[Peace-discuss] Criticism of Chomsky?!

[Morton K.Brussel]

Take a look at ZNET for an interesting criticism of Chomsky: I append 
only a bit of it, the beginning and the end.

April 27, 2004

  Talking Back to Chomsky

  By Cynthia Peters

  Our social change movements have benefited enormously from the work of 
Noam Chomsky. The incredible energy he brings to his speaking and 
writing means that millions have been exposed to his analysis of U.S. 
foreign and domestic policy. But he has one favorite rhetorical device 
that always makes me nervous. He'll suggest that something is obvious. 
Maybe he doesn't realize how much this puts people on the defensive. 
One can't help but wonder, "But what if it's not obvious to me?"

  If Chomsky considers something to be obvious, and yet I puzzle over 
it, does that mean I'm stupid? Take, for example, the question he gets 
asked at the end of every talk. He says he gets letters about it every 
day. When I worked at South End Press in the 1980s, we used to ask him 
to include something about it at the end of his lengthy denunciations 
of U.S. imperial policy in Central America and the Middle East. If you 
go to these books, you'll find, after 600 pages of analysis, a short 
paragraph about what I am talking about.

  It's the question of what individuals can do.

  And Chomsky thinks it's obvious. In an interview with David Barsamian 
in the May 2004 issue of the Progressive, he says, "The fact is, we can 
do just about anything. There is no difficulty, wherever you are, in 
finding groups that are working hard on things that concern you."

  On the one hand, he is right of course. There is no alternative to 
joining groups, which I take to mean organizing. And on my more hopeful 
days, I think that indeed the problem is that too many people just 
don't understand this obvious fact. They think that teaching kids to 
share and depriving their sons of toy guns is political work. They 
think that volunteering at the shelter and practicing "random acts of 
kindness" is going to bring about social change. They think that 
wearing hemp and riding their bikes to the food co-op can help build a 
better world.

  If lots and lots of people think this, and we can reach them and 
convince them that social change is not going to come about via random 
and individual gestures -- if that's the piece that's holding them back 
from real organizing -- then we're in luck. Our mission is 
straightforward. We just have to be like Chomsky and go around telling 
people to get busy, the path is clear, the array of organizations to 
join or create is obvious.

  But it strikes me that that is not what is holding people back. It 
strikes me that it is not at all obvious what we should do, and that by 
implying that it is, we risk making people feel stupid, when in fact 
they are quite right to ask the question, "What should I do?"
....
And to conclude, she writes:

In a Boston Globe book review (April 25, 2004), George Scialabba called 
Chomsky "America's most useful citizen." I don't disagree. He has laid 
bare the workings of the beast and explained its functioning -- 
critical components of any social change activist's toolbox. But I wish 
he would stop implying that how an individual responds to this beast is 
so obvious. If we think it's so obvious, we won't prepare ourselves for 
the problems, especially the three biggest ones explained above. We 
will not be effective. And we won't begin to build the kind of 
movements that will be a match for the beast unless we take these 
problems seriously and address them.
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