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It's worth remembering that Noah Chomsky: ...denied the Hue massacres in Vietnam: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_at_Hu%E1%BA%BF http://en.wikipedia.org

It's worth remembering that Noah Chomsky: ...denied the Hue massacres in Vietnam: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_at_Hu%E1%BA%BF http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_at_Hu%E1%BA%BF ...denied the Khmer Rogue Holocaust in Cambodia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge#Genocide http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge#Genocide ...advocated actions that were eventually followed, which lead to the death and enslavement of millions of people... ....and he's never apologized for that, or taken culpability for those actions. The fact that he's a hero of some intellectual movements show the bankruptcy of those movements. There's real champions in the world, but he's not one of them. Noah Chomsky is an apologist for tyranny, and someone who has advocated extraordinarily bad policy. Even if you slant left - and I've been gradually moving more leftwards - this man should be treated as a pariah and an embarrassment for the horror his actions have helped perpetuate. Edit: Whoever is downvoting this, and especially the facts and citations following it... I don't know what to tell you. Chomsky got the policies he was advocating for, and Communist Southeast Asia was horror, bloodbath, and concentration camps afterwards. It was very bad. You might not have heard this side of the story, but it's what actually happened. The Khmer Rouge atrocities don't happen if the South Vietnam/USA coalition wins against the North Vietnam/USSR coalition, or at least winds up demilitarized like North Korea/South Korea.

dabeeeenster 15y ago
Do you have sources for these statements?
- loc7790 15y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Noam_Chomsky http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Noam_Chomsky http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomsky/thirdworldfascism.html http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomsky/thirdworldfascism.html
  - dabeeeenster 15y ago
    Thanks, but I see no mention of Hue in either of those pages?
    - loc7790 15y ago
      "On the massacre at Hue, Chomsky and Herman quote from a captured document in which the Viet Cong boast of having 'eliminated' thousands of people, but they dismiss the evidence because 'nowhere in the document is it claimed or even suggested that any civilians had been executed'." http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomsky/thirdworldfascism.html http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomsky/thirdworldfascism.html
- lionhearted 15y ago
  It's been discussed before on HN, here's last time - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1775881 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1775881 "Space limitations preclude a comprehensive review, but such journals as the Far Eastern Economic Review, the London Economist, the Melbourne Journal of Politics, and others elsewhere, have provided analyses by highly qualified specialists who have studied the full range of evidence available, and who concluded that executions have numbered at most in the thousands; that these were localized in areas of limited Khmer Rouge influence and unusual peasant discontent, where brutal revenge killings were aggravated by the threat of starvation resulting from the American destruction and killing." - Noah Chomsky http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Noam_Chomsky#Position_on_Cambodian_atrocities_criticized http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Noam_Chomsky#Posit... And: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1775946 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1775946 > I think you're exaggerating the point to some degree by saying "there's no concentration camps in Cambodia", but I think you're generally right. "...that these were localized in areas of limited Khmer Rouge influence and unusual peasant discontent, where brutal revenge killings were aggravated by the threat of starvation resulting from the American destruction and killing" He says they were: 1. In areas not under the control of the Khmer Rouge (false) 2. Manages to somehow blame the United States for the few killings he does admit happened. A lot of people don't realize that if the United States and South Vietnamese had won the war, the massacres in Cambodia don't happen. Cambodia would've been next. American Withdrawl: 15 May 1975 Fall of Saigon: 30 April 1975 Khmer Rouge Genocide: 1975 to 1979 Wikipedia: "The Killing Fields were a number of sites in Cambodia where large numbers of people were killed and buried by the Khmer Rouge regime, during its rule of the country from 1975 to 1979, immediately after the end of the Vietnam War." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Killing_Fields http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Killing_Fields (emphasis mine) That wouldn't have happened with a stable joint American/South Vietnamese presence next door. Couldn't have happened, the USA wouldn't have allowed massacre on that scale the way the communist powers did. At the risk of getting into political territory, I think people like Noah Chomsky and Jane Fonda have a lot more blood on their hands than any of the military commanders they like to criticize.
almost 15y ago
You definitely need references for your claims there. As far as I know, and I'm not a Noam Chomsky expert, he has compared the media attention given to massacres in some parts of the world with massacres in others. From what I've read of him he didn't say that they didn't happen or that they weren't awful. But like I said, I'm not expert. And from the bits of Chomsky's writings and interviews that I have read I certainly don't agree with all of his opinions although I do find him an interesting man. But you certainly need to provide evidence when you make claims like that against anyone, it's just not acceptable to make the statements on their own.
- loc7790 15y ago
  References are already given below.
euromix 15y ago
I have a very different memory than you. I recall him showing that some other massacre (east timor) of the same scale as Cambodia was covered much less than this one in western media. His conclusion was that western power chose what Holocaust to oppose according to their political agenda but not according to moral standart. I agree with this statement and it does not mean that Khmer massacre was not an holocaust.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

dabeeeenster 15y ago

Do you have sources for these statements?

loc7790 15y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Noam_Chomsky http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Noam_Chomsky http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomsky/thirdworldfascism.html http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomsky/thirdworldfascism.html
- dabeeeenster 15y ago
  Thanks, but I see no mention of Hue in either of those pages?
  - loc7790 15y ago
    "On the massacre at Hue, Chomsky and Herman quote from a captured document in which the Viet Cong boast of having 'eliminated' thousands of people, but they dismiss the evidence because 'nowhere in the document is it claimed or even suggested that any civilians had been executed'." http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomsky/thirdworldfascism.html http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomsky/thirdworldfascism.html
lionhearted 15y ago
It's been discussed before on HN, here's last time - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1775881 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1775881 "Space limitations preclude a comprehensive review, but such journals as the Far Eastern Economic Review, the London Economist, the Melbourne Journal of Politics, and others elsewhere, have provided analyses by highly qualified specialists who have studied the full range of evidence available, and who concluded that executions have numbered at most in the thousands; that these were localized in areas of limited Khmer Rouge influence and unusual peasant discontent, where brutal revenge killings were aggravated by the threat of starvation resulting from the American destruction and killing." - Noah Chomsky http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Noam_Chomsky#Position_on_Cambodian_atrocities_criticized http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Noam_Chomsky#Posit... And: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1775946 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1775946 > I think you're exaggerating the point to some degree by saying "there's no concentration camps in Cambodia", but I think you're generally right. "...that these were localized in areas of limited Khmer Rouge influence and unusual peasant discontent, where brutal revenge killings were aggravated by the threat of starvation resulting from the American destruction and killing" He says they were: 1. In areas not under the control of the Khmer Rouge (false) 2. Manages to somehow blame the United States for the few killings he does admit happened. A lot of people don't realize that if the United States and South Vietnamese had won the war, the massacres in Cambodia don't happen. Cambodia would've been next. American Withdrawl: 15 May 1975 Fall of Saigon: 30 April 1975 Khmer Rouge Genocide: 1975 to 1979 Wikipedia: "The Killing Fields were a number of sites in Cambodia where large numbers of people were killed and buried by the Khmer Rouge regime, during its rule of the country from 1975 to 1979, immediately after the end of the Vietnam War." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Killing_Fields http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Killing_Fields (emphasis mine) That wouldn't have happened with a stable joint American/South Vietnamese presence next door. Couldn't have happened, the USA wouldn't have allowed massacre on that scale the way the communist powers did. At the risk of getting into political territory, I think people like Noah Chomsky and Jane Fonda have a lot more blood on their hands than any of the military commanders they like to criticize.

almost 15y ago

You definitely need references for your claims there. As far as I know, and I'm not a Noam Chomsky expert, he has compared the media attention given to massacres in some parts of the world with massacres in others. From what I've read of him he didn't say that they didn't happen or that they weren't awful. But like I said, I'm not expert. And from the bits of Chomsky's writings and interviews that I have read I certainly don't agree with all of his opinions although I do find him an interesting man. But you certainly need to provide evidence when you make claims like that against anyone, it's just not acceptable to make the statements on their own.

loc7790 15y ago
References are already given below.

euromix 15y ago

I have a very different memory than you. I recall him showing that some other massacre (east timor) of the same scale as Cambodia was covered much less than this one in western media. His conclusion was that western power chose what Holocaust to oppose according to their political agenda but not according to moral standart. I agree with this statement and it does not mean that Khmer massacre was not an holocaust.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]