Self Flagellating, the Case of Noam Chomsky

There will be a running series here on Noam Chomsky. One post to deal with each of his distortions and lies. I at one time considered myself a staunch member of the left, although I find directional terms to represent political views to be somewhat useless now. During this time, I found Chomsky to be an invaluable contributor to the discussion in America and on America. I still regard his writings as such, but I have noticed a disturbing trend, namely that he often distorts the truth, and maintains a curiously ineffective moral compass. Today we talk about Noam Chomsky and Faurisson Affair.

Robert Faurisson was a French professor of literature at the University of Lyon. He is a Holocaust denier who, in two letters to Le Monde, denied the existence of any Nazi gas chambers. He is an outright denier who has written articles for the Journal of Historical Review (Published by the Holocaust denying Institute for Historical Review). The IHR has had such "esteemed" contributors as David Irving, Ahmad Rami, and Ernst Zundel (repellent anti-Semites to the man).

After these letters were published, Faurisson was fired from his position, under the guidelines of the Gayssot Act, which prohibits Holocaust denial. A petition was circulated in support of Faurisson's right to free speech, and Noam Chomsky was a signatory. I can only concur that Faurisson had his rights violated, and that more broadly Holocaust denial laws are anti-libertarian and a waste of time. However Chomsky went beyond simply signing the document...


Chomsky wrote:


"I see no anti-Semitic implications in the denial of the existence of gas chambers, or even the denial of the holocaust."

A PDF copy of the newspaper article criticizing Chomsky can be found here.
http://www.paulbogdanor.com/rubinstein-chomsky.pdf


The letter itself can be found on Chomsky's site, here:
http://www.chomsky.info/letters/1989----.htm


The denial of the Holocaust is a clear instance of anti-Semitism on the part of Faurisson, and is so in general. We will leave aside Faurisson's ties to Neo-Nazis and his "friendship" with Ernst Zundel and Ahmad Rami. Denial of the Holocaust entails certain attendant consequences, unavoidable and unacceptable. Holocaust denial absolutely asserts the following:

1) The Jews fabricated a massive lie.
2) The Jews profit from this lie.
3) They have fabricated stories (matching) for every survivor.
4) This hoax involves all Jews.
5) This hoax involves almost every government.


The consequence of this? That the Jews lie to extort gentile money, and influence other governments to pay this extortion money, and enlist still other governments to support them. This is an age old anti-Semitic line "The Jews are greedy, dishonest, and run the world." Such anti-Semitism is unavoidable. So to deny the Holocaust, with such abundance of evidence, means that one must have the anti-Semitic conclusion in mind, and can't simply be "evaluating history". This can be seen when we look at Holocaust deniers themselves. To a man, liars, anti-Semites, bigots, the mentally deranged, Muslim radicals, and discredited non-scholars. Most deniers are more than one of these things. Thus if the Holocaust is a hoax, it is only the above "brave men" who have uncovered it.

We have shown Chomsky's assertions to be utter rubbish, but he is not finished soiling himself... Chomsky went further:


"Putting this central issue aside, is 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."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faurisson_affair


So Chomsky goes further than saying Holocaust denial is not anti-Semitism, he says that a famous Holocaust denier, aligned with neo-Nazis, and counting virulent anti-Semites (Ahmad Rami) as "friends" is NOT an anti-Semite.

For the connection between Faurisson and Neo-Nazis see:

http://www.anti-rev.org/textes/Fresco81a/


Chomsky has a broken moral compass. He is unable to discern reality in his constant need to demonize America and Israel. He often chances upon some legitimate observation, but in general he flails away in some self flagellating seizure, bending truth to fit a priori conclusions. This no doubt will serve to preface my next post (coming later this week) on Chomsky's whitewashing and downplaying of the Khmer Rouge genocide....