Alterman on Chomsky

[C. G. Estabrook]

This is simply shameful, a pathetic argument that barely rises to the
level of intellectual fraud.  In the same sentence you admit what is
obvious, that the charge is false -- and then assert it:


> ... the (false) charge that Noam Chomsky is a rabid anti-Semite
> flirting with Holocaust denial receives considerable support.

And since Chomsky is obviously not insane, the reader -- if s/he's got
this far in your dishonest screed -- is presented with the conclusion that
"Chomsky is, on some level, sympathetic to Faurisson's project of
Holocaust denial, and wants to maximize Faurisson's credibility."

Chomsky has said, mordantly, that he thought the issue about Faurisson had
been "settled in the Enlightenment."  He was referring to the remark
ascribed to Voltaire, "I detest what you write, but I would give my life
to make it possible for you to continue to write." That is of course a
principle of Chomsky's libertarian socialism, one that he has defended
passionately and consistently, and the reason that he wrote the essay --
it's just funny to suggest that he was "sympathetic to Faurisson's project
of Holocaust denial, and wants to maximize Faurisson's credibility."
(See Chomsky's article, "His Right to Say It," The Nation, February 28,
1981 [!] <http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/articles/8102-right-to-say.html>.)

Your smear of Chomsky can be meant only (in Doug's words) "to discredit
him (meaning his critique of U.S. imperialism). There's no other good
reason to harp on what he did or said about Faurisson" -- except that you
cannot successfully counter (or even quote accurately) what he's saying
about US policy today. --CGE

On Tue, 18 Jun 2002, Brad DeLong wrote:


> ...When someone like me looks at things like this, the (false) charge
> that Noam Chomsky is a rabid anti-Semite flirting with Holocaust
> denial receives considerable support. Chomsky's claim that there is
> "nothing in the public record to support such charges" against
> Faurisson seems so completely, insanely, flagrantly, mendaciously
> false. I am then driven to ask why Chomsky would lie so. And I can
> think of only two reasons: (i) insanity; (ii) that Chomsky is, on some
> level, sympathetic to Faurisson's project of Holocaust denial, and
> wants to maximize Faurisson's credibility...