It seems that Chomsky's characterization of him as an apolitical liberal has generated more controversy than his defense of free speech. I am wondering whether this characterization is accurate. By so characterizing him Chomsky also muddies the waters: Does he defend Faurisson because after all he is only an apolitical liberal, not a fascist? Or does Chomsky defend unconditional free speech, even for fascists?
If Faurisson had simply been blacklisted from further grants to do archival "research" or prevented by his department from turning, say, a required introductory course on Modern French History and Literature into a defense of the Vichy govt by way of denial of the Holocaust, would Chomsky have considered these violations of free speech?
Or to put the same questions another way: if a physical anthropologist were denied grants to do comparative research on the brain sizes of black and white women or if this anthropologist were disallowed in a required course of 500 or so people from insinuating the case for deep biological racial differences in cognitive ability on the basis of a putatively failed head start programme while not equipping his students *in this physical anthro course* with even a basic understanding of human genetic variation or recent research in the interaction between nutrition, cellular development and neurological sequencing--would Chomsky or others here consider such grant or course denials a dangerous violation of free speech?
best, rakesh