Chomsky-Faurisson collaboration myth. You just gonna prevaricate all
day, or address them? >>
This is getting ridiculous. As all of you of this bent now know, but find convenient to neglect, I wrote a private communication to Louis, which he posted contrary to my wishes. I would not have written on the subject for publication -- nor even privately to someone who had not already expressed a position congruent with mine -- without access to my exchange with Chomsky, which I do not have at present. Nor would I have been so one-sided in a public communication since Chomsky has my respect and general agreement in other areas -- Indochina, Palestine, East Timor, U.S. imperialism, the mass media, and so forth.
I cannot unpost what Louis sent around. It is time for y'all to apply the spilt milk rule.
The main reason I have been reluctant to post here until now, aside from the basic problem of available time, is because there seems to be virtually no interest in discussing the problems faced by activists and organizers. The discussion of economic issues and trends is lofty and often useful; some theoretical discussions are also. But only rarely is there a connection to practical activity.
This discussion is a perfect example. Noam Chomsky and his defenders pridefully boast of his uncompromising dedication to principle. Well and good, but what about the problems that arise when adherence to those principles brings death and doom to the downtrodden masses that he, and probably most of his supporters, claim to be the intended beneficiaries of his political intervention? In those instances, the responses are laced with arrogant insults, which is the characteristic response of leftwing academics to grass- roots concerns that they choose not to address with the seriousness and courtesy granted to fellow academics of the right.
As others have written, I too believe that Chomsky was chastened by his mistake, but cannot bring himself to acknowledge the full weight of it. [Much the same is true of the Mississippi ACLU, whose brief I accurately quoted but also do not have here.]
I doubt that Chomsky would do this again, or even write the same letter he wrote to me back then, and I know for a fact that the Mississippi ACLU would never again assert that the KKK is non-violent. However, at the time of my exchange with Chomsky, he was considerably more surly in support of his action than he later became.
Context was and is the essence of this dispute, because it accompanied the convergence of the Holocaust-denial launch in the United States and the Ku Klux Klan's mass rebirth and reign of violence throughout Mississippi. In this climate, a young African American radio reporter had her home vandalized and her children threatened in a Klan attack. After an anti-Klan march at Tupelo, a carload of demonstrators was forced off the road and its occupants were beaten with tire chains. In Okalona a Black college professor's truck was shot up by Klansmen; he returned their fire, wounding several. Tension and fear escalated in the rural areas; we had no choice but to mobilize mass demonstrations in response. Bennie Thompson (now a Congressional Representative) and I both received telephoned death threats on the eve of a march against Klan-backed police brutality in Jackson. Aid and comfort to Nazis and Klansmen during this period was not an abstraction.
I used the word "essay" to describe Chomsky's controversial manuscript about Robert Faurisson. alexlocascio at juno.com scolded me for calling it an introduction, and Bill Lear scolded me for calling it a preface, though I did neither. alexlocascio at juno.com insisted on the word essay, which is the term I wrote. Bill Lear objected to the word essay and insisted on "avis." Hair- splitters who wish to quibble further about these points will have to continue on their own. I shall accept whatever term or terms are sanctified in the Chomsky Pantheon, but do not expect them thereby to be satisfied.
A single brief passage of my offhand private note, which has exercised several, merely added a minor point to what Louis already had written on the issue. Lacking copies of my letter and Chomsky's, which I described from memory 20 years after the fact, I posted a further notice that included the one document I do have here, lest anyone doubt that I had a legitimate concern, but fully aware that angry demands for more, which I am powerless at present provide, would persist. When I regain access to my Mississippi archive, I shall slake the thirst of anyone who is still camped at this oasis.
We shall never agree on the asserted "right" of Nazis to poison the political air without militant opposition. I assert the right and duty of decent people to chase them off the streets and out of the schools by every available means, as many of us were attempting to do in Mississippi when Chomsky weighed in for Faurisson. These principles and Chomsky's are in opposition; they cannot be reconciled.
The only significant political point that prompted my e-mail to Louis was this statement he made:
"Part of the problem would seem to be the inability of superstar leftists like Cockburn, Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore to rely on feedback from other leftists."
With that I agree, borne out by personal anguish, which I summarized. I now recognize that Louis himself has a similar affliction. That he twisted my message toward other ends, and that Noam Chomsky's admirers brook no criticism of the master, are all points I acknowledge also with regret.
Some on this list fail to accept the distinction between political support and political agreement. When Chomsky called Faurisson's attention to Sereny's article, and offered his opinion that the article was unfair to Professor F, he was providing political support, which Faurisson immediately put to effective political use. That is not accusing Chomsky of being a Nazi or sympathizer, but it is accusing him of following a defective political compass. Does anyone deny that when Chomsky championed Henry Kissinger's right to teach, and opposed those who sought to evict Kissinger from campuses, that his action had political content?
Do all of Chomsky's admirers on this list join him in defending Faurisson's and Kissinger's right to teach and proselytize without their work being rudely disrupted?
Have we beaten this to death yet, or shall I proceed to show how the KKK and Nazis have greatly expanded their reign of terror as their Holocaust-denial movement has grown in respectability? Ordinarily the choice between either contributing to or militantly opposing such currents would be self-evident, as would be the allegiance of anyone who wears the label anarchist, socialist, communist, radical, or progressive.
Ken Lawrence