Noam Chomsky and The Guardian's commissars

The commissars at The Guardian must have been really angry when they learned Noam Chomsky had been voted the world's top public intellectual. So they decided to use their "professional skills" and sent Emma Brockes to interview him. The result is a Stalinist piece of violence mitigated only by Ms Brockes's ignorance and stupidity.

There is a half-finished packet of fig rolls on the desk. Such is the effect of an hour spent with Chomsky that, writing this, I wonder: is it wrong to mention the fig rolls when there is undocumented suffering going on in El Salvador?

It's not the first time that these "interviews" are used to delegitimize, ridicule and discredit the interviewee’s opinions and political thought, to please the interviewer’s caste and to better serve the masters and their agenda. Here the hate against Chomsky is such that the "journalist" doesn't mind to lie, to misrepresent the facts and to write about things she doesn't know.

This is, of course, what Chomsky has been doing for the last 35 years, and his conclusions remain controversial: that practically every US president since the second world war has been guilty of war crimes; that in the overall context of Cambodian history, the Khmer Rouge weren't as bad as everyone makes out; that during the Bosnian war the "massacre" at Srebrenica was probably overstated. (Chomsky uses quotations marks to undermine things he disagrees with and, in print at least, it can come across less as academic than as witheringly teenage; like, Srebrenica was so not a massacre.)

Writing to Media Lens' editors, Noam Chomsky says

Begins just the right way for the Guardian. The answer she quotes from me is correct, but it was to an entirely different question, asking whether I regret supporting Diana Johnstone's right to publish when her book was withdrawn by the publisher after vicious and dishonest press attacks, which I reviewed in an open letter, as she knows. Continues the same way. Even when some words of mine are quoted more or less accurately, she concocts a context to fit the Guardian ideology, particularly on the Balkans, where they seem completely hysterical. As for freedom of speech, she obviously didn't understand a word I said, any more than her respected colleagues seem to.

Don't read the Guardian regularly, but my impression is that it's rather typical of the way they deal with people a few mm to the left of what they regard as acceptable. Like left-liberal countparts here, they always seem to be looking over their shoulder to make sure they are respectable enough to be invited to the right dinner parties.

My only joy in all this disgusting propaganda operation is that despite all the money, energy and resources used by the guardians of powers to discredit serious opposition and dissent, Chomsky is very much appreciated and respected all over the world by millions whereas these pathetic loons at the Guardian or the New York Times or all the other sanctuaries of hypocrisy are not even taken seriously within their own caste.

We should never forget however that without these Goebbels’ children, the mass murderers and war criminals such as Blair, Bush (or Clinton for that matter) could never succeed in their criminal “projects”.

About Chomsky, when I met him for my documentary XXI CENTURY, I’ve been impressed by his ability to deal with complex topics, by his talent to communicate without making you feel you are being preached and by his ethical perspective. His intellectual and moral honesty is a powerful antidote against the poison of the corporate media.

I am so sorry for Emma Brockes: she was so eager to obey her orders that she missed a great opportunity. Amazing how some people can pass through powerful experiences without even being touched…