Table of contents for this debate.
========
Newsgroups: alt.anarchism,alt.society.anarchy,talk.politics.theory,
talk.politics.misc,alt.politics.economics,alt.fan.noam-chomsky,
alt.politics.radical-left,alt.politics.libertarian,
talk.politics.libertarian,alt.individualism
Subject: Chomsky's bad faith proven: the Khmer Rouge record
[was Re: Chomsky, was " If the left is understood to include
'Bolshevism,' then I would flatly dissociate myself from the
left. Lenin was one of the greatestenemies of socialism, in
my opinion, for reasons I've discussed.Re: Ideologies,
politics, history (was: The Murder Sweepstakes)
From: hcunn@tiac.net (Hugo S. Cunningham)
Date: Sat, 21 Sep 1996 13:17:14 GMT
I am re-posting this (with trivial changes) under its own header,
so that newcomers can find it readily. I had posted it earlier under
the thread "Re: Chomsky"
--Hugo S. Cunningham
hcunn@tiac.net (Hugo S. Cunningham) wrote:
>Arnold Chien wrote:
>[deletion of AC's interchange with another poster]]
>>This goes to show how little you know or care to know about Chomsky. Your
>>worldview evidently is roughly: there's two sides, capitalism, as exemplified
>>by the U.S., and socialism, as exemplified by the former Soviet Union. And if
>>yo criticize "our" side, that means you're on "their" side. Well, like many
>>others Chomsky rejects the dichotomy. Without getting too fancy about it, what
>>he consistently opposes is concentrated power, be it in the private economy as
>>in the U.S. or in the state as in the former Soviet Union. In terms of your
>>worldview, he's not on either side; he "accepts" that both commit crimes
> [deletion]
>Not really true. Chomsky consistently favors the enemies of the West,
>most likely because his version of Anarcho-Leftism is far closer to
>Communism than to America's mixed economy.
> His bad faith showed most clearly during the Khmer Rouge genocide
>in Cambodia (1975-78). Years after everyone else recognized and
>denounced Khmer Rouge barbarity, Chomsky continued to suggest it was
>hysteria cooked up by self-serving capitalists. Only a.f.t.e.r
>Communist Vietnam publicly resolved to overthrow the Khmer Rouge (4
>Dec 1978) did Chomsky suddenly make eloquent denunciations of the
>Khmer Rouge.
> One can find a logic, though not a creditable one, to his change
>of heart. North Vietnam, a Soviet ally, deserved support as a US
>opponent. In contrast, the Khmer Rouge were tied to China, which
>betrayed leftism by allying with the US against Soviet Russia. Tacit
>US acceptance of China's pro-Khmer-Rouge policy after 1978 was not to
>our credit, but at least we did not tell sneering lies to defend the
>Khmer Rouge record
>Appendix:
> A Khmer Rouge chronology
> with a sidelight on Prof. Chomsky:
> Who knew what, and when?
[Editor's note: a more neatly formatted copy of this chronology can be found at URL ch-kh-chron.html]
>(Note: "(NYT)" means the date something appeared in the "New York
>Times," not necessarily the exact date it happened.)
>1975
>18 Mar (NYT) South Vietnam announces abandonment of highlands.
>17 Apr (NYT) Cambodian government surrenders to Khmer Rouge
>29 Apr US evacuates Saigon embassy
>9 Jul (NYT) First of many "New York Times" editorials denouncing
> "barbarous cruelty" of Khmer Rouge
>1977
>25 Jun In a book review in the "Nation," Noam Chomsky and Edward
> S. Herman ridicule atrocity accusations against the
> Khmer Rouge.
>19 Sep (NYT) Khmer Rouge first report military clash with Vietnam.
>25 Dec (NYT) Major Vietnamese counterattack on Khmer Rouge
> in "Parrot's Beak" border district. Vietnamese-
> Cambodian relations continue to deteriorate during
> the next year (1978).
>1978
>22 Apr (NYT) President Jimmy Carter calls Cambodia "world's worst
> violator of human rights."
>22 Aug (NYT) Senator George McGovern calls for international force
> to overthrow Khmer Rouge government.
>Last quarter: In "Dissent" magazine, Noam Chomsky says that even if
> (as is highly unlikely) lurid Khmer Rouge
> atrocity stories were true, it is all America's
> fault.
>20 Nov (NYT) Walter Goodman ("Editorial Notebook") notes Chomsky's
> continued reluctance to denounce Khmer Rouge.
>4 Dec (NYT) Vietnam sets up "National Salvation" government in occupied
> Cambodia.
>8 Dec (NYT) Prof. Chomsky fiercely denounces Walter Goodman
>1979
>8 Jan (NYT) Vietnam captures Phnom Penh, capital of Cambodia
>15 Jan (NYT) Vietnam holds all major Cambodian cities.
>
>--Hugo S. Cunningham
========
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Subject: Re: Chomsky's bad faith proven: the Khmer Rouge record
[was Re: Chomsky, was " If the left is understood to include'
Bolshevism,' then I would flatly dissociate myself from the
left. Lenin was one of the greatestenemies of socialism,
in my opinion, for reasons I've discussed.
Re: Ideologies, politics, history (was: The Murder Sweepstakes)
From: ukeith@telerama.lm.com (Keith)
Date: 21 Sep 1996 09:19:50 -0400
Since Hugo has decided to start a new thread, I will also attach my
reply to it:
Hugo S. Cunningham (hcunn@tiac.net) wrote:
> Arnold Chien wrote:
> [deletion]
[Arnold Chien's defense of Chomsky deleted.]
> Not really true. Chomsky consistently favors the enemies of the West,
> most likely because his version of Anarcho-Leftism is far closer to
> Communism than to America's mixed economy.
Would you like to provide some citations from Chomsky's writings that
support this conclusion? Readers should note that Hugo has not quoted
a single sentence of Chomsky to prove any of his assertions.
> His bad faith showed most clearly during the Khmer Rouge genocide
> in Cambodia (1975-78). Years after everyone else recognized and
> denounced Khmer Rouge barbarity, Chomsky continued to suggest it was
> hysteria cooked up by self-serving capitalists. Only a.f.t.e.r
> Communist Vietnam publicly resolved to overthrow the Khmer Rouge (4
> Dec 1978) did Chomsky suddenly make eloquent denunciations of the
> Khmer Rouge.
Of course, this is completely wrong, as a reading of the
articles that you point to show. Did you even read the articles in
question?
In fact, Chomsky's big criticism of the media was that they were
so willing to latch onto very questionable sources. For example,
in his conclusion to the Nation article "Distortions at Fourth
Hand" (June 25, 1977), Chomsky lays out his main point:
We do not pretend to know where the truth lies amidst
these sharply conflicting assessments [on the number of
people killed under Pol Pot]; rather, we again
want to emphasize some crucial points. What filters
through to the American public is a seriously distorted
version of the evidence available, emphasizing alleged
Khmer Rouge atrocities and downplaying or ignoring the
crucial U.S. role, direct and indirect, in the torment
that Cambodia has suffered. Evidence that focuses on the
American role, like the Hildebrand and Porter volume, is
ignored, not on the basis of truthfulness or scholarship
but because the message is unpalatable.
Furthermore, Chomsky did not deny the fact that terrible atrocities
were taking place in Cambodia as his comment's on Francois Ponchaud's
book Cambodge Annie Ziro (Cambodia in the Year Zero) show: "Ponchaud's
book is serious and worth reading, as distinct from much of the
commentary it has elicited. He gives a grisly account of of what
refugees have reported to him about the barbarity of their treatment
at the hands of the Khmer Rouge."
Christopher Hitchen's defended Chomsky in his 1985 article "The
Chorus and the Cassandra:"
Chomsky and Herman were engaged in the admittedly touchy
business of distinguishing evidence from interpretation.
They were doing so in the aftermath of a war which had
featured tremendous, organized, official lying and many
cynical and opportunist "bloodbath" predictions. There was
and is no argument about mass murder in Cambodia: there is
still argument about whether the number of deaths, and the
manner in which they were inflicted, will warrant the use
of the term "genocide" or even "autogenocide."
People interested in reading Chomsky's 1977 Nation article can
get it at:
http://wwwdsp.ucd.ie/~daragh/articles/a_nation_distortions.html
People interested in reading Hitchen's defense of Chomsky (on
Cambodia and the Faurison affair) can get it at:
http://wwwdsp.ucd.ie/~daragh/reviews/r_cassandra.html
People interested in a good debate between a Chomsky critic and
supporter on this whole subject should check out:
http://members.aol.com/bsharp26/cambodia/media_1.html
> One can find a logic, though not a creditable one, to his change
> of heart. North Vietnam, a Soviet ally, deserved support as a US
> opponent. In contrast, the Khmer Rouge were tied to China, which
> betrayed leftism by allying with the US against Soviet Russia. Tacit
> US acceptance of China's pro-Khmer-Rouge policy after 1978 was not to
> our credit, but at least we did not tell sneering lies to defend the
> Khmer Rouge record
I can find no logic, and certainly no evidence, in your slander.
> Appendix:
> A Khmer Rouge chronology
> with a sidelight on Prof. Chomsky:
> Who knew what, and when?
> (Note: a "(T)" means the date something appeared in the "New York
> Times," not necessarily the exact date it happened.)
> 1975
> 18 Mar (T) South Vietnam announces abandonment of highlands.
> 17 Apr (T) Cambodian government surrenders to Khmer Rouge
> 29 Apr US evacuates Saigon embassy
> 9 Jul (T) First of many "New York Times" editorials denouncing
> "barbarous cruelty" of Khmer Rouge
> 1977
> 25 Jun In a book review in the "Nation," Noam Chomsky and Edward
> S. Herman ridicule atrocity accusations against the
> Khmer Rouge.
Sheer nonsense.
> 19 Sep (T) Khmer Rouge first report military clash with Vietnam.
> 25 Dec (T) Major Vietnamese counterattack on Khmer Rouge
> in "Parrot's Beak" border district. Vietnamese-
> Cambodian relations continue to deteriorate during
> the next year (1978).
> 1978
> 22 Apr (T) President Jimmy Carter calls Cambodia "world's worst
> violator of human rights."
> 22 Aug (T) Senator George McGovern calls for international force
> to overthrow Khmer Rouge government.
> Last quarter: In "Dissent" magazine, Noam Chomsky says that even if
> (as is highly unlikely) lurid Khmer Rouge
> atrocity stories were true, it is all America's
> fault.
I do not have access to this article. However, given your
complete distortion of the nature of the Nation article, I have
no reason to believe you. Can anyone supply some information from
this article.
> 20 Nov (T) Walter Goodman ("Editorial Notebook") notes Chomsky's
> continued reluctance to denounce Khmer Rouge.
> 4 Dec (T) Vietnam sets up "National Salvation" government in occupied
> Cambodia.
> 8 Dec (T) Prof. Chomsky fiercely denounces Walter Goodman
> 1979
> 8 Jan (T) Vietnam captures Phnom Penh, capital of Cambodia
> 15 Jan (T) Vietnam holds all major Cambodian cities.
>
> --Hugo S. Cunningham
Keith
========
Newsgroups: alt.anarchism,alt.society.anarchy,talk.politics.theory,
talk.politics.misc,alt.politics.economics,alt.fan.noam-chomsky,
alt.politics.radical-left,alt.politics.libertarian,
talk.politics.libertarian,alt.individualism
Subject: Re: Chomsky's bad faith proven: the Khmer Rouge record
[was Re: Chomsky, was " If the left is understood to include
'Bolshevism,' then I would flatly dissociate myself from the
left. Lenin was one of the greatestenemies of socialism,
in my opinion, for reasons I've discussed.
Re: Ideologies, politics, history (was: The Murder Sweepstakes)
From: hcunn@tiac.net (Hugo S. Cunningham)
Date: Sat, 21 Sep 1996 16:54:02 GMT
ukeith@telerama.lm.com (Keith) wrote:
[deleted]
>Hugo S. Cunningham (hcunn@tiac.net) wrote:
[deleted]
>> Not really true. Chomsky consistently favors the enemies of the West,
>> most likely because his version of Anarcho-Leftism is far closer to
>> Communism than to America's mixed economy.
>Would you like to provide some citations from Chomsky's writings that
>support this conclusion? Readers should note that Hugo has not quoted
>a single sentence of Chomsky to prove any of his assertions.
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck,
chances are it is a duck. Compile a long-term list of the regimes and
movements Chomsky defends and the ones he attacks, and a rather
obvious pattern emerges.
Historical note: In Russia's civil war (1917-21),
Anarcho-Leftists (eg Kronstadt sailors, Makhno) supported the
Communists against both parliamentarians and "White" generals. After
the Communist victory, the Anarcho-Left started to oppose them, but
were easily put down.
As a world-renowned linguist, Prof. Chomsky is a master of
ambiguity and deniability. For that reason, the Khmer Rouge record is
especially worth treasuring.
>> His bad faith showed most clearly during the Khmer Rouge genocide
>> in Cambodia (1975-78). Years after everyone else recognized and
>> denounced Khmer Rouge barbarity, Chomsky continued to suggest it was
>> hysteria cooked up by self-serving capitalists. Only a.f.t.e.r
>> Communist Vietnam publicly resolved to overthrow the Khmer Rouge (4
>> Dec 1978) did Chomsky suddenly make eloquent denunciations of the
>> Khmer Rouge.
>Of course, this is completely wrong, as a reading of the
>articles that you point to show. Did you even read the articles in
>question?
Yes. I have the photocopies in front of me.
Cruel-hearted cynics who do not want to take my word or Keith's on
faith may want to check it out for themselves. The references are
(1) Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, "Distortions at Fourth Hand"
in "The Nation" (periodical), 25 Jun 1977, pp. 789-94
(2) Noam Chomsky, Comments on "Vietnam and Cambodia" in "Dissent"
(periodical), last quarter 1978, pp 386-389.
For those without access to a library, I include a few quotes, but,
again, try to check it out for yourself. (And keep in mind that Khmer
Rouge barbarism had already been a subject of general notoriety for
two years, since 1975.)
From the "Nation" article:
Chomsky approvingly refers to "analyses by highly qualified
specialists who have studied the full range of evidence available, and
who concluded that executions have numbered at most in the thousands."
(N., p. 791, column 1)
Chomsky repeatedly ridicules refugee reports, which later turned out
to be accurate. (A generation earlier, other leftists showered
similar contempt on refugee reports from Stalinist Russia, which later
turned out to be accurate.):
[Authors approved by Chomsky] "testify to the extreme
unreliability of refugee reports, and the need to treat them with
great caution, a fact that we and others have discussed elsewhere (cf.
Chomsky: 'At War with Asia' on the problems of interpreting reports
of refugees from American bombing in Laos). Refugees are frightened
and defenseless, at the mercy of alien forces. They naturally tend to
report what they believe their interlocutors wish to hear. While
their reports must be considered seriously, care and caution are
necessary. Specifically, refugees questioned by Westerners or Thais
have a vested interest in reporting atrocities on the part of
Cambodian revolutionaries, an obvious fact that no serious reporter
will fail to take into account." (N, p. 791, column 2)
"It is interesting that a 1.2 million estimate [of the Khmer Rouge
death toll] is attributed by Ponchaud to the American Embassy
(presumably Bangkok), a completely worthless source, as the historical
record amply demonstrates. The figure bears a suggestive similarity
to the prediction by U.S. officials at the war's end that a million
would die in the next year." (N., p. 791, columns 2 to 3)
"The 'slaughter' by the Khmer Rouge is a Moss-'New York Times'
creation" (N., p. 792, column 1)
From the "Dissent" article:
[By the end of 1978, as Cambodia's diplomatic position is in flux,
Prof. Chomsky appears to be thinking about reversing his appraisal,
but old habits die hard]:
Condemnations of the Khmer Rouge m.i.g.h.t be true, but one must
note "that the susceptibility of intellectuals to fabricated atrocity
stories has been no less notorious since World War I than their
apologetics for some favored state, and that skepticism is aroused in
this case by the many documented falsehoods." (D., p 386, columns 1 to
2)
(The remainder of the article argues that any Khmer Rouge brutality
was all America's fault. This is similar to the domestic Leftie
argument that murderers should not be punished, because "society" made
them do it. Why, then, do Leftist revolutionaries periodically
slaughter u.n.r.e.s.i.s.t.i.n.g populations, as in Stalin's
Collectivization and Great Purge, and in Mao's Cultural Revolution?]
[The following quote is not directly relevant to the Khmer Rouge death
toll, but I couldn't resist adding it]:
"Now we are asked whether opposition to the U.S. attack on rural South
Vietnam, later all Indochina, was legitimate, in the light of postwar
suffering and atrocities that are in large measure a result of this
aggression. With comparable logic, Germans might have asked whether
opposition to Nazi aggression should be reconsidered after the
massacre of tens of thousands in France under American civil-military
rule" (D., p 388, column 1)
HSC comment: Such a German claim might indeed have some merit
(and relevance to Cambodia), if the US invasion of France had been
followed by the massacre of ten m.i.l.l.i.o.n. Once again, Lefties
are incapable of handling large numbers. Eg the (admittedly
excessive) execution of one very minor spy (Ethel Rosenberg) puts the
US McCarthy era on the same moral plane as Stalinist Russia (20
million dead).
>In fact, Chomsky's big criticism of the media was that they were
>so willing to latch onto very questionable sources. For example,
>in his conclusion to the Nation article "Distortions at Fourth
>Hand" (June 25, 1977), Chomsky lays out his main point:
> We do not pretend to know where the truth lies amidst
> these sharply conflicting assessments [on the number of
> people killed under Pol Pot]; rather, we again
> want to emphasize some crucial points. What filters
> through to the American public is a seriously distorted
> version of the evidence available, emphasizing alleged
> Khmer Rouge atrocities and downplaying or ignoring the
> crucial U.S. role, direct and indirect, in the torment
> that Cambodia has suffered. Evidence that focuses on the
> American role, like the Hildebrand and Porter volume, is
> ignored, not on the basis of truthfulness or scholarship
> but because the message is unpalatable.
>Furthermore, Chomsky did not deny the fact that terrible atrocities
>were taking place in Cambodia as his comment's on Francois Ponchaud's
>book Cambodge Annie Ziro (Cambodia in the Year Zero) show: "Ponchaud's
>book is serious and worth reading, as distinct from much of the
>commentary it has elicited. He gives a grisly account of of what
>refugees have reported to him about the barbarity of their treatment
>at the hands of the Khmer Rouge."
The thrust of Chomsky's article, however, was to reduce the Khmer
Rouge death toll of millions (deserving Jimmy Carter's label of
"world's worst violator of human rights,") to thousands, making it
merely one more garden-variety Third World despotism. (See his quote
above about "analyses by highly qualified specialists.")
If the death toll is common by Third World standards, then there
is no need for world opinion to consider the political pathology
responsible.
Incidentally, bogus compassion is a tool-in-trade of many
revisionists:
(1) Nazi Holocaust revisionist "Richard Harwood" ends his "Did Six
Million Really Die?" thus: "Jewish casualties during the Second World
War can only be estimated at a figure in thousands. Surely this is
enough grief for the Jewish people?"
(2) Stalin Holocaust revisionist Jerry F. Hough wrote, [For] "the
number of deaths in the purge. . .a figure in the low hundreds of
thousands seems much more probable than one in the high hundreds of
thousands, and even George Kennan's estimate of 'tens of thousands' is
quite conceivable, maybe even probable.
"Some persons seem instinctively to object to these figures on
the ground that the Great Purge was so horrible that the number of
deaths cannot have been so 'low.' We must not become so insensitive
to the value of human life, however, that we dismiss tens of thousands
of deaths as insignificant."
--Jerry F. Hough, "How the Soviet Union is Governed," Harvard
University Press, Cambridge MA, 1979; p. 177.
In each case, the revisionist professes a humanitarian horror and
grief even at the drastically downsized death-toll. He quietly leaves
it for others to draw the conclusion that if Nazism (or Stalinism, or
the Khmer Rouge) did not kill any more people than did regimes
accepted by current world opinion, then principled anti-Nazism (or
anti-Communism) is mere cynicism, or hysterical over-reaction.
[material on Hitchens article deleted]
>People interested in reading Chomsky's 1977 Nation article can
>get it at:
>http://wwwdsp.ucd.ie/~daragh/articles/a_nation_distortions.html
Good addition!
If anyone finds a substantive disagreement between what I put in
quotation marks above and what appears at that site, I would v.e.r.y
much appreciate hearing about it! (But don't try to look up my
"Dissent" cites in the "Nation" article.)
(Unfortunately, my references to page numbers and especially
"columns" might not be helpful in searching an electronic copy, but a
keyword search should let you track them down.)
[rest deleted]
--Hugo S. Cunningham