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Title: Chronicles of Dissent by Noam Chomsky, David Barsamian ISBN: 0-9628838-8-3 Publisher: Common Courage Press Pub. Date: 01 August, 1992 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (8 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Orwell + Bertrand Russell = Chomsky
Comment: In order ro get a real flavour of this book i would invite the reader to check out the sample pages provided - ...
The first thing that must be said is that the purpose of the interviews is to get Chomsky to expand on and develop some of the thinking that informs his work. Thus whereas his work is heavy with empirical detail, the interview format permits more reflective and general observations. The reader (assumed to be basically sympathetic to Chomsky's work) is here permited to se some of the ideas and theoretical arguments which underlie and arise from the work. Any book, of course, presupposes a certian readership - that is pretty much a truism - so there is nothing wrong with assuming a basically sympathetic readership in this case. I mention this, only because any of you out there utterly antipathetic to Chomsky and expecting the interviewer to (attempt to) refute the vernerable old chap will be doubtless disappointed. But of course, I'm being silly, because those of you utterly opposed to Chomsky and disamissive of his work won't of course be wasting your time reading this book - or this review. Those of you, by contrast, with a serious interest in Chomsky's work but looking for lots of empirical data would be best off looking at some of his other stuff first. Chomsky provides immense evidence for each and everyone of his propositions.
Rating: 1
Summary: Long on indignation, short on inquiry
Comment: This book comprises a series of interviews conducted with Noam Chomsky from the late 1970s through to aftermath of the Gulf War. In a sentimental introduction, Alexander Cockburn states that "Chomsky's greatest virtue is that his fundamental message is a simple one". Chomsky's message is indeed simple, though I am not sure that this should necessarily be counted a virtue rather than a debilitating weakness: the book is testament to a single animating principle, namely the excoriation of western democracies, without so much as a pretence of considering countervailing evidence. The interviews are in fact more properly characterised as a set of deferential supplications where no source is referenced by Chomsky and no assertion is challenged by his interlocutors. This is rarely a path to enlightenment.
The first interview is nominally devoted to Chomsky's academic specialism, linguistics, but the reader should prepare for disappointment. In reality it comprises only Chomsky's traditional complaints against America and Israel - and that forms the substance of the whole book. But if the complaints are traditional, the manner of their exposition becomes increasingly and unimpressively strident. Chomsky declares that, mirabile dictu, "There is such a thing as international terrorism." And who is a principal progenitor of terrorism? Why, "the United States is one of the main sponsors of it", of course. Chomsky neither defines his terms nor gives any evidence for this judgement save for complaining at US efforts in the 1960s - early in the 1960s, for the missile crisis initiated by Khrushchev secured the tacit renunciation of such efforts - to overthrow Castro's dictatorship in Cuba. Now, there are strictly pragmatic arguments for allowing Castro to oppress and impoverish Cuba's people without external hindrance, but it is difficult to see any ethical reason to do so, for in no sense could the people under such a system be said to be exercising self-determination. Moreover, given that Castro was a strong advocate during the Cuban Missile Crisis of launching a nuclear first strike against the US (on 26 October 1962 he sent a cable to Khrushchev urging such an "act of legitimate defence, however harsh and terrible the solution would be"), there genuinely was a clear case for US preventive war against his regime. Yet Chomsky, with apparent indifference to these geo-political realities, damns US actions as 'terrorism'. As often happens, the reader who lacks a historical background might be susceptible to this sort of rhetoric, but it does not withstand critical scrutiny and is far from the levels of scholarship that ought to be axiomatic for someone in Chomsky's position.
The quality of analysis does not improve as the book goes on. Chomsky's insistent theme, as I say, is the supposed iniquities of Israel; he advances this notion with scant substantiation but a great deal of abuse. He condemns the Anti-Defamation League and Alan Dershowitz in terms that indicate a revealing defensiveness on his part (apparently they "defame and intimidate and silence people who criticise current Israeli policies" - an absurd charge given the well-known eagerness of Dershowitz to engage Israel's vituperative opponents in debate), but he goes far beyond the bounds of reasonable polemic when he describes the prosecutor of Adolf Eichmann, Gideon Hausner, as "us[ing] this terminology which is in fact rather reminiscent of Eichmann himself" (Hauser had apparently referred to the PLO, reasonably enough given its record of terrorism, as a cancer). He believes US support for Israel is founded on considerations purely of realpolitik, portraying Israel as a "strategic asset" for the US. Indeed, Israel is a strategic asset for the US, being the only state in the region to hold free elections and to have an independent judiciary, but there is more to it than that. Chomsky maintains all states have a common character - "they are instruments of power and violence, that's true of all states" - and thereby manages to miss the huge, qualitative difference between a liberal democracy like the US (or Great Britain, or Israel) and a totalitarian state like Iraq or Cuba. Certainly democratic states need to exercise force in their defence against terrorism, as Israel has had to do for decades, but that force is limited and accountable, rather than indiscriminate and aimed at civilians. These are rather basic questions of political sociology and history, and they receive literally no acknowledgement in this book.
One surprising aspect of the book is that it refers to - if only to brush off - certain aspects of Chomsky's career that more than anything have damaged him in the eyes of former sympathisers. Barsamian refers to "your apologia for Nazi and Khmer Rouge genocide". Having thus been presented with a convenient straw man to knock down, Chomsky waxes indignant about these charges. The problem is that no one has ever made them. The particular comments of Chomsky that earned him notoriety were an indulgent description of the views of a Holocaust denier, Robert Faurisson, not (as Chomsky claims here) a defence of free speech, and attempts to discredit the accounts by Cambodian refugees of Khmer Rouge genocide - which accounts were in fact horribly accurate.
There is much else in this book, but it rarely rises above the level of calling other people names. Many of those Chomsky disapproves of are designated 'racist'. Abba Eban, former Foreign Minister of Israel, is apparently a racist for making the unexceptionable and irrefutable judgement that the Palestinian leadership, which has three times rejected the offer of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, has 'never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity'. The New Republic, a bastion of American liberalism, is of course 'outright racist' - apparently because it disagrees with Chomsky's denigration of Israel. A Christian religious broadcast is 'typical of a racist culture'. To begin with, the effect of this sort of stuff is comic, but after a while merely becomes banal. Like the book itself.
Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent Intro to Chomsky
Comment: I found this book more-or-less by accident, not realizing just what I was getting into. I was in 2nd year university I believe, and found this name Chomsky came up on many of the topical searches I would look up at the university library, with evocative (provocative?!?) titles like "deterring Democracy" "the Washington Connection and Third World Fascism" etc... I was curious. I have always been a seeker of truth, and have always been skeptical of power and its abuses and the fact that many, if not most, of the people I knew shared this scepticism, yet media never talked about what to all of us was plainly obvious. I actually did not take any of Chomsky's books out (so many it seemed kind of overwhelming), but I found one in a bookstore, chronicles of dissent. Interviews. Seemed like a good introduction. Talked about the Gulf war which was just ended and which I was really keen on learning more about. This event really started to make me wonder what in the hell was wrong with the world.
I bought it for myself as a Christmas gift. I read it in a few days. I was so fascinated that someone could have such insight, such a good memory for history, economics, such a way of looking at events and facts from different angles than are normally presented. Much of what he said summed up (much more articulately of course) what had been going through my head over the past few formative years. Why doesn't everyone know about and read this guy I wondered. You find out pretty quickly after discovering Chomsky that he certainly has his share of detractors (read some of the reviews of recent works ie 9/11 for example!) So I occasionally read his detractors as well, and I must say they are seldom as convincing as he is, and he stands on a much higher moral ground than most (all?) of them, a voice of sanity in a wilderness of deception, propaganda and ideology. They seem to mostly repeat US government propaganda and try to call Chomsky an apologist for genocide, which is one of the biggest jokes I can imagine. Chomsky is merciless in his defense of real freedom, and in his denunciation of tyranny. A common thread in all he says and writes is that we (the west) must judge ourselves with the same (even higher he argues) standards as we judge our enemies, but that in no instance is this ever done by the intelligentsia community, becoming basically apologists for state atrocities and violence. This seems so obvious to me, yet there are several lunatics out there who criticise (even lambaste) him for suggesting that our crimes are anywhere near as significant as "theirs" (whoever the "them" of the month happens to be) He can write a meticulously well documented book on the effects of American intervention in Vietnam (ie many many corpses), and the some wacko criticises him for not talking about all of communist atrocities in the world even though that is not the topic of his book! His point is that communist atrocities are very well documented (occasionally fabricated even!) as they are the official enemy. He chooses to focus his attention on atrocties carried out by his own government, something he feels his words and actions may be able to influence.
Noam Chomsky is feared as he exposes the truth, and something I have learned since nearly 10 years ago when I first read this book (a good reference to have on hand to this day I might add), is that people are terrified of the truth. They would rather believe government propaganda and that governments are looking out for their best interests rather than the truths which Chomsky exposes in great detail in the piles of political books he has written. This series of interviews provides a good intro, and is easier to read than his heavily footnoted books, which can be admittedly difficult to slog through (though definitely worth it as well) and brings up points that are found in more detail in his books for the more interested, or people skeptical of his interviews (something he encourages by the way). Highly recommended to anyone who is a skeptic.
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Title: Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance (The American Empire Project) by Noam Chomsky ISBN: 0805074007 Publisher: Metropolitan Books Pub. Date: 01 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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Title: Deterring Democracy by Noam Chomsky ISBN: 0374523495 Publisher: Hill & Wang Pub. Date: 01 April, 1992 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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Title: Powers and Prospects: Reflections on Human Nature and the Social Order by Noam Chomsky ISBN: 089608535X Publisher: South End Press Pub. Date: 01 May, 1996 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians by Noam Chomsky ISBN: 0896086011 Publisher: South End Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 1999 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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Title: Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America's Perilous Path in the Middle East by Rashid Khalidi ISBN: 0807002348 Publisher: Beacon Press Pub. Date: 01 April, 2004 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
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