Chowing down on Chomsky

This is a weird one to get the New Year rolling, but then we never did convention very well here at Boaty & D, as I'm sure our regular readers have noticed.

I'm currently reading 'The Essential Chomsky', because I'm very curious about the man and I want to read more about him. I've met die-hard socialists who cannot stand him, labeling him an 'anarchist'. Yet he seems to have no friends or sympathisers outside of the anti-war left.

He is big in academic circles, and a must on the reading lists of any politico. Yet he is nervously avoided, even amongst the majority of people in this country who opposed Iraq and have recently become very anti-American (at least during the Bush era).

Chomsky never did hold punches. He has always been vigorously anti authority and anti the state. He is an arch non-interventionist, he is up for grassroots power and notions of justice and civil rights. He despises racism and aggressive imperialism.

For me, Chomsky is like the most exciting firework in the box. You light the fuse, stand back and watch in awe as it shoots into the sky, releasing a dazzling display of eloquent magic. Yet while you stand there staring into space like a guppy fish at feeding time, you're struck with anxiety and disappointment as the dud, glowing remains of the rocket drops out of the sky and lands slap bang in the middle of your carefully nurtured barbecue.

Because, you see, Chomsky is spectacularly inconsistent with his beliefs. He is a man obsessed with the ills and evils of his own country, and those of its allies. But specifically America. He charts U.S. imperialism and foreign intervention, military and economic, and produces a caricature of a nation drunk on power, riddled with corruption and greed and a nation that ignores democracy.

In many senses, you can see his point. America has indeed got involved at times where it shouldn't have done. It does have a political establishment that is somewhat detached from the wants and freedoms of the people. And it does possess double standards about democracy.

But there's one massively key important point here...no other country in the world is much different, including countries with no bonds or affiliations with America.

Why does he not apply his standards to all countries? There are 193 widely recognised countries in the world. Many of these countries have shit governments that shit on their own and other people. There is injustice, greed, imperialism and tyranny. Chomsky doesn't rail against these countries and he fails to criticise non U.S. allies with anything close to the verve he does against the U.S and the west.

Look at Russia and China for example. Particularly China; a nation whose emerging markets are sucking up wealth from the third world and Africa like a Dyson deals with breadcrumbs. It takes a conservative thinker in Peter Hitchens to shine a light on things like this - see his article 'how China created a new slave empire in Africa'.

So you can get right wingers like Hitchens opposing the U.S. led Iraq war, and opposing imperialism and wickedness from other countries, yet people like Chomsky and his Australian counterpart John Pilger are eerily silent on the wrongs of non western nations. They fail to apply their principles to other countries.

I've read so much from these two over the years, and have only ever received a weird, bizarre one-sided picture of everything. This, for me, virtually destroys their respective positions, because the inconsistencies and inherent hypocrisy is too much to bear.

If the the concept of sovereign nation states is one to be fought against, and internationalism is something to be heralded, then surely it doesn't matter where wrong is to be found. Wrong is wrong, and the colour and race of the perpetrator is irrelevant. Right?

I cannot help but wonder if there is some form of neo-colonialism surrounding the outlooks of people like Chomsky and Pilger.

That they incessantly cite America and its pals as the prime source of all the world's ills is, in a curious way, a sort of slight against the tin pot lunatics of Africa's dictatorships and the unscrupulous human rights tramplers of Asian nations. It is almost to say 'only America could be that clever and mendacious as to effectively dominate the globe and world markets. These other nations are a bit thick, bless 'em.'

How else do you explain it?

I do not believe for a minute that this sets a precedent. The biggest and most arrogant hypocrites I have ever met have been left wingers. I've met more socialists who hate people than I have met socialists who really care. I've met more racist liberals than I have met colour blind ones. I met more charitable and genuinely caring conservatives and right wingers than I have met charitable and genuinely caring anti-war campaigners.

I hold battles with people like this, in real life, all the time. This blog was never designed for me to talk about certain things, but believe me, JD fights the fight in the corporeal world as well as this bloggyland one.

One phrase tends to carry me through when dealing with right-on hypocrites: we all judge others by our own standards.

Maybe I'm not quite there with Chomsky yet, and I've yet to figure him out properly. But based on what I know so far, his odd one-sidedness gives a very poor image of his work and I think it very likely that his politics gives a bad name to left libertarianism.