Home
Creators
Search Recent Random
Posts
Search DMs Popular Hash Lookup Tags Random
Importer
Import FAQ
Register Favorites Keys Review DMs Logout
Community
Telegram ThePornDude
Home Creators Posts Import Register Favorites Logout

(Slightly) Early Release of Chomsky Episode (Patreon)

Published:
2023-08-18 04:01:35
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Downloads

Some files exceed the archive size limit and weren't saved: 1 file. Please note these limits are in place to keep this site running long term, without costing a fortune. You can favorite the creator though, certain milestones increase the limit.

Content

This will likely come out later today on the main feed but we still have some more things to do. Just in case we get sidetracked and end up delayed I thought you guys would appreciate having early access so enjoy.

Feedback as always welcome!

Also, if you find any weird audio...

Comments

YellowDreams

Legend I’m going on a retreat for two weeks without internet and have a flight right now. Great timing for one last decoding fix. Haha

Exai

Desk rejected?! DISC rejected!!

OAR

Been looking forward to this, as a linguistics student back in the day. The contrast between the way he was held up by my course's profs, and the dawning reality of what he was really like when I left uni, was pretty stark. Can't criticise his general heft in the linguistic world, but I wonder what you'll say about American foreign policy sending him effing loopy in the last 20 years.

Jake Lawrence

FINALLY you two! 😂Listening now...brutal criticisms pending...

SHOUNAK SARKAR

Hey Chris and Matt, that was a pretty fair and balanced decoding of Chomsky! While I disagree with his politics, his achievements in the field of linguistics are really substantial. So, I am glad that he still keeps his academic work mostly separate from his political views, which otherwise would slightly diminish his academic record. That said (and I know you two highlighted this earlier), we must NOTE that USA was indeed a pretty malevolent entity when Chomsky was growing up. CIA organised coups, executions, segregation policies at home, atrocities committed in Central America, napalm bombing during the Vietnam war - all of these were pretty horrific. Plus he is entirely right that in the wider non-Western world, the USA is not viewed as favourably as it is elsewhere. To provide another example of the difference in perspectives between the West and East, Churchill is revered as a war hero who stoop up to the Nazis in USA, Australia and Britain. However, in the state I come from in India, he is rightly reviled as a racist, genocidal monster whose policies directly led to the death of millions of Bengalis in a man made famine. Churchill is certainly no war hero in India. So I do cut Chomsky some slack on this; his worldviews have been shaped by growing up during that time, where the criticisms he was laying out were highly unpopular with the general populace. Although, yes he should be called out vociferously for not updating his viewpoints post Obama, as there has been a noticeable shift in American foreign policy (at least for Democrats) since then. However, invading and bombing Mexico is quite popular in the MAGA right space these days, so don't rule it out entirely mate. Although, I think & hope that the CIA of today would actually refuse to do that if directed by Trump or DeSantis. Anyways great episode. Chomsky is a mixed bag, his NATO assertions and Ukraine commentary were pretty bad too. But on balance, he is still better than all of the IDW clowns and his academic output is genuine. Looking forward to your gurometer episode of him, I am guessing he would place somewhere in the middle.

Chris Wishy

Such a contrast from his field of expertise where he emphasises the incredible complexities and shows humility, to his political views that simplify and essentially infantilise voters and entire nation States. Can’t wait for the right to reply!

Paul Bowman

I think Chomsky is a good example of how a certain kind of leftism (even one ostensibly related to my own tendency) can degenerate into a form of conspiratorialism, albeit one pointing at publicly-identified real world agents (US foreign policy establishment, etc) rather than shadowy (((elites))). I think the key to decoding Chomsky though, is not so much his position on the general left/right spectrum, but through looking at his less famous long-term collaborator Ed Herman. Their shared perspective was most famously outlined in the 1988 book Manufacturing Consent, but preceded by works going back to 1973 (including the Cambodian genocide revisionism bordering on denialism). Herman's "propaganda model" of media is the shared DNA of his and Chomsky's particular brand of "Grayzone-lite" campism. Herman went on to become more or less a full-blown denier of the Rwandan genocide (I spent a fair amount of time arguing online with Herman stans around this) and the specifics of his position there are revelatory. Because there was a Western imperialist power up to its neck in the genocide - France (this is well-documented by French left and investigative sources). Herman simply discounted France as an agent, full-stop. The only thing that mattered to him was that the US backed the subsequent Kagame overthrow of the Interahamwe regime. So it's not only the agency of peripheral and semi-peripheral states (to use the world systems terms), but even any western imperialist power, other than the US. This is not just anti-Americanism - people from other countries, e.g. Middle East, etc, may be anti-Americanists - this is a specifically American form of inverted patriotism. Rather than America being the greatest, it becomes the greatest villain, to the exclusion of any other powers, UK and France included (lets not forget that Sarkozy pushed NATO into the Libyan war, not Obama). This specifically American "anti-patriotism" grounds a lot of Chomsky's more egregious geopolitical views. But the "propaganda model" is at the heart of the broken epistemics. If the propaganda - the "party line" that Chomsky continually refers to (cf also "global planners"[!]) - of the "great satan" is the source of all evil, then the ethical responsibility of its opponents is to counter it with counter-propaganda. And this is Chomsky's method - counter-propaganda against a background of an vastly over-simplified Manichean worldview. I think ultimately Chomsky's worldview is based more on ethics than a critical historical materialist worldview (mind you, so is much of the far left, theoretical claims notwithstanding). His elevation of the US to the height of global "main contradiction" (the common error of all campism) leads him to think that his ethical responsibility as an American is to prioritised the evil committed by the US, before all else. Ironically this results in profoundly unethical outcomes, like denying the agency and interests of non-Americans (Ukrainians, Finns, etc). It also goes against the common view that he is an anarchist or anarchist-adjacent, because there is no concept of counterpower in his political ontology. The class war itself is reduced to a top-down conspiracy against the working class in which the latter are mere passive victims - a totally one-sided view of the class struggle. To sum up, "one-sidedness", a criticism Marx was very fond of casting around, kinda fits pretty well with the problem of Chomsky. He may well be careful, much of the time, in saying things that are technically not wrong, but often they are only one side of the question and leaving the other sides out of the picture, because of the view of counter-propaganda being the means to right wrongs

Colin Fardey

Unrelated to the Chomsky but the bit about Mat taking the poem about the two farmers literally, was hilarious.

Roland Weber

Hi there, thanks for the episode! Hope you're both well now. I listened to the intro so far, up to the new title music 🎶😱 Those four quadrant models are really obtrusive. It's almost as if the name implied there had to be four of them 😉

Artemis Green

Re: Gender studies - when I studied it felt to me like LGBT studies, women's studies and men's studies all got squished together and then given a post-structuralist twist. I thought it was weird that an academic could do work focussing on gender but if they didn't have the 'right' theoretical backdrop to their research (for example if they were too empirical or not interested in endless discourse analysis) then they couldn't be gender studies.... I'll eat my hat if Judith Butler's Gender Trouble isn't the most famous/influential work of queer theory ever written - I feel sorry for anyone who met me at uni in my Peak Butler phase. But there are so many other authors you would look at after that... their fixation on penis article guy just shows how little they understand the discipline.

Anonymous ethicist, not a serial killer at all, just asking questions.

I think Chomsky's age, and growing up with 70+ years of anti communist American propaganda, really helps understand his world view. It makes the epistemology of world events feel more sus when you've been lied to so many times by American foreign policy I think he's still wrong on this stuff, but I understand how he would feel about it. Great episode all round though

Petr Rusnok

Thanks Matt for defending corporations, we are very grateful that we get better treatment from you than religion. You can expect your paycheck to arrive very soon.

Artemis Green

Another aside, but my mouth dropped open when I got to the bit about kinship systems. I mean I don't want to be too harsh b/c he's a 94 year old man from the US but... MY GUY. That's wildly inaccurate! Wtf??? I remember going to a workshop run by a Pintupi woman and she was explaining the way skin names traditionally determine who you marry, who you avoid, who you owe hospitality obligations to, what you need to care for... her own take was that it was a cultural system that had evolved so that no-one got left out or that you would be cared for when travelling (for example if your birth mother died, other people with the mother's skin name would step in to care for you, if you were away from your blood relatives you could approach skin brothers/sisters for hospitality). She also thought it was a way to avoid close genetic relatives intermarrying since it had the effect of prohibiting sibling intermarriage etc.

Devin Poore

As an American lefty with basically no familiarity with Chomsky (other than in reputation) prior to listening to this episode, there are absolutely some bad takes from Chomsky, but I'm also definitely taking a fair bit of umbrage with some of Chris and Matt's analysis here. Just to zero in on one such point - after Chomsky likens Ukraine (possibly) becoming a part of NATO to China forming a military alliance with Mexico and points out the likely American reaction wherein Mexico would be "blown away", Chris reacts with some incredulity regarding the notion that the US would actually go to war with Mexico in such a situation. Or that there wouldn't be broad, global condemnation if they did. I feel like the appropriate push back here (as Chris predicted) is to point out that 20 years ago, we went to war with a country that wasn't even on our border and who hadn't formed a military alliance with one of our chief national adversaries, simply because the Bush administration claimed that its leader was in possession of dangerous weapons he intended to use against us (a claim that was ultimately proven, at best, to be severely overstated; at worst, a complete and intentional fabrication). Not only did we actually invade this country, but we rallied several other Western military powers to join us in said invasion. Estimates of the civilian death toll in Irag range from the tens to hundreds of thousands. We collapsed their government and, despite having no real plan or exit strategy, made plenty of hay about "nation building" (our efforts in Iran during the 70's on that front having proven so successful). Once American public sentiment on our presence in Iraq had soured enough and we had withdrawn (less than a decade ago), we left behind us a power vacuum that was soon filled by ISIS. No Matt, we didn't annex Iraq, but we caused plenty of strife there nonetheless. In short, my country has done far more for far less provocation than the hypothetical posed here by Chomsky. Even in the current GOP primary cycle, there are candidates floating military interventions of one flavor or another in Mexico to deal with cartel activity and, if push came to shove, it wouldn't be too difficult a task to muster broad support for such a move within the GOP base, who have been primed (even prior to Trump's rhetoric brought it to new heights) with significant amounts of anti-immigrant hysteria for decades. Add to this existing animus Chinese weaponry and get ready to watch the fireworks. It sounds as though your takeaway is that Chomsky is excusing Russia's actions in Ukraine by pointing to bad things America has done or might do in similar situations, but I think it is also a fair reading to say that he is motivated more by a frustration that despite a very long list of atrocities carried out under the banner or the American flag, America HASN'T faced an equivalent degree of scorn and criticism as Russia has, nor have we made any kind of efforts whatsoever to atone for some of our worst sins as a country. There's even a fairly well organized political apparatus in America (mainly on the right) dedicated to smearing those who try to advocate awareness and the just atonement of such sins as "anti-American". Ultimately, I can't speak for Chomsky, but I can speak for myself when I say that my country wields great power and it has often done so recklessly, selfishly, and with horrific consequences for the millions of innocent people who have been caught in the crossfire of our ill fated schemes. All of this in spite of our supposed dedication to a long list of quite lofty "American" principles we are so often so quick to self-congratulate ourselves for. You guys often discuss the importance of humility on this show (as underscored by its frequent absence amongst the people you tend to talk about). I think that Chomsky might be singing a different tune regarding Ukraine if his own country had shown any genuine sense of having truly been humbled by its past mistakes and made intentional efforts to rectify them. As it stands though, I remain heavily skeptical such humility has been instantiated within the American zeitgeist, but we seemingly remain happier than ever to climb onto our high horse and point out the atrocities of others. Edit: Finishing up the episode and I'm motivated to add a bit more here as Chris talks through Chomsky's sympathetic reading of various communist regime genocides. I can't speak much about Chomsky and his history on these topics (as I said, I am not all that familiar with the guy), but I sense the same kind of sub-critical standard being applied to this topic as applied to what I discussed above. The Vietnam War was fought for explicitly ideological reasons, with the US attempting to install its own puppet government (capitalist in nature of course), just as Russia seeks to do in Ukraine now. Why is it, that despite a death toll in the millions in Vietnam (hundreds of thousands of them civilians), this event is not laid at the feet of Western capitalism as proof of the fundamental evil of the system that animated it in the same way that the Cambodian genocide or the Soviet gulag is laid at the feet of Marxism? We had no grounds for being in Vietnam. Truly. People should watch Ken Burn's documentary on the war. It is sobering. So why do all those bodies not get put in the "Strikes Against Western Capitalism" column, but all the bodies from the gulag are enthusiastically counted up and added to the "Strikes Against Soviet Communism" column. Why is the Uyghur genocide a morally reprehensible act that fundamentally proves the horror of communist China, but the various Native American genocides and similar forced cultural assimilation efforts carried out by the United States not similar grounds to disqualify Western capitalism as a viable social structure? The "just asking questions" kind of mentality that you fault Chomsky for as being tantamount to genocide denialism when applied to these historical communist atrocities is always in steady supply in America when lefties want to talk about slavery or Jim Crow or Native American genocide or Iraq or Vietnam. America and the West more broadly has its own flavor of denialism that is just as odious as what you accuse Chomsky of here. It was literally just a few weeks ago that Florida under DeSantis approved an African American studies curriculum that included teaching how, in some cases, slavery helped to teach skills to slaves which "could be applied to their personal benefit" - no attempt being made to whitewash the ills of slavery there. Marc Andreessen (highly pro-capitalist billionaire) was recently on Sam Harris' podcast and stated that he still believes our invasion in Iraq was justified, tens of thousands of innocent civilians being slaughtered notwithstanding. None of this should be read as apologetics for crimes carried out by communist regimes. I'm just trying to explain what I imagine must be the deep frustration felt by someone like Chomsky when the predictable (and justifiable) hand wringing over Putin's actions begin in a Western world that has actively taken part in, tacitly endorsed, downplayed to various degrees, and/or outright ignored its own crimes over the years.

Heath Lancaster

Wow I am surprised at how controversial this episode is sorta haha. I did not realize that Chomsky is a touchy subject for some lefties. I thought this episode was good, I learned a lot. I didn’t think he had guru tendencies either but some of the reactions to this episode on the subreddit do make me wonder what exactly is going on here, apparently some people really do live and breath on what Chomsky says?

Cesare

God damn, I had no idea he was such a tankie! What a shame, as he's otherwise quite astute.

Christopher McLaughlin

I’m pretty familiar with Chomsky’s anti-imperialist thought so I noticed quite a few straw men posed by Chris and Matt. Honestly it’s inevitable when you’re playing short clips and responding to them, as opposed to a longer critique of a more representative sample of his work over the many many many many years. I’m sure our favorite gurus in the Weinstein Industrial Podcast Complex could mount the same defense, but I don’t read their body of work so I wouldn’t know a straw man from a…rock hard man? I love the format of the show, and don’t want you guys to change a thing, it’s just a weakness that pops out when the listener is very familiar with the potential guru’s content.

João Pedro Lima Delgado

Honestly, it was disheartening to hear these two privileged Western liberals display their profound ignorance about politics in the presence of such a brilliant mind—one of the greatest advocates for the oppressed worldwide. As a Brazilian, I felt truly offended, considering Chomsky's active role in voicing opposition against various threats to our democracy over the years, including recent challenges posed by the rise of the far-right under Bolsonaro. The GurusPud is all fun and games, but when it comes to real issues, you guys don't have the knowledge or the framework to adress them. When it comes to Economics your remarks are laughable (I'm a MsC in Economics currently doing my PhD), for example, suggesting that emerging economies benefited from imperialist exploration and would otherwise be doomed to be worst off if it wasn't for that (roughly quoting Matt here). Needless to say I'll be no longer supporting the show as a patreon. Fuck you :)

Linda Sears

It seems inevitable that people will have different views on Chomsky, depending on our knowledges of history, economics, and politics and on our experiences (where we come from, people we know, etc.) There are some divides within my family; my brother-in-law, who lived in Soviet Russia in the 70's when his father was a Turkish diplomat, has a much harsher view of communism and more positive view of capitalism than I do having grown up with a Socialist, New Zealand father in the United States under Reagan. He (the brother-in-law) is pretty obsessed with what has been happening in Ukraine, particularly since his older brother worked in NATO until recently, where he focused on Russia and saw many of the warning signs of Russia's aggression long before others did. The stress of that assignment nearly did him in. Listening to my brother-in-law's arguments have helped me gain a different perspective from my own and given me more humility. I still fall on the leftist side (not so keen on corporations and not happy with the big wealth gaps and environmental devastation), but I also understand that capitalism, when well-regulated and fair, can have benefits

Christopher McLaughlin

As Robert Wright has talked about for so much of his career, it’s difficult here in the USA voicing dissent from the foreign policy blob and being taken seriously. For a long time Chomsky was one of the few voices that broke through and raised the concerns of the global south. We have other rising voices here in America now, like the Quincy Institute and their publication Responsible Statecraft. There’s just so much brutal history of American imperialism in the 20th and 21st centuries and Chomsky seemed to me like the only person who had learned it all and could speak to it. How many of us have learned the US government’s role in support of the Indonesian mass killings of 1965-66? We have a vague idea that the US did some horrifying things in Central America in the not so distant past, but we were never taught what they were. Chomsky introduced many of us to that hidden history.

Robert Andrews

A well-timed (some may say suspiciously so...) episode of A Partially Examined Life was released on Chomsky's linguistics, particularly as they are attacked by Michael Tomasello, who first wrote a review article of Steven Pinker's Language Instinct in which he pummelled Pinker's exposition of Chomsky's Universal Grammar, before writing a whole book dedicated to explaining how language ACTUALLY develops in children. Prior to reading Tomasello's review, I myself had been very convinced by Pinker's book (and by extension Chomskyan linguistics), but after reading it I found a lot more highly critical pieces on Chomsky and now very much doubt his idea of UG (and attendant arguments of the poverty of the stimulus) stands up. If you are interested in arcane arguments in linguistics filtered through an attempt to understand them using philosophical arguments by Wittgenstein, Locke, Plato and Kant, then this is essential listening. In fact, it is in two parts... https://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2023/08/21/ep323-1-tomasello-chomsky-language/

Giovanni

I want Chomsky branded supplements!

Marcus

i picked up my girlfriend from the station the other night and a few minutes after I'd started my car, we were driving in silence when the bluetooth connected and automatically started playing from 1:30:00 and Noam's croaking gutteral incantations rose dramatically out of nowhere and genuinely terrified my girlfriend. I told her not to worry, that's just Noam; he's harmless and lives in the speakers.

John Smith

I disagree that the UK media is usually this combatitive. Against Noam Chomsky, yes. Against JK Rowling, not at all. They are all combatative with everyone the British establishment doesn't approve of, and will lick the bootheels of anyone that the British establishment does approve of. I don't even agree with Noam Chomsky anymore, but my dislike of the British media is still strong. Every paper is a transphobic tabloid. And there is no chance he would be pushed back on if he were someone that wasn't supposed to be pushed back on. Even in "left wing" publications like the guardian (I refuse to acknowledge a transphobic publication as "left wing"). American journalists have far more integrity.

Liz Tily

In case anyone is in Philadelphia and needs some help with local linguistics… Woodur is water Jawn is a noun for literally anything “Go birds” is a friendly greeting or a nice way of parting