Chomsky is sometimes criticized on the left for encouraging pessimism or inaction by emphasizing the overwhelming weight of US power — or for failing to connect his own activism with labor or social movements on the ground. He is certainly his own man, holds some idiosyncratic views (I was startled, for instance, to hear him say that Vietnam was a strategic victory for the US in Southeast Asia, despite its humiliating 1975 withdrawal) and has drawn flak for defending freedom of speech for Holocaust deniers. He describes himself as an anarchist or libertarian socialist, but often sounds more like a radical liberal — which is perhaps why he enrages more middle-of-the-road US liberals who don’t appreciate their views being taken to the logical conclusion.
But for an octogenarian who has been active on the left since the 1930s, Chomsky sounds strikingly upbeat. He’s a keen supporter of the wave of progressive change that has swept South America in the past decade (“one of the liberal criticisms of [George W.] Bush is that he didn’t pay enough attention to Latin America — it was the best thing that ever happened to Latin America”).
He believes there are constraints on imperial power that didn’t exist in the past: “They couldn’t get away with the kind of chemical warfare and blanket B52 bombing that Kennedy did” in the 1960s.
He even has some qualified hopes for the Internet as a way around the monopoly of the corporate-dominated media.
But what of the charge so often made that he’s an “anti-American” figure who can only see the crimes of his own government while ignoring the crimes of others around the world?
“Anti-Americanism is a pure totalitarian concept,” he retorts. “The very notion is idiotic. Of course you don’t deny other crimes, but your primary moral responsibility is for your own actions, which you can do something about. It’s the same charge which was made in the Bible by King Ahab, the epitome of evil, when he demanded of the prophet Elijah: Why are you a hater of Israel? He was identifying himself with society and criticism of the state with criticism of society.”
It’s a telling analogy. Chomsky is a studiedly modest man who would balk at any such comparison. But in the Biblical tradition of the conflict between prophets and kings, there’s not the slightest doubt which side he represents.
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