Scholarship
A number of the essays criticize Chomsky for the fact that many of his references are not to well-known journalists, periodicals and scholars, but rather to small-circulation pamphlets written by obscure, fringe political activists. Many of his references are to his own earlier writings, which are themselves full of weak references. In other words, the quality of his scholarship is poor. One of the essays points out that Chomsky’s political and linguistic writings are similar, in that in both he ignores facts that do not fit his theories. Chomsky is criticized for presenting selective evidence. If there is a conflict between two parties, he reports the atrocities committed by one side, but none of the atrocities committed by the other. He also fails to distinguish between the inevitable collateral damage to civilians that occurs when fighting in an urban setting, with terrorist acts who intention is to deliberately kill civilians.
The Cold War
Chomsky attributed the entry of the United States into World War I to President Woodrow Wilson’s anti-German propaganda, in particular, to the Creel Commission. The conventional view of most historians is that Americans were motivated to enter the war because (a) German U-boats sunk the passenger ship the Lusitania, and (b) the Zimmerman Memorandum revealed that Germany had asked Mexico to join with it to attack the United States. Chomsky blames the United States for the Cold War, since we supported the White Russians during the Russian Civil War. Chomsky blames the National Security Council Report 68 (NSC-68) for the post-World War II intensification of the Cold War. Chomsky believed that American hawks were exaggerating the magnitude of the Soviet threat. Chomsky was critical of Czech freedom-fighter Vaclav Havel for thanking the United States for fighting the Soviets in his 1990 address to the U.S. Congress. Noam Chomsky blames the United States embargo against Cuba for Cuban poverty. But this embargo prevented Cuba’s trade with only one country, the United States. Cuba was free to trade with all the other nations of the world. Chomsky accuses the United States of terrorism, for supporting the contras in Nicaragua. But the contras, while receiving a great deal of military support from the United States, were not created by American agents, but rather by peasants resisting the collectivization of agriculture by the Sandinistas.
Zionism
Chomsky’s book about Palestine, Fateful Triangle, contains a dozen comparisons of the Zionists to Hitler, but it contains no mention of al-Hajj Amin al-Husaynia, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who was an actual friend of Hitler. In this book, Chomsky also devotes much space to the 1948 Deir Yassin military action, where the Israeli soldiers killed several hundred Palestinians during an attack on a military force in the center of the village of Deir Yassin. But Chomsky says little, if anything, about Arab atrocities during Israel’s war of independence. Chomsky frequently criticizes Israel for being a Jewish state, but he rarely, if ever, criticizes Ireland for being a Roman Catholic state, Greece for being a Greek Orthodox state, or the United Kingdom for being a Protestant (Anglican) state.
Freedom of the Press for Holocaust Deniers
Chomsky has supported the publications of holocaust deniers, in particular, Robert Faurisson. Chomsky claims that his motivation is only to protect their right to free speech and academic freedom, but he has rarely, if ever, supported the advocates of other fringe causes. Speaking of freedom of the press, the book points out that Noam Chomsky persuaded American publishers to delete from the American edition of Biographical Companion to Modern Thought an entry by British linguist Geoffrey Sampson that criticized Chomsky for his denial of the Cambodian genocide.
Conspiratorial Thinking
Chomsky has a conspiratorial world view. He believes that American foreign policy is motivation solely by the desires of corporations to increase their profits, and never by legitimate, defensive, national security considerations, or a desire to promote freedom and democracy throughout the world. If there is little evidence in most prominent news publications to support his assertions that America or Israel is committing evil acts, he interprets this as a cover-up. Chomsky believes that the American media are slanted to the right, because they are owned by large corporations. But rich corporations do not necessarily represent the interest of rich individuals, because most of their stock is ultimately owned by middle-class individuals.
Chomsky’s Linguistics
There are a number of essays in this volume that are critical of Chomsky’s linguistics. Those criticisms are not discussed here, because the reviewer has been convinced by Steven Pinker’s book, The Language Instinct, that Chomsky was right about deep structure.
