3 Noam Chomsky Quotes on Leftism

Noam Chomsky quotes on leftism

4. A lot of the people who call themselves Left I would regard as proto-fascists.

217. Unlike many leftists of his generation, Chomsky never flirted with movements or organizations that were later revealed to be totalitarian, oppressive, exclusionary, antirevolutionary, or elitist. Leninism, Stalinism, Trotskyism, and Maoism offered to many of Chomsky's disillusioned contemporaries an alternative to what they saw as blatantly exclusionary American-style capitalism. When reports about what had actually occurred in the former Soviet Union and China began to filter through, many felt betrayed. We now hear a lot about how the left has been discredited, the hopelessness of utopian thinking, the futility of activist struggle, but little about the libertarian options that Chomsky and others have so consistently presented. The type of dismay that has permeated contemporary intellectual circles has not touched Chomsky. He has very little to regret. His work, in fact, contains some of the most accurate analyses of this century. And yet, most of his criticisms of American policy, past and present, are seldom mentioned in the mainstream press or by the instructors and professors who teach history or politics. Political science departments rarely use his material on Vietnam, the Cold War, Central America, or Israel. --Robert Barsky, Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent, 1997 [198]

225. The best thing about Chomsky is that he raises the blood pressure anti-Lefties far more than he deserves. Still, Chomsky's about as challenging as Mr. Rogers. 'Hi kids, won't you be my Culturally Sensitive Leftie Neighbor? Good, today kids, we're gonna talk about the evil things America has done in Nicaragua. Can you say Nee-karrrrooah-ooah?' In a word, Chomsky is why the Left stumbled through the 90s righteously gumming its enemies rather than raptor-gutting them. --Mark Ames, December 2, 2005 [206]