[lbo-talk] Chomsky on Israel's legitimacy

Eric rayrena at realtime.net
Mon Oct 23 13:17:39 PDT 2006



>I don't get it? Where is he "badly wrong." Sounds like a realistic
>description to me.

Chomsky's counterposing of rights against legitimacy, his raising of "bad" state actions, and his bemoaning of a lack of "inherent legitimacy" indicate that he thinks legitimacy is a merely neutral moral and legal (nonpolitical) category that can be separated from the state, a good unit of measure that can be rehabilitated. He doesn't think that things like rights, legitimacy, crime, genocide, etc. are creations of the state and essential to its maintenance; they are not just the bases of it. Which is to make the point many have made about him: He's an anarchist whose problem with the state is its moral compass, not its structural brutality.



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