Chomsky's self-revelation

The February issue of Prospect carries this letter from me (link requires subscription):

Kamm replies to Chomsky 29th December 2005

Over 40 years, Noam Chomsky (January) has accused many more distinguished men than I of "tacit acquiescence to horrendous crimes." More interesting would have been a defence of his polemical distortions. We get only a reprise. Chomsky's account of Daniel Patrick Moynihan's comments on East Timor excises relevant context, presents unrelated passages as sequential, and interpolates remarks that Moynihan did not make. Even where Chomsky was right to attack western policy, he is analytically unscrupulous.

I noted (November) that from his earliest writings Chomsky "went beyond the standard left critique of US imperialism to the belief that 'what is needed [in the US] is a kind of denazification.'" Chomsky replies: "To demonstrate my 'central' doctrine, Kamm misquotes my statement that, 'We have to ask ourselves whether what is needed in the US is dissent—or denazification.'"

The full quotation runs: "We have to ask ourselves whether what is needed in the United States is dissent or denazification. The question is a debatable one. Reasonable people may differ. The fact that the question is even debatable is a terrifying thing. To me it seems that what is needed is a kind of denazification." Chomsky quotes only the first sentence, suggesting agnosticism on whether the US needed "denazification," and omits the fifth, where he makes precisely that judgement. He withholds this information from Prospect's readers to complain baselessly of misquotation. "The world's top public intellectual responds to accusations of dishonesty," indeed.

Oliver Kamm
Hove

This, I think, concludes the exchange.