Quote #232

As I read your remarks about how Kosovo reverses the usual left/right roles on intervention, I found myself wondering what Noam Chomsky--who epitomized the left-wing view that all bad things are the result of Western intervention--is saying now. Well, I couldn't find anything about the current crisis, but thanks to the miracle of search engine technology I did find some remarks about Bosnia, which are pathetic but revealing: First he tries to blame it all on the Western Right, then suddenly gets all judicious and practical. --Paul Krugman, March 29, 1999 [213]

More from Noam Chomsky

  1. [Noam Chomsky is] so far out on the lunatic fringe that even the sensible things he has to say are lost. --David Rieff, August 4, 1991 [212]
  2. Chomsky is an irresistible example of the quality problem that besets the market for academic public intellectuals. --Richard Posner, 2001 …
  3. He seems both wholly cynical about the purposes of those in power, and wholly unforgiving. Those who direct American policy - and, by impli…
  4. [Noam Chomsky has] become the guru of the new anti-capitalist and Third World movements. They take his views very uncritically; it's part o…
  5. Marxist intellectuals can and do convince themselves to subordinate mind and ethics to a larger goal or distant cause that frequently slips…
  6. Chomsky just has not entered deeply into what he is talking about and he is not greatly interested in anything except digging out material …
  7. The three paragraphs of Mr. Chomsky to which I have referred constitute less than five percent of his article. I do not know if the level o…
  8. Sneering critics like Noam Chomsky, who condemn the executioners of thousands only in passing, would not hesitate to honour the vengeful fe…

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