The Anti-Chomsky Reader

The Anti-Chomsky Reader
Editors Peter Collier and David Horowitz
Country United States
Language English
Subject Noam Chomsky
Publisher Encounter Books
Publication date
 2004
Media type Print (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages 240
ISBN 1-893554-97-X
OCLC 54966287
191 22
LC Class P85.C47 A84 2004

The Anti-Chomsky Reader is a 2004 book about Noam Chomsky edited by Peter Collier and David Horowitz. Its contributors criticize Chomsky's political and linguistic writings, arguing that he cherry-picks facts to fit his theories.[1]

Contents

The Anti-Chomsky Reader contains the following articles:

  • An introduction by Peter Collier
  • "Whitewashing Dictatorship in Vietnam and Cambodia" by Steven J. Morris, Senior Fellow at The Foreign Policy Institute, Johns Hopkins University, accuses Chomsky of denying repression and mass murder under the communist regimes of Vietnam and Cambodia. Morris claims that Chomsky adheres to a Marxist-derived view of the Indochina wars which refuses to acknowledge the totalitarian nature of the regimes in question. (pages 1–34)
  • "Chomsky and the Cold War" by Thomas M. Nichols, chairman of the Department of Strategy and Policy, U.S. Naval War College, claims that Chomsky has distorted the history of the Cold War in order to minimize the role of Communist ideology and blame the conflict on the United States. He accuses Chomsky of misusing sources and footnoting his books in manipulative and dishonest ways "to create a kind of pseudo-academic smog" often leading back to Chomsky's own work. He discusses a 1990 letter from Chomsky to Alexander Cockburn which Nichols claims laments the defeat of the Soviet Union and other Communist states and movements at the end of the Cold War, particularly singling out Czech dissident Václav Havel for vituperation. (pages 35–65)
  • "Chomsky and the Media: A Kept Press and a Manipulated People" by Eli Lehrer, former editor of American Enterprise, is a critique of Chomsky's "propaganda model" of the American media as stated in Chomsky's book, Manufacturing Consent. Lehrer accuses Chomsky of being "an outsider who knows relatively little about the media... except to the degree that 'media subservience' serves to explain why there is no outcry against the evil he sees everywhere in the American enterprise." (pages 67–84)
  • "Chomsky's War Against Israel" by Paul Bogdanor criticizes Chomsky's stance on Israel. Bogdanor charges that Chomsky distorts historical fact and falsely accuses Israel of atrocities and rejectionism while downplaying Arab aggression and violence against the Jewish State. (pages 87–116)
  • "Chomsky and Holocaust Denial", by Werner Cohn of Brooklyn, New York and professor emeritus of sociology at the University of British Columbia, analyzes Chomsky's role in the Faurisson affair through his connections to Faurisson's publisher La Vieille Taupe. Cohn accuses Chomsky of close connections to French anti-semites and Holocaust Deniers through this organization (pages 117–58). Chomsky replied in Outlook.[2]
  • "Chomsky and 9/11" by David Horowitz and Ronald Radosh analyzes a speech given by Chomsky at MIT immediately after 9/11. Horowitz and Radosh allege that "Chomsky detected [a] plot by Washington to deliberately starve 3 to 4 million innocent Afghan civilians". They also claim that Chomsky justifies the 9/11 attacks in his speech and distorts American history to make the United States appear to be a terrorist nation. (pages 161–80)
  • "Noam Chomsky's Anti-American Obsession", by David Horowitz, accuses Chomsky of being an anti-American ideologue who sees the United States as evil and rewrites American history accordingly. Horowitz claims that Chomsky is the intellectual source of left-wing anti-Americanism today. (pages 181–200)
  • "A Corrupted Linguistics" by Robert D. Levine and Paul M. Postal, both professors of linguistics, claims that Chomsky's linguistic work has been largely superseded or abandoned. They also accuse Chomsky of intellectual misconduct in his linguistic writings. (pages 203–31)
  • "Chomsky, Language, World War II and Me" by John Williamson criticizes Chomsky's linguistic work and recounts a long email debate between Chomsky and the author in which Williamson claims Chomsky repeatedly lied about his own statements and about historical facts and sources. (pages 233–48)

Reviews

The historian Keith Windschuttle, in a review in the conservative magazine New Criterion, states that "Collier, Horowitz, and their six other authors have produced a book that has long been needed. It provides a penetrating coverage of the disgraceful career of a disgraceful but very influential man, who has so far avoided a criticism as thoroughgoing as this."[3]

The English professor Mark Bauerlein, in a generally positive review in the libertarian magazine Reason, claims that "Collier and Horowitz understand well the manufactured reality of political fame, and to dismantle it requires not contrary vitriol or clever rejoinders but direct, fact-based assertions that undermine the authenticity of the image. To that end, the contributors follow a simple procedure: Quote actual statements by Chomsky and test them for evidence and logic. The best contributions to the volume add the effective and timely tactic of citing Chomsky's progressive virtues and revealing how smoothly he abandons them."[4]

References

  1. ↑ Cook, Christopher R. (2009). Chomsky, Noam; Achar, Gilbert; Shalom, Stephen R.; Crandall, Russell C.; Fabbrini, Sergio; Ole R., Holsti; Arbor, Ann, eds. "A Cold Eye Assessment of US Foreign Policy: It's the Policies, Stupid". International Studies Review. 11 (3): 601–608. doi:10.2307/40389146. JSTOR 40389146.
  2. ↑ Reply to Werner Cohn by Noam Chomsky. Outlook, June 1, 1989
  3. ↑ Windschuttle, Keith (September 2004). "A disgraceful career". The New Criterion. Retrieved 2008-10-10.
  4. ↑ Bauerlein, Mark (April 2005). "Deconstructing Chomsky". Reason. Retrieved 2008-10-10.

Reviews

Response

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