
              Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 8  Num. 15
             ======================================
                    ("Quid coniuratio est?")
 
 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 
"WHO'S NOAM CHOMSKY?" -- PART 1
===============================
 
Regarding CN 8.03 ("Worshipping  at  the Shrine of Chomsky"), one
CN reader responded as follows:
 
  I have just one question: Who's Noam Chomsky?
 
Noam Chomsky is an M.I.T. professor who has  written  and  spoken
voluminously on U.S. and world politics.  Much of his material is
quite  good and demonstrates keen insight.  It is not for nothing
that he has so many devoted fans.  There are some areas, however,
in which I personally feel he is in error.
 
There  are  some persons having a groupie mentality who just want
to swarm around some leader, and just relax and go by whatever he
or she says.  Not  all  Chomsky-ites  are  like this, but some of
them are.  To see who are  the  groupies,  just  innocently  ask:
"And  in what areas do you disagree with Professor Chomsky?"  The
groupies will  just  stare  and/or  dodge  the  question -- often
demonstrating an excellent talent for verbal gymnastics --  while
those  who  are  still  doing  their  own  thinking will be quite
concrete: Chomsky is wrong about this; He errs here.
 
(Chomsky, by the way,  is  not  the  only leading light afflicted
with groupies.  Just ask your typical  LaRouchie,  "And  in  what
areas do you disagree with Lyndon LaRouche?")
 
Who is Noam Chomsky?  Here, in  this  series,  are  some  of  his
thoughts,   as   reported  in  the  booklet  *Secrets,  Lies  and
Democracy* (Tucson: Odonian Press, 1994).
 
The corporations are the bad guys.  Any good effects traceable to
them are just  incidental.   They  are  at  heart fascistic, with
rigid, top-down control.  No democracy exists  in  the  corporate
structure.    To   back   his  argument,  Chomsky  quotes  Thomas
Jefferson, who distinguished  between  aristocrats, who "fear and
distrust the people,"  and  democrats,  who  "identify  with  the
people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the
most  honest  and safe, although not the most wise, depository of
the  public  interest."    Jefferson,   says  Professor  Chomsky,
"specifically warned against  'banking  institutions  and  monied
incorporations'  ...and  said  that if they grow, the aristocrats
will have won and the American Revolution will have been lost."
 
According  to  the  M.I.T.  professor,  the  corporations  gained
subsequent ascendancy in part  because of judicial maneuvers.  It
didn't  happen  so  much  through  the  legislative  branch,  "it
happened  through  judicial  decisions.   Judges  and   corporate
lawyers  simply  crafted a new society in which corporations have
immense power."
 
"Profits are privatized, yet costs are socialized":  So says this
doyen of the intelligentsia.   If  you  are scratching your head,
what he means is, for example, the Mexican bailout:  We are  told
that  the  Mexican  economy  is collapsing and American taxpayers
must lend a hand.  Yet  the  true story, as covered in Conspiracy
Nation and elsewhere, is  that  Wall  Street  investors  were  in
danger  of losing bucks in their Mexican investments so *we*, the
taxpayers, had to rescue  them  -- "costs are socialized."  Then,
when these same Wall Street types score big on their investments,
we, the taxpayers,  do  *not*  share  in  that  --  "profits  are
privatized."   So  too  with  a New York Times headline:  "Nation
considers means  to  dispose  of  its  plutonium."   The costs of
cleaning up the plutonium belong to us, the nation;  the  profits
of the mega power corporations belong to the stockholders.
 
The Noamster  is  *almost*  be-bopping  right  in  tune  with the
conspiracy jive when he clues us in to the war scares of 1947 and
1948 being manipulated "to try  to  ram  spending  bills  through
Congress  to  save  the  aeronautical  industry".   What Cool Cat
Chomsky  misses  is that these "war scares" did not just "happen"
to come  along  and  were  then  manipulated  by the aeronautical
industry; these "war scares" were purposefully produced, not just
"manipulated" when they supposedly chanced onto the scene.
 
Almost, Noam. But sorry, you get no cigar.
 
The  kindly  professor *does* hit the mark when he points out the
increasing gap  between  the  haves  and  the  have-nots  in this
country.   Conspiracy  Nation  points  to  this  gap,   and   the
simultaneous  disappearance  of the middle class, as a big reason
why it is becoming  increasingly  obvious  which side of the line
the mainstream media is on.  When there was a large middle class,
the sharp distinctions between rich and poor were  more  blurred.
Reflecting  the  then-fuzzy  lines between the classes, the media
also was not clearly in focus.   But the whoredom of the American
press *now* is as obvious as a hooker on Saturday night.
 
Here's Chomsky, the learned man.  And there's you, a mere mortal.
"I AM CHOMSKY, THE GREAT AND IRREFUTABLE!  WHO ARE *YOU*, AND WHY
DO YOU 'DISS' ME!?" 
 
You reply, "Well you see, sir,  it's just that you....  Well, you
say that the Clinton crime bill 'was hailed with great enthusiasm
by the far right.' And sir, I know that  you  are  like  Oz,  the
ALL-SEEING,  and  I  am  only  the  editor  of a small conspiracy
newsletter, but  still  --  Which  'far  right'  are  you talking
about??"
 
  "[The Clinton crime bill] was hailed with great enthusiasm by
  the far right..."                   -- Noam Chomsky, ca. 1994
 
Can  you  spell "wrong"?  W-r-o-n-g.  The "far right" *hated* the
Clinton  crime  bill.   Either  Professor  Chomsky  is glaringly,
obviously wrong in this statement, or  else  he  is  surprisingly
sloppy  in  his  use  of  the  term  "far right".  Even I, a mere
Editor-in-Chief of a  tundra-based  "e-zine", understand that the
term "far right" is ambiguous.
 
So also the Pied Piper of uprooted youth warns his followers that
"It's pretty clear that, taken literally,  the  Second  Amendment
doesn't  permit  people  to have guns."  Say what??  Chomsky does
not elaborate.  I guess if it's  not "pretty clear" to you, you'd
better keep it to yourself.  Otherwise, Chomsky might presume you
to be part of the "far right".
 
Yet there are actually people who  speak  in  hushed  tones  when
uttering  the  name of Chomsky.  Just like with Sherman Skolnick,
if he's not God then  he  must  be  the  Devil -- for some people
there is no middle ground.  Chomsky,  surrounded  by  "yes  men",
succumbs  to  their  need  to  place him on a pedestal.  And what
happens after they place  you  *on*  the pedestal?  Answer:  they
knock you *off* the pedestal.  So hey Noam, don't  blame  me.   I
never set you up.  They did.
 
Chomsky  blames  populist  rage  against  arrogant  government on
"intensive business propaganda" that makes the people feel as  if
the  government  is  "some  kind  of enemy."  (If *I* were to say
that, I'd risk being  called  a  "conspiracy  nut".)  This is all
just a bunch  of  "government  bashing"  that's  going  on,  Herr
Professor  seems  to say, and not a democratic uprising rooted in
the outrage felt by the  people  Noam  claims to love.  Why won't
the Mighty Mentality from Massachusetts allow for the possibility
that yes, Consarnit, this is an honest-to-Pete populist uprising?
Might that mean that Big Government  --  *this*  big  government,
anyway  --  is  not  just  inches from God Himself?  And *if* Big
Government falls, is Noam  then  left  without his *own* personal
tin god -- his own personal Jesus -- without which  he  would  be
"walking that lonesome valley, all by himself"?
 
Maybe.   For  certain  is  that Chomsky sits right in the middle,
half right and  half  wrong.   With  many  unable  to view things
beyond the sophistication of a two-dimensional  cartoon  reality,
that  makes  for  deification,  demonization,  and  yours  truly,
sitting on the fence,
 
                                Brian Francis Redman
 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
     I encourage distribution of "Conspiracy Nation."
-----------------------------------------------------------------
If you would like "Conspiracy Nation" sent to your e-mail 
address, send a message in the form "subscribe cn-l My Name" to 
listproc@cornell.edu          (Note: that is "CN-L" *not* "CN-1")
-----------------------------------------------------------------
    For information on how to receive the improved Conspiracy 
  Nation Newsletter, send an e-mail message to bigred@shout.net
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Want to know more about Whitewater, Oklahoma City bombing, etc? 
(1) telnet prairienet.org (2) logon as "visitor" (3) go citcom
-----------------------------------------------------------------
       See also: http://www.europa.com/~johnlf/cn.html
-----------------------------------------------------------------
          See also: ftp.shout.net  pub/users/bigred
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Aperi os tuum muto, et causis omnium filiorum qui pertranseunt.
Aperi os tuum, decerne quod justum est, et judica inopem et 
  pauperem.                    -- Liber Proverbiorum  XXXI: 8-9 

