Inquiry on a quote by Noam Chomsky

[Yitzhak Finnegan]

I recall him saying that 'progressives' (meaning: Leftists) have an obligation to deny or downplay the truth about oppression under communist dictatorships, on the grounds that otherwise it would give intellectual/political ammunition to American warmongers, something along that line. Can anyone find the exact quote, as stated by Chomsky, direct from his writings, and give a link?

[2046]

I recall him saying that 'progressives' (meaning: Leftists) have an obligation to deny or downplay the truth about oppression under communist dictatorships, on the grounds that otherwise it would give intellectual/political ammunition to American warmongers, something along that line. Can anyone find the exact quote, as stated by Chomsky, direct from his writings, and give a link?

I don't think he says deny or downplay exactly, (he may have said something like that, but that doesn't gel well with my readings of him) but he has said something similar to that on a few occasions. He basically says, it is not worth spending his time on attacking the attrocities committed by foreign regimes, as opposed to our own, because, let's say he attacks Hugo Chavez, that will get tons of attention and airplay, while if he attacks Obama, that will be ignored or combatted by the media. And so doing the former rather than that latter tends to help US warmongers, rather than the cause of peace, and so that's why he doesn't spend time on attacking foreign dictatorships and so forth.

 

Although I suppose you can also say that he has downplayed the oppression under forgein regimes in the sense that in his writings, he does claim on numerous instances that various atrocities committed by foreign dictators have been exaggerated by American media in an attempt to spur the public to war.

Edited April 7, 2013 by 2046