Chomsky: Internet is a Hideous Time-Waster

Another Day in the Empire


Chomsky: Internet is a Hideous Time-Waster
Saturday November 05th 2005, 10:11 pm
Once upon a time, I read Noam Chomsky religiously. Even now, I admire his knack for detail, although reading his most recent book leads one down a meandering path (and I admit buying this book, Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance, and reading it cover to cover, a rare thing these days). However, after reading Emma Brockes interview with Chomsky (published in the Guardian), my disenchantment with “the world’s top public intellectual” (according to Prospect magazine) has increased exponentially. For instance, consider the following:
His daily news intake is the regular national press and he dips in and out of specialist journals. I imagine he is a fan of the internet, given his low opinion of the mainstream media (to summarize: it is undermined by a “systematic bias in terms of structural economic causes rather than a conspiracy of people”. I would argue individual agency overrides this, but get into it with Chomsky and your allocated hour goes up in smoke). So I am surprised when he says he only goes online if he is “hunting for documents, or historical data. It’s a hideous time-waster. One of the good things about the internet is you can put up anything you like, but that also means you can put up any kind of nonsense. If the intelligence agencies knew what they were doing, they would stimulate conspiracy theories just to drive people out of political life, to keep them from asking more serious questions … There’s a kind of an assumption that if somebody wrote it on the internet, it’s true.”
I am amazed there is so much fodder for argumentation contained in one medium-sized paragraph. First and foremost, the corporate media does indeed conspire to present a biased view of politics and current events—a bias that serves the ruling corporate elite, who after all own most of the newspapers (and television news) in this country. Chomsky insists on a Marxist interpretation—which is of course, for the corporate ruling elite, harmless enough and directs attention away from the fact they are propagandizing in favor of world domination into abstract nonsense. Telling bald-faced lies about Iraq and allowing shills like Judith Miller to foment war hysteria is of course “structural,” although this may not be apparent to namby-pamby Marxists laboring away in the comfort of the ivy tower.
Second, the intelligence agencies do know what they are doing—liberals consistently think intelligence agencies are staffed with bumbling idiots—and they are stimulating “conspiracy theories just to drive people out of political life, to keep them from asking more serious questions,” for instance more serious questions about nine eleven and the role played by the aforementioned intelligence agencies. Chomsky is on record as saying he believes anything but the official nine eleven fairy tale is a baseless conspiracy theory. In an earlier interview, Chomsky said:
There’s by now a small industry on the thesis that the administration had something to do with 9-11. I’ve looked at some of it, and have often been asked. There’s a weak thesis that is possible though extremely unlikely in my opinion, and a strong thesis that is close to inconceivable. The weak thesis is that they knew about it and didn’t try to stop it. The strong thesis is that they were actually involved. The evidence for either thesis is, in my opinion, based on a failure to understand properly what evidence is. Even in controlled scientific experiments one finds all sorts of unexplained phenomena, strange coincidences, loose ends, apparent contradictions, etc. Read the letters in technical science journals and you’ll find plenty of samples. In real world situations, chaos is overwhelming, and these will mount to the sky. That aside, they’d have had to be quite mad to try anything like that. It would have had to involve a large number of people, something would be very likely to leak, pretty quickly, they’d all be lined up before firing squads and the Republican Party would be dead forever. That would have happened whether the plan succeeded or not, and success was at best a long shot; it would have been extremely hard to predict what would happen.
Obviously, even though he is “the world’s top public intellectual,” Chomsky is unable or unwilling to comprehend the fact false flag operations are structured in such a way the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing—especially if both hands are outside the purview of government. As a Marxist with a rather antiquated and conventional view of the state—and apparently unaware of the privatization of intelligence and military operations, a process well under way for some time—Chomsky finds it inconceivable that nine eleven would occur without somebody on the inside leaking information to the corporate media. “We are dealing with state-sponsored, false flag terrorism,” Webster Tarpley told the International Citizens’ Inquiry Into 9/11 in Toronto in May 2004. “I don’t mean state-sponsored in the sense that it has to be sponsored by the entire command structure of the country in question, but that it is carried forward by a private network ensconced and infesting decisive nodal points in the state apparatus of that country.”
Moreover, Chomsky believes nine eleven “would have had to involve a large number of people” and yet he buys into the nonsensical theory—endorsed and amplified by the Kean (whitewash) Commission and subsequently mythologized by the corporate media—that a small number of medieval Muslims holed up in Afghan caves pulled off the terrorist attacks. For “the world’s top public intellectual,” this is a seriously flawed line of reasoning.
According to Daniel L. Abrahamson, Chomsky is not advocating flawed reasoning so much as consciously acting as a “re-direct agent,” offering his many followers “dead-end solutions and alienating rhetoric.” In regard to nine eleven, it is worth quoting Abrahamson at length:
Noam Chomsky has acted as the premier Left gatekeeper in the aftermath of the 9-11 crimes, lashing out at the 9-11 truth movement and claiming any suggestions of government complicity are fabrications. The “radical” Chomsky takes a position so deeply rooted in denial that it makes the staged 9-11 whitewash commission look like an honest study. He belligerently refuses to discuss any of the massive evidence proving government foreknowledge and participation in the crimes, claiming it would destroy the activist movements worldwide.
“If the left spends its time on this, that’s the end of the left, in my opinion: the mainstream would be utterly delighted. It is highly likely that nothing significant will be found. And if—which I very greatly doubt—something isfound that would quickly send everyone in Washington to the death chamber, the left is unlikely to emerge triumphant.”
In other words, Chomsky is telling his followers to ignore the evidence because according to him, none exists. However even if there is massive evidence, responsible activists should ignore it because it would be “the end of the Left.”
(…)
Chomsky’s role as the chief 9-11 gatekeeper proves he is distracting his leftist followers from the truth. Instead of facing the clear facts, he claims that 19 hijackers did it and that al-Qaeda is a real terrorist enemy. When presented with documented evidence, from living hijacker patsies to the NORAD stand down, he simply claims it doesn’t exist. He resorts to emotional “they would never do it” appeals in order to deny the obvious.
Chomsky is exhibiting far more than logical skepticism, but instead is actively engaging in disinformation.
Finally, Chomsky disses the internet, deeming it a “hideous time-waster” and essentially stating the medium is rife with misinformation (and of course the New York Times is pure as driven snow and never tells a lie, especially when it comes to the government invading small countries). Of course, Chomsky is no fan of corporate media—or so we are led to believe—but he is strangely silent on offering informational alternatives (apparently we are expected to read the Progressive and the Nation and other magazines funded by the likes of the Ford and Rockefeller foundations, venues where Chomsky is primarily published).
Of course, in his alleged role as gatekeeper or “re-direct agent,” it makes sense for Noam Chomsky to diss the internet, a vast and democratic medium not controlled by foundations and corporate overseers, although this may change soon. As a blogger and writer who self-publishes books, I take umbrage in Chomsky’s assertion that the material I post more or less daily is a waste of time and is little more than “nonsense.” But then I am but a lowly web designer and prolific blogger, not a world-renowned linguistics professor and successful author with a vacation home in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, valued in excess of $1.2 million (according to Peter Schweizer). Of course, I don’t deny Chomsky his fancy summer home. I simply wish he wouldn’t attack the only viable information medium in the world outside of the clutches of corporations, including “liberal” foundations such as the one formerly run by the Ford family.