Alterman on Chomsky

[C. G. Estabrook]

Your ability to discover thought-crimes, against the plain meaning of the
texts, would have been helpful in descrying hidden Trotskyism in Moscow in
1936, assessing spectral evidence in Salem in 1692, or perhaps in giving
helpful hints to the authors of the Malleus maleficarum in 1486.  But the
occult skills that allow you to discover the amazing truth behind what
Chomsky seems to be saying -- what some might see as invidious
misrepresentation -- will not, I think, do much to distract serious
people from his accounts of the war crimes of this administration (and the
last one) and its clients. --CGE

On Tue, 18 Jun 2002, Bradford DeLong wrote:


> ...I really would welcome an opportunity to change my mind in a
> leftward direction on *something*. But that ain't the way things are
> working.  Right now, for example, I feel my mind changing on Chomsky.
> I used to take Hitchens's account at face value (yes, often a
> mistake): I used to think (mendacious as I find Chomsky's history of
> the Cold War, his running interference for Milosevic, et cetera) that
> on Faurisson Chomsky had been smeared by Dershowitz and company--that
> Chomsky had set out just to defend free speech, had fallen into a trap
> jointly laid by American Likudniks like Alan Dershowitz (who wanted to
> paint Chomsky as an anti-semitic nutboy to neutralize his critique of
> Israeli policy) and French holocaust deniers (who wanted to paint
> Chomsky as one of them to add his authority to their cause).
> 
> But now I don't think Hitchens's account can be sustained. Chomsky's
> claims to have been concerned only with freedom of speech seem to be
> impeached by his own writings, which show a desire to defend Faurisson
> that seems to me quite extraordinary when coupled with his attacks on
> historians like, say, Lucy Dawidowitz as "Stalinist-Fascists".
> 
> There's something else going on here...