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Precisely
which intellectuals of the twentieth century were or were not idiots is a
debatable point, but it is hard to argue with the definition I once heard a
French diplomat offer at a dinner party: “An intellectual is a person
knowledgeable in one field who speaks out only in others.” …The prime example
was Noam Chomsky, a brilliant linguist… But Chomsky was not known as an
intellectual until he denounced the war in Vietnam, something he knew
absolutely nothing about—thereby qualifying for his new eminence. —Tom Wolfe, “In the Land of the Rococo
Marxists” INTRODUCTION Geopolitical
scholars are like astronomers: they cannot directly perceive their objects of
study, so they rely on instruments.
Astronomers use telescopes; geopolitical scholars, the media. But instruments
cannot be trusted. Astronomers make use of a host of applied sciences that
investigate possible biases in astronomical instruments (e.g. imperfections
in the lens, optical illusions, atmospheric noise); in this way, they can correct
for these biases and get the best possible data. What about
the media? Noam
Chomsky has positioned himself as a prominent student of the media and claims
to have identified systematic biases that result from the media’s ideological
marriage to imperialist US bosses. If uncorrected, he says, these biases
distort our perception of geopolitical processes. Chomsky has
become a favorite of US detractors and is often invited to give speeches and
interviews at home and abroad. His books are widely read (or at least
bought). For these folks, Chomsky has become a replacement instrument, and they now perceive the world as
Chomsky describes it. But instruments cannot be trusted—and that goes double
for instruments that powerfully influence people’s political views. Those who
wish to be scientific must investigate Chomsky. I wish here
to examine Chomsky’s relationship to the US bosses, which Chomsky represents
as adversarial. Is it? To answer ‘yes’ is to support Chomsky’s claim to
‘independence’; to answer ‘no,’ as I will do, is to raise an interesting
question: Why is an agent of the power elite so loudly attacking it? What is
his grammatical role? I have
concluded that Chomsky—or rather, his public persona—is the system’s grammatical keystone: the wedged-shape
piece that holds in place the entire psychological warfare structure. You
know him as the academic king of grammar; he is also its performative lord. To know
Chomsky, as I will now demonstrate, is to know the world. WHAT IS CHOMSKY’S RELATIONSHIP TO THE
POWERFUL US BOSSES? An
important Chomskyan theme is that, despite obvious differences, the US
exhibits important similarities with totalitarian states. I can cock my eye
just enough to call the US, a bit whimsically, ‘sloppy totalitarianism’ (Appendix A), so I believe he has a point. But
does that make Chomsky an ‘American dissident’ comparable to, say, Soviet
dissidents? He would
say ‘yes.’ “Chomsky often calls himself an ‘American dissident,’
comparing himself to dissidents in the former Soviet Union. He calls his
critics ‘commissars’ and says their tactics are familiar to any student of
police state behavior. When asked by a reporter why he is ignored by official
Washington, he said: ‘It’s been done throughout history. How were dissidents
treated in the Soviet Union?’ ”[1] They
weren’t ignored, exactly. More like
harassed, exiled, imprisoned, sent to labor camps, tortured, and executed. But perhaps
this is unfair to Chomsky. After all, the US undeniably presents many obvious
and dramatic differences with the Soviet Union. Might Chomsky have been the
object of milder, American-style
forms of persecution and/or censorship? To answer
that, I will investigate how the media and military bosses have treated Noam
Chomsky, because Chomsky has made a career of attacking these institutions. How have US media bosses treated Noam
Chomsky? Chomsky is
credited by Wikipedia with developing “the propaganda
model of media criticism.” In Necessary
Illusions: Thought Control in a Democratic Society, he accuses there is a
“state-corporate propaganda system” in which “the media... conform to the
requirements of the state-corporate nexus,” spewing forth a “narrow
state-corporate ideology” and engaging, as required, in “media
self-censorship.”[2] If Chomsky
is to be reasonably compared to a Soviet dissident we should expect to
find—at the very least—that the “state-corporate propaganda system” gives him
the cold shoulder, for ‘dissident’ requires—by definition—that Chomsky’s
discourse be inimical to “state-corporate ideology.” The New York Times, the epitome of ‘establishment’ and ‘mainstream,’
gives the strongest possible test. On 28
September 2015 I queried the Lexis-Nexis Academic database for appearances of
‘Noam Chomsky’ in the NYT in the 6 months prior. Grand total: 38. Chomsky’s
name is appearing between 6 and 7 times per
month in the pages of the most influential mainstream news source in the
US (and the West). Very few people achieve this. For comparison, the monthly
rate for ‘Pope Francis’ is between 7 and 8. According
to Wikipedia
it was not always so: “1967 marked Chomsky’s entry into the public debate on
the United States’ foreign policy,” but without much initial success for “he
was virtually ignored by the mainstream press throughout the late 1960s and
early 1970s.” I checked, however, and Wikipedia’s claims are incorrect. There is no
jump in Chomsky coverage after the early 1970s. I queried the New York Times archive for the years
1967-75 and also 1976-84 and found that ‘Noam Chomsky’ appears about as often
in either period: once per month. Was he being “virtually ignored”? When a
young academic dips his public toe in a field that is not his specialty and
overnight is appearing once per month in
the world’s most prestigious newspaper, this is saturation coverage. Chomsky has
never been censored—just the opposite. Sure, the
mainstream media sometimes attack him. But Chomsky would agree with huckster,
hoaxer, and showman Phineas T. Barnum that, for either of them, “there is no
such thing as bad publicity.” Chomsky
is a ‘media dissident’—media attacks build his persona. Now ask
yourself: why should the media build it? If media
bosses really disliked Chomsky’s message they could simply never mention him,
in which case nobody—outside a small circle—would ever hear his views.
(Regular folk don’t go around stalking linguists.)
But the media talk about him so much that he is now a rock star: “the most
cited author living today.” Not impressed? “Noam Chomsky ranks only behind
Shakespeare, Plato and Freud as the most cited author ever.”[3] So are the
media really against him? Opinions could
differ... “The New York
Times has referred to Noam Chomsky as ‘arguably the most important
intellectual alive.’ ”[3] Whew! A far
cry, I would say, from the experience of Soviet dissidents. If we
accept that, in the US, Chomsky’s “state-corporate propaganda system” exists,
aren’t we almost forced to conclude that he belongs to that system? How do US military bosses treat Noam
Chomsky? Chomsky has
positioned himself as a strong critic of the US military which, he accuses,
lies at the center of everything that is wrong with the US. He calls it the
“Pentagon System.” “He has called [the US military] several times ‘the most
hideous institution on this earth’ and declares that it ‘constitutes a menace
to human life.’ More to the point, the military has no business being on
college campuses, whether recruiting, providing money for research, or
helping students pay for college. Professors shouldn’t work with the
Pentagon, he has said, and instead should fight racism, poverty, and
repression. Universities shouldn’t take Pentagon research money because it
ends up serving the Pentagon’s sinister goal of ‘militarizing’ American
society. He’s also against college students getting ROTC [Reserve Officers’
Training Corps] scholarships…”[4] These Chomsky
positions are well known. But how does the US military feel about him? Here’s a clue: they have paid
Chomsky millions. Though
Chomsky claims to have become a ‘dissident’ when very young, “having
determined at the age of ten that capitalism and the American
military-industrial complex were dangerous and repugnant,” his very first
job, right after getting his Ph.D., was for the MIT Research Laboratory of
Electronics, “which was funded entirely by the Pentagon and a few
multinational corporations”—in other words, by the
“dangerous and repugnant” “military-industrial complex.”[5] This wasn’t
a fluke. In fact, his most famous and influential academic research—which is
on grammar—was all funded by the US
military. “He wrote his first book, Syntactic
Structures, with grants from the U.S. Army (Signal Corps), the Air Force
(Office of Scientific Research, Air Research, and Development Command), and
the Office of Naval Research... His next book, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, was produced with money from the
Joint Services Electronic Program (U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, and U.S. Air Force)
as well as the U.S. Air Force Electronic Systems Division. Why would the Pentagon fund research into linguistics? ...As
Chomsky well knew, his work in linguistics was considered vital by the Air
Force and others to improve their ‘increasingly large investment in so-called
‘command and control’ computer systems’ that were being used ‘to support our
forces in Vietnam.’ ”[5] Who was it
that hired a young Noam Chomsky to do this research at the Pentagon-funded
Research Laboratory of Electronics? That was Jerome Wiesner.[6] I find that most interesting. Wiesner
would soon become Science Advisor to President Kennedy (1961), and by 1966 he
was part of a group called ‘Jason East,’ a branch of the Institute for
Defense Analyses (IDA), a federal contract research center (FCRC). “FCRCs’
sole customer was the government—in IDA’s case, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and
the secretary of defense.”[7] What was
‘Jason’ doing? Helping the US military fight the Vietnam War. So Chomsky
was recruited by a scientist utterly involved, and at the highest level, with
the US government and its military establishment. And Chomsky was hired to do
Pentagon research needed to fight the ‘anticommunist’ Vietnam War. Now, it
matters that Wiesner hired Chomsky at the time of the McCarthy witch hunts,
when true American dissidents—and many who weren’t even dissidents—were
branded ‘communists’ left and right and hauled before special tribunals.
“Tens of thousands of federal employees... were fully investigated under the
loyalty-security program, and some 2700 were dismissed between 1947 and
1956.”[7a] Chomsky
was hired in 1955. It is inconceivable that a top Pentagon scientist
would hire Chomsky to do high-profile ‘anticommunist’ military research in
1955—during the ‘anticommunist’ McCarthy Red Scare—without a thorough ‘background
check.’ But then it follows that no evidence of Chomsky’s radical
‘dissidence’ was found. Others who
had trouble noticing Chomsky’s ‘dissidence’ were the dissidents themselves. As
summarized by Wikipedia, in 1967 activists at Columbia
University who had membership in Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), an
organization opposing the Vietnam War, “discovered documents in the
International Law Library detailing Columbia’s institutional affiliation with
the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), a weapons research think-tank
affiliated with the U.S. Department of Defense.” Soon the organization that
Jerome Wiesner—Chomsky’s mentor—worked for became the target of SDS
agitation, as they organized the students against the university and demanded
that Columbia disaffiliate from IDA. Chomsky did not approve. “...Chomsky thought their rebellions were ‘largely misguided,’
and he ‘criticized [them] as they were in progress at Berkeley (1966) and
Columbia (1968) particularly. Same at MIT, later’ (27 June 1995). ...[Says
Chomsky:] ‘It was rather complex because the students generally considered me
a natural ally and were often surprised at my skepticism about how they were
focusing their protests... Led to considerable conflict, in fact.’ ”[8] Rather than
a true dissident, Chomsky would seem, from this evidence, a creature of the
US power elite posing as a
dissident in order to sabotage true dissidence. In other words, a COINTELPRO
asset. If he is
such, and if the ‘military-industrial’ bosses are also the media bosses, this
would explain why, when Chomsky came out publicly as a ‘Vietnam War
opponent,’ the “state-corporate propaganda system” did not expose the fact
that he had been hired to do research for the Pentagon’s ‘anti-communist’
war, choosing instead to exercise their “media self-censorship.” It would
also explain why they gave Chomsky star treatment. An
important test of the COINTELPRO hypothesis lies with an examination
of Chomsky’s ‘dissidence.’ If he is a creature of the very system he attacks
we should find that his attacks are carefully designed to steer people away from the most damning evidence
and the most damning interpretation. We should find that—despite having
information for a knockout blow—when he attacks US bosses Chomsky is in fact
pulling his punches. HAS CHOMSKY BEEN PULLING HIS PUNCHES? According
to Chomsky’s analysis, the mainstream media support the “state-corporate
nexus” because: 1)
the
most important media companies are themselves big corporations;[9] 2)
media
managers have a cultural and class affinity with corporate and government
managers;[10] 3)
advertisers
demand that media content agree with corporate interests [11] ; and 4)
journalists
and publishers are afraid of powerful people.[12] For those
who buy Chomsky books to read them—not just to display on a bookshelf as
badges of ‘left-liberal’ political correctness—his analysis must come as a
bit of a letdown: a firecracker that hisses and never pops. Chomsky
talks a big game when he accuses there is a “state-corporate nexus,” but his
fearsome “state-corporate propaganda system” is in fact decentralized and
voluntary. This is radical? This is mild.
One is at pains, in fact, to distinguish this from the musings of ordinary
Joes pondering distractedly their own vague suspicions of ‘big media.’ In fact,
Edward Herman, who co-authored Chomsky’s first presentation of his
‘propaganda model’ (Manufacturing
Consent), insists that this model should not be “dismissed as a
‘conspiracy theory’ ” because he and Chomsky have “point[ed] out very
carefully in the preface that our model is close to a ‘free market’ analysis
and does not rely on conspiracy at all.”[12a]
For ‘dissidents’ these two certainly work hard to stay within the bounds of
officially approved grammar: don’t you
dare propose a ‘conspiracy theory.’ [12b] Is Chomsky covering for the “state-corporate
propaganda system”? What’s missing? What’s missing is any discussion of the National Security Act, which authorized US Intelligence to do in secret as it pleased with a gigantic budget, thus giving it the opportunity to corrupt the media (and, by the way, explicit legal authorization to corrupt foreign media).[12c] What’s
missing is any discussion of Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller, the most
important corporate networks in the “state-corporate nexus,” and how they
have spread their tentacles all over the US government structure and the US educational and research
establishments, something that was well advanced already in the late 19th
century. Chomsky’s
book Necessary Illusions: Thought
Control in Democratic Societies (1989), contains: 1)
not one mention of the National Security Act; 2)
not one mention of the name ‘Rockefeller’; 3)
only one mention of the name ‘Carnegie,’ in a
passing reference to the “Carnegie Foundation for International Peace” (the
proper name is the Carnegie Endowment); 4)
not one mention of the ‘Ford’ family of
automobile fame; 5)
only two mentions of the Council on Foreign
Relations—created by Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller as a means
to keep a stranglehold on US foreign policy—and both times the CFR is not the
object of criticism but a scholarly
source; and 6)
not one mention of the eugenics movement, led by the Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller
fortunes, which succeeded in turning the movement into German Nazism (Part
5). Just as interesting is what Necessary Illusions does contain: a passing mention of historian
Christopher Simpson’s research on the postwar US employment of (at least)
tens of thousands of Nazis: “In the early postwar years, the United States supported
armies established by Hitler in the Ukraine and Eastern Europe, with the
assistance of such figures as Reinhard Gehlen, who
headed Nazi military intelligence on the Eastern front and was placed in
charge of the espionage service of West Germany under close CIA supervision,
assigned the task of developing a ‘secret army’ of thousands of SS men to
assist the forces fighting within the Soviet Union.”[13] Chomsky’s
footnote for this reads: “Christopher Simpson, Blowback (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988).” But again,
even more interesting is what Chomsky doesn’t say. Blowback—supporting itself on a treasure trove
of official documents that were declassified thanks to the Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA)—contains a
detailed documentation of how many other thousands of Nazis were not deployed
in Europe but in fact imported into the
United States, where they were organized by US Intelligence as
‘governments in exile’ and ‘anti-communist exile communities’ that were used
to pressure the US Congress in favor of particular policies supporting
various fascist constructs in Europe and also the US military build-up. Other
Nazis were imported into the US Army and organized into the ‘Special Forces.’
Still others were integrated into the CIA, and used prominently in CIA
propaganda activities and elsewhere. (We have reviewed all of this in Part
6.) Not a peep from Chomsky on any of this, even though he has
obviously read Blowback. Chomsky’s
awareness of Christopher Simpson is relevant to another point, because
Simpson would publish, in 1996, Science
of Coercion, where he documents how the Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller networks—in
collusion with US Intelligence—spent a fortune in the postwar taking control
of the educational institutions that train media personnel (Part
1). Chomsky apparently went on record saying that this was “An
intriguing picture of the relations between state power and the intellectual
community.” Perhaps one of his fans excitedly asked him about the book,
forcing him to make a comment that he preferred not to make. That would
explain why the search engine at Chomsky.info returns not one mention of Science of Coercion or Christopher
Simpson. The media
has behaved similarly. The widest possible Lexis-Nexis search found exactly zero mentions of Science of Coercion in mainstream newspapers. So the media bosses
want to keep mum about this—which makes sense, because Simpson has
meticulously documented the genesis and structure of the “state-corporate
propaganda system.” But given that Chomsky has dedicated his entire
‘dissident’ career to explaining this system, his silence on Simpson’s research is nothing short of remarkable. Unless, of course, Chomsky is an agent of that
system. Then it makes perfect sense. This would
also explain why Chomsky’s Propaganda
and the Public Mind, published in 2001—long after Science of Coercion—again does not contain one mention of the latter book or its author, and why it also
does not contain one mention of the
National Security Act, the Council on Foreign Relations, or the Carnegie,
Ford, and Rockefeller networks.[14] The point
of a COINTELPRO
asset is to mislead about the structure of the world. By posing as a
‘dissident,’ Chomsky becomes an effective decoy for other would-be
‘dissidents’ who never learn about the importance of the Carnegie, Ford, and
Rockefeller networks, and their—quite literally—pro-Nazi policies. But for
those who know that someone is a COINTELPRO
asset, a close attention to that person’s role can lay bare the world’s true
structure. By scrutinizing what Chomsky says, we can begin to infer what the
bosses are preparing. I turn to this next. PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE: CHOMSKY AND THE
JEWS Early in
his forays into public ‘dissidence’ Chomsky created a bit of a storm in
France when he went out of his way to defend Robert Faurisson,
a French academic who was getting in trouble for claiming that not a single
Nazi death camp had ever existed. According
to contemporary reporting in the New
York Times, Faurisson, “a lecturer in classical
and modern literature” (i.e. not yet a professor, and not a WWII specialist),
held “no particular prominence on the French intellectual or academic scene.”[15] Chomsky in fact helped to make Faurisson’s
name. In defense
of his actions, Chomsky wrote: “I have frequently signed petitions—indeed, gone to far greater lengths [than for Faurisson]—on
behalf of Russian dissidents whose views are absolutely horrendous: advocates
of ongoing U.S. savagery in Indochina, or of policies that would lead to
nuclear war, or of a religious chauvinism that is reminiscent of the dark
ages.”[16] Why would
Chomsky sell himself as someone who defends people “whose views are
absolutely horrendous”? His point is that “it is precisely in the case of horrendous
ideas that the right of free expression must be most vigorously defended.”[16] Free speech is meaningless unless we
extend it to those we disagree with. I agree with
the principle. But if Chomsky’s position is indeed principled (rather than a
politically correct way to dig himself out of a hole), then he should defend
opponents of a PLO/Fatah state in
Judea and Samaria. Why? Because there is an epidemic of attacks against our
free speech on US campuses, and there is no question that Noam Chomsky
strongly disagrees with us. But Chomsky does not defend our rights. Why is Faurisson, by contrast, so deserving? Could it be that
Chomsky does not really disagree with him? According to Alan Dershowitz, “Chomsky once told a group of people that he himself was
‘agnostic’ on whether the Holocaust occurred. When professor Robert Nozick,
who was part of the group, confronted Chomsky with this outrageous statement
following a debate at Harvard Medical School, Chomsky shoved Nozick, saying,
‘How dare you quote an off-the-record remark I made to a small group at
Princeton.’ He did not deny making the statement.”[17] In fact, if
Dershowitz’s account is accurate, Chomsky confirmed
making the statement. Chomsky has
counter-claimed in print that this is all fabrication, that he never said
this. But even if you believe him, it doesn’t matter. A good case can be made
that Chomsky is a Holocaust denier just based on how he defended Faurisson (see here). Chomsky has
also been an ardent defender of Norman Finkelstein, author of The Holocaust Industry, which claims that Jews have publicly preserved
the memory of the Holocaust not as a warning to future generations but, by
way of a ‘moral debt’ argument, “to justify criminal policies of the Israeli
state.”[18] To Finkelstein, the Jews are sly
monsters who slink in pretend grief just so they can lure their victim and
kill. But this is
not antisemitic, says Chomsky: “I can see no antisemitic implications... in the claim that
the Holocaust (whether one believes it took place or not) is being exploited,
viciously so, by apologists for Israeli repression and violence.”[19] When asked
whether the Holocaust “is… manipulated by the Israeli state to promote its
own interests,” Chomsky answers: “It’s very consciously manipulated” and
“that kind of manipulation is really sick.” But what “interests” of the
Israeli State might be served by this purported manipulation? According to
Chomsky, Israel wants “to justify oppression of others.”[20] It is “an aggressive, violent state” that “want[s] to be able
to use force freely.”[21] Jews want to punish and kill. Am I
exaggerating? Chomsky is using big words, words that have been used to
describe Nazi Germany: “an aggressive, violent state” that “want[s] to be
able to use force freely.” And this demonstrates how much the political
grammar of the ‘liberal left’ has changed since WWII. Back then, to fight
totalitarianism you opposed the Nazis and defended the Jews; today you deny
the Holocaust and call the Jewish State a ‘Nazi.’ That’s what ‘good
leftists’—you know, ‘progressive people’—are now supposed to do. And that is
what Chomsky has wrought—with a lot of help, of course, from the
“state-corporate nexus.” This
simplifies matters for a lot of people. Now that the “state-corporate
propaganda system” has turned Chomsky into a ‘leftist’ rock star, the very
definition of a ‘radical’ who fights the Establishment, it has become easy
for those wishing to consume the identity ‘radical’ (or even just ‘good
leftist’) to simply adopt Chomsky’s positions. Over a half
century before Chomsky was even born, the French political theorist Maurice
Joly had already figured him out. In Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu
(1864) Joly explained that power elites would undermine democracy while
keeping its forms—what I have called ‘sloppy totalitarianism’ (Appendix A). The bosses would send covert
agents to pose as opposition movement leaders, assisted by a press also
covertly in the power elite’s pocket. The fiercest, most vocal, most visible
critics of the government would all be covert agents. In this way, the energy for opposition, which must
always exist, would be channeled and managed into a stance useful to the
bosses. And that’s what Chomsky does. Or call
that my hypothesis: that Chomsky is a COINTELPRO
asset. Can we test
it? Yes. One way is
to interrogate US geopolitical activity. If we find that US power-elite goals
are undermined by having a lot of agitated ‘leftists’ believing that Israel
is the ‘bad guy,’ this counts against my hypothesis. But if it goes the other
way, I score an important point. There are
many issues we could consider (see here),
but this series has made a special focus of two dramatic US foreign-policy
initiatives in the Middle East: 1)
the
‘Two State Solution,’ which means to give PLO/Fatah—or the ‘Palestinian Authority’—a ‘Palestinian State’ carved
out of strategic Israeli territory. 2)
the
nuclear deal with Iran, which gives Iran precisely those resources it needs
to race the final nuclear-weapons lap, coupled with a lax inspections regime
that cannot stop Iran from crossing the finish line. These two
key policies appear carefully articulated. PLO/Fatah played a leading role in the Islamist Revolution of 1979
that established the current regime in Iran, led by angry apocalyptic bosses
who incessantly promise the violent destruction of Israel (Part
0). In 1979, amid the revolutionary celebrations in Teheran, PLO/Fatah promised to initiate a ‘peace
process’ in exchange for a strategic beachhead inside Israel, to be used as a terrorist base (Part
0). The details
in the above paragraph are not widely known, but even so there is
considerable resistance in Israel, and in the United States, to both
policies. One way to lessen the impact of that resistance is for Chomsky to
produce support for those policies among ‘leftists.’ This means convincing ‘leftists’
that Israel is the ‘bad guy.’ Why? Because then, by grammatical symmetry, PLO/Fatah—and even Iran—must be the ‘good
guys’ (the deserving downtrodden native victims of foreign colonialism and
imperialism, as Chomsky keeps telling us). These ‘leftists’
are automatically protected from charges of antisemitism because they can
say: “Look, I am just repeating what Chomsky, a Jew, is saying.” And
Chomsky—by grammatical opposition—also determines the conservative ‘right.’
Since he is reviled there, ‘conservatives’ reject everything he says. Hence, they defend Israel but also defend the US power elite
(and they attack the media, but for having a supposedly left-wing bias). The
psychological warfare of US bosses thus creates two mutually exclusive
meme-bundles: 1)
for
the left: ‘oppose US bosses’ and ‘oppose Israel’; 2)
for
the right: ‘support US bosses’ and ‘support Israel.’ Once people
associate a meme-bundle with their particular ‘identity’ (‘left’ or ‘right’)
they will defend it fiercely, because defending one’s ‘identity’ is
synonymous with defending a ‘correct’ moral view of the world (that’s how
‘identity’ works). Chomsky is
the grammatical keystone holding
this binary structure together, for his polarizing effect makes it very
difficult for a third option, based on a third (currently almost nonexistent)
identity, to emerge: 3)
‘oppose
US bosses’ and ‘support Israel.’ In other
words, there is one key hypothesis that, thanks to Chomsky, becomes
unimaginable: that perhaps US bosses—the same, after all, who launched the
eugenics movement that became German Nazism (Part
5), and who absorbed and deployed great multitudes of Nazis after
WWII (Part 6)—are reusing, in broad strokes, the
WWII strategy (Part 7); that, perhaps, they now mean to use
PLO/Fatah and Iran to destroy the
Jewish State: Holocaust 2.0 (Part
8); and that, as before, this is part of a long-term policy of
subjugating us Westerners with a
new totalitarianism (Part
9). If this
third hypothesis is reasonable, then Chomsky—by short-circuiting the mental
processes that would allow us to imagine it—is protecting the system trend that
the bosses want. Choose your identity: ‘left’ or ‘right’ it doesn’t matter.
Break left, and the bosses get
support for their anti-Israel and pro-Iranian policies, which help spread
totalitarianism abroad; break right, and they get support for their ‘war
on terror’ policies, which impose totalitarianism at home. If they balance it
just right the bosses can do both (Appendix A). I am ready
to score my point. And I can
score another if we consider: NOAM CHOMSKY’S VIEWS ON THE US-IRAN
NUCLEAR TREATY. Amy Goodman
runs a show called Democracy Now!,
and Noam Chomsky is featured for interviews on this show as often as
possible. The biggest channels for this show are PBS (Public Broadcasting
Station) and NPR (National Public Radio). This
deserves a brief comment, for the sake of context. I saw this
with my own eyes when I was first studying and then teaching at American
universities: university-educated ‘liberal leftists’ in the US have convinced
themselves that PBS and NPR are somehow ‘independent media.’ Watching PBS and
listening to NPR in fact builds their identities as skeptical sophisticates
with higher education who therefore consume independent and intelligent media. But—by
definition—PBS and NPR cannot be independent. They are both in fact—and officially—government-owned media. Moreover,
an NPR link to US Intelligence activities is easy to document. Kevin Klose
was president of NPR from 1998 to 2008. When he was appointed, there was some
controversy because, as Wikipedia
states, Klose “ ‘used to be the director of all major worldwide US government
propaganda dissemination broadcast media including VOA, Radio Liberty, Radio
Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, Worldnet Television
and the anti-Castro Radio/TV Marti.’ ” Those are all CIA operations.[21a]
And as Christopher Simpson documents in Blowback
(which Chomsky has read) the government radios have employed a multitude of
Nazis in the postwar. Chomsky
doesn’t seem to mind. When Amy
Goodman invited Chomsky over to Democracy
Now! to comment on Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech
before the US Congress to protest the US-Iran nuclear agreement, Chomsky was
happy to oblige: “For... Prime Minister Netanyahu and the hawks in Congress,
mostly Republican, the primary goal is to undermine any potential negotiation
that might settle whatever issue there is with Iran. They have a common
interest in ensuring that there is no regional force that can serve as any
kind of deterrent to Israeli and U.S. violence, the major violence in the
region. And it is—if we believe U.S. intelligence (don’t see any reason not
to)—their analysis is that if Iran is developing nuclear weapons (which they
don’t know), it would be part of [Iran’s] deterrent strategy. Now, [Iran’s]
general strategic posture is one of deterrence. They have low military
expenditures. According to U.S. intelligence, their strategic doctrine is to
try to prevent an attack, up to the point where diplomacy can set in. I don’t
think anyone with a grey cell functioning thinks that they would ever
conceivably use a nuclear weapon, or even try to. The country would be
obliterated in 15 seconds. But they might provide a deterrent of sorts. And
the U.S. and Israel certainly don’t want to tolerate that. They are the
forces that carry out regular violence and aggression in the region and don’t
want any impediment to that.”[22] Delicious. The global
interpretation is clear: bad guys: US and Israel; good guy: Iran. And again
the Chomsky doctrine: US bosses and Israel are joined at the hip; US foreign
policy is always on behalf of Israel. Problem: US and Iranian bosses are signing an
agreement that, according to an angry Israeli prime minister, will give Iran
the resources it needs to pursue its nuclear ambitions (by removing sanctions
and unfreezing assets) and the cover to pursue them (by providing for
‘inspections’ that are nothing of the sort). No matter: Chomsky doggedly
explains Netanyahu’s opposition to the US-Iran nuclear deal as follows: “the U.S. and Israel certainly don’t
want to tolerate [a nuclear Iran].” Is your
head spinning? Now,
Chomsky does not want to grant that Iranian bosses are seeking nuclear
weapons but, supposing they were,
he says, this can only be interpreted as a “deterrent strategy.” All they
want to do is balance “the forces that carry out regular violence and
aggression in the region.” According to Chomsky, Iranian bosses just want to
“prevent an attack, up to the point where diplomacy can set in.” So let me
see. World exporters of Islamist terrorism only want to make peace. For that
they need nukes. So Iranian nukes are good for us. QED. Yes, it’s a straight
syllogism! The obvious
question is: Why is Netanyahu interpreting so literally the Iranian threat,
renewed every month, that Israel will be violently destroyed? Where is his
sense of humor? Surely, the Iranians are just being playful. Take
Hashemi Rafsanjani, father of Iran’s
nuclear program: he “called... on the Muslim states to use nuclear weapon
against Israel, assuring them that while such an attack would annihilate
Israel, it would cost them ‘damages only.’ ” According to Rafsanjani, from
the Iranian point of view, a thermonuclear exchange with Israel would be
entirely reasonable, because Muslims have lots of people to spare and thus “
‘application of an atomic bomb would not leave any thing
in Israel but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world.’
”[23] What a
tease! That guy kills me. Obviously what he meant was that “anyone with a
grey cell functioning” cannot believe that Iranian bosses “would ever
conceivably use a nuclear weapon, or even try to.” And did you
notice where Chomsky is getting his expert information? “...if we believe U.S. intelligence (don’t see any reason not
to)—their analysis is...” Chomsky
sees no reason to doubt US spies! Why should
he? Spies inform the public; dissidents trust spies. It’s common sense. If
the dissident is Jewish and the spies pro-Nazi, then more so—why would Jews doubt Nazis? It’s not as if these spies
are whitewashing gangsters who vow a nuclear Jewish Holocaust. Can one be
Orwellian and Kafkaesque? Chomsky
can. He is a great stylist, a top grammarian, and a cunning linguist.
[1]
Schweizer, P. (2005). Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in
Liberal Hypocrisy. New York: Knopf Doubleday. [2]
Chomsky, N. (1989). Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in
Democratic Societies. London: Pluto Press. (pp.8, 13, 29, 88, 157, 177,
179) [3]
“On US Military Budgets’: Noam
Chomsky interviewed by Ira Shorr.” America’s Defense Monitor and the Center
for Defense Information. February 11, 1996 [4] Schweizer, P. (2005). Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in
Liberal Hypocrisy. New York: Knopf Doubleday. [5]
ibid. Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures was published
with the following notice: “This work was supported in part by the U.S.A. Army (Signal Corps),
the Air Force (Office of Scientific Research, Air Research and Development
Command), and the Navy (Office of Naval Research); and in part by the
National Science Foundation and the Eastman Kodak Corporation.” Chomsky’s Aspects of the Theory of Syntax was
published with the following notice: ACKNOWLEDGMENT This is Special Technical Report Number II of the Research
Laboratory o This work
was supported in part by the U.S.A. Army (Sighal
Corps), the Air Force (Office of Scientific Research, Ail Research and
Development Command), and the Navy (Office of Naval Research); and in part by
the National Science Foundation and the . Eastman Kodak Corporation. f
Electronics of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Research
Laboratory of Electronics is an interdepartmental laboratory in which faculty
members and graduate students from numerous academic departments conduct
research. The research reported in this document was made possible in part by
support extended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Research
Laboratory of Electronics. by the JOINT SERVICES ELECTRONICS PROGRAMS (U.S.
Army. U.S. Navy. and U.S. Air Force) under Contract No.
DAS6-o39-AMC-03llOo(E); additional support was received from the U.S. Air
Force (Electronic Systems Division under Contract AFI9(628)-2487). the
National Science Foundation (Grant GP-2495). the National Institutes of
Health (Grant MH-D4737-D4). and The National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (Grant NsG-496). Reproduction in whole or in part is permitted
for any purpose of the United States Government. [6]
Barsky, R. F. (1997). Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent.
Toronto: ECW Press. (p.86) [7]
Finkbeiner, Ann (2006-04-06). The Jasons: The
Secret History of Science's Postwar Elite (pp.36, 65-66). Penguin
Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. [7a] “Anti-Communism
in the 1950s”; The Gilder Lehrman
Institute of American History; by Wendy Wall [8] Barsky, R. F. (1997). Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent. Toronto: ECW Press. [9]
“The major media—particularly,
the elite media that set the agenda that others generally follow—are
corporations ‘selling’ privileged audiences to other businesses. It would
hardly come as a surprise if the picture of the world they present were to
reflect the perspectives and interests of the sellers, the buyers, and the
product.” SOURCE: Chomsky, N. (1989). Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies. London:
Pluto Press. (p.8) [10]
“those who occupy managerial
positions in the media, or gain status within them as commentators, belong to
the same privileged elites, and might be expected to share the perceptions, aspirations,
and attitudes of their associates, reflecting their own class interests as
well. Journalists entering the system are unlikely to make their way unless
they conform to these ideological pressures, generally by internalizing the
values; it is not easy to say one thing and believe another, and those who
fail to conform will tend to be weeded out by familiar mechanisms.” SOURCE: Chomsky, N. (1989). Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies. London: Pluto Press. (p.8) [11]
“The influence of advertisers is
sometimes far more direct. ‘Projects unsuitable for corporate sponsorship
tend to die on the vine,’ the London Economist observes, noting that
‘stations have learned to be sympathetic to the most delicate sympathies of
corporations.’ The journal cites the case of public TV station WNET, which
‘lost its corporate underwriting from Gulf+Western
as a result of a documentary called `Hunger for Profit', about multinationals
buying up huge tracts of land in the third world.’ These actions ‘had not
been those of a friend,’ Gulf's chief executive wrote to the station, adding
that the documentary was ‘virulently anti-business, if not anti-American.’
‘Most people believe that WNET would not make the same mistake today,’ the
Economist concludes. Nor would others. The warning need only be implicit.” SOURCE: Chomsky, N. (1989). Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies. London: Pluto Press. (p.8) [12]
“To confront power is costly and
difficult; high standards of evidence and argument are imposed, and critical
analysis is naturally not welcomed by those who are in a position to react
vigorously and to determine the array of rewards and punishments. Conformity
to a ‘patriotic agenda,’ in contrast, imposes no such costs. Charges against
official enemies barely require substantiation; they are, furthermore,
protected from correction, which can be dismissed as apologetics for the
criminals or as missing the forest for the trees.” SOURCE: Chomsky, N. (1989). Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies. London: Pluto Press. (p.8) [12a] “The
Political Economy of the Mass Media”; Monthly
Review; January, 1989; Edward S.
Herman interviewed by Robert W. McChesney [12b] “What
is conspiracy theory? Is this website doing it?”; Historical and Investigative Research; 4 October 2005; by
Francisco Gil-White [12c] “Did the National Security Act of 1947
destroy freedom of the press? The red pill...”; Historical and Investigative Research; 3 January 2006; by
Francisco Gil-White [13] Chomsky, N. (1989). Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies. London: Pluto Press. (pp.27-28) [14]
Barsamian, D., & Chomsky, N. (2001). Propaganda
and the Public Mind: Conversations with Noam Chomsky. Cambridge, MA:
South End Press. [15]
“CHOMSKY STIRS FRENCH STORM IN A
DEMITASSE”; The New York Times;
January 1, 1981; Section 1; Page 2, Column 3; Foreign Desk; 1031 words; By
RICHARD EDER, Special to the New York Times. [16]
“Some Elementary Comments on The
Rights of Freedom of Expression”; Appeared as a Preface to Robert Faurisson, Mémoire en defense (October 11, 1980); by Noam Chomsky. [17]
“Match Point”; The New Republic Online; June 1, 2007;
by Noam Chomsky and Alan Dershowitz Without Dershowitz’s accusation about
what Chomsky allegedly said to Robert Nozick, what basis is there for saying
that Chomsky is a Holocaust denier? Consider
again Chomsky’s behaviors on behalf of Robert Faurisson.
As we’ve seen, Chomsky defended his actions by saying that “it is precisely
in the case of horrendous ideas that the right of free expression must be
most vigorously defended”—in other words, free speech must apply to those we
disagree with (or it ain’t free speech). Since that
was his explicitly stated principled argument,
included in a preface he wrote to Faurisson’s book,
you might think that Chomsky was taking the position that Faurisson’s
ideas were “horrendous.” You might be wrong. Chomsky wrote this: “I have nothing to say here about the work of Robert Faurisson or his critics, of which I know very little, or
about the topics they address, concerning which I have no special knowledge.”(a) But was he
at least saying that Faurrison was a “horrendous”
guy? Not a bit. Chomsky wrote: “…[I]s it true that Faurisson is an
anti-Semite or a neo-Nazi? As noted earlier, I do not know his work very
well. But from what I have read—largely as a result of the nature of the
attacks on him—I find no evidence to support either conclusion. Nor do I find
credible evidence in the material that I have read concerning him, either in
the public record or in private correspondence. As far as I can determine, he
is a relatively apolitical liberal of some sort.”(a) Elsewhere
Chomsky came right out and said it: “ ‘I see no hint of
antisemitic implications in Faurisson’s work.’
”(b) Now,
Holocaust denial is such a famously delicate issue that one shouldn’t have to
point this out to a prominent Jew (least of all to an acknowledged genius):
it was imperative for Chomsky to find out exactly who he was defending. If Faurisson and
his claims turned out to be “horrendous,” Chomsky could still make his
defense—if he thought this was a free speech issue—while making it clear that
he found the author beyond the pale and did not agree with his claims.
Instead of this, Chomsky plunged headlong into the following contradictions: 1)
despite
boasting that he routinely stands on principle to defend the rights of
“horrendous” people to express “horrendous” ideas, because this is the real
test of free speech, he went out on a limb to defend Faurisson’s
character, thereby implying that his work was not in fact “horrendous”; and 2)
despite
claiming not to know much about Faurisson’s work,
Chomsky stated that he saw “ ‘no
hint of antisemitic implications in Faurisson’s
work,’ ” and moreover “Chomsky signed a petition that
characterized Faurisson’s falsifications of history
as ‘findings’ and said that they were based on ‘extensive historical
research.’ ”(b) It was
actually quite easy to show that Faurisson’s
alleged “extensive historical research” was really a fraud. Historian George
Wellers took the trouble and demonstrated that the testimony of SS doctor
Johann-Paul Kremer, which according to Faurisson
demonstrated that no gas chambers had existed, stated explicitly that gas chambers had been used to exterminate
the European Jews. Wellers demonstrated, moreover, that Faurisson
had not made a mistake but had lied.(b) Chomsky has
said: “ ‘I see no antisemitic implications in denial of the existence of gas
chambers, or even denial of the Holocaust.’ ”(b) This may work if the denier has poor access to the facts, but
certainly not for Faurisson, who has been shown
consciously to lie in order to deny the Holocaust. It is hard
to escape the impression that Chomsky tolerated his own obvious
contradictions not in order to defend Faurisson’s
free speech, but to put a ‘kosher’ seal on the man and, by extension, on
Holocaust denial. If lots of
people have speculated, on this evidence, that Chomsky himself is a Holocaust
denier, can we blame them? SOURCES: (a) “Some Elementary Comments on The
Rights of Freedom of Expression”; Appeared as a Preface to Robert Faurisson, Mémoire en defense (October 11, 1980); by Noam Chomsky. (b) Dershowitz, A. (1992). Chutzpah.
New York: Simon & Schuster. (pp.173-76) [18] Finkelstein,
N. (2000). The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of
Jewish Suffering. London: Verso. (the quote is from the Introduction). [19] quoted
in: Dershowitz, A. (1992). Chutzpah.
New York: Simon & Schuster. (p.76) [20] “Israel,
the Holocaust, and Anti-Semitism”; Excerpted from Chronicles of Dissent (1992); by Noam Chomsky [21] Noam
Chomsky: Opposing Iran Nuclear Deal, Israel’s Goal Isn’t Survival — It’s
Regional Dominance; Democracy Now;
Monday, March 2, 2015; Interviewed by Aaron Maté
and Amy Goodman. [21a] “One of the matters the NPR Board discussed before hiring [current NPR President Kevin] Klose: how NPR's news staff would react to a boss who had worked in government radio and for the Radios [Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL),], which were CIA-financed until the early 1970s. ‘There was a question as to how the NPR newsroom would receive Kevin Klose,’ says board member Chase Untermeyer, who headed Voice of America [also a CIA operation - FGW] during the Bush years.’ ” SOURCE: “Kevin Klose: journalist, fan, NPR president”;
Originally published in Current;
Nov. 23, 1998; By Jacqueline Conciatore [22] Noam
Chomsky: Opposing Iran Nuclear Deal, Israel’s Goal Isn’t Survival — It’s
Regional Dominance; Democracy Now;
Monday, March 2, 2015; Interviewed by Aaron Maté
and Amy Goodman. [23] “One of Iran’s most influential ruling
cleric [sic] called Friday on the Muslim states to use nuclear weapon against
Israel, assuring them that while such an attack would annihilate Israel,
it would cost them ‘damages only’. ‘If a day comes when the world of
Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in possession, the strategy
of colonialism would face a stalemate because application of an atomic bomb would not leave any
thing in Israel but the same thing would just produce damages in the
Muslim world,’ Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani told the crowd at
the traditional Friday prayers in Tehran. Analysts said not only Mr.
Hashemi-Rafsanjani’s speech was the strongest against Israel, but also this
is the first time that a prominent leader of the Islamic Republic openly
suggests the use of nuclear weapon against the Jewish State.” We point out that Hashemi Rafsanjani
is not merely “one of Iran’s most influential ruling cleric[s],” but the very
father of the Iranian nuclear program. SOURCE: “RAFSANJANI SAYS MUSLIMS
SHOULD USE NUCLEAR WEAPON AGAINST ISRAEL”; Iran Press Service; 14 December
2001 |
█ 0. Introduction The
present series of articles amounts to a primer. It contains strategic
historical knowledge minimally sufficient to abandon the ‘Establishment
model’ of geopolitical processes and to begin constructing an alternative
model that will explain and
predict the world of international relations. The alternative model
agrees with the Establishment model that the Middle East ‘Peace Process’
is important, but disagrees about almost everything else. In the
alternative model, the US-Iran nuclear deal makes perfect sense. It may
or may not agree with you, but it will no longer surprise you. █ 1. Psychological warfare,
communication research, and the media PSYOPs originally refers to
psychological warfare operations conducted by the military against the enemy.
But PSYOPs have domestic applications as well. We review here
historian Christopher Simpson’s documentation of how social science was
corrupted in the United States so that power elites could bend ‘democracy’ to
their will using psychological warfare. █ 2. Political grammar : ¿How
does psychological warfare work? Psychological
warfare is governed by grammatical rules. Power elites with a good
command of such rules can deploy psychological warfare to manipulate citizens
into doing things they otherwise wouldn’t—even into destroying their own
liberties. We here explain the basic operation of Western political
grammar, created in 1848, and how it may be manipulated. █ 3. Principal-Agent Theory
(PAT), the citizen, and the State Principal-agent theory (PAT) examines how
‘principals’ can manipulate ‘agents’ to do their bidding. It has been applied
to political behavior but, perhaps not too surprisingly, in such a manner
that it will not challenge the perception that Western States are functioning
democracies whose governments are duly responsive to the citizenries. Here we
explore an alternative picture that takes into account what power elites can
do through psychological (or political) warfare. █ 4. Is US geopolitics meant to
strengthen or weaken democracy? The study
of geopolitics is meant to account for the foreign policy behaviors of
the various States. However, geopolitical scholars have certain taboos about
which kinds of hypotheses may or may not be entertained. In particular, the
prevailing political grammar in the Western media and academic system appears
to rigorously forbid that anybody question the purity of intention of
those making foreign policy decisions in Western states. Why? █ 5. The goals of the US power
elite in historical perspective The US
power elite’s most important players were responsible for setting up the
US psychological warfare regime after World War II (Part 1). These same
players had a major hand in precipitating the onset of World War II.
This information is of some importance in evaluating the probable aims of US
power-elite geopolitics today. But it is next to impossible to pursue this
analysis because the US power elite role in causing World War II has been
almost completely expunged from historical education.. █ 6. US postwar
policy toward Nazi war criminals Few people are aware that the US government recruited Nazis after
WWII. And most of the aware believe this was just a handful of Nazi
scientists employed in rocket development (Operation Paperclip). In fact, the
US government shielded from justice a giant multitude of Nazis—including many
war criminals who had bathed themselves in innocent blood—and used them to
create the postwar US intelligence infrastructure. This affected both
domestic and foreign policy. The self-imposed silence of the Western media
on this topic is diagnostic of the psychological warfare regime that
dominates. █ 7. The aims of the
US power elite in WWII Certain important events surrounding the causes and aftermath of World
War II may be recruited to defend a model of the US power elite as
pro-Nazi. This model naturally needs to provide satisfactory special
reasons for important behaviors of the same power elite that appear
anti-Nazi. But the same applies to the Establishment model: it must provide
satisfactory special reasons to explain why, if the US power elite has been
anti-Nazi, it involved itself so intensely with sponsorship and then
recruitment of Nazis. We examine these issues here. █ 8. US foreign
policy in the Arab-Israeli conflict Given US power elite’s sponsorship of the eugenics movement, which
became German Nazism, and the same US power elite’s creation of the
postwar psychological warfare regime, it is reasonable to ask whether US
postwar foreign policy has been consistent with the aims of the
eugenicists and the German Nazis, namely, to destroy democracy and to kill
Jews. That is the question we ask here. █ 9. Why do enemies
of democracy attack the Jews? Shoa (‘the Holocaust’) was a horrific slaughter and a Crime Against Humanity, but it was not
an historical aberration. As Western historical processes go, the
mass-killing of Jews may be the most recurrent and stable. Those who killed
the Jews in World War II were enemies of human liberty. This, too, is not
new. In the history of the West, whenever the Jews are under attack, everybody’s
liberties are in danger. What explains this? One simple fact: for 2500 years,
Jewish thought has been the engine of Western political liberation,
and Western enemies of liberty have always understood this. Notify me of new HIR pieces!
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