Chomsky for the 21st century

The Aljazeera web site has lately published an extract from Noam Chomsky’s 1992 book of ‘interviews’ (they are not hard-hitting) Chronicles of Dissent. The reason is suggested by the web site’s caption to a photograph of a Hasidic Jew praying at the Western Wall: ‘Is Holocaust manipulated by the Israeli state to promote its own interests?’ The question is rhetorical. It is asked by Chomsky’s faithful interlocutor, David Barsamian; Chomsky replies: 'It's very consciously manipulated. I mean, it's quite certainly real, there's no question about that, but it is also undoubted that they manipulate it.'

Two observations about this. First, it might appear odd that Chomsky offers the redundant observation that the Holocaust is 'certainly real', but it should be read in the context of a contrived discussion that the Aljazaeera extract has edited out, which runs like this:

QUESTION: I ask you this question because I know that you have been plagued and hounded around the United States specifically on this issue of the Holocaust. It's been said that Noam Chomsky is somehow agnostic on the issue of whether the Holocaust occurred or not.

CHOMSKY: My "agnosticism" is in print. I described the Holocaust years ago as the most fantastic outburst of insanity in human history, so much so that if we even agree to discuss the matter we demean ourselves. Those statements and numerous others like them are in print, but they're basically irrelevant because you have to understand that this is part of a Stalinist-style technique to silence critics of the holy state and therefore the truth is entirely irrelevant, you just tell as many lies as you can and hope that some of the mud will stick. It's a standard technique used by the Stalinist parties, by the Nazis and by these guys.

I’ve written before about this particularly shameless evasion. No serious critic of Chomsky has ever claimed that he is Holocaust denier. The criticism is not that he claims for Holocaust denial factual accuracy, but that he invests it with political legitimacy, denying its inherent antisemitism. (I found from a recent trawl through these unsavoury web sites that one online publication – I won’t give a link, but it’s an electronic magazine tendentiously called the Revisionist Clarion – has reproduced my post on Chomsky's relations to Holocaust denial, and another on the antisemitic polemicist “Israel Shamir”, while making its own antisemitic annotations. Be aware that it has done so of course without my knowledge or consent, but there’s not much I can do about it. The headline given to me was, at least, ‘A PARTICULARLY VICIOUS BASTARD’, as indeed I am.)

Secondly, it’s interesting to note the direction of Chomsky’s rhetoric over the years, and the Aljazeera extract reminds me of this. In Chronicles of Dissent, Chomsky at least recognises antisemitism as a real phenomenon, and not only historically, while maintaining it is no more prevalent or destructive than other forms of prejudice:

Anti-Semitism undoubtedly exists, but it's now on a par, in my view, with other kinds of prejudice of all sorts. I don't think it's more than anti-Italianism or anti-Irishism, and that's been a very significant change in the last generation, one that I've experienced myself in my own life, and it's very visible throughout the society.

I think this is a mistaken interpretation on many grounds, but it’s not an illegitimate claim. Contrast it, though, with what Chomsky has said much more recently on the same question, in remarks to a Scottish pro-Palestinian group at the end of 2002 (emphasis added):

By now Jews in the US are the most privileged and influential part of the population. You find occasional instances of anti-Semitism but they are marginal. There’s plenty of racism, but it’s directed against Blacks, Latinos, Arabs are targets of enormous racism, and those problems are real. Anti-Semitism is no longer a problem, fortunately. It’s raised, but it’s raised because privileged people want to make sure they have total control, not just 98% control. That’s why anti-Semitism is becoming an issue. Not because of the threat of anti-Semitism; they want to make sure there’s no critical look at the policies the US (and they themselves) support in the Middle East.

Again, I have written of this passage before, but wish to put it on record again, for reasons I shall explain next week. Noam Chomsky is by some margin the most prominent public figure in the Western world to maintain publicly that Jews are “the most privileged and influential part of the population”, and that they cry antisemitism because they want to increase their control of American life from domination to “total control”, thereby preventing public debate on their sinister foreign-policy goals. Think about it.