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by HyperSane 1191 days ago
He supported the communist though. He also supported Pol Pot. You can predict his opinions of foreign policy if you understand that he bases them on the "US is evil" axiom and therefore anyone who opposes it is good, no matter how actually evil they may be.
1 comments
fulafel 1191 days ago
The Pol Pot thing seems debunked: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-07-01/brull---the-boring-tr...

The communism support doesn't seem to quite stick either if WP is to be believed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Noam_Ch...

In Britannica and WP he's labeled an anarcho-syndicalist, so seems to be against both capitalism and noncapitalist authoritarian systems.

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HyperSane 1191 days ago
Chomsky absolutely was a Cambodian Genocide denailist at the time. He very arrogantly dismissed actual eyewitness testimony of the genocide from refugees purely for ideological reasons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide_denial#Chom...

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fulafel 1190 days ago
(Disclaimer: i'm just reading up about this now)

Did you skip my first link or are you disagreeing with it? It's about the same subject. And in your WP link has a second quote writing about the genocide as fact.

Another I think credible seeming article about it that seems to judge against denialism in an academic journal called "Genocide Studies and Prevention": https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1...

Chomsky's skepticism in the media criticism article talking (among other things) about a book about the then-contemporary events of course looks quite unfortunate in retrospect, but given the volume of work and constant writing about world events over a long career it seems to be a error in judgement in the moment, rather than denying history, especially as he evidently updated his views later as more evidence came about.

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HyperSane 1190 days ago
"looks quite unfortunate in retrospect"

It was completely unjustified at the time. There was absolutely no reason to doubt the testimony of refugees coming from Cambodia, other than they didn't fit into Chomsky's strange worldview that the US is the cause of all problems in the world.

Even today his views on Russia's invasion of Ukraine are completely moronic.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/12/22/russia-ukraine-war-left...

For ‘Peace Activists,’ War Is About America, Never Russia Their own hard-left worldview is so absorbing that they will take the side of any aggressor in the anti-Western camp.

https://www.e-flux.com/notes/470005/open-letter-to-noam-chom...

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