{"id":5920,"date":"2009-08-14T16:28:37","date_gmt":"2009-08-14T06:28:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?p=5920"},"modified":"2009-08-14T16:28:37","modified_gmt":"2009-08-14T06:28:37","slug":"leonard-zeskind-on-noam-chomsky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?p=5920","title":{"rendered":"Leonard Zeskind on Noam Chomsky"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trawling the web for texts on the history of ‘white nationalism’, I stumbledupon a new book by US writer Leonard Zeskind titled Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream<\/a><\/em> (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009). The subject is one in which I have a keen interest, so naturally when I obtain an over-priced copy in 10 years time at one of Melbourne’s better second-hand bookshops, I will read it. Until then, I will have to content myself with listening to the interview Leonard Lopate conducted with Zeskind on the subject of his book for WNYC in June 2009 (see<\/em> above link).<\/p>\n

As it happens, I’ve encountered Zeskind’s name before — he’s written quite extensively on the subject of white supremacy and the far right in the United States.<\/p>\n

So, I looked at his website.<\/p>\n

There, I noticed Uncle Leonard had written about Uncle Noam (and er, the Dixie Chicks): ‘Dixie Chicks and Noam Chomsky: Two Sides of Americanism & Anti-Americanism in the USA’<\/a>, January 2, 2003. Here, Zeskind’s argument rests on the notion that:<\/p>\n

…anti-Americanism is a solid part of American life. But consideration of its ramifications is largely absent from the discourse inside the left… The questions must be asked: Are some opponents of U.S. imperialism also fundamentally anti-American? Do some anti-Americans serve as a core anti-imperialist opposition? The answer is \u201cyes\u201d on both counts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I see: ‘anti-Americanism’ is as American as cherry pie (and ah, violence). To not be anti-American, then, is to be anti-American.<\/p>\n

I think.<\/p>\n

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As for Chomsky, according to Zeskind, Uncle Noam:<\/p>\n

…is representative of [a] trend on the left, a trend that mirrors conservatives on the right. Rather than finding the two-sidedness of American national life, they see only one aspect. The conservatives love their mono-dimensional country unconditionally and believe all others to be traitors. Those like Chomsky abjure their mono-dimensional enemy with unqualified contempt and believe all others to be morally bankrupt. It is a tendency rooted in the anti-imperialist movements of the 1960s and early 1970s, and the search for revolutionary agency.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Zeskind then goes on to describe this movement as it manifested in the United States, claiming that Chomsky “has emerged as the principal spokesperson for [this] older \u201canti-American\u201d anti-imperialism”.<\/p>\n

In essence, Chomsky embodies ‘anti-Americanism’.<\/p>\n

According to Zeskind, he is also:<\/p>\n

…an \u201canarchist,\u201d we are informed, which he defines as a \u201clibertarian socialist.\u201d He is a free speech absolutist, we are reminded whenever a protest is lodged about his relationship to Holocaust denial and Robert Faurrison. And for twenty-five years [sic<\/em>] he has been an indefatigable fighter against U.S. foreign policy, writing books faster than many people read the Sunday paper and giving speeches at every available venue. He has often skewered the hypocrisy of American elites, but at the same time he has demonstrated little understanding of the dynamics at work among the American people. For two decades, Chomsky has repeatedly sung one analytical note. Sometimes he hits the right target. Other times he has been remarkably tone deaf. One note. One idea.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

America is Bad, mmmkay?<\/em><\/p>\n

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Among Chomsky’s many (other) crimes, Zeskind nominates: his delivery of a speech on the subject of US imperialism in May 1990 at the university in Hamburg — while at the same time ‘foreigners’ “were being burned out of their homes and attacked in every city”; his ridicule of the notion of ‘anti-Americanism’ and; his failure “to find a democratic or progressive thread within the American national narrative”, especially as it is to be found in the work of Eric Foner and “the industrial labor movements that culminated in the formation of the CIO in the 1930s”. In summary, according to Zeskind, Chomsky’s “frame of reference for democracy remains completely in the Third World”.<\/p>\n

Finally, while noting that he is “not a neo-Nazi”, and does not deny the occurrence of the Holocaust, “Chomsky most certainly does not capitalize the H in Holocaust and give the event its proper name”, and fails (or failed) to note “any evidence of anti-Semitism… in Faurisson\u2019s writings on the Holocaust”, describing him instead as ‘some sort of liberal’. In summary:<\/p>\n

Simply put, on the issue of anti-Semitism, Chomsky is blind in both the left eye and the right eye. Two questions are then posed for left-wing intellectuals and anti-globalist street activists: Is it this man and this analysis that you want to follow when marching against war in Iraq or in opposition to free trade treaties? If irrational anti-Americanism becomes tinged with anti-Semitism, would Chomsky recognize it? Based on the evidence, the answer is an obvious no.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For my part, two questions are posed by Zeskind’s scribblings: Is this man serious? And: if he can read, why doesn’t he?<\/p>\n