Chomsky on Free Speech

Seth Ackerman SAckerman at FAIR.org
Fri Mar 30 11:30:35 PST 2001


Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:


> When Chomsky wrote of Iraq, Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, etc., he
> generally included obligatory denunciations of Hussein, Milosevic,
> Serbian atrocities, Stalinists, etc., presumably to prevent confusion
> as to where exactly he stands politically. Why did he find it
> unnecessary to do the same in the case of Faurisson, East European
> dissidents, etc.? Isn't it a better political judgment to defend
> Faurisson's right to freedom of expression & other civil liberties
> while denouncing or ridiculing his conclusions than to defend it
> without doing so?
. Maybe Chomsky omitted a denunciation because he knew that no one in their right mind would ever mistake him for a Holocaust denier. You'd have to be one of those ultra-paranoic Jewish nationalists who sees swastikas in everybody's eyes to think Noam Chomsky secretly sympathyzes with neo-Nazis. Whereas you'd only have to be very misinformed to think he's a Stalinist.

Seth



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