>Hitchens put it best:
>
>"I am put very much in mind of something from the
>opening of Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis
>Bonaparte... Chomsky, whose prose now manifests
>that symptom first captured in, I recall, words
>by Dr. Charcot -- "le beau calme de l'hysterique"...
>the September 11 crime is a mere bagatelle...
>All radical polemic may now proceed..."
Peter, I'm not trying to bait you, but even leaving aside the substance this is some truly horrible writing. One thing I've always admired about Noam Chomsky is how he is (for good reason) completely secure in his intellect. He speaks and writes in ways that anyone can understand, never trying to demonstrate that he's smarter than everyone else. On the contrary, he continually emphasizes that anyone can understand what he's talking about.
Contrast this to Hitchens, both before and after the terrorist attacks. It's all about showing off his intellect. Look at how much I've read! And in my circles we all know who "Dr. Charcot" is, so there's no need to identify him! And we also all speak French, so we never stoop to translate anything! And we all use words like "bagatelle" and "polemic" constantly!
This is very bad news in someone who claims any kind of progressive politics. I'm not saying Hitchens is the only person who does it -- Lewis Lapham and Gore Vidal often write like this too. All three of them come off as not caring about communicating to anyone outside a small group of people. This is exactly the kind of attitude that makes people refer to a "liberal elite."
As far as the substance of what Hitchens says, it's factually incorrect. Chomsky didn't say the terrorist attacks were "nothing new":
http://www.counterpunch.org/chomskyterror.html
"Let's go back...turn to the question of the historic event that took place on September 11th. As I said, I think that's correct. It was a historic event. Not unfortunately because of its scale, unpleasant to think about, but in terms of the scale it's not that unusual. I did say it's the worst...probably the worst instant human toll of any crime. And that may be true. But there are terrorist crimes with effects a bit more drawn out that are more extreme, unfortunately. Nevertheless, it's a historic event because there was a change. The change was the direction in which the guns were pointed. That's new. Radically new."
I guess people can claim that Chomsky is wrong, that nothing like the terrorist attacks has ever happened before in human history, that, as Hitchens says, we're now "learning a new language." Personally, I think to do that you have to be ignorant of the entire history of mankind. To achieve this ignorance it seems to help to be American and white. See this article about Walter Mosley: http://www.observer.co.uk/waronterrorism/story/0,1373,776438,00.html
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