[Peace-discuss] The Responsibility of Intellectuals, Redux

[C. G. Estabrook]

[It is a great piece, as was the original, many years ago.  Last year Chomsky 
answered a question form a journalist as follows. --CGE]



Q. Finally, why have you criticised the formula 'to speak truth to power,' which 
was used by the late Edward Said to describe the role of intellectuals?

A. That's actually a Quaker slogan, and I like the Quakers and I do a lot of 
things with them, but I don't agree with the slogan. First of all, you don't 
have to speak truth to power, because they know it already. And secondly, you 
don't speak truth to anybody, that's too arrogant. What you do is join with 
people and try to find the truth, so you listen to them and tell them what you 
think and so on, and you try to encourage people to think for themselves.

The ones you are concerned with are the victims, not the powerful, so the slogan 
ought to be to engage with the powerless and help them and help yourself to find 
the truth. It's not an easy slogan to formulate in five words, but I think it's 
the right one.



On 9/9/11 10:05 AM, E. Wayne Johnson wrote:
> It's a great piece.
>
> There seem to be 4 kinds of "intellectuals".
>
> 1) There are those who really understand what is going on and are willing to 
> speak truth to power.
>
> 2) There are those who know the truth and have "sold their birthright for a 
> mess of red pottage"
> and have become pawns for the itching ear crowd.
>
> There are those who ain't quite woke up yet and 3) may or 4) may not be willing.
>
>
>
>
> On 9/9/2011 8:41 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>> Noam Chomsky - The Responsibility of Intellectuals, Redux: Using Privilege to 
>> Challenge the State
>>
>> Since we often cannot see what is happening before our eyes, it is perhaps 
>> not too surprising that what is at a slight distance removed is utterly 
>> invisible. We have just witnessed an instructive example: President Obama’s 
>> dispatch of 79 commandos into Pakistan on May 1 to carry out what was 
>> evidently a planned assassination of the prime suspect in the terrorist 
>> atrocities of 9/11, Osama bin Laden. Though the target of the operation, 
>> unarmed and with no protection, could easily have been apprehended, he was 
>> simply murdered, his body dumped at sea without autopsy. The action was 
>> deemed “just and necessary” in the liberal press. There will be no trial, as 
>> there was in the case of Nazi criminals—a fact not overlooked by legal 
>> authorities abroad who approve of the operation but object to the procedure. 
>> As Elaine Scarry reminds us, the prohibition of assassination in 
>> international law traces back to a forceful denunciation of the practice by 
>> Abraham Lincoln, who condemned the call for assassination as “international 
>> outlawry” in 1863, an “outrage,” which “civilized nations” view with “horror” 
>> and merits the “sternest retaliation”...
>>