Chomsky on 'Anti-Americanism'

international | arts and media | other press

Tuesday May 15, 2007 10:37

by Miriam Cotton & David Manning - MediaBite

editors at mediabite dot org

The media response to those who dare to criticise

Carol Coleman, RTE's Washington correspondent, interviewed George Bush in 2004, but while the tone and manner of her interview appeared coarse and combative, the questions she posed were not the critical words one might expect for a man, at the time, responsible for 100,000 Iraqi deaths. The context remained, not that the invasion of Iraq was illegal, as Kofi Annan had stated, but that it was a mistake - a far more friendly term.

"Irish people are angry over Iraq"

and

"There is a feeling that the world has become a more dangerous place today because you have taken the focus off Al Qaeda and diverted into Iraq. Do you not see that the world is a more dangerous place"

were as critical as it got.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2004/0624/primetime.html

Eamon Delaney, editor of Magill, accused George Galloway of 'cosying up to' the mass murderer Saddam Hussein. He also described the 'fluency' with which George orates his point of view as extremely dangerous. His rationale for this extraordinary claim was to say that benevolent powers around the world would fear condemnation as war criminals if they choose the path of what they describe as 'humanitarian intervention'. In other words any articulate observer who is able to demonstrate conclusively that these interventions are anything but humanitarian is depicted as the true danger - while death and destruction on a genocidal scale is depicted as merely unfortunate but unavloidable necessity.

http://www.rte.ie/tv/latelate/20060929.html

When Noam Chomsky visited Dublin in 2006 he was received with determined resistance by certain elements of the Irish media. Chomsky’s critical erudition on the subject of the ‘war on terror’ had clearly made some people nervous.

Mark Little, for example, surprisingly mustered more venom for a man who opposed an illegal invasion than Ms. Coleman could muster for the man responsible for what now tops 650,000 deaths. Professor Chomsky summed up the interview in his closing remarks...

Mark Little: "There is still no danger of Noam Chomsky becoming the mainstream?"

Noam Chomsky: "I wouldn't call it a danger, I'd be happy to be mainstream, but powerful institutions do not enjoy being criticised. There's nothing surprising about that. In the United States, or in Western Europe a very high degree of freedom has been won, WON, not granted, WON, and that means that you are relatively free from the kind of repression that takes place in most of the world, but you are not going to be welcomed by those whose power you are trying to undermine."

Mark Little: "Finally, there is a danger isn't there that Noam Chomsky becomes almost what they call a raw-shock test in psychology, whereby it means something visceral to both sides. You're ideas get lost in this very loud and bitter debate about quotes and things. Do you ever fear that in that din...?"

Noam Chomsky: "It happens all the time, it happened in the last half hour. When you repeated what [was] said, that I never see any shades of grey, that I always blame America and so on. Those are natural defensive reactions on the part of people that do not want to hear the truth about themselves. Yes of course that happens."

http://www.rte.ie/news/2006/0119/primetime.html

In recent interview for MediaBite, Chomsky has expanded on what he believes is meant by ‘anti-Americanism’:

“In totalitarian societies, the usage is standard. In the former Soviet Union, for example, dissidents were condemned as “anti-Soviet” or “anti-Russian.” Where a democratic culture prevails, the usage would be regarded as comical. If people who criticize Irish government policies were condemned as “anti-Irish,” I suppose people would collapse in ridicule in the streets of Dublin. At least they should.”

Chomsky also stresses the difference which an individual can make in challenging the status quo and by reference to the events leading to Israel’s assault on Lebanon last year he gives a critical analysis of the way the language of media reporting is used to distort perceptions of reality. Link to full interview here:

http://www.mediabite.org/