12-11-2012, 04:19 PM
I liked Jim's article and just posted it everywhere, with a few caveats.
In attacking left-gatekeeper #1 one has to understand that Chomsky is not just wrong he is wrong for structural reasons.
His job is to get the left to suck up the bait planted by the right to throw the left off the trail.
Now initially this was done with the emergency-nuke threat-linked to -Castro Russians did it graft- on that worked so well on Earl Warren (eventually) and Carry McWilliams ofThe OSS alumni.... I mean The Nation (immediately).
The left is exactly who should have picked up the football and ran with it in the correct direction> i.e. that 11/22 was a right wing coup and it leads to today's corporate fascism. [note I am not saying they are the ONLY ones who should have been important] But they should have been loudest even though JFK was not a leftist. He was a real liberal, a species that no longer exists.
The genius of the CIA media op was to make bashing JFK as the "litmus test" of being a "goooooood leftists here's a biskit" Hence they created a firewall btw. left liberal and further left that has widened as foundation funded left-gatekeepers have widened the firewall until left-liberals have become an extinct species. Note that during the 1960s this bait was not sucked up because there was not enough time for Left-gatekeepers to erase history. They would have been called out, and in some cases were.
So the question then becomes how does one counter this gatekeeping function of Chomsky? IMO, the key point to remember is that Chomsky is not real issue, but rather the key point is to show that Chomsky helps the right not the left, and that Chomsky is not even a real leftists, just a marketed McLeftist.
Now IMO, this is not done by using the word Marxist on him. I mean that word is way too general and all kinds of hypocrites have used it just like the word Democratic was used in totalitarian East Germany. Now Cambodia... are we going to blame that on Karl too? Maybe SOME of it is a legitimate critique but the point about Vietnam , a communist country too, invading it to put a stop to the genocide seems relevant here.
The whole Cambodia think is IMO counterproductive to bring up again here , for a couple of reasons. One , Chomsky has written tons trying to clear up his position on this (practically the entire volume two of After the Cataclysm... the Cataclysm being the Vietnam War, not his views on Cambodia) Look I read it so long ago I just don't care anymore, and imo it is COUNTERPRODUCTIVE to bring it up in this JFK related thing. Why? Because AT FIRST GLANCE to the young and easily influenced Chomsky readers reading Guru Chomsky for the first time it will SEEM like it is rightist criticism of Chomsky and hence buttress him in a juvenile way as a Real Leftist ™ . Now one might very legitimately reply "fuck it with left , right, what about truth". I agree. Except that is not how left-gatekeeping works, and so , that is not how to counter it.
Again, the key point about Chomsky is not his own point on the spectrum but in how he CASTS those who talk about the JFK assassination as INHERENTLY NOT OF INTEREST TO THE LEFT. This is just not so. In fact it is the opposite of the truth. So all of this old Chomsky BS, as ridiculous as it is, should not be brought up again FOR this purpose because it will only be used as a dismissal mechanism to ignore the clear fact that Chomsky has been incredibly useful to cover up a right wing coup detat . Left-Gatekeeping is not just about the left. For their judgements about JFK are THE ONLY LEFT ideas that are picked up by the whole spectrum. Form NYT to Bill O'Reilly. Unless this left-gatekeeping is directly and mindfully confronted we have no chance. It is not just about the left.
In attacking left-gatekeeper #1 one has to understand that Chomsky is not just wrong he is wrong for structural reasons.
His job is to get the left to suck up the bait planted by the right to throw the left off the trail.
Now initially this was done with the emergency-nuke threat-linked to -Castro Russians did it graft- on that worked so well on Earl Warren (eventually) and Carry McWilliams ofThe OSS alumni.... I mean The Nation (immediately).
The left is exactly who should have picked up the football and ran with it in the correct direction> i.e. that 11/22 was a right wing coup and it leads to today's corporate fascism. [note I am not saying they are the ONLY ones who should have been important] But they should have been loudest even though JFK was not a leftist. He was a real liberal, a species that no longer exists.
The genius of the CIA media op was to make bashing JFK as the "litmus test" of being a "goooooood leftists here's a biskit" Hence they created a firewall btw. left liberal and further left that has widened as foundation funded left-gatekeepers have widened the firewall until left-liberals have become an extinct species. Note that during the 1960s this bait was not sucked up because there was not enough time for Left-gatekeepers to erase history. They would have been called out, and in some cases were.
So the question then becomes how does one counter this gatekeeping function of Chomsky? IMO, the key point to remember is that Chomsky is not real issue, but rather the key point is to show that Chomsky helps the right not the left, and that Chomsky is not even a real leftists, just a marketed McLeftist.
Now IMO, this is not done by using the word Marxist on him. I mean that word is way too general and all kinds of hypocrites have used it just like the word Democratic was used in totalitarian East Germany. Now Cambodia... are we going to blame that on Karl too? Maybe SOME of it is a legitimate critique but the point about Vietnam , a communist country too, invading it to put a stop to the genocide seems relevant here.
The whole Cambodia think is IMO counterproductive to bring up again here , for a couple of reasons. One , Chomsky has written tons trying to clear up his position on this (practically the entire volume two of After the Cataclysm... the Cataclysm being the Vietnam War, not his views on Cambodia) Look I read it so long ago I just don't care anymore, and imo it is COUNTERPRODUCTIVE to bring it up in this JFK related thing. Why? Because AT FIRST GLANCE to the young and easily influenced Chomsky readers reading Guru Chomsky for the first time it will SEEM like it is rightist criticism of Chomsky and hence buttress him in a juvenile way as a Real Leftist ™ . Now one might very legitimately reply "fuck it with left , right, what about truth". I agree. Except that is not how left-gatekeeping works, and so , that is not how to counter it.
Again, the key point about Chomsky is not his own point on the spectrum but in how he CASTS those who talk about the JFK assassination as INHERENTLY NOT OF INTEREST TO THE LEFT. This is just not so. In fact it is the opposite of the truth. So all of this old Chomsky BS, as ridiculous as it is, should not be brought up again FOR this purpose because it will only be used as a dismissal mechanism to ignore the clear fact that Chomsky has been incredibly useful to cover up a right wing coup detat . Left-Gatekeeping is not just about the left. For their judgements about JFK are THE ONLY LEFT ideas that are picked up by the whole spectrum. Form NYT to Bill O'Reilly. Unless this left-gatekeeping is directly and mindfully confronted we have no chance. It is not just about the left.