Someone off-list asks:
"But how about the charge by Werner Cohn that Chomsky arranged for one of his books to be published in France by the holocaust denier Serge Thion?"
I choose to answer it on list, because it is a good question.
Well, it's complicated. Chomsky lets anyone publish his material. He recently allowed someone to take some of his writings (and those of others) and weave them without citation into a potage au paranoia about U.S. government repression that was presented to the World Conference Against Racism. Government repression deserves better treatment. Anyone can print Chomsky's stuff in any country and he doesn't object. So Chomsky really is anti-copyright.
Chomsky apparently knew only one side of Serge Thion. And it is clear that Thion abused the relationship, a fact that Chomsky stubbornly refuses to address.
Several questions arise. When was it public knowledge that Thion had become a revisionist. When did this fact become known to Chomsky.
The short answer is that Chomsky could have found this out sooner if he had bothered to check out the actual views of Thion and Faurisson. Chomsky argues the content is not the point when free speech is involved. True, but it is sometimes the point if you are being played for a sucker, and your name is being used to increase book sales.
>From what I have been able to find out through research and a somewhat
prickly but highly principled correspondence from Chomsky, is that Chomsky
did not know about Thion's other habits, and really did think of Thion as a
"a libertarian socialist scholar with a record of opposition to all forms of
totalitarianism." See:
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/articles/8102-right-to-say.html
This is just about as accurate as calling Faurisson "a relatively apolitical liberal of some sort."
What Chomsky does not want to admit is that erstwhile friend Thion and his pals hoodwinked him.
A good version of this problem is covered in an e-book by Robert F. Barsky of the University of Western Ontario. Barssky reaches a similar conclusion to my article. Chomsky has a blind spot for how to deal with both real world political manipulation and his critics. See:
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-books/chomsky/5/5.html
I also agree with Barsky that the claims of Werner Cohn about Chomsky are dubious and malacious.
When I did my research, which was extensive, I took the criticisms of Cohn and Vidal-Naquet and set out to see what would survive independent verification. The answer is: not much. Much of it is red-baiting and false assumptions.
The documents I found in the archive of a Holocaust denier clearly show that Faurisson had a relationship with the Institute for Historical Review--the leading Holocaust denial institute--prior to his [Faurisson's] book being published by Thion, and that they all were very jolly about using the Chomsky essay as a preface or introduction. What is equally clear is that nobody bothered to tell Chomsky about his "preface" until it was too late for Chomsky to stop the printing of the actual inside pages of the Faurisson book (where the Chomsky essay is called a "preface"), but Chomsky was able to get a different wording on the cover, which is always printed seperately and often later than the guts of the book.
A few words by Chomsky about how he was conned would undercut most of his critics, but Chomsky refuses to bad mouth Thion.
I have no problem pointing this out, however. If it were me, I would have forced Thion to pulp the books and start over with just the petition in support of free speech with the multiple signatures.
-Chip Berlet
-----Original Message----- From: Stuart323 at aol.com [mailto:Stuart323 at aol.com] Sent: Wednesday, June 19, 2002 3:08 AM To: cberlet at igc.org. Subject: Chomsky Question
Chip,
I found your article on Chomsky to be valuable and helpful. (I wish I read French, though.)
But how about the charge by Werner Cohn that Chomsky arranged for one of his books to be published in France by the holocaust denier Serge Thion?
Stuart Elliott