Monday, June 26, 2006

Observer Foreign Editor makes a fool of himself with 'superb demolition' of Chomsky: I think it is a good thing when journalists or editors try to 'take on' Chomsky: they almost invariably makes fools of themselves and advance Chomsky's credibility.

Comments to the article contain a range of for and against. One of my favourites is:

"In particular, the complaint about Chomsky creating 'a moral - or rather immoral - equivalence between the US and the greatest criminals in history' is crashingly stupid, because the Chomsky quote that is supposed to illustrate this explicitly says exactly the opposite."

The only way for the establishment to deal with Chomsky is through complete silence - no mention or discussion ever, because to mention or debate him can only backfire. This tactic worked for a long time through the 70s, 80s and 90s, but with the advent of the internet the control of discourse has broken down and even newspapers have been forced to address the topic and the complaints from their readers and ex-readers.

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