Jeremy Scahill on 9/11

[Paul Rigby]

To be sure the JFK assassination is something of a blind spot for Chomsky. As a linguist and academic he can't be unaware of his use of words here. But I take that on board and still find much of his analysis useful. I also find some limitation to structural analysis when it comes to looking into this area in general.

Language matters

Children must be rigorously indoctrinated in these conventions to ensure that Political Correctness will reign unchallenged. The most extensive study of high school history texts found that the word terror "does not appear once in reference to U.S. or client practices in any of the 48 texts examined in 1979 and 1990..."

Rethinking Camelot (London: Verso, 1993), p.61

Diction and repetition matter hugely, according to the author of RC.

Trouble is, Maggie, his followers don't really read him.

Paul - you have taken this massively out of context. In addition, you have only included part of the paragraph and ignored the broader argument within which it sits.

The passage can be seen on page 70 (not p61) here:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/3096270/Noam-C...ng-Camelot

The full paragraph is as follows:

Children must be rigorously indoctrinated in these conventions to ensure that Political Correctness will reign unchallenged. The most extensive study of high school history texts found that the word terror "does not appear once in reference to U.S. or client practices in any of the 48 texts examined in 1979 and 1990. The Viet Cong, it is duly noted, murdered and terrorized; one can only wonder how they could possibly out-terrorize Diem's US-backed forces." (Footnote 32). The answer to that question is quite simple: it is true by definition, the same device that expunges the vastly greater US terror, and its aggression itself, from the annals of history.

Footnote 32 reveals that the section in speechmarks is from John Marciano's "Ideological Hegemony and the War against Vietnam: A Critique of United States History Textbooks", 1992. And cites another study.

Chomsky is performing structural analysis of how "ideological hegemony" is maintained by ruling elites. He is not advocating its usage.

Indeed, it's rather curious that your "left gatekeeper" Chomsky, who you seem to consider an asset of American intelligence, talks about "the vastly greater US terror".

Paul - this is precisely why I don't get involved with your "specifics". I've just wasted an hour of my life searching out the original quote in full, and attempting to understand its proper context.

You could have saved that hour, Jan, by checking within the book version cited - where the instanced quote is indeed to be found on page 61 - and not an on-line version, which I wasn't citing.

Nor is Chomsky "performing structural analysis of how "ideological hegemony" is maintained by ruling elites" - he's replicating their techniques, having first taken care to suggest his opposition to their methods. That's a very different thing. It's all part of the rich charm of Chomsky's CIA-serving oeuvre.

Does he tell his readers that the US does beastly things all over the globe? Absolutely. He has to, it's part of his brief, and the primary means by which he established, and sustains, his "legend." Critics of left-gatekeepers have never denied any of that. What we argue is all together subtler, as befits the intellectual secret police work we critique.

Chomsky doesn't deny the CIA is guilty of monstrous crimes, he simply transfers responsibility for them to successive US presidents: The CIA, we are to understand, was just obeying orders.

A somewhat ironic defence, no, for a committed Zionist who has dedicated much of his career, as Blankfort details, to defending the state of Israel from the US left?