Alterman on Chomsky

[Brad DeLong]

>On Tuesday, June 18, 2002, at 10:58 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>
>>[For "an alternative interpretation of Chomsky's final paragraph," why not
>>read what he writes? --CGE]
>
>because it's so much easier--and requires far more googly 
>cleverness!--to assign guilt by association. clearly if the british 
>fascists quote chomsky approvingly, out of context or otherwise, 
>then chomsky approves of them and supports holocaust 
>denial/revisionism along their lines, regardless of anything he 
>might actually say anywhere else. so why bother reading it?
>
>j
>
>>
>>...[elsewhere] I was asked whether the fact that a person denies the
>>existence of gas chambers does not prove that he is an anti-Semite. I
>>wrote back what every sane person knows: no, of course it does not. A
>>person might believe that Hitler exterminated 6 million Jews in some other
>>way without being an anti-Semite. Since the point is trivial and disputed
>>by no one, I do not know why we are discussing it.
>>
>>In that context, I made a further point: even denial of the Holocaust
>>would not prove that a person is an anti-Semite. I presume that that point
>>too is not subject to contention. Thus if a person ignorant of modern
>>history were told of the Holocaust and refused to believe that humans are
>>capable of such monstrous acts, we would not conclude that he is an
>>anti-Semite. That suffices to establish the point at issue.

Interesting use of the word "proof." Denial of the Holocaust by 
someone who has done even the slightest amount of reading in history 
does make it overwhelmingly likely that someone is an anti-Semite. 
Faurisson does not deny the Holocaust because he thinks that humans 
are incapable of monstrous acts--he denies it because he thinks the 
Jews are very capable of monstrous acts.

You are digging Chomsky into an even deeper hole. I have never yet 
run into anyone who has done some reading in history, denies the gas 
chambers, and yet is not an anti-Semite.

Brad DeLong