come at me.
Manufacturing consent turned me into a full blown leftist
He has plenty of anti-communist rants, and considered the Bolsheviks a ruling intelligentsia who only wanted to gain power for themselves.
It can take years to deprogram someone from his brand of college-student oriented idealist "anti-authoritarianism", into an actual class and materialist way of looking at the world.
Oh ummm... haha, that's weird. Imagine this comment describing what happened to you. That would be super awkward and uncomfortable. Probably. Idk it never happened to me, I'm just talking in hypotheticals.
I've read Parenti but the two are more complementing each other rather than disproving so i never understood the whole Parenti-Chomsky "feud" apart from being sectarian shitstirring.
It's less a feud and more a graduation away from Chomsky's faults and limitations toward Parenti who is unabashed in his defense of peoples' defense and liberation with an explicit practice of historical materialism
Nah, it's definitely a sectarian feud. You calling those "faults and limitations" tells me that you're on one side of that feud.
It's not a feud, it's just two writers/lecturers and one is a socialist while the other is not.
Noam is wrong about a lot of things, important things, if that sets me on a "sect" apart from him, so be it
Oh, you're a Parenti fan? Name three bad VHS rips of his lectures.
When asked about his relationship with Epstein, Mr. Chomsky replied in an email:
“First response is that it is none of your business. Or anyone’s. Second is that I knew him and we met occasionally.”
In March 2015, Epstein scheduled a gathering with Mr. Chomsky and Harvard University professor Martin Nowak and other academics, according to the documents. Mr. Chomsky said they had several meetings at Mr. Nowak’s research institute to discuss neuroscience and other topics. Two months later, Epstein planned to fly with Mr. Chomsky and his wife to have dinner with them and movie director Woody Allen and his wife, Soon-Yi Previn, the documents show. Mr. Chomsky said...
“If there was a flight, which I doubt, it would have been from Boston to New York, 30 minutes. I’m unaware of the principle that requires that I inform you about an evening spent with a great artist.”
https://archive.ph/lT9No
I did a bit of editing to improve the formatting.
In 2018, Chomsky asked Epstein for help with a “technical matter” regarding the disbursement of common funds relating to his first marriage, the Journal reported.
He went on to confirm that in March 2018, he received a transfer of approximately $270,000 from an account linked to Epstein, telling the Journal that it was “restricted to rearrangement of my own funds, and did not involve one penny from Epstein”.
In 2018
Cringe but if you believe that this is why mainstream media cared (especially since the story very not suspiciously popped out after Chomsky going full anti-US propaganda on Ukraine), i have a bridge to sell you.
Bill Clinton has been a rapist since he was Bill Clinton, doesn't make Chomsky have better takes
i can excuse Epstein, but not having dinner with Woody AllenQuick, get the
board! We need to know how many times Chomsky went to dinner with Phil Spector and Roman Polanski!
Everybody did. Like lots of people attended the same parties as Epstein or were in a photograph with him.
He was instrumental in radicalising me. I watched the "New War on Terror" interview, as a saved video file before YouTube existed, probably a dozen times. But honestly I started to move past him in 2003. Also most the books with his name as the author are just typed up interviews and are terrible to read. It's as if they tried to monetise the Chomsky name as hard as they can.
He had a lot of great deconstructions of capitalism, in his earlier years. I don't think anyone can deny that. I think he frequently speaks a lot of sense.
However, especially currently in his senile age, he has many hmm takes. Like advocating for Biden, partially defending Epstein and being very critical of AES countries.
I'm not really sure any single public figure warrants uncritical support, because they're humans with varying ideas and flaws.
I'm not really sure any single public figure warrants uncritical support
Excuse me, I am posting publicly right now.
I think he has some good ideas, but he's not right about everything (obviously). I admire him in some ways also because he makes his critiques of imperialism fairly accessible to the average lib, compared to some other authors. But he's not the end game of "leftist thought", merely an introduction. From what I've seen he's also started to have increasingly bad takes on current events as he's aged.
I love that clip of him where he tries to explain to Andrew marr that capitalism and journalism in particular self selects for obedience, and Marr is just like
. But I don't trust someone as smart as he is who claims not to understand dialectics and used to hang out with Jeffrey EpsteinI wonder if his "I don't understand dialectics" thing actually means "Marx was a bullshitter and no one should read him". Just more of his typical anti communism.
Noam Chomsky is like Mao because he has good takes and bad takes. Noam Chomsky isn't like Mao because he's a white US academic who never lead any popular movement
Good for you, however:
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5be5a25929711449ca9950d4/t/5df7ff1ef8dcf22406cca2ec/1576533792709/Noam+Chomsky+and+the+Compatible+Left.pdf
Thanks for this, finished part one and it's a good read. Feel like it deserves its own post tbh
