49 Replies to “Noam Chomsky vs. Ezra Levant on Free Speech”

  3. Hmmm…15 or 20 years ago I read a book by a fellow named L Fletcher Prouty called “The Secret Team”. He claimed to be FDR’s personal pilot as well as a Pentagon insider. In the book, as I recall, he claimed that the war making material that was stockpiled on Okinawa for the potential invasion of Japan (enough to supply a 500,000 man army in the field for a year) was instead shipped to Ho Chi Minh in Viet Nam so he could start his war against the French.
    My take away from that nugget was that the Viet Nam war was calculated decades in advance of the actual American involvement. This was long before the defeat of Chiang Kai Chek and the appearance of the Maoist state in China.

  4. Listening to Chomsky reminds me of Billy Madison:
    “Mr. Madison, what you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.”

  5. With respect, let me clarify your statement. He is a certifiable Marxist idiot.

  6. “… certifiable Marxist idiot”.
    That’s what collectivism does. It removes one’s ability to think independently and creatively.
    Thus, the individual and his inherent freedom of speech are a threat to the collective and are therefore both to be disposed of.

  7. A committed leftist to the end. Corporations can’t act upon individuals in the way that the government (that mandates itself a monopoly on the use of coercive violence inside its borders as part of policing) is able to. That doesn’t mean that a government has to be coercive, only that they reserve the ability to be coercive to themselves (a la “if you rob a bank or rape someone, we will use as much force as is needed to stop you.”).
    Noam seems to support the idea that absence of a free bully pulpit is the same as denial of the right to free speech. If a newspaper doesn’t like what you have to say, they won’t publish it. That’s not denying freedom of speech, that’s practising freedom of association. He won’t see that this battle has been won (by universal access to the internet in places that allow that) but is under threat by “net neutrality” and other big-brotheresque means of oversight and control. The government that I suspect he’s supporting is the biggest threat to free speech, but is opaque to scrutiny and it’s own constitutional controls. I guess he’s forgotten that communist revolutions usually mean that the communist revolutionary supporters are the first to face the firing squad after the revolution is won.

  8. And we wonder why we’re in the state we’re in when there have been two or more generations lost to the mutterings of the triumverate, Chomsky, Alinsky, and Klein. If these three had been around in the Thirties to teach in a university we’d all be speaking German and a bagel and cream cheese/lox would be unheard of.

  9. I could only bear to listen to half of this interview. When it became apparent that Chomsky would not discuss the gagging in Academia until he had landed is point about the horrors of domination of major media by corporations, I hit the stop button. I gagged his expression, in other words.
    It’s true that corporate media lies by omission.
    But it’s also true that political correctness is trying to extinguish any criticism of collectivism.
    Underlying all of this is the arrogance of the left: if there is no supernatural and absolute moral authority, then man is the source of moral authority, and since the left position is the morally correct position, expression of any other opinion is amoral. In other words, legalism leads to morality, also known as “social justice”.
    The central problem the left has with this notion is that is no moral hazard for power seekers who bend the rules to their own advantage. Any such system will eventually decay through corruption. Such systems are inherently flawed. Legalism is doomed to fail. (And in my opinion, for which I do apologize, it died on the cross some 1975 or so years ago).
    Case in point: the Hildebeast. While attempting to attain power she is attempting to seize the moral high ground on issues that have not yet achieved ‘social justice’ – in other words, society has not yet achieved the correct moral legal apparatus – yet she herself breaks the very rules she espouses. This is abject moral corruption at its finest. Legalism fails because there are always those who will not play by the rules, and sometimes they win – and win big, by this strategy.

  10. Ken said: “He is a certifiable Marxist idiot.”
    He’s not though. An idiot, that is. He’s -lying-. Marxists do that. Its like their go-to strategy.
    What he wants is to force people to listen to him. He wants to force FOX News into carrying his manifesto about the Iraq war, because of the political leverage he’ll get from it and because he doesn’t want to SPEND ANY MONEY on it himself.
    Marxists are great ones for spending other people’s money to get what they want, but they’re tight as bark to a tree with their own.

  11. Whatever we might think of his politics, I do think Chomsky hit the nail on the head with this memorable statement:
    “If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.”

  12. JJM , that’s what he say’s but he doesn’t mean it at all. like ezra said they went from screaming freedom of speech out side the universities, and then once in the deans office they silence all dissenting opinions so only their message get’s out only their narrative get’s out. Remember these kids that go to these institutions (bless their souls) are definitely impressionable, they are learning. So when the “diversity” of opinions is hidden what do you think they will think like coming out of these places.

  13. “If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.”
    Wow. And if you believe that he follows that….at a lose for words.

  15. Noam Chomsky, the great faux intellectual, who speaks in these measured and reasonable tones is really not that way at all because he is above all else a propagandist.
    He has achieved 86 years on this earth but refuses to open his eyes or change his mind about anything. Manufactured consent indeed.

  16. Actually I agree that he is not an idiot. Chomsky is a dyed in the wool communist, and Paul in Calgary nails it with…”and then once in the deans office they silence all dissenting opinions so only their message get’s out only their narrative get’s out.”
    Bill Ayers said in his long interview with Megan Kelly that their group realized in the 1970s that they could not create a revolution and decided to work from within. They have achieved remarkable success and practically own the universities and many of the governmental administrations across North America.

  18. “A committed leftist to the end.”
    Indeed.
    But I have more respect for him, an unrepentant (but rich, thusly hypocritical) old Commie, than sociopathic poseurs (Liberal or Conservative) who would pretend that they stand for freedom and democracy instead of their real motives: election, re-election, power, perks, and prestige.

  19. While there is no doubt Chomsky tilts hard to the left, it is utter nonsense to label him as either a communist or Marxist. In fact it is an old propaganda trick. I have completely quit watching any TV news (Canadian or US) because it is SO EXACTLY what Chomsky details in agonizing, statistically validated detail. North American TV News is pure crapola…a convenient tool to herd the flock. And yes, with two notable exception is entirely corporate owned. They are forced to keep the lying narrative going lest they be lynched by the millions they have so ill-served for so long. And no they are not pushing an agenda of honest reporting, they are pushing an agenda which dovetails nicely with corporate plans. You should read the quote at the top of this page as to why SDA exists.

  21. The thing to get about Chomsky is that he only criticizes his own country.
    This is typical, of hard left Yankees.
    They do make some valid points. Try reading Paul Craig Roberts (once in the Reagan admin) who has a piece up today by John Pilger who discusses the phony bases of so called humanitarian wars. For example the hoax of a Serbian genocide; the hoax of a imminent massacre by Gadaffi, etc. And let’s be honest: the hoax of Saddam’s WMD. Unrelated to war: the hoax of the financial meltdown in 2008 (see David Stockman).
    So like Chomsky I now take an extremely dark view of the fascist US state and feel that we’ve all been hopeless dupes.
    But here’s the difference: unlike Chomsky I don’t just hate the US state. I hate all large hegemonic states.
    Chomsky and his ilk are childlike in their belief that a state can act morally. Not so. He disgusts me for only citing his own country and giving even more totalitarian states a pass.
    So therefore I phart in his general direction because he is a dishonest hypocritical creep.

  22. Shortly after the earthquake in Haiti, Chomsky was interviewed on a Sunday morning show. I forget which one it was.
    Anyways, Chomsky criticized the USA for immediately sending hospital ships to Haiti. He said that it would have been better to send money to the NGO’s on the ground. I thought that was odd. Those ships were needed and saved lives and much suffering.
    I found out later that his daughter was one of the top dogs at OXFAM, an NGO on the ground in Haiti.
    Noam is a despicable ass.

  23. Accusing your opponent like big business of something what big academia themselves are doing. That is manipulating the media outlets for there own interests. The latest 2014 was the hottest year ever press release from NASA for example. Going out into the world and finding the news is a skill MSM has long thins forgotten.

  24. Should spell it Gnome since he’s as stupid as a garden gnome. Right up there with the Naomi Kleins and Avi Lewis on the moron scale.

  28. Great that Ezra could fight back the corporate censorship to interview this windbag. I was all into Chomsky when I was an idiot, but now I am an adult. I knew every angle he took but could not bear more than half of it.

  29. The whole direction of leftist/progressive propaganda is to force all people to think only prescribed thoughts. And if you do not, then you are labeled and publicly shamed as racist/zenophobe/homophobe/islamophobe/wager of war on women.
    (Un)fortunately for them, the islamists have other ideas for these useful idiots.

  30. Back in the ’80s, I was really into machine translation of languages. The current available products confirm my considered approach; but I digress.
    Chomsky became famous for his study of linguistics; not for his study of political philosophy. He has ridden hyabis useless political musings and life on the back of his fame as a linguist.
    A fraud he his.

  31. And Clinton sent US treasury money – and her brother got great mining deals.

  32. Chomsky claims to be a “libertarian socialist”, a sort of leftist/anarchist, rather than a Marxist. However, it seems to be the kind of “anarchism” in which people would be free to do whatever he would like them to do.
    While he may not be a communist, he gives aid and comfort to America’s enemies by attacking it and not the communists, who have always been far more evil. Apparently one doesn’t have to be a dyed-in the-wool Marxist to engage in leftist lunacy.
    Read his 1977 article in The Nation where he defended the Khmer Rouge. He wrote of “alleged” Khmer Rouge atrocities and attributed the factual claims of actual slaughter to “the extreme unreliability of refugee reports”. He takes no responsibility for the lies he believed and passed on, in covering for this genocide.
    http://www.chomsky.info/articles/19770625.htm

  33. “What we really need is anarchy. With a strong anarchist leader.”
    Are you that dense you don’t get this? Obviously.

  34. Forgive me replying to myself but study the last 100 years of the Roman Republic:
    As each populist succeeded the last populist on various grounds, and giving out more state funds to supporters, they watered down Roman citizenship and increased dependency upon the Roman state, requiring larger state taxation to pay for it.
    Ultimately, it all ended in calamity, and Augustus solved the problem by becoming a de facto emperor. Of course, he still kept the trappings and symbols of empire, just that the senate only did what he wanted.
    Obomber, anyone?

  36. A libertarian is not, and cannot be, a socialist. Simply because a Libertarian (which I am) insists upon personal responsibility.

  37. Ken, I should have added that Chomsky is clearly a communist sympathizer, if not a full fledged Marxist.
    Take Chomsky’s words from the article I previously quoted.
    It was inevitable with the failure of the American effort to subdue South Vietnam and to crush the mass movements elsewhere in Indochina, that there would be a campaign to reconstruct the history of these years so as to place the role of the United States in a more favorable light. The drab view of contemporary Vietnam provided by … the establishment press helps to sustain the desired rewriting of history, asserting as it does the sad results of Communist success and American failure. Well suited for these aims are tales of Communist atrocities, which not only prove the evils of communism but undermine the credibility of those who opposed the war and might interfere with future crusades for freedom.
    Accurate reports of communist atrocities are merely “tales” and communist conquests are “crusades for freedom”. He’s yet another useful idiot, as Vladimir Lenin so aptly put it.

  38. “Libertarian socialism (sometimes called social anarchism, left-libertarianism and socialist libertarianism) is a group of political philosophies within the socialist movement…”
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism
    This is how they self-identify. It’s the deceived leading the deceived – they all fall into a ditch on the left side of the road.

  41. Looks like Chomsky would have got along great with Nestor Mahkno. Google Nestor Mahkno. He was the “”libertarian socialist”, a sort of leftist/anarchist,…” who was the anarchist leader in South Russia (Ukraine) during the Russian civil war. At one time his army numbered reportedly as high as 50,000. He sometimes fought the Reds and sometimes cooperated with the Reds, but always fought against the Whites. My wife’s family was the recipient of some of his largesse.
    Mahkno is even today an icon of the anarchist movement.

  42. I’d never heard of Mahkno. From what I have just read, he had a lot of blood on his hands. It seems he was least partly driven by his hatred of prosperous landowners, since he himself had grown up in poverty. Chomsky similarly hates the United States, although the reason for his grudge is unclear.
    Mahkno = “libertarian communist”. Chomsky = “libertarian socialist”. Yes, I suppose they could have become comrades. Chomsky would at least have probably defended the anarchist terrorist in the same way he has apologized for murderous communist dictators in the past.

  45. NNM666:
    I see you have awakened. Did it take you this long to realize Chomsky is a Jew and rouse
    you enough to make one of your very predictable anti-Semite remarks?

  46. Uh, no…curiously it isn’t there this morning, or any of the other links (note to lance), but it has to do with shouting at the radio “you don’t speak for me” ie the raison d’etre of sda…don’t be so quick to be snarky.

  47. Why this blog?
    Until this moment I have been forced to listen while media and politicians alike have told me “what Canadians think”. In all that time they never once asked.
    This is just the voice of an ordinary Canadian yelling back at the radio – “You don’t speak for me.”

  48. Too funny. People listening to Ezra Levant calling Noam Chomsky stupid! Thats just too funny.

  49. Chomsky will never change, which means Ezra doesn’t have to worry about a moving target. Haven’t heard from him for some time, he’s too old to admit he has been wrong all these years. He should go live in one of those Kibbutz’s – do they still exist?

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