<< I wrote to Chomsky asking his version
of the event, hoping an acceptable answer would be forthcoming. Instead, I
received a hostile polemic, neither denying nor explaining his evident
political (as opposed to civil-libertarian) assistance to Faurisson,
I don't know what you would consider an acceptable answer, except maybe a statementr that it wasn't true that Chomsky had defended Faurisson's right to publish (garbage) and teach (nonsense) in the face of anti civil-libertarian hates peech laws in France. If Chomsky was hostile, maybe it's because he's tired of having to answer the right-wing canard that he's a closet Holocaust revisionist, even when it's promoted by left-wingers. Obviouslt Chomsky is not insane, so he's not a revisionist; he's not pro-Nazi; he's not a sympatheizer with fascist. He is a free speech fanatic--a position I share.
>>In a similarly disheartening experience earlier, as I reported to Chomsky, the
ACLU, defending the KKK's right to rally at a recently desegregated
Mississippi high school in 1977, told the court that "the Ku Klux Klan does
not promote violence to effectuate social change." >>
I will bet you a great del of money that "the ACLU"--the organization, as an official statement, said nos uch thing. An ACLU staff or cooperating attorney may have said something in the context of litigation, but you'd be amazed at the things people say in those contexts.
--Justin Schwartz (lawyer)