I'm glad the board doesn't appeal to you.

--
---------------------------------------------------
Dan Clore

The Website of Lord Weÿrdgliffe:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/index.html
The Dan Clore Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/necpage.htm

--
---------------------------------------------------
Dan Clore

The Website of Lord Weÿrdgliffe:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/index.html
The Dan Clore Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/necpage.htm

Therefore, the relevant question is whether his comments about post-war
Cambodia were accurate or not.  If they were not correct, then he
should acknowledge his earlier mistake and correct the error.  If he
doesn't, then it's fair to say that he is not accurate -- which is
evidence that he is not a credible commentator.

There were indeed massive atrocities in Khmer Rouge Cambodia;  media
reports at the time may have contained minor errors but were
substantively correct.  If Chomsky perceives it as defeat ("crying
uncle") to admit this fact, that's his problem.

[...]

He provides intellectual ammunition and affirmation for a certain
subset of the far left, and among such persons he is no doubt very
popular, but I don't think he convinces many people who didn't already
share his view of the world.  Indeed, his work has become so repetitive
and self-referential that I think affirmation can be its only use.

To say that Chomsky is expected to "cry uncle" implies that his
commentary is substantively accurate, but that he is nonetheless
expected to surrender to some sort of ideological force-majeure.

Certainly one can understand why he (and his partisans) would try to
frame the debate in such favorable terms.  Nevertheless, it begs the
question:  is his commentary generally accurate, or not?

The fact remains that Chomsky has been a poor judge of foreign regimes,
his comments on the Khmer Rouge being only the most grotesque
instance.  Frankly I don't care whether he admits this ("cries uncle")
or not -- old men are entitled to their snits and quibbles.

What interests me is the devotion he inspires among his acolytes
despite this evident lack of judgment and (ahem) accuracy.

Cambodia is however a convenient tree to nail him to, because of the
infamous U turn on Cambodia that the left committed when the Soviet
line changed, just as we nailed earlier generation of commies onto
their U turn on Hitler.

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
     6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
     naN4sfts3KBXmUIlhB4budWYFOt7VEgIjeT6kNmI
     4RqaGOIvy+VN70OyIr5NFYIQNPo42Bu4FwP7UPkOc

  ------
We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because
of the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this
right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state.

The only difference is that there are lots of people even today who
will defend his position on North Vietnam etc, but after 1979 when the
Soviet Union changed its line, no one, not even Chomsky himself, will
defend the position he took on Cambodia.  Instead of defending his
position, he lies about his position, claiming that his post 1979
position was also his pre 1979 position.

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
     6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
     CvYnp8AQLrR9DqIwTdcCp68mZYMic21JBZEg2lvt
     4aq13pwqRZ+t0w6Yfl4lZu5foAoeH1ha0oN+abW10

  ------
We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because
of the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this
right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state.

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
     6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
     9y6GECumUQ26H3GpjmAH0FgtCgqBeAGAy6WjT3jw
     43LzbIbNfiLs5AM76Rr1skEutIbzkCc5mBjUY/0PV

  ------
We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because
of the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this
right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state.

Shawcross gives an account of world reaction to the holocaust by
governments, mass media, the radical left, and Chomsky in particular,
and an account of what evidence was available, and when it became
available:
<http://catalog.com/jamesd/shawcross.htm>

Compare Shawcross's account with Chomsky's account
<http://catalog.com/jamesd/chomsdis.htm>

Shawcross's account is diametrically opposite to Chomsky's account on
almost every issue.

Which is more likely:  That Shawcross is lying to support a war that
he opposed, or that Chomsky is lying to support totalitarian terror?

Further, we can easily check many of Shawcross's points.  I have done
so.  The events in Cambodia were massively under reported.  Many in
the western press did not want to hear the news, and sought to
discredit and deny it.

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
     6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
     Jcc3ysOlmOtIlM6/VWs3z32KmYJ0hD+2/E1maF51
     4HRxl3jogj0S0pYV8CNYDkXi8oLS5Uj3f4HYZWC4h

  ------
We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because
of the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this
right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state.

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
     6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
     pvpCiAt2km6CWCh0y8lf30oPFsm7UlUTQPajDEAc
     4iZD6s6qGZ6L6ipr1Lqp83mmTI2p6B9gYWqcB/d4y

  ------
We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because
of the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this
right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state.

There are no scholarly estimates lower than 1.5 million, and the 1.5
million figure and similar lowball figures come from communist
scholars.  

Vickery is the source for the six hundred thousand figure, and he
falsifies his citations even more flagrantly and outrageously than
Chomsky.  Vickery is a scholar in the same sense as Irving and Chomsky
are scholars.  Vickery does not attribute that six hundred thousand to
Pol Pot, but to hardship caused by the US bombing, undisciplined
troops taking revenge contrary to Pol Pots generous and mild orders,
spontaneous peasant outrage, and internal warfare caused by lack of
adequate central discipline.

For a discussion of one of Vickery's more infamous falsified citations
see <http://www.deja.com/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=640861360>
See also <http://www.deja.com/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=640603767>, and
<http://www.deja.com/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=640694477>

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
     6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
     2V8QvFcp37ZhifPYLzs5vrW+Pe1yv275qrDYcJHz
     4b1OqduZbpOkd+2C2nhxhbVcpkO+vzNf1X4OzZ4Sp

  ------
We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because
of the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this
right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state.

As Lacouture pointed out when he corrected his errors, these errors
did not significantly alter the big picture of mass murder, terror,
and universal slavery with many slaves treated with appalling cruelty.
Before and after these corrections, Lacouture's work still projects
the same entirely accurate picture of Cambodia, and Chomsky's work
projects a wildly false picture of Cambodia.

Yes, Lacouture was careless about details.  But he relying on sources
that were very careful about details, and the overall picture he gave
of those sources was accurate

Further, why make a big deal about inaccuracies that do not change the
overall picture, when Chomsky's work contains inaccuracies that
radically change the picture.  An inaccuracy that does not change the
story is an error.  An inaccuracy that radically reverses the story is
a lie.  Lacouture erred.  Chomsky lied.

As I have been saying, compare Shawcross's account of what was known,
what was said, with Chomsky's account of what was known, what was
said, compare
<http://catalog.com/jamesd/shawcross.htm>
with Chomsky's account
<http://catalog.com/jamesd/chomsdis.htm>

One of them has to be knowingly lying.  They cannot both be sincerely
telling what they honestly believe to be the truth.

We can check out Chomsky's citations, they are deceptive.  We can
check out Shawcross's citations.  They are accurate.

For example Chomsky leads the reader to believe that Hildebrand and
Porter presented a neutral evaluation of observations by neutral
observers, when in reality they were merely mouthpieces for official
Khmer propaganda. Chomsky and Herman lie about the evidence presented
by Ponchaud, claiming it was second hand, and implying that it was
extorted by fear from refugees who were forced to tell Ponchaud that
which they imply he wished to hear.  Chomsky and Herman also denied
the existence of direct observation of the tortured bodies of murdered
women and children by outsider who saw these bodies near the border.

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
     6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
     QQMR0jsBbXUqdilEiDc5+MC1xCij3P33RN3Cpc/u
     4ZqcDrtnMMGZKNE0zSg23c1T6IiCBX0ioEsxNoLrj

  ------
We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because
of the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this
right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state.

However, I was addressing his specific misjudgment of the Khmer Rouge
regime.  Since the Khmer Rouge took power after the war, I referred to
this as "post-war Cambodia".

Chomsky's technique was to establish a set of alleged facts by
selecting certain sources.  The major media did not report these facts,
or contradicted them;  therefore media reports were false (and guided
by ideology rather than fact).

The problem is that he gave no good reason why we should believe his
sources were more credible than the mass media.  Otherwise his argument
worked just as well in reverse:  instead of using his sources to
discredit the mass media, we could use the mass media to discredit his
sources.

It goes without saying that any major historical event will generate a
certain number of false or exaggerated reports.  No doubt there were
some false or exaggerated reports of Khmer Rouge atrocities, and no
doubt some number of inaccurate reports were accepted as fact by the
western press because they were consistent with the weight of evidence
available.

Even if Chomsky could identify specific errors, it would not be
reasonable to generalize (as he does) to media coverage of Cambodia as
a whole, still less to media behavior generally.

By analogy:  While it's widely believed that the Nazis made soap out of
human corpses, apparently they never actually did.  It would be obvious
nonsense to argue on this basis that all evidence for the Holocaust is
likewise open to question -- nor could we argue that the absence of
such inquiry is evidence of a sinister hegemony.

Of course, there are revisionists who make just such arguments.  My
contention is that Chomsky's argument is essentially identical, which
is why I feel it's appropriate to call him a revisionist in the
pejorative sense.

[...]

Thus: I'm sure one can find passages in which Chomsky acknowledges that
the Khmer Rouge are brutal and violent.  Taken in isolation these
quotes would seem to acquit him of the charge that he was a Khmer Rouge
apologist who denied their crimes.

However, in context, his argument was consistently that the Khmer Rouge
were much less brutal and violent than they were reported to be.  One
can thereby be an apologist and denier while still averring, quite
sincerely, that the regime in question was brutal and violent.

Again, Holocaust denial provides a parallel.  Revisionist authors will
routinely intone that the Nazi state was brutal and violent and that it
did kill some large number of Jews.  One could defend these authors by
citing these comments, in isolation, to prove that they are not pro-
Nazi and do not deny the Holocaust.

Yet the substance of these authors' argument is that the Nazis weren't
all that brutal, that they didn't kill that many Jews, that the real
war crimes were committed by the Nazis' enemies, and that we think
otherwise only because of powerful propaganda.  The parallel to
Chomsky's own commentary hardly needs further exploration.

To repeat my earlier point:  even if we can point to specific errors,
media reports were substantively correct.  Chomsky's view of the psot-
war regime was substantively wrong.  Khmer Rouge Cambodia was indeed
analogous to Stalin's regime, or Hitler's -- not, as Chomsky tried to
argue, to France after liberation from the Nazis.

By analogy, Holocaust revisionism doesn't become credible just because
we discover that the Nazis never made soap from human remains.

When one has thousands of pieces of evidence supporting a certain
conclusion, it hardly discredits the conclusion if we discover that one
or two of those pieces are actually false.  Nor does it demonstrate
that people who accepted these erroneous bits of information (e.g. the
news media) were somehow dishonest when they did so.

That is not to say that Chomsky correctly identified errors in media
coverage of Cambodia;  most of the alleged errors were merely instances
when media coverage did not correspond to the information he got from
his preferred sources.

We can quibble whether 1-2 million was a fair estimate in 1977, or a
shade to high.  The fact remains, as I said, that media reports about
post-war Cambodia were substantively correct.  Conversely, Chomsky was
substantively wrong.  The Khmer Rouge did indeed compare to Hitler or
Stalin, not to the French after liberation in 1944, and Chomsky was
wrong to say otherwise.

[...]

("They laughed at Galileo.  They also laughed at Bozo the Clown.")

[...]

Needless to say, many regulars here did not think my comments on his
Vietnam work had merit, so I suppose you may classify this too as "in
dispute".  Readers, as I always say, must judge for themselves.

Chomsky's techniques bear comparison to David Irving's, but I think
there are also some distinctions.  Irving does original research, but
dishonestly manipulates what he finds.  Chomsky does little or no
primary research;  he relies almost entirely on secondary sources, and
the manipulation comes in his source-selection.

In that sense, Chomsky could be compared to an author who wrote about
the Holocaust relying entirely on authors like David Irving (and others
like him).

When Chomsky proves to be wrong (as he was in Cambodia), this allows
defenders (like Mr. Bayliss) to insist that Chomsky was relying on
credible sources.  This shifts the debate from questions of fact to
judgements about source credibility, which are inevitably easier to
fudge and obfuscate, especially in cases where only limited information
was available.

The most precise parallel to Chomsky's work is, IMHO, Stalin's
apologists in the 1920s and 1930s -- the sort of "comfortable
professor" Orwell satirized.  One thinks of the Webbs, for instance,
who insisted that while there had been some hardships and privation in
the Soviet Union, the Ukranian terror-famine was a fabrication of
hostile western propaganda.

I wonder if, later, they had the presence of mind to insist that they
had never denied the existence of the terror-famine and had been
writing only about the attitude of the western press.

Procrustes

wrote:

Sometimes, however, Chomsky is just a naked apologist for
totalitarianism.  Take for example chapter 5 of _At War with Asia_, in
which he favorably reports state propaganda from the communist
government of North Vietnam.

Of course, I don't expect to convince many of Chomsky's fans in this
forum.  The most I expect is that they may at least understand the
reasons that many people find him less than persuasive.

In fact, I don't think Chomsky is an apologist for Stalinism per se.
While I've made the case that he was an apologist for totalitarian
communism, I think this was incidental to his other beliefs and
interests.  It makes no practical difference to our judgment of his
accuracy or credibility, but it does suggest a different understanding
of Chomsky as a thinker and as an intellectual phenomenon.

Viewed charitably, he was an idealist frustrated by the obvious
imperfections of his own society.  Certain Stalinist states were able
to prey on that idealism by presenting an appealing Potemkin-village
picture of a society that compared favorably to ours.

Naturally he would want to defend this vision, since it provided hope
that his idealism could be realized.  Sadly, the vision was false, and
by defending it and disparaging contrary evidence, Chomsky was
eulogizing a Stalinist regime and concealing its crimes.

(This doesn't vitiate the analogy to Stalin's apologists in the 1920s
and 1930s, or Hitler's apologists in recent decades.  I'm sure many of
them were motivated by sincere but misplaced idealism, too.)

Viewed less charitably, Chomsky was hostile to American society, for
reasons rational or otherwise.  He adopted America's enemies simply
because, if America's enemies were good, that provided another argument
that America itself was bad.  It just happened to be the case that
America's enemies were totalitarian communists.

These two interpretations are not mutually exclusive, and in fact I
think both are true.  The gravemen of his critique seems to have
shifted in the latter 1970s, from misplaced idealism to bitter
alienation.  The themes in his work change perceptibly, but become
ossified and repetitive by the early 1980s.  That's why I think the
late 1970s are the most interesting period of Chomskyana to study.

For example, I think it's interesting that this is the period when
his "critique of the media" first becomes a major theme.  Before this
he'd only made occasional, perfunctory references to alleged US
propaganda.  Yet in his books, articles and letters circa 1977-1979 it
suddenly becomes the dominant theme, the "propaganda model" in embryo.

I think it's no accident (pardon the cliche) that he started attacking
alleged US "propaganda" just as negative reports were pouring out of
the communist regimes in Indochina.  To preserve his myth-image of
these regimes, and of US opposition to them, he needed some mechanism
to exclude these negative reports.

By dismissing these reports as "propaganda", he both disputed the
evidence and turned the accusation back against American society.
Eventually, the volume of evidence that had to be excluded became so
great that a "system" or "model" was necessary to explain how so much
false or unsubstantiated evidence could have been so widely circulated.

(The simpler explanation was that this evidence was widely circulated
precisely because it was true and well-substantiated.  However, this
implied that Chomsky had been wrong about these regimes, and was
therefore beyond the bounds of thinkable thought.)

Put simply:  Chomsky's critique of the news media is itself a principal
mechanism of his apologism.  Therefore the fact that his work
emphasizes this critique is not evidence that he isn't an apologist.

(By analogy:  Holocaust revisionists dismiss evidence of the Holocaust
as Jewish propaganda, the product of Jewish hegemony over the media and
academia.  Certainly it would make no sense to cite this assertion as
evidence that these revisionists were media critics and not Nazi
apologists.)

Readers can judge for themselves whether my comments have been
mere "cheap shots".  They also must evaluate my "scholarly
credibility".  For myself, I find your resort to name-calling
unpersuasive to say the least.

As for "persistence"... well, I'm not even sure what you mean by this.
Frankly I think I'd be a lot better off if I did something more
productive rather than "persisting" in these dialogues.  But I enjoy
them, so I persist.  (I'm persistent, but not responsible... ;-)

However his later work, after the fall of communism, also has some
significance. Seeing the whole picture enables us to separate
deception from self deception, gives us some insight into what Chomsky
genuinely believed.

When the Soviet Union weakened and fell, Chomsky's internal vision of
the world required things to get worse in Latin America, rather than
better, since Chomsky's world view had the US, rather than the Soviet
Union, intervening in Latin America and aggressing against it, while
the Soviet Union was defending and supporting the Latin Americans
against the US. Instead there was an outbreak of democracy and
prosperity.  Chomsky then produced some articles and a book explaining
that this outbreak of peace and prosperity was realy an outbreak of
poverty and dictatorship.

This shows that he did indeed sincerely believe in his internal vision
of the world.  On the other hand it also shows that he did not believe
in the account of the world that he had been giving.  Since in his
account of the world the Soviet Union played no role whatsoever in
Latin America, the weakening and fall of the Soviet Union could have
no effect on Latin America, and therefore should in no way discredit
his account.

If he sincerely believed in his account of the world, he might need to
rewrite history and current events to show the US doing evil in Latin
America, but would have no need to rewrite current events to show that
evil in Latin America increased, rather than decreased when the Soviet
Union fell.

The fact that he found it necessary to rewrite this fact shows that he
was aware of the extensive Soviet meddling in Latin America, and
approved it, while in his writings he denied it.

On the one hand, he was sincerely deluded, and genuinely wrong.  On
the other hand, he did not say what he believed, nor believe what he
said.  From his post fall writings, we can infer that among other
things he did not believe that US dominance was as complete as he
claimed, nor did he believe Soviet dominance and influence as
irrelevant and insignificant has he claimed to believe.

From time to time, I have attempted to give the long explanation of
what commies secretly believe and intend, but no one ever gets it,
except other ex commies.

So I will now give the short account.

Commies think they will rule well, but they mean to rule.

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
     6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
     QqjYY0DoQQj7SvE8YyoS19HTpIpV3ztDAjxxtW3A
     4phjlOwkV5eEZuLo2Je3Ruh2R6+2mDTqMsvTobIfn

  ------
We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because
of the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this
right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state.

[...]

James, this is one of the finest postings that you have ever made.
One for the ages!  You are one scary dude.