The story of Noam Chomsky’s transfiguration from an innovative professor of linguistics into an international left-wing idol has been told and re-told. He is an “anarchist,” we are informed, which he defines as a “libertarian socialist.” He is a free speech absolutist, we are reminded whenever a protest is lodged about his relationship to Holocaust denial and Robert Faurrison. And for twenty-five years he has been an indefatigable fighter against U.S. foreign policy, writing books faster than many people read the Sunday paper and giving speeches at every available venue. He has often skewered the hypocrisy of American elites, but at the same time he has demonstrated little understanding of the dynamics at work among the American people. For two decades, Chomsky has repeatedly sung one analytical note. Sometimes he hits the right target. Other times he has been remarkably tone deaf. One note. One idea. By this light Chomsky is of the quintessential type of American so disparaged by the antifa activist on the bus from Frankfurt to Berlin. Yet, Chomsky is loved by the German Left. Who can forget that night in May 1990 at the university in Hamburg. With “foreigners” being burned out of their homes and attacked in every city, with national socialists atop the opera house in Leipzig behind signs reading “U.S. and U.S.S.R Out,” and German justice infamously blind in the right eye—Chomsky thrilled several thousand German students with his rousing condemnation of…U.S. imperialism.
It is here, at the confluence of anti-globalism and anti-imperialism, that Chomsky is most important. Precisely the spot in Europe that the Nation failed to investigate. In recent years, when asked if he is in fact “anti-American,” Chomsky has not replied in either the affirmative or the negative. Rather, he has likened the charge to that used against dissidents in the old Soviet Union, who were accused of being “anti-Soviet.” The question itself, Chomsky has contended, reflects “deep totalitarian commitments.” As a point of fact, however, Chomsky, like other anti-American Americans, fails to find a democratic or progressive thread within the American national narrative. Certainly, Chomsky has celebrated the movements of the 1960s. But consider this moment, when a reporter asked Chomsky to describe “democracy.”
“Democracy has two quite different meanings,” he said. “There’s the dictionary meaning and then there is the meaning that is used for purposes of power and profit.” As an example of the latter, Chomsky cited the “business sectors that run the United States.” As examples of the former, he cited Guatemala in the early 1950s (before a CIA coup-invasion) and the Sandinista’s Nicaragua in the early 1980s. He did not mention the Reconstruction period so carefully excavated by Eric Foner. He did not mention the industrial labor movements that culminated in the formation of the CIO in the 1930s. His frame of reference for democracy remains completely in the Third World. And as anti-imperialism has become infused with an irrational anti-Americanism (and at moments an even more irrational anti-Semitism), Chomsky remains blind to these developments.
Consider in this regard Noam Chomsky’s relationship with Robert Faurisson, a French literature professor who helped pioneer the Holocaust denial movement in France. It is not necessary to repeat the charges and counter-charges here. Suffice it to state the relevant facts: In 1979, Chomsky signed a petition defending Faurisson from dismissal from his post at the University of Lyons-2. When challenged about his signature, Chomsky wrote a brief (approximately 2,000 words) note claiming that he did so on both free speech grounds and to promote academic freedom. He would make the same defense for any university professor, he later said, including those who might reasonably be considered war criminals in Vietnam. The note was then used by Faurisson as an introduction to his book, Memoire en Defense, published in 1980. Chomsky says the note was used without his permission, but it did not matter; he stood by his defense of academic freedom. Chomsky also claimed he had not read Faurisson’s book; but the contents did not matter either.
Certainly, Chomsky is not a neo-Nazi. Neither does Chomsky claim, as Faurisson does, that the Holocaust is a hoax, (although Chomsky most certainly does not capitalize the H in Holocaust and give the event its proper name). Neither does this incident alone indicate that Chomsky is an anti-Semite. What it does demonstrate, however, is that Chomsky does not recognize even the most obvious forms of anti-Semitism. In this note cum introduction Chomsky wrote: “…is it true that Faurisson is an anti-Semite or a neo-Nazi? As noted earlier, I do not know his work very well. But from what I have read—largely as a result of the attacks on him—I find no evidence to support either conclusion…As far as I can determine, he is a relatively apolitical liberal of some sort.” A year later, Chomsky published a detailed defense of his defense of Faurrison; and two decades later both documents were still available (without further comment) on a website devoted to archiving Chomsky’s work.
The issue being delineated here is not whether Chomsky believes that anti-Semites have the right to free expression. Manifestly, he does, and his views on this point are much like those of other civil libertarians in the United States. Rather, the issue here is that Chomsky contends that he did not see in Faurisson’s writings on the Holocaust, even the contention that it is a “Zionist lie,” any evidence of anti-Semitism. (Further, Chomsky believes the man is some sort of liberal.) Simply put, on the issue of anti-Semitism, Chomsky is blind in both the left eye and the right eye. Two questions are then posed for left-wing intellectuals and anti-globalist street activists: Is it this man and this analysis that you want to follow when marching against war in Iraq or in opposition to free trade treaties? If irrational anti-Americanism becomes tinged with anti-Semitism, would Chomsky recognize it? Based on the evidence, the answer is an obvious no.
Examples abound of the self-contradictory nature of American national identity and its two-minded expression in the popular culture. But consider in conclusion the meaning of the Dixie Chicks, three white women whose country tunes and bluegrass instrumentation have sold millions of records (CDs) in a part of the music industry known for and dominated by social and cultural conservatives. The band’s very name conjures up images of the Old South, with its racist underpinnings and paternalistic treatment of young white women. Yet the “Chicks” fans are overwhelming—but not exclusively—young and female and most assuredly white. And they largely reside outside the liberal megalopolis stretching from Washington, D.C. to Boston. They live and their fans live in the American heartland. So, when lead singer Natalie Maines made a well-publicized criticism of President Bush before an audience in Great Britain, the Chicks were condemned as “un-American” and “anti-American” by conservative critics high and low. Disc jockeys kept their music off the radio. Their CDs were burned in public pyres and boycotts were promised of their concerts. For a brief moment the country music industry almost turned its self into a witch hunting, dissident-hating cultural lynching party. This was the America that every left leaning anti-American the world over knows and loathes.
The Dixie Chicks first response was to publicly apologize for the remark about the President, and to take other humbling, even self-demeaning measures. But a second response came when they began touring the cities and towns of the Midwest and South. Their concerts became like political rallies, with background videos playing footage from the black freedom marches of the 1960s and civil rights demonstrations by gay men and lesbians in the 1970s. The lead singer wore a shirt with “Free Natalie” in large letters across the front. And each concert was sold out. If there was an actual boycott, it had no effect. This was one aspect of American life most casually ignored by the left. Buried deep in the heartland, it springs to life in ways that baffle the most ardent anti-American. If anything, the Dixie Chicks are a reminder that two conflicting hearts beat in the American breast, and two contradictory thoughts are necessary to be able to understand their meaning.
References
Marquis, Christopher. „World’s View of U.S. Sours After Iraq War, Poll Finds.“ New York Times . 4 June 2003. “Views of A Changing World“ June 2003. The Pew Research Center for The People & The Press. www.people-press.org.
„USA Oui! Bush Non! How Europeans See America.“ By Eric Alterman. The Nation. 10 February 2003.
Pipes, Daniel. „Profs Who Hate America.“ New York Post. 12 November 2002.
In pursuing it Popular Front strategy in the 1930s, the Communist Party did not formally repudiate its position that a distinct Black Belt nation existed in the South, composed in the main of black peasants. It did, however, emphasize organizing black steel workers in Alabama and Sharecroppers in Arkansas along class lines during this period. And it should be noted that black nationalism has itself had two sides, including a more Americanist tendency at-odds with a purely Pan-Africanist trend.
„Is Chomsky ‘anti-American’?“ Interview by Jacklyn Martin. Published 9 December 2002 The Herald Arkansas State University.
„Noam Chomsky Anarchy in the USA“ Rolling Stone May 28, 1992. interview and article by Charles M. Young.
Chomsky, Noam. „Some Elementary Comments on The Rights of Freedom of Expression.“
Chomsky, Noam. „His Right to Say It.“ The Nation. February 28, 1981.
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