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the basis for chomsky's anarchism is that age of consent laws are an unjust hierarchy that places adults above children
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this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2025
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Chapotraphouse
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his credentials were pretty bad before any of this came out. to me these takedowns are not survivable:
I'm not gonna stand by everything the guy ever said. But he is 97 years old for lord's sake.
He was born just a decade after the fall of Tsarist Russia.
Nobody stays the same over 100 years. Chomsky's been getting noticeably more inconsistent in his actions and statements since like.. the year 2000, which is when basically all these criticisms are from.
I'm not saying 'ignore all old people', but I am saying people change enormously over half a century and we shouldn't judge them as if they are exactly the same person they were. To start picking apart the consistency of the ramblings or actions of a ninety-seven year old as if he's still an on-the-ball scholar just feels a bit unnecessary.
Chomsky seems to be consistent in his exceptionalism and imperialism
Howso? A lot of his work and speeches pre-turning 70 seem to focus on how the US (and the west more generally) has no justification for any of its wars and criticising its other forms of imperialism.
A lot of Chomsky's interviews or the ones I've seen deal with how freedom of speech is above everything, how violently opposing war is irresponsible, how the best way is to talk it out and put the responsible ghouls in charge.
He demeans the violent demonstration against the invasion of Vietnam.
It's the same with reformists that try to redirect the anger and indignation into impotent ballots
He can proclaim be against war but if he bashes those who oppose it through any kind of disruption, I will still call him someone that perpetuates the empire
Edit: it's early in the morning and I'm rambling so I'll probably elaborate latter during the day
EDIT: Not actually interested in defending him on re-think. My whole point is just that he's scatterbrained and not the same thought figure he was.
Not really, people have been calling him out since the early 90s for hanging out with the head of the CIA and being a warhawk shitlib
Well, yes really, almost all the shared criticisms are of post-2000 events.
And I agree that stuff is bad. I'm not saying he is completely defensible pre-2000, but he was much more politically consistent then than now.
I mean even before the 90s I could mention how most of his sociological output is just re framing already existing sociology in a manner that defangs its revolutionary potential - hes been ribbing on Steven Lukes and shit his entire career.
Cambodian genocide denial and Khmer Rouge apologia was also very bad, but unfortunately a lot of big leftist figures at the time engaged in it. It was one of those events where a lot of respected left wing figures got it extremely wrong in real time.
This is the consequence of putting political alignments in a one dimensional chart, Malcolm x, Robert Williams, Assata Shakur, John Brown, Platner, Chomsky, AOC, all of them are leftists
So is Joespeh Biden, Tony the tiger Blair and hitlers left toe apparently
The term you're thinking of is moderate neoliberalism.
None of these are in 'The Left' unless you include people who are far right but occasionally do socially liberal things as leftists
I mean more "far left" people like Samir Amin also engaged in Khmer Rouge apologia. It was a pretty big failure by a lot of communists. There are still Maoists to this day that do this.
Are they really
Leftism is such a purposely nebulous term, as long as you have one slightly decent take you are a leftist, if you think that a broken arm shouldn't force you to declare bankruptcy then you are a leftist even if you are pro invasion, same with pro LGBT right but you are a mouth foaming racist, see Bernie Sanders