[Peace-discuss] [sf-core] Fw: Orthodoxy vs. style

[C. G. Estabrook]

Chomsky of course has spent as much time as anyone writing about media control in the the US, before and after "Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media" (1988).

He's contrasting the situation in the US with the rest of the world.

The US had to pioneer new forms of propaganda (directed at its own citizens) precisely because it could not rely on a controlled press, as in the 20th century totalitarianisms.

That produces the paradoxical situation that Soviet readers often didn't believe their press because they knew it was controlled, but Americans tend to believe their press because the means of control are not so obvious.
 

On Mar 24, 2013, at 2:14 PM, David Johnson <dlj725 at hughes.net> wrote:

> Carl,
> 
> I would disagree with Chomsky on this point ;
> 
> "So, yes, the United States is a very free country, in fact it’s the freest 
> country in the world. I don’t think freedom of speech, for example, is 
> protected anywhere in the world as much as it is here."
> 
> When dissident MAJORITY opinion is blocked access to the media, than there 
> is NO freedom of speech.
> 
> When importent news stories are supressed and ignored there is NO freedom of 
> speech.
> 
> When money buys access to the media for corporations and the wealthy, while 
> at the same time even when citizen groups raise the money to run commercial 
> statements of fact and the corporate media REFUSES to air the commercial, 
> then there is NO freedom of speech.
> 
> When elections are rigged via electronic corporate controlled voting 
> nachines and
> massive levels of voter disenfranchisement is allowed to happen with no 
> legal sanctions, then there is NO democracy.
> 
> When third parties are blocked access to being on the ballot by means of 
> ridiculous requirements that the dems and the repubs are not subjected to, 
> then there is NO democracy.
> 
> When third party candidates are blocked access to being in televised 
> debates, then there is NO democracy.
> 
> When people are denied the right to vote for the rest of their life in 
> certain states, because of PAST criminal convictions  then there is NO 
> democracy.
> 
> When the Supreme Court appoints a President instead of allowing a re-run of 
> a corrupt election, then there is NO democracy.
> 
> When there are only two major political parties, that agree on most issues 
> and protect each other, then there is no opposition party and hence NO 
> democracy.
> 
> When the government has the legal " right " to arrest and imprison and even 
> MURDER a citizen and not allow habeous corpus rights, then there is NO 
> democracy.
> 
> I also want to say that I think a distinction needs to be made between " 
> liberal " as opposed to " Leftist ".
> A liberal may want to reduce suffering and make society in general a little 
> more just, but a liberal does NOT want to enpower working people, or end 
> class priviledge / advantages or end corporate dominance, nor even consider 
> eliminating capitalism.
> 
> Of course the definition of terminology is always a problem.
> Ask ten people on the street to define the following terms : " Socialism " , 
> " capitalism ",
> " liberal ", " conservative ", and one will get an interesting variety of 
> definitions.
> 
> Many good intentioned people say they are " liberals ", but do not 
> necessarily support the positions or actions of those in the " liberal 
> ruling class ", as defined by Chris Hedges in " Death of the Liberal Class 
> ".
> That is, those in positions of national power in ; Churches, Journalism, The 
> Arts, Labor Unions, Non-Profit Advocacy Groups  etc..
> Often times those in these above mentioned positions will do things that go 
> against and undermine their ; parishioners, members, etc. and the stated 
> objectives of their organization or profession.
> 
> The terms " Left-wing " and " Right-wing " as you probably know, originated 
> in post revolutionary France, describing the elected members of the 
> parliament. Those who sat on the left of the chamber represented the 
> interests of ; Working people, Peasant farmers, small shop owners / 
> self-employed. Those who sat on the right of the chamber represented the 
> interests of those with wealth.
> 
> David J.
> 
> 
> In order to have a REAL democracy, one must have accurate information for 
> the citizenry to be able to make good decisions.
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "C. G. Estabrook" <carl at newsfromneptune.com>
> To: "David Johnson" <dlj725 at hughes.net>
> Cc: "sf-core" <sf-core at yahoogroups.com>; "Mike Lehman" 
> <rebelmike at earthlink.net>
> Sent: Sunday, March 24, 2013 12:02 PM
> Subject: Re: [sf-core] Fw: [Peace-discuss] Orthodoxy vs. style
> 
> 
> Chomsky said the following in an interview five years ago:
> 
> "I should say that the place where I am most feared and despised is probably 
> in left liberal intellectual circles. If you want to see a graphic 
> indication of this, take a look at one of my favorite journal covers, which 
> is framed and posted right outside my door. It’s the more or less official 
> journal of left liberal intellectuals, The American Prospect, and the cover 
> depicts the terrible circumstances in which they try to survive – the 
> enormous forces that are virtually destroying them.
> 
> "In the picture, two figures are depicted; two faces, sneering and angry. On 
> one side is Dick Cheney and the Pentagon, on the other side is me. The left 
> liberal intellectuals are caught between these two huge forces. This 
> depiction is indicative of the paranoia and concern that there might be some 
> small break in orthodoxy. The liberal intellectuals (and not just in the 
> United States) are typically the guardians at the gates: we’ll go this far, 
> but not one millimeter farther; and it’s terrifying to think that somebody 
> might go a millimeter farther. This extends throughout the major media too. 
> So, yes, the United States is a very free country, in fact it’s the freest 
> country in the world. I don’t think freedom of speech, for example, is 
> protected anywhere in the world as much as it is here. But it’s a very 
> managed society, it’s a business-run society, carefully managed, with strict 
> doctrinal requirements and no deviation tolerated – this would be too 
> dangerous.
> 
> "One of the reasons it’s too dangerous is that the political establishment, 
> both political parties and the political class, is, on many major issues, 
> well to the right of the population. On health care, for example, which you’ve 
> written about for decades, the population is to the left of the 
> establishment, and has been so forever. And the same is true for many other 
> issues. So, permitting issues to be discussed is threatening, and permitting 
> deviation from a kind of party line is dangerous and has to be carefully 
> controlled.
> 
> "So, yes, this is a very free country, but at the same time there’s a very 
> rigid ideology."
> 
> 
> On Mar 24, 2013, at 11:50 AM, David Johnson <dlj725 at hughes.net> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> " I note this to avoid any confusion, not because it affects any of the 
>> points I have raised here, especially the inaccurate attribution to the 
>> Nation as having called Chomsky a "self-hating Jew".
>> Exactley !
>> 
>> The point is Mike, NOT attacks on others on the Left, but on liberal 
>> collaborationists and their propoganda publications like THE NATION, 
>> MOTHER JONES, etc.
>> I use to subscribe and enjoy reading both, but in recent years, even 
>> though occasionaly they will have a decent article, they have been more 
>> often than not, appologists for the democrats, sell-out union " 
>> leaderships ", and in general defenders of the American and global 
>> capitalist system.
>> As a Socialist and a former Green Mike, I am certain you know what I am 
>> talking about.
>> The Guardian however still has more good journalism than bad, heads and 
>> shoulders above the New York Times, and the above mentioned so called " 
>> progressive " magazines.
>> The only thing we have comparable to the Guardian in the U.S. at this 
>> point in time is occasional good journalism from ROLLING STONE and THE NEW 
>> YORKER, also occasionaly SALON.COM and THE ATLANTIC.
>> Otherwise it is the iron curtain of U.S. corporate media and their junior 
>> partner liberal gate keepers that use the distraction of identity politics 
>> and the fear mongering of the corporate controlled DNC.
>> 
>> Comradely
>> 
>> David J.
>> 
>> 
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: Mike Lehman
>> To: sf-core
>> Sent: Sunday, March 24, 2013 9:56 AM
>> Subject: Re: [sf-core] Fw: [Peace-discuss] Orthodoxy vs. style
>> 
>> David,
>> To be fair to the Guardian, they also printed Greenwald's critique and 
>> corrected an error or two in the original article that Glenn discusses at 
>> the end of this column.
>> 
>> What's interesting about Chomsky is that he keeps his focus on the 
>> problems at hand, rather than attacking those on the left that he might 
>> disagree with. It's the personal attacks on him that stand out, rather 
>> than something he engages in against others. You may not like what he has 
>> to say, but the focus stays on the topic at hand, rather than on Chomsky's 
>> "style."
>> Mike
>> 
>> On 3/24/2013 9:40 AM, David Johnson wrote:
>>> The Guardian's Aida Edemariam interviewed him ( Chomsky ) in London and 
>>> produced an article, published Saturday morning.
>>> " So to recap: Chomsky is a sarcastic, angry, soporific, scowling, 
>>> sneering self-hating Jew, devoid of hope and speaking from hell, whose 
>>> alpha-male brutality drives him to win at all costs, and who imposes on 
>>> the world disappointingly crude and simplistic arguments to the point 
>>> where he is so inconsequential that one wonders whether he has ever 
>>> changed even a single thing in his 60 years of political work. "
>>> 
>>> Unbelievable characterization of Noam Chomsky from a newspaper ( The 
>>> Guardian ) which over the years has done some great journalism.
>>> I mean, have you ever seen Chomsky speak ?
>>> 
>>> David Johnson
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: C. G. Estabrook
>>> To: Peace-discuss List
>>> Sent: Saturday, March 23, 2013 9:26 PM
>>> Subject: [Peace-discuss] Orthodoxy vs. style
>>> 
>>> How Noam Chomsky is discussed
>>> The more one dissents from political orthodoxies, the more the attacks 
>>> focus on personality, style and character
>>> • <Mail Attachment.jpeg>
>>> • Glenn Greenwald
>>> • guardian.co.uk, Saturday 23 March 2013 09.52 EDT
>>> <Mail Attachment.jpeg>
>>> Noam Chomsky, delivering the Edward W. Said lecture in London on 18 March 
>>> 2013 Photograph: guardian.co.uk
>>> (updated below)
>>> 
>>> One very common tactic for enforcing political orthodoxies is to malign 
>>> the character, "style" and even mental health of those who challenge 
>>> them. The most extreme version of this was an old Soviet favorite: to 
>>> declare political dissidents mentally ill and put them in hospitals. In 
>>> the US, those who take even the tiniest steps outside of political 
>>> convention are instantly decreed "crazy", as happened to the 2002 
>>> anti-war version of Howard Dean and the current iteration of Ron Paul (in 
>>> most cases, what is actually "crazy" are the political orthodoxies this 
>>> tactic seeks to shield from challenge).
>>> 
>>> This method is applied with particular aggression to those who engage in 
>>> any meaningful dissent against the society's most powerful factions and 
>>> their institutions. Nixon White House officials sought to steal the files 
>>> from Daniel Ellsberg's psychoanalyst's office precisely because they knew 
>>> they could best discredit his disclosures with irrelevant attacks on his 
>>> psyche. Identically, the New York Times and partisan Obama supporters 
>>> have led the way in depicting both Bradley Manning andJulian Assange as 
>>> mentally unstable outcasts with serious personality deficiencies. The 
>>> lesson is clear: only someone plagued by mental afflictions would take 
>>> such extreme steps to subvert the power of the US government.
>>> 
>>> A subtler version of this technique is to attack the so-called "style" of 
>>> the critic as a means of impugning, really avoiding, the substance of the 
>>> critique. Although Paul Krugman is comfortably within mainstream 
>>> political thought as a loyal Democrat and a New York Times columnist, his 
>>> relentless attack against the austerity mindset is threatening to many. 
>>> As a result, he is barraged with endless, substance-free complaints about 
>>> his "tone": he is too abrasive, he does not treat opponents with respect, 
>>> he demonizes those who disagree with him, etc. The complaints are usually 
>>> devoid of specifics to prevent meaningful refutation; one typical 
>>> example: "[Krugman] often cloaks his claims in professional authority, 
>>> overstates them, omits arguments that undermine his case, and is a bit of 
>>> a bully." All of that enables the substance of the critique to be avoided 
>>> in lieu of alleged personality flaws.
>>> 
>>> Nobody has been subjected to these vapid discrediting techniques more 
>>> than Noam Chomsky. The book on which I'm currently working explores how 
>>> establishment media systems restrict the range of acceptable debate in US 
>>> political discourse, and I'm using Chomsky's treatment by (and ultimate 
>>> exclusion from) establishment US media outlets as a window for 
>>> understanding how that works. As a result, I've read a huge quantity of 
>>> media discussions about Chomsky over the past year. And what is so 
>>> striking is that virtually every mainstream discussion of him at some 
>>> point inevitably recites the same set of personality and stylistic 
>>> attacks designed to malign his advocacy without having to do the work of 
>>> engaging the substance of his claims. Notably, these attacks come most 
>>> frequently and viciously from establishment liberal venues, such as when 
>>> the American Prospect's 2005 foreign policy issue compared him to Dick 
>>> Cheney on its cover (a cover he had framed and now proudly hangs on his 
>>> office wall).
>>> 
>>> Last week, Chomsky was in London to give the annual Edward W. Said 
>>> lecture, and as always happens when he speaks, the large auditorium was 
>>> filled to the brim, having sold out shortly after it was announced. The 
>>> Guardian's Aida Edemariam interviewed him in London and produced an 
>>> article, published Saturday morning, that features virtually all of those 
>>> standard stylistic and personality critiques:
>>> 
>>> "When he starts speaking, it is in a monotone that makes no particular 
>>> rhetorical claim on the audience's attention; in fact, it's almost 
>>> soporific . . . . Within five minutes many of the hallmarks of Chomsky's 
>>> political writing, and speaking, are displayed: his anger, his 
>>> extraordinary range of reference and experience . . . . . Fact upon fact 
>>> upon fact, but also a withering, sweeping sarcasm – the atrocities are 
>>> 'tolerated politely by Europe as usual'. Harsh, vivid phrases – the 
>>> 'hideously charred corpses of murdered infants'; bodies 'writhing in 
>>> agony' – unspool until they become almost a form of punctuation.
>>> 
>>> "You could argue that the latter is necessary, simply a description of 
>>> atrocities that must be reported, but it is also a method that has 
>>> diminishing returns. The facts speak for themselves; the adjectives and 
>>> the sarcasm have the counterintuitive effect of cheapening them, of 
>>> imposing on the world a disappointingly crude and simplistic argument. 
>>> 'The sentences,' wrote Larissa MacFarquhar in a brilliant New Yorker 
>>> profile of Chomsky 10 years ago, 'are accusations of guilt, but not from 
>>> a position of innocence or hope for something better: Chomsky's sarcasm 
>>> is the scowl of a fallen world, the sneer of hell's veteran to its 
>>> appalled naifs' – and thus, in an odd way, static and ungenerative. . . .
>>> 
>>> "But he answers questions warmly, and seriously, if not always directly – 
>>> a surprise, in a way, from someone who has earned a reputation for 
>>> brutality of argument, and a need to win at all costs. 'There really is 
>>> an alpha-male dominance psychology at work there,' a colleague once said 
>>> of him. 'He has some of the primate dominance moves. The staring down. 
>>> The withering tone of voice." Students have been known to visit him in 
>>> pairs, so that one can defend the other. . . .
>>> 
>>> "Chomsky, the son of Hebrew teachers who emigrated from Ukraine and 
>>> Russia at the turn of the last century, began as a Zionist – but the sort 
>>> of Zionist who wanted a socialist state in which Jews and Arabs worked 
>>> together as equals. Since then he has been accused of antisemitism (due 
>>> to defending the right to free speech of a French professor who espoused 
>>> such views, some 35 years ago), and been called, by the Nation, 
>>> 'America's most prominent self-hating Jew'. These days he argues 
>>> tirelessly for the rights of Palestinians. . . . . Does he think that in 
>>> all these years of talking and arguing and writing, he has ever changed 
>>> one specific thing?"
>>> 
>>> So to recap: Chomsky is a sarcastic, angry, soporific, scowling, sneering 
>>> self-hating Jew, devoid of hope and speaking from hell, whose alpha-male 
>>> brutality drives him to win at all costs, and who imposes on the world 
>>> disappointingly crude and simplistic arguments to the point where he is 
>>> so inconsequential that one wonders whether he has ever changed even a 
>>> single thing in his 60 years of political work.
>>> 
>>> Edemariam includes several other passages more balanced and even 
>>> complimentary. She notes his academic accolades ("One study of the most 
>>> frequently cited academic sources of all time found that he ranked 
>>> eighth, just below Plato and Freud"), his mastery of facts, his 
>>> willingness to speak to hostile audiences, his touching life-long 
>>> relationship with his now-deceased wife, and his remarkable commitment, 
>>> even at the age of 84, to personally answering emails from people around 
>>> the world whom he does not know (when I spoke at a college near Rochester 
>>> two weeks ago, one of the students, a college senior studying to be a 
>>> high school social studies teacher, gushed as he told me that he had 
>>> emailed Chomsky and quickly received a very generous personal reply). She 
>>> also includes Chomsky's answer to her question about whether he has ever 
>>> changed anything: a characteristically humble explanation that no one 
>>> person - not even Martin Luther King - can or ever has by themselves 
>>> changed anything.
>>> 
>>> But the entire piece is infused with these standard personality 
>>> caricatures that offer the reader an easy means of mocking, deriding and 
>>> scorning Chomsky without having to confront a single fact he presents. 
>>> And that's the point: as this 9-minute Guardian video excerpt about Iran 
>>> and the Middle East from Chomsky's London speech demonstrates, he 
>>> rationally but aggressively debunks destructive mainstream falsehoods 
>>> that huge numbers of people are taught to tacitly embrace. But all of 
>>> that can be, and is, ignored in favor of hating his "style", ridiculing 
>>> his personality, and smearing him with horrible slurs ("self-hating 
>>> Jew").
>>> 
>>> What's particularly strange about this set of personality and style 
>>> attacks is what little relationship they bear to reality. Far from being 
>>> some sort of brutal, domineering, and angry "alpha-male" savage, 
>>> Chomsky - no matter your views of him - is one of the most soft-spoken 
>>> and unfailingly civil and polite political advocates on the planet. It's 
>>> true that his critiques of those who wield power and influence can be 
>>> withering - that's the central function of an effective critic or just a 
>>> human being with a conscience - but one would be hard-pressed to find 
>>> someone as prominent as he who is as steadfastly polite and considerate 
>>> and eager to listen when it comes to interacting with those who are 
>>> powerless and voiceless. His humanism is legion. And far from being 
>>> devoid of hope, it's almost impossible to find an establishment critic 
>>> more passionate and animated when talking about the ability of people to 
>>> join together to create real social and political change.
>>> 
>>> Then there's Edemariam's statement, offered with no citation, that 
>>> Chomsky has been called "America's most prominent self-hating Jew" by the 
>>> left-wing Nation magazine. This claim, though often repeated and 
>>> obviously very serious, is inaccurate.
>>> 
>>> The Nation article which she seems to be referencing is not available 
>>> online except by subscription. But what is freely available online is a 
>>> 1993 article on Chomsky from the Chicago Tribune that makes clear that 
>>> this did not come from the Nation itself, but from a single writer who, 
>>> more importantly, was not himself calling Chomsky a "self-hating Jew" but 
>>> was simply noting that this is how he is often attacked ("one critic 
>>> observed that Chomsky has 'acquired the reputation as America's most 
>>> prominent self-hating Jew.'"). In 2010, the scholarly website 3 Quarks 
>>> Daily noted an article on Chomsky from The Telegraph that also claimed 
>>> without citation that "the Left-wing Nation magazine [] called him 
>>> 'America's most prominent self-hating Jew'". Inquiries in the comment 
>>> section for the source citation for this quote prompted this reply:
>>> 
>>> "I know this is a few years old, but the citation for the 'most prominent 
>>> self-hating Jew' quote is: Morton, Brian. 'Chomsky Then and Now.' Nation 
>>> 246, no. 18 (May 7, 1988): 646-652.
>>> 
>>> "With access to a full-text archive of The Nation, it took me only a few 
>>> minutes to locate this. The full quote in context is 'If Chomsky has 
>>> acquired the reputation of being America's most prominent self-hating 
>>> Jew, this is because, in the United States, discussion about the Middle 
>>> East has until recently taken place within very narrow bounds.'
>>> 
>>> "As you can see the point was quite the opposite of how it was presented. 
>>> The Nation often includes different perspectives so attributing one 
>>> reviewer's comment to 'The Nation' as a whole would be dishonest anyway.
>>> 
>>> "Regardless of that however, the reviewer was actually making the point 
>>> that Chomsky's views only seem far out because the spectrum is so 
>>> limited. . . . .This is just another example of the kind of lazy, 
>>> dishonest way in which Chomsky's views are generally reported."
>>> 
>>> Having myself retrieved a full copy of Morton's 1988 article, I can say 
>>> with certainty that this comment is indeed 100% accurate. Even leaving 
>>> aside the sloppiness of attributing one article by a freelance writer to 
>>> "the Nation" itself, it is wildly inaccurate - on the substance - to 
>>> claim that the Nation labelled Chomsky a "self-hating Jew":
>>> 
>>> <Mail Attachment.png>
>>> The oft-repeated claim that Chomsky has "been called, by the Nation,
>>> 'America's most prominent self-hating Jew'" is simply false. If anything, 
>>> that Nation article debunked that accusation, and certainly did not 
>>> embrace it.
>>> 
>>> But the strangest attack on Chomsky is the insinuation that he has 
>>> changed nothing. Aside from the metrics demonstrating that he has more 
>>> reach and influence than virtually any public intellectual in the world, 
>>> some of which Edemariam cites, I'd say that there is no living political 
>>> writer who has more radically changed how more people think in more parts 
>>> of the world about political issues than he. If you accept the premise 
>>> (as I do) that the key to political change is to convince people of 
>>> pervasive injustice and the need to act, then it's virtually laughable to 
>>> depict him as inconsequential. Washington power-brokers and their media 
>>> courtiers do not discuss him, and he does not make frequent (or any) 
>>> appearances on US cable news outlets, but outside of those narrow and 
>>> insular corridors - meaning around the world - few if any political 
>>> thinkers are as well-known, influential or admired (to its credit, the 
>>> Guardian, like some US liberal outlets, does periodically publish 
>>> Chomsky's essays).
>>> 
>>> Like any person with a significant political platform, Chomsky is fair 
>>> game for all sorts of criticisms. Like anyone else, he should be 
>>> subjected to intense critical and adversarial scrutiny. Even admirers 
>>> should listen to his (and everyone else's) pronouncements with a critical 
>>> ear. Like anyone who makes prolific political arguments over the course 
>>> of many years, he's made mistakes.
>>> 
>>> But what is at play here is this destructive dynamic that the more one 
>>> dissents from political orthodoxies, the more personalized, style-focused 
>>> and substance-free the attacks become. That's because once someone 
>>> becomes sufficiently critical of establishment pieties, the goal is not 
>>> merely to dispute their claims but to silence them. That's accomplished 
>>> by demonizing the person on personality and style grounds to the point 
>>> where huge numbers of people decide that nothing they say should even be 
>>> considered, let alone accepted. It's a sorry and anti-intellectual 
>>> tactic, to be sure, but a brutally effective one.
>>> 
>>> UPDATE
>>> 
>>> One of the passages from Edemariam's Guardian article that I quoted above 
>>> has now been edited. The article originally stated: "Since then he has 
>>> been accused of antisemitism (due to defending the right to free speech 
>>> of a French professor who espoused such views, some 35 years ago). . . ", 
>>> but has now been changed (with an editor's note appended to the bottom) 
>>> as follows: "Since then he has been accused of antisemitism (due to 
>>> defending some 35 years ago the right to free speech of a French 
>>> professor who was later convicted of Holocaust denial). . . " I note this 
>>> to avoid any confusion, not because it affects any of the points I have 
>>> raised here, especially the inaccurate attribution to the Nation as 
>>> having called Chomsky a "self-hating Jew".
>>> 
>>> ###
> 
> 
> 
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