to make any kind of point ...
posted by philip-random at 10:15 AM on June 19 [1 favorite]

If you say anything bad about anyone who has done anything good you’re on the wrong side.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 12:08 PM on June 19 [1 favorite]

I think this correspondence between Noam Chomsky and George Monbiot seems to capture his own thinking and those of his critics on accusations of hypocrisy and double standards.
posted by interogative mood at 12:28 PM on June 19 [1 favorite]

I first noticed Noam Chomsky when the public research interest group at my university put on a film about him. It was a rather odd experience: there was this guy railing against propaganda featured in a film that was itself fairly crude propaganda. But that some of his fans were good doublethinkers shouldn't necessarily reflect poorly on him, and for a time I would occasionally read him, in znet I believe. And then I stopped. I don't remember why, there's just this little note in my mind saying "untrustworthy" beside his name. Possibly Slobodan Milošević had something to do with it: i was following the news quite closely from a diversity of sources at the time and was probably decent in distinguishing "facts they don't want you to know" from "facts that just aren't so" on the topic. Anyway I didn't take receipts, but it seems some of my fellow mefites have.
posted by mscibing at 3:01 PM on June 19

Chomsky claims Eastern European dissidents have it easy (if you can't bother to read Chomsky's own writing on this, that's not my problem) and then tells the world that Putin's Russia does have a point about crushing Ukraine... Those dissidents are paying with their lives. His commentary is both hateful and hypocritical especially from his position of power and comfort. It also follows a common thread: he supports Russian supremacy in eastern and central Europe. Central Europeans should orient themselves more "internationally"....and accept Putin's dictatorship? Nonsense.
posted by UN at 3:02 PM on June 19 [3 favorites]

Noam Chomsky: a critical review. I wrote this up 20 years ago, after a lot of debates on alt.fan.noam-chomsky.

Thread on Chomsky from February 2012.

Raziel Abelson, chair of the philosophy department at NYU, writing in April 1967:

I would like to congratulate The New York Review on its publication [Feb. 23] of the extraordinary article by Noam Chomsky, “The Responsibility of Intellectuals.” Chomsky’s morally impassioned and powerfully argued denunciation of American aggression in Vietnam and throughout the world is the most moving political document I have read since the death of Leon Trotsky. It is inspiring to see a brilliant scientist risk his prestige, his access to lucrative government grants, and his reputation for Olympian objectivity by taking a clearcut, no-holds-barred, adversary position on the burning moral-political issue of the day, and by castigating the complacent mythology of “specialized expertise” under which many academic intellectuals shrug off the crimes committed by their government, only provided they are not naked enough (e.g., the Dominican intervention) to defy the most accomplished casuistry.

It will be said that Chomsky’s account of American foreign policy is drawn in black and white, and that politics is in reality a spectrum of shades of gray. And this objection would be sound, if Chomsky were writing as a detached observer on Mars. Sure, Viet Cong terrorists have murdered, mutilated, and intimidated their opposition. Certainly, Red China has been far more hysterically aggressive than Chomsky admits (so much as to have frightened their Communist allies, as well as half their own population). But I salute Chomsky for not caring to appear fair to the facts on both sides. For the facts are known well enough by now. It is the moral evaluation of our foreign policy and the decision as to what we are going to do about it that is now in order. At precisely this moment we have the best, perhaps the only, chance to stop the senseless slaughter in Vietnam and achieve a détente with the Communist nations. Why doesn’t President Johnson stop the bombing of North Vietnam, as he promised to do, if only he would receive some sign—when everyone knows he has received all sorts of frantic signs? I hope Chomsky’s indignation will prove infectious, and that he will have convinced many of his fellow scientists that judgments of right and wrong need not and should not be left to technical experts on geopolitics or the theory of thermonuclear games.

From what I can tell, Chomsky's view of politics was shaped during the Vietnam War. He regarded the US as morally equivalent to Nazi Germany in its foreign policy, especially in the Third World, and made powerful arguments for the responsibility of intellectuals to oppose the war.

The problem is that there's a conflict between political responsibility (the highest value of the sphere of politics) and strict adherence to the truth (the highest value of the sphere of scholarship). If the truth is complicated, and if by simplifying it so as to maximize moral outrage you can convince more people, bring the war to an end faster, and save people's lives, should you not do so?

But once you start down this path, you get a widening gap between your view of the world and reality. To weaken the argument for war against some official enemy, you tear apart the official propaganda which attempts to blacken the image of that enemy; but in the process, you may end up believing in the enemy's propaganda instead. Instead of a simplistic good-guys-vs.-bad-guys view with the US in the role of the good guys, you get the same simplistic good-guys-vs.-bad-guys view with the enemy in the role of the good guys. Chomsky appears to have had a remarkably positive view of the Communist regimes in Asia (see his articles on Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam published in 1970 in the New York Review of Books). He also appears to have fallen for Bosnian Serb propaganda in just this way (see comments by Adrian Hastings, David Campbell).

My biggest problem with Chomsky isn't his scathing denunciation of US foreign policy. It's that you can't trust what he says. (For anyone reading Chomsky, my advice is: always look up the references.)

Noah Smith on Chomsky's view of foreign policy.

Chomsky’s north star as a foreign policy thinker — his fixed belief, around which all of his other beliefs revolved, and to whose contours they were forced to mold themselves — was that America is an Evil Empire bent on world domination. To borrow Imre Lakatos’ terminology, “America bad” was the core of Chomsky’s foreign policy thought, and everything else was an expendable periphery.

Howard Gardner on the "good guys vs. bad guys" view of the world, which is extremely simplistic, but intuitively appealing. Chomsky's view simply reverses who the "good guys" and who the "bad guys" are.

Most five-year-olds have developed a Star Wars script. Life consists of a struggle between Good and Bad forces, with the Good generally triumphant. Many movies and television programs, and a few events in real life, can adequately be described in terms of such a script. Most historical events or works of literature, however, prove far more complex; to understand the causes of World War I or the U.S. Civil War, or to grasp the thrust of a novel by Hawthorne or Austen, one must weigh and integrate multiple factors and nuances. Students learn in class to give more complex explanations for such historical or literary events. Yet, when they are confronted with new and unfamiliar materials--say, a story from another culture, or a war in an unfamiliar part of the world-- even capable students lapse to an elemental way of thinking. The Star Wars "good guy-bad guy" script is often invoked in such situations, even when it is manifestly inappropriate.

posted by russilwvong at 3:03 PM on June 19 [6 favorites]

“ Chomsky claims Eastern European dissidents have it easy (if you can't bother to read Chomsky's own writing on this, that's not my problem”

Well you can’t seem to read it either, because he’s clearly making relative claims. Ie that the jesuits in Central America had it much worse than Central European dissidents. Plus they had the bravery to resist Soviet AND American power.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 3:16 PM on June 19 [3 favorites]

And what exactly is the point of him creating these relative claims? As an expert in language and propaganda, he is certainly aware of the usage of this kind of rhetorical tool.
posted by UN at 3:23 PM on June 19 [1 favorite]

It’s pointing out the hypocrisy of many in the US who use(d) these dissidents to advance American interests, but have nothing to say about the crimes of the US.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 3:33 PM on June 19 [3 favorites]

Okay, then why does he need to throw Eastern Europeans under the bus to make that point, years ago in his correspondence and interviews, and with Ukraine today?

Chomsky claims Eastern Europeans don't care about Central or South America but that's his own invention.
posted by UN at 3:38 PM on June 19 [1 favorite]

It’s not everyone else’s responsibility to hold your hand through the political implications of an argument.

Again, he’s not saying that people in Central Europe didn’t care about victims of us imperialism , he’s so clearly saying that the dissidents—-especially people like Havel—-did not. Did Havel denounce US crimes when speaking in the US? That’s hypocrisy.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 3:46 PM on June 19 [1 favorite]

It’s not everyone else’s responsibility to hold your hand through the political implications of an argument.

I am sorry you don't like my questions.
posted by UN at 4:01 PM on June 19

On a somewhat twisted positive note, at least it's more or less just the extreme right and fascists (AfD in Germany, Trump supporters in the US) who share Chomsky's vision for Europe. That's not to say the ideology isn't a problem, of course, considering the victories the extreme right made in the recent EU elections. But with Finland and Sweden joining NATO, and hopefully soon Ukraine, more Western Europeans understand the threat of the dictatorship next door.
posted by UN at 4:29 PM on June 19

He has quite the hate for "dissidents in Eastern Europe" due to them supposedly having it easy when they were suppressed under communism.

I read the whole thing, and you are pretty much missing the point of the letter you posted. Did you mean to post something else?
posted by oneirodynia at 7:58 PM on June 19 [1 favorite]

interogative mood: I think this correspondence between Noam Chomsky and George Monbiot seems to capture his own thinking and those of his critics on accusations of hypocrisy and double standards.

Monbiot: At this point, faced with Professor Chomsky’s repeated and apparently wilful failure to grasp the simple points I was making or answer the simple questions I was asking, I almost lost the will to live. I have not replied.

Never meet your heroes.
posted by russilwvong at 9:51 PM on June 19 [3 favorites]

Did Havel denounce US crimes when speaking in the US?

DId Vaclav Havel pay his respects to my whataboutery? Shame on him if not!
posted by ocschwar at 10:14 PM on June 19 [2 favorites]

A Ukrainian translator of Noam Chomsky responds to his recent comments on the Russian invasion.

A short letter to some Western intellectuals. Please share to whom it may concern. I can’t write anything long because we’re still on the run, with my kids who are right here next to me. So, in brief: Ukraine was not “dragged into” war, it was attacked. Without even a pretext like Hitler’s attack on Poland. I know other countries have faced their share of foreign intervention, and right now you’re witnessing overt Russian imperialism. I don’t want to make any flawed historical comparisons, but empires have lost wars against smaller peoples before, and in the end, the Russian imperialist government must lose. When you’re being bombed, when you’re thinking of ways to evacuate your kids, you have a different perspective than when you’re sitting cozy in an office somewhere in Arizona. Yes, Noam Chomsky, I’m looking at you, among others.

I started as a volunteer translator of “The Responsibility of Intellectuals” into Ukrainian—now I’m aghast at how you mention, in one sentence, the lead-up to this invasion: “What happened in 2014, whatever one thinks of it, amounted to a coup with US support that… led Russia to annex Crimea, mainly to protect its sole warm-water port and naval base,” Chomsky said. What if the US occupied Baja, California? Before “overthrowing capitalism,” try thinking of ways for us Ukrainians not to be slaughtered, because “any war is bad.” I beg you to listen to the local voices here on the ground, not some sages sitting at the center of global power. Please start your analysis with the suffering of millions of people, rather than geopolitical chess moves. Start with the columns of refugees, people with their kids, their elders and their pets. Start with those kids in cancer hospital in Kyiv who are now in bomb shelters missing their chemotherapy.

posted by UN at 1:30 AM on June 20 [5 favorites]

If Chomsky had used Central and Eastern European dissidents once or twice to make a point about biases in American academia, politics and media, sure, I’d get it. Not all dissidents face the same oppression. The world is not equal. But he goes far, far beyond making a point about US intellectuals. Chomsky has a near pathological obsession with using Central European dissidents as his own personal punching bag.

In the link I posted, Chomsky, and I am quoting directly, calls dissidents in Eastern Europe "self-centered".
He claims they believe "their own suffering has unique significance".
He disparagingly writes of the"unique character of East European dissidents".
He claims dissidents in the Soviet satellites were "uniquely privileged among dissident intellectuals".
He writes: "their suffering and oppression, though real and terrible, was not comparable to that of many of their counterparts elsewhere".
And then continues: "the repression in Eastern Europe did not begin to compare with what is faced daily in this highly-praised democracy".
He writes of "the great ease of opposing repression in Eastern Europe" and that "Eastern Europeans generally take it for granted that, naturally, everyone must dedicate all efforts and concern to them; no one else matters."

He calls Eastern Europeans both cowardly and dishonest when he says "As to whether Eastern Europeans will some day have the intellectual courage to face these matters honestly I have no idea".

He makes the accusation that Václav Havel went to the US to "grovel before the murderers", that he was "praising the killers".

On Václav Havel, in other writings, Chomsky dismisses as giving an "embarrassingly silly and morally repugnant Sunday School sermon", a "shameful performance" in order to "extort money from the American taxpayer". That he, like his western counterparts, is "on a moral and intellectual level that is vastly below that of Third World peasants and Stalinist hacks" when he says he does not mean to, but does, "equate a Vietnamese villager to Vaclav Havel." (insults all around at this point)

This is just the tip of the ice berg. He has pages and pages of these tirades in his lectures, books, interviews. It’s disturbing.
posted by UN at 4:50 AM on June 20 [2 favorites]

He makes the accusation that Václav Havel went to the US to "grovel before the murderers", that he was "praising the killers".

I mean, without commenting on any of the rest of your post, this is a perfectly reasonable way to characterize an Eastern European pleading with the American government to fix a problem with the Soviets, tbh.
posted by adrienneleigh at 11:03 AM on June 20

The Soviet Union is no longer, Stalin is dead, Lenin is dead, Nixon is dead, Marx is dead. Chomsky is not. The end may have begun in Central Europe, but now is, for ones own health, a good time to let go of the bitterness and hatred.

It's also impolite and not at all reasonable to call people "killer praisers" for expressing their opinion. Slander isn't the way to express disagreement.
posted by UN at 12:28 PM on June 20

I'll give Chomsky credit for one thing: he kept politics out of his work as a professor. Never mistreated a grad student. Never caused publication credit to be taken from a deserving author or given to an undeserving one. At least that's the gossip you'll hear at MIT about him.
posted by ocschwar at 2:40 PM on June 20 [1 favorite]

Slander isn't the way to express disagreement.

If you say so.
posted by flabdablet at 3:27 PM on June 20 [2 favorites]

On the one hand, that's a pitifully low bar for an academic to clear. On the other hand, actually clearing it does put him well above many academics, especially ones who are interested in having a high public profile. So sincerely, aside from any question of his politics, good for him for being a decent mentor and colleague.
posted by biogeo at 3:39 PM on June 20 [1 favorite]

Normally, when a professor builds up a huge audience outside academia, especially when it's for something outside his field of study, you can expect the professor to have a long track record of narcissistic behavior that goes back to his office and classroom.

Chomsky is an exception to that rule. A disingenuous hack when it comes to politics. A conscientious and diligent scholar when he's on campus.
posted by ocschwar at 2:09 PM on June 21