Ambush League

The anti-Noams were at it over the holiday, shouting and preening when not crawling on the ground, looking for anything, regardless of size or importance, that would incriminate Chomsky of thought crimes, war crimes, any crimes that the Noamophobes hoped to pin on him. It was an interesting, if tedious, display, a pseudo-intellectual mosh pit filled with awkward, stumbling ravers who wanted it made plain that they really hate Noam Chomsky.

Well, "made plain" isn't quite accurate. In fact, when you scroll down that Crooked Timber thread, you'll encounter verbiage so impenetrable that you'll wonder how an ostensibly simple idea -- "Chomsky Bad" -- could gather so much collective debris from brain to tapping fingers. But then, as the despised MIT Professor himself has often said, one of the roles academics and their minions/imitators play is to obscure, not clarify, ideas and subjects for debate; to make it seem that you must learn a secret language to fully understand whatever issue is under discussion. Anyone who's been around these types when they howl in tongues about Chomsky knows exactly what they're saying: the anti-Noams revile him for his anti-imperialism and exposure of statist apologetics. More, they loathe him for extensively footnoting his arguments, which makes it harder to debunk his critiques, thus compelling them to dissect random sentences and even individual words in a typically comic effort to find the smoking syntax that will show Chomsky for the fascist he really is, while proving them correct, if not moral and pure as well.

This crazed activity is commonly referred to as "The Chomsky Wars," as bogus a title as there is. There can be no "Chomsky Wars" without Chomsky himself participating, which he reluctantly does from a distance after friends make him aware of the latest slander, but he's hardly the principal actor. Wars about Chomsky might be closer to the mark, but even that premise falls short since what we usually get is not "war" but a lot of arm waving and ankle biting of the cheapest kind, the heaviest artillery being buckets of shit that soil the Noamophobes more than their intended target -- not that they mind the smell, as it doubtless reminds them of home. A weak skirmish or bumbling ambush, maybe. But "war"? Fire ants would laugh at that.

Among those who stumbled forth were two reliable Chomsky haters: Oliver Kamm and Brad DeLong. Kamm I know only from an ex-(or perhaps very confused and sad) lefty in the Bay Area who filled my mailbox with his anti-Noam screeds, and I can't say that it inspired me to read Kamm much further. Partly because I've seen this material before, but mostly due to Kamm's pretentious tone and condescending manner, both of which he displayed in the Crooked Timber thread. There are those who enjoy this kind of act, the Brit Lord dispensing regal truths to his admirers, but when presented as a mode of attack, it's simply precious and ultimately ridiculous, and I was surprised that Noam took Kamm seriously enough to slap down. Still, it appears that Kamm is something like the Chomsky of the Noamophobes, their go-to guru who reminds them that imperial war and flacking for the state are true progressive values. There's certainly no shortage of suckers willing to buy that bit, as Kamm understands perfectly well and shamelessly plays up.

Brad DeLong is less showy than Kamm, since being an economist demands a more serious demeanor. But he operates much in the same way, striving to nail Chomsky with his own words, provided they are separated from the larger whole and reinterpreted by DeLong, who somehow "knows" what Chomsky "really" thinks. This of course muddies the waters to such a degree that one can accuse Chomsky of pretty much anything, which DeLong does every chance he gets. A DeLong fave is to paint Chomsky as pro-Khmer Rouge, which Noam is very much not, but intellectual honesty isn't what DeLong is after here: it's trying to keep a radical critic of US power from reaching more people by making him seem criminally insane, or as DeLong calls Chomsky, a "nut boy." If Chomsky were actually this way, then there would be no need to cherrypick his quotes and sentences, throw them in a mixer then pour them online. Simply posting Chomsky's complete essays would do the trick. But that's not what DeLong does, and for good reason -- it would immediately show which of the two was trying to pull a con, and DeLong, a former Clinton employee, is too smart to allow Chomsky to speak for himself. Hence his garbled "translations."

But this is DeLong's main gig when not crunching numbers. His support for imperialist violence and economic domination of the powerless leads him to attack anyone, especially those with wide followings, who criticizes US aggression, or worse, helps to educate citizens about how to understand the difference between what is being said by the state, and what is actually being done by the state. Right after Edward Said succumbed to leukemia, DeLong popped up at LBO-Talk to slander Said one last time before his body went cold. It was a disgusting performance, but fully in line with DeLong's political purpose. And when Noam goes, assuming DeLong outlives him (a coin-flip, judging from this), you can expect this garbage wrapped in skin to be positively gleeful. Vile scarcely covers it.

There were some sane commentators in the Crooked Timber thread, not that it mattered all that much, given the dense brush that surrounded them. But one in particular was our good friend Jon Schwarz, who simply couldn't resist from participating. I tried to warn him, but Jon's optimistic and believes he can reason with those who take Kamm and DeLong seriously -- not only reason with them, but do so using humor and wit. Oh Jon, what did Yale do to you?