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By the left... about turn
Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance, Noam Chomsky’s latest opus, has already been reviewed in these pages, including amusing correction of a jacket-quote:
Arguably the most important intellectual alive" - The New York Times
This very old quotation in fact was:
Arguably the most important intellectual alive, how can he write such nonsense about international affairs and foreign policy? - The New York Times
A new UK review by Nick Cohen, reprinted in al-Guardian of all places, craps all over Chomsky again. Long, amusing, EFL
Whatever other crimes it committed or covered up in the twentieth century, the Left could be relied upon to fight fascism. A regime that launched genocidal extermination campaigns against impure minorities would be recognised for what it was and denounced.
Ummm... Yeah. Okay. With the proviso that the "impurities" had to be confined to geneaology...
Not the least of the casualties of the Iraq war is the death of anti-fascism. Patriots could oppose Bush and Blair by saying that it wasn’t in Britain’s interests to follow America. Liberals could put the UN first and insist that the United States prove its claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the court of world opinion. Adherents to both perspectives were free to tell fascism’s victims, ’We’re sorry to leave you under a tyranny and realise that many more of you will die, but that’s your problem.’
snip
Noam Chomsky is the master of looking-glass politics. His writing exemplifies the ability of the Western Left to criticise everything from the West - except itself. He is immensely popular; but his popularity is mystifying on the first reading. His work is dense and filled with non sequiturs (here he seeks to use the Cuban missile crisis to explain the Iraq war, which is a little like using the first Moon landing to explain the dotcom boom). He claims to confront the comfortable with uncomfortable facts they don’t want to face. Yet his audience is primarily a comfortable Western audience.
snip
The lesson of 11 September is that no constraints of morality or conscience would stop al-Qaeda exploding a nuclear weapon. If however, it is all our fault, as Chomsky says, perhaps we can avert catastrophe by being nicer and better people. Perhaps we can, but Chomsky is as reluctant to admit that al Qaeda is an autonomous movement as he is to admit the existence of the democratic and socialist opposition to Saddam Hussein.
Dunno if these ilk of reviews help the book biz much.
Posted by: Glenn (not Reynolds) 2003-12-17
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=22867