Thank you to everyone who took the time to read the article and listen to or read the interview before knee-jerk–reacting to the mere mention of Chomsky. I realize he is an incendiary figure, particularly for those of us whose isolation and coercion through societal deprivations he advocated for.
As I write in “You Can’t Cancel Me”:
“I may quote or reference someone you disagree with;
“I may quote or reference someone *I* disagree with.”
The point of this essay and conversation is not to idealize Chomsky but rather to glean wisdom from his past words, which serve as a “Remember thou art mortal” whisper in our ears and a lesson to forever guard against the cognitive biases and menticidal manipulations Chomsky himself has succumbed to.
If you are tempted to outright reject everything Chomsky (or anyone, even those you generally disagree with) has said simply because he has made other statements you find heinous, ask yourself if you are practicing a form of ideological Cancel Culture that prevents you from being able to find truth wherever it happens to exist.
If you find yourself reaching for ad hominems, consider taking a step back and examining the content of his words quoted in this piece. Do you agree or disagree with what he said about free speech—why or why not?
Those of us who are truth-seekers aim to rise above partisan divides and instead engage on the level of ideas, respectfully refuting them with logic, reason, and evidence if we disagree.
When we find ourselves falling into the trap of attacking those we disagree with, we risk becoming like those who name-call us because they have been propagandized to fear views that counter their brainwashing.
I encourage everyone to listen to the TED talk Mickey cited (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MYEtQ5Zdn8) and ask whether you are living as a soldier or a scout. Do you seek to defend your beliefs at all costs, or do you seek clarity about reality?
Chomsky serves as a cautionary lesson that it is easy to slip into the role of soldier, even if you once sought to live as a scout.
I strive to practice the latter, and my sense is that if you are here reading this, you do, too.
I won’t be able to respond to every comment individually due to time-sensitive deadlines but wanted to post this comment to encourage respectful discussion of the ideas captured in Chomsky’s quotes and my conversation with Mickey rather than being triggered by the lightning-rod figure of Chomsky himself.
Again, thank you all for being here and for caring about truth, freedom of speech, and humanity 🙌🤗
Chomsky unfortunately later said that unvaccinated people should lose their basic rights. This was the end of Chomsky as an intellectual and philosopher
What a great term, vintage Chomsky! I had to give up on Chomsky when he interviewed with Russell Brand and said that, although he was an anarchist, only big governments could stop climate change. I wrote about my disillusionment here: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/noam-chomsky-is-the-problem. But I loved vintage Chomsky! Before I did Substack, I did this YT on Manufacturing Contempt, about how they got people to despise the unvaxxed: https://youtu.be/Z7SJoMQVIVE.
Sitting at home during the early lockdown I stumbled on documentaries from Media Education Foundation. Ironically, watching their docs on other subjects made me realize the Covid hoax. Hard to listen to the video on propaganda you included because I think it is the woman from Democracy Now. I used to respect their platform. And then when they advocated for the stripping away of rights - when attorney groups advocated for the stripping away of rights - I realized Civil Liberties for the left are only when they fall within the approved dogma. Professor Miller writes that Chomsky made excuses for anyone he had sympathy for.
I've always been a skeptical person but the post COVID era has taken me to a new level. I'm now completely cynical of all narratives. I don't reject narratives because they are popular (that is also a mistake), I reject them because I can find no evidence in support of them.
Jul 22, 2023Liked by Margaret Anna Alice, Mickey Z.
"For example, suppose it was discovered tomorrow that the greenhouse effect has been way underestimated, and that the catastrophic effects are actually going to set in 10 years from now, and not 100 years from now or something. Well, given the state of the popular movements we have today, we’d probably have a fascist takeover—with everybody agreeing to it, because that would be the only method for survival that anyone could think of. I’d even agree to it, because there just are no other alternatives around right now." Chomsky, 1990s
Source: “Undertanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky”, by Noam Chomsky, edited by Peter Mitchell and John Schoeffet, The New Press, NY, 2002; at page 388, in Chapter 10 “Turning Point – Based on discussions in Illinois, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New York, and Maryland in 1994 to 1996 and 1999”, ISBN 1-56584-703-2.
Noam Chomsky was a big influence on my early life and one of the first "anti establishment" thinkers I ever encountered. I heard many of his talks and had "Manufacturing Consent" and one more on CD back in the 90s.
As I got older and my picture of the world and postwar history started to broaden I started to wonder where Chomsky's voice was on the big events of the 60s like the assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK and I was shocked to find that he basically towed the establishment line. Same thing with 9/11 later on-- it didn't make any sense. It was really disenchanting because I can only imagine what difference a dissenting voice as prominent as his could have made to turn the tide and bring the truth of the Kennedy assassination (or any of those other events) into the open. The coup de grace for me was his behavior during Covid and I'm now convinced he's been a fake the whole time...like some sort of elaborate controlled opposition.
"We can learn that no matter how awake we think we are, how aware we are of the tricks used to propagandize us, how skeptical we remain of media and the State, or how knowledgeable we are about history, there but for the grace of God go we."
Amen to that.
One suspects his age affected his judgement and by that I do not mean dementia but self preservation fears
add joni mitchell, neil young, howard stern, gene simmons to the list of formerly radical free thinkers who bought the covid propaganda hook, line and sinker. i won't even go as far as sean penn who may not be recoverable.
If I remember correctly, his Covid comments related more to complete body autonomy than freedom of speech. I wonder if he still believed an unvaxxed person had the freedom to spout their beliefs while they were being denied food?
Great post, MAA! I love it, having been a huge fan of the 'old' Chomsky, if that can actually mean anything. I heard his rationalising the lockdowns with an argument so weak it would have embarrassed the old Chomsky into the grave. All that came to mind was that his brain wasn't firing on all cylinders either because of old age, poor diet, or having been injected or...
It struck me as interesting, too, as a kind of corollary, that JBP also got jabbed. What!? The person who, besides Chomsky, may be *the* anti-tyranny spokesman who spotted the tyrannical wedge that gender pronoun laws are, was one of the 'leading intellectuals' who specialised in the practices and manifestations of tyranny, failed to see the covid narrative for the Nazi-Germany mechanism it was is... astounding. Astonishing? Or maybe typical of 'true' intellectuals who are in such deep thought that the immediate events are fuzzy anachronisms.
And your article is a synchronicity for me. It has timed itself perfectly with me and my next essay where I am looking to explore how we are able to choose to not see what is true. In part this inspired by an old Chomsky comment, his response to the question of why the people within the false-news making world, knowingly lie. Paraphrased, Chomsky replied, 'It isn't that they *knowingly* lie. People are generally very uncomfortable lying and so what happens is that they simply stop seeing the truth.'
Thank you to everyone who took the time to read the article and listen to or read the interview before knee-jerk–reacting to the mere mention of Chomsky. I realize he is an incendiary figure, particularly for those of us whose isolation and coercion through societal deprivations he advocated for.
As I write in “You Can’t Cancel Me”:
“I may quote or reference someone you disagree with;
“I may quote or reference someone *I* disagree with.”
(https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/with-thanks-to-you-you-magnificent#%C2%A7you-cant-cancel-me)
The point of this essay and conversation is not to idealize Chomsky but rather to glean wisdom from his past words, which serve as a “Remember thou art mortal” whisper in our ears and a lesson to forever guard against the cognitive biases and menticidal manipulations Chomsky himself has succumbed to.
If you are tempted to outright reject everything Chomsky (or anyone, even those you generally disagree with) has said simply because he has made other statements you find heinous, ask yourself if you are practicing a form of ideological Cancel Culture that prevents you from being able to find truth wherever it happens to exist.
If you find yourself reaching for ad hominems, consider taking a step back and examining the content of his words quoted in this piece. Do you agree or disagree with what he said about free speech—why or why not?
Those of us who are truth-seekers aim to rise above partisan divides and instead engage on the level of ideas, respectfully refuting them with logic, reason, and evidence if we disagree.
When we find ourselves falling into the trap of attacking those we disagree with, we risk becoming like those who name-call us because they have been propagandized to fear views that counter their brainwashing.
I encourage everyone to listen to the TED talk Mickey cited (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MYEtQ5Zdn8) and ask whether you are living as a soldier or a scout. Do you seek to defend your beliefs at all costs, or do you seek clarity about reality?
Chomsky serves as a cautionary lesson that it is easy to slip into the role of soldier, even if you once sought to live as a scout.
I strive to practice the latter, and my sense is that if you are here reading this, you do, too.
I won’t be able to respond to every comment individually due to time-sensitive deadlines but wanted to post this comment to encourage respectful discussion of the ideas captured in Chomsky’s quotes and my conversation with Mickey rather than being triggered by the lightning-rod figure of Chomsky himself.
Again, thank you all for being here and for caring about truth, freedom of speech, and humanity 🙌🤗
Chomsky unfortunately later said that unvaccinated people should lose their basic rights. This was the end of Chomsky as an intellectual and philosopher
What a great term, vintage Chomsky! I had to give up on Chomsky when he interviewed with Russell Brand and said that, although he was an anarchist, only big governments could stop climate change. I wrote about my disillusionment here: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/noam-chomsky-is-the-problem. But I loved vintage Chomsky! Before I did Substack, I did this YT on Manufacturing Contempt, about how they got people to despise the unvaxxed: https://youtu.be/Z7SJoMQVIVE.
Sitting at home during the early lockdown I stumbled on documentaries from Media Education Foundation. Ironically, watching their docs on other subjects made me realize the Covid hoax. Hard to listen to the video on propaganda you included because I think it is the woman from Democracy Now. I used to respect their platform. And then when they advocated for the stripping away of rights - when attorney groups advocated for the stripping away of rights - I realized Civil Liberties for the left are only when they fall within the approved dogma. Professor Miller writes that Chomsky made excuses for anyone he had sympathy for.
I've always been a skeptical person but the post COVID era has taken me to a new level. I'm now completely cynical of all narratives. I don't reject narratives because they are popular (that is also a mistake), I reject them because I can find no evidence in support of them.
"For example, suppose it was discovered tomorrow that the greenhouse effect has been way underestimated, and that the catastrophic effects are actually going to set in 10 years from now, and not 100 years from now or something. Well, given the state of the popular movements we have today, we’d probably have a fascist takeover—with everybody agreeing to it, because that would be the only method for survival that anyone could think of. I’d even agree to it, because there just are no other alternatives around right now." Chomsky, 1990s
Source: “Undertanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky”, by Noam Chomsky, edited by Peter Mitchell and John Schoeffet, The New Press, NY, 2002; at page 388, in Chapter 10 “Turning Point – Based on discussions in Illinois, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New York, and Maryland in 1994 to 1996 and 1999”, ISBN 1-56584-703-2.
Noam Chomsky was a big influence on my early life and one of the first "anti establishment" thinkers I ever encountered. I heard many of his talks and had "Manufacturing Consent" and one more on CD back in the 90s.
As I got older and my picture of the world and postwar history started to broaden I started to wonder where Chomsky's voice was on the big events of the 60s like the assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK and I was shocked to find that he basically towed the establishment line. Same thing with 9/11 later on-- it didn't make any sense. It was really disenchanting because I can only imagine what difference a dissenting voice as prominent as his could have made to turn the tide and bring the truth of the Kennedy assassination (or any of those other events) into the open. The coup de grace for me was his behavior during Covid and I'm now convinced he's been a fake the whole time...like some sort of elaborate controlled opposition.
I'm sorry, Chomsky has such a sordid history of being all over the map... I can't endorse anything he now says.
Doesn't mean I don't appreciate your writing.
"We can learn that no matter how awake we think we are, how aware we are of the tricks used to propagandize us, how skeptical we remain of media and the State, or how knowledgeable we are about history, there but for the grace of God go we."
Amen to that.
One suspects his age affected his judgement and by that I do not mean dementia but self preservation fears
If you are brainwashed... how would you know?
Perhaps a less intimidating question would be:
If you are wrong... how would you know?
The problem we face today is that none of these answers are taught in school, when they should be the cornerstone upon which education is built.
add joni mitchell, neil young, howard stern, gene simmons to the list of formerly radical free thinkers who bought the covid propaganda hook, line and sinker. i won't even go as far as sean penn who may not be recoverable.
Sometimes one can be so smart they’re stupid .
i almost didn't read this because I'm so disappointed with Chomsky. His 1970s/80s talks were amazing. Now I feel like I was hoodwinked.
If I remember correctly, his Covid comments related more to complete body autonomy than freedom of speech. I wonder if he still believed an unvaxxed person had the freedom to spout their beliefs while they were being denied food?
So convicting...to uphold freedom of speech of all ppl, that we don’t like or agree with
Great post, MAA! I love it, having been a huge fan of the 'old' Chomsky, if that can actually mean anything. I heard his rationalising the lockdowns with an argument so weak it would have embarrassed the old Chomsky into the grave. All that came to mind was that his brain wasn't firing on all cylinders either because of old age, poor diet, or having been injected or...
It struck me as interesting, too, as a kind of corollary, that JBP also got jabbed. What!? The person who, besides Chomsky, may be *the* anti-tyranny spokesman who spotted the tyrannical wedge that gender pronoun laws are, was one of the 'leading intellectuals' who specialised in the practices and manifestations of tyranny, failed to see the covid narrative for the Nazi-Germany mechanism it was is... astounding. Astonishing? Or maybe typical of 'true' intellectuals who are in such deep thought that the immediate events are fuzzy anachronisms.
And your article is a synchronicity for me. It has timed itself perfectly with me and my next essay where I am looking to explore how we are able to choose to not see what is true. In part this inspired by an old Chomsky comment, his response to the question of why the people within the false-news making world, knowingly lie. Paraphrased, Chomsky replied, 'It isn't that they *knowingly* lie. People are generally very uncomfortable lying and so what happens is that they simply stop seeing the truth.'
Again, thank you. Love it.