>Just saw a video of Chomsky speaking about the Middle East (from December),
>and in the Q&A he was verbally attacked by a Spart, who was then voted out
>of the auditorium. Chomsky said that the Sparts do this all the time,
>"breaking up meetings" as he put it, and he was quite rough on the guy, who
>exited yelling, "You manufacture your own consent!"
>
>Doug, you follow the Sparts. What's with this?
Worse, I actually talk to them, and read their paper!
No denying it, though, they're absolute assholes at public meetings. Inevitably they get up during the Q&A and launch into one of their robotic diatribes about "imperialist daggers pointed at the heart of the deformed Chinese workers state" and suchlike (though China may be a degenerated workers state, can never remember). Their favorite targets are the Cliffites - the SWP in Britain, the ISO in the US. At Zizek's Lenin conference, they kept battering at Alex Callinicos, one of the leading lights of the Brit SWP, who refused to answer their questions. Oddly enough, I think they're right about 80% of the time, but they're just so annoying that you want to cut off their mikes and have them hauled out of the room. No doubt they find Noam to be a radical chic apologist for imperialism, or something.
Doug