Dr. Frank's What's-it

It is amazing how low the pro-Israel crowd will go to smear Israel's critics.

Your jaws have got to drop when see hysterical Israel supporters arguing with a sraight face that Noam Chomsky - the most cited living author in the world and himself a Jew - is a "Holocaust denier" and an "anti-Semite."

If that isn't shockingly dirty politics, I don't know what is.

The "coy implication" of this smear campaign is, of course, to suggest that Chomsky's articulate criticism of Israel is motivated by hatred of Jews, instead of by legitimate and objective reasoning.

Frank: You should be ashamed of yourself for repeating and cheerleading such libelous invective.

I personally disagree with Chomsky on a lot of issues, as I'm sure you do, but to attack him by promoting and repeating such a big lie is really cheap and irresponsible.

my understanding(that being the movie Manufacturing Consent and a libertarian ex-boyfriend that sang his praise) is that Chompsky
had no idea what that guy's book was about. he
just wrote a paper on free speech and said yeah
use it for whatever you want.

which admittely is stupid...if it were me crazy
book guy would be in court for libel.

what can you say though,like many great thinkers,he's a genius and an idiot.

Jeez, Arya, can't a guy have any fun around here?

My intention was to point out an amusing bit of rhetorical slapstick, along with a comment, half-baked though it may have been, on the nature of humor, and why it seemed so much funnier when I realized that I "knew" the author. Believe me, I have no wish to get into an argument about Noam Chomsky with you - let's agree to disagree in advance on that one, if it's all right with you.

In fact, though, Oliver Kamm doesn't characterize Chomsky as an antisemite, nor does he call him a Holocaust denier. What he does say is that Chomsky is (or can be, when it suits his polemical purposes) an "antisemitism denier" or minimizer, which seems fairly hard to dispute in the case of Faurisson; and that he is an intellectual swindler, which also seems fairly evident to me. I'll take it as read that you disagree. As I'm sure you're aware, you are not alone in that view.

Chomsky's critique of Israel was not the subject of Kamm's post, still less of mine. You're projecting.

We can defer lengthened debate to a subject of greater mutual interest some other time, agreed.

But, pray tell, what is an "antisemitism denier?"

That's Kamm's term, from this essay: http://oliverkamm.typepad.com/blog/2004/11/chomsky_and_hol.html

Here's the paragraph:
"What, finally, are we to make of Chomsky’s remarks on the Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson? They are worse than sophistry. Chomsky is not himself a Holocaust denier, and no responsible critic has ever claimed he is. He is, rather, an “antisemitism denier”. His disaffection from genuinely progressive values – the values that the United States at its best effectively promotes, as we have lately seen in Afghanistan – is so extreme that it leads him to see not only “no enemies on the Left” but also “no enemies amongst the enemies of my enemies” – even if it puts him alongside men who whitewash Nazi genocide."

I'd guess (though I suppose I'm not certain) that you'd disagree about Afghanistan. Regardless, I think Kamm is right about about Faurisson.

Chomsky was defending free speech.

For this, Chomsky should be commended, not attacked.

It is no different - and no less commendable - than the ACLU defending the First Amendment right of Nazis.

Clearly he never endorsed - or even read in detail, as he himself admits - Faurisson's writings.

Oliver Kamm and David Horowitz type former-leftists-turned-neo-con-apologists know all of this.

But they continue to deliberately lie about the nature of Chomsky's role to discredit Chomsky for his own political writings, in particular those critical of Israel and of U.S. foreign policy (maintenance of which Israel's future depends).

It is they who are siding with the enemies of their enemies, by advocating a form of totalitarian repression of any expression with which they find fault.

Here are Chomsky's remarks on the Faurisson affair. Please point out any "anti-semitism denier" faux pas.

http://www.mit.edu:8001/activities/safe/safe/writings/chomsky-on-free-expression

This hot and nasty defense of hating Jews is called "SOME ELEMENTARY COMMENTS ON THE RIGHTS OF FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION."

Believe me, I am very familiar with this tract.

The Faurisson matter is not quite the straightforward free speech issue that it's cracked up to be. It's not exactly the same as the ACLU/Nazi instance. The right to free expression entitles you to march down the street, but it does not automatically include the right to a university position. I'm not a fan of the sort of civil lawsuit that charged Faurisson with "falsifying history," but it's clearly an accurate charge. And it's hard to argue that Faurisson belonged on the staff of a university, his right to free expression notwithstanding.

Chomksy's dissembling on the matter is rather typical of his polemical method (it goes: I'm not aware of the details, but as far as I am aware of them the claims of my critics are scurrilous and unjustified; yet as the whole matter is irrelevant anyway, we shall say no more about it.) But Chomsky clearly knew the character of Faurisson's views. The claim that he knew and forgot, or that, being a busy man, he read the materials with insufficient attention, managing to miss only those parts that were relevant to the Holocaust I still regard as amusingly weak straw-grasping.

At any rate, he does seem to go out of his way to avoid an overt disavowal of Faurisson's views. As to why he should do this, I truly have no idea. It's bizarre.

Finally, for the record, I don't place Oliver Kamm in the same category as David Horowitz.

For Aryamehr University:

You ask "but pray tell, what is an 'antisemitism denier?'"

It is someone who denies that there is anything anti-Semitic about an author who claims that World War II was caused by the Jewish campaign against Nazi Germany before the war.

Look for "Vidal Naquet Chomsky Faurisson" on the Web. You will find several excellent texts translated into English by Vidal Naquet on this affair. In one of them Vidal Naquet quotes Faurisson extensively. Chomsky denies that there is anything anti-Semitic in Faurisson's writings. Why not make up your mind yourself?

“It is amazing how low the pro-Israel crowd will go to smear Israel's critics,” writes Aryamehr University.
Vidal Naquet is not a member of the pro-Israel crowd. He is quite critical of Israel’s policies, as he was of France’s policies during the Algerian War. Who is doing the smearing here? Some unconditional Chomsky fans smear anyone who questions Chomsky’s positions on Faurisson and the Middle East as AIPAC advocates, neo-Cons, enemies of free speech. Sorry, but that just won’t work with Vidal Naquet.
Here is a quotation from a text by Vidal-Naquet on the Chomsky-Faurisson case.

“Chomsky-the-Janus-faced has thus read Faurisson and not read him, read his critics and not read them. Let us consider the issues in logical order. What has he read of Faurisson which allows him to bestow so fine a certificate? For is he not "a relatively apolitical liberal of some sort" (pp. xiv- xv)? Since Chomsky refers to nothing in support of this, it is impossible to know, and I shall simply say: Faurisson's personal anti-Semitism, in fact, interests me rather little. It exists and I can testify to it, but it is nothing compared with the anti- Semitism of his texts. Is it anti-Semitic to write with consummate calm that in requiring Jews to wear the yellow star starting at the age of six "Hitler was perhaps less concerned with the Jewish question than with ensuring the safety of German soldiers" (Vérité, p. 190) ? Certainly not, within Faurisson's logic, since in the final analysis there is no practical anti-Semitism possible. But within Chomsky's logic? Is the invention of an imaginary declaration of war against Hitler, in the name of the international Jewish community, by an imaginary president of the World Jewish Congress,[7] a case of anti-Semitism or of deliberate falsification? Can Chomsky perhaps press linguistic imagination to the point of discovering that there are anti-semitic falsifications?”

Look up the rest of the text at http://www.anti-rev.org

yes, i know that feeling. i had it about you after you released ALCATRAZ! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! put that in your purse and swing it over your shoulder!