64 Comments

Hmm, anyone else a subscriber but only looks at the teaser version? Would love to read the full interview.

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Chomsky is a one trick pony. Anti American in its purest form he will fashion every argument to arrive at the same starting point. Whatever evil anywhere is nothing compared to what USA is doing. Plus it is our fault anyway. Same dynamic as Sanders and his billionaires tick. But for a few votes in his first political campaign Sanders would be driving a cab in Vermont haranguing passengers with tirades against people he envies and resents. Chomsky has more intellectual chops so he brought the genre to higher level. There is always another Bernie or Noam waiting to corner you at Starbucks. Sounds counterintuitive in the light of the attention they get but they are actual irrelevant to man in the street whose mantle they claim. Marxists, regardless of the piles of bodies they produced and geography they have controlled and decades they have been at it have very little to offer that people volunteer for. Fighting human nature and aspirations is a fool's pursuit. No, you cannot engineer human souls.

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For you idiotic bozos who didn't get Chomsky's point about sports: He appreciates and enjoys athletic competition. He is simply pointing out how stupid it is to root for a team just because they're from your geographic location. It's a perfect small bore critique of the nationalism that both he and Einstein have called possibly the worst of humainity's instincts. He has spent his whole life showing people how disgusting and immoral it is to refuse to examine the behavior of your own country with exactly the same criteria you would use examining a different country.

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“...traces the aforementioned undeniable truth, that the arc of American politics has moved in his direction, thanks in large part to activism.”

Huh? The acceptance of American imperialism, militarism, corporatism is ubiquitous now. The acceptance of more authoritarianism is everywhere - distinguished between groups mostly by what form it should take and how it should be implemented/achieved. I really don’t see how the arc of American politics can be seen to have moved toward Chomsky. There really is no old-school “left” anymore - the opposition to both political and corporate power - and what social causes of the old left that have made progress are now taken up by the new “left” as a means of control (perhaps most noticeably and acutely in the whole current manifestation of identity politics).

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Chomsky equates the massive scale effort by the CCP to de-Uighur the Uighurs... to Gaza?!

record scratch

Glad you put this out there Matt. Chomsky always grated but that's delusional.

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Chomsky told folks to vote for Biden. Now we have Biden's security team sending state troopers to some guy's home to intimidate him for a mild criticism of birdbrain AOC. Here's the video proof: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTBVwTXM2eA

Hope Matt and Chomsky are happy now.

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Nothing funnier than the "Baked Noam Chomsky" faux phone calls to the Jimmy Dore show.

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"I tried again in the interview below, but he dunked on me quickly. Some issues are no-fly zones. But there are plenty he loves talking about."

Ah, the essence of why the Intelligentsia is held in such disregard. If you are a wide-ranging public policy pundit, yet decline to venture into certain areas that will likely show a lack of intellectual consistency, that seriously degrades confidence that any points you make on any subject have fairly considered the many sides of contentious issues. Isn't this fairness of analysis supposedly the hallmark of our intellectual betters?

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Matt your link has issues. Need to fix it or risk losing readers. It's not just the shorth version problem, it's also that when comments are made about something I commented and I want to view the link doesn't take me to the comment specifically.

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Either Chomsky is a total boomer or I just got filtered, hard.

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Splendid lil interview. Thank you, Matt.

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Same problem - subscriber with no access. Went through the whole Substack process with no change at all.

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founding

Outstanding and much needed excerpts from the full version on "Useful Idiots".

Some "thinkers" in our groups are dismissive of Chomsky on “enterprises ought to be owned and managed in a democratic fashion by the people who participate in them” -- the only tinny thread for the entire dismissal ;-))

Of course another inspiring progressive, Richard Wolff, concluded exactly same -- cooperatives ruled by workers-owners. Even in most German corporation there is rudimentary of that - per law worker/employee representatives sit on Boards. Crimes against humanity like lack of universal public health in the US are unimaginable anywhere in the world.

But Noam Chomsky is "dismissed" by numerous "deep thinkers" among commentariat -- the obvious reason is the mirror Chomsky is holding for all of us:

-- Before inventing "genocide" in China promoted by Falun Gong berserkers and anti-Semitic evangelical extremist Adrian Zenz and imposing starvation on Syrian population for 17 (seventeen) years on behalf of oh soo democratic Saudi Arabia and Israel -- Chomsky recommends that we look closer at home -- that we should look at horror of Gaza -- it is OUR open-air concentration camp, for example.

This is too strong for delicate ears of our "deep thinkers".

"More misery in Syria." Let them eat... nothing.

"More misery in Syria." - The Scrum (substack.com)

https://thescrum.substack.com/p/more-misery-in-syria

Patrick Lawrence -- April 10

The US worsened the suffering of Syrians by backing Jihadist terrorists against them, burning their wheat fields and looting their oil and gas. Now the US wants to “help” the Syrians by suffocating them with brutal sanctions!

Queues all over Syria for bread and fuel after the US and NATO looted Syria’s oil and burned its wheat. The US is a sadistic regime that thrives on the misery of nations. Syria was once a self-sufficient country. Before America decided (remember 17 years ago !!) that secular socialist Syria needs “democracy and freedom”.

------------------------------------------------

Former hostage responds to top diplomat calling Al Qaeda a US 'asset' in Syria - YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5eb-z-QLXw

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Matt, I wish you had asked him about your and GG's unforgivable Trump supporting moral outrage at the refusal of a couple of social media platforms to amplify the Hunter Biden laptop 'October Surprise' non-event - that was always easily accessible on the NY Post site. I did and he was caustic and outraged at your collective stupidity.

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yeah,, Im a subscriber, but Im only seeing teaser. Cannot reach full article.

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