I've been thinking on how to express my distaste for Chomsky in a way that explained what it is about his writing I do not like, yet not come off as saying his conclusions are a priori wrong, and I think I have a great example with which to work.

Consider his article from 1989 on the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan:


Invasion Newspeak: U.S. & USSR

In it, he starts off with a rather straight-forward explanation of the event he is going to discuss. The first two paragraphs could even be the opening paragraphs of a Rush Limbaugh blog (if Rush was capable of communicating in something other than grunts and snorts). It discusses how a Russian journalist was sent to a psychiatric hospital by the government for having called the Russian invasion of Afghanistan an invasion.

But the third paragraph is vaguely accusatory. It suggests that the press pointing it out is a kind of "self-congratulation: It couldn't happen here". The implication, when he says, "We might, however, inquire further into why this has never happened. One possibility is that the question has never arisen because no mainstream U.S. journalist has ever mimicked Danchev's courage," is that the press doesn't say those things here, so the government doesn't NEED to send reporters to prison - so we're not any freer, and maybe even in more of an oppressive system.

He goes on to use an example that is a plurium interrogationum logical fallacy: he uses excruciatingly inflammatory language to describe what was going on in Vietnam, over-simplifying what was going on and claiming as fact things that have not been proved or accepted by all the people involved. He continues by resorting even to the association fallacy of "concentration camp" in order to invoke feelings associated with Hitler and the Holocaust.

What is most irritating, is that he concludes that, "In short, there are no Danchevs here. Within the mainstream, there is no one who can call an invasion "an invasion," or even perceive the fact; it is unimaginable that any U.S. journalist would have publicly called upon the South Vietnamese to resist the U.S. invasion. Such a person would not have been sent to a psychiatric hospital, but it's doubtful that he would have retained his professional position and standing. "
All this he wrote while the Washington Post was publishing articles about the "US Invasion of Panama" and the "Invasion of Grenada". Today, no one shies away from "the Invasion of Iraq" except MAYBE Fox News.

But aside from being wrong, he actually manages to avoid pointing out that the two governments are qualitatively different. If he wants to point out that social pressure or extreme amounts of nationalism are pressures to which reporters frequently cave, he should explicitly state it. Instead, he leaves the question of 'is the US government really any different' lie unanswered, giving the reader ample opportunity to come to the wrong conclusion, which even his own argument suggests YES, it IS different.

Of course, it's easy to argue that Chomsky was talking about Vietnam. But how can he compare modern (1989) Soviets with the US of 20 years prior (US involvement in Vietnam having effectively ended in 1972)? He may as well say that Germany has no business telling Sudan to stop the genocide in Darfur because the Holocaust, or Japan because of Nanking. Or the Russians because of the famine they engineered in the Ukraine in the '30s. With that reasoning, nothing ever gets better.

There are still more apologies that can be made for Chomsky's article. But then we come to the ultimate problem: Noam Chomsky is a brilliant linguist. His command of language and communication are the stuff for which inguistic Hall of Fames would enshrine him on a first ballot. If he wanted to, he wouldn't make those mistakes.

Consider the fallacies: Chomsky could make the same argument he is making: that the press does not show particular courage in the US, and that not having to have that courage doesn't necessarily make them accurate; WITHOUT resorting to assertions that inflame the passions, and WITHOUT resorting to manipulative omissions or subtle changes of subject.

I feel that Chomsky's goal is NOT to get people to agree with his conclusions else he would use less off-putting assertions. What he seems (to me) to be doing is constructing arguments that are emotionally appealing and may even have the right conclusions, but he is inserting the things he TRULY wants you to believe in the course of the argument. ie: in this article, he doesn't want or even care much if you agree that the press is not any more likely to be honest here than in the Soviet Union so much as he wants you to believe that there is no qualitative difference between what was going on in Vietnam with what was going on in Afghanistan. Once his readers believe that, the rest will follow.

Either that, or Chomsky really isn't much of a linguist after all. That doesn't seem all that likely to me.