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I’ve never read a critique of Chomsky that didn’t distort his views to the point of absurdity, and Nick Cohen’s “review” of Hegemony or Survival in The Observer is one of the most absurd I’ve ever read. I could write several thousand words here unpacking each juicy misrepresentation. These things get written all the time, I suppose. But even as a “non-political” book reviewer, I am shocked that this kind of thing gets published in a serious national newspaper. Doesn’t The Observer have a literary editor?
After more or less ignoring the book under review, Cohen quotes Jose Ramos-Horta, one of the leaders of the struggle for independence of East Timor (for which Chomsky himself played a large role in enabling), who asked: “Why did I not see one single banner or hear one speech calling for the end of human rights abuses in Iraq, the removal of the dictator and freedom for the Iraqis and the Kurdish people?”
Cohen rounds off in apparent triumph by adding: “Perhaps Professor Chomsky would like to carry on his campaign against hypocrisy by answering him.”
He already has, a million times: take this from a recent Washington Post response to a critic who thinks opposing Bush means supporting bin Laden etc:
“If what you mean is that I have criticized Bush’s policies more than Osama’s, that’s because I take for granted, like everyone else, that Osama bin Laden is a murderous thug, who the current incumbents in Washington should never have supported through the 1980s, and who should be apprehended and tried for his crimes right now - as I’ve written - and don’t see any point reiterating what 100% of us believe about him. But I am a citizen of the US, and therefore share responsibility for US government policies, and assume that one of the duties of citizenship is to live up to that responsibility - by criticizing policies one thinks are wrong, for example.”
One might also say, why should we demonstrate against the crimes of our leader’s pawns (and so become a pawn ourselves)?
Perhaps Nick Cohen, as a subject of her Majesty’s, can provide us with evidence of his opposition to Indonesian genocide in East Timor, as supported by the US? Maybe he did oppose it. So was it “a mistake”? Or is there a pattern that he cannot make out, with each atrocity adding one more square to the American Foregin Policy Quilt?
If he had faced the book rather than effaced it, he might have woken up from his uneasy, Orwellian dreams beneath that quilt.
Other Splinters posts of interest:
- Birds On The Wire I’ve just discovered two inte…
- Leonard Cohen Live At Last
- Hallelujah Terrific news - Leonard Cohen is goi…
- ‘Bring me the head of Bin Laden’
- Most wanted
