4 ms·

Ignored or silently blacklisted is probably a more apt description.

anigbrowl 9y ago
Oh come on, he's a tenured professor at an elite university and very, very widely known. I ignore most of his output because a) he's inconsistent and engages in apologetics, b) I have a big problem with how he constructs his arguments - basically he never looks at things from the side of the people he's criticizing, and thus leaves his readers poorly equipped to field counter-arguments, and c) there are lots of other writers who I think do a better job. Maybe I'm judging him harshly, and if I'd encountered him at a younger age his writings would have been a worthwhile on-ramp into the same field of knowledge. But as an adult I find his writing like pouring gasoline or kerosene on a campfire: it flares up satisfyingly for a few seconds, but that's no way to build a fire that will burn steadily for hours and sustain people through a cold night.
- baursak 9y ago
  I don't think anything you said contradicts what I said though. He's more known outside the US than inside. His writings only appear in book format or in marginal media outlets. NYT and WaPo crowd would rarely, if ever, have him write an op-ed. The only TV appearances he can manage are on Democracy Now.
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    I don't know or care to measure his relative popularity, and living in the Bay Area it's quite difficult to asses his popularity in the US at large, but Chomsky has struck me as one of the most well-known writers on the left for >20 years now. So what if he's mainly published in book form? I don't think of op-eds as good for anything more than cocktail party chat, I've certainly never heard of anyone taking any kind of meaningful political action in response to one. Sometimes they help to draw attention to an obscure issue or influence people a bit at election time, but his absence from op-ed pages bothers me not one whit. It can be convenient for a political establishment to have some popular, attractive, but ultimately ineffective figures (often unconsciously - please don't overlook this) for others to cluster around. Such persons are referred to as Judas Goats, from ranching where the idea originates. This is why it bothers me that Chomsky gets his readers all fired up over injustice but never seems to equip them with the intellectual tools to do very much about it. Given his manifest intellectual talents, it's strange that he opts for the role of a preacher railing against sin rather than delving into the root causes. I'm not saying don't read him or take him seriously, he has a lot of valuable things to say. But if you just rely on Chomsky and want to get into radical politics, it's like going into battle with a nerf gun. He's very moralistic, but as his arguments often never address things from the point of view he's railing against they're very easy to deflect. Of course Chomsky would argue that the The Establishment has a whole body of media arguing on its behalf and he sees no reason to do their work for them, but that doesn't really equip his readers to argue the case, which is where the rubber meets the road. Also (and I know I'm not the first to say this) Chomsky is really good at saying what he thinks is wrong with the world but not at equipping his readers with tactical responses to do anything about it, other than shouting into a megaphone. This a problem with left activism in general, which has been lacking in the tactics and strategy department. That's not Chomsky's fault, but agitation without organization leads to futility and demoralization. Alinsky's Rules for Radicals remains a standard primer of activist organizing methods but at times it seems to have been almost forgotten about by people on the left. I only heard about it because people in the Tea Party took up using it and shared its contents widely while pretending to be very outraged by their existence. (As a general rule, your opponents are often far better teachers than your friends, in any context, not just politics.) I could name a large pro-Democratic political forum that I've read for 10 years where I've only seen it mentioned once or twice, and then only in passing rather than as a repository of useful techniques. So if you're dissatisfied with the state of the world, the best thing you could do would be donate your Chomsky books to a thrift store and pick that up instead. Sun Tzu wouldn't hurt either.
    - baursak 9y ago
      I don't agree with your assessment of his writing as "preaching", because that would be the most boring and dullest preaching I've ever read. Most of my Chomsky reading experience seems like reading academic writing in tone and substance, with copious facts, footnotes, and endless pages of references in the back. This also addresses your point of "never addressing things from point of view he's arguing against", unless those points of view have different facts. Maybe you can cite a few examples of what you mean for me to understand your argument better. As far as root cause analysis, again, can you explain what you mean? Chomsky is a well known anarchist and frequently discusses issues of capital, power, etc. "Understanding Power" is a title of one of most popular books, for example.

Oh come on, he's a tenured professor at an elite university and very, very widely known. I ignore most of his output because a) he's inconsistent and engages in apologetics, b) I have a big problem with how he constructs his arguments - basically he never looks at things from the side of the people he's criticizing, and thus leaves his readers poorly equipped to field counter-arguments, and c) there are lots of other writers who I think do a better job. Maybe I'm judging him harshly, and if I'd encountered him at a younger age his writings would have been a worthwhile on-ramp into the same field of knowledge. But as an adult I find his writing like pouring gasoline or kerosene on a campfire: it flares up satisfyingly for a few seconds, but that's no way to build a fire that will burn steadily for hours and sustain people through a cold night.

baursak 9y ago
I don't think anything you said contradicts what I said though. He's more known outside the US than inside. His writings only appear in book format or in marginal media outlets. NYT and WaPo crowd would rarely, if ever, have him write an op-ed. The only TV appearances he can manage are on Democracy Now.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  I don't know or care to measure his relative popularity, and living in the Bay Area it's quite difficult to asses his popularity in the US at large, but Chomsky has struck me as one of the most well-known writers on the left for >20 years now. So what if he's mainly published in book form? I don't think of op-eds as good for anything more than cocktail party chat, I've certainly never heard of anyone taking any kind of meaningful political action in response to one. Sometimes they help to draw attention to an obscure issue or influence people a bit at election time, but his absence from op-ed pages bothers me not one whit. It can be convenient for a political establishment to have some popular, attractive, but ultimately ineffective figures (often unconsciously - please don't overlook this) for others to cluster around. Such persons are referred to as Judas Goats, from ranching where the idea originates. This is why it bothers me that Chomsky gets his readers all fired up over injustice but never seems to equip them with the intellectual tools to do very much about it. Given his manifest intellectual talents, it's strange that he opts for the role of a preacher railing against sin rather than delving into the root causes. I'm not saying don't read him or take him seriously, he has a lot of valuable things to say. But if you just rely on Chomsky and want to get into radical politics, it's like going into battle with a nerf gun. He's very moralistic, but as his arguments often never address things from the point of view he's railing against they're very easy to deflect. Of course Chomsky would argue that the The Establishment has a whole body of media arguing on its behalf and he sees no reason to do their work for them, but that doesn't really equip his readers to argue the case, which is where the rubber meets the road. Also (and I know I'm not the first to say this) Chomsky is really good at saying what he thinks is wrong with the world but not at equipping his readers with tactical responses to do anything about it, other than shouting into a megaphone. This a problem with left activism in general, which has been lacking in the tactics and strategy department. That's not Chomsky's fault, but agitation without organization leads to futility and demoralization. Alinsky's Rules for Radicals remains a standard primer of activist organizing methods but at times it seems to have been almost forgotten about by people on the left. I only heard about it because people in the Tea Party took up using it and shared its contents widely while pretending to be very outraged by their existence. (As a general rule, your opponents are often far better teachers than your friends, in any context, not just politics.) I could name a large pro-Democratic political forum that I've read for 10 years where I've only seen it mentioned once or twice, and then only in passing rather than as a repository of useful techniques. So if you're dissatisfied with the state of the world, the best thing you could do would be donate your Chomsky books to a thrift store and pick that up instead. Sun Tzu wouldn't hurt either.
  - baursak 9y ago
    I don't agree with your assessment of his writing as "preaching", because that would be the most boring and dullest preaching I've ever read. Most of my Chomsky reading experience seems like reading academic writing in tone and substance, with copious facts, footnotes, and endless pages of references in the back. This also addresses your point of "never addressing things from point of view he's arguing against", unless those points of view have different facts. Maybe you can cite a few examples of what you mean for me to understand your argument better. As far as root cause analysis, again, can you explain what you mean? Chomsky is a well known anarchist and frequently discusses issues of capital, power, etc. "Understanding Power" is a title of one of most popular books, for example.