Statement from Noam Chomsky sent to TBNYU!
Feb 22nd, 2009 by Take Back NYU!
I would like to express my support for the actions of the students who are calling on their universities to end their participation in the brutal oppression of Palestinians by divesting from corporations that participate in and profit from these crimes, in violation of international and US law.
Noam Chomsky
Faculty, MIT Linguistics and Philosophy
Congratulations and welcome to the fragmented petty bourgeois “radical” left of utterly disorganized, futile and self-serving criticism from a cozy, protected academic “leftist” who will feed you to the lions while sits back in his MIT office and collects healthy checks on books that disorient students and make actual political programs unlikely, esp. since he condemns the actual revolutionaries, Lenin and Trotsky, who actually led a revolution.
Noam Chomsky, an incoherent and useless member of the petty bourgeois US academic “left,” supports your cause. Meanwhile Chomsky hasn’t demonstrated the ability or desire to lead anything, other than confused students into the political abyss.
There is a difference between supporting a totalitarian regime, and supporting the human rights of those who suffer under and as a result of that regime.
Read the FAQ, *talk* to any member of an occupation. There is no support for ‘terrorism’ here. (Although I find that word grotesquely over-used and undervalued).
In sum: I do not have to sympathise with Hamas and its aims to sympathise with the ordinary people who suffer - both Israeli and Palestinian.
Solidarity from the UK.
The comments thus far on this and other threads consist of a bizarre collection of ad hominem attacks. It is unfortunate that so many people in the U.S. do not realize that when they resort to personal attacks they demonstrate that they do not have any valid arguments to defend their position. Demonization is merely an underhanded propaganda technique employed in unethical attempts to discredit the speaker. This is a very basic concept that the administration at NYU and their supporters obviously do not understand. A junior high school level primer in logic would have been sufficient to avoid the embarrassing responses.
Adhering to a 2500-year-old collection of borrowed Babylonian myths does nothing to bolster the credibility of those who criticize these students and Chomsky. Thankfully the students at NYU appear to have a better grasp of world history and world affairs than those who would be their teachers.
David Cohen,
My attacks on Chomsky are not ad hominem. I don’t know about the other posters. My attacks have to do with his anarcho-libertarian, disorganized and utterly disorienting approach to politics. He has no idea how to change anything. This is not a personal characteristic, but based on his adhesion to bourgeois “left” anarchism and other nonsense. The students are participating in the same fragmented, disoriented, useless petty bourgeois “left” protest politics. These are cobbled together single issue approaches that are useless and never work for anything. Just look at the state of the US political “left’|’ today–an assemblage of identity politics, issue du jour, pragmatic and concessionist crap that has resulted in the election of an identity politics tromp de oeil, Obama. All day long the liberal media establishment bombards the public with identity politics while wages continue to fall, jobs are lost by the tens of thousands, war still rages, political hostages with no trials are held, and torture goes on unabated. And that’s the “change we can believe in!” Oh, give him time. Give him more time and more such actions and inactions shall follow. And Chomsky–a futile critic with no program, no plan, no organization and nothing but books that disorient, confuse and disperse any real political possibilities. Same with Obama.
Noam Chomsky is awesome. TBNYU! is awesome. I love you guys.
I don’t understand why there is so much pessimism and criticism towards the occupiers of NYU. What exactly is wrong about the demands being made and stance taken? And as for Noam Chomsky, he is an academic, intellect, linguist and one of the most outspoken thinkers in the U.S. and not one to be condemned for his anarchic outlook. If we all sang from the same songbook then we might end up with the same misconceptions of freedom that the many U.S. politicians, media propagandists and bovine believers mistakenly hold.
wow, my respect level for noam chomsky just went down about 3,000,000%.
Way Beyond You,
You obviously do not understand the concept of an ad hominem attack. Your entire comment is an ad hominem attack devoid of substantive arguments.
Your post used the following as a refutation of Chomsky’s and the students’ position: “…fragmented petty bourgeois “radical” left of utterly disorganized, futile and self-serving criticism from a cozy, protected academic “leftist” who will feed you to the lions while sits back in his MIT office and collects healthy checks on books that disorient students and make actual political programs unlikely, esp. since he condemns the actual revolutionaries, Lenin and Trotsky, who actually led a revolution….an incoherent and useless member of the petty bourgeois US academic “left,” supports your cause…hasn’t demonstrated the ability or desire to lead anything, other than confused students into the political abyss.”
Your posts and the posts of the others in your camp did nothing to bolster the opposition to the students. As I stated previously these posts indicate that those who oppose the students do not have any valid arguments. It is very telling that I needed to explain this very elementary concept to you and the other posters.
I think i’ve got way beyond you figured out!
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=62337551648&ref=ts
This seems just as well suited for columbia, circa 2003 being the media hotbed of anti-anti-zionism.
Props on the props from Noam! I love the flippant use of bourgeois, and i’m pretty sure Noam comes from the Emma Goldman school of disillusionment in institutionalized revolutions, where state powers are cosmetically reorganized and popular revolt is still violently suppressed (as it was by Lenin/Trotsky et/al) in favor of externalized and centralized decision-making processes totally alienated from the population the revolution is supposedly in the name of. Did you just read Lenin’s excoriation of infantile ultra-leftism before posting here? Because that was an ass-saving piece of cognitive dissonance in total denial of the dissolution of all revolutionary aspects of the bolshevik “revolution.”
Similarly, the founding of Israel for the purpose of escaping anti-semitism is somewhat self-contradictory in that by creating a hierarchically organized and socially stratified state apparatus in the name of one portion of the population the escapees created the illusion that anti-semitism existed in a vacuum and ended up mirroring the
same governments they sought to create a safe haven from. Thus the ability to dehumanize and subjugate the palestinians, not in favor of jewish preservation but of state preservation. Israel’s backstabbing of holocaust victims, 40% of which are living under the poverty line in their supposed safe haven, is another example of this.
Noam is also good in reflecting on the aspects of jewish history that aren’t as self-serving as the self-negation running through the general support of Israel as a “necessarily” machiavellian defender of western civilization in a savage middle east. It’s the west that nearly exterminated the jews, so that doesn’t make sense, at all.
Also, why does Abby hate old people with weight problems?
Hope this ends well!
Seriously?…. people are using a solidarity statement from chomsky to people that are doing direct action as an opportunity to badmouth political stances they disagree with? these students just all got suspended….. seriously… maybe if instead of debating stupid shit about 19th and early 20th century dead guys….. you could… spend your time… I dont know…. writing the administration and telling them not to fuck over people that arent just pontificating!
I suppose you could do both? Ha…
how do we know that this is actually chomsky addressing the statement? it could have been anyone making this up for the sake of having the approval of someone notable…
Cohen,
Cohen Cohen Cohen. people are pissed off my friend, people are very pissed off and all your fancy terms and pontification will not change the fact that people are very pissed off. Us feeble minded Americans may not grasp certain concepts but there are some people who do not think, they act on instinct and all the logic in the world could not convince them not to be annoyed. And the concept is very simple Cohen, when you protest you want to make people, even feeble minded people who lack your fancy terms like ad hominem, sypathetic to your cause. If you have annoyed them, you have failed, if you have infuriated the lot of them and made the others laugh at your stupidity you have failed unequivicolly. All your thoughts and ideas don’t matter two shits, it is feelings that matter and the way most people feel is; fuck these kids, these kids suck, i’m frustrated that someone who is so priveleged to go to such a good schol could act so recklessly. Some people even take that sort of thing personally. Logic be damned, in protest, the ultimate logic lies in manipulating the feelings of the masses, it is here that the protestors failed. Your a fool if you were banking on people to sympathize with supossed ‘well constructed arguments’ and not be infuriated with your thoughtless, inflamatory tactics. Emotions aside, where is the logic in offering 13 scholarships to students in the Gaza strip while there are people living in America who are unable to afford an NYU education or any education for that matter? Where is the logic in invading a private institution that you voluntarily paid to attend and disrupting the learning process of others who paid to attend it, in protest of the fact that you have to pay to much to attend it? And finally, Mr. Cohen, What was the logic behind your emotionally charged thread post? By calling into question the tactics of the critics aren’t you guilty of using an Ad Hominem attack? Don’t you think you took things pretty far into hypocrite country when you claimed that Americans have an elementary grasp on the functions of logic? At least the Ad hominem using critics don’t accuse others of using Ad Hominem attacks while they themselves do it. They have no pretenses about their Ad hminem uses. You my friend, have, like all of us, let your emotions cloud your judgement. You are a hypocrite, you are an Ad Hominem attacker of Ad hominem attackers, you are an emotional writer who uses overly dramatic language (like; “Thankfully the students at NYU appear to have a better grasp of world history and world affairs than those who would be their teachers.”) and claims to be a steward of logical thought and rational argument. I am an emotional writer as well but at least I do not pretend to be mr. logic. You, my friend are a fool, you have no ethos, your emotion cancels out your logic and your ostensibly logical pretense and hypocritical lack of self awareness cancels out your emotion.
Red herring central compliments of “DoesSSSSS Make a difference”. Actually many people do care about the correctness of arguments and you and your cronies use of propaganda techniques is despicable. For any wondering why this blog was slammed by the opposition give this a read.
“The Megaphone desktop tool is a Windows “action alert” tool developed by Give Israel Your United Support (GIYUS) and distributed by World Union of Jewish Students, World Jewish Congress, The Jewish Agency for Israel, World Zionist Organization, StandWithUs, Hasbara fellowships, HonestReporting, and other pro-Israel public relations, media watchdog, or activism organizations. The tool delivers real-time alerts about key articles, videos, blogs, and surveys related to Israel or the Arab-Israeli conflict, especially those perceived by GIYUS to be highly critical of Israel, so that users can vote or add comments expressing their support of Israel. The tool was released in July during the 2006 Lebanon War. An RSS newsfeed is available so that non-Windows users may also receive the Megaphone “action alerts.”
david cohen,
You have taught me nothing, except that you have absolutely no understanding of political history, ideology, or historically effective political action.
Noam Chomsky represents a completely impossible and utterly ineffectual political “ideal”–anarchism–which has never and will never effect anything, because it is based on a false premise, that “government” (or organizations, or what have you) itself is the issue, rather than that the class-character of the government is the issue.
Those who understand that the government under capitalism is the organizing committee of the ruling class understand that government PER SE is not the problem, but rather class-based government of the bourgeoisie (or whatever ruling class in history, including the aristocrats). The proletariat, taking over the government, does not abolish government. It abolishes the class-character of government.
Chomsky has no ideas for anything other than criticizing Israel from a standpoint of the “left” and some notion that US imperialism and its outpost in Israel could be abolished without abolishing capitalism itself. Israel is an occupying force fully endorsed and buttressed by the imperialist enterprises of the US. That cannot be otherwise under capitalism, which is always going to be imperialistic.
It is not possible to abolish the imperialism of the US without abolishing capitalism. But Chomsky eschews and condemns as “authoritarian” those actual revolutionaries that have actually made revolution against capitalism. And instead, he encourages this sort of piece-meal, unprogramatic, anarchic, clueless, defeatist, naive and unfortunately defeating forms of protest and action that have not gained a thing and cannot gain a thing.
They cannot work because you don’t LOBBY a corporation to be “nicer” corporations, as such. No, you do away with corporations. You don’t ask for a kinder, gentler machine-gun hand of the bourgeois state. You do away with the bourgeois state. Actions that are predicated on a false understanding of the socio-political and economic realities are doomed to failure. Period. That’s why this action will result in the career suicides of a few while delivering nothing for the many.
“This is what democracy looks like?” NO, this is not what democracy looks like. Democracy is inconsistent with a corporate-owned and run university. The students occupied such a building. Such an occupation cannot be democratic because the owners are the arbiters of the space, and what goes on there. Democracy doesn’t exist in such a setting.
Ian,
Appeals to the administration for kindness to the students may accomplish something in the short term to remediate the damages that the student action has done to the students themselves. But unless the students understand that they are and have acted under a false premise, a mistaken understanding of social relations, then they and others like them will commit themselves to similarly futile, defeatist enterprises in the future. This is the agglomeration of piece-meal, fragmentary, identity politics leftism in the US, which operates as if isolated elements in the system can be addressed one at a time, independent of the whole, and treated like a cancer. Such an approach seeks to isolate and treat each reified instance as utterly disconnected from the whole. If only Israel wouldn’t bomb the Gaza, if only NYU would give scholarships to Gaza students, if only, if only, if only…
But NONE of these issues can be approached as single-issue items, or as an amalgam of cobbled together items, treated outside of the socio-economic and historical context and the whole organization of society under capitalism. And to treat them as such is to run the risks that these students have run: they have endangered their academic careers for a futile effort, because they operate from a false premise–that some sort of “action,” some mayhem, some “activist” trouble-making will effect change, when the total system is going to adjust to such disequilibrium in an instant, and restore order immediately. All that has happened is that the students have endangered their futures and made their own possible maneuverings in the world more difficult. And they have gained nothing from this sacrifice. Because liberal activism is flawed in its orientation due to a failure to understand the nature of the enemy, or the task at hand. I am not arguing for the status quo. I am arguing for an intelligent, programmatic and effective approach to changing it. And this sort of activity is not at all recommended.
The fact is, such liberal, progressive, radical “left” politics is doomed. It has no idea that you cannot lobby a corporation to be a nicer corporation because there are other compensations that will take place. Israel is the imperialist outpost of US capitalism, and it will not go away as such without ending capitalism. Period.
Similarly, private institutions will charge money, exploit their workers, alienate students, and tend toward higher prices, as long as private institutions exist. PERIOD.
The answer is to work with program, a party of the workers, to end the system that produces this entire reality.
Mr. Cohen,
the article clipping you have posted is interesting. I admit I did not know about this magaphone tactic and it is certainly food for thought. But, with respect, your point is a non-sequitor and sort of a given. Of course governments are going to use propaganda, what government doesn’t? You can’t demonize one organization for using propaganda and then support another organization that uses propaganda. But I don’t really want to get into an Isreal Palestine debate with you here because it is such a complicated human topic with innocent victims on both side and real evil on both sides as well. What I want to hit home, is the point; that many naysayers of this of this protest are not unsypathetic to the plight of people struggling to survive in the Gaza strip. They are, rather, unsypathetic to the NYU protesters and the tactics that these NYU protesters have used. Believe it or not sir, I have no twisted agenda, all I have is a passionate belief that these protesters have embarrassed their institution, the great city that the institution represents and their fellow Americans, they should be punished (not severely, because their crime was far from severe) and their demands should be ignored. As a final point, Do you have any idea how much crime, poverty and suffering exists in the U.S.A?(if not then just look up New Orleans and Detroit’s wiki pages and check the crime and poverty levels, while your at it check the per capita income for a household in Bronx county, a county in N.Y.C) why should an institution in the U.S.A offer more scholarships to bright people in a foreign country who cannot afford an education when there are bright people in this country who cannot afford an education, a health care plan or electricity. If those kids really wanted to make an ethereal difference then they could have hopped on the b train into the Bronx and done some community service.
I would like to express my support for the actions of the students who are calling on their universities to end their participation in the brutal oppression of Palestinians by divesting from corporations that participate in and profit from these crimes, in violation of international and US law.
Sincerely,
Hitler
Founder, Chancellor
Nazi Party
Third Reich
Noam Chomsky’s support is perfect for this cause.
He is, of course, the man who was paid by the Pentagon for decades while railing against the Military Industrial Complex, has set up several tax shelters for himself and invested in War profiteers while declaring the evils of capitalism. In short, his views are just as wonderfully fractured and poorly thought out as the list of demands for this protest!
this comes as a surprise since Chomsky has said that divesting from corporations that have to do with israel won’t work in the US due to the strong ties that (virtually all) corporations have with israel.
right now of all the people posting for divesting strategies in this site, whoever runs microsoft or has a computer with an intel processor has paid companies that are strongly connected with israel.
anyways, still good times, chomsky is not a leader of the left (he’s too old anyways to do that) but his opinions and arguements are very valid.
i read some posts accusing him of this and that; baseless personal insults are ridiculous, and totally unrelated with any political discussion. even if for the sake of arguement we accept that w/e chomsky is accused of is true, that has nothing to do with his opinions.
the validity of an opinion is detached from the person voicing that opinion.
[...] for widening the vistas of possible realities. Read Noam Chomsky’s letter of endorsement, here addthis_url = [...]
As an adherant to what David Cohen refers to as ‘a collection of 2,500 year old Babylonian myths’ (I believe he was referring to Judaism), I feel quite insulted. Where is is multicultural sensitivity?
I think a little sensitivity training is in order.
Also in need of such training are Keri Lyons and Nadia Collado, who demonstrated topless in front of Kimmel in what they called “a show of solidarity for Take Back NYU.” What would the clerics at the University of Gaza think about their actions?
a collection of 2,500 year old borrowed Babylonian myths? Both Judaism and Islam fit that category, seeing as it was the same mythology that became the backbone of both religions. (Christianity too, for that matter.) Since both the Palestinians and Israelis are fond of “2500 year old borrowed Babylonian stories” such as those of Isaac and Ishmael and Abraham and God, this “fact” adds nothing to the discussion.