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Davide wrote: "Intellectual bad faith..."
Intellectual bad faith? "Let he who is free from sin, cast the first stone".
I think the shoe will wind up fitting your foot better than it will ever fit Chomsky's.
Even in these very casual group-forum-posts, you're committing excess after excess.
No citations, no references; unsupported statements lined up one after another.
Davide wrote: "The argument was that the press of the so-called free world was, in reality, merely a propaganda machine whose sole purpose was to destroy the alternative social model represented by communist countries...."
You cherry-picked a very wobbly example to make your case here,
After all, there is ample evidence of Western suppression of communist societies which have nothing to do with Noam Chomsky.
Davide wrote: "But Chomsky was already quite accustomed to manipulating facts..."
Is that so? When exactly did he acquire this bad habit, when he was making a reputation for himself as one of the world's foremost linguists?
How amazing that no one attacked him during that phase of his career.
Davide wrote: "*Distortions at Hand* is not worth the paper it was on. ..."
I'd read any piece penned by Noam Chomsky, anytime. His reputation is still towering.
Meanwhile, (beyond two measly self-published political tracts, (79 pps, & 274 pps, respectively, both with Kindle ink still wet) your own academic pedigree is what, exactly?
Do you have any formal accreditation at all?
Davide wrote: "What struck me most about that work, however, was the inhumanity shown by the two authors: the disgraceful way they dismissed the testimonies of refugees as unreliable, reducing them to mere emotional reactions...."
Chomsky was quite correct in dismissing any emotionalism from the debate at the time. Emotion has no place in international diplomacy.
Not for the least of which reason is that sobbing refugees are often paraded in US news media, purely for the sake of promulgating falsehoods. This was memorably brought out during Desert Storm, just to name one example.
So. It seems you are not very familiar with the history of propaganda.
But nevermind. Besides all this tripping and stumbling around, what bearing has your emotional reaction got to do with anything? Are you an academic or just a man-in-the-street with an ax to grind?
In my eyes, no bonafide scholar would proceed as you have done so far. You should be providing facts, rather than your own personal reminiscences.
Davide wrote: "Chomsky can be satisfied: he succeeded in creating media in his own image and likeness....."
Ugh. Please don't tell us you've fallen for those hoary old 'liberal media' theories. Truly only fit for the lunatic-fringe.
Davide wrote: "Rather, he was someone determined at all costs to prove a thesis: that the Western press was just as corrupt as the communist one....."
And you disagree with this notion? You'd insist on what interpretation instead? That there's somehow no corruption in the West? Are you saying that because Chomsky attacked Western Media, he is therefore a Marxist and thus a 'philosophical zombie', from where you stand?
Previously, you declared yourself leery of academics seeking to harvest cheap notoriety; yet this is how you go about promoting your books? With shoddy allegations like these?
Asking another way: you've warned us about the dangers posed by intellectual zombies, but you need to go back to 1977 to find evidence? Come on now.
Davide wrote: "We pretend that the testimonies coming from inside a country that is killing its own young people do not exist....."
You'd prefer wailing, hand-wringing, women tearing their hair and eating grass all based on what? TV interviews?
You don't wish "mere" emotion kept at bay, you prefer that hysteria take hold?
Unfortunately, emotion is not what American policy decisions should be based on.
Chomsky understands this very well. You apparently don't agree
Score so far: Chomsky 1 - Borelli 0.
Feliks wrote: "Davide wrote: "Intellectual bad faith..."
Intellectual bad faith? "Let he who is free from sin, cast the first stone".
I think the shoe will wind up fitting your foot better than it will eve..."
There are people who deny the Holocaust. After all, antisemitism has been a widespread disease for centuries.
I never thought it would be possible to meet someone capable of denying the genocide in Cambodia carried out by the Khmer Rouge.
Yet this denial of reality allows me to speak about another extremely important issue: Noam Chomsky’s relationship with truth.
Pol Pot was convicted of crimes against humanity by the Cambodians themselves. It would be offensive of me even to try to convince you otherwise.
Chomsky tried to argue that the genocide in Cambodia was an invention of newspapers by citing a book that relied on false data spread by Pol Pot’s government.
The truth of a reconstruction is confused with an opinion about that reconstruction. That is Chomsky’s logical error. It is an error made in bad faith, because it is not credible that he failed to understand such a simple concept, yet it continues to cause damage.
There are still people who believe that no one in Cambodia died of starvation or in labor camps.
Feliks wrote: "Davide wrote: "Intellectual bad faith..."
Intellectual bad faith? "Let he who is free from sin, cast the first stone".
I think the shoe will wind up fitting your foot better than it will eve..."
By the way, Chomsky’s article:
https://chomsky.info/19770625/
In my opinion, it is not worth the paper it is written on, but if someone wants to give it credibility, we live in a free world. We do, at least. The Cambodians did not.
Zoinks.The kid doesn't seem to grasp basic terminology related to the topic. Anyne else sense that?
Concepts like these:
bolshevism
socialism
Marxism
communism
communalism
Much less, social democracy, etcetera. He apparently lumps 'em all together as if they're one thing, right? Le Sigh.
Feliks wrote: "Zoinks.The kid doesn't seem to grasp basic terminology related to the topic. Anyne else sense that?
Concepts like these:
bolshevism
socialism
Marxism
communism
communalism
Much less, soci..." How did you figure that out? Maybe I was too harsh. Maybe you really don’t know what you are saying and writing. Someone who chooses to be represented by a criminal can’t be very bright.
::stretch:: ::yawn::Apropos of nothing:
There's plenty of media watchdogs who independently arrive at the same conclusions which Chomsky does, re: American news media.
There's plenty of independent scholars & academics, who arrive at the same conclusions Chomsky does, re: American foreign policy.
Year after year, his voice is far from the only one heard sounding the wake-up call.
Why do I say apropos of nothing? Because unless this punk kid starts shouting at me in all caps or something, I'm prone to skip reading whatever he has to say.
The topics which have been raised the past two days though, are creating a pleasurable frisson in my leisure moments.
I'm always glad to aid the Left and diss the Right. Especially if it makes someone hopping mad, like today/yesterday.
Socialist nations of course, enjoy a higher standard of living than Americans do
Feliks wrote: "::stretch:: ::yawn::Apropos of nothing:
There's plenty of media watchdogs who independently arrive at the same conclusions which Chomsky does, re: American news media.
There's plenty of indepe..."
Was there, or was there not, a genocide in Cambodia? It’s a simple question, and it deserves a simple answer, without nonsense.
You see, if you were truly confident in your ideas, you would not need to hide behind the face and name of a criminal. I am used to being threatened or insulted by fascists and communists. They never impressed me in the past, and they do not impress me today.
I am Italian, and I know this kind of attitude very well. In the 1970s, there were university students in Italy convinced that Albania was some sort of paradise. The conditions of misery in which Albania lived at the time were inconceivable to a Westerner. For a brief period, they considered Cambodia a new frontier of human development: a society where money had been abolished and all men supposedly lived as equals;
before that, it had been Mao’s China and, until the invasion of Hungary, the Soviet Union.
I am used to these kinds of fantasies. On the right, there were the nostalgics of fascism, who took refuge in memories of Fascist Italy, presenting it as some sort of paradise. My country, under fascism, was in miserable condition, but they seemed to forget that.
Do you want to defend Chomsky? Do you want to deny the genocide in Cambodia? It does not change my life. But stop calling yourself after a criminal. You are making a very bad impression.
Adam Smith's Folly; Always worth a reprint.
Europe
Philip II's incompetent handling of the Spanish Economy, 1557
https://www.itakehistory.com/post/sil...
Dutch Tulip Collapse 1637
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_m...
United Kingdom
South Seas Bubble of 1720
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_S...
Spitalfields Riots, 1765-69
https://everything.explained.today/Sp...
Post-Napoleonic Depression
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Na...
Panic of 1825
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_o...
Irish Famine 1845 - '52
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_F...
Panic of 1847
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_o...
Panic of 1866
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_o...
Great Agricultural Depression 1873-1896
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_D...
United States of America
Panic of 1819
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_o...
Panic of 1837
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_o...
Panic of 1857
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_o...
Panic of 1873
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_o...
Panic of 1884
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_o...
Panic of 1893
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_o...
Panic of 1907
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_o...
Depression of 1921
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depress...
Crash of '29
Great Depression 1929-1939
Oil Crisis 1970s
Dot Com Bubble
'Great Recession' (subprime mortgage lending crisis & corporate bail-outs)
Current: Automation vs Job Loss crisis
Yep, I'm a proud Marxist ...
Feliks wrote: "Adam Smith's Folly; Always worth a reprint. Europe
Philip II's incompetent handling of the Spanish Economy, 1557
https://www.itakehistory.com/post/sil...
Dut..."
"Ce qu'il y a de certain, c'est que moi, je ne suis pas marxiste". Karl Marx
Davide wrote: "Feliks wrote: "Adam Smith's Folly; Always worth a reprint. Europe
Philip II's incompetent handling of the Spanish Economy, 1557
https://www.itakehistory.com/post/sil......"
Do you know French, or do I need to translate it for you? Do you know when Marx said that phrase and who he was addressing? Or are you one of those Marxists who have never read a word Marx actually wrote and just cheer for Soviet criminals?
I hope everyone here can see the difference between what I posted in my msg #10, (historical facts) compared to the wifty, weepy, soggy emotional content of the rest of this thread. The trademark of these green-kid authors is that they harp on personality as the crux of their arguments. To them, all the world's problems are personality-based.
Vast economic schisms --wars --tariffs --all the fault of 'stubborn academics'.
Geopolitics is all the fault of stodgy adults who won't recognize some new wave which they insist has changed the world while we weren't paying attention.
That's why it's too pointless for me to engage with them. Their remarks are too paltry.
There's no common ground. They don't believe in history; they disagree that history governs them. they swear that men deliberately embroider history. They feel it's a scam.
They love that hoary old fallacy "victors write the history books".
Groan.
Mistrust is their bias. Every phalanx of Young Turks is convinced that adults are taking advantage of them. Every generation of whelps suspicions all adults who ever preceded them,
They feel that any prior round of adolescents were somehow fooled; outmaneuvered; they vow not to let it happen to them.
Thus, the emergence of lone, roving n00bs like these aspiring self-pub authors on Goodreads and their half-baked political theories.
They admit nothing, they respect nothing.
Famous thinkers? Famous scholars? No matter the field (Chomsky, Pinker, Commager, Kissinger, Galbraith, Feyniman)?
They merely whine. "Oh, sure they're household names but only because they set out to be, that was their goal all along, they were just in it for the fame, they made no significant change".
Ri-i-i-i-ght. No one's accomplishments were ever valid. There were never any facts, only rhetoric,
It's all just personality and convention; chasing fame for fame's sake.
Fame is all merely pandering to, by, or from one set of old-boys to some other set of old-boys. Just a status-quo they'd like to see overturned.
Reputation is never earned, (in their withering estimation).
What really grieves them is that no one is recognizing their persona. The world is all wrong until that day finally arrives.
Feliks wrote: "I hope everyone here can see the difference between what I posted in my msg #10, (historical facts) compared to the wifty, weepy, soggy emotional content of the rest of this thread. The trademark..."
You are very superficial. I don’t know who you think you’re talking to, and you have absolutely no sense of humor, which makes you rather unpleasantly juvenile. Perhaps you are one of those people Keynes described as “hearing voices of dead economists in the air.”
I asked you whether there was a genocide in Cambodia and whether you speak French. You managed to answer everything except my questions.
As for facts, you have provided none, and the fact that you do not know me suggests you are not especially well prepared. Who told you that I am polemicizing against Pinker, for example? I would never presume to criticize Chomsky’s linguistic nativism, but when he speaks about social sciences, “God save us.”
You are right about one thing: anyone who writes is driven by a small degree of narcissism. Chomsky himself is driven by narcissism when he ventures into geopolitics and writes absurdities about Cambodia, trusting that someone hiding behind the face of a murderer will follow him.
Feliks wrote: "I hope everyone here can see the difference between what I posted in my msg #10, (historical facts) compared to the wifty, weepy, soggy emotional content of the rest of this thread. The trademark..."
I never like to put things on the level of authority; it’s beneath me. But I am who I am, while you hide behind the face of a genocidal figure because you’re ashamed to show your own in public. You should be less rude and less arrogant.
Learn to respect other people’s work, just as others respect the fact that you may not like it. All you do is talk about things you do not understand in order to promote your own ideology.
The argument was that the press of the so-called free world was, in reality, merely a propaganda machine whose sole purpose was to destroy the alternative social model represented by communist countries.
*Distortions at Fourth Hand* is not worth the paper it was written on. The authors challenged, for example, the way Western media portrayed the regime of Pol Pot in Cambodia.
Today, we all know that Pol Pot’s brief dictatorship carried out a true genocide: roughly a quarter of the Cambodian population died from starvation, forced labor, or political persecution.
At the time, very little information was escaping the country, and many Western intellectuals, ignoring reports of an ongoing genocide, became fascinated by the attempt of the Khmer Rouge to create a communist society that would not even use money.
Chomsky was not really a fan of Pol Pot. Rather, he was someone determined at all costs to prove a thesis: that the Western press was just as corrupt as the communist one.
He did so through an act of intellectual bad faith, analyzing the content of a few texts dealing with Pol Pot’s Cambodia.
It was an absurd operation. If a genocide is taking place, its reality does not depend on what is written in a text summarizing data provided by the very government carrying it out. Facts must be verified empirically, not through argumentation — or worse, manipulation.
But Chomsky was already quite accustomed to manipulating facts, and the article sounds convincing even though it is false. What struck me most about that work, however, was the inhumanity shown by the two authors: the disgraceful way they dismissed the testimonies of refugees as unreliable, reducing them to mere emotional reactions.
It is the same way we treat Iranians today. We pretend that the testimonies coming from inside a country that is killing its own young people do not exist. Chomsky can be satisfied: he succeeded in creating media in his own image and likeness.