In Tuesdays Wall Street Journal(1) Roger Scruton – Philosopher and hired hand of the tobacco industry launched a feeble attack on Noam Chomsky. Entitled ‘Who Is Noam Chomsky’ the piece runs through the usual litany of lies and half truths with even less skill than is usual in this type of ad hominem assault.
Scruton begins by claiming that Chomsky long ago abandoned his academic career:
“For Prof. Chomsky long ago cast off his academic gown and donned the mantle of the prophet. For several decades now he has been devoting his energies to denouncing his native country, usually before packed halls of fans who couldn’t care a fig about the theory of syntax.”
This accusation is simply false – Chomsky’s political activism and work in linguistics have run concurrently since the 1960’s, (and Scruton must surely be aware of the possibilities of multi-tasking since he manages to be both an academic and a tobacco lobbyist). Presumably this fabrication is designed to portray Chomsky as a man who was once a sensible and valuable intellectual who has sadly succumbed to hubris – abandoning academe for delusions of grandeur. It would not aid Scruton’s depiction of Chomsky as a great mind that has gone off the rails if he were to acknowledge that Chomsky in fact never did “cast off his academic gown”.
Scruton then accuses Chomsky of being angry, of being a “ranter” – when as anyone who has ever seen Chomsky speak will know there are few less rhetorical and more restrained speakers around. Calling someone “angry” or a “ranter” is of course the polite intellectual’s way of labelling someone as a lunatic. This is a common tactic when depicting leftists who must not be allowed to be seen as calm and rational – rather leftists are always “ranters” who “vent their rage” and “vent spleen” etc.
Scruton goes onto dredge up the familiar Cambodia nonsense – claiming that Chomsky was a supporter of the Khmer Rouge. As usual no source or quote is given with regard to this accusation (since none exist). The Cambodia claim derives from the fact that Chomsky has argued that the number of deaths attributed to the Khmer Rouge were inflated for propaganda purposes, (which they were), and he also argued that the rise of the Khmer Rouge was due in no small part to the US bombing of inner Cambodia (killing similar numbers as are attributable to the Khmer Rouge). Presumably if the latter constitutes support for the regime then historians of the twentieth century who argue that the Versailles treaty was a significant factor in the rise of National Socialism in Germany are in fact Nazi apologists.
Having done with lying about his subject Scruton moves onto attacking Hugo Chavez as part of his rather bizarre explanation of Chomsky’s popularity:
“For it is his ability to excite not just contempt for American foreign policy but a lively sense that it is guided by some kind of criminal conspiracy that provides the motive for Prof. Chomsky’s unceasing diatribes and the explanation of his influence. The world is full of people who wish to think ill of America. And most of them would like to be Americans. The Middle East seethes with such people, and Prof. Chomsky appeals directly to their envious emotions, as well as to the resentments of leaders like President Chavez who cannot abide the sight of a freedom that they haven’t the faintest idea how to produce or the least real desire to emulate.”
Would this be the same President Chavez who was briefly toppled by a US backed military coup? The same Hugo Chavez who has a popular mandate that puts the Bush regime to shame? The same Hugo Chavez who has been encouraging democracy to move from the political sphere – to the economic – by fostering workers cooperatives and various experiments in self-management. The same Hugo Chavez who has established thousands of medical centres for the poor? The same Hugo Chavez who has helped thousands of people achieve freedom from want by subsiding food for the least well off?
Counter-intuitive though it may seem it appears that the genuinely freedom loving thing for Chavez to have done would have been to welcome the military junta and perhaps applauded from exile whilst Venezuela‘s social programs were dismantled and its population again subjected to the tender mercies of a vicious US client regime.
What is perhaps most striking about Scruton’s article is the childish and half-hearted nature of the attack. One finishes it thinking ‘God I could have done a better hatchet job than that!’ No attempt is made to substantiate any of the claims – since of course the author knows full well that the supine Anglo/American media will spare him any difficult questions.
In an email leaked in 2002 Scruton asked his paymasters at Japan Tobacco if they could raise his payments from £4,500 monthly to £5,500.(2) Presumably they are getting rather better value for money than the Wall Street Journal if this pitiful attempt at character assassination is anything to go by.
Alex Doherty is a member of the UK Watch collective
www.ukwatch.net
(1) http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110008997
(2) http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4341924,00.html
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