Noam Chomsky (20 page)
Authors: Wolfgang B. Sperlich
Chomsky’s Martian answers with a lengthy but extremely important history lesson, a notion often ignored by mainstream journalists who seek to sensationalize the here and now by situating it in a vacuum of unrelated events. Again Chomsky takes exception to the present catch-phrase of ‘everything has changed with 9/11’ by pointing out that the ‘new’ war on terrorism is merely a cynical continuation of
US
foreign policy that dates back to the 1980s, if not before:
I think he would begin with some factual observations that he’d send back to the journal on Mars. One factual observation is that the war on terrorism was not declared on September 11; rather, it was redeclared, using the same rhetoric as the first declaration twenty years earlier. The Reagan administration, as you know, I’m sure, came into office announcing that a war on terrorism would be the core of
US
foreign policy, and it condemned what the president called the ‘evil scourge of terrorism.’ The main focus was state-supported international terrorism in the Islamic world, and at that time also in Central America. International terrorism was described as a plague spread by ‘depraved opponents of civilization itself,’ in ‘a return to barbarism in the modern age.’ Actually, I’m quoting the administration moderate, Secretary of State George Shultz. The phrase I quoted from Reagan had to do with terrorism in the Middle East, and it was the year 1985. That was the year in which international terrorism in that region was selected by editors as the lead story of the year in an annual Associated Press poll, so point one that our Martian would report is that the year 2001 is the second time that this has been the main lead story, and that the war on terrorism has been redeclared pretty much as before. Furthermore, there’s a striking continuity; the same people are in leading positions. So Donald Rumsfeld is running the military component of the second phase of the war on terrorism, and he was Reagan’s special envoy to the Middle East during the first phase of the war on terrorism, including the peak year, 1985. The person who was just appointed a couple of months ago to be in charge of the diplomatic component of the war at the United Nations is John Negroponte, who during the first phase was supervising
US
operations in Honduras, which was the main base for the
US
war against terror in the first phase.
27
Here Chomsky’s political
nous
is as sharp as it has ever been. Note that since then Negroponte has moved on to take charge of Iraq (as proconsul and
US
ambassador to Iraq) and recently moved again to become Director of National Intelligence, a misnomer if there ever was one.
Let us close this and all other issues with Chomsky’s simple but devastating truth about the matter of terrorism and how it is reported in the mass media – and according to the propaganda model: ‘It’s only terrorism if they do it to us. When we do much worse to them, it’s not terrorism. Again, the universal principle. Well, the Martian might notice that, even if it’s not discussable here.’
28
Returning from Mars, here is the real Chomsky in his home in Lexington, poring over his newspapers at breakfast. It is a veritable paper trail – clues to the left, clues to the right. The case will never be closed until freedom is realized in the
US
and the rest of the world. As he says, it’s up to you and me.
1 A Working Life
1
Noam Chomsky,
Knowledge of Language
(New York, 1986), p. xxvii; cited in James McGilvray,
Chomsky
(Cambridge, 1999), p. 239.
2
Carsten Volkery, ‘Noam Chomsky, Der Grossvater der Amerika-Kritiker’,
Spiegel Online
, 25 March 2005; text available online at
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/0, 1518, 348276, 00.html
(accessed 3 July 2005).
3
Public messages for Noam Chomsky’s 70th birthday, posted online at
http://www.zmag.org/noambirth.htm
(accessed 3 July 2005).
4
Robert F. Barsky,
Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent
(Cambridge,
MA
, 1997), p. 13.
5
Ibid.
, p. 21.
6
Noam Chomsky,
The Chomsky Reader
, ed. James Peck (New York, 1987), p. 11; also cited in Barsky,
Chomsky
, p. 23.
7
Harry Kreisler, ‘Conversation with Noam Chomsky’ (Berkeley, 2002); transcript available on
http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20020322.htm
(accessed 1 July 2005).
8
Chomsky,
Chomsky Reader
, p. 7; also cited in Barsky,
Chomsky
, p. 47.
9
Samuel Hughes, ‘The way they were (and are)’,
University of Pennsylvania Gazette
(July–August 2001).
10
Ibid.
, p. 82.
11
Carol Chomsky,
The Acquisition of Syntax in Children from Five to Ten
(Cambridge,
MA
, 1969).
1
Robert F. Barsky,
Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent
(Cambridge,
MA
, 1997), p. 95.
2
Noam Chomsky,
Cartesian Linguistics
(New York, 1966).
3
David Crystal,
A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics
(Oxford, 1991), pp. 258–9.
4
Ferdinand de Saussure,
Course in General Linguistics
(New York, 1959).
5
Roman Jakobson,
Selected Writings
, 1:
Phonological Studies
(The Hague, 1962).
6
Claude Lévi-Strauss,
Tristes Tropiques
(New York, 1963).
7
Leonard Bloomfield,
Language
(New York, 1933).
8
B. F. Skinner,
Verbal Behavior
(New York, 1957).
9
Noam Chomsky, ‘A Review of B. F. Skinner’s
Verbal Behavior’, Language
, xxxv/1 (1959), pp. 26–58.
10
See also Barsky,
Chomsky
, chapter 1.
11
Zellig S. Harris,
Methods in Structural Linguistics
(Chicago, 1951).
12
Barsky,
Chomsky
, p. 53.
13
Noam Chomsky, ‘The Biolinguistic Perspective after 50 Years’ (speech delivered at the University of Florence, Italy, April 2004)
14
Samuel Hughes, ‘The way they were (and are)’,
University of Pennsylvania Gazette
(July–August 2001).
15
Barsky,
Chomsky
, p. 86.
16
Ray C. Dougherty,
Natural Language Computing
(Hillsdale,
NJ
, 1994), p. viii.
17
Gilbert Harman, ed.,
On Noam Chomsky: Critical Essays
(New York, 1974), p. vii.
18
Noam Chomsky,
Language and Politics
(Montreal, 1988), p. 190.
19
Bertrand Russell,
The History of Western Philosophy
(London, 1946, reprinted 1979), p. 634.
20
Donald Davidson and Jaako Hintikka, eds,
Words and Objections: Essays on the Work of W. V. Quine
(Dordrecht, 1969), p. 64.
21
Noam Chomsky, personal communication, 2005.
22
Noam Chomsky,
Aspects of the Theory of Syntax
(Cambridge,
MA
, 1965).
23
Chomsky,
Aspects
, pp. 128–47.
24
Available at
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060412763/qid=1120108283/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/103-0618543-1252605?v=glance&s=books
(accessed 30 June 2005).
25
Crystal,
Dictionary of Linguistics
, p. 383.
26
Neil Smith,
Chomsky: Ideas and Ideals
(Cambridge, 1999).
27
Ibid.
, p. 19.
28
Andrea Mechelli and others, ‘Neurolinguistics: Structural Plasticity in the Bilingual Brain’,
Nature
, 431 (2004), p. 757.
29
Smith,
Chomsky
, p. 69.
30
Noam Chomsky,
Barriers
(Cambridge,
MA
, 1986), p. 1.
31
Noam Chomsky,
Rules and Representations
(New York, 1980), p. 46.
32
Chomsky,
Rules
, p. 215.
33
L. S. Ramaiah and T. V. Prafulla Chandra,
Noam Chomsky: a Bibliography
(Gurgaon, 1984).
34
Randy Allen Harris,
The Linguistics Wars
(New York, 1993).
35
Smith,
Chomsky
, pp. 208–9.
36
Barsky,
Chomsky
, p. 183.
37
David Adger,
Core Syntax: a Minimalist Approach
(Oxford, 2003), p. 367.
1
Harry Kreisler, ‘Conversation with Noam Chomsky’ (Berkeley, 2002); transcript available on
http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20020322.htm
(accessed 1 July 2005).
2
Kreisler, ‘Chomsky’.
3
Rudolph Rocker,
Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism
(London, 1973); earlier versions appeared in various pamphlets with unknown publication dates. A comprehensive bibliography of the works of Rudolph Rocker is available on
http://flag.blackened.net/rocker/biblio.htm
(accessed 1 July 2005). The text of the article cited is also available on
http://flag.blackened.net/rocker/aasind.htm#struggle
(accessed 1 July 2005). Another source of Rocker’s work is the Anarchist Archives maintained by D. Ward on
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/index.html
(accessed 1 July 2005). Note that Rocker also wrote an article, ‘The Tragedy of Spain’, which appeared in 1937 in the
Freie Arbeiter Stimme
, the New York Jewish anarchist weekly magazine that Chomsky was in the habit of reading.
4
Roderick Kedward,
The Anarchists
(London, 1971), p. 13.
5
Rudolph Rocker, ‘Anarchism and Sovietism’; text available on
http://flag.blackened.net/rocker/soviet.htm
(accessed 1 July 2005).
6
Noam Chomsky,
Hegemony or Survival
(Crows Nest,
NSW
, 2003), p. 189.
7
Kedward,
Anarchists
, p. 14.
8
Harriet Feinberg,
Elsie Chomsky: A Life in Jewish Education
(Cambridge,
MA
, 1999), p. 17.
9
Neil Smith,
Chomsky: Ideas and Ideals
(Cambridge, 1999).
10
Rudolph Rocker,
Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice. An Introduction to a Subject which the Spanish War Has Brought into Overwhelming Prominence
(London, 1938).
11
Bertrand Russell,
Roads to Freedom
(3rd edn, London, 1948), p. 6.
12
Robert F. Barsky,
Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent
(Cambridge,
MA
, 1998), p. 47.
13
Barsky,
Chomsky
, chapter 2: ‘Zellig Harris, Avukah, and Hashomer Hatzair’.
14
Barsky,
Chomsky
, p. 121.
15
Ibid
.
16
Cited from the website of
RESIST
at
http://www.resistinc.org/resist/board.html#paullauter
(accessed 1 July 2005).
17
http://www.resistinc.org/index.html
(accessed 1 July 2005).
18
http://www.resistinc.org/resist/the_call.html
(accessed 1 July 2005).
19
Barsky,
Chomsky
, p. 129.
20
Ron Chepesiuk,
Sixties Radicals, Then and Now
(Jefferson,
NC
, 1995), pp. 133–46.
21
Chomsky, personal communication.
22
Noam Chomsky,
American Power and the New Mandarins
(New York, 1969), p. 93.
23
Ibid.
, p. 297.
24
Smith,
Chomsky
(back cover).
25
Barsky,
Chomsky
, p. 138.
26
Ibid.
, p. 161.
27
The text of the original manuscript and the history of its suppression is available on
http://mass-multi-media.com/CRV/
(accessed 1 July 2005).
28
Rudolph Rocker,
Anarchosyndicalism
(London, 1938), p. 31.
29
Ibid.
, p. 94.
30
Diego Abad de Santillan,
After the Revolution
(New York, 1937), p. 86.
31
Michael Bakunin,
Bakunin on Anarchy
, ed. and trans. Sam Dolgoff (New York, 1972).
32
Noam Chomsky, ‘Notes on Anarchism’, in
For Reasons of State
(London, 1973); the text cited here is from the version on the ‘official Chomsky web-site’ at
http://www.chomsky.info/books/state01.htm
(accessed 1 July 2005), unpaginated.
33
Cited in Daniel Guérin,
Anarchism: From Theory to Practice
, trans. Mary Klopper (New York, 1970), no page reference given.
34
Chomsky, ‘Notes on Anarchism’.
35
Karl Marx,
The Civil War in France
(New York, 1871, reprinted 1941), pp.77–8.
36
Chomsky, ‘Notes on Anarchism’.
37
Ibid
.
38
Cited on the website of the Federation of American Scientists at
http://www.fas.org/irp/world/chile/allende.htm
(accessed 1 July 2005).
39
A history of Nicaragua is available online at
http://library.thinkquest.org/17749/mainhistory.html
(accessed 1 July 2005).
40
Noam Chomsky,
On Power and Ideology: The Managua Lectures
(Boston, 1987), p. 6.
41
Ibid.
, p. 3.
42
Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, ‘The Nazi Parallel: The National Security State and the Churches’, in
The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism
(Boston, 1979); citation from a text version available at
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Herman%20/NaziParallelFascism_Herman.html
(accessed 1 July 2005), unpaginated.
43
The full text of the Concordat is available at
http://www.newadvent.org/library/docs_ss33co.htm
(accessed 1 July 2005).
44
Article posted online at
http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2005/621/621p19.htm
(accessed 1 July 2005).
45
Chomsky,
On Power and Ideology
.
46
Noam Chomsky, ‘Central America: The Next Phase’, posted on
Z Magazine
, 1988, available online at
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/articles/z8803-CA-next-phase.html
(accessed 1 July 2005).
47
Noam Chomsky, ‘Interview’,
Leviathan
, 1/1–3 (1977), PP. 6–9.
48
Ibid
.
49
Noam Chomsky, ‘Scenes from the Uprising’,
z Magazine
(1988); text online at
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/articles/z8807-uprising.html
(accessed 1 July 2005).
50
Noam Chomsky, ‘War is Peace’, in
Fateful Triangle
(Boston, 1999); text online at
http://www.chomsky.info/books/fateful01.htm
(accessed 1 July 2005), unpaginated.
51
Noam Chomsky, ‘Interview’,
Shmate: A Journal of Progressive Jewish Thought
, 20 (1988), pp. 24–32. Note that this is a very small publication and the transcript may be based on a conversation rather than a taped interview.
52
Deborah E. Lipstadt, ‘Deniers, Relativists and Pseudo-Scholarship’,
Dimensions
,
VI
/1(1991); text online at
http://www.adl.org/Braun/dim_14_1_deniers_print.asp?&MSHiC=125
2&L=10&W=chomsky+CHOMSKYS+&Pre=%3CFONT+STYLE%3D%22 color%3A+%230000000%3B+background%2Dcolor%3A+%23FFFF00%22 %3E&Post=%3C%2FFONT%3E (accessed 1 July 2005).
53
Noam Chomsky,
Rogue States
(Boston, 2000), p. 51.
54
Full text available online at
http://www.motherjones.com/news/special_reports/east_timor/evidence/nairn.html
(accessed 1 July 2005).
55
Alex Burns, ‘Operation Mindcrime: the Selling of Noam Chomsky’ (2001); text online at
http://www.disinfo.com/archive/pages/article/id589/pg1/
(accessed 1 July 2005).
56
Ibid
.
57
Ibid
.
58
Cited in Burns, ‘Operation Mindcrime’, p. 3.
59
Ibid.
, p. 8.
60
Keith Locke,
Otago Daily Times
and the
Evening Post
, 23 November 1998.
61
Chomsky,
Hegemony or Survival
, p. 54.
62
East Timorese Movement Against the Occupation of the Timor Sea (19 April 2004), full text available online at
http://www.etan.org/news/2004/04mkott.htm
(accessed 1 July 2005).
63
Noam Chomsky,
September 11
(New York, 2001), pp. 93–4.
64
Ibid.
, p. 116.
65
As noted on the Seven Stories Press website at
http://www.sevenstories.com/about/
(accessed 1 July 2005).
66
Arundhati Roy, ‘Do Turkeys Enjoy Thanksgiving?’, speech at the opening of the Mumbai World Social Forum, 16 January 2004; full text available online at
http://www.countercurrents.org/wsf-roy190104.htm
(accessed 1 July 2005).