The king of “America Bad” geopolitical analysis Noam Chomsky, likely on his way out.

[Mister Terrific]

“Russia is acting with restraint and moderation”

-Noam Chomsky

According to local authorities, 458 bodies have been recovered from the town, including nine children under the age of 18; among the victims, 419 people were killed with weapons and 39 appeared to have died of natural causes, possibly related to the occupation.[1][15] The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights documented the unlawful killings, including summary executions, of at least 73 civilians in Bucha.[16][3] Photos showed corpses of civilians, lined up with their hands bound behind their backs, shot at close range.[17]An inquiry by Radio Free Europe reported the use of a basement beneath a campground as a torture chamber.[18][19] Many bodies were found mutilated and burnt,[20][21] and girls as young as fourteen reported being raped by Russian soldiers.[20][22] In intercepted conversations, Russian soldiers referred to these operations involving hunting down people in lists, filtration, torture, and execution as zachistka ("cleansing").[23] Ukraine has asked the International Criminal Court to investigate what happened in Bucha as part of its ongoing investigation of the invasion to determine whether a series of Russian war crimes or crimes against humanity were committed.[24][25]

Bucha massacre - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Far leftists like Chomsky often misread the motivations of authoritarians because secretly they agree with the authoritarian world view....Individual rights and right to self determination be damned.

This is total idiocy. Chomsky is FAR more anti-authoritarian than you are, he's one of the most extreme advocates of free press, free speech, and a total commitment to absolute human rights that you can find. His entire political philosophy revolves around anti-authoritarianism and always has.


You are perfectly okay with authoritarianism so long as its the USA or one of its allies participating in it. You never, ever have anything bad to say about American authoritarianism, and you hate Chomsky because he's willing to call out America when America acts unrighteously too, rather than focusing solely on our enemies.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

“Russia is acting with restraint and moderation”

-Noam Chomsky

According to local authorities, 458 bodies have been recovered from the town, including nine children under the age of 18; among the victims, 419 people were killed with weapons and 39 appeared to have died of natural causes, possibly related to the occupation.[1][15] The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights documented the unlawful killings, including summary executions, of at least 73 civilians in Bucha.[16][3]

He said that they're acting with MORE RESTRAINT THAN THE USA. You still haven't countered his actual claim, and the fact that you keep posting copy-pastes of deaths in the hundreds when Iraqis were dying by the hundreds of thousands is just proving his case.



@Toussaint, I asked you one already, just answer these simple questions:


1. Did the USA kill far more Iraqis (even only counting the first 2-3 years) than Russia has killed Ukrainians? Yes or no?

2. Did the USA kill far more Iraqi civilians (even just in the first 2-3 years) than Russia has killed Ukrainian civilians? Yes or no?

3. Did the USA inaugurate their war with a far more devastating starting blow ("Shock and Awe") than Russia did in Ukraine? Yes or no?

4. Did those substantially more Iraqi deaths come despite the fact that Iraq was offering far less resistance? Yes or no?

5. Did those substantially more Iraqi deaths come despite 2003 Iraq having a much smaller population than 2022 Ukraine? Yes or no?



By every single objective measure, USA fought war more indiscriminately and deadly when invading Iraq that Russia did when invading Ukraine. Chomsky's exact claim was that Russia's invasion of Iraq WAS wrong and WAR a major crime and that they SHOULD face consequences for it, but that the USA is a hypocritical country that condemns such invasions when their "enemy" does them, but then turns around and does the same thing when it serves its own geopolitical interests.

Was that true, or not?

You give the impression that you don't give a flying fukk about the black/brown people America kills, just so long as you can deflect to some American enemy.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Well, let's go with an objective measure: deaths.

3 years into the war, there were three major population-level studies of deaths in the Iraq War. They found somewhere between 700,000 and 1,000,000 deaths due to the war, with between 150,000 to 600,000 of those deaths being violent. Obviously, it was difficult to get a firm # because the USA had completely destroyed Iraq as a functioning nation and US government didn't give a flying fukk how many Iraqis it had killed.

Right now, we're 2.5 years into the Ukraine War. Most of the estimates I've seen are from about 2 years into the war, and they range from 35,000 to 70,000 Ukrainian troops killed and 11,000+ civilians killed.

Oh, and Iraq's population in 2003 was much SMALLER than Ukraine's population right now.


So the USA in 2003 walked and killed 10x as many people as Russia did, with a much higher % of those deaths being civilians, despite Iraq being a smaller country than Ukraine and despite facing far less resistance. But tell me again why Chomsky is wrong when he says that America was less restrained?

All @Toussaint will do in response is post more social media. He lacks any understanding of the issues at all, he is nothing more than a pro-America bot at this point.

Notice that @Toussaint remains completely silent on the actual American atrocities, because he can't defend them. All he can do, over and over, is deflect to our enemies. That is exactly what Noam Chomsky was pointing out.

 

[ADevilYouKhow]

Ukrainian Prosecutor Says Russian Troops Beheaded Ukrainian Soldier

Ukrainian Prosecutor-General Andriy Kostin said on June 18 that Russian troops beheaded a Ukrainian soldier in the eastern Donetsk region.

www.rferl.org

RuSSiA iS aCtiNG WitH reSTRaInT aND MoDerATIoN

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Ukrainian Prosecutor Says Russian Troops Beheaded Ukrainian Soldier

Ukrainian Prosecutor-General Andriy Kostin said on June 18 that Russian troops beheaded a Ukrainian soldier in the eastern Donetsk region.

www.rferl.org

RuSSiA iS aCtiNG WitH reSTRaInT aND MoDerATIoN

Y'all have been reduced to clowns at this point.

He said that Russia acted with restraint compared to the US invasion of Iraq.


Random anecdotes of individual acts of violence by troops doesn't do jack shyt to dispute that (American soldiers have been known to commit individual atrocities on numerous occasions themselves, and are rarely held to account for such). The actual question is whether, on a full-scale level, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been as bloody as the US invasion of Iraq. And I already pointed out that the US invasion of Iraq was 10x as bloody as Russia's invasion of Ukraine, especially when it comes to civilian deaths, despite the fact that Ukraine has offered far more resistance than Iraq did.

Why are you ignoring the actual facts of the case? Why participate in the same techniques of pro-American propaganda via deflection that Chomsky was calling out?

 

[ADevilYouKhow]

Y'all have been reduced to clowns at this point.

He said that Russia acted with restraint compared to the US invasion of Iraq.


Random anecdotes of individual acts of violence by troops doesn't do jack shyt to dispute that (American soldiers have been known to commit individual atrocities on numerous occasions themselves, and are rarely held to account for such). The actual question is whether, on a full-scale level, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been as bloody as the US invasion of Iraq. And I already pointed out that the US invasion of Iraq was 10x as bloody as Russia's invasion of Ukraine, especially when it comes to civilian deaths, despite the fact that Ukraine has offered far more resistance than Iraq did.

Why are you ignoring the actual facts of the case? Why participate in the same techniques of pro-American propaganda via deflection that Chomsky was calling out?

That’s fukking bullshyt and you know it


Russia never acts with “restraint”

Not in Afghanistan
Not in the Caucasus
Not in Georgia
Not in Syria
Not in Ukraine


“Random anecdotes” as if Russia wasn’t facing a laundry list of crimes against humanity from the first year of their war of aggression over land and resources




What about Yankees!

I must have missed when the US annexed Iraq btw. When did Russia annex Crimea 2013/14? Restraint…

Make sure you include Iran and their Shiite death squads bodycount in the US figure for extra potatoes, Comrade!

 

[Mister Terrific]

Ukrainian Prosecutor Says Russian Troops Beheaded Ukrainian Soldier

Ukrainian Prosecutor-General Andriy Kostin said on June 18 that Russian troops beheaded a Ukrainian soldier in the eastern Donetsk region.

www.rferl.org

RuSSiA iS aCtiNG WitH reSTRaInT aND MoDerATIoN

Counting the Dead​

It will most likely take many years to identify all those civilians who died during Russia’s assault on Mariupol – and we may never have a full account. Many were killed during attacks or as a result of injuries for which they were unable to get treatment. Others died in the weeks and months following Russia’s siege of the city because they did not have access to clean water or medicine.

During the first half of March 2022, Mariupol residents buried the bodies of their loved ones, neighbors, and strangers in shallow makeshift graves in their backyards, the courtyards of apartment blocks, and in grassy areas where children used to play. Given the ongoing fighting and bombardment of the city, many were unable to bring bodies to hospitals, morgues, or cemeteries, and city officials only managed to promptly collect a fraction of the bodies.

The remains of some victims were likely mixed in with the rubble of damaged and destroyed buildings, never to be identified before demolition and reconstruction efforts began. Still others may have been buried outside of Mariupol. Some of those buried in makeshift graves were later transferred to official cemeteries in and around the city.

Picture of a make-shift grave in Mariupol with a destroyed building in the background. ©2022 REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenk

To better grasp how many people died, we analyzed satellite imagery, photographs, and videos of five of Mariupol’s cemeteries. We estimate that at least 10,284 people died and were buried in these five cemeteries during the first year of the conflict, though likely many more died. We estimate that around 2,250 people would have died naturally in Mariupol during that time, meaning the city had at least 8,034 excess deaths above a peacetime rate.
It is not clear how many of the people buried in these cemeteries were civilians – including those who died as a result of unlawful attacks – and how many were combatants.

With the city still under Russian occupation, many witnesses to abuses committed during or after the fighting who remain in Mariupol cannot speak about their experiences without risking retaliation. Physical evidence of crimes committed by Russian and affiliated forces has most likely disappeared or been destroyed. As a consequence, the full extent to which civilians died, were injured, or are still missing as a result of Russian forces’ battle for control of Mariupol against Ukrainian forces is unknown.

Counting the Dead: Documenting Loss in Mariupol, a Ukrainian City Besieged and Devastated

Documenting Loss in Mariupol, a Ukrainian City Besieged and Devastated

www.hrw.org

Remember when the U.S. abducted thousands of Iraqi children to be raised in America?

During the Russo-Ukrainian War,[3] Russia has forcibly transferred almost 20 thousand Ukrainian children to areas under its control, assigned them Russian citizenship, forcibly adopted them into Russian families, and created obstacles for their reunification with their parents and homeland.[7][8]The United Nations has stated that these deportations constitute war crimes.[8][9] The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for President of Russia Vladimir Putin[10](who has explicitly supported the forced adoptions, including by enacting legislation to facilitate them)[1] and Children's Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova for their alleged involvement.[10]According to international law, including the 1948 Genocide Convention, such acts constitute genocide if done with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a nation or ethnic group.[11][a]

Child abductions in the Russo-Ukrainian War - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[Professor Emeritus]

That’s fukking bullshyt and you know it


Russia never acts with “restraint”

Not in Afghanistan
Not in the Caucasus
Not in Georgia
Not in Syria
Not in Ukraine

Notice how you can't explain why the Iraqi death toll was 10x higher than the Ukrainian death toll. Or why Russia didn't start their war with "shock and awe" and the large-scale destruction of infrastructure the way the USA did.

“Random anecdotes” as if Russia wasn’t facing a laundry list of crimes against humanity from the first year of their war of aggression over land and resources

You're proving the point. When our enemies engage in wars of aggression, they face a laundry list of crimes against humanity. But when America does the same, they get off scot-free. Why is that? Do you think our invasions of Iraq, Vietnam, Cambodia, etc. were legal under international law, or that we didn't commit war crimes? Do you think our mass bombings of civilian centers, our use of weapons of mass destruction, our torture, our assassinations, our sponsoring of terrorists, our arming of dictators, and so on aren't war crimes too?

I must have missed when the US annexed Iraq btw. When did Russia annex Crimea 2013/14? Restraint…

That is an absolutely bizarre argument. Russia did everything possible to annex Crimea with no deaths at all. No one disagrees that Russia wants Ukraine to be part of its country. That's completely irrelevant to the argument. When Russia annexed Crimea, they CLEARLY did it with the desire to annex the nation but not kill any people. They actually wanted Crimeans (and Ukrainians) to be part of their country. That's as opposed to the USA, who killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis but sure as hell didn't want Iraqis to be part of the USA, they just wanted the oil to flow.

Hell, that's the story of America. Annex America but make sure you kill all the Native Americans first. Annex Mexico only after you've driven out the Mexicans. Fight proxy conflicts and resource wars across the globe, launch coups and fund terrorists on every continent to ensure that bananas and oil and and every other resource keep flowing freely to American consumers, but sure as hell don't bring in any of their people.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Counting the Dead​

So strange - you keep gish-galloping these copy-pastes, but still can't explain why America killed 10x as many Iraqis as Russia has killed Ukrainians.

Remember when the U.S. abducted thousands of Iraqi children to be raised in America?

Americans don't want no more fukking brown kids in this country than they already have.

Americans made sure that hundreds of thousands of Iraqi kids died due to sanctions, bombings, and purposeful destruction of all Iraqi infrastructure, hardly took in any of them, and somehow you think that the fact that they DIDN'T want to take any in after killing hundreds of thousands means something. Is America killing hundreds of thousands thus operating with "more restraint" than Russia which has only killed a couple thousand kids and taken in a couple thousand more?

Do you have ANY logical process going on here other than, "America good, enemies bad!"??? Can you ever admit that America has done ANYTHING wrong?

 

[Pressure]

 

[Mister Terrific]

This Newstatesman article is a perfect takedown of Chomskys generational lunacy

Noam Chomsky: Russia is fighting more humanely than the US did in Iraq

The US linguist on the war in Ukraine, how the West is provoking China and why the UK is “not an independent country anymore”.

www.newstatesman.com

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has recorded 8,490 civilians killed and 14,244 injured in Ukraine since the start of Russia’s invasion 14 months ago. However, it “believes that the actual figures are considerably higher” because of poor data from areas with high civilian casualties, such as the city of Mariupol in the south. Ukrainian officials believe that tens of thousands – perhaps up to 50,000 people – died in Mariupol alone during Russia’s siege of the city in 2022.

Remember in 1984 Orwell shows that authoritarian communists like Chomsky will convince you 2+2=5. Here Chomsky and his ilk are trying to convince us 50,000 dead people is showing restraint. Deliberate eradication of an ethnic group by Serbs isn’t a genocide and refugees from the killing fields of Cambodia CIA plants.

At times, Chomsky’s ideological priors lead him to overlook facts that might contradict his narrative. For instance, Sweden and Finland, which had been officially non-aligned for 210 and 73 years, respectively, both applied to join Nato in May 2022. To most observers, the end of their decades of neutrality might seem at least tangentially related to the invasion of Ukraine three months earlier. However, Chomsky says that both countries seeking to join Nato had “nothing to do with fear of a Russian attack, which has never been even conceived”. Claims that Russia could threaten either country amount to “Western propaganda”, he adds. Instead, Chomsky argues that joining Nato gives the military industries of both Nordic countries “great new market opportunities [and] new access to advanced equipment”.

In fact, both countries explicitly cited the invasion of Ukraine as the reason behind their applications to join Nato. Moreover, within living memory, Finland fought off Soviet attempts to conquer and annex the country. The Winter War of 1939-40against the USSR still shapes Finnish attitudes to Russia. Finland joined Nato on 4 April, while Sweden’s application continues to be held up by Turkey’s objections.

Asked what form a potential settlement to the war in Ukraine might take, Chomsky says: “First of all, Ukraine will not be a member of Nato. That’s the red line that every Russian leader has insisted on since [the former Russian president Boris] Yeltsin and [the former Soviet president Mikhail] Gorbachev.” He adds: “Ukraine gains the status of, say, Austria during the Cold War or Mexico today. Mexico can’t join a military alliance [hostile to the US]. There’s no treaty about it but it’s perfectly obvious.”

A peace agreement would involve Ukraine offering “a degree of autonomy” to the eastern Donbas region, today partially occupied by Russia. “With regard to Crimea [which was illegally annexed in 2014]… we put it off for the moment. Let it be discussed later. Those are the basic outlines of a solution under the Minsk II agreement.” The Minsk I and II agreements were signed between Ukraine and Russia in 2014 and 2015. Intended to end the conflict that began in 2014, they included military and political steps that were never implemented by Moscow. The agreements are today widely viewed in Ukraine as having paved the way for Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. “There will be no Minsk III,” as the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskycurtly put it last November.

Just an utterly delusional reading of Putin’s intentions bordering on senility.

“Autonomy to eastern Donbas” “Status of Austria and Mexico”

This is more idiotic than claiming Ukraine has biolabs.

Chomsky’s criticisms of US foreign policy are not limited to Ukraine. Just as Washington provoked Russia with Nato expansion it is also “provoking China openly” over Taiwan, he tells me. “The US is carrying out a programme… to encircle China with a ring of sentinel states armed with advanced precision weapons aimed at China,” an apparent reference to American defence cooperation with countries such as Japan, South Korea and Australia.

“What is the threat from China at this point?” Chomsky asks me. “The threat is coming from the US with, of course, Britain following. [The UK] is just a lackey at this point. It’s not an independent country anymore.” Though he acknowledges that China is “not a nice country” and is violating international law in the South China Sea, he says “the talk about [war over] Taiwan is coming from the West”. Beijing, which views Taiwan as its own territory, has not ruled out an invasion and regularly conducts military exercises which simulate a blockade of the self-governing island.

Another criminal misread by Chomsky. China is now currently attacking Filipino fishing boats 800 miles from China.

The global order. The ability for nations to feel secure in their borders, trade freely, freedom of movement, freedom of commerce and largest population and living standards boom in world history doesn’t matter to men like Chomsky. We need a “multipolar” world led by Uighur concentration camp guards and kgb assassins.

Reflecting on our conversation, I came across a passage in an essay from Chomsky’s 1970 book At War with Asia. “As long as an American army of occupation remains in Vietnam, the war will continue,” he wrote. “Withdrawal of American troops must be a unilateral act, as the invasion of Vietnam by the American government was a unilateral act in the first place. Those who had been calling for ‘negotiations now’ were deluding themselves and others.” These words seem to me to be more applicable to the war in Ukraine than anything Noam Chomsky said during our conversation 53 years later.

And this the crux of the hypocrisy. Western aligned nations must surrender immediately, face victors justice, relinquish their human rights and dignity, be driven off in to death camps, beheaded in the mud and have their children sent off to Lebensraum programs and all those who oppose this are CIA spooks and arms of the empire.

I tell oh that the moderates of the world are getting tired of the political extremism. There will be a reckoning soon for these ghouls.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Remember in 1984 Orwell shows that authoritarian communists like Chomsky will convince you 2+2=5.

Chomsky is an anti-authoritarian anti-capitalist just like Orwell was, you fukking dumbass, and they share the exact same interest in the tendency of powerful states to use propaganda on BOTH SIDES of the capitalist/communist divide.

In fact, Chomsky often cites Orwell as a significant influence on him and the Orwell Society has cosigned Chomsky's ideas. This essay praising Chomsky is from the chairman of the Orwell Society:

Chomsky, Orwell and the Myth of Press Freedom

The US maverick intellectual Noam Chomsky cites Orwell’s views on thought control in free societies in his latest YouTube video. Richard Lance Keeble reports Noam Chomsky is an extraordinary man. Voted the world’s leading public intellectual in a 2005 poll, the 76-year-old Professor Emeritus at th

orwellsociety.com

"Noam Chomsky is an extraordinary man. Voted the world’s leading public intellectual in a 2005 poll.....In Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, he proposed the ‘propaganda model’ to highlight the ways in which corporate media in the West serve essentially to promote the interests of dominant financial, social, political and military interests. For many decades the model has inspired countless progressive media activists and theorists globally. I personally used the model prominently for my own PhD (completed in 1996) which examined the US/UK mainstream press coverage of the 1991 US-led attacks on Iraq."

"Chomsky says that Orwell, as the author of Nineteen Eighty-Four, is normally associated with the suppression of thought in dystopian, authoritarian societies. Lesser known, according to Chomsky, is Orwell’s stress on “thought-control” in supposedly free societies such as England. Here a subtle system of censorship operates which means that unpopular ideas are rarely heard. Going to Orwell’s precise words:"


The chair of the Orwell Society praising Chomsky, saying that he personally relies on Chomsky's models, and demonstrating how much Chomsky and Orwell shared their views of propaganda in Western society. You're talking about doublespeak in the same breath as you call Chomsky an authoritarian and suggest that he and Orwell are in opposition to each other.

Here Chomsky and his ilk are trying to convince us 50,000 dead people is showing restraint.

Not "restraint" in the abstract, just more restraint than when the USA killed well over 600,000 people in a smaller country with less opposition. You remain completely silent on that, just as you've remained silent on every argument regarding bad US foreign policy despite that being the premise of your thread.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

"he acknowledges that China is 'not a nice country' and is violating international law in the South China Sea"

Another criminal misread by Chomsky. China is now currently attacking Filipino fishing boats 800 miles from China.

How is that a "misread"? Did you not know what he was referring to by violations of international law? This has to be the 10th time in this thread that I've caught you failing to understand what you just read. And this isn't a new thing for you - as I pointed out earlier, virtually every interaction with have on US policy involves you making basic errors of fact because you either don't read what you're replying to, or lack the capacity to understand it. Embarrassment about that is likely why you rely so heavily on copy-paste.

 

[Mister Terrific]

​

​

The hypocrisy of Noam Chomsky​

by
Keith Windschuttle
On the philosopher’s record of defending authoritarian regimes.

Chomsky has used his status, originally gained in the field of linguistics, to turn himself into the leading voice of the American left. He is not merely a spokesman. His own stance has done much to structure left-wing politics over the past forty years. Today, when actors, rock stars, and protesting students mouth anti-American slogans for the cameras, they are very often expressing sentiments they have gleaned from Chomsky’s voluminous output.



Hence, to examine Chomsky’s views is to analyze the core mindset of contemporary radicalism, especially the variety that now holds so much sway in the academic and arts communities.

Chomsky has been a celebrity radical since the mid-1960s when he made his name as an anti-Vietnam War activist. Although he lost some of his appeal in the late-1970s and 1980s by his defense of the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia, he has used September 11 to restore his reputation, indeed to surpass his former influence and stature. At seventy-four years of age, he is today the doyen of the American and much of the world’s intellectual left.

In contrast, Chomsky has produced no substantial body of political theory of his own. Nor is he a relativist. He advocates the pursuit of truth and knowledge about human affairs and promotes a simple, universal set of moral principles. Moreover, his political writings are very clear, pitched to a general rather than specialist audience. He supports his claims not by appeals to some esoteric conceptual apparatus but by presenting plain, apparently factual evidence. The explanation for his current appeal, therefore, needs to be sought not in recent intellectual fashions but in something with a longer history.

Of all the major powers in the Sixties, according to Chomsky, America was the most reprehensible. Its principles of liberal democracy were a sham. Its democracy was a “four-year dictatorship” and its economic commitment to free markets was merely a disguise for corporate power. Its foreign policy was positively evil. “By any objective standard,” he wrote at the time, “the United States has become the most aggressive power in the world, the greatest threat to peace, to national self-determination, and to international cooperation.”

however, when it came to the real world of international politics Chomsky turned out to endorse a fairly orthodox band of socialist revolutionaries. They included the architects of communism in Cuba, Fidel Castro and Che Guevera, as well as Mao Tse-tung and the founders of the Chinese communist state. Chomsky told a forum in New York in December, 1967 that in China “one finds many things that are really quite admirable.” He believed the Chinese had gone some way to empowering the masses along lines endorsed by his own libertarian socialist principles:

China is an important example of a new society in which very interesting and positive things happened at the local level, in which a good deal of the collectivization and communization was really based on mass participation and took place after a level of understanding had been reached in the peasantry that led to this next step.

When he provided this endorsement of what he called Mao Tse-tung’s “relatively livable” and “just society,” Chomsky was probably unaware he was speaking only five years after the end of the great Chinese famine of 1958–1962, the worst in human history.

In fact, Chomsky was well aware of the degree of violence that communist regimes had routinely directed at the people of their own countries. At the 1967 New York forum he acknowledged both “the mass slaughter of landlords in China” and “the slaughter of landlords in North Vietnam” that had taken place once the communists came to power. His main objective, however, was to provide a rationalization for this violence, especially that of the National Liberation Front then trying to take control of South Vietnam. Chomsky revealed he was no pacifist.

I don’t accept the view that we can just condemn the NLF terror, period, because it was so horrible. I think we really have to ask questions of comparative costs, ugly as that may sound. And if we are going to take a moral position on this—and I think we should—we have to ask both what the consequences were of using terror and not using terror. If it were true that the consequences of not using terror would be that the peasantry in Vietnam would continue to live in the state of the peasantry of the Philippines, then I think the use of terror would be justified.

It was not only Chomsky who was sucked into supporting the maelstrom of violence that characterized the communist takeovers in South-East Asia. Almost the whole of the 1960s New Left followed. They opposed the American side and turned Ho Chi Minh and the Vietcong into romantic heroes.

When the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia in 1975 both Chomsky and the New Left welcomed it. And when news emerged of the extraordinary event that immediately followed, the complete evacuation of the capital Phnom Penh accompanied by reports of widespread killings, Chomsky offered a rationalization similar to those he had provided for the terror in China and Vietnam: there might have been some violence, but this was understandable under conditions of regime change and social revolution.

Although information was hard to come by, Chomsky suggested in an article in 1977 that post-war Cambodia was probably similar to France after liberation at the end of World War II when thousands of enemy collaborators were massacred within a few months. This was to be expected, he said, and was a small price to pay for the positive outcomes of the new government of Pol Pot. Chomsky cited a book by two American left-wing authors, Gareth Porter and George Hildebrand, who had “presented a carefully documented study of the destructive American impact on Cambodia and the success of the Cambodian revolutionaries in overcoming it, giving a very favorable picture of their programs and policies.”

Instead, Chomsky commended authors who apologized for the Pol Pot regime. He approvingly cited their analyses that the forced march of the population out of Phnom Penh was probably necessitated by the failure of the 1976 rice crop. If this was true, Chomsky wrote, “the evacuation of Phnom Penh, widely denounced at the time and since for its undoubted brutality, may actually have saved many lives.” Chomsky rejected the charge of genocide, suggesting that

the deaths in Cambodia were not the result of systematic slaughter and starvation organized by the state but rather attributable in large measure to peasant revenge, undisciplined military units out of government control, starvation and disease that are direct consequences of the US war, or other such factors.

After the Cataclysm also presented a much more extended critique of refugee testimony. Chomsky revealed his original 1977 source for this had been Ben Kiernan, at the time an Australian graduate student and apologist for the Pol Pot regime, who wrote in the Maoist-inspired Melbourne Journal of Politics. What Chomsky avoided telling his readers, however, was that well before 1980, the year After the Cataclysm was published, Kiernan himself had recanted his position.

The result they helped produce, however, was far worse than any bureaucratic solution that might have emanated from the behavioral sciences of the 1960s. From our present vantage point, we can today see the long-term outcome of the choice Chomsky posed in 1967 between the “comparative costs” of revolutionary terror in Vietnam versus the continuation of private enterprise agriculture in the Philippines.

The results all favor the latter. In 2001, the average GDP per head in the Philippines was $4000. At the same time, twenty-five years of revolution in Vietnam had produced a figure of only half as much, a mere $2100. Even those Vietnamese who played major roles in the transformation are now dismayed at the outcome. The former Vietcong General Pham Xuan An said in 1999: “All that talk about ‘liberation’ twenty, thirty years ago, all the plotting, all the bodies, produced this, this impoverished broken-down country led by a gang of cruel and paternalistic half-educated theorists.”

These “half-educated theorists” were the very mandarins Chomsky and his supporters so badly wanted to succeed and worked so hard to install.

Notice whenever far leftists get caught out defending their favorite genocidal regime of the week it’s always “how could I know?”. My response “What do you know and why should I listen to you?”