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The trouble with Chomsky
Open Republic: April/ May/
June 2006
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Politics makes strange bedfellows. For tactical reasons, nation states and political parties form alliances with the enemies of their enemies. Noam Chomsky, an individual, has no particular reason to do so. He was described by the Chicago Tribune as "the most cited living author." He is the world's most famous and respected linguistic scientist in addition to being a well-known radical political writer.
Chomsky has never said that he believes the enemy of his enemy is his ally. Yet how else can we explain his minimization of the genocide carried out by Pol Pot? He participated directly in downplaying the Cambodian massacres of 1975-78. Chomsky and his co-author Edward S. Herman tried to shed doubt on the extent of the horrors that took place. In their After the Cataclysm we read, "The apparent uniformity of refugee testimony is in part at least an artefact reflecting media bias" (1979:147). Chomsky knows perfectly well that independent reports by different people and sources confirm each other. His dismissal of statements by survivors of the genocide on the grounds that they agreed with each other is outrageous.
After the Cataclysm is not easy to obtain. Perhaps that is because it has done harm to Chomsky's reputation and is no longer being discussed by his friends. However, I found one copy in the New York Public Library and another in the library of the College of Staten Island. This book is an attempt to close one's eyes to the extent of the crimes committed in Cambodia. Chomsky argues that the genocide carried out by Pol Pot was not as bad as the massacres committed by Indonesia that took place in East Timor. Chomsky has done the world a service by bringing the East Timor situation to light. There is something he misses, however. The United States neither ordered nor carried out the murders there; Indonesia did. Pol Pot, on the other hand, did order and carry out the murders in Cambodia. The United States is not guiltless, but the sin is one of omission. The United States committed a sin of omission during World War II as well, by not publicizing the Holocaust or bombing the death camps. Nevertheless, it is Hitler who killed the Jews, not the United States; it is Indonesia that committed murder in East Timor, not the United States. Indonesia, a dictatorship and an Islamic country, is not America.
In order to minimize the extent of Pol Pot's crimes, Chomsky asks, "In the first place, is it proper to attribute deaths from famine and disease to the Cambodian authorities?" (1979:152). It is quite proper if those very authorities caused the famine and disease, which they did by evacuating the cities. He also asks, "Or, one might wonder, how can it be that a population so oppressed by a handful of fanatics does not rise up to overthrow them?" (1979:152). If he were stupid, one could understand the question. According to Chomsky's logic, there should be no oppressed people anywhere, since they all would have overthrown their oppressors. We must conclude his question is both dishonest and utterly heartless.
Chomsky and Herman, his co-author, play down reports of mass murders and government-sponsored mass starvation. They fail to understand that Pol Pot, in an attempt to create a totally communist society, forced the Cambodian people to commit auto-genocide. All stories of the atrocities, according to Chomsky and Herman, are merely arguments to be used by America to persuade countries under Western domination to obey their masters: 'Questions of truth are secondary. The central theme that liberation from Western domination is a fate to be avoided at all costs is constantly and persistently drilled into popular consciousness'. (1979: 292-93).
Having just accused America and the West of saying "Questions of truth are secondary", Chomsky and Herman go on to say the following:
‘When the facts [emphasis added] are in, it may turn out that the more extreme condemnations were in fact correct. But even if that turns out to be the case, it will in no way alter the conclusions we have reached on the central question addressed here: how the available facts were selected, modified, or sometimes invented to create a certain image offered to the general population’ (1979:293).
A few quotations will not suffice. I urge everyone to go out and read this evil book. Chomsky and Herman select and modify facts, which is what they say America does (see above citation), in order to cover up what Pol Pot did and to show that America is worse. America then went on to do something bad: it opposed the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia that toppled the government of Pol Pot. America, a nation state, was acting on the principle of "the enemy of my enemy is my ally." As soon as America and Pol Pot were on the same side, Chomsky was free to write of "Pol Pot's atrocities" and to say that "the US supported the Khmer Rouge in its continuing attacks in Cambodia" (2000:45).
Why on earth should an American statement in favour of Pol Pot turn out to be the force that made Chomsky realize that Pol Pot had committed atrocities?
Something very strange is going on here. America spoke against Vietnam's crushing of Pol Pot because it is a nation state and lives in a world of alliances. Chomsky, an individual, continues to follow the policy of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" no matter where it leads him. Sometimes, as a matter of fact, it leads him to do good. In the days when he was still trying to make Pol Pot look less bad, Chomsky wrote about the murders that Indonesia was committing in East Timor, arguing that Indonesia, an ally of America, was even worse than Pol Pot. We need not agree with Chomsky that Indonesia was indeed worse than the Khmer Rouge. We must agree, however, that Chomsky was correct to point out what was happening in East Timor. Chomsky was one of those who brought East Timor to the attention of the world. His words may have made a difference.
If we are to talk about sheer numbers of innocent victims, the greatest killer who ever lived was Mao Zedong. During the Great Leap Forward, Chairman Mao ordered farmers to melt their tools in order to forge steel in backyard furnaces. Famine followed as the night the day, but China continued to export grain. Estimates of those who starved to death between 1959 and 1961 range from 20 to 60 million. The worst famines of the 20th century were created by Communist regimes. There was no crop failure. The worst famine that ever took place – anywhere – was the Chinese catastrophe of 1959-61 (see Spence: 581-83). Then there were the tens of millions who were killed during the Anti-Landlord Campaign, the Anti-Rightist Campaign, or the Cultural Revolution. Yet when Chomsky mentions "real human beings who are suffering and being tortured and starving," he is referring only to the "actions of our government."
It was Marx who said history is the story of the class struggle. Stalin's murder of the kulaks, Mao's Anti-Landlord Campaign and Cultural Revolution, and Pol Pot's genocide were all explicitly undertaken as part of the class struggle. Pol Pot emptied the cities because the Communist Manifesto advocates the "combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equitable distribution over the country." What Pol Pot did was part of a philosophical program. Marx looked forward to the day when class differences would disappear and there would be no reason for anyone to disagree. Human beings, to their eternal credit, will always argue. A philosophy that hopes to achieve absolute harmony is necessarily one that leads to thought control and therefore to absolutism. Famine on a massive scale is taking place in North Korea, where innocent people are dying every day, but a government committed to stamping out free thought is willing to sacrifice their lives. It is no accident, Comrade.
Noam Chomsky, in his book 9-11, continues to compare the United States with dictatorships. He continues to conclude that the United States is worse. He recognizes that al-Qaeda is a terrorist organization, but he insists that "in much of the world, the U.S. is regarded as a leading terrorist state, and with good reason"(2001:23). As for Bin Laden, here is what Chomsky says: "His call for the overthrow of corrupt and brutal regimes of gangsters resonates quite widely, as does his indignation against the atrocities that he and others attribute to the United States, hardly without reason" (2001:61).
What are the good reasons, according to Chomsky? "The most obvious example, though far from the most extreme case," he tells us, "is Nicaragua"(2001:43). Chomsky maintains that the damage America caused in Nicaragua was "more severe even than the tragedies in New York [on September 11]" (2001:25). The Sandinista government went to the World Court, the Security Council, and the General Assembly. America vetoed a resolution in the Security Council, but the World Court and the General Assembly voted in favour of the government of Nicaragua. "That's the way a state should proceed," says Chomsky. (2001:25). If the United States had followed similar tactics, the Taliban would still be in power and al-Qaeda would still have its military bases in Afghanistan.
America's strength forced the Sandinistas to allow elections. The Sandinista leader, Daniel Ortega, was defeated in 1990 and Violeta Barrios de Chamorro was elected. Elections were held again in 2001, and once again Daniel Ortega was defeated. It took American power to overthrow the dictatorship of the Sandinistas, but once there was democracy, the Nicaraguans voted to stay democratic. The second election took place after Chomsky wrote 9-11; as for the first, Chomsky presumably doesn't understand its importance. Or maybe he understands only too well. In any event, he doesn't mention it.
An even greater American sin, according to Chomsky, was the bombing of the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan in 1998. He cites various writers who state that the plant was the only affordable source of medicine and that perhaps tens of thousands of people have died because they can't get drugs (2001:48). He says that America is as guilty of the deaths in Sudan as Chairman Mao was guilty of the famine of 1958-61 in China (2001:47). Chomsky doesn't seem to know that when in 1959 Peng Dehuai, an officer in the Chinese army, wrote a letter to Chairman Mao about the famine, Mao dismissed Peng from the army (Spence:581-83). Chairman Mao knew about the famine and didn't care. Devastating famines have struck other Communist countries as well. Stalin engineered a famine in his war against the rich peasants – the kulaks. North Korea has been suffering from famine for years. Totalitarian states – Marxist, Islamic, or non-ideological – are prone to famines and similar catastrophes, but democracies are not.
If the people of Sudan are indeed dying because they can't get drugs, that is the fault of the Sudanese government, an insane regime that allows slavery and is waging a murderous war against its citizens in the province of Darfur. If countries like Sudan and North Korea opened their doors to the world, the world would bring food and medicine. Aid was offered to China after the Tangshan earthquake of 1976, which killed 242,000 people. China, as indifferent to an earthquake as to a famine, "declined foreign and UN offers of humanitarian aid" (Spence:649). Despots are more committed to their oppressive systems than they are to their own people – a fact that Chomsky does not seem to understand.
No one knows to what extent the bombing of Sudan's Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant caused a disaster. We can be sure, however, that the medical problems that women in Afghanistan faced under the Taliban were worse. The Taliban did not allow women to practice medicine, nor did it permit male doctors to treat female patients. If that weren't bad enough, women were not permitted to work by the Taliban, and widows had no way to earn a living (see "Citing Islamic law, Taliban shut bakeries that aided women," New York Times, August 17, 2000).
Chomsky, as we have seen, forgets all the issues he cares about when it comes to Islamic states. To be sure, he will make exceptions and condemn countries allied with the United States, like Saudi Arabia. But Chomsky hates Israel more than he hates bin Laden. He accuses the United States of "supporting Israeli atrocities" (2001:44). He opposes the attacks of 9-11 because they killed people, but also because he feels they helped Israel: "The Palestinians are unlikely to gain anything. On the contrary, the terrorist attack of September 11 was a crushing blow to them, as they and Israel recognized immediately" (2001:112).
Religious zealots in Afghanistan supported by the United States defeated the Soviet Union, which had invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Chomsky associates bin Laden with "the forces established by the United States and its allies for their own purposes and supported as long as they served those purposes" (2001:37) At least the United States had purposes; the defeat of the USSR in Afghanistan led to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the threat of nuclear war between America and the Soviet Union, and the growth of freedom and prosperity in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and perhaps even in Russia itself. Do these results excuse America for supporting fanatics? Maybe yes, maybe no. But when Chomsky writes with sympathy and understanding of bin Laden's motivations, he is defending something that cannot possibly do any good to anyone. Bin Laden is a crazy fanatic. He is not linked with any worthy cause. If the United States is to be condemned for supporting Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan, why is Chomsky falling into the same trap by describing bin Laden's terrorism as reasonable and justified?
Chomsky points out that the "U.S. is one of the most extreme religious fundamentalist cultures in the world; not the state, but the popular culture" (2001:21) He writes "not the state," but he doesn't understand what he has written. There is freedom of religion in America; bin Laden, however, is explicitly opposed to freedom of any kind. In any case, the most fundamentalist of Americans does not believe in executing women who have been raped, although such things happen in Islamic states(See "Death to Blasphemers: Islam's Grip on Pakistan," The New York Times, May 12, 2001). Nor do American fundamentalists believe in sentencing people to death for blasphemy, although a man was sentenced to death in Pakistan for saying that Arabs did not practice curcumcision or shave their armpits before the advent of Islam. (See "In Pakistan, Rape Victims are the 'Criminals,'" (See New York Times, May 17, 2002).
Chomsky is the world's most famous linguist. Living in the United States has not hurt him; indeed, it may be a factor contributing to his fame. A well-known American scholar is likely to be known all over the world, since America's power automatically contributes to the renown of its noted citizens. Thus, Chomsky is the beneficiary of the country he attacks.
Chomsky changed the nature of linguistics. A very familiar example of his thinking is illustrated by a pair of sentences that differ by a single word: "John is easy to please," and "John is eager to please." The words "easy" and "eager" are both adjectives. Yet the grammatical structures of these sentences are quite different. We can rewrite the first as "It is easy to please John," but any English-speaking child knows that it is ungrammatical to say, "It is eager to please John." In other words, children know more grammar than grammarians do.
Chomsky came to the conclusion "that there is a universal grammar which is part of the genetic birthright of human beings, that we are born with a basic template that any specific language fits into" (Cogswell:3). The similarities among languages, therefore, are much more significant than the differences.
Before Chomsky, the guiding spirit of American linguistic theory was Leonard Bloomfield, a behaviorist. Chomsky attacked behaviorism in his negative review of B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior. The behaviorist view that learning language is the result of positive reinforcement is dismissed in a joke about Albert Einstein, who, according to legend, did not learn to speak until he was four:
Einstein: The soup is cold, Mommy.
Mrs. Einstein: Albert, you never spoke before!
Einstein: The soup was never cold before.
The anonymous author of this joke demolished Skinner's theory of language acquisition. Sometimes the most important scientific discoveries are the result of common sense. Chomsky, to the best of my knowledge, was the first linguist to say, "The fact that all normal children acquire essentially comparable grammars of great complexity with remarkable rapidity suggests that human beings are somehow specially designed to do this, with data-handling or 'hypothesis-forming' ability of unknown character and complexity" (cited in Harris:58).
Chomsky's work opens the door to new research into the relationships between language and the mind. Opening one door, however, may lead to closing (though not locking) a different door. Since the Chomskyan revolution, we have become more aware of linguistic universals. Yet one universal – the fact that all languages are always changing – has gotten less attention. To take a single example, the work of Andre Martinet on the logical patterning of sound changes has been forgotten. Another unfortunate by-product of Chomsky's ascendancy is the fact that despite the growth of interest in linguistics, the literature tends to be directed toward specialists and is hard to read. This unnecessary obscurity is odd, considering that it is Chomsky who has defined linguistics as a branch of a different area of research – psychology.
Human beings are designed to speak. Perhaps they are also designed to be loyal. It may be that humanity could not survive without loyalty to one's family, one's friends, one's community, one's country, one's world. It is impossible to separate selfishness from altruism, despite Marx's assumption that self-interest, as opposed to the interest of the proletariat, is harmful. Yet loyalty can be extremely destructive, as is shown by the evidence of war. The late Isaiah Berlin understood "the right to self-expression, to personal relationships, to the love of familiar places or forms of life, of beautiful things, or the roots and symbols of one's own, or one's family, or one's nation's past." Berlin knew something Chomsky needs to learn: "True internationalism must be based on mutual regard and respect between nations. To have internationalism you must have nations" (cited in Wieseltier).
Chomsky the linguist has redefined the meaning of linguistics. By viewing language as a creation of the human mind, he has changed linguistics into a tool for studying the mind, and indeed, the whole question of human intelligence. He is a scholar who has constantly modified and improved his theories. Chomsky the political activist, on the other hand, is a man who has never changed his views about anything. How can Chomsky, who saw through the silliness of Skinner's theory of language acquisition, fall for the even sillier idea that Marxism is humane? How can he support liberty and yet compare Bin Laden, Khomeini and Pol Pot favorably with the United States? How can an angry writer remain calm about fanaticism and genocide when carried out by anti-Americans?
This is the great mystery of Chomsky. He is totally silent about the excesses of radical Islam. What's wrong with Chomsky? Why is he imprisoned by his loyalty to mass murderers and Islamists? Does it make sense for a professed loner to ally himself to the enemies of his enemy? They have not allied themselves with him.
References
Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, After the Cataclysm. The Political Economy of Human Rights, Vol. 2. Boston: South End Press, and Montreal: Black Rose Press, 1979.
Noam Chomsky, Rogue States. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2000.
Noam Chomsky, 9-11. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2001.
David Cogswell, Chomsky for Beginners. Illustrated by Paul Gordon. New York: Writers and Readers Publishing, Inc., and London: Winters and Readers Ltd.
Randy Allen Harris, The Lingusitic Wars, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jonathan D. Spence, The Origins of Modern China, New York and London: Norton, 1990.
Leon Wieseltier, "When a Sage Dies, All Are His
Kin," New Republic, December 1, 1997.
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Copyright:
Open Republic Institute Ltd.