Noam Chomsky has recently started a blog: http://blog.zmag.org/ttt/

Snip from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Chomsky has written strong refutations of deconstructionist and postmodern criticisms of science.

I have spent a lot of my life working on questions such as these, using the only methods I know of — those condemned here as "science," "rationality," "logic," and so on. I therefore read the papers with some hope that they would help me "transcend" these limitations, or perhaps suggest an entirely different course. I'm afraid I was disappointed. Admittedly, that may be my own limitation. Quite regularly, "my eyes glaze over" when I read polysyllabic discourse on the themes of poststructuralism and postmodernism; what I understand is largely truism or error, but that is only a fraction of the total word count. True, there are lots of other things I don't understand: the articles in the current issues of math and physics journals, for example. But there is a difference. In the latter case, I know how to get to understand them, and have done so, in cases of particular interest to me; and I also know that people in these fields can explain the contents to me at my level, so that I can gain what (partial) understanding I may want. In contrast, no one seems to be able to explain to me why the latest post-this-and-that is (for the most part) other than truism, error, or gibberish, and I do not know how to proceed."

Chomsky is one of the most well-known figures of the American left.

"I have always supported a Jewish ethnic homeland in Palestine. That is different from a Jewish state. There's a strong case to be made for an ethnic homeland, but as to whether there should be a Jewish state, or a Muslim state, or a Christian state, or a white state — that's entirely another matter."

Overall, Professor Chomsky is not fond of traditional political titles and categories and prefers to let his views speak for themselves. He also has a large group of critics, both conservative and liberal, as well as some anarchists, who, although they normally agree with his political analysis, consider his aforementioned support of electoral politics to go against their principles.

For Chomsky, terrorism is objective, not relative. He states in his book 9-11, page 76:

Wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a war against terrorism.

On the efficacy of terrorism:

One is the fact that terrorism works. It doesn't fail. It works. Violence usually works. That's world history. Secondly, it's a very serious analytic error to say, as is commonly done, that terrorism is the weapon of the weak. Like other means of violence, it's primarily a weapon of the strong, overwhelmingly, in fact. It is held to be a weapon of the weak because the strong also control the doctrinal systems and their terror doesn't count as terror. Now that's close to universal. I can't think of a historical exception, even the worst mass murderers view the world that way. So pick the Nazis. They weren't carrying out terror in occupied Europe. They were protecting the local population from the terrorisms of the partisans. And like other resistance movements, there was terrorism. The Nazis were carrying out counter terror.

Quotes regarding Chomsky

• "In all American history, no one's writings are more unsettling...Chomsky is among our greatest dissenters." — James Peck
• "One of the great voices of reason of our times" — New York Daily News
• "Arguably the most important intellectual alive...[with a] body of political writings, accessible to any literate person but often maddeningly simple-minded." — The New York Times,

Full Wikipedia overview: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky

Thanks, Jacek, for bringing some of Chomsky's words to TC. He is, by far, my favorite author in IR. ¡Viva Chomsky!

Saludos,

Atenea

Jacek,

I didn't read the link yet, but I noticed something in your message I've always thought but never seen anybody express it.

I think all peace efforts for Israel/Palestine have been going the wrong way. If there is a chance for peace in the region, it would be in a multi-ethnic non-religious state. I don't think there will ever be peace if Jews and Arabs don't learn to really live together.

It is very sad that in the 1990s in Bosnia we have created another similar situation.

JP

(PS: Atenea, what is IR?)

I cannot wrap my head around such situations.  Only my heart, with sadness.

Maxi

I would be curious to know what Chomsky relies on to make that affirmation. Hitler proudly used terrorist tactics, he used the word many times, always in a laudatory way. He felt but contempt for the security of populations and clearly said so.

And, though most post-war regimes have tried to exaggerate the importance of partisan movements, they had a very minor impact in the Great Reich, and most people did not know of their existence before 1944.

I don't know, Maxi, I understand Chomsky's point as follows:

1. States do use terrorism
2. When states, including the Nazis, use terrorism, they call it counter-terrorism.

In my opinion, 1. is true and 2. is false as far as Nazis are concerned. And by using the false fact that Nazis presented themselves as counter-terrorists, Chomsky acknowledges that the rhetorics of the state using terrorist tactics is relevant.

I admit that in the period 1934-1938 the Nazi propaganda shortly shifted to something more state-like, but it can't be what Chomsky is talking about, because during that period there was neither German occupation of other countries nor partisan movements.

I agree with JP, that a multiethnical Israeli-Palestian should be the solution, and to put that solution into practice is on the hands of laicist or moderate Israelis and Palestinians. Nevertheless, so far, any peace process implays an ethnical solution... and Bosnia peace process is the clear example. Those provoming ethinic cleaning won, since the situation was acepted as it was left in 1995 and there were no attempts to force the people comming back to their regions. Even before that, you have the Beneš agreements in Czechoslovakia and the deportation of ethnic Germans all around central Europe.

Summing up, so far peace has meant ethnical cleanising. Has a peace process created so far a multiethnical state that we could consider stable? I guess is a big political problem: multiculturalism is not understood as peace and vice versa.

Jairo