(The Responsibility of Intellectuals, Noam Chomsky, Nov 2017)
The premise of this 50 year old essay is simply that “It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies”. In it, Noam Chomsky spreads a buffet of official lies, coverups, half-truths and self-serving prejudices to show how extraordinarily badly the West has treated the world. The era was the Viet Nam War (it first appeared in the New York Review of Books in 1967), which was so obviously a fraud that a generation of Americans actually mobilized against it. Since then, things have settled into a largely blind acceptance, and the essay needs a new round of exposure. “Since we often cannot see what is happening before our eyes, it is perhaps not too surprising that what is at a slight distance is utterly invisible.” That’s where intellectuals’ responsibility comes in.
The book is a finely crafted effort to attack and destroy various pseudo-intellectuals in various American governments, emphasizing their stature and influence in sending the country down a disgusting path of destruction, poverty and slaughter overseas.
As usual, there are fireworks galore. Chomsky cites several experts who show that Osama bin Laden succeeded beyond his wildest dreams, causing the US to waste a good $4 trillion on endless unsuccessful wars, while radicalizing Islam to jihad and terrorism as he alone could never do. They say America is still bin Laden’s greatest ally, long after his death.
Truth hurts.
All the more reason to tell it.
David Wineberg