Posted on 09/11/2001 4:00:06 AM PDT by Mr. Mulliner
Chomsky and the Jews
By Werner Cohn
FrontPageMagazine.com | September 11, 2001
Editor’s Note: For fifteen years, Werner Cohen has been fighting media indifference and academic censorship, in his attempt to expose the Neo-Nazi connections of self-styled "leftist" intellectual Noam Chomsky. Here at last is the complete, uncensored story. FrontPageMagazine.com is proud to present the fully updated 2001 Online Edition of Werner Cohen’s Chomsky and the Jews.
ELEVEN MONTHS since the beginning of what the Arabs call the Al Aqsa Intifada, hundreds of Arab and Jewish lives have been lost. It has been a year of great suffering for all. But for Noam Chomsky it has been suffering for the Palestinians, period. In a speech he gave at MIT last December 14, he was concerned over what he called "killings" and "atrocities," all of which, according to him, were killings of Arabs by Jews. Not a word whatever of the televised sickening lynchings, two months before Chomsky's speech, of Corporal Vadim Novesche and Sergeant Yosef Avrahami, which shocked the world. Not a word of any suffering by Jews, not a word of Arab violence. Instead, a repeated demand for a Palestinian "right to resist," and a criticism of Arafat for having signed away that right at Oslo. Arafat, as Chomsky has asserted many times before, is far too easy on the Jews. Nine months later, on August 13, Chomsky revved up his hysteria even more, this time charging Israel with "a repetition of Nazi crimes" (op-ed piece, Los Angeles Times).
Since I wrote my analysis of Chomsky’s relations with neo-Nazi Holocaust deniers in 1985 (updated 1995), Chomsky and his friends have attempted to rebut my conclusions by, a) calling me a liar, b) a Zionist, and c) accusing me of misquoting sources.
Insofar as these attacks are in any way concrete, they concern my disclosures of the political relationship between Chomsky and the French neo-Nazi Holocaust deniers. The basic documents, including Chomsky's own charming and typically understated "Cohn is a pathological liar," are now on line. I provide these links to the original materials, so anyone can determine exactly who is telling the truth and who is not:
The Chomsky Documents
As I have shown in my Partners in Hate (see below), the Chomsky-Nazi connection was documented by the ("left-wing") Nazis' leader, Pierre Guillaume, in a chapter entitled "Une Mise au Point," in a publication called Droit et Histoire (Paris, La Vieille Taupe, 1986). Until recently, this text by Guillaume, which includes a comment from Chomsky, was difficult to obtain. Now an anti-Semitic organization has put it on the Internet, at least for the time being, so all those who can read French can see for themselves (Une Mise au Point by Pierre Guillaume).
This text bears careful, attentive reading. There are some difficulties: it is in French, and it makes reference to fairly obscure details in French fringe politics. For these reasons it requires some effort. But for anyone willing to put in this effort, the rewards are a striking, detailed understanding of Chomsky's politics. Nobody who has studied this text, in my humble opinion, will ever again have any respect for Noam Chomsky.
After I publicized the existence of this document, Chomsky called me a "pathological liar" for my trouble. His own followers have now been incautious enough to put these comments by Chomsky on the web as well, at least for now. They are at least as interesting as Guillaume's original document, because, if read together with Guillaume's account, they give rare, direct evidence of Chomskyan veracity.
In this letter to the editor of a Communist Canadian Jewish publication ("Outlook"), Chomsky maintains that he has read the Guillaume piece and that this Guillaume piece contains nothing that concerns him. For example, says Chomsky, it contains "no hint of any collaboration" between Chomsky and Guillaume in its writing, as I had maintained. But if the reader will consult p. 170 of Guillaume, he will there find an explanation of how Guillaume had submitted an earlier version of his piece to Chomsky, who had made some corrections, and how Guillaume had corrected the piece in accordance with Chomsky's instructions. Moreover, Guillaume also reproduces a letter from Chomsky, in further comment. These items clearly show that Chomsky, to this anti-Semitic audience in France, vouches for Guillaume's accuracy. Of course when he writes to an audience of left-wing Jews in Canada, Chomsky denies all: no, Guillaume did not write what he did, no, Chomsky did not collaborate with Guillaume. Fortunately the reader can now check Guillaume in person.
Another incident, very important in the Guillaume essay, has to do with Chomsky's insistence that Guillaume and his Holocaust-denying organization "La Vieille Taupe" publish the French version of Chomsky's book "Political Economy of Human Rights" (written with E. Herman). Here Chomsky plays dumb. He insists that it was a mainline French publisher, Hallier-Albin, not La Vieille Taupe, that was to publish the book. But Guillaume explains in detail (p. 154) that he, Guillaume, was the director of the collection in H-T that published the book, and that Chomsky insisted on giving this plum to him out of a sense of solidarity with Guillaume's politics, that is to say with La Vieille Taupe.
Werner Cohn
August 2001
Click here to read the 2001 FrontPage edition of Werner Cohn’s Partners in Hate: Noam Chomsky and the Holocaust Deniers.
I have come to the end of Chomsky's story but there is a final question that some readers may find bothersome. I have described the politics of Noam Chomsky insofar as they relate to Nazism, and I have also shown something about Chomsky's associates: Faurisson, Guillaume, Thion, the Institute for Historical Review. Chomsky's propaganda, taken by itself, is obnoxious and certainly hostile to Jews but still does not have quite the same character as that of his associates. Where they are frankly neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic, he fudges and covers himself with self-exculpating formulas. Were it not for his associates we would certainly wish to recognize a line between him and organized anti-Semitism.People who are only casual observers of Noam Chomsky tend to make the mistake of lumping him in with every other Jewish marxist who has come along. And, of course, he has a lot of support from both Jewish and non-Jewish Leftists insofar as they don't take the time to examine his political writings in toto (and who, besides Werner Cohn, would want to?) and take the time to figure out where he's coming from. Chomsky has never made much of an effort to distance himself from that support either.The reader will have to judge for himself what to make of Chomsky's choice of political friends. My summary of the issue is that his associates are in the business of justifying the Nazis and that Chomsky helps them to carry on this business, not at all as a defender of freedom of speech but as a warm and reliable friend.
Much nonsense is sometimes written about the alleged fallacy of "guilt by association." True, if Chomsky happened to be associated with Faurisson and Thion in a tennis club, that particular association would not make him a neo-Nazi. But in fact we saw that Chomsky justified Faurisson's Holocaust-denial, we found Chomsky publishing his own books with neo-Nazi publishers, we saw him writing for a neo-Nazi journal, we saw that the neo-Nazis promote Chomsky's books and tapes together with the works of Joseph Goebbels. It is this complex of anti-Semitic activities and neo-Nazi associations, not his professed ideas alone, that constitutes the Chomsky phenomenon.
Here is the best analysis that I've seen of Chomsky's political philosophy and which movements and philosophies of which he's a part or supportive. Even the casual observer will not have missed that fact that Chomsky is no defender of Zionism. But he's managed to keep his Jewish antagonism under wraps pretty well. Here's the expose of his philosophy that is overdue.
Will it make an impact on his support? I doubt it very much. His defenders and "disciples" tend to be the kind of people who are convinced they are smarter than anyone else and therefore no one can tell them anything.
An interesting thing about his anti-Semitism is that his father was a well-known Hebrew scholar and, I'm pretty sure, a Zionist. His main mentor in Linguistics was his professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Zellig Harris who was most definitely a strong Zionist and spent the last years of his life working as a carpenter in Israel, if I'm not mistaken. In short, I am sure that he was steeped in Zionism from an early age. So his turn to anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism represents, to me, a strong rejection of himself and his background. Any amateur psychologists want to comment on this?
Until I see that sort of thing, I will suspect that this is all guilt by association.
I don't think anyone is accusing Chomsky of denying the Holocaust, although it wouldn't be difficult to find evidence that he downplays the Holocaust to the point of equating Nazi atrocities to America's "war crimes."
The charge is indeed guilt by association, but as the author states in those concluding paragraphs, it is not a casual association. Chomsky writes in clear and knowing support of neo-Nazi organizers in France (Faurisson and Guillaume) who are definitely Holocaust-deniers. Yet because of Chomsky's reputation as a scholar and a darling of the American media and Leftist academia as well as the Left in general, Chomsky is able to deny these associations without fear of losing support.
On the "guilt by association" charge, consider what would happen if someone published a book titled Bill Clinton and the Dixie Mafia. Clinton's supporters -- especially the media and academia -- would first of all laugh down as much of it as they could get away with. No doubt some would find it worth their while to write a response to the book and would probably do so by saying that there is no evidence that Clinton was ever a member of the Dixie Mafia. True enough, but the charge that there was corroboration hasn't been answered just by saying that Clinton was never a member of that group.
In the same way, by saying that Chomsky is in corroboration with Holocaust-deniers and in political agreement with some or most of their agenda isn't claiming that Chomsky himself has denied the Holocaust. But it's a serious charge nonetheless and one that Chomsky's supporters have never answered with anything but arrogant ridicule.
I skimmed through the FrontPageMagazine article referenced above, and I may missed some crucial element, but it reminds me of a recent hit piece "proving" that Edward Said is not really Palestinian because the author strings together some misinterpretations of fact. Here, the article seems to "prove" that Chomsky has "neo-Nazi" connections because 1) he supported the right to free speech of a well-known "Holocaust-denier", Faurisson; and 2) he wrote a prefec to a book by the same person. In neither case did Chomsky himself ever say "I deny the Holocaust occurred" but rather something like "everybody has a human right to free expression" even if repugnant.
Here's why this point is absolutely crucial. If, as Chomsky's critics allege, he is evil because he affirms the right of even a denier of the Holocaust to express his views, then what is one to call those people at the very highest levels of the government of the state of Israel who deny the Holocaust? Does the question strike one as absurd? Well, in fact, it has been official Israeli government policy (at least since the official military alliance with Turkey dating from 1958), to deny the reality of the Armenian Holocaust of 1915, when the Turkish military killed half of all Armenians; and later of the 1922-1923 Greek Holocaust when massive numbers of Greeks were killed or driven from Asia Minor by the successor Turkish government under Ataturk.
Chomsky has mentioned this in several books I have read, and his doing so is what got me started reading other of his books. So I think the issue of "Holocaust denial" cuts both ways. WHICH Holocaust; who benefits from denying the one ot the other? I see Chomsky stating that BOTH happened; his political enemies claim only ONE happened. Who is closer to the truth?
There really is one serious intractable problem between Western Civilization and Chomsky.
An acknowledgement of God is at the center of Our civilization. Not that we all believe in him, just that it is acknowledged that He is.
Chomsky desires to destroy that very concept from the mind of mankind using linguistics. In other words, he has been 'redefining' words and concepts to leave out an acknowledgement of God.
That changes everything and everyone. Yet it is obvious that God is still here. Chomsky and others are endeavoring to deal with that also.
Chomsky and others will fail, but at our expense. We will pay a price because many of our leaders have accepted his protestations.
BEWARE THOSE YOU CHOSE TO LEAD YOU.
There is coming a day for us all when we will be in astounded awe at the "nature" of life on this planet.
All profound protestations explaining 'how' life is and operates will be so foolish unless we have begun our concept with the assumption, the Given, that God IS.
In Mathmatics, Physics, the Sciences and Astronomy there are 'Givens'. No proof is required for them, yet we want to be so scientific and demand a proof for Faith. In a relationship with God, Faith is a Given.
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