What Chomsky wrote in self-defense

Apsken at aol.com Apsken at aol.com
Thu Oct 29 08:17:05 PST 1998


<< He is simply pointing out that a few idiots claimed it was a huge scandal that he was defending the right to speak of someone with whose ideas he had little familiarity, and that this was absolutely nuts. >>

Thus far Bill Lear has chosen name-calling, lawyerly evasions, and theological hairsplitting in preference to discussion of political issues that he snatched out of context from my private off-line correspondence and subsequent additions. Inquiring minds ask whether he will be as quick to question Saint Noam's veracity in light of these contradictory statements or, as I predict, he will instead continue to heap insults on Chomsky's critics while dodging direct challenges to his own hypocritical rants.

Chomsky to The Nation [thanks to LP for posting]:

"In this statement, I made it explicit that would not discuss Faurisson's work, having only limited familiarity with it (and, frankly, little interest in it)."

Robert Faurisson on Chomsky's statement to him:

"Noam Chomsky, the famous professor (of Jewish origin) at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is aware of the research work I do on what Revisionist Historians term 'the gas chamber and genocide hoax.' He informed me that Gitta Sereny had mentioned my name in the above article, and stated that I had been referred to 'in an extraordinarily unfair way.' "

Which was it? Limited familiarity and lack of interest, or sufficient familiarity with his Holocaust-denying colleague to brand one scholarly anti- Nazi critic's evaluation "unfair"?

Ken Lawrence



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