9 ms·

Chomsky praises Snowden and condemns US hypocrisy

184 points by wlj 13y ago

northwest 13y ago
I think it's time somebody hand Chomsky a bigger mic.
- grandalf 13y ago
  That would be nice, but among those with the intellect to understand any kind of nuanced view, his opinions are well respected.
pvdm 13y ago
"Prism is an attack on American citizens" -Chomsky
- northwest 13y ago
  It's actually pretty strange that even he limits the damage to the US only. Whereas it's clearly worldwide damage. EDIT: I suppose he phrased it this way so that we listen more closely (or listen at all).
  - znowi 13y ago
    Attack on American citizens is a way more powerful message than attack on German or some other "second class" citizenry :) But also, it is American elected officials who deployed the program on American taxpayers money. Therefore, American citizens, unknowing to themselves, have become a major investor into the greatest surveillance network in history, which spies back on them and the rest of the world. So Chomsky's quote hit it right home.
    - northwest 13y ago
      Great point.
soup10 13y ago
Chomsky takes the anti-American, or anti-government side of any and all debates and writes whiny essays full of sarcastic jabs that preach to a choir of the faithful. He makes no attempt to consider the side of government(or whoever he as casting as the villain at the moment of his self righteous spiel). It's as much of a tragedy to take him seriously as it is to take radical right think tank garbage seriously.
- tome 13y ago
  It's a shame you're being downvoted. Chomsky is clearly an idealist and he's never mananged to convince me he has a clue about how human beings and the real world actually work. Would I like to live in peace and prosperity in Chomsky's dream anarcho-liberal world? Of course. Do I think humanity can get there in the next hundred years. No way. We are all allowed to dream, but thank goodness some of us are also realistic.
- graeme 13y ago
  Without an example of specific instances where Chomsky does this, and reasons why he was wrong, this is pure ad hominem.
  - omonra 13y ago
    http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomskyhoax.html http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomskyhoax.html Please do familiarize yourself with his views on other issues.
    - eksith 13y ago
      Excellent! I always wanted to read a completely unbiased (and totally not cherry-picked and wasn't compiled by a fanatical detractor) resource on Chomsky's collected works. Clearly, this is it. Worth noting, Paul Bogdanor contributed to The Anti-Chomsky Reader : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anti-Chomsky_Reader http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anti-Chomsky_Reader While I'm educating myself, I really should tune to Rush Limbaugh to learn about contraception, feminism and LGBT rights.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
Todd 13y ago
Link to associated video: http://mondoweiss.net/2013/07/chomsky-says-snowden-should-be-honored-for-telling-americans-what-the-government-was-doing.html http://mondoweiss.net/2013/07/chomsky-says-snowden-should-be... The quoted segment starts at 1:21:25
OldSchool 13y ago
Chomsky is one of the greatest intellectuals of our time. The man has nothing to lose and nothing to gain by voicing his thoughts. Too bad he is getting up there in age but hopefully we will enjoy his presence for many more years.
- fixxer 13y ago
  Agreed. He is so very adept at reducing a complicated system into simple relationships of cause and effect. No government is to be trusted not to manipulate the population through fear. That should be taught in grade school.
  - lukifer 13y ago
    "The burden of proof must always be on state power to justify itself."
- jgalt212 13y ago
  Irrespective of anything Chomsky says on the whole Snowden affair, Chomsky is bad American/borderline traitor. If there's an anti-American government position to take on an issue, he'll find it and take it.
  - pfraze 13y ago
    Dissent isn't treason, even if you do it a lot.
    - jgalt212 13y ago
      He dissents, per Chris Hitchens, even when such dissent is "stupid and ignorant." So if Chomsky is too smart to be "stupid and ignorant," he must do so out of his need to be a bad American. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2011/05/chomskys_follies.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_wor...
      - 13y ago
orbitingpluto 13y ago
Unsurprisingly, non-Americans take exception to American exceptionalism. America is literally pulling a, "We're better than you so we can violate any of your laws - including our own - and then murder, torture & kidnap. We are sovereign over the entire world." Few non-Americans think that's a swell idea, so it will only last as long as American power lasts. If you agree with Chomsky or not or if you think American power will last or not, you at least have to be able to concede that everybody else in the world has a valid gripe about the benevolent bully who really likes his big stick. Chomsky is just an American who noticed that...
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- hox 13y ago
  Do you honestly think other nations don't do the same? Treating the U.S. as an exceptional case in this regards is just ridiculous.
  - sinkasapa 13y ago
    Nationalism is indeed horrible everywhere it is found. Patriotism should be treated just like racism wherever it is encountered. It is a mechanism for one group of people to dehumanize another or at least feel superior to another. But I think the most powerful nations are the most frightening.
  - peterashford 13y ago
    Yeah, us New Zealanders have kidnapped lots of US citizens and handed them over for torture in opposition of own laws. We've established an overseas prison explicitly to hold people who would have rights if we imprisoned them locally. But, you know, it's cool : all states do the same thing.
    - dnautics 13y ago
      don't be so smug. It almost happened, with kim dot com.
cconroy 13y ago
(This has nothing to do with Snowden but Chomsky's main point.) One thing I found troubling about all this is you can't expect the victims in other countries to decouple the intentions of the American gov't from American citizens. Except (even more troubling) is that citizens seem to support drone warfare (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/03/10/most-americans-approve-of-foreign-drone-strikes/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/03/10/m...).
- northwest 13y ago
  > you can't expect the victims in other countries to decouple the intentions of the American gov't from American citizens. And that is why all these drone wars actually keep the "terrorist" recruiting machine running. A handful of people in the US make huge $$$ on war (the military budgets are surreal, plus, billions are suddenly "lost", etc.). $$$ are a clear incentive for war. This creates new terrorists. These need to be hunted and killed. That means we need to keep the "defense" budget high. And as a bonus, we get a totally transparent citizen.
- speeder 13y ago
  Frankly, excepting a few circles (like, Hackers) most US citizens I've met support US government positions, even the most stupid ones, maybe out of ignorance... But they do. I remember even once, I was eating in a restaurant in front of my home (literally, it was across the street), and 3 US citizens were talking in english in a nearby table... Their conversation was one of the most horrible things I heard in a while, they were advocating get rid of immigrants, because all immigrants were filthy evil people and deserve to die, and that brazillians were scum, and whatnot (and they were saying that in Brazil). I almost hit one of them in the head, but then I realized they were 3, and I was one, so I decided to just finish my food and leave as quickly as possible. Other encounters with typical US citizens were not much better, reading comments on mainstream newspaper do not make me believe better either. And I cannot count how much times I got into arguments about our US supported dictatorship during the cold war, with US people that believe that I should have thanked the US government for "saving" us. And then, saving from what? And the reply is whatever fake threat of the time (communists, terrorists, muslims, whatever). This get me so much on my nerves that I even started to join random communication channels with US people (like, game chats, site chats, social networks) and provoke them into political arguments, just to check, and yes, many DO believe the US came here to "save" us, it is like if US citizens have some sorta of weird hero complex where they believe that the foreign policy of the US is save everyone. This is something that I never understood properly, how the hell a population can believe such bullshit. Beside other bizarre views (for example frequently I see comments defending that US should just turn North Korea and Iran into glass... Usually when reading reuters.com)
davidp 13y ago
I like the attention Chomsky brings to the NSA surveillance problem, but I think he does Snowden a disservice by using him in any kind of comparison to the true terrorists he lists. In attempting to point out the unevenness of America's extradition requests, he inadvertently puts him in the same "moral high ground" as the terrorists, which doesn't help.
zackmorris 13y ago
I've been a big fan of Noam Chomsky for years. I had to implement a recursive descent parser for a project recently and stumbled onto this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomsky_hierarchy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomsky_hierarchy He laid out the classes of formal grammars clear back in 1956. Every time you use a regular expression, compile code or run a script, you're applying concepts that he helped pioneer. I almost couldn't believe it. I have a new appreciation for his work, and a better understanding of why his logical approach to ethics/civics/philosophy always resonated with me.
- samatman 13y ago
  Chomsky is a critical bridge between the ancient and modern, but credit for generative grammars belongs to Panini: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_grammar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_grammar A good 2500 years prior. Chomsky was in the right place, at the right time, to carry that work forward into computer science. Not to detract, but the point is key: Sanskrt was formally specified 2500 years ago in a way that is recognizably a CFG.
  - sinkasapa 13y ago
    Yes, and not mildly context sensitive.
jgalt212 13y ago
Stop posting Chomsky stuff to HN. He is not an intellectual. He either cannot, or refuses to see both sides of the coin--either in his political writings or academic writings (e.g. there profound and valid empirical cracks in his universal grammar model that he's failed to acknowledge). Down with Chomsky. Down vote me, I don't really care. I'd surely trade all my HN Karma for a reduction in Chomsky related posts to HN. It will make HN a better community.
- jes 13y ago
  With respect, you really haven't provided a good argument here. Some references that support your claims would be helpful.
- thirsteh 13y ago
  Okay, jgalt212... (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Galt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Galt)
ballard 13y ago
What's with the "nothing to hide" meme? Has there been any research on it? Is it a product of meritrocratic naïveté, Facebook signalling, consumerism, media or another combination? It seems like a great way to have a compliant, feeble populace dependent on others for protection.
michaelbuddy 13y ago
"What would Chomsky do?" isn't a bad first question to ask on all geopolitical matters.

184 points by wlj 13y ago

northwest 13y ago

I think it's time somebody hand Chomsky a bigger mic.

grandalf 13y ago
That would be nice, but among those with the intellect to understand any kind of nuanced view, his opinions are well respected.

pvdm 13y ago

"Prism is an attack on American citizens" -Chomsky

northwest 13y ago
It's actually pretty strange that even he limits the damage to the US only. Whereas it's clearly worldwide damage. EDIT: I suppose he phrased it this way so that we listen more closely (or listen at all).
- znowi 13y ago
  Attack on American citizens is a way more powerful message than attack on German or some other "second class" citizenry :) But also, it is American elected officials who deployed the program on American taxpayers money. Therefore, American citizens, unknowing to themselves, have become a major investor into the greatest surveillance network in history, which spies back on them and the rest of the world. So Chomsky's quote hit it right home.
  - northwest 13y ago
    Great point.

soup10 13y ago

Chomsky takes the anti-American, or anti-government side of any and all debates and writes whiny essays full of sarcastic jabs that preach to a choir of the faithful. He makes no attempt to consider the side of government(or whoever he as casting as the villain at the moment of his self righteous spiel). It's as much of a tragedy to take him seriously as it is to take radical right think tank garbage seriously.

tome 13y ago
It's a shame you're being downvoted. Chomsky is clearly an idealist and he's never mananged to convince me he has a clue about how human beings and the real world actually work. Would I like to live in peace and prosperity in Chomsky's dream anarcho-liberal world? Of course. Do I think humanity can get there in the next hundred years. No way. We are all allowed to dream, but thank goodness some of us are also realistic.
graeme 13y ago
Without an example of specific instances where Chomsky does this, and reasons why he was wrong, this is pure ad hominem.
- omonra 13y ago
  http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomskyhoax.html http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomskyhoax.html Please do familiarize yourself with his views on other issues.
  - eksith 13y ago
    Excellent! I always wanted to read a completely unbiased (and totally not cherry-picked and wasn't compiled by a fanatical detractor) resource on Chomsky's collected works. Clearly, this is it. Worth noting, Paul Bogdanor contributed to The Anti-Chomsky Reader : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anti-Chomsky_Reader http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anti-Chomsky_Reader While I'm educating myself, I really should tune to Rush Limbaugh to learn about contraception, feminism and LGBT rights.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

Todd 13y ago

Link to associated video: http://mondoweiss.net/2013/07/chomsky-says-snowden-should-be-honored-for-telling-americans-what-the-government-was-doing.html http://mondoweiss.net/2013/07/chomsky-says-snowden-should-be... The quoted segment starts at 1:21:25

OldSchool 13y ago

Chomsky is one of the greatest intellectuals of our time. The man has nothing to lose and nothing to gain by voicing his thoughts. Too bad he is getting up there in age but hopefully we will enjoy his presence for many more years.

fixxer 13y ago
Agreed. He is so very adept at reducing a complicated system into simple relationships of cause and effect. No government is to be trusted not to manipulate the population through fear. That should be taught in grade school.
- lukifer 13y ago
  "The burden of proof must always be on state power to justify itself."
jgalt212 13y ago
Irrespective of anything Chomsky says on the whole Snowden affair, Chomsky is bad American/borderline traitor. If there's an anti-American government position to take on an issue, he'll find it and take it.
- pfraze 13y ago
  Dissent isn't treason, even if you do it a lot.
  - jgalt212 13y ago
    He dissents, per Chris Hitchens, even when such dissent is "stupid and ignorant." So if Chomsky is too smart to be "stupid and ignorant," he must do so out of his need to be a bad American. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2011/05/chomskys_follies.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_wor...
    - 13y ago

orbitingpluto 13y ago

Unsurprisingly, non-Americans take exception to American exceptionalism. America is literally pulling a, "We're better than you so we can violate any of your laws - including our own - and then murder, torture & kidnap. We are sovereign over the entire world." Few non-Americans think that's a swell idea, so it will only last as long as American power lasts. If you agree with Chomsky or not or if you think American power will last or not, you at least have to be able to concede that everybody else in the world has a valid gripe about the benevolent bully who really likes his big stick. Chomsky is just an American who noticed that...

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
hox 13y ago
Do you honestly think other nations don't do the same? Treating the U.S. as an exceptional case in this regards is just ridiculous.
- sinkasapa 13y ago
  Nationalism is indeed horrible everywhere it is found. Patriotism should be treated just like racism wherever it is encountered. It is a mechanism for one group of people to dehumanize another or at least feel superior to another. But I think the most powerful nations are the most frightening.
- peterashford 13y ago
  Yeah, us New Zealanders have kidnapped lots of US citizens and handed them over for torture in opposition of own laws. We've established an overseas prison explicitly to hold people who would have rights if we imprisoned them locally. But, you know, it's cool : all states do the same thing.
  - dnautics 13y ago
    don't be so smug. It almost happened, with kim dot com.

cconroy 13y ago

(This has nothing to do with Snowden but Chomsky's main point.) One thing I found troubling about all this is you can't expect the victims in other countries to decouple the intentions of the American gov't from American citizens. Except (even more troubling) is that citizens seem to support drone warfare (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/03/10/most-americans-approve-of-foreign-drone-strikes/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/03/10/m...).

northwest 13y ago
> you can't expect the victims in other countries to decouple the intentions of the American gov't from American citizens. And that is why all these drone wars actually keep the "terrorist" recruiting machine running. A handful of people in the US make huge $$$ on war (the military budgets are surreal, plus, billions are suddenly "lost", etc.). $$$ are a clear incentive for war. This creates new terrorists. These need to be hunted and killed. That means we need to keep the "defense" budget high. And as a bonus, we get a totally transparent citizen.
speeder 13y ago
Frankly, excepting a few circles (like, Hackers) most US citizens I've met support US government positions, even the most stupid ones, maybe out of ignorance... But they do. I remember even once, I was eating in a restaurant in front of my home (literally, it was across the street), and 3 US citizens were talking in english in a nearby table... Their conversation was one of the most horrible things I heard in a while, they were advocating get rid of immigrants, because all immigrants were filthy evil people and deserve to die, and that brazillians were scum, and whatnot (and they were saying that in Brazil). I almost hit one of them in the head, but then I realized they were 3, and I was one, so I decided to just finish my food and leave as quickly as possible. Other encounters with typical US citizens were not much better, reading comments on mainstream newspaper do not make me believe better either. And I cannot count how much times I got into arguments about our US supported dictatorship during the cold war, with US people that believe that I should have thanked the US government for "saving" us. And then, saving from what? And the reply is whatever fake threat of the time (communists, terrorists, muslims, whatever). This get me so much on my nerves that I even started to join random communication channels with US people (like, game chats, site chats, social networks) and provoke them into political arguments, just to check, and yes, many DO believe the US came here to "save" us, it is like if US citizens have some sorta of weird hero complex where they believe that the foreign policy of the US is save everyone. This is something that I never understood properly, how the hell a population can believe such bullshit. Beside other bizarre views (for example frequently I see comments defending that US should just turn North Korea and Iran into glass... Usually when reading reuters.com)

davidp 13y ago

I like the attention Chomsky brings to the NSA surveillance problem, but I think he does Snowden a disservice by using him in any kind of comparison to the true terrorists he lists. In attempting to point out the unevenness of America's extradition requests, he inadvertently puts him in the same "moral high ground" as the terrorists, which doesn't help.

zackmorris 13y ago

I've been a big fan of Noam Chomsky for years. I had to implement a recursive descent parser for a project recently and stumbled onto this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomsky_hierarchy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomsky_hierarchy He laid out the classes of formal grammars clear back in 1956. Every time you use a regular expression, compile code or run a script, you're applying concepts that he helped pioneer. I almost couldn't believe it. I have a new appreciation for his work, and a better understanding of why his logical approach to ethics/civics/philosophy always resonated with me.

samatman 13y ago
Chomsky is a critical bridge between the ancient and modern, but credit for generative grammars belongs to Panini: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_grammar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_grammar A good 2500 years prior. Chomsky was in the right place, at the right time, to carry that work forward into computer science. Not to detract, but the point is key: Sanskrt was formally specified 2500 years ago in a way that is recognizably a CFG.
- sinkasapa 13y ago
  Yes, and not mildly context sensitive.

jgalt212 13y ago

Stop posting Chomsky stuff to HN. He is not an intellectual. He either cannot, or refuses to see both sides of the coin--either in his political writings or academic writings (e.g. there profound and valid empirical cracks in his universal grammar model that he's failed to acknowledge). Down with Chomsky. Down vote me, I don't really care. I'd surely trade all my HN Karma for a reduction in Chomsky related posts to HN. It will make HN a better community.

jes 13y ago
With respect, you really haven't provided a good argument here. Some references that support your claims would be helpful.
thirsteh 13y ago
Okay, jgalt212... (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Galt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Galt)

ballard 13y ago

What's with the "nothing to hide" meme? Has there been any research on it? Is it a product of meritrocratic naïveté, Facebook signalling, consumerism, media or another combination? It seems like a great way to have a compliant, feeble populace dependent on others for protection.

michaelbuddy 13y ago

"What would Chomsky do?" isn't a bad first question to ask on all geopolitical matters.