I read --I think it was -- Hitchens account -- and a fine one it was. And yes, Chomsky was smeared. And no, he won't get smeared for this one. Perhaps it's even a good thing for him to have signed this one -- he might have gotten smeared for not signing. But again, I note that quite a few people here don't care much for his work.
Still, I think he was at least incautious in the Faurisson case. Yes, he took it to be an issue of free speech. No, I don't believe someone has the right to go around spreading lies. And Faurisson was/is a liar, isn't he? Would you or anyone here defend me if I were to insist it was free speech for me to go around talking about the Protocols as if it were fact?
And yes, I think it was silly for the coalition to stipulate that condition. But I think this petition is also silly, at least ill-timed, perhaps worse.
But I've learned something from it -- about Lerner. From this distance, he'd seemed OK.
kj khoo
>
>On Thu, 13 Feb 2003 kjkhoo at softhome.net wrote:
>
>> Doug Henwood wrote:
>> >Chomsky just signed the Lerner letter.
>>
>> Yeah. Like he signed the one for the French holocaust denier for which
>> he got quite a bit of bashing. Looks like he didn't learn from that
>> one, and trusts some of his friends too much?
>>
>> kj khoo
>>