Trying to reason with Chomsky
Some Ukrainian academics write an open letter to Noam Chomsky that points out some recurring fallacies/patterns:
Pattern #2: Treating Ukraine as an American pawn on a geo-political chessboard
Whether willingly or unwillingly, your interviews insinuate that Ukrainians are fighting with Russians because the U.S. instigated them to do so, that Euromaidan happened because the U.S. tried to detach Ukraine from the Russian sphere of influence, etc. Such an attitude denies the agency of Ukraine and is a slap in the face to millions of Ukrainians who are risking their lives for the desire to live in a free country. Simply put, have you considered the possibility that Ukrainians would like to detach from the Russian sphere of influence due to a history of genocide, cultural oppression, and constant denial of the right to self-determination?
The history of genocide is a pretty big thing to ignore, if you ask me, especially for someone as vocal about global political issues as Chomsky is. Stalinists ignored it and tried to bully others into ignoring it (sound familiar?) but surely Chomsky doesn’t consider Stalin a comrade.
Then there’s the NATO issue. We get it: Putin doesn’t want NATO expanding right next to Russia…but the fact remains that Putin doesn’t own other countries even if they are right next to Russia.
The premise is that NATO’s eastward expansion left Putin with no other choice but to attack. But the reality is different. Eastern European states joined, and Ukraine and Georgia aspired to join NATO, in order to defend themselves from Russian imperialism. They were right in their aspirations, given that Russia did attack Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014. Moreover, current requests by Finland and Sweden to join NATO came in direct response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, consistent with NATO expansion being a consequence of Russian imperialism, and not vice versa.
In addition, we disagree with the notion that sovereign nations shouldn’t be making alliances based on the will of their people because of disputed verbal promises made by James Baker and George H.W. Bush to Gorbachev.
Wait, you mean US politicians don’t get to determine Ukraine’s fate for all time? Who knew?!
Then there’s Chomsky’s whataboutery. What about the US?!!! Nothing; it’s not about the US.
Item 5 is downright shocking.
Pattern #5. Whitewashing Putin’s goals for invading Ukraine
In your interviews, you go to great lengths to rationalize Putin’s goals of “demilitarization” and “neutralization” of Ukraine. Please note that, in his TV address from February 24, 2022, marking the beginning of the war, the verbatim goal declared by Putin for this “military operation” is to “denazify” Ukraine. This concept builds on his long pseudo-historical article from July 2021, denying Ukraine’s existence and claiming that Ukrainians were not a nation. As elaborated in the ‘denazification manual’ published by the Russian official press agency RIA Novosti, a “Nazi” is simply a human being who self-identifies as Ukrainian, the establishment of a Ukrainian state thirty years ago was the “Nazification of Ukraine,” and any attempt to build such a state has to be a “Nazi” act. According to this genocide handbook, denazification implies a military defeat, purging, and population-level “re-education”. ‘Demilitarization’ and ‘neutralization’ imply the same goal – without weapons Ukraine will not be able to defend itself, and Russia will reach its long-term goal of destroying Ukraine.
We’ve seen that kind of “denazification” before.
I listened to Yascha Mounk trying to reason with Chomsky for an hour; it’s just not possible. He’ll just reiterate his same position without engaging with any arguments.
So very disappointing. I have liked much of Chomskys work and agree with his critique of American policy in the past (Manufacturing Consent” is CNN pretty good). I even share a bit….just a bit…of the Whataboutism. But as another pointed out at Marcus Ranum’s ( very skeptical about American policy and actions) website….there are far worse options than the American Imperium. Plus, as an American I am selfish and do benefit from our position as global hegemony???
So American support means that Ukrainians have no real needs or desires of their own? I certainly look at much of what the United States considers its “vital interests” with a skeptical eye, but it’s not American tanks that rolled across the border into Ukraine. Certainly the first step in “demilitarizing” Ukrain would be to GET THE FUCKING RUSSIAN ARMY OUT OF IT. It sounds like Chomsky believes Putin”s “Look what they made me do!” story. He’s rejected that sort of tale coming from Washington, but takes it at face value from Moscow? Okaaaay. Does this mean it’s impossible to reject both American and Russian aggression and imperialism at the same time? Or to only ever see the latter as a justified “response” to the former? Not that I’ve read a lot of Chomsky, but I would have thought that he’d be capable of more nuanced analysis. Guess I was mistaken. Feet of clay. Head of clay too, it looks like.
Being a better neighbour (let alone being better to his fellow Russians) would have been much less costly, and would have reduced the eagerness of all of these countries to seek NATO protection from Putin. But it is not usually in the nature of dictators, bullies, and predators to have changes of heart, with hearts not really being in evidence to start with. (Which is why I’ll feel a little bit less dread once Donald Trump is safely in prison or in the grave.)
Chomsky reached his apogee as a political commentator in the Vietnam War years, when the behaviour of the US in Vietnam, as led by Nixon, Johnson and Kissinger, was generally on a par with that of the Nazis in Poland. But that apparently made him, as it did so many others, into someone whose political stance was reflexively anti-American. This led him to support Saddam Hussein in Gulf Wars 1 and 2, and now apparently to assume the role of apologist for Putin over the Ukraine.
So I would suggest to him that he should quit before he falls too much further behind, and devote the rest of his days to gardening, perfecting his golf swing, lawn bowls, or whatever.
https://chomsky.info/199102__/
https://chomsky.info/199102__02/
Omar: sometim s “too old” IS too old. Like Trump and Pelosi and even Biden, the Greatest Generation just needs to ride off into the sunset. Heck, that’s why I retired and I am much younger than they are. Chomsky just seems…calcified.
I really wonder these days if I have a home on the “left” I was told by a friend that concepts of male and female are western imperialism and I need to get with the science.
Plus, Chomsky is just boring a lot of the time. The man has literally put me to sleep.
Also, too:
In 1991, Estonia declared independence from Russia, and shortly thereafter made the Estonian language the official language for all governmental purposes. It had formerly been Russian. When I visited eight years later, the bulk of the Russian immigrants still refused to learn or speak Estonian because even though they composed less than a quarter of the population they considered themselves to be the “owners” of the country. I will never forget asking the price of a sweater at the market in Tallinn (in my stumbling Estonian) and being angrily berated and sworn-at by the Russian-speaking woman who ran it, simply for speaking that language. Chomsky has never had to live in that kind of environment, and cannot possibly imagine the absolutely fierce intensity of peoples trying to escape Russian influence and make stronger ties with NATO and the west. To him it is just some kind of abstract chess game. Estonia went from being a backwards SSR to a fully modern western country and member of NATO just three years after they regained independence, and they enjoy one of the most modern constitutions in the world with equal rights for women enshrined therein. Think about that, Noam. Think about how motivated a people have to be to go from stone age to space age in three years. We Americans have had nearly 250 years to do the same, and we’re still behind the game as compared to those Estonians.
[…] a comment by James Garnett on Trying to reason with […]
Most Westerners (and I include myself in this) seem to have little idea of the history of the Russian Empire and its extension, the Soviet Empire, even in the crudest of terms. (The same is true of the Ottoman Empire.) Russia, to the average Westerner, seems to consist of vast, unpeopled spaces with a few large cities in the West, and little is known of the multiplicity of peoples it contains. Chomsky, for all his intelligence in some respects, falls into the trap of supposing that since the USA came out of World War II as the most powerful country in the world, it is therefore somehow responsible for everything that happens in the world. All roads lead to Washington, and other peoples, particularly if they belong to smaller nations, have no agency, except when they are instigated into doing this or that by Washington or by some recognised and powerful enemy like the Soviet Union or China, who, again, it seems in Chomsky’s view, are let off the hook, since they are forced to behave as they do by U.S. power – and so, once again, the US is responsible for everything that is wrong with the world. It is a view of the world that seems in many respects to have a fair bit in common with that of the most chauvinistic and cynical believers in American power and America’s right to impose itself on others.
Chomsky, like a lot of tankies, believes in American exceptionalism as fervently as the American right wing. He just believes in it backwards. The right wingers think that America is the best, and everything good in the world comes from America, and America can do no wrong. Chomsky thinks America is the worst, and everything bad in the world comes from America, and America can do no good. So if America is doing something, it must be a bad thing. And if something bad is happening, it must be because America did something.
All above noted.
Brian M @#5: I consider myself to be still of The Left. But as the late Christopher Hitchens so elegantly pointed out, lefties have to choose between the Anti-totalitarian Left, and its opposite, the Pro-totalitarian Left. Support for the latter leads you into the same political camp in which both the journalist John Pilger and Noam Chomsky have pitched their tents. As for me, I cannot recall EVER having disagreed with anything Hitchens wrote, on any topic. (In that regard he was very much like our hostess Ophelia Benson.)
The Right, on the other hand, apparently judges any position on whether or not it will be good for business-as-usual. This leads them directly to both AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) and Covid denialism. Also anti-vaxxerism, etc.
Including his position that “women cannot be funny”? I think that Kate Smurthwaite soundly refutes that (among others).
I’ve even known Ophelia to crack a joke, on occasion. Not very often, as she is usually smugly surly and opposed to any kind of fun whatsoever.
I Don’t know. I find the surliness rather funny and charming in its own right. And when one’s opponents are the deranged crew of Trumpanzees, AGW deniers, andTrans loons…that justifies both surliness and smugness!❤️
My humor (or sense thereof, or lack) is of course on the dry side. O has been known to laugh, although I won’t claim to have witnessed this.
JG @ #11:
I was not aware that Hitchens said “women cannot be funny.” But it does arouse from memory one evening well spent with a group drinking together around a table years ago, and being hilariously entertained by Diana Hill, the sister of the famous TV comedian Benny Hill. Benny was very definitely a funny man, and he used to regularly fly in to Sydney to spend time visiting Diana, and do a spot or two for the odd local TV station on the side. But, good as he was, as a comedian he could not hold a candle to Diana. She had us in fits, and continuously.
Which leads me to believe that there could be a gene or two (dozen) floating around in our genomes, and responsible for what is called the human ‘sense of humour.’ And by its absence, lack thereof.
So if Hitch said that, then he was wrong, and I have to say so. (Sigh.)
Nobody’s perfect. Have not been since God made the mistake of shoving that damned talking snake into the Garden of Eden. So not even God’s perfect. You can quote me on that, though WARNING!!! there could be consequences. For both of us. ;-)
For all his brilliance in some areas, Chomsky is a bit daft in others. When the conclusion (e.g., America is the proximate, efficient, and final cause of any particular instance of human suffering) becomes forgone, reason becomes slave to dogma. That sort of motivated reasoning is everywhere, of course, but the self-loathing “we are the root of all evil” character of it seems a particularly common feature of academic blowhards, religious zealots, and racists.
James Garnett#12. Ophelia can certainly be very funny, and I find her neither smug nor surly – nor any combination of the two.
Tim@17 I said that, of course, knowing that it would make her laugh.
:)
Omar @ 15 – It was a Vanity Fair article from January 2007. Deeply unfunny and even more insulting. I remember that hair bursting into flames feeling when I first read it.
Here’s my irritated reaction:
https://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2006/depends-whos-asking/
And then a slower and more thorough reading the next day, in which I found it even worse than the first time:
https://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2006/on-closer-reading/
Current ‘anti -imperialism’ is a sham. NONE of the right-thinking crowd seems to even imagine the existence of German, Russian, Japanese, Ottoman, Mongol imperialism and their after effects on modern societies.
OB: I have read, marked, learned from and inwardly digersted the first of those links you provided @#20.
My consider opinion is that Hitchens must have been in his cups, three sheets to the wind, if not as drunk as a skunk when he came up with that bullshit. No other explanation fits.
He was erudite, and so readily quoted, drunk or sober.
It is indeed awful stuff.
Ophelia @20
I went back and read that second piece of yours, and found this admission:
AHA! You read it here first, friends! Ophelia is a trans man!
(Sorry. Couldn’t resist.
I’ll go sit at the back and think about what I did.)
#21 Imperialism – and yet I remember the great writer Joseph Roth, author of the marvellous novel, ‘Radetsky March’, and his fury and despair over the splitting apart, into small, supposedly ‘ethnically pure’ nations, of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which, for all its faults, afforded its minorities, including the Jews (of whom Roth was one) some protection, so that the situation described in Auden’s poem on the death of Yeats came about: ‘And the living nations wait/ Each sequestered in its hate’.
There’s a good recent history on the history of the Ottoman Empire: ‘The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars & Caliphs’, by Marc David Baer.
The fact is that there is imperialism now, and there always will be.
I have very mixed feeling about Hitchens. He was highly intelligent and eloquent, and a very good debater. But I have no time at all for his ill-conceived support for the Iraq War, and his description of the brave Dixie Chicks as ‘fat slags’ because of their public opposition to the war.
Same here. He also said – somewhat surprisingly for someone who wrote a book with the subtitle How Religion Poisons Everything – that he didn’t want religion to go away, because he wanted the argument to go on.
The original letter contained a series of untruths. In addition, here is an analysis of the letter: https://www.globalteachin.com/uncategorized/a-response-to-yuriy-gorodnichenko-bohdan-kukharskyy-anastassia-fedyk-and-ilona-sologoub-regarding-their-critique-of-noam-chomsky-on-the-russia-ukraine-war
Okay, here goes my story about Noam Chomsky. Years ago (and by that, I mean the late 1960’s) I was a doctoral candidate in linguistic philosophy. At one point, Chomsky was a guest at a seminar I was taking. I disputed a point he made about David Hume, and Chomsky totally, humiliatingly devastated me by citing a quotation from Hume that directly contradicted what I was saying. After this experience, I checked, and it turned out that Chomsky had made the Hume quote up on the spot; Hume had never said any such thing. That pretty much sums up the Noam Chomsky I experienced; I would never believe a thing he said without checking his claims myself.
Interesting.