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Somewhat related, from Chomsky: "My own concern is primarily the terror and violence carried out by my own state, for two reasons. For one thing, because it ha
by jccc 9y ago
Somewhat related, from Chomsky:
"My own concern is primarily the terror and violence carried out by my own state, for two reasons. For one thing, because it happens to be the larger component of international violence. But also for a much more important reason than that: namely, I can do something about it. So even if the US was responsible for 2% of the violence in the world instead of the majority of it, it would be that 2% I would be primarily responsible for. And that is a simple ethical judgment. That is, the ethical value of one’s actions depends on their anticipated and predictable consequences.
"It is very easy to denounce the atrocities of someone else. That has about as much ethical value as denouncing atrocities that took place in the 18th century."
- navigator01 9y agoThe crimes of the United States measured in human lives destroyed are significantly less than Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot etc. We can very easily look at history and make this judgement. Equivocation here is not high intellectualism. It's intellectual dishonesty.
- wu-ikkyu 9y agoShould those crimes be excused just because someone else racked up a higher body count?
- navigator01 9y agoThey should be understood in context. The US was engaged in a war against dictatorial USSR style communism for nearly 50 years. History has shown the US to be on the right side of that conflict. Is people being killed ever a good thing? Almost never. Human life is inherently valuable. But is it at least more understandable when it is done in the name of trying to rid the world of a dangerous and destructive ideology? Yes it is.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- wu-ikkyu 9y ago>History has shown the US to be on the right side of that conflict. That depends on who wrote the history book you're reading. By the accounts of the millions of innocents slaughtered by both sides, neither side was in "the right".
- Can_Not 9y ago> But is it at least more understandable when it is done in the name of trying to rid the world of a dangerous and destructive ideology This is factually wrong, the cold war was about imperialism and spheres of influence. The US was tearing down democracies and propping up dictators left and right to counter the Soviet Union.
- jerf 9y agoOf course not. But I'd feel a lot better about saying that if I didn't expect that this isn't just a rhetorical gateway to turn around and ignore the high-body count crimes in favor of the politically-fashionable ones again, since "of course not" is the only dialectal response possible.
- jccc 9y agoThe quote directly addresses your point. What should U.S. citizens do about the crimes of other governments? By contrast, what should U.S. citizens do about crimes that are the doing of their own government, regardless of what proportion they are of the total state-level crimes in the world? This is what he means by ethical value of these judgments.
- navigator01 9y agoWell I think the US was more justified than Pol Pot, Stalin et. al. when it engaged in violence.
- icebraining 9y agoTalk about damning with faint praise.
- jccc 9y agoYou're arguing a different point from the one being discussed. The argument from the beginning was not about where the U.S. ranks in goodness vs. evil compared with other countries. Many people say Chomsky is full of it when he focuses his criticism on the U.S. for actions he believes to be state-level crimes because, these people say, other countries are the true evil ones. Chomsky's response is that even if you think the U.S. government is responsible for only 2% of the crimes in the world, it is this 2% that falls on his shoulders (and yours, and mine) as a U.S. citizen. His efforts on that 2% can have meaningful impact that can't be had on the other 98%.
- afarrell 9y ago> excused by a higher body count From 1939-1945, we sent tons and tons of weapons, cars, and rolling stock to Stalin. Were we justified in supporting him? If you say yes, then how do you decide which murderous dictators to be willing to support? Those who will oppose more powerful murderous dictators.
- baursak 9y agoHave you done the actual comparison? E.g. Native American Genocide vs Stalin's Purges as one example. What's the result?
- Can_Not 9y agoAlso Winston Churchill bragging about letting 2 million Indians starve. Stalin was trying to stop farmers from burning their own crops. It's interesting how one sided most of our "common knowledge" of the last century is.
- lazyasciiart 9y agoIf it were so easy to denounce the atrocities of someone else, then you'd expect to have fewer people willing to stand by and cover up for Harvey Weinstein and all the similar cases. It seems more correct to say that it is easy to denounce the atrocities of someone you already dislike, or somehow see as 'other'.
- grasshopperpurp 9y agoThis misses the point, because the people standing up for Weinstein would be more like people in his own state in Chomsky's example. They were close enough to do something about it.
- wutbrodo 9y agoPeople didn't stay quiet about HW because of some general difficulty of denouncing atrocities, they did so because he wielded significant influence and they didn't want their careers to suffer. This is sadly true of the victims as well: more than one of them has said that they wanted to go loud and public with it but were afraid that it would completely wreck their career through being blackballed, etc (and some of them have said that this _is_ what happened as a result of coming out with allegations). That doesn't apply at all to the US failing to denounce e.g. Indonesia.