Noam Chomsky Turns 92 Today

from Mother Jones via The Free Online

Noam Chomsky Turns 92 Today. He’s Celebrating With a Livestream on Planetary Peril and Democratic Uprisings.

It was just seven years ago that Mother Jones ran an article by Noam Chomsky titled “Destroying a Planet Without Really Trying.” In his sights: “dangers like pandemics.” He saw epidemiological and environmental threats as intertwined, on top of oil profiteering, labor exploitation, Indigenous rights violations, and institutional inaction and obstacles. “That’s what the future historian—if there is one—would see,” he wrote.

“If you ask what the world is going to look like, it’s not a pretty picture. Unless people do something about it. We always can.”

That last bit—we always can—is the takeaway not just of his 2013 article, but of his life’s work. If there’s a throughline in his canon of criticism of imperialism and capitalism’s wreckage, it’s that idea. Action is takable. Solutions are available. “It’s not that there are no alternatives. The alternatives just aren’t being taken.”

Chomsky marks his 92nd birthday today with a livestream on “the future of democracy, nuclear threat, and the looming environmental catastrophe in a post-Trumpian world.” The video is here. His 2013 article is here. Chomsky sipping coconut water through a straw is here. If you’re a glutton for archival punishment, his 1969 autopsy of William F. Buckley Jr. is here.

There are 16 Comments

he may still be alive, but he hasn't done anything interesting for actual anarchists or to promote actual anarchy since about 1969 when he wrote Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship and (re)introduced mass-based real-life anarchist political experiments to a public in the middle of Cold War anticommunism, the mounting debacle of the Vietnam War, and deep suspicion of anything occurring outside the mainstream. since then he's been an intellectual critic of US foreign policy and a supporter of third world dictators of various stripes. the main problem with this trajectory is his use of imminent critique of the written and oral declarations of US policy makers; he begins with taking them as true statements and proceeds to find the hypocrisy in actual policy. in his personal political practice he's nothing more than a left-wing social democrat. and don't get me started on his reactionary linguistics...
i'm not saying anarchists would be better off without him. undoubtedly he's been the gateway drug for many anarchists, who would have probably never dared to investigate radical political theory without hearing him mention his philosophical adherence to some form of libertarian socialism. but it's also not terribly controversial to say clearly that the anarchism he prefers is the sort that was destroyed on the barricades in Barcelona in May 1937. in other words, it has little to no relevance to contemporary anarchism. the more intelligent and literate anarchists have moved on from their Chomsky fanboy days, and for good reason.
the tags at the bottom of the story should probably include "MSM" and "not anarchist."

Reversely, to progressives Chomsky is a gateway drug to the Democrcatic presidential candidate for how many elections now?

Reactionary as in being deterministic is what anon means.

He's not a total loss, at least he managed to squeeze out "Destroying a Planet Without Really Trying" with his boring cerebral sphincter!

Is anyone going to bring up this issue against the most famous anarchist who isn't an anarchist? If you know the story about how Daniel Everett is being prevented from communicating with the Piraha it's pretty disgusting. IF Chomsky knows about this then this would be something that warrants ACTUAL cancelization. Everett's Sapir-Worfesque non-recursive theory of language visa vi the Piraha would actually end Chomsky's theory of language. The fact that the Chomsky dominated UoB is repressing Everett's research is one of the great academic scandals that no one is talking about and IF Chomsky knows what's going on this would basically be state authoritarian enabling. He's already not an anarchist but this would be beneath even basic practices of ethical liberalism.

Yes, and that's Chomsky's so disgustingly pompous Western methodology at work, that he cannot fathom the consciousness of peoples who exist and live in the moment and have no need to count numbers and accumulate material objects greater than one in number, and how a lifestyle forms the modes and intricacies in language and not a primeval gene. He is a moron!

If there's one, sole, reason why I'm okay that SE's still around these parts is because Chomsky's still alive, and some liberal lefty's still posting about him, here.

I'm still mourning the Chumpsky today. So sad when he left us back in 2006 or something... now he's dead.

Long live the Chumpsky!

Oxana Malaya was found at the age of eight living among dogs in Ukraine in 1991 which she had done since the age of three. As a result she demonstrated a lack of ability to learn language and exhibited dog-like traits such as barking, walking on all fours, howling, sniffing and digging. She formed a powerful bond with the dogs at the time, such that when authorities attempted to rescue her, they were driven away by them. The only words she could speak were ‘yes’ and ‘no’.
All efforts to teach her to speak failed, including Noam Chomsky's recommended syntax related oral exercises carried out over 5 years by a trained team of specialists. Brain scans showed an abnormal cognitive ability and speed attributed to having to live in an intense and active environment unhindered by modern restrictive social barriers.

it's pretty much a no-brainer now that Chumpsky was a anachronistic (not to be confused with "anarchistic"!) determinist tool... still pushing this retrograde Generative Grammar like several decades after theorists like Sapir, Worf, and Wittgenstein nailed the coffin of determinism, at least when it comes to linguistics. But I know... anything goes in US academia.

Back in the hazy-minded '60s you could make epistemological corpses walk, just like them retrograde imperialist anthropologists did. You could also go full Castaneda or McKenna without anyone criticizing your bullshit... aaaahhh sweet '60s when Berkeley still costed a penny and you had either a dopehead or a full Nazi as Chair of the faculty! ;)

I think in the 60's the trick was to dis-educate yourself from the establishment,,,,no mean feat and usually requiring medicinal drugs to trigger the metamorphosis ( thx Kafka ) and achieve the gaol.

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