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Chomsky and me, engaging in the public debate about mandating covid jabs

The answer from Chomsky regarding covid vaccines is at the 8min mark and lasts for just two mins:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VX0hn6F-jsI

Subsequently, I had quite a lengthy exchange with him - see below (one must read from the bottom up).

Rippon

Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 2021 at 6:47 PM
From: "rippon
To: “Chomsky, Noam - (noamchomsky)” noamchomsky@arizona.edu
Subject: Re: [EXT]advocating for apartheid

“refusal to vaccinate is not only causing great harm but is providing a great opportunity for the virus to mutate with possible catastrophic consequences”

There are many highly qualified, even eminent, scientists saying the exact opposite. For example:

  • the mass-jabbing is driving the mutations

  • the danger of covid is being massively hyped because none of the stats can be trusted; even the creator of the PCR test said it’s not fit for this purpose; even health authorities admit that there is a massively false positive rate; there is big pressure on medics to classify deaths with covid as deaths from covid

  • the jabs will precipitate catastrophic consequences when the timebomb of adverse reactions (up to and including death) goes off; even now, info and stats on adverse reactions (including death) are being heavily suppressed

Of course I appreciate that you consider such assertions “dangerous” “moronic” “nonsense”.

My question is,

How did you reach the conclusion that the scientists who sing the same tune as government and big-pharma (advocating masks-lockdowns-jabs) have done the science correctly and all the dissident scientists have got it wrong?

(I won’t ask again my question about internment camps for jab-refuseniks again because you’ve had plenty of opportunties but confirmed your determination to evade that one.)

It seems that the scale of covid-jab-refusal is high in many places (e.g. Idaho, as you mention). Therefore, from the perspective of pro-vaxxers (e.g. yourself), it is important to understand and address the science arguments that are being ‘peddled’ in opposition to the state-corporate narrative, because it is the voices of scientists and medics that are leading the dissent (not because they are natural leaders but because people take the voices of experts seriously).

You have repeatedly advised me that I should debate this publicly, and you have thus, unwittingly, highlighted another major problem with the covid drama:

The public debate is impossible - because it is extremely heavily censored on all media, e.g. Facebook, YouTube.

You have said you have “no time or interest” in understanding the dissident position, but I will give you some references anyway - because I’m not sure you know your own mind because you have also said you don’t have time for me but then keep making more time for me.

The heavy censorship on YouTube has catalysed the emergence of alternative platforms. You might like to spend some time here:

https://brandnewtube.com/

You might like to look (e.g. on brandnewtube) at output from any of the following (a small sample of leading dissident voices, in no particular order). You presumably think it’s urgent that the dangerous nonsense is debunked asap, but the problem with the rude dismissive approach (as exemplified by your own colourful language) is that that always catalyses more dissidence, which, to your mind, could cause “catastrophic consequences”. (I’m surprised to find myself saying all this stuff to you, Mr Chomsky, because you used to be a dissident yourself. I’m reminded again of Christopher Hitchens, who also made the journey from radical dissident to chorister of the state narrative.)

  • Dr Mike Yeadon

  • Prof Luc Montagnier

  • Dr Andrew Wakefield

  • Prof Dolores Cahill

  • Dr Judy Mikovits

  • Dr Vernon Coleman

  • Catherine Austin Fitts

  • https://planetlockdownfilm.com/

  • Joseph Mercola

  • WorldDoctorsAlliance

  • BarringtonDeclaration

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dissolving-Illusions-Suzanne-Humphries-ebook/dp/B00E7FOA0U/ref=sr_1_1

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jabbed-Vaccine-Industry-Establishment-Government-ebook/dp/B07MF61CFZ/ref=reads_cwrtbar_15/261-8761242-2709209

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Unreported-Truths-About-Covid-19-Lockdowns/dp/1953039146/ref=sr_1_1

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Truth-About-Contagion-Exploring-Theories-ebook/dp/B08X66QGRK/ref=reads_cwrtbar_12/261-8761242-2709209

Sent: Tuesday, September 07, 2021 at 11:15 PM
From: “Chomsky, Noam - (noamchomsky)” noamchomsky@arizona.edu
To: "rippon
Subject: Re: [EXT]advocating for apartheid

I take the view of anyone capable of looking at the very clear facts demonstrating that vaccination radically reduces infection, contagion, and death, and who understands that refusal to vaccinate is not only causing great harm but is providing a great opportunity for the virus to mutate with possible catastrophic consequences.

All of this is trivially obvious, and I can’t spend any more time with someone so utterly blinded by ideological extremism that he’s incapable of looking at obvious facts.

What you should obviously be doing is going to places like Idaho, where adopting your beliefs has led to such overflowing of hospitals by the unvaccinated that by now all medical care has to be rationed. And you should be explaining to the desperate nurses, doctors and other care workers that they should stop vaccinations.

When you’ve done that, publish their responses. We’ll all be interested.

That’s what you would surely do if you believed in what you’re saying. If you don’t,…

From: rippon
Sent: Tuesday, September 7, 2021 10:38 AM
To: Chomsky, Noam - (noamchomsky) noamchomsky@arizona.edu
Subject: Re: [EXT]advocating for apartheid

External Email

“Everyone agrees that fortifying children’s health comes first.”

Therein lies the crux of the issue. The first thing we propose to do about children’s health is jab them (ostensibly) to protect them from covid, which poses near-zero risk to them anyway, when the first thing we should do is fortify their health (clean air, clean water, clean food) so that they can shrug off covid even more easily than they already do.

You apparently take the state-corporate view of medicine that medical interventions (e.g. jabs) should be embraced rather than avoided.

I reiterate: we (e.g. UK, USA) could have spent the last year stamping on the corporations that weaken people’s health and immunity rather than stamping on citizens (e.g. lockdowns).

Your “safe spaces” phrase actually evokes an analogous debate, the one regarding dangerous triggering debates on college campuses. Some argue that visiting-speakers with dangerous views should be banned for the sake of preserving a “safe space” for (delicate) students. The counter-argument is: No, students should be fortified intellectually so that they can defend themselves against odious arguments rather than protected from them.

My position is indeed public, and I’m now aware of your public position - basically the diametric opposite of mine; for example, I don’t regard covid-jab refuseniks a danger to public health to whom we should therefore apply a policy of apartheid; but I am persuaded by the thousands of medical experts who regard the covid jabs as a danger, e.g. as a timebomb of blood-clots, ADE and other serious/lethal adverse reactions.

You say that you don’t think discussing covid (or vaccines generally) with me is worthwhile but, at the same time, you apparently think it is worthy of your time because you keep replying. (I myself will happily continue talking to anyone who is happy to keep talking to me.)

I wonder if you will still evade this simple fundamental question:

Since it is logical nonsense to expect indecent people (jab refuseniks) to behave decently (segregate themselves from society), then what measures do you consider tenable? For example, should internment camps be considered?

Sent: Monday, September 06, 2021 at 11:43 PM
From: “Chomsky, Noam - (noamchomsky)” noamchomsky@arizona.edu
To: "rippon
Subject: Re: [EXT]advocating for apartheid

I’ve grasped perfectly. Everyone agrees that fortifying children’s health comes first. No need to push that open door.

Since you oppose general safe spaces in schools from polio, measles, smallpox,…, and presumably think this has some importance, then make your position public and discuss it with anyone who thinks it’s worthwhile to do so. Don’t bother me.

Of course you’re concocting arguments. Namely, the one you falsely attributed to advocates of vaccine mandates in school.

From: rippon
Sent: Monday, September 6, 2021 3:00 PM
To: Chomsky, Noam - (noamchomsky) noamchomsky@arizona.edu
Subject: Re: [EXT]advocating for apartheid

External Email

You apparently haven’t grasped what I’ve said (or I haven’t been clear enough), so I’ll try again:

“Protecting” children is the wrong starting-point. Fortifying their innate health (e.g. their immune system) is the correct starting point. Protecting should only be a strategy for those children where fortifying fails. For example, you might want to protect them through isolation from the population and/or through a vaccine jab to boost their immunity.

For your part, come out and say so (instead of evading): Do you consider internment camps an appropriate measure for anti-vaxxers who will not have the decency to segregate themselves? If not that, what measures would be appropriate?

I have not concocted any arguments. I have relayed arguments from scientists and medics who refute the narrative of establishment-science. Like you, I am not a scientist of disease and infection so, again like you, I would never write any articles myself on the subject.

You apparently believe in the safety and efficacy of the covid jabs, but you haven’t posted any articles explaining the scientific basis for that (because, like me, that is not a specialism of yours), and you haven’t scientifically explained, or pointed to any such explanation of, why the warnings of many scientists about the covid-jabs are unfounded, e.g. the warning that the jabbing is driving the emergence of variants.

You say, “mandates have long been instituted to provide safe spaces for children where they’ll be protected from polio, measles, etc.”, and this reveals a basic tension/contradiction from those who endorse the deployment of jabs (covid and others). It is actually, effectively, an anti-vax argument because the traditional justification for jabbing people is to provide them with immunity and protect them from an infected person next to them on the train. The mandating of safe-spaces means that pro-vaxxers (e.g. yourself) have moved on from their traditional faith in ‘vaccines’: pro-vaxxers no longer believe that jabs protect from infection (which actually concurs with the anti-vax position), but merely reduce suffering - hence the need to mandate safe-spaces because the jabbed themselves don’t believe their jab has protected them

That major shift is worthy of much debate, so the debate is far from “over”, as you would apparently have it.

Putting the science aside, my primary interest is in the political dimension to the covid drama, where you have revealed another tension/contradiction in your position.

You say I’m “entirely free” to peddle dangerous nonsense, and my understanding (from your words over past decades) is that you actually think it’s vital that people are free to do that because otherwise we don’t have free speech. I think I can even quote you practically verbatim: “If you believe in free speech then you must allow people to espouse views that you hate, not just views that you like, otherwise you don’t have free speech.”

And here is the tension/contradiction in your new position: now you say that society should segregate anti-vaxxers. That means, then, that you don’t want them to be “entirely free” to peddle dangerous nonsense, views that you hate.

Your last two sentences are bizarre. No “required” level of politeness has been set by either of us, so you should feel no need to hold back - if, say, expletives is what you have felt like using in response to my “dangerous” “moronic” “lies” “confusion” and “concocted” “nonsense” (incidentally, it is, again, striking that a logician apparently thinks that colourful language adds weight to his argument). And what is the “it” in your last sentence (“It’s over”)? The debate about covid is certainly not over; and debate about ‘vaccines’ is certainly not over - it has been raging for the last couple of centuries.

Maybe the “it” refers to your capacity to continue engaging with me. I respect that: we all have limited time and energy and have to decide where to expend them. If that is the case, then thank you for engaging at this much length - very generous of you, especially when the other person is spouting “dangerous” “moronic” “lies” “confusion” and “concocted” “nonsense”.

Sent: Monday, September 06, 2021 at 9:43 PM
From: “Chomsky, Noam - (noamchomsky)” noamchomsky@arizona.edu
To: "rippon
Subject: Re: [EXT]advocating for apartheid

Perfectly clear. What you wrote is correct: “That vaccine mandates in schools is longstanding practice is irrelevant unless your point is that that feature (longstanding) substantiates the veracity of the practice. My counterpoint (which I have actually borrowed from you) is that the longevity of a practice (e.g. slavery) tells us nothing about the correctness of it.”

Perfectly correct, which is why no one has given the moronic argument that you concocted… Rather, the mandates have long been instituted to provide safe spaces for children where they’ll be protected from polio, measles, etc.

If you’re opposed to that, come out and say so, instead of hiding behind inventions.

Much of the rest is also correct. Children should have healthy lives.

And you’re entirely free to peddle the dangerous nonsense that you’ve picked up from sources that are totally refuted by massive evidence.

Not my business. If you honestly believe what you’re saying, you’ll write or at least post articles about it. I’ve been more polite than required. It’s over

From: rippon
Sent: Monday, September 6, 2021 10:47 AM
To: Chomsky, Noam - (noamchomsky) noamchomsky@arizona.edu
Subject: Re: [EXT]advocating for apartheid

External Email

I don’t know what part of what I’ve said that you’re saying “Correct” to.

To “protect” children from disease is the wrong starting point; indeed, it is a large part of the very basis upon which the whole of western medicine (which is failing miserably) is conceived.

The misconception is that good health stems from the intervention of doctors (e.g. surgery), drugs and vaccines.

The correct starting point is that children should be fortified against disease. That requires healthy inputs to the body - clean air, clean water, clean food. The notion of ‘protection’ should only apply to those whose bodies, for whatever reason (e.g. weak natural immunity), are too weak to withstand infection.

I think you’re aware of Ivan Illich’s perspective on the professions - that they primarily serve themselves rather than their clients. The problem for doctors and drug-companies is that, if government was serious about public health, then their role would be minimal and there would be no money to be made.

What I am ‘peddling’ is certainly not baseless. I think you accept that there is indeed a large body of material (books, documentaries, etc) that does indeed provide a big base to what I’m saying.

So what you really mean is that you reject the material that forms the base of what I’m saying, rather than meaning that what I say is “baseless”.

Here, then, is the problem for you in political philosophy terms:

There is a view of medicine and how to promote public health that is diametrically opposed to the state narrative. ‘Anti-vax’ is a component of that view.

You have always espoused (as far as I’m aware) that truth should not be left to the state to determine, that competing views should be allowed, otherwise we have fascism.

It seems, then, that medical truth is a stumbling block for you. The belief that ‘vaccines’ constitute fraudulent dangerous ‘medicine’ should effectively be outlawed.

Here is the evasion on your part: since it is logical nonsense to expect ‘indecent’ people (those who reject vaccines) to behave ‘decently’ (segregate themselves from society), then, to be not evasive, you should say what measures for the ‘indecent’ you think are tenable, e.g. internment camps.

Your “no time or interest” is in this respect:

You concede that there is indeed a large body of scientific literature that debunks (or, professes to debunk, from your perspective) the state propaganda on covid. That is why you say it would need “unravelling” - because there’s a lot of it. You have “no time or interest” in that exercise. Presumably your reason is because you feel convinced that such a big exercise would simply result in the foregone conclusion that the dissident scientists are simply mired in blindness, confusion and lies; and therefore the “unravelling” would prove to have been a big waste of your time and effort.

But here’s the problem …

You happen to be dangerously wrong.

You have been very right for many decades about state propaganda regarding military aggression (and other crimes of state).

Your strong position, e.g. on Iraq, exposed the true nature of others. The Iraq invasion was a defining moment for Christopher Hitchens. He started life as a radical leftie, but at the time of the Iraq invasion, he mutated into a staunch defender of state propaganda that obfuscated war crimes. In his mind, he effectively outlawed diametrically opposed views by branding opponents of the invasion as traitors and collaborators in mass-murder (by Saddam) - not fit to be members of civilised society (just like your own smear of anti-vaxxers).

Covid is apparently your ‘Hitchens-moment’, where you, similarly, have mutated into a staunch defender of state-propaganda, endorsing masks-lockdowns-jabs. Your style of argument eerily echoes Hitchens: you basically just assert, repeatedly, loudly, that those who reject the ‘science’ regarding covid jabs are too stupid and dangerous to be part of civilised society. You are keeping Hitchens’ torch of bulldog exchange (belligerent unsubstantiated assertions instead of reasoned argument) alive. It seems Noam Chomsky is Christopher Hitchens for the 2020s.

Sent: Monday, September 06, 2021 at 4:38 AM
From: “Chomsky, Noam - (noamchomsky)” noamchomsky@arizona.edu
To: "rippon
Subject: Re: [EXT]advocating for apartheid

Correct. If you think it’s wrong to protect children from polio, measles,… then come out and say so. Don’t hide behind evasions.

The rest is mostly lies and confusion. You, not me, are obviously the one not interested in the covid drama and the people suffering from it. If you were interested you wouldn’t be peddling baseless notions that would cause great harm if they were public and some misguided people would take then seriously – as in fact is happening, as is plain to anyone capable of looking at the dramatic evidence on vaccination and infection.

From: rippon
Sent: Sunday, September 5, 2021 2:36 PM
To: Chomsky, Noam - (noamchomsky) noamchomsky@arizona.edu
Subject: Re: [EXT]advocating for apartheid

External Email

That vaccine mandates in schools is longstanding practice is irrelevant unless your point is that that feature (longstanding) substantiates the veracity of the practice.

My counterpoint (which I have actually borrowed from you) is that the longevity of a practice (e.g. slavery) tells us nothing about the correctness of it.

You have succinctly summarised the basis for your position on the covid drama: “no time or interest”

Thank you, then, for indulging me this much on questions about which you have no time or interest.

If you ever do acquire any interest in any analyses that divert from the government-BigPharma line, then you could continue reading this email …


There is tonnes of evidence for the alternative strategy to protect people from viral infections:

The primary cause of all illness is the toxicity of our air, water and food. The solution, then, would have been to spend a year clamping down on the corporations that are responsible for that, rather than a year clamping down on citizens (e.g. lockdowns).

Processed food (e.g. processed sugar), consumed on a massive scale, does a particularly good job of weakening people’s natural immunity.

There is between zero and near-zero evidence in the history of medicine that ‘vaccines’ have made a significant contribution to public health. Various diseases, e.g. smallpox, were already in rapid decline before the introduction of any ‘vaccine’. Then the drug companies introduced a ‘vaccine’ and stole the credit for the ongoing decline of disease.

The reason for the rapid decline in disease was due to the political and engineering professions, certainly not the medical profession or drug companies, that reason being vast improvements in sanitation, nutrition and housing.

The body of articles, books, etc from medics and scientists who debunk vaccines and, indeed, most of modern medicine is so large that it would be tedious to list a reasonable portion of it, and a waste of time anyway to do so for someone who has “no time or interest” and prefers to dismiss the perspective of dissidents as “confusions” of the “blind”.

But, for what it’s worth, here are just a couple of titles that, in a parallel universe, where Noam Chomsky was very interested in a medical issue of global proportions, he would avidly read:

Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccines, and The Forgotten History

https://www.amazon.com/Dissolving-Illusions-Disease-Vaccines-Forgotten/dp/1480216895/ref=sr_1_1

What Really Makes You Ill?: Why Everything You Thought You Knew About Disease Is Wrong

https://www.amazon.com/What-Really-Makes-You-Ill/dp/1673104037/ref=sr_1_1

Sent: Sunday, September 05, 2021 at 9:33 PM
From: “Chomsky, Noam - (noamchomsky)” noamchomsky@arizona.edu
To: "rippon
Subject: Re: [EXT]advocating for apartheid

You misread. I wrote that vaccine mandates in schools is long-standing practice.

What is overwhelming is the evidence that vaccination radically reduces infection, contagion, and severity. One has to be truly blind not to see that.

There is no credible evidence that there is any alternative.

The rest is a mass of confusions. Sorry, but no time or interest in unravelling them

From: rippon
Sent: Sunday, September 5, 2021 12:40 PM
To: Chomsky, Noam - (noamchomsky) noamchomsky@arizona.edu
Subject: Re: [EXT]advocating for apartheid

External Email

Your own response demonstrates that the evidence is far from “overwhelming” and that, in fact, everything about this global drama is highly debatable (if not fraudulent).

It is disturbing that a logician would consider one aspect of the soundness of something (jabbing) to be that it is “long-standing practice”. You yourself have argued that, by that criterion, one can ‘justify’ practically any evil, e.g. slavery.

But if we follow that criterion of yours anyway, then it is long-standing practice to jab people with vaccines for the purpose of providing them immunity from the danger, so that the jabbed need not worry about the medical status of the person next to him on the train.

You yourself have ditched that longstanding practice and followed the latest establishment line of talking, now, only about infection and symptoms. That state-propaganda (something you have built a reputation and career upon professing to oppose) is part of the ever-moving goalposts of the narrative that, despite its repeated failure, still finds apologists to be propped up. You yourself have argued that those apologists include, most powerfully, the world’s leading intellectuals, and you have often remarked that that reveals the true nature of ‘intellectuals’ - highly articulate promulgators of state propaganda rather than forensic seekers of truth.

Your first sentence is quite illogical. You can’t “follow” facts; you can merely collect them. But you can follow a debate about those facts. So I’ll assume that you mean that you have followed the debate about covid “closely”. Then you will be aware of the output of thousands of dissident scientists and medics, e.g. World-Doctors-Alliance, Barrington-Declaration-signatories. The natural question, then, is, For what reasons have you decided that they are talking nonsense? For example, Nobel Laureate (Physiology), Luc Montagnier, argues that current covid-jabbing is a major hazard to the population because it is driving the emergence of variants.

Your final sentence is also bizarre. You say that indecent people (those who want to be free to harm others) should behave decently (segregate themselves). Now of course that is pure nonsense (from a logician, no less), on a par with ‘a fish should behave like a bird’, and therefore will never happen. So it reads, quite simply and transparently, as your way to avoid the real and difficult question: What (fascist) measures would you advocate to force ‘indecent’ people to behave ‘decently’?

Your chilling flirtation with fascism is also illustrated by your implication that refusenicks, through their indecency, will force you (or the state-propagandists you support) to advocate totalitarian measures.

You have a reputation for being one of the most well-read people on the planet. Have you really never read any of the books by medics and scientists that powerfully debunk the whole vaccination business and, indeed, the basis of most of modern western medicine? Are you not even aware that iatrogenic conditions are one the leading causes of illness and death in the west?

Sent: Sunday, September 05, 2021 at 7:15 PM
From: “Chomsky, Noam - (noamchomsky)” noamchomsky@arizona.edu
To: "rippon

Subject: Re: [EXT]advocating for apartheid

I follow the facts closely. The evidence is overwhelming that vaccination radically reduces infection and severity of symptoms. It’s rare to have such overwhelming evidence on a complex issue. I think that just as children have a right to be safeguarded in school with vaccine mandates, long-standing practice, so people have a right to be safeguarded if they want to work in a store or go to a concert. Those want to be free to harm others should have the decency to segregate themselves.

From: rippon
Sent: Sunday, September 5, 2021 12:51 AM
To: Chomsky, Noam - (noamchomsky) noamchomsky@arizona.edu
Subject: [EXT]advocating for apartheid

External Email

Dear Mr Chomsky,

You have advocated for an apartheid society through the isolation of people who refuse the covid jab.

Your position is predicated on the assumption that the covid-jabbing of billions of people around the world is the way out of the world’s covid situation.

Are you aware that there are substantial anti-jab movements around the world? Are you aware that these are political movements, and that they are based on science rather than the propaganda emanating from globalist organisations (e.g. WHO, Gates-Foundation, big-pharma)?

For example, thousands of scientists around the world (including a Nobel Laureate) argue that mass-jabbing of the population is the worst thing to do because it drives the virus to mutate into more virulent forms (much like excessive use of antibiotics catalyses the emergence of super-bugs and pesticides catalyse resistant strains of pests).

Are you aware that medical procedures coerced through blackmail violate the Nuremberg principles?

Are you aware that, covid-jabs aside, there is a prodigious body of academic and scholarly work that debunks the practice of ‘vaccination’ in general?

Given the political philosophy that you have espoused for many decades, your position regarding covid is very surprising and deeply disturbing.

4 Likes

Good Great exchange from your viewpoint Rippon. If he won’t look at the facts, I don’t know what else you can do. Maybe throw in some links about treatments for covid-19.
Maybe he hasn’t the energy to delve these days - but then he should have the humility to admit that he doesn’t know whether the great unwashed anti-compulsionists have a point or not, and there’s therefore no point in asking him.
Instead he’s simply appealed to authority, reversing decades of his own teachings.
Cheers

3 Likes

Will the real Noam Chomsky please stand up…

Great stuff, Rippon and hats off for the perseverance. There was no engagement of any real substance from Chomsky there that I could see.

One thing, I do feel that referencing ‘controversial’ figures like Wakefield and Vernon (amongst others) provides the opposition with a too easy out (irrespective of whether such figures are right or wrong) and especially when there are bigger fish around that are far more difficult to fry; Yeadon and Malone, for example.

1 Like

Yep, you make a good point about my mentioning Andrew Wakefield and Vernon Coleman (although I personally was not aware that Coleman is also a ‘disgraced’ figure).

But I was slightly trying to ‘tempt’ Chomsky into replying, along the lines that my ‘argument falls down when one invokes disgraced people’.

What is so striking is the degree to which Chomsky talks about covid in exactly the same tone, manner and certainty as Hitchens did about Iraq. And that was a Hitchens classic line of attack: ‘You cannot be taken seriously if you invoke anything from any disgraced person, e.g. Chomsky - a Saddam apologist.’

So I was curious to see if Chomksy’s mutation into ‘Hitchens for the 2020s’ would include that element of Hitchens-style.

3 Likes

Respect for your resolution, Rip. Very well done.

1 Like

Agreed and I admire your persistance even if it’s in vain hope! However, this just highlights my many assertions in other threads and elsewhere, that Chomsky is just a gatekeeper. @RhisiartGwilym in a post said “what is a gatekeeper”? I wasn’t sure that this was rhetorical, but my definition (not sure if you’ll find this in Miriam Webster’s dictionary) is this.

A gatekeeper is someone who builds up lots of “left” credentials by opposition to mainsteam thinking, policy, or beliefs. Having built up this “left” image, on a key issue that seems to need propping up, they support the GIC’s rather than opposing, in the belief that they can sway the “left” viewpoint away from where they were and into line with the GIC’s policy. Gatekeepers (in my definition) are paid or rewarded in other ways for their deliberate misdirection of those who are not on the side of the GIC’s.

1 Like

Good definition, Pat, I have to say that, having followed Noam’s output for many years, I don’t recognise any signs in it of him doing what you describe; not as a conscious deceit.The idea of him being a paid, cynical misleader just doesn’t convince at all.

I can only conclude that - like everyone else - he will make occasional glaring errors when some strong emotional complex - a blind-spot/hot-button issue for him - knocks him off his rationality trolley. I don’t believe anyone in the world is ever wholly immune from such errors.

Regrettably, I think we can also observe that, having grown so old, he’s lost some of his intellectual sharpness, as witness his buying into the covid hoax generally, to the point of actually endorsing an apartheid response. A seriously-foolish conclusion.

It’s the Overton Window really isn’t it.

When the spectrum of acceptable opinion has been so ruthlessly constrained, even relatively mild and measured demurrals are easily framed as [insert smear here].

If Kate Sherimani turns up to a rally and gives it the Nurses Are Nazis rhetoric (which to be fair she hasn’t, or not exactly) then those who share the platform, and those watching, those who ‘Like’ the tweets, and anyone else who can be lassoed, will be dismissed as Deniers/Morons/Refuseniks/Monsters &c.

By the same logic those who question vaxxx orthodoxy are Othered, and NC won’t allow himself to be associated with them.

But FWIW I agree that he has always been a gatekeeper.

An interesting postscript courtesy of Darren Allen

2 Likes

Noam’s definitely lost it. Time for a permanent villeggiatura.

It’s remarkable how he keeps repeating this. It’s also the type of response one would get from certain posters on TLN. Surely it must be easy to provide evidence if it is so overwhelming. It just appears to be quoting from the MSM, governments or big Pharma. Israel is of course one obvious example where infection is NOT radically reduced.

Having said that, I don’t see Chomsky as a gatekeeper. Would a gatekeeper publicly state “The US is one of the leading terrorist states in the world”? Chomsky appears most comfortable analyzing from a political, economic or social point of view, but much less from scientific or technical viewpoint (eg covid, 9/11). I suspect he essentially trusts the “scientific community” while he’s (rightly) skeptical of politicians, big business, journalists. Perhaps this is down to his higher regard for science-based subjects over humanities.

Yeah, great exchange, Rippon, and thanks for posting.

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Brilliant post, rippon!

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Hi folks, as @KarenEliot linked to at Offguardian, Graeme MacQueen points to the left mags all ignoring 9/11 and presumably now pro-covid vax:

"Among the U.S. left media that kept the silence, partially or wholly, are:

Monthly Review
Common Dreams
Huffington Post
Counterpunch
The Nation
The Real News
Democracy Now!
Z Magazine
The Progressive
Mother Jones
Alternet.org
MoveOn.org "

BTL comments also interesting:

gumby

Sep 10, 2021 10:25 PM
et al

https://web.archive.org/web/20060613072211/http://questionsquestions.net/topics/left_gatekeepers.html

" "That’s an internet theory and it’s hopelessly implausible. Hopelessly implausible. So hopelessly implausible I don’t see any point in talking about it."
Noam Chomsky, at a FAIR event at New York’s Town Hall, 22 January 2002, in response to a question from the audience about US government foreknowledge of 9/11."

"Apparently, ‘conspiracy stuff’ is now shorthand for unspeakable truth."
— Gore Vidal, from “The Enemy Within”, 27 Oct 2002

cheers

PS as RG refers to the woke as goats amongst sheep maybe we should be calling NC a goatkeeper!

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CJ, I think it’d now more accurate to refer to poor Noam as a rampant king billy goat in his prime, who’s now, in his calamitous dotage, become an emasculated sheep.

And whilst we’re at it, perhaps we should award Rippon a Bull-Dog Neverletgo designation; or maybe a Pit-Bull, Cane Corso, Dogo Argentino, whatever. That dialogue with poor worn out and doddering Noam was very much of that sort. Not that I want to suggest that Rippon was being unkind, or bullying. But if a man with Noam’s stellar - and on the whole entirely deserved - accumulated reputation stoops to the sort of answers he’s given R, then he’s asking to be shredded; as Rippon self-evidently has done. Rippon armed with masses of highly-pertinent material, Noam clearly completely unaware of any of it, and unable now to raise the interest. Talk about David and Goliath, with R in the young slinger’s role. I never expected to see Noam fall so low! God, what a disaster. Point, Game, Set and Match to R! (Sorry about the mixed metaphors; pick 'em apart as you wish.)

Actually, I think the video with Chomsky suggesting isolation for vaccine hesitants has been taken down. It no longer plays at Rippon’s youtube link, and another video on this page

Noam Chomsky Says Anti-Vaxxers Have Responsibility To ‘Isolate’ Themselves

also doesn’t play - so it’s probably the same video!?
This is a very concerning interview though.

From May: there is a better Chomsky interview from a left viewpoint (because it’s not about vaccines):
Link: Renowned Political Activist Noam Chomsky Urges Next Generation to Take Action

@Rippon will LOVE this:
“He also stressed that anti-vaxxers need to be won over with argument and discussion, rather than force.”

They need to be talked into their pen by logic, see? Stop being silly. Stop it, now! Get in. That’s right, that’s a good (…add patronising term).

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Isn’t his intransigence/active opposition to minority theories (9/11, covid, JFK assassination according to @Rich and @RhisiartGwilym) similar to what we’ve seen elsewhere on the left? If he’s a gatekeeper then there are many more on the left. It’s natural for Chomsky to be asked to corroborate people’s ‘more radical’ views, so he’s put on the spot a lot. He does have a ‘blind spot’ regarding biased media coverage when he agrees with the media narrative. Maybe we all do, but someone like him should at least notice that much, and point it out - if he keeps quiet deliberately it means he doesn’t really believe in free media holding power to account, or free speech, any more than anyone else!

The video in the article you have linked above is still playing for me Evvy. I had to scroll down to it towards the bottom of the page but it works and it is the same one that @Rippon posted. What happens when you click on it?

This thread could go on for ever. If he’s asked about “more radical” stuff, if he was not a gatekeeper, he could easily say something like, ‘I don’t have sufficient knowledge …’ or ‘that’s not an angle I have investigated’. Where he dismisses something he disagrees with, without offering any explanation, that to me is a sign of total arrogance or in the case of someone with “radical” credentials, a gatekeeper (IMHO).

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Yes that’s a point that can’t be dismissed. But as I say they do that alll over the left, including on other forums :wink: It could be a human trait - maybe the reality is that nobody is keen to dismantle their stall.once they have set it out in public. OTOH they do seem to carry on the attack with the same verve irrespective of new evidence. It’s a conundrum for me.