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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Rowan Berkeley
Published Letters: 176
Remember, I said previously, I always start by assuming that everyone is a rational actor, even though I know that this is not true. I do this because it's a good rhetorical strategy, in that the next approximation is always even more interesting. In this case, the next approximation is that they are either brainwashed by others, or self-brainwashed - a difficult concept to ground objectively, in that, how does the observer decide which is the self-brainwashed, himself or the observed? Anyway, to your examples.
(1) Orwell : absolutely cynical and sinister, and self-brainwashed, and brainwashed by others, and, to make it worse, he knew it. This is as good a description of living in hell as any, psychologically speaking, but then again, some of us choose this life. I mean, you are aware, aren't you, that he worked for british wartime broadcasting, and I shall leave that phrase a little vague.
(2) Chomsky, absolutely definitely, the man is a fraud. That isn't to say that anything in his political books is untrue, rather, that the US system protects him because of his selectivity, which is only in recent years starting to show visible cracks, which attract the attention of different observers according to their own interests, but currently include such diverse topics as Israel and 9-11. Also, in my humble opinion, his 'language organ' theory is rubbish, but I am not expert enough to be able to say either why it is rubbish, or why it is never exposed as such.
(3) Bakunin was an out and out gangster. I don't think this is even in dispute.
(4) Vonnegut, well, look, the man is a comic novelist, a buffoon. His highly public spasms of disgust at mansinhumanitytoman are just spasms. US novelists nowadays do not inspire respect, generally, for intellectual rigor, integrity, or anything else - at last not the ones who get lionised. What that says about US pop lit is obvious, and it is not intended to imply anything about novelists outside th epop lionised circuits, since I don't claim to know about them, or to have much time to find out.
(5) Lucy Parsons, sorry, I have no idea about, or interest in.
(6) Nor do I know who Nicholas Walter was, or care much.
Remember what I said on a previous thread about the basics of psychological warfare? That the art of it is to persuade your opponents that you are a really evil mother, a ruthless geopolitical giant gangster with no scruples? Isn't that what Chomsky has been saying about the USA, in book after book, loudly and publicly, heard all over the world, for four decades? How naive do you have to be to see that as genuine? And why does the evil mother itself protect him? Precisely because his proposed "solution" is no solution at all, but a shapeless, formless mess called "anarchism." I mean, don't get me started. Please.
I will offer you this, though, from the same Jeff Blankfort I mentioned on another thread as having been one of the victims of, and successful complainants against, the ADL's secret police tactics:
http://www.leftcurve.org/LC29WebPages/Chomsky.html
Nor does he fall into the category of pop. lit. lions like Vonnegut that I was dissing. Anyway, back to the interesting Blankfort vs. Chomsky thing. First of all, Blankfort is Jewish, and a pillar of San Francisco activism. So we can forget about Electro Robot here. And hopefully we can forget about that person who just posted about Platonistic elite bankers running communism etc.
I think Blankfort is wrong in thinking that Chomsky's never-outgrown youthful zionism is the reason for the protectsia provided to him by the US liberal elite. As I said, I think it is precisely the fact that Chomsky's "solution" is no solution at all, but a wishy washy formless anarchist fantasy, that makes him valuable, since he drains off anti imperialist energy that would otherwise find more dangerous forms. I know Jeff, and I have tried to discuss this with him, because we exchanged a lot of emails during a period when we were both on a busy email list, but he isn't a great one for theory one way or the other.
The fact that Chomsky's zionist weaknesses offer themselves as an explanation for his ineffectuality is no accident, though. It is yet another example of how Jewish issues continually find their way into the scapegoat position for whatever real contradictions may exist in the larger world. This is a tragic and recurring phenomenon, and as I said Hannah Arendt provides a whole row of instances, ranging from the Jewish role in feudalism through to the Jewish role in communism. Zionism as scapegoat is just another in a long, tragic chain, and that explains why I can recommend reading Jeff Blankfort's essay on Chomsky and simultaneously go on being a zionist myself. It's a long dark corridor that I'm walking, and I don't really expect it to get any lighter.
I used to feel like saluting when I read Karen Kwiatkowski. I thought she was marvellous, really, when she came out with the original "In Rumsfeld's Shop" essays, and for a while thereafter. I think by now she has become a bit of a fixture in a libertarian small publishing niche, and her writing has lost its freshness, but that doesn't negate my admiration for her early stuff, at all.
I didn't guess it was you until I scroll down to the bottom of it.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
