Why in description to this video nobody bothered to put names of authors about whom Chomsky talks? I found this: Fancois Ponchaud (born 1939) is a French Catholic priest and missionary to Cambodia. He is best known for his documentation of the genocide which occurred under the Khmer Rouge Jean Lacouture (9 June 1921 - 16 July 2015) was a journalist, historian and author. He was particularly famous for his biographies Book "Cambodia, 1975-1982" by Michael Vickery Douglas Eugene Pike - Pol Pot apologist.
I'm rather impressed, he was able to pull all the details out of his brain on the fly. Makes me a little suspicious - since my momory isn't quite as good. Good job for the start, Alex.
Numbers vary. No one knows for sure. But lets assume it was 2 million, that doesn't change the fact that there were a lot of lies and fabrications. Chomsky and Herman just reported the actual known facts at the moment. That doesn't mean they were apologists for the regime.
+Chomsky's Philosophy If we assume 2 million Cambodians died then, indeed, it would change the so-called fact that "there were a lot of lies and fabrications." The estimates would then, indeed, be accurate-- as accurate as the most recent serious scholarship on this issue. www.phnompenhpost.com/7days/statistics-mass-murder
The Cambodian government estimates 1.5-2 million deaths associated with the Khmer Rouge. This includes an estimated 1.3 million executions while the rest were from famine and disease. You can't call yourself an anarchist when you lick the boot of totalitarians and murderers.
Chomsky's view on the US media having a negative bias toward Cambodia and not Indonesia (at the time) wasn't exactly untrue. Nonetheless, I wonder with curiosity if Chomsky would be as critical of the US media if, hypothetically, their reporting had been rough and tough on Indonesia instead of Cambodia.
As he mentioned, he and the other author (I believe he said economist) just gathered data and reported the facts. It's amazing what he can pull from his memory. Then again, I read today that he was called "The Einstein of Linguistics".
augnkn93043 You just compared Chomsky’s dialogue here to speeches by Stalin and Hitler...not very bright. And for the record, Stalin was not an aggressive speaker, in fact he was a horrible orator.
initially, Chomsky was simply asking for clarity over the use of one specific source (the book "Cambodia: Year Zero" by Francois Ponchaud, 1978) in one specific article by Jean Lacouture. the book was one of the first to document atrocities in Cambodia and Lacouture was the first to review it. Lacouture references pol-pot "boasting" about 2 million dead. Chomsky gets hold of Ponchaud's book and notices that actually, Ponchaud actually says something a bit different: that 800,000 people were killed in the American bombing of Cambodia in the first half of the decade, and that the Khmer Rouge were responsible for 1.2 million deaths from all causes (execution, starvation etc), with this information coming from the American embassy in Cambodia (Ponchaud was a Jesuit priest there). Chomsky notes some more discrepancies so writes to Lacouture personally to ask why his is abusing Ponchaud's source material. Lacouture publishes a response making some clarifications and corrections but ultimately says the numbers don't matter/aren't the point. Chomsky thinks it does matter and that it's not OK to sloppily misquote books in articles that then become very popular and thus broadly disseminate false information. later, Chomsky wrote a book in which he used this example of sloppy use of source material to make the point that when the murderers are communist, certain types of journalists are often happy to play loose with the figures, and compared this with western press coverage of east timor, where the violence received little to no international attention, because there was no political interest there. some detractors have tried to skew this to claim that Chomsky is downplaying Cambodian genocide, however anyone who has read anything Chomsky has written on Cambodia, will know that this is not the case, as he relays brutal accounts of the violence perpetrated there. to be completely clear, in this book (Manufacturing Consent, one part of a two volume analysis of the American propaganda system), Chomsky and his co-author explicitly state that the total estimate may well end up at the 2 million mark as further data comes in, but that tentatively they side with what they argue is the most reliable source at the time (before 1988), which was the American intelligence services estimate, which they take as a conservative minimum. it should be noted that Chomsky was never making estimates about how many people died in Cambodia himself, but about the way that source material is used sloppily when it serves a particular political interest (look at the murderous commies!), and how source material is ignored if it doesn't serve that interest (sorry people being murdered by non-commies, we don't care about you). the whole drama around this issue has been purposefully initiated by his right-wing detractors as a lighting rod for those who have a gripe with Chomsky for various reasons and who won't bother to look into the details, leading to outbursts and accusations such as that documented in the YT link and also your own comments. indeed, this is the intended purpose of the smear. it has been mildly successful as a tool of derailment, as a character assassination, particularly with those within the ranks of the right-wing eager to have Chomsky's broad body of work discredited with a lazy but convenient "commie apologist" slur (Chomsky is neither a communist, nor Marxist, nor commie apologist. let me assure you, he thinks Stalin was despicable as much as the next guy)
I want to take up your point where Chomsky(accurately) points out that atrocities committed by communist forces are frequently covered by western media, whereas atrocities committed by the West are almost always ignored. Ironically, a consistent theme with Chomsky, is that he almost invariably does the exact same thing, just in the reverse. He will often correctly point out atrocities committed by western powers, while usually ignoring or downplaying atrocities committed by communist/non-western actors. With the Cambodian Genocide he did it to an extent, but he’s been much more guilty of it in how he’s addressed the Bosnian Genocide, frequently engaging in outright denial, or usually pinning the blame for it somehow on western countries. He’s often gone out of his way to defend the Serbian government under Milosevich, mainly because members of the Old Left like Chomsky regard the Milosevich regime as the last bastion of socialism in the post-Cold War period.
@@CrimzinEclipse2010 i think it's unfair to say he "outright denies" it [yugslav genocide]. from my understanding there is some scholarly debate over whether what happened in Yugoslavia constitutes mass killing or genocide. that's a legitimate discussion, and not one unique to Chomsky. similar discussions exist for many events where there isn't full consensus on whether mass killings constitute genocide or not, usually hinging on whether total destruction of a race was the intention. Chomsky is certainly not (from the videos i've seen of his comments) denying the slaughter of life or the scale of it in Yugoslavia. I haven't read "Yugoslavia: Peace, War, and Dissolution" so i can't really comment too much, but i'm led to believe that his point is about atrocities of equal size elsewhere that are given little to no attention, whereas the atrocities in Yugoslavia have received disproportionate attention in the western media because it serves their agenda. my opinion is that this is a legitimate position to take
@@CrimzinEclipse2010 Chomsky says that its pointless to focus on attrocities that other people do because you can't control what they do, you can control what you yourself do. Since everyone already knows about attrocities of our enemies, why not learn about attrocities that we do?
@@CrimzinEclipse2010 Chomsky was an equally despicable apologist for Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge atrocities (see my comment on the main comment thread to this video). He also claimed that Holocaust-denial was not antisemitic, that the leading Holocaust-denier in France was not antisemitic but "just an apolitical liberal", has for years excused and whitewashed terrorist crimes and imperialist jihadism of Hezbollah and Hamas in order to paint a one-sided picture of the conflict there, and has similarly whitewashed the policies of the ruling Iranian theocracy.
I was in Vietnam at the time. Knowing the fact that the communist soldiers from Vietnam just has been exhausted from the post war had to go to war against the Khmer Rouge because they invaded Vietnam first, we were horrified of their crimes against humanity and innocent people. I always questioned in my mind where were the UN ? Where were the United Nation ? Why they ignored such gennoacide? Over the years now I realized the truth that after the American withdrawal, they did not care anymore and we the South Vietnamese could have been tortured and killed like the Cambodian if the North Vietnamese regime was not better than the Khmer Rouge, it was a chilly thoughts in my mind while this horror was going on in Cambodia. And I myself questioned why the Vietnam army successfully fought against and removed the brutal regime to help To end the gennocide why didn’t we be recognized by the United Nations, why no one’s were talking about our victory against the Pol Pot and his brutal regime? Now I understand politics didn’t speak the truth because both sides against each other. After the South Vietnam and the American Alie was defeated, they ignored everything. At first they didn’t know and didn’t want to know the truth, they then supported Pol Pot to fight the Vietnamese communist and accuse Vietnam for Cambodia invasion. They did not want to admit the truth that actually the North Vietnamese soldiers were the only country who intervene this bloody brutal genocide . But the fact is the fact, time can not lie . Now the whole world know about this Holocaust but too late. I think the United Nations and The United State owe Vietnam an apology regarding the Cambodian Holocaust in 1976 to 1979 period
Cambodians are quite aware it was the Vietnamese Communists who defeated the Khmer Rouge. But they are also aware of lands they've lost to Vietnam not long before that. So Cambodians don't view the Vietnamese as liberators but instead as occupiers, especially since the Vietnamese remained in Cambodia for many years after.
because we were tired of fighting against communism, we willfully avoided helping to avoid a genocide nearby. This is why we shouldn't fight over the small stuff, and why I respect Jesus' teachings a lot: - "turn the other cheek" - "if Caesar asks for all your money, just give it to him. Your life's work shouldn't be about money." - "my kingdom isn't of this Earth...if it was, _then_ my servants would fight a war for me." Christians need to avoid fighting wars that are just about "small" things such as socio‑economic systems of governance. There are more important things to die for.
When he says that he did not see such figures, he meant what he said; that he had not seen them. That’s why he searched for the book and found that half of the deaths weren’t even done by the Khmer Rouge.
The "only authentic Cambodian scholar who has written on the subject" Chomsky mentions at 11:00, Michael Vickery (an American Fulbright scholar w/ a degree in "Russian Studies"), was a Marxist, and became an apologist for the genocide by saying it was not a genocide, but just peasant revolutionaries doing what peasant revolutionaries always want to do: take out their anger on their urban counterparts. Chomsky became infamous for whitewashing this genocide even as former supporters for the Khmer Rouge came out attacking it. Notice the double standard Chomsky uses in his debate "But American bombing killed 800,000" while the Khmer genocide is trivialized with "Well they were worked to death" (try using that to detract from the 6 million figure for the Holocaust). Chomsky says Vickery's apologia was "very highly praised in England by Indochina scholars and so-forth" - well of course it was, they were all fellow travelers like Scottish academic, Pol Pot apologist, and cheerleader for Asian communism Malcolm Caldwell. It is a common tactic with Leftists to just deny, deny, deny, but Western ones can't so much in the modern age, they have to equivocate. They must make the debate over quantity, not about the glaring failures of their liberal assumptions.
I agree Holocaust was bad with 6 million dead, but we never talk about the Russian genocide by Nazis [lebestraum] (~30 million dead), and famine in Bengal India ~(4-6 million dead). I think this "what about ism" is important, because it shows we remember genocides by our enemies far more than genocides on our enemies or by people allied to us.
@@aoeu256 Most certainly. Technically speaking, the Russians are the only people for whom a genocide can actually be proven using the standard definition of govt policy aimed to wipe out a specified group. I'm referring to the "liquidation of kulaks as a class" Soviet policy enforced in 1930-1931; it was announced in Dec of '29. For all its fame, the "Holocaust" itself as a term was virtually invented in the '70s - there's no mention of the word prior to that whereas the Holodomor in Soviet Ukraine was named almost instantly. The "6 million" figure is debatable at best too. The best surviving records were actually kept by the Einsatzgruppen on the Eastern Front in what is sometimes referred to as "the shooting Holocaust." I believe you get 2-3 million, the figures from the camps are culled from questionable census data. Its' not that the census data is wrong, just that many Jews "missing" after the census are believed to have emigrated out, fled, what have you. David Irving was imprisoned for questioning this figure and in court saying he believed 3-4 million was more accurate. If one is to count Lebensraum (more a worldview than policy) as genocide then one must also apply this to Sovietization policies carried out by the USSR (which one must remember was allies w/ Nazi Germany for years, critical to the building of their war machine, and co-invaded Poland with them). This is the killing of dissidents, use of others as slave labor in the GULAG system, suppression of national culture/language. Ironically, all these "genocides" pale in comparison to what communists have done to their own peoples. In fact, the USSR and Red China have the infamous historical distinction of being the only govts to have killed more of their citizens in peacetime than died in war. The official number the Red Chinese give for Mao's famine is 40 million! And I believe we only get an admission of that number from them because Xi Jinping's own family was a victim of Mao during the Cultural Revolution. This is not to detract from the Nazi crimes, but more to point out the glaring double-standard at work academically, perhaps best summarized by Jean Paul-Sartre's infamous statement that the GULAG system must never be talked about because it's done out of love, or (like Chomsky) because the Americans did X and Y. Sartre was one of the "intellectuals" like his common-law-wife Simone de Beauvoir and Kristeva that radicalized visiting Asian and African students, one of which, of course, was Pol Pot (a nickname, his real name was Saloth Sâr, Pol Pot is short for "Political Potential" because the communists thought he had "political potential" - I kid you not). Also, regarding Lebensraum - both WWI and WWII were "total war" - the British blockade of Germany in WWI - an act of brigandry by the day's own definition - starved to death over a half-million German civilians. By WWII entire cities are being turned to ash or, on the German end, starved to death (Leningrad) - so these things become fuzzy by the standards of their day. We bellyache over a family of Afghans killed in a drone strike during the Biden withdrawal, well how interesting would Dresden have been the next day with CNN satellite dishes reporting live from the scene, or the firebombing of Tokyo, which did far more damage to property and human life than the atomic bombings did? Millions of Germans died in the postwar months that followed as well with one US proposal, the Morgenthau Plan, advocating the complete destruction of their industrial base and transformation of Germany into a pre-industrial agrarian state - one big potato field essentially. They great irony in all of this is that in June 1941 the greatest land fighting force in history is sweeping its way across the Soviet Union with the aim to wipe communism off the face of the Earth. Had they been successful - no Red China (hundreds of thousands of lives saved), no North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela... no half-century of Cold War, no communist insurgencies in S. America, no 7000 thermonuclear weapons pointed at the West, no Soviet block with all the atrocities committed therein - in fact, no war in Ukraine today. That is an incredible thought. I would LOVE to hear Chomsky ruminate about that.
can someone spell out what's going on here? i understand what Chomsky's saying re: Cambodia, but I don't understand what the audience member is getting at nor what Chomsky means by 'decoding a lie'.
In 1979, Chomsky and Herman revised Counter-Revolutionary Violence and published it with South End Press as the two-volume The Political Economy of Human Rights.[113] In this they compared U.S. media reactions to the Cambodian genocide and the Indonesian occupation of East Timor. They argued that because Indonesia was a U.S. ally, U.S. media ignored the East Timorese situation while focusing on that in Cambodia, a U.S. enemy.[114] Taking a particular interest in the situation in East Timor, Chomsky testified on the subject in front of the United Nations' Special Committee on Decolonization in both 1978 and 1979, and attended a conference on the occupation held in Lisbon in 1979.[115] The following year, Steven Lukas authored an article for the Times Higher Education Supplement accusing Chomsky of betraying his anarchist ideals and acting as an apologist for Cambodian leader Pol Pot. Although Laura J. Summers and Robin Woodsworth Carlsen replied to the article, arguing that Lukas completely misunderstood Chomsky and Herman's work, Chomsky himself did not. The controversy damaged his reputation,[116] and Chomsky maintains that his critics deliberately printed lies about him in order to defame him.[117] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky#Edward_Herman_and_the_Faurisson_affair:_1976.E2.80.931980
There was a big campaign that continues to this day of accusing Chomsky of defending Pol Pot. Because he and Edward S. Herman looked at the claims being made and compared it to East Timor
KentAllard You’re not telling the truth. The problem with chumpski is that he encouraged people to ignore refugee testimony and believe Pol pot’s propaganda. Chumpski is a big shit.
@@BuGGyBoBerl Yes, it is true. Chomsky deliberately ignored the refugees since what they were saying didn’t fit the narrative he was trying to spread. Don’t marginalize Pol Pot and the atrocities the Khmer Rouge committed, 1.5-3 million dead out of a population of 7 million is not a good look.
I'm hearing Chomsky speaking for 15 minutes, about if it was 2 millions, or it was 200.000... but I don't see any actual point at all. Whats the point of the argument? What's the discussion about? What is he advocating for?
The source video says October 22, 1986. The most recent information I found with a quick search is this - directly quoted from the Cambodian Genocide Wikipedia page: "As of 2009, the Documentation Center of Cambodia has mapped 23,745 mass graves containing approximately 1.3 million suspected victims of execution. Direct execution is believed to account for up to 60% of the genocide's death toll, with other victims succumbing to starvation, exhaustion, or disease."
@@lacanian1500 No sarcasm. Chomsky has been figuratively eating his opponents alive for many, many decades. He is a virtual compendium of knowledge & insight both in politics, history, and in his own field.
I cannot find this official inquiry by the government of Finland that Chomsky mentions around @12:56 Perhaps it is "Kampuchea decade of the genocide : report of a Finnish inquiry commission edited by Kimmo Kiljunen" - but that is a private initiative composed of Finnish academics, journalists, and human rights activists- this looked at pre-existing demographic data, (censuses, birth and death rate records, and refugee figures) before and after the regime - gave a range of 1.5 to 2 million people killed. There was also a Swedish report, based upon the work of Kyell Engel and others who visited Cambodia in 1979, titled "A People Destroyed: Declassified Documents on the Cambodian Genocide" (gives an estimate of about 2 million people killed in the genocide)
Noam Chomsky said refugees were exaggerating about the atrocities that they suffered and help perpetuate the suffering of the Cambodians people even further. He is arrogant and a liar!
^ Selective care about genocide. It's because the American government don't actually care about genocide unless it is somehow negatively effecting their world control.
@@amihartz Compare our coverage of the holocaust (11 million , many who are Westerners dying) vs Lebensraum (30 million Russians, our enemies) dead vs "Asian holocaust" in Southeast Asia & China vs Bengal famine (4 million dead). All occured during WW2, yet we know much more about one of them (yes its bad) than the others.
The problem with Chomsky is he tried to be a generalist with an anti US lens. Whilst the USA is indeed guilty of many many crimes, his bias is always directing him. When you try and specialize in nothing but generalize in every conflict from Palestine to Venezuela you are going to make mistakes and not grab the nuances of what is going on. Its why academic journals exist and researchers spend years just trying to get an answer on one aspect of what is going on. Chomsky doesnt do that. Hes not an investigative journalist. He lives a comfy existence.
Nonsense. He's one of the most well-read people in the world. All he does is read books and academic journals. "Investigative journalism" is too frequently anything but. The amount of derivative reporting is staggering.
love how pissed off reporters get when Chomsky uses details. They, like their audience, have an intentionally imposed A.D.D. It makes it possible to sell more products.
Route6 Kid You overlook the fact that Chomsky's details are false. And he copied brochures from Pol Pot's own PR team without investigation. Chomsky so hated the American government deception about the Gulf of Tonkin that he became a shill for a genocidal regime! He used appeals to verbosity, and a gullible leftist press rather than arguing inductive,y from the facts. If you look at other subjects where Chomsky speaks you will see him fall back on these rhetorical tricks again and again. Why? Because they fool the educated and uneducated alike, as you point out in your comment. But no Cambodian expert concurs with Chomsky's account of the facts. They are made up, like most of Chomsky's fake intellectual arguments.
@@ubergenie6041 see, the credibility of your comment gets down the drain as soon as you get to that extreme. its always the same. someone disagrees and instead of giving reasons it gets into a shitfest were the opposition is completely wrong
Wanting some accuracy in information and holding the U.S and the Kymer Rouge to the same standard or of criticism is not being an apologist for Pol Pot or the Kymer Rogue, the opposite is being an apologist and propagandist for the U.S.A.
And this was all extemporaneous. No teleprompters or notes, just off the top of his head. Amazing. He reduced the questioner (spelled accuser) to a barely coherent ball of rage. When you come at the king, don't miss.
@@peterr6988 Which makes Chomsky's performance amazing. Like he said, takes one minute to tell a lie and 10 (well in this case 14) minutes to unravel it - all while the guy is trying to shout him down. He did this during a real time Q&A, citing names, places and dates , with no notes - other than the article which his 'antagonist' happened to write. All of it can be fact checked. And he flat out invites the audience to fact check. Badass. It also illustrates another point made by the Prof. If this had been on TV (say Meet The Press) He would not have had the time and space to lay out his case before being interrupted, 'Sorry Prof. Chomsky but we have to cut to commercial break...' So, in the name of concision the repeated lie continues while to truth gets cut off to sell Viagra. 'Nuff said.
The mans knowledge is encyclopedic. I have watched hours and hours of Chomsky and am amazed at his depth of knowledge. Watch Evan Solomon interview Chomsky.
Chomsky’s book “After the Cataclysm” is a long, tedious attempt to debunk nearly every report of atrocities by the Khmer Rouge. He portrayed the Cambodian genocide as a media hoax. He grudgingly and briefly admitted that there may have been some occasional unjustified violence by the Khmer Rouge, but he dismissed such violence as normal excesses that occur during revolutions. No big deal to him. His book attacks reporters and the media in general, not the Khmer Rouge. No genocide, according to him.
@@luperamos7307 Your comment is a perfect example of the kind of silly whataboutism that Chomsky always uses when confronted by the fact that he denied the Pol Pot genocide for purely political reasons.
Can u give a quote from his book that supports your argument? Critiquing the media that is reporting an atrocity is not the same as denying said atrocity. Skepticism and denial shouldn’t be conflated when it comes to taking accurate account of historical atrocities.
Howard Bloom's reporting of Chomsky's mind on this matter has given me pause on my Bloomsitmeter. You now can find facts. We live in interesting times, eh?
We were in similar situation but luckily the North Vietnamese communist was acting a lot better they didn’t kill us the south Vietnamese people. Yes there were south Vietnamese soldiers were put in hard labour in education camp . My brother was in the camp for 7 years. Our family was so poor that we didn’t have money to visit him in the camp . But the North Vietnamese regime was not brutal as the Khmer Rouge other wise everyone were also tortured and murdered as we were the losers. Who knows what it was turned around at that historical time as long as the other side won they could do anything when society was upside down. The effects lasted for generations after the war . But there were no UN there to help people. We were abandoned for whatever turned out to be luckily we still alive now to say something about the fact. We were also told not to wear colour every thing must be in black just like in Cambodia. But later on that was. It true the communist in Vietnam was not as bad and as brutal as in Cambodian. What else did we expect more when we were defeated in the South, the didn’t kill all of us that we were lucky enough. Otherwise we were in the same fates as 2 million Cambodian, we were one of them. I hate war, we hate suffering of post war too . We were starving at that time as well
Everyone here should go read what Chomsky actually wrote in 1977. Listening to him here is the same as listening to someone who is accused of a crime telling you that they didn't do it. Look for yourself at what he wrote.
This video is an audio clip of Chomsky at the University of Colorado in 1986. During the question period, I am the person who can be heard challenging him about his attempt in the 1970s to debunk reports of Khmer Rouge atrocities. Many critics have faulted him for his shameless denial of the Khmer Rouge's genocide. On this occasion, he went off on long tedious irrelevant tangents to cover up his whitewash of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. By the 1980s, when the evidence was too overwhelming to deny, he finally acknowledged Khmer Rouge atrocities. . On this occasion, he drowned me out every time that I tried to bring up his denials of Khmer Rouge atrocities. The audience was full of Chomsky's blind followers who lapped up his evasions and distortions. Chomsky is slippery and dishonest, dancing around what he wrote in the past. The moderator (a Chomsky acolyte) turned off my microphone so I couldn't reply to him. What a shit show. Chomsky has also denied Serbian atrocities in Bosnia during the 1990s. He has engaged in other falsifications, such as denying that Ghaddafi staged terrorist attacks in Europe and denying that the North Vietnamese committed a massacre in Hue in 1968.. For a detailed expose of Chomsky's BS about the Khmer Rouge, go online to "Chomsky's lie: denial of the Khmer Rouge holocaust in Cambodia." Or go to the Wikipedia article "Cambodian Genocide Denial." Or many other critical articles about his attempt to whitewash the Khmer Rouge.
Wow I just googling this and saw your post (13 hours ago) Thanks for commenting Frank Here is a copy and paste from the wiki for everyone "On 6 June 1977, Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman published an article in The Nation that contrasted the views expressed in the books of John Barron and Anthony Paul, François Ponchaud, and Gareth Porter and George Hildebrand, as well as in articles and accounts by Fox Butterfield, Carol Bragg (eyewitness testimony), Asian scholar George Kahin, J.J. Cazaux, Sydney Schanberg, Swedish journalist Olle Tolgraven, and others. Their conclusion was:[14] We do not pretend to know where the truth lies amidst these sharply conflicting assessments; rather, we again want to emphasize some crucial points. What filters through to the American public is a seriously distorted version of the evidence available, emphasizing alleged Khmer Rouge atrocities and downplaying or ignoring the crucial U.S. role, direct and indirect, in the torment that Cambodia has suffered.[14] Chomsky and Herman had both faint praise and criticism for Ponchaud's book Cambodia: Year Zero, writing on the one hand that it was "serious and worth reading, as distinct from much of the commentary it has elicited", and on the other that "the serious reader will find much to make him somewhat wary."[14] They wrote that the refugee stories of Khmer Rouge atrocities "must be considered seriously", but should be treated with great "care and caution" because "refugees are frightened and defenseless, at the mercy of alien forces. They naturally tend to report what they believe their interlocuters wish to hear."[14] Chomsky and Herman mentioned information in the accounts conflicted, and suggested that after the "failure of the American effort to subdue South Vietnam and to crush the mass movements elsewhere in Indochina," there was now "a campaign to reconstruct the history of these years so as to place the role of the United States in a more favorable light." According to the two men, this rewriting of history by the establishment press was served well by "tales of Communist atrocities, which not only prove the evils of communism but undermine the credibility of those who opposed the war and might interfere with future crusades for freedom." In support of their assertion, Chomsky and Herman criticized Barron and Paul's book Murder of a Gentle Land for ignoring the U.S. government's role in creating the situation, saying, When they speak of 'the murder of a gentle land,' they are not referring to B-52 attacks on villages or the systematic bombing and murderous ground sweeps by American troops or forces organized and supplied by the United States, in a land that had been largely removed from the conflict prior to the American attack.[14] They suggest, using examples, Barron and Paul's "scholarship collapses under the barest scrutiny," concluding that, "It is a fair generalization that the larger the number of deaths attributed to the Khmer Rouge, and the more the U.S. role is set aside, the larger the audience that will be reached. The Barron-Paul volume is a third-rate propaganda tract, but its exclusive focus on Communist terror assures it a huge audience."[14] Later comments In Manufacturing Consent (1988), Chomsky and Herman discussed the media reaction to their earlier writings on the Cambodian genocide. They summarised the position which they had taken in After the Cataclysm (1979): As we also noted from the first paragraph of our earlier review of this material, to which we will simply refer here for specifics, “there is no difficulty in documenting major atrocities and oppression, primarily from the reports of refugees”; there is little doubt that “the record of atrocities in Cambodia is substantial and often gruesome” and represents “a fearful toll”; “when the facts are in, it may turn out that the more extreme condemnations were in fact correct,” although if so, “it will in no way alter the conclusions we have reached on the central question addressed here: how the available facts were selected, modified, or sometimes invented to create a certain image offered to the general population. The answer to this question seems clear, and it is unaffected by whatever may yet be discovered about Cambodia in the future.”[27] Responses to Chomsky and Herman In the introduction to the American edition of his book, Ponchaud responded to a personal letter from Chomsky, saying, With the responsible attitude and precision of thought that are so characteristic of him, Noam Chomsky then embarked on a polemical exchange with Robert Silvers, Editor of the NYR, and with Jean Lacouture, leading to the publication by the latter of a rectification of his initial account. Mr. Chomsky was of the opinion that Jean Lacouture had substantially distorted the evidence I had offered, and, considering my book to be "serious and worth reading, as distinct from much of the commentary it has elicited," he wrote me a letter on October 19, 1977 in which he drew my attention to the way [Year Zero] was being misused by anti-revolutionary propagandists. He has made it my duty to 'stem the flood of lies' about Cambodia -- particularly, according to him, those propagated by Anthony Paul and John Barron in Murder of a Gentle Land.[11]: xiii Ponchaud wrote a different response to Chomsky in the British introduction to his book: Even before this book was translated it was sharply criticized by Mr. Noam Chomsky...and Mr. Gareth Porter....These two 'experts' on Asia claim that I am mistakenly trying to convince people that Cambodia was drowned in a sea of blood after the departure of the last American diplomats. They say there have been no massacres, and they lay the blame for the tragedy of the Khmer people on the American bombings. They accuse me of being insufficiently critical in my approach to the refugee's accounts. For them, refugees are not a valid source...it is surprising to see that 'experts' who have spoken to few if any refugees should reject their very significant place in any study of modern Cambodia. These experts would rather base their arguments on reasoning: if something seems impossible to their personal logic, then it doesn't exist. Their only sources for evaluation are deliberately chosen official statements. Where is that critical approach which they accuse others of not having?[28]
Cambodia scholar Bruce Sharp[self-published source?] criticized Chomsky and Herman's Nation article, as well as their subsequent work After the Cataclysm (1979), wrote that while Chomsky and Herman added disclaimers about knowing the truth of the matter, and about the nature of the regimes in Indochina, they nevertheless expressed a set of views by their comments and their use of various sources. For instance, Chomsky portrayed Porter and Hildebrand's book as "a carefully documented study of the destructive American impact on Cambodia and the success of the Cambodian revolutionaries in overcoming it, giving a very favorable picture of their programs and policies, based on a wide range of sources." Sharp, however, found that 33 out of 50 citations in one chapter of Porter and Hildebrand's book derived from the Khmer Rouge government and six from China, the Khmer Rouge's principal supporter.[8] Cambodia correspondent Nate Thayer said of Chomsky and Herman's Nation article that they "denied the credibility of information leaking out of Cambodia of a bloodbath underway and viciously attacked the authors of reportage suggesting many were suffering under the Khmer Rouge."[29] Journalist Andrew Anthony in the London Observer, said later that the Porter and Hildebrand's book "cravenly rehashed the Khmer Rouge's most outlandish lies to produce a picture of a kind of radical bucolic idyll." Chomsky, he said, questioned "refugee testimony," believing that "their stories were exaggerations or fabrications, designed for a western media involved in a 'vast and unprecedented propaganda campaign' against the Khmer Rouge government, 'including systematic distortion of the truth.'"[30] Donald W. Beachler cited reports that Chomsky's attempts to counter charges of Khmer Rouge atrocities also consisted of writing letters to editors and publications. Beachler said: Examining materials in the Documentation Center of Cambodia archives, American commentator Peter Maguire found that Chomsky wrote to publishers such as Robert Silver of The New York Review of Books to urge discounting atrocity stories. Maguire reports that some of these letters were as long as twenty pages, and that they were even sharper in tone than Chomsky’s published words.[2]: 223 Journalist Fred Barnes also mentioned that Chomsky had written "a letter or two" to The New York Review of Books. Barnes discussed the Khmer Rouge with Chomsky and "the thrust of what he [Chomsky] said was that there was no evidence of mass murder" in Cambodia. Chomsky, according to Barnes, believed that "tales of holocaust in Cambodia were so much propaganda."[31]: 118 In 1978, French scholar Jean Lacouture, formerly a fervent sympathizer of the Khmer Rouge, said: "Cambodia and Cambodians are on their way to ethnic extinction.… If Noam Chomsky and his friends doubt it, they should study the papers, the cultures, the facts."[13] Journalist Christopher Hitchens defended Chomsky and Herman in 1985. They "were engaged in the admittedly touchy business of distinguishing evidence from interpretations."[31]: 116 Chomsky and Herman have continued to argue that their analysis of the situation in Cambodia was reasonable, based on the information available to them at the time, and a legitimate critique of the disparities in reporting atrocities committed by Communist regimes relative to the atrocities committed by the U.S. and its allies. However, Bruce Sharp[self-published source?] asserted that Chomsky continued to claim much lower numbers of Khmer Rouge victims long after the large number of dead was proven by mass graves.[32][failed verification]"
@@frankk1512 ~ Thanks for posting info showing how Chomsky denied Khmer Rouge atrocities. In the 1970s, he tried to debunk every report of Khmer Rouge butchery and oppression. Now, he pretends that he was just critiquing the evidence that was available at the time. Not true. He doubted horror stories by Cambodian refugees. Also, as I recall, he made a few favorable comments about the Khmer Rouge, such as claiming that they instituted an 8-hour work day. Ha. Chomsky has been bullshitting on this subject for years -- as well as on other matters, such as disputing Serb atrocities in Bosnia during the 1990s. For instance, see the Wikipedia article "Bosnia genocide denial" (scroll half-way down). As with his whitewash of the Khmer Rouge, Chomsky has tried to cover up and wiggle out of what he said earlier by distorting his previous positions. Chomsky is incapable of admitting a mistake. He has been wrong about many things. When I exchanged letters with him many years ago, I pointed out some of his factual errors. He wrote back to me, denying that he had made any mistakes. He insisted that he was "100 percent right." He's a dishonest egotistical rigid ideologue who's impossible to reason with.
@@FrankCoffman Much respect to you. Here after Chomsky's view's on Ukraine. He is so anti establishment that can't find anything wrong in Russia's wrongdoings. You are right and he is a liar. Silencing you tells a lot.
@@joelkallio308 ~ Thanks, Joel. Yes, Chomsky wouldn't let me get a word in edge-wise because he was desperate to defend himself and keep me from exposing him -- so he rattled off a long tedious monologue that was beside the point. His slavish devotees think he's the ultimate authority on everything, including philosophy, history, politics, economics. He isn't an expert on these subjects. I also posted a reply to his misinformed comments about Isaac Newton's theory of gravity on this RU-vid video: "Noam Chomsky on René Descartes" He spouted ridiculous nonsense about physics which he clearly knows nothing about.
Overwork and starvation counts as genocide deaths, just like in the Holocaust. He’s being intellectually dishonest. He’s also an asshole for telling Cambodians to their face that they’re lying. “As best as can now be estimated, over two million Cambodians died during the 1970s because of the political events of the decade, the vast majority of them during the mere four years of the 'Khmer Rouge' regime. This number of deaths is even more staggering when related to the size of the Cambodian population, then less than eight million. ... Subsequent reevaluations of the demographic data situated the death toll for the [civil war] in the order of 300,000 or less.”
@@czechmatey Chomsky’s book “After the Cataclysm” is a long, tedious attempt to debunk nearly every report of atrocities by the Khmer Rouge. He portrayed the Cambodian genocide as a media hoax. He grudgingly and briefly admitted that there may have been some occasional unjustified violence by the Khmer Rouge, but he dismissed such violence as normal excesses that occur during revolutions. No big deal to him. His book attacks reporters and the media in general, not the Khmer Rouge. No genocide, according to him.
So, is his message essentially that the common death count from the Cambodian genocide is very exaggerated? Has this argument not been debunked by now, especially after the discovery of nearly 24,000 mass graves with 1.3 million dead bodies? Count those who were not buried in mass graves and the 1.5 to 2 million figure doesn't seem too far off. From my understanding, he has also downplayed refugee testimonies that suggest the 1.5 to 2 million figure to be correct. I understand his central point that comparable atrocities by "our side" are often accepted as okay much more than our enemies, but this downplaying of the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge is ridiculous.
If you think that he's underplaying the Khmer Rouge's atrocities you didn't listen to the video. All he's said is the information available at the time were misreported by the press, which isn't inconsistent with your observations. The important point is how the press overstates/understates *what's known* about atrocities depending on who does them.
Did you even listen to the video? How can you assume the cause of death by the existence of a grave? Every dead person looks the same, whether an American or a Cambodian killed them...
And what is that point? The Khmer rouge did not kill 2m people' only 700k ? This is one of the most boring talks i have ever heard (except other talks by Chomsky)
@@ilankozma4668 No, that is not the point, and perhaps it was boring because the content of what he said was obviously totally lost on you. The point is that the press overstates/understates what is known at the time about atrocities, depending on whether they're perpetrated by enemies or allies. The exact number killed by the KR is irrelevant, what is relevant is how the press dealt with the available facts, and how they apply different standards to other genocides, such as the one in East Timor (perpetrated by US ally Indonesia).
@@flame0154if you cant see that everything noam chomsky said was wrong you are delusional hes literally justifying KR for all of the killing saying it wasnt 2 million it was actually 1.2 million and if he did any research he literally wouldnt have to look so dumb on stage 🤦🏾♂️
@debunker chomsky didn’t listen to the witnesses the guy was telling chomsky their were witnesses to confirm is pov and chomsky got mad and over talked him like did you even watch the video?
@@lelouchvibritania8121 “The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.”: Variants: One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is just a statistic. A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic. When one dies, it is a tragedy. When a million die, it is a statistic. In Портрет тирана (1981) (Portrait of a Tyrant), English translation The Time of Stalin: Portrait of Tyranny, Harper & Row, 1981, ISBN 0-06-010148-2; page 287 of the 1983 reprint Soviet historian Anton Antonov-Ovseyenko attributes the following version to Stalin: "When one man dies it's a tragedy. When thousands die it's statistics." This is the alleged response of Stalin during the 1943 Tehran conference when Churchill objected to an early opening of a second front in France. In her review "Mustering Most Memorable Quips" of Konstantin Dushenko's 1997 Dictionary of Modern Quotations (Словарь современных цитат: 4300 ходячих цитат и выражений ХХ века, их источники, авторы, датировка), Julia Solovyova states: "Russian historians have no record of the lines, 'Death of one man is a tragedy. Death of a million is a statistic,' commonly attributed by English-language dictionaries to Josef Stalin." Mustering Most Memorable Quips, The Moscow Times, 1997-10-28 This quotation may originate from "Französischer Witz" (1925) by Kurt Tucholsky: "Darauf sagt ein Diplomat vom Quai d'Orsay: «Der Krieg? Ich kann das nicht so schrecklich finden! Der Tod eines Menschen: das ist eine Katastrophe. Hunderttausend Tote: das ist eine Statistik!»" ("To which a Quai d'Orsay diplomat replies: «The war? I can't find it so terrible! The death of one man: that is a catastrophe. One hundred thousand deaths: that is a statistic!»") Another possible source or intermediary may be the concluding words of chapter 8 of the 1956 novel The Black Obelisk by Erich Maria Remarque: "Aber das ist wohl so, weil ein einzelner immer der Tod ist - und zwei Millionen immer nur eine Statistik." ("But probably the reason is that one dead man is death-and two million are only a statistic." 1958 Crest Book reprint) Mary Soames (daughter of Churchill) claims to have overheard Stalin deliver a variant of the quote in immediate postwar Berlin (Remembrance Sunday Andrew Marr interview BBC 2011) See also Jean Rostand, Thoughts of a Biologist, 1939: "Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god." In an interview given for the 1983 three-part documentary Der Prozeß by Norddeutscher Rundfunk on the Third Majdanek trial, Simon Wiesenthal attributes the quote to the unpublished auto-biography of Adolf Eichmann. According to Wiesenthal, Eichmann had been asked by another member of the Reich Main Security Office during WWII what they should answer would they be questioned after the war about the millions of dead Jews they were responsible for, to which Eichmann according to his own testimony had replied with the quote.
@@sirnoobs8098 He didn't acknowledge the Serbian war crimes in Srebrenica as genocide despite the fact that there are many evidences that said otherwise.
@@jakebate1533 Nice try, but first of all, to all illiterate right wingers, Chomsky is anarchist, which has nothing to do with Stalin or Khmer Rouge or any kind of central state authority, let alone dictatorship! Secondly, not that I approve of Stalin or Khmers or any authoritarian rule, but come to think of it, capitalism (including American, European, et al) has committed more crimes and genocides than hundreds of Stalins and Khmers put together, from mass murder and enslaving millions of Africans, killing of obliterating millions of Native Americans, and murder of another few million civilian Vietnamese, Japanese and Cambodians by weapons of mass destruction (such as nuclear, chemical and biological weapons used by Americans as well as Europeans), killing 60 million people by ultra right wing Nazis, mass genocides all over Africa by the hands of European colonizers to rob them out of natural resources, and not to mention recent murder of nearly two million people in Iraq and Afghanistan...
I think this talk was from 1986 so just to clarify, Chomsky's numbers are pretty wrong. The estimates of the number of deaths under the Pol Pot regime are quite close to the original 2 million figure (at least 1,4 million bodies were discovered by mapping done by Yale since 1995 plus deaths through over-work, starvation etc). Of course he had little empirical evidence to go by at that time, but I think it illustrates Zizeks point well about how often Chomsky has been empirically wrong throughout his career.
Chomsky here is happy to admit the numbers could turn out to be high, higher - what he was establishing are the facts and figures known at that time, and making clear that a casual treatment of data is not sound practice; being "empirically wrong" in this sense doesn't seem like a bad thing at all.
he never claimed his numbers are accurate. he even said it can be 2 million or more. he said we have different sources and different numbers at that time. his point wasnt the crime being a crime. it obviously his. its rather the hypocracy
That man knew he wrote a lie and double-downed but it just made him look worse because Chomsky knew what he said, wrote, where and how facts were gathered including from the US state department.
Not true. There are many refutations of Chomsky's BS. But you've already said that you won't even look at contrary information, which you've dismissed without even knowing what it is. Obviously, you're a blind follower, not a critical thinker.
That's BS. Thomas Sowell tore Chomsky A new hole or two. Dozens of academics have called CHUMPsky out over the last 60 years. In fact, ANY FACTS OR INDIVIDUALS that refute or contradict CHUMPsky 'facts' he simply IGNORES or LEAVES THE DAIS or repeats his Marxist Cliches and Platitudes. Often quoting himself from his own 'research' and previous works/ books. He is quite simply a sociopath. An intellectual sociopath. His speech patterns and semantics are EXACTLY what Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Joseph Stalin, and virtually every 20th Century DICTATOR repeats ad nauseum. Chomoskies prism/ God is Karl Marx The ultimate Critical THEORY God of Anarchy. CHOMPSKY endlessly criticises Capitalism, Christianity and ANY fact or idea that conflicts with the Marxist Zero Sum Economics, social, psychological, meta physical, epistemology, semantics, financial narratives of the Negative Elanche. Something that Socrates was Murdered for. Pointing out the Negative instead of the positive aspects of virtually ANY progress of ANY improvement of the human experience. In fact, CHUMPsky NEVER offers a single solution to any of his grievances with him man history. Other than his endlessly repeated "a new paradigm of and by " other means" of advancing the human story. He is by any definition in psychiatry and psychology a CLASSIC UN REPENTANT SELF CONFESSED ANARCHIST SOCIOPATH.
@@FrankCoffman Here you are lying again. I read sources that disagree with Chomsky all the time. Most of the mainstream media disagrees with him. I said I wasn't interested in your recommendations, because anyone who behaves as you behaved during his talk has lost all credibility with me. Behaving that way is a good indication to me that you are not a reliable source of information. That's the price you pay for acting like that. You lose credibility. Is that too difficult for you to understand? Try not to lie when you respond.
@@ast453000 ~ You're rude, uninformed and closed-minded. You're not debating with me. You're just making a stupid personal attack on me -- because you have nothing substantive to say. I'm not lying. You have no clue. You haven't read his book "After the Cataclysm" in which he devoted a lengthy chapter to disputing reports of Khmer Rouge atrocities. I will re-post (below) a few comments that I wrote in another post on this video: * Chomsky claimed: "Khmer Rouge programs elicited a positive response from some sectors of the Cambodian peasantry because they dealt with fundamental problems rooted in the feudal past." So he praised the Khmer Rouge for helping Cambodian peasants. He didn't believe reports of genocide. * Chomsky complained that "it became virtually a matter of dogma in the West that the [Khmer Rouge] regime was the very incarnation of evil with no redeeming qualities." He complained about ignoring the Khmer Rouge's "redeeming qualities" which he attempted to demonstrate. * Chomsky cited absurd claims of improved health care and working conditions under the Khmer Rouge. He objected to condemning the Khmer Rouge, and he objected to ignoring their "redeeming qualities." * Chomsky tried to put a positive gloss on the Khmer Rouge by quoting defenders of the Khmer Rouge. For instance, Chomsky approvingly quoted a Khmer Rouge apologist who wrote that "the condition of the Khmer peasant has improved notably" under the Khmer Rouge. Chomsky quoted another Khmer Rouge defender who claimed that under the Khmer Rouge, peasants "appeared to have acquired dignity, serenity, and security after a lifetime of oppression and violence." This is the fake reality that Chomsky was pushing by quoting Khmer Rouge apologists. * In the 1970s, Chomsky systematically tried to whitewash the Khmer Rouge. He said that horror stories from Cambodian refugees were unreliable. He tried to refute reports of murder and oppression by the Khmer Rouge. He acknowleged that some atrocities occurred, but he brushed off Khmer Rouge violence as insignificant by falsely comparing it to the angry reaction of French people who attacked Nazi collaborators after WWII. Chomsky minimized, denied, justified and made excuses for the Khmer Rouge. He had no criticism of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. What he wrote about the Khmer Rouge is total bullshit. In addition, during the height of Mao's brutal "Cultural Revolution," Chomsky lauded totalitarian Comunist China for working to build a "just society." He said of Mao's dictatorship: "one finds many things that are really quite admirable.” Chomsky continues to defend communist China and blame the US for tensions with China. In addition, Chomsky has been echoing Russian propaganda about Ukraine and blaming the West for the war in Ukraine. No lies. Just facts. There are numerous sources on the Internet that expose his attempted whitewash of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s, but you haven't bothered to look them up. He has repeatedly defended or made excuses for anti-American dictatorships. You don't know what you're talking about -- so go away and mind your manners, if you have any.
did you watch the video? He explicitly condemned the "barbarity of the Khmer Rouge" and also the forced work, starvation etc 7:19. I wish Chomsky detractors would actually engage in the substance of his argument rather than making up easily disproven lies.
@@GlassesAndCoffeeMugs he also condemned the 9/11 attacks and then proceeded to say the United States did it to itself. It's not the terrorists fault you see.
@@kenfresno5218 That's because it was the United States' fault, they armed and funded the mujaheddin which turned into Al Queda, they did not act on intelligence indicating there would be an attack, and they were breeding terrorism in the region. Fact: The US State Department once considered Bin Laden to be a rebellious freedom fighter and an asset to US intelligence. None of this justifies the actual attack; analysis is not justification
@gerrydonohoeBy Chomsky's logic the US and Great Britain were no better than the Nazis because we killed more of their soldiers and civilians than they did ours. It's moral relativism gone mad. In fact it's an inversion of morality.
Short summary: Journalist accuses chomsky of liying. Chomsky retorts by saying the 2 million estimate was a single person's account based on some refugee accounts. Then CHomsky also points out that out of that 2 million 800 k is actually attributed to US bombings (that does not seem to bother the journalist, who just keeps interrupting), then CHomsky also says that currently there is no reliable or meaningful data on exact estimates. WHAT he does say however, is that even though there are no real numbers, the US media just keeps repeating the 2 million number (which is more nuanced than simply the khmer rogue killing 2 millions people...there was starvation also due to war and dismantled infrastructure) while the same US media completely ignored East Timur 200k killings. Overall his statement was not that the khmer was innocent, but that the US media kept amplifying one data while suppressing another one in favor of a US ally.
@@ferretyluv Whataboutism lmao... Since people insist on bringing up the moral principles of self-determination and freedom of association, I insist that those principles be equally and fairly applied. That is a thing that human beings do, when it comes to questions of morality, to demand that they be universally invoked if they are to be invoked at all. I don’t know what kind of weird moral world people are living in where they think it’s some irrelevant dodge to maintain the essential notion of universalism. Those who use the term “whataboutism” are alleging that their targets are avoiding hard conversations and real engagement through distraction, but that is in fact precisely the function that the term uses in our discourse, to allow people to wriggle out of considering America’s terrible history of crimes abroad. And to the extent that this dynamic is identified at all, it’s never matched with an attendant focus on the stuff that was disallowed from the conversation. People don’t say “that’s whataboutism” at 2:00 and then say “OK let’s get serious about what America’s drug war has done to Mexico” at 2:30. The people who say “whataboutism” don’t want to talk about carpet bombing in Cambodia. They don’t want to talk about death squads in El Salvador. They don’t want to talk about reinstalling the Shah in Iran. They don’t want to talk about the murder of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo. They don’t want to talk about giving a hit list to rampaging anti-Communists in Indonesia. They don’t want to talk about the US’s role in installing a far-right government in Honduras. They don’t want to talk about US support for apartheid in South Africa. They don’t want to talk about unexploded ordnance that still kills and maims in Laos. They don’t want to talk about supporting the hideously corrupt drug lord post-Taliban regime in Afghanistan. They don’t want to talk about aiding literal Nazis and Italian fascists in taking over the government in Albania. They don’t want to talk about giving support to the far-right government’s “dirty war” in Argentina. They don’t want to talk about the US-instigated far-right coup in Ghana. They don’t want to talk about our illegal bombing of Yugoslavia. They don’t want to talk about centuries of mistreatment of Haiti, such as sponsoring the coup against Aristide. They don’t want to talk about sparking 36 years of ruinous civil war, and attendant slaughters of indigenous people, in Guatemala. They don’t want to talk about our drone war in Pakistan. They don’t want to talk about how much longer this list could go on. So when do we talk about that stuff, exactly? freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/i-am-asking-for-a-coherent-set-of?s=r
@@ferretyluv How is it whataboutism? Whataboutism being the practice of justifying or legitimising actions taken by saying someone else did other bad things. Very different to a media analysis that focuses on how the US media treats the crimes of official enemies versus how they treat the crimes of allies and themselves.
@@missc2742 Good for you (and the rest of the world) ! The most ethical society SHOULD be at the forefront of everything and the rest should follow. You follow your betters not those who are worse than you are.
@gerrydonohoe you guessed wrong. To become powerful at the societal level you must FIRST be ethical. To be ethical means to be able to treat others fairly. Societies that follow universal human ethics (morality is species-specific, that's my thought btw) which are absolute and evolve slowly over time, become more successful and more powerful. Then some immoral culture with which they come in conduct with treats them wrong or become acquainted with a bad bunch of the powerful society (like the Cortez bunch in Lat. America) and lose the conflict with them because even the bad bunch is better than them! That's how ethical societies get to be more powerful than societies that do things wrong. Your moral relativism won't root in this comment section. I have a strong allergy for it.
Lasting for four years (between 1975 and 1979), the Cambodian Genocide was an explosion of mass violence that saw between 1.5 and 3 million people killed at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, a communist political group. The Khmer Rouge had taken power in the country following the Cambodian Civil War.
What a liar and hypocrite: he was clearly admiring the khmer rouge. Here's an exerpt of the article he talks about: Hildebrand and Porter present a carefully documented study of the destructive American impact on Cambodia and the success of the Cambodian revolutionaries in overcoming it, giving a very favorable picture of their programs and policies, based on a wide range of sources. Published last year, and well received by the journal of the Asia Society (Asia, March-April 1977), it has not been reviewed in the Times, New York Review or any mass-media publication, nor used as the basis for editorial comment, with one exception. The Wall Street Journal acknowledged its existence in an editorial entitled “Cambodia Good Guys” (November 22, 1976), which dismissed contemptuously the very idea that the Khmer Rouge could play a constructive role, as well as the notion that the United States had a major hand in the destruction, death and turmoil of wartime and postwar Cambodia. Source: chomsky.info/19770625/ The whole article dismisses the reports of genocide, which came out to be exact in the end.
Seriously? Did you even read the article to which you just quoted from? Perhaps, if your conclusion that ‘he was clearly admiring the khmer rouge’ is true then it shouldn’t be hard to assimilate some more quotes, further down in the page and past the point where people can immediately cherry pick quotes from, into your conclusion now should it? ‘Ponchaud’s book is serious and worth reading, as distinct from much of the commentary it has elicited. He gives a grisly account of what refugees have reported to him about the barbarity of their treatment at the hands of the Khmer Rouge.’ ‘We do not pretend to know where the truth lies amidst these sharply conflicting assessments; rather, we again want to emphasize some crucial points. What filters through to the American public is a seriously distorted version of the evidence available, emphasizing alleged Khmer Rouge atrocities and downplaying or ignoring the crucial U.S. role, direct and indirect, in the torment that Cambodia has suffered. Evidence that focuses on the American role, like the Hildebrand and Porter volume, is ignored, not on the basis of truthfulness or scholarship but because the message is unpalatable.’ And here is even a passage where the purported Khmer Rogue admirer actually casts scepticism over the level of American atrocities and actually ends up downplaying their true scale from what was originally offered. ‘Ponchaud cites a Cambodian report that 200,000 people were killed in American bombings from March 7 to August 15, 1973. No source is offered, but suspicions are aroused by the fact that Phnom Penh radio announced on May 9, 1975 that there were 200,000 casualties of the American bombing in 1973, including “killed, wounded, and crippled for life” (Hildebrand and Porter). Ponchaud cites “Cambodian authorities” who give the figures 800,000 killed and 240,000 wounded before liberation. The figures are implausible. By the usual rule of thumb, wounded amount to about three times killed; quite possibly he has the figures reversed.’
Always watch the mass graves business. They can always fudge numbers that way. His main note is that the same people who are Cambodia nuts say nothing about East Timor, our crime.
wow read the comments in here! How could he have ever given any form of support to a Stalinist party in Cambodia? Did he really have to have the exact numbers to know that this spelled out murder? Why did he not move to Cambodia himself? He was a young man and could have helped Pol Pot build Cambodia - or was he worried his education could have been a death sentence to him?
Because exact numbers matter. Because the victims and survivors of atrocities have a right to truth. Professor Chomsky did nothing different than what has been done by many Truth and Reconciliation Commissions before him have done before - he documented the number of victims for posterity's sake.
A main principle of academia is to write such that there is no way you can get misunderstood. Chomsky gets an F on this, look at the mess in the comment section. Long rebuttals back and forth since he cound't make this clear, even to an audience trying to get their answers. He focused on downplaying a genocide since he was so filled with hate towards the U.S' atrocities, and he looked like a fool. Instead of a clear apology for the misunderstanding, this is the mess he left himself in. People who don't have time to read all his blabber (Im unfortunate enough to have read some of his works) won't come from this talk, or any of his answers to his critiques with any real answers. Unclear, emotional and ideologically blinded is his legacy.
Re: "A main principle of academia is to write such that there is no way you can get misunderstood." This is a video of Chomsky responding verbally to attacks, he's not writing anything. However if you read anything from Chomsky, you will notice he writes in the spirit of Orwell: Plain speech. He doesn't resort to confusing words, confusing ideas, or any complicated 'system' of thinking. He is always misunderstood by those who cannot accept his basic moral principle: Avoid hypocrisy. Look at your own crimes first. Re: "He focused on downplaying a genocide" No, he called for accuracy in reporting of official enemy's crimes, and his corrections were accepted by Ponchaud. So what you call "downplaying" I call correction. I want to know the truth. Who is your source that he "downplays" atrocities? Do you think he downplayed the US bombing of Cambodia like Ponchaud did? Re: "so filled with hate towards the U.S' atrocities" Chomsky is not "filled with hate" and never says anything hateful. But he's accused of it of course. Critical analysis is not hate. Hate is what you're doing: attacking a straw man you created. Re: "Unclear, emotional and ideologically blinded" He is quite clear, but you don't have the patience to listen to his decoding of a lie. He's being interrupted constantly by his accuser. Emotional? He's being harrassed about genocide denial and yet I don't see an emotional outburst. I see someone being assertive. Where are the tears? Where is the shouting? Where does he lose control and call people names? Ideological? He has no political ideology. He does not advocate any ideology. He refuses to give advice beyond calling on people to organize and educate themselves.
@@gerrydonohoe2765 This is a great reply, thank you. Ironically, while I called chomsky emotional my comment was probably fueled by emotion. When it comes to the subject matter, I haven't seen a clear rebuttal, a clear explisit sorry that he used Kmehr sources to downplay the number. Why choose this hill to die on? Like I said, look at the comment section here, people are confused as to what his intentions are. When it comes to ideology, he argues very much in line with other neo marxists that i've read the works of. A lot of critique of the current system, few ideas as to how to improve it. However, he himself states that he is an anarchist. Two quite embarrasing conclusion to arrive at, in my view. If i found myself in either of those systems, I would flee at an instance. But anyways, thanks for a great reply (Im not being ironic, you pointed out my mistakes).
@@xdman20005 I appreciate your mature and moderate response, it's a rare occurrence. Re: "people are confused as to what his intentions are." Yes, and they need to read Chomsky if they want to understand Chomsky's positions. Re: "few ideas as to how to improve it" He does give specific advice: accuracy in media, freedom of speech, and that people should organize themselves if they want to affect change. He explains how popular movements caused humanitarian political change, not specific leaders or political ideas. Freedoms are wrested from power, not given as gifts. Other than this he's quite clear he is loathe to give advice on how to "improve" things. All political systems imposed from above are destined to fail. Re: "he himself states that he is an anarchist" No, he's never stated that but it's always been attributed to him. He did an interview on anarchy with the BBC back in 1978, I've listened to it a few times over the years. He describes himself as a "fellow traveler" to anarcho-syndicalism (distinct from 'anarchy' e.g. obviously you need rules of the road), and he gives the example of the spontaneous nd successful anarcho-syndicalist political system that developed in Spain before Franco smashed it. You can see similar efforts today in cooperative businesses, owned & managed in a way much closer to Marxist than capitalist principles. He does not advocate any kind of anarcho-syndicalist revolution. He believes nation states ought to dissolve naturally, depending on how people organize.
@@gerrydonohoe2765 I think you're more knowledgable than me on Chomsky, thanks for clearing those gaps in my positon up. What do you think about his position on NATO being in the wrong when it comes to "eastern expansion"? He quotes Mearsheimer, whom I see the russians utilize as a propaganda tool these very days and his article "Why Ukraine is the West's fault" or something like that, quite literally playing into the book of the KGB, denying a nation their autonomy.
@@xdman20005 I think you're referring to Chomskly's article "US Military Escalation Against Russia Would Have No Victors". He does reference Mearsheimer as being on the fringe, and lists others from within the US Government including Willam Perry and George Kennan. So the view that the US provoked Russia back in 2008 by trying to extend NATO is valid. This direcly played into the Kremlin's hand for propaganda, since NATO expansion means Russian withdrawl. Chomsky's argument is to not escalate tensions. Right now the world is against Russia, and the US is not known for subtle maneuvering. WW3 is at the door. NATO involvement right now is extremely dangerous, given the lack of information about Putin's mind.
Really? Because he was proved to be objectively wrong. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide the genocide denial caused the deaths of 1.5-2 million people.
What an embarrassing performance on Chomsky's part. Vickery is the "only expert on Cambodia" who wrote about the massacres huh? Chandler begs to differ. Including countless Cambodian scholars.
So I'm leaning towards agreeing with Chomsky here, but he totally could have gone without calling the man a liar. Odds are he's now never going to change his mind, and anyone who believes as he does will despise Chomsky.
True. He also doesn't properly allow the other guy's argument to be spoken clearly. Keeps cutting him off. I actually came here to hear Chomsky's defence after reading a scathing critique here: quillette.com/2018/07/15/devastation-and-denial-cambodia-and-the-academic-left/ But I'm not impressed overall. Even if his point on the US being responsible for 800k of the 2m is valid, he still rails against those responsible for the smaller figure. There is no complaint voiced about the ideology behind the larger one. One could speculate that means he is an apologist for it. And that would appear consistent with his prior positions. One also notes that on one hand interventionism is decried as evil. But a lack of intervention when it results in genocide is also decried in the same way. So it seems there is no position any president can take which would be pleasing on these matters.
@@BenWeeks > _he still rails against those responsible for the smaller figure_ This objection makes as much sense as that of a murderer in 1940s US facing trial and saying _"Why do you rail against me and not Hitler?"._
@@BenWeeks 3 things. the other guy interrupt him and not the other way round. second he dont have the time here to dismantle everything he said here. third, he doesnt apologize the numbers nor does he say its fine. he talks about misquoting
Chomsky has a high opinion of himself. His advocation of Communism is disgusting giving the fact he lives and is successful in a capitalist society. Now that we know the truth that the 2 million figure is pretty accurate we can see how ridiculous his entire statement is in this video.
How is it disgusting? People can live in deep poverty under capitalism, and having capitalism isn't a real indicator of a successful or capable society. Just look at the lower classes in the US, or in multiple African and South American countries where many people live in squalor fundamentally tied to the capitalistic system. Are you going to tell those people that they have it better because they live under capitalism? A better question; are you going to tell someone like Chomsky, who has lived in a capitalist society his entire life, that he has no right to have an opinion on the economic system used by his country? Very ridiculous.
Well the 2 million figure is after the Khmer Rouge were allowed to genocide for a long time, Chomsky was criticizing the early 2 million figure to show you that the media is tries to amplify massacres by non-US while minimize East Timor atrocities.
IT's just a loooooong mess... Can't he just get to the point instead of going around the bush and repeating the same thing 3 times... He is really a bad communicator.
He is entitled to muster a defence. But critics should be able to outline their argument as well. Like this: quillette.com/2018/07/15/devastation-and-denial-cambodia-and-the-academic-left/
@@BenWeeks Chomsky bias is very clear here. HE does everything he can do defend Khmer, but on the other hand, he does everything he can to accuse the corporation of propaganda and conspiracy... Nice link, thanks.
He isn't defending pol pot, he is literally just calling out misinformation on the subject of the victims of his regime. Like someone saying hitler killed 2 billion people, and someone corrected them by saying the right amount of victims.
You need to read more politics..US government and politics were using this 2 million deaths against bloody pol pot regime but in the meantime they were trying to cover from people’s eyes what US caused during the war in Vietnam and aftermath in Cambodia..🤷🏼♂️
@@korona5673 Can you give me one reason to read more politics to justify the defense of stupidity by Noam Chomsky around the world. This is a man who will defend murder if it is to advance the course of socialism or communism. Even in the absence of death, you can't be a sane person to defend that ridiculous and evil ideology. I don't think pathetic adequately describes him, he is evil when he tries to justify deaths at the hands of communists.
@@philipbaidoo7985 yep, you need more reading and hearing..first N.Chomsky is not defending pol pot or his regime here, second you need to learn what is socialism, communism and its fractions (hint for you pol pot wasn’t even a communist) ..thanks ..oh before i go ..people have been dying over 60 years due to US world politics hmmm did you say evil ideology ? 🤘🤘😂
@@korona5673 reading to learn about a death cult. No, thank you, I have got better things to do with my life, than to read the foolishness and stupidity of socialism or communism that always ends in mass graves.
