The Anti-Chomsky Reader

Rating:
Summary: A good refutation of Chomsky is needed; this isn't it
Review: I enjoy reading Horowitz, but I don't open a book written or edited by him expecting a sober and careful examination of leftist thought. With that in mind, this book definitely serves its purpose - to give those who already hate Chomsky some more intellectual ammunition. I doubt any Chomskyites will be swayed by it, because right from the start the book is so meanspirited, that it immediately puts sympathizers on the defensive. The book jacket, featuring a review from Alan Dershowitz, calls Chomsky an intellectual fraud and claims that nothing he says can be trusted. There are other blanket statements to that effect sprinkled throughout the book. So much for fairness.
Nevertheless, the book provides some good reminders that Chomsky has made some terrible predictions and has a tendency to overstate his case. Of course, I'd like to meet the 70something year old intellectual who hasn't made some glaring errors in the past.
The weaker chapters are on Chomsky's media theory and his supposed Holocaust revisionism. In the former, the author grossly misunderstands (or misrepresents) Chomksy's ideas to the point where he thinks that since the NYTimes and Wall St. Journal have different editorial viewpoints on various issues, somehow that refutes Chomsky's propaganda model. The latter chapter has some interesting tidbits about Chomsky's dealings with Holocaust deniers, but one wonders what the real point is. Chomsky used bad judgement, but does anyone seriously believe that he denies the Holocaust or wants to further the Holocaust denial movement? Since the right so often wastes space rehashing this incident, it makes me wonder if they're short on anti-Chomsky material.
One of the final chapters struck me as extremely unfair for its method, because it used a private email exchange as a source to prove Chomsky's duplicity. Such an exchange should not be fair game for a published attack. Chomsky, for those who don't know, is actually very generous with his time, and often engages in long email exchanges with ordinary people. One of the contributors exploits this and selectively quotes Chomsky in order to belittle him. Sadly, Chomsky may not feel like being so generous anymore.
Despite its many flaws, I do recommend this book, but not because it will lead us to the truth. Conservatives will gleefully interpret it as some sort of slam dunk or smoking gun, and Chomsky's fans will benefit from knowing what they're up against (and may even be encouraged by just how thin - both in volume and insight - this book is).

Rating:
Summary: HA HA!!!
Review: A funny book! This is like Ann Coulter with maybe three more brain cells. Actually, more like two. Horowitz is so out of it, it's amazing! He thinks he has some special insight into the left, because of his activist past and whatever it was he did with the Black Panthers, god knows when. I bought this book at a used book store for $5, being a Chomsky reader, because I always want to hear both sides of the arguement. I should have known that simply looking at the publisher Encounter Books (they publish books about France being evil and multiculturism in class rooms making white kids stupidier, check out their website if you don't believe me) that this was not going to be a refutation of any kind, but rather a weak attempt at character assassination. If you like Horowitz and want some reaffirmation of an idealogy that thinks the left is trying to destroy America, you will love reading this. I think this book is mainly for people who hate Chomsky and haven't read him. But I digress...

I don't think Horowitz (or any of these rightwing pundits) are trying to destroy America. I just think the left and right have different ways of looking at their country. This point is beyond Horowitz, and people who share his view that those who criticize America are doing so out of hatered for their country rather then love to see it (and the world) do better. The last reviewer reffered to Chomsky as Grima Wormtongue from Lord of the Rings. That's about as good an argument as any in this piece of garbage.

Rating:
Summary: My God!!!!!!!!
Review: After reading some excepts from this obvious monstrosity of a book, and some of the reviews, I was tempted to write an in-depth defense of Chomsky's views. However, since I am short of time, and hope that my defense could possibly alter the weltanschauung of Chomsky's critics (a generous label for many of them I know) I will leave the reader with this quote from Bertrand Russell about another controversial Jewish philosopher: "Spinoza is the noblest and most lovable of the great philosophers...ethically he is supreme...As a natural consequence, he was considered, during his lifetime...a man of appalling wickedness." I think this should tell you all you need to know about those who depict Chomsky as immoral and wicked.


Rating:
Summary: Labelling and Straw Men
Review: As a Scot I am struck by the use of the terms 'left' and 'anti-American' here. It's as if these words carry mechanistic weight, that is, they help one understand the mechanisms by which Chomsky reached his conclusions.

But they don't. In fact, they inform one of the perspective of the person using these terms. Use of these terms denotes a simplistic and rigid belief system. How strange that anyone who doesn't believe in the free market without a bit of control can be filed in the same box as Stalin! In Western Europe the welfare state is stronger than in the US (ie. poor pregnant mothers are generally given the same level of care as middle-class pregnant mothers), yet the system is basically capitalist. Does that make Europeans generally of the 'left', or even Stalinists?

This labelling business is like some kind of weird sport: ah! I've got you categorized now, ya lefty!

I think it's helpful to look at things in more depth, allowing for more complexity and more accuracy. Think of it like this: Chomsky has certain views about how the behavior of some humans beings harms the welfare of others. The absurd invasion of Grenada (Reagan-worshippers, please try to justify that!) is one example; the US and UK support of undemocratic and murderous regimes such as Pinochet's is another. Chomsky pointed out forcefully that for various reasons, our governments supported regimes which harmed and killed many thousands of ordinary people who were just trying to work and live. And he also pointed out that this wasn't widely reported in our mass media. What's wrong with that? Why not face up to these facts? Why squirm out of it by calling him a lefty or a neo-communist? You may disagree with Chomsky's explanation, his media theory, but it is surely true that (a) our governments did bad, bad things to civilians in other countries, and (b) the media were remarkably bad at reporting this.

So as a principle, why not just deal with (a) the facts - are they correct or not?, and then, if they are, (b) Chomsky's conclusions.

This book doesn't really do this. It picks on some mistakes that Chomksy made, and then implies that this means that the reader should regard all that Chomsky states as false (a logical fallacy); it (depressingly) raises the false accusation that Chomsky is a holocaust-denier; it has an irrelevant chapter in which Chomsky's linguistics theories are challenged: so what? That's science, it's allowed, that's how science works, people disagree and then do experiments to resolve these disagreements, Watson and Crick made some mistakes in their DNA model, they were challenged and then fixed, blah blah blah, what the heck does this have to do with political debate?); his footnotes are challenged - um, so he self-references, like all other scholars, and sometimes uses hard to find sources, again, so what?; etc.

Looking at Horowitz's stuff in general, it does seem as if he is a bit of an irrational nationalistic, anti-'left' ideologue. He has found a faith and is sticking by its dogmas. He carries some core beliefs through which the outside world is interpreted. Thus, he argues from a set of unexamined (at least by him) and flimsy premises. So do many of the reviewers here. For example, if someone questions US foreign policy, they are on the 'left', and are there to be attacked. Same with Chomsky's criticism of the behaviour of the State of Israel (ie. = anti-Semitic).

Some reviewers here also seem to use this bizarre method of argument. The 'left' lives in a daydream, the 'left' lies to maintain its ideological position, etc.

Now I don't understand the value of this way of doing things. It's a distraction from getting at the truth. As a citizen I am interested in knowing about how government policies affect people domestically and abroad. Chomsky has conducted some informative analyses on these topics. Trying to bat them away by using labelling and straw men just doesn't do it for me.

The authors are ignorant or dishonest, and they get one star.


Rating:
Summary: Complete slander of a humanitarian thinker
Review: Aside from the fact that the publisher of this book, Encounter Books, is affiliated with the Project for a New American Century, the think tank that staffs the Bush White House and created its post-9/11 foreign policy of pre-emptive war, the axis of evil, and everything else Bush relies on to fight the war on terror, a full year BEFORE 9/11, the book is also full of complete misrepresentation. Chomsky never sided with that lunatic French author who denied the holocaust. He never denied Pol Pot's atrocities. He is not anti-American. He only asks Americans to apply the same standards to themselves as they apply to other nations. When we do that, we discover that, often times, our government deceives us into believing we are the moral crusaders of the planet, while we bomb civilians into ash and support death squads and dictatorships across the planet. Why not mention that little tidbit, Horowitz?

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant and insightful
Review: Chomsky is a person so brilliant in theory, that he forgets the reality of dealing with people such as terrorists and tyrants. He is now into denying the holocaust and proclaiming how Arafat is virtuous.

This book is both fascinating and insightful. Required reading!!!

Rating:
Summary: The Chomskier they are, the harder they fall
Review: I have two comments:

1. About the negative reviews - Today, with the success of science and rational thought, it is no longer in fashion to argue from a position of belief or ideology and a person who wants to convince people of his ideas will try to use more scientific/rationalistic arguments, thus assuming a more respectable and serious semblance.

Therefore, U.F.O nuts are U.F.O "investigators", holocaust deniers are "revisionists" or "historians", religious literalists are creation "scientists" and true believers are "skeptics" (since they focus on "being skeptical" towards the opposing views, thinking that by doing so their view will win by default.)

These people just love to use a scientific and philosophical jargon, and especially to use words that are the mark of a professional skeptic: straw-man, ad hominem, fallacy etc.

You can see good examples to what I have just said if you read reviews by the people who have given this book only one star. The fact of the matter is that these people are blind disciples of the guru Chomsky who react the same way as a devout Christian would have if this book had been titled "The anti-Christ reader". But, like the people mentioned above, they try to use this deceiving skeptical jargon.
Well, if they love mentioning logical fallacies like straw-man and ad hominem, maybe they should not use the same fallacies - some of them call this book stupid or wrong without explaining why, some attack the authors but, yet again, give no explanation; I also read some of them say that this book called Chomsky an anti-Semite and said it was a straw-man argument. Actually, the book has never claimed that (even though, in my opinion, he is as close as you can get.) but only mentioned Chomsky's repulsive connection with holocaust deniers; so, in fact, the reviewers themselves were those who used the straw-man argument. Some of them give examples of times he was right or some of his attributes as a reason why this book is wrong (but, again, don't address its claims); well, I guess that even a broken clock shows the correct time occasionally. However, the fact of the matter is that this book exposes a lifetime of colossal mistakes, actions and declarations which are not redeemable by the few times he did something right; if you know the joke that ends with the words "but only one time I was with a sheep" you can see that every chapter of this book discloses things Chomsky has done and each of them, in itself, is like "being with a sheep" (I guess when it comes to his connection with bigots, it's "being with a wolf"); I mean, some murders take less than a minute but their severity is enough to condemn someone for the rest of his life. Chomsky's foolish actions, ideas, lectures and thoughts would suffice for a 100 lifetimes.

Therefore, you shouldn't be fooled by the pseudo-arguments of his followers, they are only some very impressionable first-year college kids who were brainwashed and joined the cult of Chomsky, and now they are very angry that this book has committed the gravest act of blasphemy which is attacking their leader, and they feel that it's their moral obligation to become his protecting knights and charge to his rescue.
(I guess that that would make them the "Cult-Of-Chomsky Knights" - figure out the acronym for yourselves). I mean, just look at what some of them write:
"He is a good man", "He is a smart man", "He is a moral man", "One time I saw him in a dream and he promised to take me to his heavenly abode if I pledged to hate America", "Guru Chomsky Krishna is the fourth incarnation of St. Marx", "After reading his books my little-Chomsky grew 5 inches" etc.

Thankfully, there are only few of them and they only managed to reduce the score from 5 stars to 4.


2. I wish that Collier and Horowitz had asked Chomsky to write a forward to this book; think about that: Chomsky alleges to be this great defender of the freedom of speech (which he isn't, this book and Dershowitz's "Chutzpa" show examples to the contrary), so what would have been a better way to prove it than to write a forward to a book titled "The anti-Chomsky reader"? Also, since Chomsky always claims that he is very popular and has a huge following, there is a danger that zealots from this "huge following" try to censure and attack the book (as some very few of his cult members have tried to do here) it is his obligation, as a true freedom of speech adherer, to make clear that this book written by these "apolitical conservatives" has a right to be published and read, and what could be a better way to do so than to write a forward?

Now, if you think about that, asking him would have been a win-win situation:

A. He refuses - Then Collier and Horowitz could have asked (justifiably so) whether their book is so much worse than the one by Faurrison which denies the holocaust; I would pay a lot to see Chomsky squirms trying to explain that.

B1. He agrees and writes a scathing forward - Again, since he didn't see fit to criticize Faurrison's book, the same question as in A could have been asked.

B2. He agrees and writes a neutral forward - Use it!
That would have been great! A forward by Chomsky to a book that tears him to pieces.

In conclusion, this excellent book shows that Chomsky, like all fanatic ideologues, considers his set of ideas to be the absolute truth and tries to fit reality to it instead of the other way around, consequently making stupid mistakes and committing foolish deeds.
Reality, logic and consistency have an annoying habit not to forget about you even if you try to forget about them; this book is the knock of this trio on Chomsky's door.




Rating:
Summary: with us or against us
Review: I only had the opportunity to read parts of this book. But I find some comparisons very short-sighted and distorting. One example is refering to Chomsky living a secret double life of a neo-nazi if I remember correctly. Now there is no evidence of Chomsky cheerleading the extermination of Jews. True, Chomsky is very critical of Israel's Lukid Party, as many other Jews are, which is a political party in power that harshly enforces Zionist principals. However, I don't recall ever reading any support for violence against the Jews. Another incident involves an author that questioned the holocaust, which used an unrelated intro from Noam Chomsky. The books fails to mention that Chomsky immediately reacted to the outrage over the book, claiming that he had no intention of supporting the author's opinions.

Everything else I read followed the same formula. If Chomsky is critical of this American-sponsored action, he must be this and that.

The authors do find instances of hypocracy in Chomsky's literature. Its a little more concrete, but I still find it petty.

And the authors deserve some praise for questioning Chomsky. He has urged people to check and review his literature and teachings. But I just don't think this is the best guy to go after. Chomsky has a habit of appearing caustic to many readers, but he will cite a wealth of evidence without blind faith in a government or ideology, no matter which political direction it leans.

Rating:
Summary: Pre-emptive attack?
Review: If you want to know more about Chomsky's views, read his writings first. This book is worth picking up for a different perspective once you have some background -- so you can valuate the author's views rather than swallowing them whole. If you are new to Chomsky, this book will encourage you to dismiss ideas and arguments before understanding them or their context (which is really never useful, no matter what you want to agree with).

In isolation, this book serves to widen the gulf between those who've heard somewhere that Chomsky is a self-hating anti-American evil intellectual (and want this view confirmed and fleshed out), and those who follow Chomsky's well-referenced political writings and ignore his critics. (This is not to mention readers of his linguistic work, which is generally not accessible to lay readers - students of linguistics are often indifferent to his politics. Inclusion of two respected linguists is a point in this volume's favor, but readers may mistakenly conclude that the views are reprentative of the field).

Finally, the one-sided attack mode of this book can be seen even in the editorial reviews, which are full of overt "liberal bias"-style rhetoric. Note the use (and intended/actual emotional effect) of loaded words like "hysterical", "cult", "bizarre", "hate", "gloating".

Consider carefully, and think for yourself.

Rating:
Summary: Points of Similarity
Review: It's interesting how much we take on faith. It's common knowledge among us laymen that Noam Chomsky, though revolutionizing the field of linguistics, is just another left-wing kook and self-hating American Jew. The Anti-Chomsky Reader, however, makes a compelling case for the radical view that Noam Chomsky is in fact another left-wing kook and self-hating American Jew, but with all the scholarship of a Michael Moore rant or Rage Against the Machine tirade: even his linguistics seems to be built on the same foundation of intellectual dishonesty and lack of common sense.

Central to the Chomskian worldview is the ineluctable culpability and ultimate evil of the First World, premised on moral hyperrelativism and a total inversion of causality. Any benevolent act of ours can be motivated only by greed and self-interest, while any atrocity commited by one of the fashionable tyrannies is ignored, minimized, or excused as a justified response to our aggression.

Therefore, Cuba is an oppressive dictatorship because of our trade embargo, Vietnam remains underdeveloped because of our war, the Soviet Union failed because its leadership colluded with us to sully the communist ideal, we supported the Nicaraguan contras to deny them a socialist paradise, the killing fields of Cambodia didn't really happen (and as far as it did it was for their own benefit), the rape of Lebanon by the PLO was the Jews' fault after all, Al Qaeda attacked us but we deserved it, and in any case they're not all that bad-- didn't bin Laden build roads in the Sudan? Part of the appeal of Chomskian politics must be that it's so gosh darned simple.

Another aspect is his disdain for the unwashed public, utterly under the spell of a pervasive "propaganda system" by which Big Corporations blind us from the truth-- never mind that he has managed quite successfully to propagate his own blather. He apparently believes that such publications as the New York Times are part of this right-wing propaganda. Chomsky of course has managed to step out into the light and see the shadows on the wall of the cave.

That contempt extends to the elected leaders of the countries he professes to care about-- witness the disdain for Czech president Vaclav Havel who addressed Congress to thank the United States for liberating his country from the communist yoke. Similarly the Left sneered at Hamid Karzai, the president of newly liberated Afghanistan. It seems we simply can do no good.

Readers might not yet be familiar with Chomsky's collaboration with Holocaust deniers. He refuses to dissociate himself from neo-Nazi publications that use his writings, and publishes his books with a French neo-Nazi publisher. He supports Nazi hate speech (in the interest of free speech, of course) but won't extend the same privilege to Jews.

John Williamson's closing account on his linguistics is delicious icing on the cake-- the final nail that deftly punctures his inflated persona and exposes him as a cowering buffoon.

Ann Coulter has said that when a liberal accuses you of something, they're very often guilty of it themselves-- and indeed, Chomsky and his fellow travelers are hard at work constructing their own "propaganda system" out of self-hatred and self-imposed weakness. The problem, of course, is that propaganda works-- and that is why, for instance, Holocaust deniers are so pernicious. When the lie is unopposed, it will eventually become truth and impossible to refute. But while Chomsky is fighting for mindshare by attempting to further radicalize the Old Media, the battle is fought more and more in the free media marketplace where cable, talk radio, and the Internet now provide space for progressive right-wing voices.

So, rather than a towering intellectual Chomsky is just another stormtrooper of the Left, infatuated with his own rants and daisy chains of self-referential footnotes. It's hard to understand why the Left would pick an expert in linguistics as a most respected exponent of its politics, unless the Left cares less about molding its views to the Truth than molding the truth to its views. Although I don't accuse Chomsky of being a Nazi, I see "points of similarity" with Goebbels.