RE: Noam Chomsky and Cambodia

From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Dec 16 2002 - 11:40:30 MST


--- Mike Linksvayer <ml@gondwanaland.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 2002-12-15 at 12:27, Mike Lorrey wrote:
> > > This is indeed very peculiar behavior from a liberal standpoint,
> but
> > > it might make a bit more sense from a libertarian or anarchist
> one.
> > > Certainly it is plain that one can't simultaneously `deny the
> > > holocaust' while describing it as `the most fantastic outburst of
>
> > > collective insanity in human history'. So John Clark has not
> > > *really* said it all; more remains to
> > > be said. (And of course it has been said, but it's late...)
> >
> > What is so interesting about it is that Chomsky, along with many
> left
> > wing sociologists, have come to define collective violence by the
> right
> > wing as 'insane' or 'irrational' while defining collective violence
> by
> > unionists, anti-war demonstrators, Palestinians, leftist
> > revolutionaries, etc as entirely rational (see "Collective
> Violence",
> > Barkan and Snowden). Similarly, they avoid studying state
> terrorism, as
> > well as other state conducted forms of collective violence.
>
> [I can't tell who wrote the text Mike Lorrey quoted, but felt it
> needed
> to be included for context anyway]
>
> Lorrey, you really know how to take a strong case and turn it into a
> strawman. Relative to the cases you cite above, the holocaust is
> singularly insane and evil. Leftists are often guitly of ignoring
> the
> mass violence of communism, or of excusing it relative to that of
> right-wing socialists, but the violence done by Palestinians, for
> example, doesn't even begin to hold a candle to that of the Nazis or
> the Communists. Sheesh.

Ah, but lefties also claim that communism is a right wing ideology of
state capitalism, thereby placing it in the right wing camp.

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