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1 - His Ukraine stance is simply that we have had a Cold War paradox in our American minds since the 50s, Russia is both too strong a foe to ignore and a paper

• cmrdporcupine 3y ago
  The problem with the Ukraine stuff is that it falls easily into the same crap position as Varoufakis and others on the left which is basically a) some kind of "realism" about what Ukraine should do [basically surrender] and b) gives credence to much of the crap that Lavrov has put out on the public stage about this war being somehow about American imperialism. Well, duh, everything is about imperialism, but what's missing from Chomsky's analysis is that: Russian imperialism is far far far worse. I am not so much distressed by Chomsky's position on this issue as that of many of his followers/fans who seem to lack nuance entirely Lefteast had some good articles on this topic and the crappy role many western "left wing" intellectuals have been playing. I will try to dig them up.
  • johndhi 3y ago
    Why is Russia's imperialism far far far worse? What about the us invasion of Iraq is "better" than the Russia invasion of Ukraine?
    • snowpid 3y ago
      1.) Iraq was never annexed by USA. 2.) American govertment never claimed there is no Iraqi culture. 3.) There was no large kidnapping of Iraqi kids. 4.) There are no mass rapes made by the American military. 5.) Iraqis were never forced to forget Arab and learn only English. 6.) Hussein used poison gas on Kurdish people and used Zyklon B filled rockets (yes, same gas like in Ausschwitz) to attack Israel. Hussein occupied Kuwait and attacked Saudi - Arabia. There is no remotely similar thing the Ukraine goverment did in the past.
      • za3faran 3y ago
        Lots of these are paper arguments. Yeah so Iraq was not "annexed", but the west installed a puppet government to do what they want, and they attempted to brainwash the population with western values. They did the same in Afghanistan, but fortunately they failed miserably and left in a humiliated manner. Maybe the kidnapping wasn't as bad as ukraine, but the hundreds of thousands killed and millions displaced and sick and poor and left without anything would like to have a word with you. I'm not defending Saddam's atrocities, but let's not pretend that the US didn't nuke Japan or use napalm in Vietnam. Fact of the matter is that the western hypocrisy is now more exposed than ever. You think they really care about Ukraine? All they see is more room to expand their influence and power in the globe.
        • 0xDEF 3y ago
          >Iraq was not "annexed", but the west installed a puppet government to do what they want, and they attempted to brainwash the population with western values. This is a lie. There was a legitimate democratic election in Iraq in January 2005 with 58% voter turnout. Because of the Shia majority of Iraq they voted into power a pro-Iranian Shia-dominated government which is the very opposite of a US "puppet government".
          • za3faran 3y ago
            If you believe that the west didn't have a hand in the outcome, I have a bridge to sell you. Plus, we don't believe in western style democracy in our tradition, so further proof of western destruction and meddling in other countries' affairs. Quite the hypocrisy when they do it themselves but then cry when another power like Russia does it (and I don't condone what is happening in Ukraine either, but the hypocrisy must be pointed out).
    • ajuc 3y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_genocide_of_Ukrainians_in_the_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine#Assessments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_genocide_of_Ukr... Let's also remember a few millions of Ukrainians were starved to death not 100 years ago by Russians. Ukraine is and was the most fertile soil in Europe. Russians sent soldiers to steal food and to ban people from leaving. This is what happens when Russia invades you. People in the west have no comparison.
      • johndhi 3y ago
        Some interesting responses here but imo these sound like "worse" but not "far far far worse" conditions to me. A war where lots of people are being killed exploded maimed raped generationally ruined or traumatized - is really horrible either way. It sounds like Russia has somewhat worse intentional practices than us but I don't see what the us did as okay in any sense.
        • ajuc 3y ago
          Russians on their TV openly argue for killing "every Ukrainian". The fact we are even arguing about this is the best evidence that morality is relative...
          • mrguyorama 3y ago
            And that's just the start. They openly advocate for nuking western nations. Imagine if Anderson Cooper spent tens of minutes ranting about how we should just nuke Russia and China because fuck them
            • cmrdporcupine 3y ago
              I'm no apologist for Russia, and you can see that from where I started this thread, but... You act like there aren't actually dozens and dozens of Fox-news style commentators on US media and talk radio who haven't said similar things before, about various enemies of the USA? The asshats on Russian media saying these things are basically the Russian equivalent of that crap. Demagogues etc Some of the shit I heard coming from American right wing media after 9/11 was downright scary.
    • torstenvl 3y ago
      The U.S. could do better about prosecuting troops who commit war crimes, but it does prosecute them. By contrast, Russia openly condones war crimes. Not in the debatable "enhanced interrogation" borderline kind of way. In the kidnapping children to wipe out an entire cultural history and intentionally bombing civilian targets kind of way.
      • za3faran 3y ago
        Why prosecute just the troops and not those in command who ordered the war crimes? Starting with Bush sr, Clinton, Bush, Obama, and the rest of the gang and all the way down the chain of command.
    • cmrdporcupine 3y ago
      Ok, let's put it another way so we don't play whataboutisms, which this is what this is veering into: Would you rather your country and governance be controlled and dominated by Russia or by the EU & the west? I think most people here, if they're being honest, know that despite all its issues, political and economic life in the Baltic states, Poland, Czech Republic, etc. is better in most respects than life in Belarus or large parts of Russia, or the Russian dominated states that surround it. We can debate why that is the case, but I think that's basically fact. (Yes, I hear the streets of Minsk are very clean and it's a "well ordered" society, but this is the kind of thing we hear about all sorts of authoritarian countries and it doesn't make up for lack of basic democracy and individual freedoms, etc.) In other words: We are not talking in this concrete instance about whether "the invasion of Iraq is better/worse than Russian invasion of Ukraine", but whether Russian dominance and control of Ukraine is better or worse for Ukrainians than western. I think on the whole the Ukrainian people have voiced their position on this. Now, whether life will be better for Ukrainians in a post-Russian-control world, I can't say, because it seems the Putin/Lavrov regime is doing its best to make that impossible by destroying as much of Ukraine's productive capacity and future success as it can. Russian strategy seems to have transitioned -- about last fall -- from "occupy as much as we can and destroy the Zelensky regime and take over" to "retreat to a defensive line and f*ck up as much of the rest of Ukraine as we can, salting the earth to make it clear what leaving Russian domination looks like" Clearly the US invasion of Iraq is a historic war crime. It should not have happened, and I agree with others that the perpetrators should be held to account. But this isn't a math equation where we balance the one action with the other. We are talking about the physical real lives of Ukrainians, and their ability to control their own country and trade with who they want, and manage their own affairs -- not Iraq. In other words, it's not US imperialism in the abstract vs Russian imperialism in the abstract, it's in this instance for this real world situation the case that western/EU/US alignment is better in the long run for Ukraine than Putin's.
      • johndhi 3y ago
        Great post.
  • fishtacos 3y ago
    Chomsky has missed the mark more than once. His response to the NATO campaign against Serbia during the Kosovo war was what clinched it for me. He's come back to apologize about being misunderstood in that he was only opposing NATO intervention because it would lead to a response (no shit) against ethnic Albanians by Serbs... Talk about missing the forest for the trees. The ethnic cleansing of Albanians in Kosovo had been going on for almost a century at that point - not all ethnic cleansing is militaristic. It can occur via political representation, whitewashing of one's history, meaning, presence, through educational systems, sidelined and ignored into oblivion, like so many cultures have been. I think he's taking a similar tone-deaf view of the Ukrainian conflict.
    • cmrdporcupine 3y ago
      Agree 100%. FWIW I was in various left wing activist groups at the time and the Chomsky-type position was both mainstream, but one I disagreed with and one thing that pushed me further away from those kinds of groupings. It's a blind tribal positioning -- NATO / US bad, therefore everything it does bad. But this is in no way a materialist or logical method of analysis. Either you support the oppressed and minorities (e.g. Kosovan Albanians or Ukrainians etc) or you don't, and making abstract statements about right and wrong without having an actual tactical answer is irresponsible when people's lives are on the line. But, worse, we're finding there's people who not only have essentially abstentionist positions but also there's a large portion of "the left" that is explicitly pro-Russian through some sort of aesthetic and/or cultural attachment to some Russophile past related to the Soviet Union (e.g. "Tankies"), or just raging anti-American positions that push them in that direction (the George Galloway types) etc. etc. These people are... really messed up, but also way more prominent than I realized/feared. There is simply no excuse to support an authoritarian, homophobic, violent, quasi-theocratic, terrorizing gangsterist regime like Putin's... wow
      • fishtacos 3y ago
        Like you, I've managed to navigate myself through the minefield of various activist groups I also subscribed to, at least in concept... It appears, to me, that one's alliances are teaching moments (months, years) that lead to a rather enticing, surreptitious, inward analysis of of the logic and values one considers primary. >>There is simply no excuse to support an authoritarian, homophobic, violent, quasi-theocratic, terrorizing gangsterist regime like Putin's... Not to pat each other on the back, but we are in agreement. To bring it down to a more simplistic, humane POV, follow the Golden Rule: do unto others etc... Russia has failed at the first 3 words of that written/said idea of reciprocity and is unfortunately, damn proud of it.
• ajuc 3y ago
  Ad 1. There's no paradox. Russia is a paper tiger that barely works. But it has nukes and enough conventional army to fuck up small countries in Eastern Europe. Hence they seek NATO membership. The war isn't about USA, the war is about deciding whether Russia can again occupy about 100 000 000 people living there. Chomsky arguing against west involvement is enabling Russia. This isn't rocket science. If Baltic States didn't join NATO they would be gone by now. Poland would be likely fighting a war as we speak. Ad 2. I have a lot of people I respect tell me his linguistic ideas make some sense, but for me it's just wrong (see LLMs). It's not my specialty and it's his specialty so I usually resist the urge to speak about it. He doesn't seem to have any problems speaking about Eastern European politicis tho, without knowing much about it. I'd cry "colonialism" but that's cheap.
• snowpid 3y ago
  According to wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Noam_Chomsky#Views_on_Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Noam_Ch...) ' In October 2022, he called on the U.S. to stop "undermining negotiations" between Ukraine and Russia.[137] In an interview with New Statesman published in April 2023, Chomsky is quoted in saying that Russia was fighting more "humanely" in Ukraine than the U.S. did in Iraq, and that Russia was "acting with restraint and moderation" as Ukraine had not suffered "large-scale destruction of infrastructure" compared to Iraq.[138] Chomsky also asserted that Ukraine was not a free actor, that it was the U.S. and then United Kingdom which refused peace negotiations to further their own national interests, and that U.S. military aid to Ukraine is aimed at degrading Russian military forces.[138] Chomsky also argued that the applications to join NATO by Sweden and Finland had "nothing to do with fear of a Russian attack, which has never been even conceived", but instead was to give both countries new markets for their military industries and access to advanced equipment.[138] ' and that is copying Russian propaganda. Not all he says about the war is Russian propaganda but more than you claim. Chomsky fan boys just start to read the wikipedia articles and stop defending him.
• diegoeche 3y ago
  The article is bullshit. He had interesting criticism for imperialist policy in the US, but after the 90s it becames a tiring "west is bad". Not only he blames the victim with Ukraine, he did it with the Serbian ethnic cleansing and the Cambodian genocide. Him: On the Cambodian genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide_denial#Chomsky_and_Herman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide_denial#Chom... Him: On the Srebrenica massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_genocide_denial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_genocide_denial