Chomskys faulty "there was no JFK assassination conspiracy" logic

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

Intelligent men, like Chomsky, are barefaced lairs, whenever they play the lone nut card.

KK

Its hard to not come to that conclusion Karl.

How could he write a sophisticated analysis of the Spanish civil war when he was 12 years old that still amazes people today, and be so ignorant of the Kennedy assassination.

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One cannot overstate just how god owful the Chomper is on all the JFK stuff. I recently began going back over it to see if there was one true thing he typed. Am still reviewing it, so far nothing. But even I was shocked at just how insane some of the stuff is. In his 2010 book he actually implies that Allen Dulles was more mellow about Cuba than JFK!! And above all, there is no mention of any possible hint of CIA being on their own, doing stuff independent of Kennedy.

The stuff is so diametrically opposed to reality, and there are so incredibly many times where Chomsky is going along talking about subject A b or c and takes a break to make some insipid comparison to something that happened "in the Kennedy Administration' It is becoming increasingly difficult -- given the incredible sample size of his JFK bashing and the worse than wonder nutritional value of each morsal, that he is not another example of an Encounter Magazine "left?????" guard-rail for containment purposes. That's why when critiquing him it is always imperative NOT to associate him with "the left" per se. That only plays right into the psy op strategy being used.

You know what stands out above all else? His contempt for history. I mean he will be yammering along with some typically great stuff about Bush and how the Democrats bent over and allowed everything when all of a sudden you are in Chomsky's Conflationist Democratville and Chomsky is comparing Bush or Hillary to something JFK alegedly did during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Trouble is Chomsky is just brain-dead wrong. and there IS ABSOLUTELY NO HISTORICAL CONTEXT. The "unifying element" to this idea of a Chomskyparagraph is, it would seem, that "all democrats have always been the same and yes boys and girls , I am making the assassinations of the Kennedys the litmus test for being a good leftist"

Chomsky is about as anarchist as Sam Halperin.

[Marlene Zenker]

Ironically, this is in the news today. This made me laugh.

http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/...am_chomsky

[Steve Minnerly]

The other thing that drives me crazy about Chomsky ( and others ) is when he says "who cares".

Who cares ?

You meaning knowing the truth is suddenly no big deal ? Give me a break. An informed electorate is the basis of getting the right guy elected.

I wanna know what happened to Kennedy cause i wanna make damn sure i don't vote for anyone or any party that still believes in the use of those tactics. I want others to know also so they make the right political decisions. This stuff is important as Dennis Potter said.

The whole point of human existence is to know the truth.

[Frankie Vegas]

Rethinking Camelot?

[ed. note: I was never a Camelotian; a JFK activist of the time told me I'd die unmourned in a rat-infested garret]

Speaking of Chomsky's brain:

Of all of these theories, the only ones of any general interest are those that assume a massive cover-up, and a high-level conspiracy that required that operation. In that case, the assassination was an event of true political significance, breaking sharply from the normal course of politics and exercise of power. Such ideas make little sense unless coupled with the thesis that JFK was undertaking radical policy changes, or perceived to be by policy insiders.

The scale of the presumed conspiracy should be appreciated. There is not a phrase in the voluminous internal record hinting at any thought of such a notion. It must be, then, that personal discipline was extraordinary among a huge number of people, or that the entire record has been scrupulously sanitized. There has not been a single leak over thirty years, though a high-level conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy and conceal the crime would have to involve not only much of the government and the media, but a good part of the historical, scientific, and medical professions. An achievement so immense would be utterly without precedent or even remote analogue.(pg. 37)

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Re-watched Virtual JFK recently. I would think stopping 6 wars and trying to stop a seventh amid a government who were keen on war would be enough to get one assassinated.
Also, the related agencies and people were involved with murders of other heads of state, so assassinating one in their own country wouldn't be too much of a leap.

As for the cover up. I read something about that years ago that I wish I could remember. It basically explained that big cover ups can happen when there are a lot of little people told to cover a little piece up and not given a reason why but value their jobs (lives).

I'm so glad I found this thread. I've been meaning to look at Choamsky's ideas on this case.

[Mitchell Severson]

Chomsky is clearly wrong on the assassination. And Douglas and DiEugenio write convincingly that Chomsky is wrong on JFK's foreign policy positions and control over CIA. But, good lord, he cannot be a "gatekeeper". I think it's exceedingly more likely that he just interjected his "all politicians more or less represent business interests" analysis after Stone's movie piqued public interest in the topic. Unfortunately for Chomsky, this analysis does not seem to hold for JFK. On the other hand, he's probably turned 100,000 people away from conventional US foreign policy for every 1 he has convinced JFK's assassination was not a conspiracy or did not matter. Of all the leftists I've ever spoken to, none have mentioned his book or his thoughts on the subject. The man just happens to be wrong about an issue we find important. An issue a lot of writers get wrong, though. Including Maddow.

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

Mitchel, before rejecting out of hand the possibility that Guru Chomsky-- strangely symbiotic nemesis of the New York Times-- might be a gatekeeper please consider the following variables.

1) What is the sample size of the Chomsky writhings about JFK?
2) How many times does Chomsky land in his favorite Fiji refueling stop-- bashing JFK-- when on longer flights that have nothing to do with JFK
3) Just how many incredibly huge narrative shifting mistakes does Chomsky make in his historical-context stripped JFK tantrums. Consider the 6 mini-page section in 2010s Hopes and Prospects for example. Go ahead look at it. Look at the absolutely incredible things he says there e.g. Dulles less aggressive than JFK on Cuba, JFK responsible for Northwoods and 6 other whoppers just as mind-fucked... look at them them and then recall the 1) the huge sample size of this brain sewage then consider
4) the historically documented fact of Left-gatekeeping e.g. Encounter Magazine, the New York Review of Books. Plenty of great sources on tthis including by Frances Saunders, Hugh Wilford, Brett Gary.

Left Gatekeeping. > thanks for the barricades!!!

[Phil Dragoo]

http://www.ctka.net/reviews/Chomsky_Sick...genio.html

Noam Chomsky's Sickness unto Death

by Jim DiEugenio 11-07- 2012


Excerpt:

Noam Chomsky's attempt to obfuscate President Kennedy's policy to withdraw from Vietnam turned out to be rather unsuccessful. If one recalls, at the time that Oliver Stone's JFK was released, Chomsky wrote an article for Z Magazine and then published a book called Rethinking Camelot. Beneath all the excess verbiage, Chomsky was saying the following:

1.) That NSAM 263, issued in October 1963, did not actually mean what it said. Namely that Kennedy was planning on removing all American advisors from Vietnam.

2.) NSAM 273, signed by LBJ after Kennedy's death, did not actually impact or alter NSAM 263.

3.) All the witnesses that John Newman, Fletcher Prouty and Peter Scott adduced to bolster the fact that Kennedy was withdrawing from Vietnam, these men were all either biased or wrong.

4.) Vice-President Johnson was not really all that bad of a guy. And there was no real break in Vietnam policy when he took over. After all, he and Kennedy were essentially the same man in the sphere of foreign policy.

To put it mildy, Chomsky's attempt to promulgate this line was not effective. Especially when the Assassination Records and Review Board unearthed even more documents supporting Kennedy's plan. These were enough to influence even the mainstream media into writing news articles about Kennedy's plan to withdraw from Vietnam. (Probe Vol. 5 No. 3 pgs. 19-21) These new documents were released by the ARRB on December 22, 1997. Within days, the New York Times headlined a story with, "Kennedy Had a Plan for Early Exit in Vietnam." The Associated Press story read, "New Documents Hint that JFK Wanted U.S. out of Vietnam." The Philadelphia Inquirer story was bannered, "Papers support theory that Kennedy had plans for a Vietnam pullout."


End Excerpt


Destruction in detail of a disinformation agent

Chomsky demonstrates the centrality of Sibel Edmond's admonition to eschew the partisan in favor of deeper investigation

[Albert Rossi]

http://www.ctka.net/reviews/Chomsky_Sick...genio.html

Noam Chomsky's Sickness unto Death

by Jim DiEugenio 11-07- 2012


Excerpt:

Noam Chomsky's attempt to obfuscate President Kennedy's policy to withdraw from Vietnam turned out to be rather unsuccessful. If one recalls, at the time that Oliver Stone's JFK was released, Chomsky wrote an article for Z Magazine and then published a book called Rethinking Camelot. Beneath all the excess verbiage, Chomsky was saying the following:

1.) That NSAM 263, issued in October 1963, did not actually mean what it said. Namely that Kennedy was planning on removing all American advisors from Vietnam.

2.) NSAM 273, signed by LBJ after Kennedy's death, did not actually impact or alter NSAM 263.

3.) All the witnesses that John Newman, Fletcher Prouty and Peter Scott adduced to bolster the fact that Kennedy was withdrawing from Vietnam, these men were all either biased or wrong.

4.) Vice-President Johnson was not really all that bad of a guy. And there was no real break in Vietnam policy when he took over. After all, he and Kennedy were essentially the same man in the sphere of foreign policy.

To put it mildy, Chomsky's attempt to promulgate this line was not effective. Especially when the Assassination Records and Review Board unearthed even more documents supporting Kennedy's plan. These were enough to influence even the mainstream media into writing news articles about Kennedy's plan to withdraw from Vietnam. (Probe Vol. 5 No. 3 pgs. 19-21) These new documents were released by the ARRB on December 22, 1997. Within days, the New York Times headlined a story with, "Kennedy Had a Plan for Early Exit in Vietnam." The Associated Press story read, "New Documents Hint that JFK Wanted U.S. out of Vietnam." The Philadelphia Inquirer story was bannered, "Papers support theory that Kennedy had plans for a Vietnam pullout."


End Excerpt


Destruction in detail of a disinformation agent

Chomsky demonstrates the centrality of Sibel Edmond's admonition to eschew the partisan in favor of deeper investigation

A friend of mine, who has been an admirer of Chomsky (he holds a Ph.D. in linguistics from Princeton) both in his field and for his politics, nevertheless also could never understand his (or Cockburn's) stand on the JFK assassination. I gave him Jim's article to read, and he thanked me profusely for "setting him straight". I asked him if there was a tinge of irony in his reply, and he said, no, you've convinced me that Chomsky is wrong about JFK's Vietnam (and Cuba) policies.

To me, the business about continuity between NSAM 263 and NSAM 273 is as old as the reaction to P.D. Scott's earliest work on this subject. It smacks of the purpose of the "Pentagon Papers" -- lay the blame on the Democrats, and show Kennedy "started" the war.

[Tracy Riddle]

Alexander Cockburn pretty much summed up his (and Chomsky's) attitude in this quote:

"The effect of 'JFK' is to make people think that America is a good country that produced a good President killed by bad elites...This is an infantile, inactivist prescription for politics, essentially inviting people to put their faith in another good President, whose inevitable foul-up can then be blamed on the same bad elites."

[Magda Hassan]

Alexander Cockburn pretty much summed up his (and Chomsky's) attitude in this quote:

"The effect of 'JFK' is to make people think that America is a good country that produced a good President killed by bad elites...This is an infantile, inactivist prescription for politics, essentially inviting people to put their faith in another good President, whose inevitable foul-up can then be blamed on the same bad elites."

I wouldn't disagree with Cockburn's statement though.