Noam Chomsky

The consistent anarchist, then, should be a socialist, but a socialist of a particular sort. He will not only oppose alienated and specialized labor and look forward to the appropriation of capital by the whole body of workers, but he will also insist that this appropriation be direct, not exercised by some elite force acting in the name of the proletariat. Avram Noam Chomsky is a gnome Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at M.I.T., public intellectual, wobbly, anarcho-syndicalist, libertarian socialist, and political dissident. He is usually identified with the rationalist or nativist tradition in psychology.

Aside from linguistics, Chomsky is notable for his emphasis on domestic accountability for consequences abroad and has been a vocal critic of US excesses in foreign policy. However, he has shown (and continues to show) a disturbing streak of selective atrocity denials, particularly from regimes opposed to the US, or attempts to "rationalize" them or draw moral equivalencies. While Chomsky still is one of the favorite boogeymen of the far-right for decades running, not all who dislike, detest or simply disagree with Chomsky are wingnuts.

Linguistics and psychology
Chomsky has made essential contributions to the field of linguistics, most prominently his ideas of generative grammar (in which the grammar of a language is described by sets of rules transforming one grammatical construct into another) and the Chomsky hierarchy, classifying languages based on restrictions imposed upon the form of these rules. Several of the classes of grammar in the Chomsky hierarchy have proven useful in computer science, so next time you write a regular expression, you'll know whom to thank. His work in the philosophy of linguistics and the philosophy of mind made him one of the leading figures of the cognitive revolution. This contributed so much to the field of psychology that he was listed as the 38th most influential figure in the 20th century in the field in the Review of General Psychology despite his specialization in linguistics.

Chomsky argued against the behaviorism of B.F. Skinner on the topic of language acquisition. One of his most famous arguments is the "poverty of the stimulus," i.e., that children acquire language with insufficient input from the environment for language to be learned entirely by a behaviorist stimulus-response mechanism. This argument remains a topic of controversy, especially among psychologists and linguists who take a more empiricist approach. Chomsky posited an innate "language acquisition device," a "mental organ" that allowed for the derivation of syntactical structure and grammatical rules of language. These phenomena were thought to play a central role in a "Universal Grammar." However, Chomsky has subsequently modified some of his arguments, reformulating generative grammar in terms of what became known as the "minimalist program," inspired Imre Lakatos' idea of a research program, an attempt to synthesize the positions of Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn.

That Chomsky has significantly dominated his field is reflected in his prominence in the most widely used book in introductory linguistics by Fromkin et al., now in its 10th edition. Additionally, Chomsky heavily influenced linguists and fellow public intellectuals Steven Pinker. Some empiricist critics of Chomsky, such as Michael Tomasello, maintain that language does have a biological basis, but that this basis is in the ability to imitate rather than in any mechanisms designed explicitly for verbal language. Regardless of how you feel about his theories, Chomsky remains perhaps the most influential linguist of all time, and is sometimes referred to as "the father of modern linguistics."

The Chomsky Rule
We Americans are to blame. The "Chomsky Rule" is an informal name for the ethical position of prioritizing political criticism of that country (usually where one is a citizen) where one has political influence instead of criticizing other nations where one has little or none. The concept became especially controversial around 2015. The Chomsky quote that generated the rule is:

Activist journalist Glenn Greenwald often invokes the Chomsky rule and has popularized it, which has garnered attacks on both men who are frequently targeted together. In the context of the American and British press's frenzied orgy of condemnations of Ecuador's poor record on press freedoms — prompted by that nation's offer of asylum to Julian Assange — Greenwald writes:

Detractors sometimes accuse those invoking the Chomsky Rule of secretly supporting everyone from Putin to Al Qaeda to DAESH. This is fallacious. Criticism is one area does not necessarily imply support for another position. Focusing on the wrongdoing of the world's only superpower and its allies might be a critically missing addition to the public discussion in the country where the wrongdoing can be stopped or reined in by an informed citizenry. Relatedly, whataboutery is commonly deployed against those who follow the Chomsky Rule.

However, it is not always true that a greater positive impact can be achieved by criticizing one's own government. Activists, writers, and journalists can help improve situations and increase pressure on foreign governments, either directly through international media or by influencing their own governments to speak out against human rights violations in other countries. It depends on the circumstances. There is, however, a tendency to ignore human rights violations coming from the U.S. and its allies, and their alleged good intentions are all too often readily accepted and regurgitated by the American media.

Manufacturing consent
Perhaps Chomsky's most famous political book (co-authored with Edward Herman) is Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media,  (ISBN 0-375-71449-9) published in 1988, and which many on the left consider "canonical" on the proposition that "what goes viral in the U.S. media...[is] what is politically convenient for the U.S. government." Somewhat surprisingly, the New York Times gave the book a generally positive review, although also stating the book contains 'overstatements'.

The book shares its title with a documentary film that has become a popular introductory text to Chomsky's work, even though Chomsky finds aspects of it irritating. He has also written dozens of books critical of United States foreign policy.

Chomsky believes that major corporations, investment firms, and the federal government occupy a concentrated political ruling class which owns mainstream media outlets. He believes they operate collectively for their own selfish interest, putting constraint on the breadth of political discourse found in mainstream media. Chomsky states that smaller media outlets follow the lede of larger outlets, and so also play a role in servicing elite interests. To the extent markets play a role in media indoctrination, Chomsky believes that the advertizing nature of mass media outlets also skews the content of mass media to serve wealthy interests. Chomsky says this happens because of the higher purchasing power of wealthy Americans.

Chomsky believes the college educated class, for example white collar professionals, are particularly indoctrinated by elite interests. He says this happens because the American ruling class feels they need their consent in political decision making. He also believes that all those outside the college educated class are propagandized instead to not care about political decision making.

He states that the American mainstream media has a rationale to pretend to lean liberal, as they fear liberal progress beyond what they sanction. He suggests this is why American mainstream media appears to have a liberal bias.

The American right-wing has recently reiterated themes present in Chomsky's media analysis. Particularly themes about college student indoctrination and "NPC" society being only supportive of the "current media thing". They depart from the book however in their analysis of this alleged phenomena, instead insinuating that programmed media narratives are there to promote "runaway liberalism" rather than to stifle liberal progress.

Anti-postmodernism
Chomsky is opposed to postmodernism, to put it mildly, going as far as to compare postmodernist critiques of "white male science" to the Deutsche Physik of Nazi Germany and its attack on "Jewish physics". He is, additionally, opposed to Slavoj Žižek. In an interview in 2013, he expands:

On conspiracies
Chomsky does not accept Illuminati conspiracy theories or the conspiracy theory surrounding the September 11 attacks and regards the Federal Reserve, Trilateral Commission, and Bilderberg Group as organizations of no real significance or threat. This has led to many wingnut conspiracy theorists arguing that Chomsky is, in fact, a tool of the New World Order, being used to brainwash the masses into accepting leftist ideas. Or something like that. A few members of the conspiracy idiot squad We Are Change even once went to the extent of protesting a Chomsky speaking engagement, expressing these sentiments.

Geopolitics and selective genocide denial
When atrocities were done and still happening, Chomsky was reluctant to apply the word "genocide" to the massacres of Srebrenica and Kosovo. He once stated: The Srebrenica case, in fact, was the first case in which an individual, Bosnian Serb general Radislav Krstic, was found guilty of the crime of genocide. Chomsky argues that there has been a 'vulgar politicization of the word "genocide"', which is now 'so extreme' that he rarely uses the word at all. Chomsky defended Milosevic from blame for the Srebenica massacre, and he elaborated on his views on the conflict in his 1999 book The New Military Humanism: Lessons from Kosovo. This seems to be due to his own use of the aforementioned "Chomsky Rule" in which he blames the U.S. and NATO intervention first and foremost.

In a 2009 interview by George McLeod of The Phnom Penh Post, Chomsky was ambivalent about international trials for perpetrators of the Cambodian Genocide by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge (KR), saying "after all, an international trial that doesn’t take into account Henry Kissinger or the other authors of the American bombing and the support of the KR after they were kicked out of the country – that’s just a farce". Chomsky frequently objects to the West — and the United States in particular — not being held accountable for war crimes or crimes against humanity, while less powerful nations are. For instance, the US was a signatory member of the 1998, which instituted an international tribune, the ICC, dedicated to prosecuting war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. The US later withdrew, attempting to shield war criminals and crimes against humanity perpetrated by US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

On the other hand, Chomsky did write shortly after the Vietnam War ended "the record of atrocities in Cambodia is substantial and often gruesome", as well as that "When the facts are in, it may turn out that the more extreme condemnations were in fact correct." Whatever responsibility he laid at the feet of the United States, he did not deny that a large atrocity had taken place in Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge. However, he claims that 1.2 million were killed by the Khmer Rouge and the other 800,000 were killed by American bombings, excavation of mass graves indicates at least 1,386,734 were executed by the Khmer Rouge and outside of those graves 2.18 million were killed by the Khmer Rouge overall and "only" between 30,000 and 500,000 were killed in the U.S. bombing of Cambodia so Chomsky's statistics are still wrong. Chomsky's fans have defended this by claiming that those interred in the mass graves known as could actually have been killed by American bombers. He has been heavily criticized for this, particularly due to downplaying the number of dead long after they had been definitively confirmed.

Freedom of expression and the press
Chomsky's essay, 'Some Elementary Comments on the Rights of Freedom of Expression', appeared as an introduction to a Holocaust denial book by French writer Robert Faurisson, without Chomsky's knowledge or approval. Responding to a request for comment in a climate of attacks on Faurisson, Chomsky defended Faurisson's right to express and publish his opinions on the grounds that freedom of speech must be extended to all viewpoints, no matter how unpopular or fallacious.

In the wake of the 2015 Charlie Hebdo massacre, Chomsky controversially compared the media and public reactions to those shootings on the one hand, and on the other, the 1999 NATO bombing of Radio Serbia's headquarters during the Kosovo War. Chomsky accused the Western media of hypocrisy for denouncing only the former. But his analysis of media double standards in rallying to the cause of press freedom went well beyond Kosovo:

Anarchistic pragmatism
Despite his stance as an anarchist, Chomsky has been known to advocate things that make him polarizing within anarchist circles. He for instance opposes the classical left-libertarian position of anti-electoralism in favor of active political involvement with state political systems, believing the best way to an anarchist society is through working with systems of power. This militant adherence to pragmatism has resulted in him supporting some very horrible people which has fueled the polarizing effect he has on other anarchists.

The best illustration of this is Chomsky being a very vocal supporter of the regime of Hugo Chávez. His praise didn't go unnoticed as when, during the 2006 UN session, Hugo Chávez recommended Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival as an important text on the subject of American imperialism. The mention helped give the author some renewed publicity. The two later hit it off, with Chomsky traveling to visit Venezuela in 2009 as an honored guest. Even after the death of Chávez, Chomsky still continues to speak highly of him and his government.

While some anarchists disapprove of Chomsky's affinity for people like Chavez — who wasn't an anarchist — Chomsky holds that many political terms are imprecise. Of anarchism, he declares: "It resists any characterization." Moreover, he accepts the need for some pragmatism:

Another famous example of his pragmatism came when he endorsed Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump after Bernie Sanders lost the primary. He believed in stopping the spread of neo-fascism in America first and foremost because he found fascism to be so dangerous to society that working with the establishment is preferable. Put simply, the Democrats are opportunists who follow the way the wind blows; Republicans are demagogues who work with reactionaries and monsters, so Chomsky, by default, prefers Democrats.

Most other anarchists though reject this kind of approach holding that consistently working with the establishment actually helps to perpetuate state societies and elitism via complicity rather than demolishing them.

But the most outspoken, needless to say, is much more radical. These include, unsurprisingly, hard green anarchists like John Zerzan who not only dislike Chomsky for working with the establishment but hate him even more for his embrace of technology as a means to improve things, including the environment. The fact Chomsky is himself a green anarchist who is well-known for being a staunch advocate of protecting and fixing Earth's ecology is utterly lost on them, or they don't feel he's radical enough. That's because Zerzan is an anarcho-primitivist, which Chomsky is not.

Chomsky and feminism
One issue that at times has been raised about Chomsky by those who support him (or would otherwise) is his comparably lukewarm attitude towards feminism. Indeed, he's only ever tangentially discussed it in any real sense, much to the chagrin of anarcha-feminists. While it's very safe to say that he is in no way anti-feminist or against feminism, he doesn't seem interested in exploring it to the same degree he has with other movements, whatever connotations that might carry.

Responding to an accusation from a former student of his that he was an "old-fashioned patriarch" and "has never really understood what the feminist movement is about", Chomsky chose to contest the idea that feminism constitutes a single movement. He instead stated that he believes it a multitude of separate movements, each with their own goals, and worthy goals. He also implied he had disinterest in the topic and they he may not be familiar enough with the topic.

In a Salon piece, Chomsky is quoted as saying that liberal movements of the 1960s had good goals but were poor in carrying many of them out. He implies that racial desegregation and gender equality movements weren't properly thought out in tactics. With regards to feminism, Chomsky states that a removal of the breadwinner role for many white working men should have come with a worthwhile social role to replace it, but instead the relevant men were faced with increased atomization from broader society. He states this atomization is ok with college professors, but not ok for working class solidarity. Chomsky ultimately thinks that the liberalization tactics of the 1960s didn't take into consideration long-term solidarity concerns.

Chomsky on LGBT rights
Chomsky has stated that LGBT rights were pushed through during the Obama years in spite of the initial opinions of Obama and of Republicans. He stated that Obama "evolved" on the topic due to public opinion, and was willing to concede because it's an "easy concession". Chomsky claimed that LGBT rights don't fundamentally challenge elite power, due to an alleged lack of a class component of LGBT rights. Chomsky claims corporations and big business have no fundamental reservations about LGBT rights as a whole. Chomsky called LGBT rights important, but also said someone having commitment to LGBT rights isn't necessarily displaying commitment to overall civil liberties. Chomsky notably sued the Obama administration on constitutional civil liberties matters, for Obama approving indefinite detention of any suspected terrorist without charge or trial.

Chomsky on cancel culture
Noam Chomsky called cancel culture a common mainstream tactic. Chomsky claims that segments of the American left are appropriating these mainstream tactics to censor right-wing speech, and that this aids right-wing causes. Chomsky claims that much of this type of censorship gives unnecessary publicity to the right-wing and gives them a opportunity to present themselves as reasonable via free speech concerns. Chomsky says that, for example, denying a far-right-winger a speaking opportunity on a college campus is essentially giving them a gift. He instead advises those on the left to set up counter-meetings and rationally work through the individual arguments on the right-wing.

In other interviews, Chomsky has stated this tolerance should not extent to tolerance for explicit calls to violence in private households, but other than that, Chomsky generally encourages against censorship of political argumentation.

Chomsky on antifa
Chomsky has called self-described 'antifa' a "miniscule fringe" of the left. He states that self-described antifa groups don't aid in anti-fascism, are "gifts" to the right-wing, and are self-destructive. He's criticized their use of censoring tactics as well as violence. Like his comments on cancel culture, Chomsky believes these tactics are simply playing out right-wing desires, and that the right-wing is exuberant when given the opportunity to present themselves as a more tolerant force. In other interviews, Chomsky has also stated the right-wing is more brutal in their application of violence than the left, and so testing the right-wing on this matter is usually a bad idea. Instead Chomsky advocates that the left appeal to the common populace and use non-violent tactics whenever possible.

Wingnuts who hate Chomsky
Noam Chomsky has been the bête noire of right-wingers for going on five decades. Batshit crazy David Horowitz detests Chomsky, largely because the latter deeply opposes Horowitz's neoconservative and mindlessly pro-Israel positions. Horowitz runs a site called Discover the Network wherein he lists all the evil libruls plotting to destroy All that is Good and True. Chomsky, of course, enjoys an entry. Additionally, Horowitz and his long-timer partner in lunacy, Peter Collier, edited and published a collection of attacks on Chomsky, a set of tracts titled The Anti-Chomsky Reader, published by Collier's own obscure company.

At his Frontpage magazine site, Horowitz hosts his own anti-Chomsky screeds, as well as those of others. To Horowitz, Chomsky is a man of "psychotic hatred," and a paramount danger to America:

Writing with Jacob Laksin, Horowitz feverishly shrieks about "a second Holocaust of the Jews" in which Hezbollah "can count on Muslim support and apparently the support of American radicals as well," which he claims Chomsky is promoting.

Beyond Horowitz's various swamps, there's a former professional virgin, Ben Shapiro, who informs the world that: "A secular humanist, born a Jew, is still a secular humanist. Noam Chomsky is a Jew, but he is also a twisted and evil thinker..." But on a later occasion, Benny denied Chomsky is a Jew, declaring that Chomsky “is not really Jewish,” and is “Jewish in name only.” (A JINO?) Chomsky is also covered in "vainglorious huckster" Dinesh D'Souza's cheesy, jingoistic Propaganda Film "documentary," America.

Bloviating blowhard Bill O'Reilly would have us know that the kids are not all right! For, because of Chomsky, "many of our children grow up steeped in a toxic brew of negativity, ridicule, and downright anti-Americanism."

Not all who dislike, detest or disagree with Chomsky are wingnuts. Mere neoliberal, pro-Israel fanatics also loathe him and his politics, although some give him credit when they believe it due. New Atheists often also detest Chomsky, as one of their leading voices does.

And if that were not enough, some sane people hold St. Noam Chomsky in contempt, or at least disagree with him.

Osama bin Laden and Chomsky
Osama bin Laden read numerous secular sources he may have disagreed with to better understand American politics, including Chomsky's commentary on American media.

Upon bin Laden's death, Chomsky strongly felt it set a very bad precedent that the murderer had not been given a trial and was instead assassinated. Chomsky stated that while Bin Laden committed a crime, his assassination "violat[ed] elementary norms of international law."

Alex Jones and Chomsky
Alex Jones had a positive view of Chomsky's media analysis, appreciating how it claimed the government and the elite were running the media. He had brought Chomsky on his show at least once to promote Chomsky's books before Jones became fully enmeshed with the Republican Party. However, as Alex doesn't share Chomsky's overall politics and is combative, he disparaged Chomsky after plugging his work.

Critics of Chomsky call Chomsky conspiratorial, while others claim Chomsky is not alleging conspiracy in his media analysis, but rather informal institutional alliances. Defenders of Chomsky claim there is no need for active conspiracy for Chomsky's analyses to be correct.

Chomsky and email
Part of Chomsky's appeal is that he answers email from just about anyone and has been doing so for decades. This has led to people sending in various pranks and odd questions into Chomsky's inbox over the years, which hasn't deterred Chomsky much from answering emails. Due to Chomsky occasionally stating a politically incorrect or unanticipated opinion in emails about topical issues, the leaders of reddit.com/r/chomsky have at times banned circulation of email responses from Chomsky.

Chomsky and Epstein
In April 2023, Jeffrey Epstein's private calendar was revealed to the public, with several high profile individuals revealed to have scheduling meetings with Epstein, such as Woody Allen (a washed up Hollywood sex offender) and Ehud Barak (the former prime minister of Israel). Chomsky was also one of the names revealed to be scheduled meeting with Epstein. When asked about this by reporters, Chomsky responded by saying "none of your business".