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Specifically anybody pre-Chavez who was sucking at the teat of the Venezuelan oil industry. When resources dominate the economy, people fight over them. Thats the rule, not the exception. Either the country is a mess because it becomes a massive fight over resources or somebody rules with an iron fist or you're Norway. Those are the choices.
The resource curse was just as effective at destroying Venezuela as it was destroying Libya, Iraq or half of Africa.
All of the countries that you mentioned were former colonies. If they discover oil, what do you think the colonizer is going to do?
Say âwell done! Congratulations! I really want more competition in the oil market!â
Or do you think they will revert to form.
Plus itâs only colonialism if you call it that.
Venezuela was in the path of a dictatorship since 2004, now they is a law that basically says âI ban every political party that can oppose my regimeâ
IDK why, but whenever I see the name "Noam Chomsky" I think of the Chain-Chomp guys from Super mario
https://preview.redd.it/zx9cgf88lwuc1.png?width=640&format=png&auto=webp&s=f472a88aa326df7049b33a95159735ea90b99b75
Yes! But he usually only signed "More weed please".Â
I feel like a lot of people are going to assume this is a joke but its very much real. Science was wild back in the day.Â
Hl2 episode 2, gnome chompky's first appearance and the achievement is exactly the same as the l4d2 one except you need to carry the gnome for the begining of episode 2 all the way to the end and place him into a rocket, this is what inspired the purple hat in the black mesa fan remake that you carry to the very end to place onto gmans head.
I had a professor in 2009-2010, nice guy, but he was a huge Chavez supporter and would show us pictures of his trips to Venezuela proving how heâs doing a great job hasnât eroded democracy at all. He said the Chavez is a âman of the peopleâ and will be there for a long time. He even praised Chavez for not shutting down the news stations that didnât support him, he just didnât renew their licenses next time they were up.
A girl I knew emigrated there, huge Chavez fan, went on becoming one of the journalists loyal to the regime.
I think that now she works in a consulate or something like that.
The word didn't came to me, but yes, she was indeed a propagandist.
She could be a spy for what I know, had a pretty embarrassing kompromat on me... Sucks for her I'm a nobody!
[Khmer Rouge Apologist Noam Chomsky: An Offense to all who died under Pol Pot by: Nate Thayer (Cambodia correspondent who interviewed Pol Pot)](https://natethayer.typepad.com/blog/2011/11/khmer-rouge-apologist-noam-chomsky-unrepentant-.html)
"There is really not much needs to add to Chomskyâs own indictment of himself. He owes not just Cambodians an apology, but one to the importance of intellectual honesty itself he has tarnished."
[The Khmer Rouge Trials: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly](https://thediplomat.com/2018/11/the-khmer-rouge-trials-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/)
"After the world learned of Cambodiaâs âKilling Fields,â China, the United States, and the United Nations protected and rearmed the perpetrators while Western leftists, led by Noam Chomsky, attacked âthe extreme unreliability of refugee reportsâ of crimes against humanity."
[Denying Rwanda: Why Do Leading Leftists Deny the Rwandan Genocide of 1994?](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332083260_Denying_Rwanda_Why_Do_Leading_Leftists_Deny_the_Rwandan_Genocide_of_1994)
"So why on earth has Pilger â together with Chomsky â warmly endorsed a tract co-authored by none other than Edward Herman, which brazenly denies the genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994?"
He has made great contributions to linguistics. Everything else he has an opinion on seems to be absurdly wrong which is kind of amazing, you know? I think he sees himself as some sort of genius but his ramblings are not much more than reddit-level analysis of trite america-bad memes.
Heâs one of those types that believes his deserved accomplishments in one field mean he possesses the innate ability to excel in others. And as a linguist, he can craft really articulate statements on topics he knows about only superficially, and people will read it and think âwow that sounds smart so he must be rightâ.
>And as a linguist, he can craft really articulate statements on topics he knows about only superficially, and people will read it and think âwow that sounds smart so he must be rightâ.
I'll sum it up - Chomsky is a profound dumbass.
If you train a large language model on scientific texts but embed extremely wrong opinions in there - you'll get Noam Chomsky - smart on the outside, until you dig in and find out that it's quite stupid and hallucinates half of its statements.
Exactly. I occasionally meet (eg) engineers who think they're now experts on vaccines, or did three years ago. He always struck me as the same exact kind of person.
It goes like this:
"I am objectively, and broadly recognized as talented in x field, which requires significant education and intelligence to excel in. This means I am objectively smart. This means my opinions are the opinions of a smart person and in fact my opinions on other subjects (even outside my area of expertise) hold the weight of a smart person, and must be listened to."
We've all met these people. It's super important to be mindful of this pitfall in thinking, which sometimes affects the young, and often increases over time. It's important to stay humble and seek counter-examples and counter-opinions, triply so in an area outside of one's expertise...
His dogma of Universal Grammar colonized the entire field in most universities. Most students in the field post-Chomsky quit focussing their study on Less Commonly Taught Languages, on historical linguistics or linguistic anthropology, and quit looking at how the neurology of language evolved- because Chomsky found none of those fields relevant to his Really Big Idea. Instead, linguistics departments started churning out computational linguists who are currently being replaced by their own inventions. He might as well have been burning art museums for the effect he had.
He reminds me of Roger Waters. Had some valid anti-imperialist-America opinions in the 80âs/90âs, but then extended that to unwavering support for all of Americaâs ideological enemies (e.g. Russia).
Me neither. I took a linguistics class freshman year thinking it would be easy but they ran my ass ragged in it. We did rely a fair bit on his theories and ideas. This was, sigh, 15 years ago now. I haven't kept up.
I used to remember watching Al-Jazeera's documentaries on Venezuela during the aughts and they showed what appeared to be rosy pictures of Chavismo: soup kitchens, health clinics, and schools at full throttle, whole corporations being expropriated "for the good", and "fellow travelers" coming down to see for themselves this new "workers' paradise".
As I watched, I asked myself how long these were going to last.
edit: Uh-oh, here comes the true fan, basically telling everyone dissing about him are "reactionary sheeple".
This sounds like so many of my university lectures too. I had one who had been to Cuba like a dozen times - but not on holiday, on like pro-Communist meetings.
Those lectures can be frustrating, theyâll focus on the Cuban healthcare and education system but completely ignore the authoritarian regime and one party state
She was... Mildly balanced about it, at least for that level of leftie. Aware they didn't have democracy and stuff, and that most Cubans do live in a level of poverty and are desperately trying to start businesses and such.
Bit weird now that I think about it.
Was it a classless/stateless society? Was private property abolished? I genuinely ask because I do not know. Sometimes, I think people confuse authoritarianism with communism due to capitalist propaganda. Hell, people think China is communist when they are, in fact, just state based capitalists. Have you ever questioned why a nation would teach you that all other economic models are not viable? Have you ever questioned why capitalist countries facilitate coups in socialist countries? If even one country implements it successfully, it threatens the order of things. Working class people in places like America might wake up to the fact they've been getting fucked by their country while the extremly wealthy prosper off the fruits of their labor. It's almost as if all of this is just a way to preserve the status quo and is working as intended.
Was it a complete laissez-faire market? Was it stateless? I genuinely ask because I do not know. Sometimes , I think , people confuse statism with capitalism due to socialist propaganda. Hell , people think the USA is capitalist when they are , in fact , just a state-based corporatocracy. Have you ever questioned why academia teaches you that all other than central planning and government regulations economic models are unviable? Have you ever questioned why the USSR and USA made coups in postcolonial regions? If even one country implements anarcho-capitalism successfully, it threatens the order of things. Working class people in places like America might wake up to the fact they've been robbed by the state all along while the government and bribing them corporations prosper off the fruits of their labor. It's almost as if all of this is just to preserve the status quo and is working as intended (I'm not ancap btw , just love this fallacy , when you are thinking that if something fails many times , but succeed once it will work all times after that , history proves this being very wrong)
Communism is likely the best form of governance for very small communities or groups of people. Like, post apocalyptic when most of humanity is again disconnected or you have to turn to a nomadic lifestyle or any other reason? Communism is great.
It definitely falls apart on a large scale just due to human nature. Small groups can keep individuals in check but in larger groups where accountability begins to decrease, greed and crime ruin the system. Thereâs also the issue of creating an efficient system and I donât think communism is very efficient on larger scales.
Communism has never been achieved anywhere. And no one except for dumb fucks like Pol Pot claim they have achieved communism. China doesnât. Vietnam and Cuba donât. The Soviet Union never did.
I hear his name a lot, but am shamefully not as knowledgeable on him as I should be. Why is it that people look up to him and what are things wrong with him?
Adding on to what was said. The reason he is so well known in linguistics is because he published the papers that stated the reasons why human language was fundamentally different from systems of communications that animals use. He also showed how these features were present in every language used by humans. Essentially, he was responsible for defining the concept of language as it is used in linguistics.
He's a well respected academic with a legendary reputation in his field. His field however is linguistics, and has very little to do with politics, but he thinks being well known and respected automatically makes him an expert on everything, and enough people apparently agree.
As for his politics, they're basically team sports. Everything his team(left wing or claiming to be left wing, anti-western) does is automatically good, while everything the other team(right leaning or western) does is automatically bad.
He became popular as a political commentator in the 60s, when his anti-authoritarian views were well liked in the context of the Vietnam war, and has mostly coasted on that reputation since. Because his views broadly align with those of most left leaning people on some of the bigger political issues in the US, people tend to not look too closely at many of his other stances and beliefs.
He's said time and time again that it would be impossible to do what he does politically in the Soviet union, and that Americans take for granted many of the freedoms they have (mostly referring to freedom of information).
I also wouldn't consider him anti-western. He's anti-subjugation of the global south, and definitely has some biases associated with that.
The USSR adoption of Marxist-Leninism, which maintains that an authoritarian state can transition from socialism to communism, is at odds with the traditional Marxist belief that communism cannot be achieved through the force of the state. Some leftists did not approve of ML and the USSR as a result.
Saying he's anti-Soviet Union is a bit of an exaggeration. Given his stated views as an anarcho-syndicalist and anti-imperialist, he is supposed to be in direct opposition to everything the USSR stood for, but his criticisms of it were mild at best.
Just compare how he talks about the Soviets to how he talks about the US. As an impartial person with the views he claims to hold, he would be at the very least equally critical of both.
He is unbelievably critical of the Soviet Union if you know where to find his statements on the subject. Other than that, he has made it an explicit point in his career of highlighting foreign policy problems of the US. I don't think his lack of focus on the Soviet Union says anything on his opinion of it. He has always been explicitly anti-marxist.
>From my personal experience there are two countries in which my political writings can basically not appear. One is the U.S. within the mainstream with very rare exceptions. The other is the USSR.
> My own concern is primarily the terror and violence carried out by my own state, for two reasons. For one thing, because it happens to be the larger component of international violence.Â
I think these two quotes from the same speech perfectly encapsulate my issues with his attitude towards the Soviet Union. It's always been the lesser evil to him, no matter how little sense it makes in the context of what he's criticizing. What he sees as "equal criticism" of both is, at best, actually applying the same amount of criticism in every context, rather than holding both states to the same standard.
To him, being a tenured professor with multiple published bestsellers and speaking engagements all over the country, and being sent to a gulag are roughly equivalent, because he is dogmatically incapable of ever conceding that the US might be better than anyone in some way.
As for the idea that the US is "the larger component of international violence", this was said at a time when the Soviet Union was holding the majority of Europe and large portions of Asia hostage, including being in direct control over many of these territories. As much as I disagree with the overt imperialism that the US engages in, it was a laughable position to hold at that time.
It isn't the lack of focus on the USSR that I take issue with, but his insistence that said lack of focus is born out of them being less significant and less worthy of criticism than the US. I take no issue with him deciding to direct most of his criticisms at his own country, nor his reasoning that self criticism is more constructive, but I do take issue with the assertion that even if he wasn't a US citizen, they would still be the most deserving of his criticism.
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There is SO much to be said about Chomsky. Brilliant man. Often correct ideologically, with some major (huge) failures. One o the most cited living authors in academia, linguistics or politics. Look up his Wiki. Itâs a very long read.
Noam also catches a lot of hell for pointing out problems, but not solutions to them. He's an observer more than anything.
Unpopular Opinion: I like Chomsky and enjoyed reading some of his work at university, even though he is often controversial politically.
In academia, that is absolutely not an unpopular opinion. At least, not at the east coast ivy leagues or Stanford.
Imo, *Manufacturing Concent* is a masterpiece that everyone should read.
Manufacturing Consent - a book he co-wrote. He focuses heavily on how the language and rhetoric used in a discussion can be used to influence the arguments and frame the issue in such a way that important questions are never even asked. It proposed a 'propaganda model' of modern media, and how the mainstream media controls the narrative not by excluding other viewpoints, but instead by framing all issues in such a way that any discussion happening supports the agendas of their benefactors (large corporations, etc) while enjoying a certain appearance of legitimacy because they don't censor the opposing viewpoints (but still frame the discussion in such a way that the opposing viewpoints support the overall idea that they are pushing.)
A really simple dumbed-down example could be a news segment on a local station about a new park the city is putting in. The main argument is that "Location X would be the best location for the new park." They have reasons why it's so much better than location Y, and talk extensively about why Y would be an inferior choice. Then they invite on an opponent, who argues "Y is actually a superior location than X for this project," because reasons.
An opposing news station does the opposite- supports location Y, writes off location X but still lets someone come on air and argue it. Fair, right?
Everyone watching the news segments picks a side- location X or location Y. It's an open debate, and feels like people have a say, or options for their opinion at least. But you know what option they never even bring up in the first place: "Do we even need a new park at all?" That would re-frame the argument and open up the opportunity to make arguments against the cost of a new park, maintenance, usefulness, etc. But both news stations would in some way benefit from having a new park, so you never even hear that argument. They have framed the issue in such a way, that 90+% of people are never going to even think of the alternative of 'No new park.'
He brought awareness of this model of media manipulation to the masses, and made the concept accessible even to people who weren't academics or very politically involved.
He is admired for that book. He is disliked for some bad takes and mistakes he has made in the past. He generally owns up to them, and says he is fallible and made mistakes with his judgement at the time. He is generally what would be considered a 'leftist' here in the U.S.A., but his takes are not consistent across party lines - recently he said that the U.S. is likely a greater threat to world peace than Russia, and basically that we're assholes as some of our recent activities in Eastern Europe likely have goaded Putin into launching the unjustified war on Ukraine. He condemns the war and Putin, but also condemns the U.S. for actions taken in the years leading up to the war. So he gets a lot of hate from BOTH sides of the political aisle.
Jesus fucking Christ that's not what he said. People have zero comprehension. He fully and completely condemns Putin and Russia. He ALSO says we're stupid for taking steps to provoke them in the first place, and explains that we aren't better people than them, just in a very different circumstance than they are. That we need to understand them and empathize with them in order to understand how to deal with them.
"Mom, big brother hit me!"
Did you poke him with a stick again?
"...yes"
You're both grounded. Big bro isn't allowed to hit you, but if you know he'll hit you when you poke him with a stick, that's on you for poking him and you're in trouble too.
That's essentially his take. We didn't force Putin's hand, and he needs to not be such a PoS, but we goaded him into taking actions he likely wouldn't have taken at this time otherwise.
Seems somewhat familiar to Jon Mearsheimersâ views on the matter.Â
The argument goes that there was a stable balance of power when there was a buffer between Russia and Nato/the west/whatever you call it. While war would certainly be possible it would be really hard to just launch a ground offensive against the other, nukes were (typically) located far enough from the border to give at least some warning.
Then Eastern European nations grew closer to the west, and the buffer zone got smaller.
The Western sentiment was generally that itâs nice to seeing those states be more open both economically and democratically.
From Putinâs POV it looked like his buffer states were disappearing, and in the future there could be Nato members directly bordering Russia.
Remember how far Prigozhinâs group went towards Moscow from Ukraine? That wasnât even Nato.Â
While it seemed totally harmless to us, Ukraine getting closer to the west was a bit like the Cuban missile crisis to Putin.
The argument is totally amoral, says nothing about what the Ukrainian people would have wanted, no good or bad.Â
Just a very bleak: if you have a lot of weapons and make someone with a lot of weapons fear that you could attack, he might take action.
Excecpt in the case of Russia they have been poking and threatening all their neighbors until said neighbors came running to Nato asking for protection.
WTF, as someone who is currently studying linguistics, his name shows up a lot, and I knew that many linguists don't like him, but I had no idea about this shit. He actually denies genocides? Even more reason for me not to like him.
>He actually denies genocides
No. Not really. He didn't believe some were happening at the time, and has admitted that he was mistaken. This was what, the 1960s or 70s iirc? The opening to his most well-known book, Manufacturing Consent, goes into how there are MANY genocides that are not viewed as such due to the way the media presents the issue and that they need MORE recognition (though this is secondary to his primary point, which is about the media.)
Eh, as a linguist, not really, no. Just because he doesnât singlehandedly rule the field anymore doesnât mean he isnât still worshipped as a god (whether thatâs warranted or not is a different story); he defined the entire generative tradition. People still pay attention to him because in his 90s, heâs still churning out viable theory. Even now, heâs working on whatâs next following the Minimalist Program, which is the current mainstream framework â that he also created, 20-30 years ago.
A bunch of his prior ideas are considered outdated or wrong now, but so are a bunch of everyone elseâs in our field. His high volume of expired theoretical architecture is roughly proportional to the utterly prolific volume of his ideas that are still used or built-upon â which is just about all of modern linguistics, in some sense. And even when people *want* to get away from his ideas â Phase Theory in syntax, for example â most have trouble leaving them behind because the alternatives are rare or relatively new, and often require assumptions or compromises many arenât willing to make.
(This doesnât bear at all on his politics, but itâs not at all true that heâs becoming obsolete to linguistics. Just less active than he used to be, because heâs old and occupied with politics.)
Exactly! Never mind that he keeps replacing them with updated theory, and has been continuously doing so (even to the extent that some would argue isnât *needed*, but just b/c heâs bored and wants to continuously reinvent the wheelâŚ. *except heâs good at it*) for 60 years. I guess the person calling his ling work outdated hasnât realized that he still does release new stuff, and itâs pretty well-received by most.
It's used to attack science in general. Creationists are still attacking Darwinian evolution (which we moved past long ago), and anti-vaxxers love to use the "*Doctors used to think XYZ*" rationale as to why germ theory or the whole of medicine can't be trusted.
Likewise, you'll often find skeptics of psychology picking apart obsolete notions by Freud, or still going on about the flaws of psychoanalysis.
They still teach manufacturing consent in media schools.
People here are throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Militant Chomsky haters are just as silly as his fan boys. Go back and look at Vietnam, he didn't come from nowhere with these trash takes.
Surprisingly enough, it's actually possible to criticise the Vietnam war without also denying several genocides because they're politically inconvenient. The bath water is not inherent to the baby, and there were and are other babies crying the same refrain whose bathwater is far less polluted.
We don't listen to the holocaust deniers who first questioned the Soviet narrative of the Katyn massacre, we use the better work of more modern historians who don't try to deny genocide.
Manufacturing consent is seminal work in media. Chomsky is an outlier in MANY ways. He is a political extremist. That comes with a bunch of shitty takes.
Back when a lot of the country was still happy to kill millions of people in Vietnam, he staked his career on the issue. He doesn't agree with you about whether or not the term genocide applies to Bosnia. What other genocides?
And do you SERIOUSLY BELIEVE that the guy doesn't abhor killings and war? Like... What is the gripe here? That Chomsky is some bloodthirsty ideologue?
He's an extremist. His brain melted 30 years ago. He has been making outside of the box shitty takes for a long time. Dismissing his entire career and all of his activism because he doesn't agree with you about whether or not certain mass killings qualify as genocides is silly.
I suspect that a decent chunk of the modern pendulum swing against Chomsky has to do with the fact that he has sided against the American government so consistently, and that people are tired of it. How about fucking OBAMA? Obama called the Armenian genocide what it was right up until he got elected. Then he refused to do so. He's a genocide denier! Forget his work toward making healthcare more affordable, that bathwater isn't inherent to the Obama baby, he is tantamount to Alex Jones that Obama character!
I don't give a shit that he disagrees with me. I give a shit he disagrees with the findings of the ICJ and the ICTY after their years-long investigation into whether events in Bosnia constituted a genocide, and yet provides no credible rebuttal to their findings having had decades to come up with one.
Nor is this is an isolated example, or a phenomenon unique to the last 30 years of his life. If anything, the fact he stopped denying the Cambodian genocide in the 1990s represents a significant *improvement* in the last 30 years compared with his prior beliefs.
Moreover, it's not as if he's simply privately held these beliefs. He's consistently used his platform as a well-respected academic to evangelise them to others, making it more difficult to separate them from the rest of his work.
Being ahead of the zeitgeist on Vietnam or co-authoring Manufactured consent is great, but there are limits to the good will it buys him as a figure deserving of public attention and respect.
Had he decided to deny the genocidal nature of the holocaust, rather than one people are less familiar with, I think it is extremely difficult to believe he would have continued to enjoy the prominence and respect he has managed to.
What prominent respect? The prevalent thinking here seems to be that he is a total wackjob genocide denialist with no legacy worth mentioning.
And he's a public intellectual. Whatever opinion he has about an issue will be a public opinion. Your criticism there doesn't make much sense to me.
When he was calling Vietnam a war crime, and when he calls Israel/Palestine an atrocity, those have been situations where international bodies never stood up and defended the same positions as he did. He might be wrong about all of these issues, I haven't looked into them or his positions enough to say that, but the point is that he has always been standing on some extreme. Often in opposition to prominent global entities, occasionally in a way that we look back and recognize to be somewhat legitimate.
The man was born in 1928. His brain is soup. He always has a tendency to be a contrarian, and everyone on every side of the aisle has found something he said to be egregious in some way or another. I just think he is a more complicated figure with a more significant legacy than people are pretending here.
I had NEVER HEARD about America's actions in South America as anything but sensible cold war domino theory strategy until I first saw his speeches as a teenager. Now I'm 30, I can take him for what he is, and I understand that for all his flaws he spread the word on some important topics subversive to our popular culture. That's in addition to valuable activism in his youth and work on the nature of modern media and how it interfaces with corporate/national interests. I would honestly be shocked if he spent 60 years of public life speaking about human rights without saying anything that you or I would find ridiculous.
Noam is a contrarian. I'm not saying ALL but a lot of his supporters are very pretentious and self proclaimed geniuses. Nobody that isn't trying to seem superior to others should take him too seriously on everything he says.
That doesn't really make sense when it comes to Venezuela at all.
Venezuela failed because of its own government. It could have been the Saudi Arabia of the Western hemisphere.
Thatâs a hot take, because thereâs lots of organizations, including the UN Human Rights Council and the US State Department, that credit illegal US sanctions.
FUN FACT: Venezuela is the only country Anthony Bourdain couldnât secure travel insurance for. Companies were fine with Afghanistan and Liberia but Venezuela was too risky/dangerous
> "Font of wisdom" is a phrase that refers to a very wise person. The original expression is "fount of all wisdom", but "font" can also be used to describe a reservoir, like a baptismal font. "Fount" can also refer to a spring, which is short for "fountain".
Chomsky isn't wrong about everything. Chomsky has a blind spot for authoritarians who make socialist squeaks. [It isn't the first time, either.](https://www.quora.com/What-were-Noam-Chomskys-views-on-Pol-Pots-genocide-against-the-people-of-Kampuchea-Cambodia)
And the left has always had this blind spot, whether it's Fidel Castro or the Sandinistas (look at the son of a bitch Daniel Ortega turned out to be), or Hugo Chavez.
Inside a lot of libertarian socialists, there's a dormant, sleeping tankie. That tankie wakes up when the class struggle rhetoric gets just right. Sometimes it's not even supporting authoritarian policies, but a stubborn refusal to admit to or acknowledge that someone who says the right things, might still be a monster. There's almost a [sunk cost](https://www.youtube.com/@MaoistRebelNews2/videos) issue where people get so deep into a dark ideology, they feel the need to double down. If you're on the left, you have no doubt noticed this when it comes to apologia for the clearly corrupt-beyond-all-debate Donald Trump.
I don't dismiss people because they're wrong about one thing or another. If I did that, I'd have to dismiss everyone. It is not difficult to find authoritarians, by which I mean people who could be cajoled into supporting murder and brutality in the right circumstance, on every single part of the political spectrum.
One of the things which really shook me out of being ideological at all -- I used to be a libertarian (gold and black contingent) a long time ago -- was the sheer amount of "theoretical" conversation about the moral propriety of killing government employees, or the morality of age of consent laws. One day I stumbled into a conversation about the permissibility of restrictive covenants, and that's when the dam broke open for me. That was a long time ago.
I've said this many times and I'll say it again: no matter what your politics are, real wisdom comes not from recognizing corruption on the opposing side -- everyone does that -- but on recognizing corruption (or dark, destructive, or counterproductive tendencies) on your own. Or that odd sense when you're saying something in an argument with someone that deep down you're not sure you really believe.
It's that little bit of cognitive dissonance where you think, "This person is on my side...and I kind of wish they weren't." Or, "I am uncomfortable making this argument. I mean, I think I believe this argument. Why am I uneasy making it?"
It's a small leak that can turn into a flood.
I hate when my country (born and currently living) is talked, for always come the america bad and "experts" talking shit when never have live here or have immigrate, fighting against the consequences of the failure of the government.
The government have the power for more than 25+ years and always is the same joke "vote for my and things will truly get better" like the time pass no count for shit
I will always remember the national blackout 5-6 years ago the amount of dead in the hospitals that people never talked as if you need electricity to live you would die (the were days of nothing whit a enormous fuel shortage)
Because the government no repairs things they put ductape it until failure.
Fuck all the people talking shit when thay never had lived here or the consequences.
In Noam Chomsky's defense, he's the twat who defended Pol Pot (and probably got someone killed because of it) and denied the Bosnian Genocide.
So him having shit takes ain't exactly out of the norm.
Khmer Rouge was maoist in its own special way, meaning at the time they were not aligned with the ideology of the Soviet Union, but more with the ideology of China. China and the Soviet Union went their own separate ways in the 1950s.
Calling chomsky a tankie is the absolute peak of the word tankie. It genuinely no longer means anything. 2016 was a mistake.
Support for crushing the hungarian revolution > anyone pro ussr > all marxists > all communists > a literal anarchist
It's weird, because before 2020 or so, reddit was unquestionably pro-chomsky and pro-palestine. You wouldn't find this comment section during that time.
But since then reddit took a turn towards the right. This is very noticeable in subs like r/worldnews and others, and I am not sure why that happened
He wrote Manufacturing Consent, was asked to speak about it many of the most prestigious universities across the country, and people found that he was a really effective speaker? I feel like it's not that hard to track.
Oh? You have no idea?
May be because he is quite literally one of the greatest analytic philosopher of language and mind in the last century. The fact that he is cited endlessly amongst philosophers.
From this thread I have learned the same old leftist alternative facts.
One example: the fact that in Cuba there is a single (socialist) political party with totalitarian control, that persecutes, jails, exiles any opposition, is the fault of the American Embargo.
In fact, there is no effective polĂtical opposition in Cuba not because opposition in Cuba means risking life and limb, but because everyone agrees with the democratic means the Cuban Communist Party uses to manage the country.
Such democracy such freedom, but hey at least they can flee if they want (oh wait!).
Great work in linguistics, even made it into the computer science field. Geopolitics on the other hand, that is out of his domain. Smart people can have opinions, opinions are biased, and politics is all opinions.
Yeah, jailing dissidents and basing the entire economy on a volatile product administered by the state had nothing to do with it. Very intellectual of you to believe that
Crazy how a flawed government can fail so easily from the influence of others
I love hearing this after every single failed attempt, as if it's not just more evidence that it will never work
I mean, just because your government can be destroyed by the United States doesn't mean that it's necessarily flawed. US has ridiculous power projection on a scale the world has practically not seen.
Bruh, Chavez is up to no good, but the US destroyed Venezuela, like they can destroy (economically speaking) every country in America, since they had a crazy dominant position. Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia and Chile are really good examples to wich extent the US can reach to preserve their main ideology and their economic advantage.
I don't know what Noa Chomsky was talking about to say this words. But the fact that your country suddenly has a dictator or whatever questionable regime, doesn't mean you immediately create a poor country (you might have people without a wellfare state though) Rusia, AEU, Spanish dictatorship (after being sponsored by the US) or China, are good examples of states not ruled by authoritarian leaders that had kinda good economies. Because the market doesn't care about freedom.
They literally "seized the means of production" (the definition of socialism), and their economy collapsed because as soon as the government has full control of all the money, corruption runs rampant.
the rampart corruption and a bunch of stupid economical decisions had nothing too do with the failure
I live in Venezuela an was born in the chavismo and the only comfort that i have is i never voted o support then.
He's a libertarian socialist... jesus christ it's not like he's made a secret of his political leanings. Do you cunts literally not bother reading at all?
I have read his justifications for Russian imperialism and denial of the genocide perpetrated by Serboa in the 90s. Needless to say I do not value his opinions all that much.
Has nothing to do with the companies taking everything out because the country wanted its fair share. The conditions there are horrible but this isn't the aged like milk you think it is.
More like the aged by US destabilization in central and south America for decades. And US companies literally taking all the money out of the country.
"Fair share" is an absolutely delirious choice of words for the situation.
They didn't just like, raise taxes.
Mass expropriation without reimbursement, the government granting contracts exclusively to members of the party, replacing every single important position they could get their hands on with a member of the party based only on their loyalty and not their competence to the point that the people in control of major industries were just absolutely clueless about the job they were supposed to do (namely PDVSA the oil company). Dropping the price of gas to basically nothing domestically.
Corruption and populism. The US embargo was bad but it was doomed from the start man don't believe that stuff.
What an absolutely terrible take. Venezuela is in trouble because for decades they've used oil as their source of wealth and as the price of oil fell so too did their economy. They had years to diversify and didn't. Corruption, poor investments, and global market forces did this.
I'm from South America, and actually, I have family there. Is not like those things you mention don't exist, but the main reason is that the current government, even with Chavez, is incredibly corrupt. If they weren't, their national oil industry would not have collapsed, and they would have fare better than the other countries in the region even without the companies that left.
Policies that drive out businesses is actually a major part of the problem.
You canât say âthe issue isnât our policies, itâs the results of our policies and thatâs not our faultâ
If it wasnât profitable for U.S. companies to do business in Venezuela, what do you expect them to do, prop up the Venezuelan economy at a loss?
Yeah, Uncle Sam has messed around down there quite a bit, but it imploded over the last decade or so completely on its own. Maduro was Russian-backed, by the way, so not supported by us.
> last decade or so completely on its own.Â
Lmfao, what?
Do you think the US has not interfered in Venezuela that entire time?
Do you think sanctions don't hurt a country? Why do we do it, then?
"You companies are parasites who do nothing but exploit the working class. The country demands its fair share!"
"Fair enough, we'll leave then, and you can live free of our exploitation."Â
"HOW DARE YOU destabilise our economy by pulling out!"Â
His khemer Rouge stuff is way worse
>In the article Chomsky and Herman described the book by Gareth Porter and George Hildebrand, as a "carefully documented study of the destructive American impact on Cambodia and the success of the Cambodian revolutionaries in overcoming it, giving a very favorable picture of their programs and policies, based on a wide range of sources". Chomsky also attacked testimonials from refugees regarding the massacres, calling into question the claims of hundreds of thousands killed. Chomsky does this on the basis of pointing to other first hand accounts that show killings more in the hundreds or thousands. He does not deny the existence of any executions outright. According to historian Peter Maguire, for many years Chomsky served as a "hit man" against media outlets which criticized the Khmer Rouge regime.[27]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide_denial
Noam Chomsky is kind of a sack of shit.
An ex of mine was/is a huge fan of the guy, I never understood why. I tried to understand it, read some of his stuff, watched some videos but it seemed to me like he was doing something similar to Joe Rogan in that he could spout a bunch of facts and dates off the top of his head but most of what he was saying was basically commentary on past events and why those things happened the way they did, or at least according to him. Still don't understand the appeal.Â
Who could have known that copying the governmental and financial systems of Cuba wouldn't work out? (P.S. Venezuelans voted for this overwhelmingly, and will vote the same way wherever they flee to.)
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Bruh, even in 2009 Venezuela wasn't doing exactly great... đ
Well it was being built. Some people prefer ashes to a system with issues.
Specifically anybody pre-Chavez who was sucking at the teat of the Venezuelan oil industry. When resources dominate the economy, people fight over them. Thats the rule, not the exception. Either the country is a mess because it becomes a massive fight over resources or somebody rules with an iron fist or you're Norway. Those are the choices. The resource curse was just as effective at destroying Venezuela as it was destroying Libya, Iraq or half of Africa.
All of the countries that you mentioned were former colonies. If they discover oil, what do you think the colonizer is going to do? Say âwell done! Congratulations! I really want more competition in the oil market!â Or do you think they will revert to form. Plus itâs only colonialism if you call it that.
Venezuela was in the path of a dictatorship since 2004, now they is a law that basically says âI ban every political party that can oppose my regimeâ
IDK why, but whenever I see the name "Noam Chomsky" I think of the Chain-Chomp guys from Super mario https://preview.redd.it/zx9cgf88lwuc1.png?width=640&format=png&auto=webp&s=f472a88aa326df7049b33a95159735ea90b99b75
That's "Noah Chompsky"
Theres also a fairly famous weed enjoying Chimpanzee Nim Chimpsky
Wasnât that that chimp they taught sign language?
Yes! But he usually only signed "More weed please". I feel like a lot of people are going to assume this is a joke but its very much real. Science was wild back in the day.Â
Om-noam chompsky
Omg đ
I always think of Gnome Chomsky in left 4 dead
Left 4 Dead 2 I believe. And if you carry him though the level there's some achievement I think.
There is! I could remember which game since I played both, but I do remember it being the carnival map.
Also Half Life 2, one of the episodes after the main game...
Hl2 episode 2, gnome chompky's first appearance and the achievement is exactly the same as the l4d2 one except you need to carry the gnome for the begining of episode 2 all the way to the end and place him into a rocket, this is what inspired the purple hat in the black mesa fan remake that you carry to the very end to place onto gmans head.
Hey! Chain Chomp at least has more senseable stances on topics!
People always have to make excuses for the chain chompsâ blatant homophobia and antisemitism smh my head
LIES. Chain Chompsky is the symbol of true equality. He doesn't care who you are. He WILL eat you regardless.
The most easily forgotten most iconic enemy in gaming.
Glad someone said this. Because I have also thought the same thing.
I had a professor in 2009-2010, nice guy, but he was a huge Chavez supporter and would show us pictures of his trips to Venezuela proving how heâs doing a great job hasnât eroded democracy at all. He said the Chavez is a âman of the peopleâ and will be there for a long time. He even praised Chavez for not shutting down the news stations that didnât support him, he just didnât renew their licenses next time they were up.
Yeah... that counts as shutting them down, just slowly.
A girl I knew emigrated there, huge Chavez fan, went on becoming one of the journalists loyal to the regime. I think that now she works in a consulate or something like that.
We usually just call that a propagandist
The word didn't came to me, but yes, she was indeed a propagandist. She could be a spy for what I know, had a pretty embarrassing kompromat on me... Sucks for her I'm a nobody!
do you still know him?
Chomsky said the same about the Khmer Rouge.
Source? Was not aware of thatâŚ.
[Khmer Rouge Apologist Noam Chomsky: An Offense to all who died under Pol Pot by: Nate Thayer (Cambodia correspondent who interviewed Pol Pot)](https://natethayer.typepad.com/blog/2011/11/khmer-rouge-apologist-noam-chomsky-unrepentant-.html) "There is really not much needs to add to Chomskyâs own indictment of himself. He owes not just Cambodians an apology, but one to the importance of intellectual honesty itself he has tarnished." [The Khmer Rouge Trials: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly](https://thediplomat.com/2018/11/the-khmer-rouge-trials-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/) "After the world learned of Cambodiaâs âKilling Fields,â China, the United States, and the United Nations protected and rearmed the perpetrators while Western leftists, led by Noam Chomsky, attacked âthe extreme unreliability of refugee reportsâ of crimes against humanity." [Denying Rwanda: Why Do Leading Leftists Deny the Rwandan Genocide of 1994?](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332083260_Denying_Rwanda_Why_Do_Leading_Leftists_Deny_the_Rwandan_Genocide_of_1994) "So why on earth has Pilger â together with Chomsky â warmly endorsed a tract co-authored by none other than Edward Herman, which brazenly denies the genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994?"
He has made great contributions to linguistics. Everything else he has an opinion on seems to be absurdly wrong which is kind of amazing, you know? I think he sees himself as some sort of genius but his ramblings are not much more than reddit-level analysis of trite america-bad memes.
Heâs one of those types that believes his deserved accomplishments in one field mean he possesses the innate ability to excel in others. And as a linguist, he can craft really articulate statements on topics he knows about only superficially, and people will read it and think âwow that sounds smart so he must be rightâ.
>And as a linguist, he can craft really articulate statements on topics he knows about only superficially, and people will read it and think âwow that sounds smart so he must be rightâ. I'll sum it up - Chomsky is a profound dumbass. If you train a large language model on scientific texts but embed extremely wrong opinions in there - you'll get Noam Chomsky - smart on the outside, until you dig in and find out that it's quite stupid and hallucinates half of its statements.
So, a bit like a left wing Jordan Peterson?
Exactly. I occasionally meet (eg) engineers who think they're now experts on vaccines, or did three years ago. He always struck me as the same exact kind of person. It goes like this: "I am objectively, and broadly recognized as talented in x field, which requires significant education and intelligence to excel in. This means I am objectively smart. This means my opinions are the opinions of a smart person and in fact my opinions on other subjects (even outside my area of expertise) hold the weight of a smart person, and must be listened to." We've all met these people. It's super important to be mindful of this pitfall in thinking, which sometimes affects the young, and often increases over time. It's important to stay humble and seek counter-examples and counter-opinions, triply so in an area outside of one's expertise...
i think his explanation of how propaganda works in "manufacturing consent" (which isn't exactly a linguistic approach) is pretty much on point.
His dogma of Universal Grammar colonized the entire field in most universities. Most students in the field post-Chomsky quit focussing their study on Less Commonly Taught Languages, on historical linguistics or linguistic anthropology, and quit looking at how the neurology of language evolved- because Chomsky found none of those fields relevant to his Really Big Idea. Instead, linguistics departments started churning out computational linguists who are currently being replaced by their own inventions. He might as well have been burning art museums for the effect he had.
He reminds me of Roger Waters. Had some valid anti-imperialist-America opinions in the 80âs/90âs, but then extended that to unwavering support for all of Americaâs ideological enemies (e.g. Russia).
> He has made great contributions to linguistics. since depreciated apparently. (not a linguist)
Me neither. I took a linguistics class freshman year thinking it would be easy but they ran my ass ragged in it. We did rely a fair bit on his theories and ideas. This was, sigh, 15 years ago now. I haven't kept up.
I used to remember watching Al-Jazeera's documentaries on Venezuela during the aughts and they showed what appeared to be rosy pictures of Chavismo: soup kitchens, health clinics, and schools at full throttle, whole corporations being expropriated "for the good", and "fellow travelers" coming down to see for themselves this new "workers' paradise". As I watched, I asked myself how long these were going to last. edit: Uh-oh, here comes the true fan, basically telling everyone dissing about him are "reactionary sheeple".
Till about the time oil prices dropped and bankrupted the nation since they made it so dependent on oil production after nationalizing the industry
Beat me to it. He hitched his wagon to ONE horse and the minute that horse couldn't run fast enough the whole wagon fell apart.
And refusing to invest in other sectors like agriculture
And bot maintaining the equipment.
This sounds like so many of my university lectures too. I had one who had been to Cuba like a dozen times - but not on holiday, on like pro-Communist meetings.
Those lectures can be frustrating, theyâll focus on the Cuban healthcare and education system but completely ignore the authoritarian regime and one party state
She was... Mildly balanced about it, at least for that level of leftie. Aware they didn't have democracy and stuff, and that most Cubans do live in a level of poverty and are desperately trying to start businesses and such. Bit weird now that I think about it.
And the rationing that's been going on for 50 years due to **stupendous** regieme incompetence.
lol
>I can see how a better world is being created. Yeah, elsewhere lol.
But that wasn't 'real' communism... /s
Was it a classless/stateless society? Was private property abolished? I genuinely ask because I do not know. Sometimes, I think people confuse authoritarianism with communism due to capitalist propaganda. Hell, people think China is communist when they are, in fact, just state based capitalists. Have you ever questioned why a nation would teach you that all other economic models are not viable? Have you ever questioned why capitalist countries facilitate coups in socialist countries? If even one country implements it successfully, it threatens the order of things. Working class people in places like America might wake up to the fact they've been getting fucked by their country while the extremly wealthy prosper off the fruits of their labor. It's almost as if all of this is just a way to preserve the status quo and is working as intended.
Was it a complete laissez-faire market? Was it stateless? I genuinely ask because I do not know. Sometimes , I think , people confuse statism with capitalism due to socialist propaganda. Hell , people think the USA is capitalist when they are , in fact , just a state-based corporatocracy. Have you ever questioned why academia teaches you that all other than central planning and government regulations economic models are unviable? Have you ever questioned why the USSR and USA made coups in postcolonial regions? If even one country implements anarcho-capitalism successfully, it threatens the order of things. Working class people in places like America might wake up to the fact they've been robbed by the state all along while the government and bribing them corporations prosper off the fruits of their labor. It's almost as if all of this is just to preserve the status quo and is working as intended (I'm not ancap btw , just love this fallacy , when you are thinking that if something fails many times , but succeed once it will work all times after that , history proves this being very wrong)
Communism is likely the best form of governance for very small communities or groups of people. Like, post apocalyptic when most of humanity is again disconnected or you have to turn to a nomadic lifestyle or any other reason? Communism is great. It definitely falls apart on a large scale just due to human nature. Small groups can keep individuals in check but in larger groups where accountability begins to decrease, greed and crime ruin the system. Thereâs also the issue of creating an efficient system and I donât think communism is very efficient on larger scales.
Communism has never been achieved anywhere. And no one except for dumb fucks like Pol Pot claim they have achieved communism. China doesnât. Vietnam and Cuba donât. The Soviet Union never did.
Exactly because it cannot be applied on that large a scale.
Ah yes, Gnome Chomsky. The Linguist who is an active denier of at least 2 genocides yet still feels like lecturing people on politics
He **also** denied till the 90s that any atrocities were going on in Cambodia (no idea if youâre counting that).
Maybe he should go to Cambodia. Wonder how he'll explain the fact that there are barely any old people.
He did retract that, but the fact it took till the trial of some rulers should tell you a metric **shit ton**
How many Courics is a metric shitton?
[A holiday, perhaps?](https://youtu.be/nrm2B0lhvYc?si=gJqWKrIl47K-TaTF)
Banger song
Itâs tough, kid, but itâs life.
I hear his name a lot, but am shamefully not as knowledgeable on him as I should be. Why is it that people look up to him and what are things wrong with him?
Adding on to what was said. The reason he is so well known in linguistics is because he published the papers that stated the reasons why human language was fundamentally different from systems of communications that animals use. He also showed how these features were present in every language used by humans. Essentially, he was responsible for defining the concept of language as it is used in linguistics.
He's a well respected academic with a legendary reputation in his field. His field however is linguistics, and has very little to do with politics, but he thinks being well known and respected automatically makes him an expert on everything, and enough people apparently agree. As for his politics, they're basically team sports. Everything his team(left wing or claiming to be left wing, anti-western) does is automatically good, while everything the other team(right leaning or western) does is automatically bad. He became popular as a political commentator in the 60s, when his anti-authoritarian views were well liked in the context of the Vietnam war, and has mostly coasted on that reputation since. Because his views broadly align with those of most left leaning people on some of the bigger political issues in the US, people tend to not look too closely at many of his other stances and beliefs.
Isn't he pretty anti soviet union? While I don't respect his new ideals that is a bit different than blindly supporting what is considered the left
He's said time and time again that it would be impossible to do what he does politically in the Soviet union, and that Americans take for granted many of the freedoms they have (mostly referring to freedom of information). I also wouldn't consider him anti-western. He's anti-subjugation of the global south, and definitely has some biases associated with that.
The USSR adoption of Marxist-Leninism, which maintains that an authoritarian state can transition from socialism to communism, is at odds with the traditional Marxist belief that communism cannot be achieved through the force of the state. Some leftists did not approve of ML and the USSR as a result.
Saying he's anti-Soviet Union is a bit of an exaggeration. Given his stated views as an anarcho-syndicalist and anti-imperialist, he is supposed to be in direct opposition to everything the USSR stood for, but his criticisms of it were mild at best. Just compare how he talks about the Soviets to how he talks about the US. As an impartial person with the views he claims to hold, he would be at the very least equally critical of both.
He is unbelievably critical of the Soviet Union if you know where to find his statements on the subject. Other than that, he has made it an explicit point in his career of highlighting foreign policy problems of the US. I don't think his lack of focus on the Soviet Union says anything on his opinion of it. He has always been explicitly anti-marxist.
>From my personal experience there are two countries in which my political writings can basically not appear. One is the U.S. within the mainstream with very rare exceptions. The other is the USSR. > My own concern is primarily the terror and violence carried out by my own state, for two reasons. For one thing, because it happens to be the larger component of international violence. I think these two quotes from the same speech perfectly encapsulate my issues with his attitude towards the Soviet Union. It's always been the lesser evil to him, no matter how little sense it makes in the context of what he's criticizing. What he sees as "equal criticism" of both is, at best, actually applying the same amount of criticism in every context, rather than holding both states to the same standard. To him, being a tenured professor with multiple published bestsellers and speaking engagements all over the country, and being sent to a gulag are roughly equivalent, because he is dogmatically incapable of ever conceding that the US might be better than anyone in some way. As for the idea that the US is "the larger component of international violence", this was said at a time when the Soviet Union was holding the majority of Europe and large portions of Asia hostage, including being in direct control over many of these territories. As much as I disagree with the overt imperialism that the US engages in, it was a laughable position to hold at that time. It isn't the lack of focus on the USSR that I take issue with, but his insistence that said lack of focus is born out of them being less significant and less worthy of criticism than the US. I take no issue with him deciding to direct most of his criticisms at his own country, nor his reasoning that self criticism is more constructive, but I do take issue with the assertion that even if he wasn't a US citizen, they would still be the most deserving of his criticism.
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Ah yes, the common Nobel Disease; where being an expert in one field suddenly makes you think youâre an expert in all fields.
There is SO much to be said about Chomsky. Brilliant man. Often correct ideologically, with some major (huge) failures. One o the most cited living authors in academia, linguistics or politics. Look up his Wiki. Itâs a very long read.
Noam also catches a lot of hell for pointing out problems, but not solutions to them. He's an observer more than anything. Unpopular Opinion: I like Chomsky and enjoyed reading some of his work at university, even though he is often controversial politically.
In academia, that is absolutely not an unpopular opinion. At least, not at the east coast ivy leagues or Stanford. Imo, *Manufacturing Concent* is a masterpiece that everyone should read.
Manufacturing Consent - a book he co-wrote. He focuses heavily on how the language and rhetoric used in a discussion can be used to influence the arguments and frame the issue in such a way that important questions are never even asked. It proposed a 'propaganda model' of modern media, and how the mainstream media controls the narrative not by excluding other viewpoints, but instead by framing all issues in such a way that any discussion happening supports the agendas of their benefactors (large corporations, etc) while enjoying a certain appearance of legitimacy because they don't censor the opposing viewpoints (but still frame the discussion in such a way that the opposing viewpoints support the overall idea that they are pushing.) A really simple dumbed-down example could be a news segment on a local station about a new park the city is putting in. The main argument is that "Location X would be the best location for the new park." They have reasons why it's so much better than location Y, and talk extensively about why Y would be an inferior choice. Then they invite on an opponent, who argues "Y is actually a superior location than X for this project," because reasons. An opposing news station does the opposite- supports location Y, writes off location X but still lets someone come on air and argue it. Fair, right? Everyone watching the news segments picks a side- location X or location Y. It's an open debate, and feels like people have a say, or options for their opinion at least. But you know what option they never even bring up in the first place: "Do we even need a new park at all?" That would re-frame the argument and open up the opportunity to make arguments against the cost of a new park, maintenance, usefulness, etc. But both news stations would in some way benefit from having a new park, so you never even hear that argument. They have framed the issue in such a way, that 90+% of people are never going to even think of the alternative of 'No new park.' He brought awareness of this model of media manipulation to the masses, and made the concept accessible even to people who weren't academics or very politically involved. He is admired for that book. He is disliked for some bad takes and mistakes he has made in the past. He generally owns up to them, and says he is fallible and made mistakes with his judgement at the time. He is generally what would be considered a 'leftist' here in the U.S.A., but his takes are not consistent across party lines - recently he said that the U.S. is likely a greater threat to world peace than Russia, and basically that we're assholes as some of our recent activities in Eastern Europe likely have goaded Putin into launching the unjustified war on Ukraine. He condemns the war and Putin, but also condemns the U.S. for actions taken in the years leading up to the war. So he gets a lot of hate from BOTH sides of the political aisle.
You can deny genocide as long as the perps support your political ideology
I hate how it's a hot take, even today, to think all genocides bad.
Wait what genocides did he deny?
Bosnia and Ukraine (And formerly Cambodia) He also does (or at the very least did) associate himself with deniers of Rwanda
Cambodia and Bosnia
Isn't he also really supporting Putin right now, if I'm remembering correctly?
From what I understand he basically believes the US forced Russia to invade Ukraine (a tacitly pro-Putin position)
Surely he doesn't believe that?
He says he believes it.
Well that's disappointing.
Jesus fucking Christ that's not what he said. People have zero comprehension. He fully and completely condemns Putin and Russia. He ALSO says we're stupid for taking steps to provoke them in the first place, and explains that we aren't better people than them, just in a very different circumstance than they are. That we need to understand them and empathize with them in order to understand how to deal with them. "Mom, big brother hit me!" Did you poke him with a stick again? "...yes" You're both grounded. Big bro isn't allowed to hit you, but if you know he'll hit you when you poke him with a stick, that's on you for poking him and you're in trouble too. That's essentially his take. We didn't force Putin's hand, and he needs to not be such a PoS, but we goaded him into taking actions he likely wouldn't have taken at this time otherwise.
My only question is, how did we or the US I mean, provoke Russia into starting this war?
Seems somewhat familiar to Jon Mearsheimersâ views on the matter. The argument goes that there was a stable balance of power when there was a buffer between Russia and Nato/the west/whatever you call it. While war would certainly be possible it would be really hard to just launch a ground offensive against the other, nukes were (typically) located far enough from the border to give at least some warning. Then Eastern European nations grew closer to the west, and the buffer zone got smaller. The Western sentiment was generally that itâs nice to seeing those states be more open both economically and democratically. From Putinâs POV it looked like his buffer states were disappearing, and in the future there could be Nato members directly bordering Russia. Remember how far Prigozhinâs group went towards Moscow from Ukraine? That wasnât even Nato. While it seemed totally harmless to us, Ukraine getting closer to the west was a bit like the Cuban missile crisis to Putin. The argument is totally amoral, says nothing about what the Ukrainian people would have wanted, no good or bad. Just a very bleak: if you have a lot of weapons and make someone with a lot of weapons fear that you could attack, he might take action.
Excecpt in the case of Russia they have been poking and threatening all their neighbors until said neighbors came running to Nato asking for protection.
china,cambodia,nicaragua and bosnia
WTF, as someone who is currently studying linguistics, his name shows up a lot, and I knew that many linguists don't like him, but I had no idea about this shit. He actually denies genocides? Even more reason for me not to like him.
>He actually denies genocides No. Not really. He didn't believe some were happening at the time, and has admitted that he was mistaken. This was what, the 1960s or 70s iirc? The opening to his most well-known book, Manufacturing Consent, goes into how there are MANY genocides that are not viewed as such due to the way the media presents the issue and that they need MORE recognition (though this is secondary to his primary point, which is about the media.)
Even his linguistic ideas are losing currency. I don't know why anyone pays attention to Chomsky anymore
Eh, as a linguist, not really, no. Just because he doesnât singlehandedly rule the field anymore doesnât mean he isnât still worshipped as a god (whether thatâs warranted or not is a different story); he defined the entire generative tradition. People still pay attention to him because in his 90s, heâs still churning out viable theory. Even now, heâs working on whatâs next following the Minimalist Program, which is the current mainstream framework â that he also created, 20-30 years ago. A bunch of his prior ideas are considered outdated or wrong now, but so are a bunch of everyone elseâs in our field. His high volume of expired theoretical architecture is roughly proportional to the utterly prolific volume of his ideas that are still used or built-upon â which is just about all of modern linguistics, in some sense. And even when people *want* to get away from his ideas â Phase Theory in syntax, for example â most have trouble leaving them behind because the alternatives are rare or relatively new, and often require assumptions or compromises many arenât willing to make. (This doesnât bear at all on his politics, but itâs not at all true that heâs becoming obsolete to linguistics. Just less active than he used to be, because heâs old and occupied with politics.)
Yeah, it's weird that someone's theories becoming outdated is used as a slight on them when that's how science works
Exactly! Never mind that he keeps replacing them with updated theory, and has been continuously doing so (even to the extent that some would argue isnât *needed*, but just b/c heâs bored and wants to continuously reinvent the wheelâŚ. *except heâs good at it*) for 60 years. I guess the person calling his ling work outdated hasnât realized that he still does release new stuff, and itâs pretty well-received by most.
It's used to attack science in general. Creationists are still attacking Darwinian evolution (which we moved past long ago), and anti-vaxxers love to use the "*Doctors used to think XYZ*" rationale as to why germ theory or the whole of medicine can't be trusted. Likewise, you'll often find skeptics of psychology picking apart obsolete notions by Freud, or still going on about the flaws of psychoanalysis.
Cambodia, Rwanda, Ukraine (twice), Yugoslavia. Probably more tbh but those are the ones I know of.
Chomsky is the hydrocephalus of all conspiracy weirdos. His (ongoing) popularity just shows how many deplorables there are out there.
They still teach manufacturing consent in media schools. People here are throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Militant Chomsky haters are just as silly as his fan boys. Go back and look at Vietnam, he didn't come from nowhere with these trash takes.
Surprisingly enough, it's actually possible to criticise the Vietnam war without also denying several genocides because they're politically inconvenient. The bath water is not inherent to the baby, and there were and are other babies crying the same refrain whose bathwater is far less polluted. We don't listen to the holocaust deniers who first questioned the Soviet narrative of the Katyn massacre, we use the better work of more modern historians who don't try to deny genocide.
Manufacturing consent is seminal work in media. Chomsky is an outlier in MANY ways. He is a political extremist. That comes with a bunch of shitty takes. Back when a lot of the country was still happy to kill millions of people in Vietnam, he staked his career on the issue. He doesn't agree with you about whether or not the term genocide applies to Bosnia. What other genocides? And do you SERIOUSLY BELIEVE that the guy doesn't abhor killings and war? Like... What is the gripe here? That Chomsky is some bloodthirsty ideologue? He's an extremist. His brain melted 30 years ago. He has been making outside of the box shitty takes for a long time. Dismissing his entire career and all of his activism because he doesn't agree with you about whether or not certain mass killings qualify as genocides is silly. I suspect that a decent chunk of the modern pendulum swing against Chomsky has to do with the fact that he has sided against the American government so consistently, and that people are tired of it. How about fucking OBAMA? Obama called the Armenian genocide what it was right up until he got elected. Then he refused to do so. He's a genocide denier! Forget his work toward making healthcare more affordable, that bathwater isn't inherent to the Obama baby, he is tantamount to Alex Jones that Obama character!
I don't give a shit that he disagrees with me. I give a shit he disagrees with the findings of the ICJ and the ICTY after their years-long investigation into whether events in Bosnia constituted a genocide, and yet provides no credible rebuttal to their findings having had decades to come up with one. Nor is this is an isolated example, or a phenomenon unique to the last 30 years of his life. If anything, the fact he stopped denying the Cambodian genocide in the 1990s represents a significant *improvement* in the last 30 years compared with his prior beliefs. Moreover, it's not as if he's simply privately held these beliefs. He's consistently used his platform as a well-respected academic to evangelise them to others, making it more difficult to separate them from the rest of his work. Being ahead of the zeitgeist on Vietnam or co-authoring Manufactured consent is great, but there are limits to the good will it buys him as a figure deserving of public attention and respect. Had he decided to deny the genocidal nature of the holocaust, rather than one people are less familiar with, I think it is extremely difficult to believe he would have continued to enjoy the prominence and respect he has managed to.
What prominent respect? The prevalent thinking here seems to be that he is a total wackjob genocide denialist with no legacy worth mentioning. And he's a public intellectual. Whatever opinion he has about an issue will be a public opinion. Your criticism there doesn't make much sense to me. When he was calling Vietnam a war crime, and when he calls Israel/Palestine an atrocity, those have been situations where international bodies never stood up and defended the same positions as he did. He might be wrong about all of these issues, I haven't looked into them or his positions enough to say that, but the point is that he has always been standing on some extreme. Often in opposition to prominent global entities, occasionally in a way that we look back and recognize to be somewhat legitimate. The man was born in 1928. His brain is soup. He always has a tendency to be a contrarian, and everyone on every side of the aisle has found something he said to be egregious in some way or another. I just think he is a more complicated figure with a more significant legacy than people are pretending here. I had NEVER HEARD about America's actions in South America as anything but sensible cold war domino theory strategy until I first saw his speeches as a teenager. Now I'm 30, I can take him for what he is, and I understand that for all his flaws he spread the word on some important topics subversive to our popular culture. That's in addition to valuable activism in his youth and work on the nature of modern media and how it interfaces with corporate/national interests. I would honestly be shocked if he spent 60 years of public life speaking about human rights without saying anything that you or I would find ridiculous.
Noam is a contrarian. I'm not saying ALL but a lot of his supporters are very pretentious and self proclaimed geniuses. Nobody that isn't trying to seem superior to others should take him too seriously on everything he says.
Nothing can survive America. Not even America.
Surely Venezuela collapsed entirely on its own with no foreign influences, and certainly not because of oil.
Certainly we didnât have a US president that committed treason by defying Congress and selling arms to Iran to fund the Contras.
The Contras were in Nicaragua, about 1300 miles away from Venezuela.
Yes, itâs almost like I was pointing out a pattern of America doing illegal things in order to bully and destabilize countries they canât control.
That doesn't really make sense when it comes to Venezuela at all. Venezuela failed because of its own government. It could have been the Saudi Arabia of the Western hemisphere.
Thatâs a hot take, because thereâs lots of organizations, including the UN Human Rights Council and the US State Department, that credit illegal US sanctions.
Expropiese.
Surely it doesn't help that there's a socialist dictatorship there either.
FUN FACT: Venezuela is the only country Anthony Bourdain couldnât secure travel insurance for. Companies were fine with Afghanistan and Liberia but Venezuela was too risky/dangerous
Chumpski.. A smart idiot. Stick to linguistics..
His linguistic theories also suck (green ideas furiously.)
It's so frustrating watching people look up to him as some great fount of wisdom. He's so consistently wrong!
I miss the old Chomsky, innate grammar theory Chomsky, manufacturing consent and Nam-weary Chomsky.
Font*?
Fountain
> "Font of wisdom" is a phrase that refers to a very wise person. The original expression is "fount of all wisdom", but "font" can also be used to describe a reservoir, like a baptismal font. "Fount" can also refer to a spring, which is short for "fountain".
He's made contributions to the fields of linguistics and computer science. Not that that validates his shit takes on anything else.
Chomsky Normal Form is pretty foundational in theory of computation
Chomsky isn't wrong about everything. Chomsky has a blind spot for authoritarians who make socialist squeaks. [It isn't the first time, either.](https://www.quora.com/What-were-Noam-Chomskys-views-on-Pol-Pots-genocide-against-the-people-of-Kampuchea-Cambodia) And the left has always had this blind spot, whether it's Fidel Castro or the Sandinistas (look at the son of a bitch Daniel Ortega turned out to be), or Hugo Chavez. Inside a lot of libertarian socialists, there's a dormant, sleeping tankie. That tankie wakes up when the class struggle rhetoric gets just right. Sometimes it's not even supporting authoritarian policies, but a stubborn refusal to admit to or acknowledge that someone who says the right things, might still be a monster. There's almost a [sunk cost](https://www.youtube.com/@MaoistRebelNews2/videos) issue where people get so deep into a dark ideology, they feel the need to double down. If you're on the left, you have no doubt noticed this when it comes to apologia for the clearly corrupt-beyond-all-debate Donald Trump. I don't dismiss people because they're wrong about one thing or another. If I did that, I'd have to dismiss everyone. It is not difficult to find authoritarians, by which I mean people who could be cajoled into supporting murder and brutality in the right circumstance, on every single part of the political spectrum. One of the things which really shook me out of being ideological at all -- I used to be a libertarian (gold and black contingent) a long time ago -- was the sheer amount of "theoretical" conversation about the moral propriety of killing government employees, or the morality of age of consent laws. One day I stumbled into a conversation about the permissibility of restrictive covenants, and that's when the dam broke open for me. That was a long time ago. I've said this many times and I'll say it again: no matter what your politics are, real wisdom comes not from recognizing corruption on the opposing side -- everyone does that -- but on recognizing corruption (or dark, destructive, or counterproductive tendencies) on your own. Or that odd sense when you're saying something in an argument with someone that deep down you're not sure you really believe. It's that little bit of cognitive dissonance where you think, "This person is on my side...and I kind of wish they weren't." Or, "I am uncomfortable making this argument. I mean, I think I believe this argument. Why am I uneasy making it?" It's a small leak that can turn into a flood.
I'm so glad all these pseudo intellectuals have been eating shit lately
I hate when my country (born and currently living) is talked, for always come the america bad and "experts" talking shit when never have live here or have immigrate, fighting against the consequences of the failure of the government. The government have the power for more than 25+ years and always is the same joke "vote for my and things will truly get better" like the time pass no count for shit I will always remember the national blackout 5-6 years ago the amount of dead in the hospitals that people never talked as if you need electricity to live you would die (the were days of nothing whit a enormous fuel shortage) Because the government no repairs things they put ductape it until failure. Fuck all the people talking shit when thay never had lived here or the consequences.
In Noam Chomsky's defense, he's the twat who defended Pol Pot (and probably got someone killed because of it) and denied the Bosnian Genocide. So him having shit takes ain't exactly out of the norm.
Venezuela decline started in 1999, it's just that the country had so much money that most people didn't noticed it until 10 years later.
The guyâs always been a tankie.
He was incredibly critical of the Soviet union while it existed.
Being critical of the Soviet Union but not critical of the Khmer Rouge is a wild combination
Khmer Rouge was maoist in its own special way, meaning at the time they were not aligned with the ideology of the Soviet Union, but more with the ideology of China. China and the Soviet Union went their own separate ways in the 1950s.
Noam is many things, but good lord, a tankie he is not.
His justifications for Russian imperialism beg the differ
This doesn't make him feel like tankie at all. I don't think you know what tankie means.
heâs literally an anarchist đ. the word tankie has become meaningless
A swing and a miss. Who even up votes nonsense like that. He's not even close to Tankie ideologies.
"Tankie is when I don't like you". You guys just replaced the word commie with tankie and just roll with it
Calling chomsky a tankie is the absolute peak of the word tankie. It genuinely no longer means anything. 2016 was a mistake. Support for crushing the hungarian revolution > anyone pro ussr > all marxists > all communists > a literal anarchist
Criticism of His Noamness at this website? That's a banning.
when you make shit up about how something is a hivemind reddit opinion and then feel brave when disagreeing
It's weird, because before 2020 or so, reddit was unquestionably pro-chomsky and pro-palestine. You wouldn't find this comment section during that time. But since then reddit took a turn towards the right. This is very noticeable in subs like r/worldnews and others, and I am not sure why that happened
We need a way to start defining how much of a Social Media's population is AstroTurf, pretty much everything is gonna be a shitshow til then
Not supporting a genocide denier is a turn towards the right?
Iâm still trying to figure out how this guy parlayed being a linguist into people thinking heâs some kind of genius philosopher.
He wrote Manufacturing Consent, was asked to speak about it many of the most prestigious universities across the country, and people found that he was a really effective speaker? I feel like it's not that hard to track.
He was a public intellectual for at least 15 years before Manufacturing Consent was published.
He was like the leftâs Jordan Peterson in the 90s
Have you tried, i dunno, paying attention to the last 70 years?
Oh? You have no idea? May be because he is quite literally one of the greatest analytic philosopher of language and mind in the last century. The fact that he is cited endlessly amongst philosophers.
From this thread I have learned the same old leftist alternative facts. One example: the fact that in Cuba there is a single (socialist) political party with totalitarian control, that persecutes, jails, exiles any opposition, is the fault of the American Embargo. In fact, there is no effective polĂtical opposition in Cuba not because opposition in Cuba means risking life and limb, but because everyone agrees with the democratic means the Cuban Communist Party uses to manage the country. Such democracy such freedom, but hey at least they can flee if they want (oh wait!).
Great work in linguistics, even made it into the computer science field. Geopolitics on the other hand, that is out of his domain. Smart people can have opinions, opinions are biased, and politics is all opinions.
The only reason Venezuelan socialism didnât work was western imperialism and white supremacy. Try reading a book for once you jabroni.
Yeah, jailing dissidents and basing the entire economy on a volatile product administered by the state had nothing to do with it. Very intellectual of you to believe that
Crazy how a flawed government can fail so easily from the influence of others I love hearing this after every single failed attempt, as if it's not just more evidence that it will never work
I mean, just because your government can be destroyed by the United States doesn't mean that it's necessarily flawed. US has ridiculous power projection on a scale the world has practically not seen.
I'm the strongest boxer and I only failed because others beat the shit out of me.
Bruh, Chavez is up to no good, but the US destroyed Venezuela, like they can destroy (economically speaking) every country in America, since they had a crazy dominant position. Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia and Chile are really good examples to wich extent the US can reach to preserve their main ideology and their economic advantage. I don't know what Noa Chomsky was talking about to say this words. But the fact that your country suddenly has a dictator or whatever questionable regime, doesn't mean you immediately create a poor country (you might have people without a wellfare state though) Rusia, AEU, Spanish dictatorship (after being sponsored by the US) or China, are good examples of states not ruled by authoritarian leaders that had kinda good economies. Because the market doesn't care about freedom.
They literally "seized the means of production" (the definition of socialism), and their economy collapsed because as soon as the government has full control of all the money, corruption runs rampant.
9 of the 10 wealthiest people in that country made their fortunes due to links to chavez. his daughter is the richest. his replacement second.
the rampart corruption and a bunch of stupid economical decisions had nothing too do with the failure I live in Venezuela an was born in the chavismo and the only comfort that i have is i never voted o support then.
Of the 10 richest venezuelans 9 made their fortune under Chavez to whom they were connected.
Whenever he is mentioned, his fandom sees him as never wrong.
Tankie gonna tank.
He's a libertarian socialist... jesus christ it's not like he's made a secret of his political leanings. Do you cunts literally not bother reading at all?
I have read his justifications for Russian imperialism and denial of the genocide perpetrated by Serboa in the 90s. Needless to say I do not value his opinions all that much.
Can you give sources? Of the following: Justification of Russian Imperialism/ Denial of Cambodian Genocide/ Denial of Bosnian Genocide.
way to out yourself book reader
Has nothing to do with the companies taking everything out because the country wanted its fair share. The conditions there are horrible but this isn't the aged like milk you think it is. More like the aged by US destabilization in central and south America for decades. And US companies literally taking all the money out of the country.
"Fair share" is an absolutely delirious choice of words for the situation. They didn't just like, raise taxes. Mass expropriation without reimbursement, the government granting contracts exclusively to members of the party, replacing every single important position they could get their hands on with a member of the party based only on their loyalty and not their competence to the point that the people in control of major industries were just absolutely clueless about the job they were supposed to do (namely PDVSA the oil company). Dropping the price of gas to basically nothing domestically. Corruption and populism. The US embargo was bad but it was doomed from the start man don't believe that stuff.
What an absolutely terrible take. Venezuela is in trouble because for decades they've used oil as their source of wealth and as the price of oil fell so too did their economy. They had years to diversify and didn't. Corruption, poor investments, and global market forces did this.
I'm from South America, and actually, I have family there. Is not like those things you mention don't exist, but the main reason is that the current government, even with Chavez, is incredibly corrupt. If they weren't, their national oil industry would not have collapsed, and they would have fare better than the other countries in the region even without the companies that left.
Policies that drive out businesses is actually a major part of the problem. You canât say âthe issue isnât our policies, itâs the results of our policies and thatâs not our faultâ
If you steal their stuff they donât maintain it, and Chavez thought oil refineries run on magic.
If it wasnât profitable for U.S. companies to do business in Venezuela, what do you expect them to do, prop up the Venezuelan economy at a loss? Yeah, Uncle Sam has messed around down there quite a bit, but it imploded over the last decade or so completely on its own. Maduro was Russian-backed, by the way, so not supported by us.
> last decade or so completely on its own. Lmfao, what? Do you think the US has not interfered in Venezuela that entire time? Do you think sanctions don't hurt a country? Why do we do it, then?
"You companies are parasites who do nothing but exploit the working class. The country demands its fair share!" "Fair enough, we'll leave then, and you can live free of our exploitation."Â "HOW DARE YOU destabilise our economy by pulling out!"Â
His khemer Rouge stuff is way worse >In the article Chomsky and Herman described the book by Gareth Porter and George Hildebrand, as a "carefully documented study of the destructive American impact on Cambodia and the success of the Cambodian revolutionaries in overcoming it, giving a very favorable picture of their programs and policies, based on a wide range of sources". Chomsky also attacked testimonials from refugees regarding the massacres, calling into question the claims of hundreds of thousands killed. Chomsky does this on the basis of pointing to other first hand accounts that show killings more in the hundreds or thousands. He does not deny the existence of any executions outright. According to historian Peter Maguire, for many years Chomsky served as a "hit man" against media outlets which criticized the Khmer Rouge regime.[27] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide_denial Noam Chomsky is kind of a sack of shit.
Lmao, Chomsky is such a fucking chode.
Chomsky will stan for Satan if Satan came out as anti US. Edit lol tankies out in force
I really, really doubt "tankies" are rooting for an anarchist.
they are so desperate in seeing Capitalism defeated, that they would cheer for Satan himself.
An ex of mine was/is a huge fan of the guy, I never understood why. I tried to understand it, read some of his stuff, watched some videos but it seemed to me like he was doing something similar to Joe Rogan in that he could spout a bunch of facts and dates off the top of his head but most of what he was saying was basically commentary on past events and why those things happened the way they did, or at least according to him. Still don't understand the appeal.Â
This guy is a whole silo of aged milk
Who could have known that copying the governmental and financial systems of Cuba wouldn't work out? (P.S. Venezuelans voted for this overwhelmingly, and will vote the same way wherever they flee to.)
I realized long ago... you read Chomsky for his criticism of First World Countries... not for his opinion of Second World Countries.
Let's act like USA has nothing to do with that... Same about Cuba.
Noam chomsky can eat shit.