Forum Post: Noam Chomsky blasts Tutu, the Presbyterians and Elvis Costello - represent the height of hypocrisy, anti Semitism.
Posted 12 years ago on March 10, 2012, 2:49 p.m. EST by ShubeLMorgan2
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from New York, NY
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5hY-gffV0M
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott,_Divestment_and_Sanctions#cite_note-59
In March 2011, Haaretz reported that many artists, academics and celebrities have supported and participated in the cultural boycotting of Israel.[45] Artists who have voiced support for the campaign or cancelled appearances in Israel citing political reasons include musicians Elvis Costello[46], Brian Eno[47], Gil Scott Heron[48], Pete Seeger[45], The Pixies[46], Roger Waters[46][45], writers Eduardo Galeano and Arundhati Roy[49], filmmakers Ken Loach[50] and Jean-Luc Godard.[51] Artists who have voiced oppposition to the campaign include writers Umberto Eco[52], film makers Joel and Ethan Coen,[53] and musicians John Lydon[54] and Gene Simmons.[45] ... In August 2011, the American National Middle Eastern Presbyterian Caucus (NMEPC) endorsed the BDS campaign against Israel.[56]
Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Archbishop Desmond Tutu has called on the international community to treat Israel as it treated apartheid South Africa and supports the divestment campaign against Israel.[58]
Noam Chomsky
In 2010, Noam Chomsky, the 2011 Sydney Peace Prize recipient and a prominent pro-Palestinian activist was interviewed regarding the BDS movement and stated that its "hypocrisy rises to the high heavens". He said that its goal was "the destruction of Israel". He said that it's "not a call from the Palestinian people". He said that anything that targets Israel alone can be attacked as antisemitism and "unfortunately this is with justice". He stated that BDS campaign harms the "whole movement". It harms the Palestinians and it is a gift to the Israeli hardliners and their American supporters, because the BDS's "hypocrisy is so transparent... why not boycott the United States?.. Israeli crimes [are] a fragment of US crimes, which are much worse". He also argued that the Palestinian people don't support boycotting Israel and that the BDS movement is run by people who falsely claim to represent the Palestinian people. [59][60]
http://www.bdsmovement.net/2012/bds-proposal-wins-big-at-occupy-oakland-8681#.T1e2fMAgc_c
Congratulations to ShubeLMorgan2 for teasing out the wormy core of the Chomskyan apple!
While one can learn something about the USA's and others' misdemeanors from reading his books, Chomsky's agenda is nevertheless an extremely disempowering one as at bottom he serves the agenda of the global capitalist ruling elites.
His libertarian socialism (LS) merely means concentrating entirely on moralizing about a "genuinely democratic" future without considering the FACT of differential human characters and abilities. Views such as his dominate the Left today!
The best antidote to Chomsky is to read about the Hindu Caste System. It is viciously inegalitarian - but it works spectacularly effectively as even George Orwell admitted. Sure we can do better than introducing a Hindu-like Caste System but we need a system that can incorporate its advantages - and one of these is that fact that it keeps people on their toes!
What we have instead in the West is the democratic egalitarian fantasy that drugs the masses into passive confusion, buying people off with sweet-sounding words.
Chomsky's fundamental role is to make the sweet-sounding words seem intellectual! So Dump the Chump!
What exactly is the Hindu caste system effective at? I mean, sure, we all have different abilities, and it may be true that aspects of socialism could inhibit achievement (because of lack of incentives), although it obviously depends on the variation of socialism we're talking about (and yes, there are many), nevertheless, why would you possibly appeal to the Hindu caste system in your argument? This is something that requires reasoning (beyond, it's true because Orwell said it's true, assuming you're not citing Orwell out of context)?
Some years ago I was able to work out the origin of the Hindu Caste System but dared not publish it because I feared a negative reaction.
Still, rather than annoying you by making cryptic comments, the reference in Orwell is in his Essays, Journalism & Letters Vol. 4 p. 464 in an article titled "Reflections on Gandhi". In his usual backhanded manner Orwell actually quotes the insight of E. M. Forster in that the British Vice is hypocrisy whereas the Indian Vice is "maniacal suspiciousness" in other words people "kept on their toes" to an inordinate and pathological degree.
(Hence even in popular caricatures Indians are so often servile and ignorant - but they cannot believably be parodied as stupid!)
This Indian outcome DOESN'T HAPPEN TO THE SAME EXTENT in the West - despite conspiracy theorists and paranoia among the elites - since we have the drugs of democracy, egalitarianism and optimistic "Yes-we-can" phraseology. People would naturally rather believe these things than take the difficult option of looking more deeply into the West's philosophical hypocrisies.
Economic decline, energy shortages and impending severe Middle Eastern War are certainly taking away the moonshine-effect of these drugs however!
Dear francismjenkins,
I see that I did not really answer your first question. The Hindu Caste System is most effective at creating different and antipathetic roles in larger society. The priestly (Brahmin), warrior (Kshatriya), landowner-capitalist (Vaisya), and worker (sudra) castes, as well as the untouchable (Dalit) 'beneath caste' reflect hereditary job distributions. In this sense they clearly defined inequlity but at the same time encouraged WITHIN-CASTE SOLIDARITY, including mutual help groups.
As you will now readily see this is why Marxism has always had a strong following in India - its claim as to the very real antagonism of boss and worker already paraded in the caste system itself.
Hence the strength of the Hindu Caste System lies in its recognition of and tolerance towards difference. Western egalitarianism is quite the opposite - so here the end result of the latter is massive resentment-filled envy of anyone who is a bit wealthier! And so help me, keeping-up-with-the-Joneses seems to have been the quintessential Western obsession in the 60s & 70s!
among the dalit there is deep animosity towards the higher classes. have you been to india and seen how the dalit are treated? the caste system is very effective at repressing the lower classes.
I have not traveled in India (only landed at Delhi airport once) but I fully accept the deep animosity towards the higher castes that you describe BECAUSE EVERYBODY ELSE AND ALL BOOKS tell me that too. Yet despite this deep animosity they have not been able to defeat it - even with outside help!
Indeed the caste system is so effective (as I mention with Japan) - and as a result what is really amazing is that it has never been overthrown!
Both Islam and Christianity (in that order) tried to conquer the caste system in India - and both failed miserably.
What is good about the caste system is its effectiveness both in repressing lower orders but also in tolerating difference.
The Hindu Caste System will only be overthrown as its origin is revealed - but the solution to the resulting chaos will be an elective caste system based on character NOT upon heredity since character is not hereditary - as even Nietzsche came to understand.
The Hindu Caste System has traditionally been intepreted, e.g. by the leading German race-theorist Houston Stewart Chamberlain, as evidence of a master race using a lower race as slaves to construct civilization. He then claimed that the master race and lower race interbred, leading to chaos and collapse.
Only when you can get around that nonsense effectively can you understand the positive side of future "caste politics."
many dalits have opted out of the caste system by converting to christianity or islam. they are then no longer covered by the caste system. i guess it only applies to hindus. btw you cannot become a hindu, you must be born a hindu.
Exactly - but as you no doubt realize Hinduism remains the de facto ruling religion by sheer numbers since even the Sudra caste comprises 49% of India's population!
What is very interesting was the different approaches used by Islam and Christianity (in that order) in their attempts to convert India. The Mogul Emperors were originally Mongols who converted to Islam then invaded India. Islam spread into what is now Pakistan but that area originally was NOT Hindu dominated. Rather, the region was mainly Buddhist or animist so the people readily converted to Islam (as far as I can gather and infer from Lonely Planet's Pakistan).
Whereas Islam worked "from the top", trying to win over ruling elites, Christianity worked from the bottom - once the British took over the country.
The Anglican Church, flush with cash, used the Thomas Christians to convert masses of untouchables and poor Moslems in the 1850s, threatening the hegemony of both Islam and Hinduism! The end result? The Great Indian Mutiny of the later 1850s - the only occasion Hindu and Moslem worked together (the story about the beef-&-pork-fat soaked rifle cartridges is a story only).
When the businessmen in Britain realized what had happened, support for the Anglican Church nosedived. Hence Anglicanism's subsequent ready acceptance of Darwinian evolution in 1860 as its leaders could now accept the idea of Indians being racially inferior and so unworthy of conversion!!!!!!
But this is a story nobody wants to tell and few want to hear!
At least on my computer your comment is "now you see it, now you don't."
Decent hypothesis, of course western culture is more centered on individual liberty and (in America at least) meritocracy and competition. The idea that anyone can succeed is the incentive to try, but this is obviously very different than Marxist ideology. However, my response is simply that if the caste system created a respect for differences, why has it been vigorously opposed by its subjects? If Orwell could be said to have been supportive of this ideology in some way, why did he fight alongside anarchists in the Spanish Civil War?
The keep up with the Jones' mentality in the United States does drive consumerism, and I do acknowledge that it exposes underlying cultural traits that we haven't been willing to explore. It's commonly said that youthful idealism is the product of naivety, but could it be that this idealism is more reflective of human nature, and cynicism is driven into us by the dysfunctional structure of our society (that we're immersed in from birth)? Maybe turning to greed is our way of giving up, thinking that our highest ideals are unrealistic, etc.
Dealing first with your second paragraph: yes, cynicism is very much built in to Western (and Indian) systems. And it is also true that many will give up their highest ideals - but this doesn't matter too much, so long as they can do something productive. This is what a new elective caste system will allow for! Conversely, that cynics should be ruling the country or the world is another matter entirely!
The caste system's respect for difference respects rulers, soldiers, capitalists and workers as separate parts of a functioning "national organism" or larger society. It is this that has assured its survival since prehistoric times - caste was already firmly in place at the time of Gautama Buddha.
Caste was opposed by Buddha and Buddhism but when Buddhism spread to other countries like Indonesia and Japan, when it obtained majority support it could not function as an economic system. Hence by default it brought the Hindu Caste System in its wake in order to stablilize job functions.
We see this in Bali for example. But a more striking situation is Japan where, upon the accession to power of Buddhism and its vegetarian preferences, anyone who killed animals for a living was stigmatized as being of lowest caste - i.e. butchers and fisherman (the Burakurumin).
So caste has been vigorously opposed - but it has also been accepted, even by outside societies, since it provides for a stable subdivision of roles in society: into rulers, capitalists and workers.
Orwell did not support the Hindu Caste System - he was just making an observation. My observation, based on his Homage to Catalonia and especially The Lion and the Unicorn is that his preferred democratic outcome is impossible in practice as it requires too much from each person as if all people were equal in temperament, ability and character.
We certainly do not want the Hindu Castes in the West of today - but equally we do need to understand its "tolerance for difference" and model our future accordingly on such overt differentiated roles.
You can provide the best proof for this? Do you know people you could trust in the highest office of government? And do you know others better suited for other roles? I have no doubt you know of examples for the latter roles and perhaps of the former too!
It is a matter not just of cleverness in the leadership but trustworthy characters in such roles!
Thanks.
That's our fraud Noam. The ground should be cut out from under his feet, reputation speaking.
Good luck with that. He's the closest thing the left has to a semi rational spokesperson. Yes, he's always been overrated but interesting.
Don't you think that the comments he made are a wee bit self discrediting and way over the top? I mean come on now, Desmond Tutu a hypocritical anti Semite. Tutu, Elvis Costelo, the Presbyterian Church's anti Semitic "hypocrisy rises to the high heavens".
He's a left-gatekeeper fraud. A government paid pied piper tasked with misleading the left and drawing the boundaries of "acceptable dissent".
Gone into more detail here: http://occupywallst.org/forum/chomsky-on-boycott-divest-and-sanctions-bds-agains/ , if interested.