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Noam Chomsky defends pro-colonialist professor

Edit: Sorry, wrong thread
(edited 6 years ago)

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The people who want him fired/PhD revoked seem to be lefties, no one on the right would encourage the involvement of BLM
The bloke's article was written in 2007, yet he still is in the job. If it is not offensive to other experts in the field, why should anyone give a **** if it is offensive to morons on Twitter?
Original post by Mathemagicien
Centrists and centre-leftists. BLM aren't particularly known for their left-wing economics.


I think that's perhaps due a lack of understanding of economics but there demands for white people was quite lefty, at least based on their world view; white people (rich) should give away their stuff to black people (poor)
Original post by Mathemagicien

This is yet another counterexample to the belief that it is the left that is stifling free speech. Leftist defends free speech while virtue-signalling liberals cannot bear any views from outside their Overton Windows.


Good for Chomsky, but I'm not sure it's a counterexample. I imagine that those calling for the article and this guy's PhD to be revoked are leftists. The argument is not that most leftists are stifling free speech, it's that most who are trying to stifle free speech are leftists.

That still seems to be true here.
Original post by Mathemagicien
Were the Nazis left-wing for redistributing wealth from wealthy Jews to Aryans? Is that not just an emergent feature of their racialist views, rather than an economic stance of its own?

It isn't like BLM want reparations from the descendants of the rich blacks who owned slaves.


Well the Nazis were socialist but I’d agree that’s not why they stole from the Jews. Based on your comparison BLM are the very best socialist and the very worst racist (but probably also socialist among their race as well)
Good for Noam. No-platforming isn't a viable policy in the long run, forcing people underground only makes things worse. In all academic contexts, there needs to be a proper exchange of ideas and views need to be debated, not treated as heresies. In many fields (not just political / economic) this kind of stifling of debate is an ugly feature of contemporary academic life. For example, theories that are not yet proven but widely treated as proven are being used to exclude contrary views.
Original post by Mathemagicien
Were the Nazis left-wing for redistributing wealth from wealthy Jews to Aryans?


Well, the methodology was just the same as the one the Soviets adopted in their ways of redistributing land and wealth and he could even have been inspired by their revolution! Actually, his persecution of Jews was less brutal at the beginning than that of the kulaks by the Reds.

We go on about Nazi Germany but the Soviet dictatorship was well up and running by the time Hitler made it, how many Russians had been murdered by the regime by the time Hitler got started at it in Germany? The Nazis invaded Poland and so did the USSR. They colluded with the Nazis in annexing a country, there was nothing better about the Soviet Union and their political system. Hitler and Stalin.
(edited 6 years ago)
Original post by Mathemagicien
BLM aren't the very worst racists... I was not equating them to Nazis.

Nazis were fascists, not socialists. Similar to socialism in what it actually did (for 'Aryans', not Jews), but the reasons for doing it were vastly different (fundamentally about inequality of peoples, completely opposite to socialism).


BLM are a bunch of hooligans and middle-class virtue-signallers who, even if some do have a positive view of communism/socialism, it is only because they have never read a word of Marx in their life. They have iPhones, worship super-rich celebrities, and probably usually voted for Hillary (at least as much of a corporate shill as Trump was) rather than Sanders.


I didn’t say they were the very worst racists, I said that best case they’re socialists and worst case they’re racist.

I don’t see why you’re adding equality to socialism, there’s nothing in the definition of socialism that says it has to be implemented for a particular reason.

Well yes, in part they are but BLM in the main, is black Americans who have been lied to and tricked into thinking the world hates them
He's always been pro free speech. Despite the endless streams of Nick Cohen articles denouncing Noam as a traitor he was expressing concern and using his influence when Chevez started imprisoning Judges who said things that were uncomfortable for the left wing government.

He was raising concerns about Venezuela before it was cool.
(edited 6 years ago)
Original post by Mathemagicien


It isn't like BLM want reparations from the descendants of the rich blacks who owned slaves.


What really annoys me is that it was the slave owners who got the reparations!

Original post by Mathemagicien
That is true, but the bolshevik revolution was more violent by necessity. Unlike the Nazis, the Reds came into power after a bloody civil war. The Nazis didn't have to overthrow the Kaiser, since he was removed by the Allies after WWI. Then it led to a more brutal system of government under Stalin, perhaps more similar to fascism than to socialism (debatable), and I can't really defend all of his methods.

It was a dictatorship by necessity. The USSR needed huge reforms to catch up with the West. Sometimes a bit of pain today saves a lot more pain tomorrow.


The "reds" were already essentially in power before the civil war happened. The provisional governments caved again and again to the soviets, especially the petrograd soviet. The post civil war Bolsheviks never reinstated a lot of the rights the workers and soldiers won during the provisional government days. Which is why the most ideological and revolutionary soldiers tried to overthrow the Bolsheviks at the end of the civil war. The rest is history. Never mind Stalin. It was Trotsky that put down the Kronstad uprising. The masses put the Bolsheviks in power to end the war and place power in the hands of the soviets and factory committees, instead power was handed to the Bolshevik party that was becoming ever more dictatorial and centralised. In which case they could get on with their moronic historical determinism.

If there is something in the idea that there is something fundamental to Marxism that facilitates the creation of dictatorships it is the stupid idea that societies must pass through stages of historical development before you can have any notion of socialism, and these stages of development can be scientifically mapped out, and of course my version of mapping out is of course 100% correct and any opposition to my interpretation is obviously wrong since we tested this in a lab of course. This means it is the intellectual Marxists that have to taker control, not the illiterate workers demanding economic democracy who don't understand our particular interpenetration of Marxism which we are now going to make the official version in such a way that is goes against the enlightenment nature of Marxist philosophy.

Orwell was probably right when he said Trotskyists were the more moral group, but there wasn't much in it.

Spoiler

(edited 6 years ago)
Original post by Mathemagicien
It was a dictatorship by necessity. The USSR needed huge reforms to catch up with the West. Sometimes a bit of pain today saves a lot more pain tomorrow.


By necessity IF you happen to share the same political vision, that you believe Marxism-Leninism is the best system for a happy society. That such opinion forcefully implies the acceptance of a centralized dictatorship and loss of personal freedom for the individual is actually what makes me reject it, by now there is no doubt that democracy and capitalism are the only workable formats for human nature.

You sound a bit like 'oh well, the kulaks just had to go...', they weren't just moved on. They were as ruthlessly disposed of as Jews by the Soviet equivalent to the Einsatzgruppen, as you already knew anyway.
(edited 6 years ago)
Original post by zhog
By necessity IF you happen to share the same political vision, that you believe Marxism-Leninism is the best system for a happy society. That such opinion forcefully implies the acceptance of a centralized dictatorship and loss of personal freedom for the individual is actually what makes me reject it, by now there is no doubt that democracy and capitalism are the only workable formats for human nature.

You sound a bit like 'oh well, the kulaks just had to go...', they weren't just moved on. They were as ruthlessly disposed of as Jews by the Soviet equivalent to the Einsatzgruppen, as you already knew anyway.


Have you read the State and Revolution?

It's almost anarchist.

It's the fact that the reality of the situation was not as Utopian as the Leninists wanted it to be. No international revolution happened. The revolution in Germany failed. The dictatorship the Bolsheviks created isn't what they wanted (which again is why this is not fascism), they felt forced into as the only way to deal with the situation and act as the vanguard class for the proletariat.

Also Lenninism comes from what was a minority at them time of the revolution. Most Marxists didn't want to overthrow the provisional government as they didn't think the country was capable of socialist revolution. Leninism came from a niche idea that the working class would do what the bourgeoisie and capitalists were failing to do. This only became the ideology of Marxism because they were the ones that won and made it the official doctrine. Prominent Marxists equal to the status if Lennin such as Kautsky condemned what the Soviet Union was doing on Marxist grounds. Kautsky was the orthodox Marxist from the right of Lenin, then you had briefly from the left Rosa Luxembourg (before she was killed) criticising the Bolsheviks for not having actually handed power to the soviets.





Some Chomsky quote on free speech.

“Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.”


So it is not a surprise. He has defended the right for holocaust deniers to publish books etc in the past. Which again isn't unusual, the left has a big strand which is very pro free speech, which is why you got the Green Party in the UK defending the Islamists rights to spread hate speech etc. Back then it was all the rage to denounce the left for supporting Islamism and holocaust denial because prominent member fo the left defended free speech. How it's all changed lol, now everything is falling over themselves to protect the neo-nazis.
(edited 6 years ago)
Original post by Underscore__
Well the Nazis were socialist but I’d agree that’s not why they stole from the Jews. Based on your comparison BLM are the very best socialist and the very worst racist (but probably also socialist among their race as well)


O boiiiii

I'm replying now so i remember to reply properly later to this
Original post by Mathemagicien
He clarified that he meant 'at the very best they are socialist, at the very worst racist', if that will save you from a long reply.


It's okay on second thoughts it's too late in the thread to post a sarcy one line reply that brings in the rep so i might not bother
There is nothing remotely untrue about the benefits colonialism had on former colonies and the immorality of colonialism can/should be treated as a separate academic discussion. The funny thing about this is that my parents, natives of former British (East African) colonies, also say that life under British rule had its perks. The only ones calling for revoking the authors professorship are young, social science students who have watched too many civil rights biopics.

Unfortunately, this far-left crowd have also realised that universities are essentially businesses, and they -- the students -- are customers. Universities don't want the publicity associated with a potentially 'white-supremacist professor'. It's also unfortunate that the majority of writers at influential left-wing tabloids are champagne socialists who love to prop anything racial and potentially controversial.
Original post by ChaoticButterfly
Have you read the State and Revolution?


No but I know how the revolutionary process ended up hijacked by Leninists, we call it a Soviet revolution sometimes but Russian is actually the term as implied in your quoting. Bolshies and menchies, all that. Had Lenin choked to death on something on the way back from Switz and who knows what the world map would look like now. Coincidentally enough, same could be said for Hitler. Had he been killed in WWI... Doesn't change anything about the consequences of their deeds or their mindsets.

“Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.”


Goebbels and Stalin allowed the right type of speech, as much as rocket man does. Coincidentally enough, that seems to be coming back to fashion these days. We've had a fight at Speakers' Corner last weekend.
(edited 6 years ago)
How can you revoke someone's PhD unless it's honorary? A PhD is a qualification you get from doing a substantial piece of research, spanning typically 3–4 years. You can't just delete that qualification from someone because you disagree with their views.
Reply 18
Original post by Mathemagicien
Portland State University Professor Bruce Gilley violated the “very principle of free speech” by causing “offence and hurt” with his colonialism article in the Third World Quarterly.

However, another of the journal's editors, renowned leftist Noam Chomsky, said that the calls for censorship and revoking of the professor's PhD opened 'dangerous doors'.

Chomsky added, “I’m sure that what I publish offends many people, including editors and funders of journals in which they appear.”

https://www.thecollegefix.com/post/36998/

This is yet another counterexample to the belief that it is the left that is stifling free speech. Leftist defends free speech while virtue-signalling liberals cannot bear any views from outside their Overton Windows.


So he didn't actually defend the colonialist POV, rather free speech as a concept, right?
Misleading title.
Original post by Mathemagicien
Sure you can have your PhDs revoked. E.g. for plagiarism that was discovered years after it was awarded to you, something that I recall has happened to a lot of Merkel's ministers a few years ago (the old defense minister, and then the education one, iirc), and iirc that Martin L King chap.

Or for conducting experiments deemed very unethical, e.g. that woman who electrocuted a cow's udders or something, and Joseph Mengele iirc. Or falsifying data even after they get their degree (even if the PhD thesis was correct), e.g. that Schoen bloke.


But that's for falsifying data and plagiarism, not for a genuinely obtained PhD that you just want to revoke because you dislike the person. As far as I know there is no evidence against the integrity of his doctorate.

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