The latest instalment in the controversy over Noam Chomsky’s revealing interview with Emma Brockes in The Guardian is a letter to the newspaper from Chomsky, published yesterday. (Do see also the impressive accompanying letter from a survivor of a Serb-run concentration camp – but my comments in this post relate specifically to Chomsky.) Chomsky's letter reads in full:
Emma Brockes's report of her interview with me (G2, October 31), opens with the following headline:"Q: Do you regret supporting those who say the Srebrenica massacre was exaggerated? A: My only regret is that I didn't do it strongly enough"
I did express my regret: namely, that I did not support Diana Johnstone's right to publish strongly enough when her book was withdrawn by the publisher after dishonest press attacks, which I reviewed in an open letter that any reporter could have easily discovered. The remainder of Brockes's report continues in the same vein. Even when the words attributed to me have some resemblance to accuracy, I take no responsibility for them, because of the invented contexts in which they appear.
As for her personal opinions, interpretations and distortions, she is of course free to publish them, and I would, of course, support her right to do so, on grounds that she makes quite clear she does not understand.
My information is that, with one minor alteration (Chomsky was under the curious impression that Ms Brockes wrote her own headline), this letter is exactly as Chomsky wrote it. It has not been edited or shortened. That is, on the face of it, remarkable, for you will note that Chomsky’s complaint contains no specific charges whatever. With the phrase “even when the words attributed to me have some resemblance to accuracy”, Chomsky slyly insinuates that Ms Brockes has fabricated quotations, but does so in such a way that he can deny having made this grave accusation if pressed on it. He then retreats into the impossibly general assertion that his words have been given “invented contexts” – again, without indicating any respect in which he has, in fact, been quoted out of context. Neat: Chomsky deals with one of the few non-hagiographic interviewers he encounters by impugning her honesty while carefully refraining from giving details that would risk his being refuted by a transcript or recording.
That is, of course, a disgraceful way for Chomsky to conduct himself, but I think I understand why he has adopted this curiously circumlocutory technique – what might be termed a ‘deniable calumny’. As I mentioned in the post immediately below this one, he was badly burned by the experience of casually insulting Larissa MacFarquhar of the New Yorker, who wrote a profile of him in 2003 (not online, unfortunately). Chomsky claimed, on the basis of a particularly preposterous historical assertion attributed to him and that one would like to think he must have been embarrassed by, that Ms MacFarquhar’s article was “too ridiculous to merit comment... No one can seriously use this as a source.” It was later proved from videotape evidence that Ms MacFarquhar had quoted Chomsky accurately in every detail. (For the details of this, see John Williamson’s detective work in The Anti-Chomsky Reader.)
This time, Chomsky has prudently avoided making any claim that could be falsified. He has merely thrown dirt at an interviewer and left it up to the reader to judge whose word should be believed. So let me give you some relevant background information that might help you make up your mind.
In my article about Chomsky in the current issue of Prospect I note:
After 9/11, Chomsky deployed fanciful arithmetic to draw an equivalence between the destruction of the twin towers and the Clinton administration's bombing of Sudan—in which a pharmaceutical factory, wrongly identified as a bomb factory, was destroyed and a nightwatchman killed.
Many readers will be familiar with Christopher Hitchens’s lucid objections to this line of reasoning, but fewer may know the grounds on which Chomsky later defended his claims.
In an interview in Salon magazine in 2002 with Suzy Hansen in January 2002 (a free version is here), Chomsky advanced his case with the following words:
"That one bombing [in Sudan], according to the estimates made by the German Embassy in Sudan and Human Rights Watch, probably led to tens of thousands of deaths."
Now, the first claimed source was suspect: it wasn’t the German Embassy, but a former German Ambassador in the Harvard International Review venturing what he claimed was “a reasonable guess” but was actually an off-hand comment made as a rhetorical device and on the basis of no research at all. But the second claimed source was a straight falsehood. Salon published in its next issue a letter of correction from Carroll Bogert, Communications Director of Human Rights Watch:
Noam Chomsky states in a Jan. 16 interview with Suzy Hansen, "That one bombing [of the al-Shifa plant in Sudan], according to the estimates made by the German Embassy in Sudan and Human Rights Watch, probably led to tens of thousands of deaths." In fact, Human Rights Watch has conducted no research into civilian deaths as the result of U.S. bombing in Sudan and would not make such an assessment without a careful and thorough research mission on the ground. We have conducted research missions and issued such estimates for Iraq and Yugoslavia, after U.S. bombing campaigns there. In our experience, trenchant and effective criticism of U.S. military action requires factual investigation.
Chomsky’s next step was as revealing as it was bizarre. He wrote to the magazine claiming that the letter from Human Rights Watch merely confirmed what he had said all along: 'Hansen opens by quoting my statement, in an earlier interview, that the bombing is responsible for "killing unknown numbers of people (no one knows because ... no one cares to pursue it)." That is, there have been no serious studies, by Human Rights Watch or anyone else, as I made explicit.'
I am sufficiently long in tooth and thick of skin to be surprised by little in the way of rhetorical slipperiness, but the brazenness of Chomsky's rejoinder is beyond anything in my political experience.
There is, however, an interesting coda. Chomsky is supposed to be a prolific writer, but in fact his political output, certainly in recent years, largely comprises slim volumes of ‘interviews’ that require no research and that redefine the adjective ‘cosy’. A sample question from his indefatigable promoter David Barsmian might be (Class Warfare, 1996, p.112), “Are you looking forward to the summer at Wellfleet, on the Cape?" (On receiving the answer "yes", Barsamian follows it up with, "And you get a little sailing and swimming in on the side?" - but it turns out Chomsky has no firm views on this challenging supplementary question.) Chomsky’s latest book is just such a volume, entitled Imperial Ambitions, 2005. In it (p.109), he returns to these supposed estimates of Sudanese deaths from Clinton’s bombing – and quietly drops any reference to Human Rights Watch. His original claim about the organisation just slips down the memory hole:
But the few credible estimates that are available, one from the German ambassador [sic – Chomsky still hasn’t got his facts straight] published in the ultraleft [this is a Chomsky witticism, believe it or not] Harvard International Review and another in the Boston Globe, plausibly estimate several tens of thousands of deaths as a consequence of the bombing – maybe more, maybe less.
So let’s get this straight. Chomsky told a rank, identifiable and public lie. He was caught doing it. He carried on as if nothing untoward had happened, while having the gracelessness and gall to blame his interviewer for obtuseness in interpreting his remarks (“A phrase in a telephone interview does not have quotes, details or footnotes; that is self-evident"). He has now quietly dropped the matter when he believes no one is paying attention (no one but me, Professor). Unabashed and without shame, he moves on to the next piece of bullying bluster against a supposedly dishonest and incompetent interviewer, who in this case is Emma Brockes of The Guardian.
Well, then: Emma Brockes and Noam Chomsky; who is the more credible? You decide.
UPDATE: "Chomsky slyly insinuates that Ms Brockes has fabricated quotations, but does so in such a way that he can deny having made this grave accusation if pressed on it." Since I wrote this, Chomsky has gone on to accuse Emma Brockes of fabricating quotations. I shall have more to say about this in another post.
