Is Chomsky’s Sophistry Useful?
Written by Lancelot Finn (Spring 2002)
A poster advertising Chomsky’s talk quoted a pundit who called him “the leading gadfly of our national conscience.” Presumably that was meant to be a compliment, but it rang true to me in a different way: refuting Chomsky’s arguments is as easy as swatting flies, because they are all based on semantic sleight-of-hand. Chomsky is a modern sophist.
The word sophist comes from fifth-century Athens. Sophists were well-paid rhetoricians and manipulators of words, especially persuasive to the young, who liked their skill at undermining accepted norms and values. Many people disliked them for “making the unjust cause appear just and the just cause appear unjust,” but this did not prevent them from winning huge followings and lots of money. Socrates saw through their tricks, but the sophists easily got the better of honest lesser minds.
Chomsky put his training in linguistics to good use in his Taubman speech on Feb. 6. The argument was built on the mis-definition of words. His assertion that the U. S. is the main sponsor of international terrorism turns out to be true, since, using a casual army manual definition, Chomsky defined terrorism as “the use of violence or the threat of violence for political or ideological ends.” By this definition, “terrorism” also includes war and governance in general—a police force, for example, uses the threat of violence for the “political end” of law and order. The authors of the army manual, presumably, were not anarchists. They believed in legitimate violence, and assumed that among their readers this would be understood. But Chomsky ripped the definition out of context and used it to mislead.
His other semantic abuses were similarly flagrant. His nuance-free definition of hypocrisy—“if it’s wrong for them, it’s wrong for us”—leaves out context, motive, legitimacy and outcomes, which make all the difference. He indulged in mock generosity by classifying U. S. actions as “merely” terrorism rather than “aggression, a much worse crime.” Actually, terrorism is recognized across cultures as a violation of honor, wrong a priori in all cultures, whereas aggression is judged on the merits, and in the cases of aggression against Iraq, Milosevic and the Taliban these are excellent. Chomsky deftly manipulates words in order to, so to speak, “make the unjust cause appear just and the just cause appear unjust.” It’s transparent, and unravels under any scrutiny.
Even with all this semantic hocus-pocus, the poor man had to delve back to1985 to come up with some really juicy examples of American “international terrorism.” It was pathetic. Because of the title of the speech, “War on Terror” followed by an insolent question mark, I expected Chomsky to make a vigorous case against the war in Afghanistan. That he did not—except for the old and discredited point, that the Taliban request for “evidence” is superficially reasonable—confirms that there is just no case to be made. The scrupulous conduct of our campaign deprived him of any Afghan casualty figures worth quoting.
Chomsky finished with a brilliant touch. We have two options, he said, if we are not to be hypocrites. The first is to say, we’re strong, we like power, so we’ll get our way, never mind right and wrong or good and evil. To understand what he did next, you need to know the story “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” Two charlatans come to town and tell the emperor they can weave garments which are not only beautiful, but have the trait of being invisible to the stupid and the unfit for office. They plan on everyone lying and pretending to see the clothes so as not to be considered stupid or unfit. Chomsky used the same tactic to conclude his speech. “The other way is much harder,” he said. “And I think you know what it is.” Do we? We know? Does everyone else see it? Am I the only one lacking this insight? He almost got away with it. But when a student finally asked what this other way was, the game was up, the emperor had no clothes. As he fumbled and contradicted himself, it became clear that he didn’t have a clue what this “other way” was. Having smeared every figure from right to left, having castigated the intelligentsia which is his only constituency, he faced only dead ends and could offer no way out. Even Noam Chomsky could not wave a magic wand and dispel the moral complexity of wielding power for good.
The worthwhile part of the speech was the critique of Israel. Americans, in truth, happily acknowledge past sins in our own history. Slavery and civil rights are the core of a high school history curriculum, while Latin American studies departments (to name just one example) nationwide churn out reams of criticism of the U. S. But we have a soft spot for Israel because of the Holocaust. Too long have we turned a blind eye to the sordid career of this little desperado state. It is not true, as Chomsky insisted, that “America and Israel are the same.” On the contrary, their methods and objectives would be repugnant and alien to our deepest convictions, if only we understood what was happening—that’s why there is hope. So why couldn’t Chomsky give a responsible address, acknowledging the inspiring triumph in Afghanistan, but then bringing in his intimate knowledge of Israeli misdeeds to show how support for Israel is incompatible with American values?
One word: the market. If he did that, I probably wouldn’t have gone to see him, because I probably would never have heard his name. Wacko left-wing sophistry is Chomsky’s calling card, it makes him famous, it draws the crowds. That’s why I was curious. I figured my blood would boil at his mendacious insults, and I thought it might be fun. Advanced societies can develop perverse forms of entertainment—the rap of Eminem, the films of Stanley Kubrick, the Museum of Modern Art, and the diatribes of Noam Chomsky. Just as the fifth-century Athenians paid their sophists to confuse them and undermine their values, we pay ours to harangue us and damn us for hypocrisy.
It’s not an enviable job. Chomsky is doomed to be the walking refutation of his paranoid worldview. Here he is, condemning our leaders, calling our foreign policy criminal, accusing us of systematically spreading propaganda and suppressing the guilty truth. What do we do? Do we jail him? Do we pull his books from bookstore shelves? Far from it. He is given tenure at the nation’s leading scientific institution, paid thousands of times the world’s median income, invited to speak to audiences of the nation’s best and brightest, obsequiously flattered in introductions and then listened to with awe. Saying what he says while getting that kind of treatment—the cognitive dissonance must be unbearable!
So it’s no wonder that Chomsky got wrong-footed in the question-answer session. In fact, he ended up talking something perilously close to sense. In his speech, Chomsky said chillingly that “if the Master [the U. S.] doesn’t like it, it’s off the record, out of history, it never happened,” so, naturally concluding that the media was a conspiracy and could not be trusted, a student asked where to get reliable news. Chomsky said the Financial Times offered good journalism, reliable reporting. During his speech, he obliquely used the word “totalitarian” to describe the U. S. Yet when a student tried to bait him into alleging “repression,” he refused, pointing out that on the contrary he gets more invitations to speak than he can accept. You could feel the disappointment of the assembled faithful. What? We’re not living in a fascist state? Excuse me, Mr. Chomsky, that’s not quite what we came to hear. More talk like that and you’ll be out of a job.