NOAM CHOMSKY, Havens Center, Orpheum Theater, Madison WI 4/2010

[2204Alpha]

Noam Chomsky is so old, he still thinks mother government will save us all!

[Loltochapel]

@2204Alpha He is a anarchist.So therefore he does not believe in the existence of the state

States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions.

Noam chomsky

[decidererer]

as usual, chomsky has little to say about organizing... his analysis of today's reality rocks, but honestly, i think we know what's going on now... what's interesting is chomsky's reading of the spanish anarchist document, reporting that this was a great success... thus, chomsky holds up a self-reported, short-lived dream as a model, but that's not a morally or intellectually serious call to organize... that's just fantasizing

[centurion180ad]

Once again, Professor Chomsky’s depictions of the views of Adam Smith are spot on. It is good to see, intellectual honesty.

[kevrs2]

i must say "leo sayer" is looking his age ,but its good to see him (at the start ),..if just for a moment ,thanks leo and there wont be a mention of the dirty underpants :)

[pepintheshort100]

Mr. Chomsky, who runs America?

Who screwed up America?

You uber-educated asshole!

[hardreset1]

I have alot of respect for Chomsky, I consider him insightful and ethical. However his reference to Hayek and Rand is completely out of sync with their teachings. He is suggesting that those brilliant philospher/economists would encourage saving the banks. They would not. In a free market no one is too big to fail and any state intervention is anathema.

[decidererer]

@hardreset1 First of all, he didn't comment on Hayek and Rand, he said that the rich would carry their copies of Hayek and Rand with them as they cheerfully took state aid. As for your statement - "any state intervention is anathema" - is that really Hayek? Hayek was influenced by protonazi theorist Carl Schmitt and both believed in a very strong state intervention against democracy, a form called authoritarian liberalism. Example: Pinochet in Chile.

[JoeStunner]

How much common sense, insight, knowledge and integrity can one man cram into less than an hour? I just hope that are people who'll take Chomsky's place when he's gone.

[henrythesteinberg]

@millec60 When did he do that?

[millec60]

@henrythesteinberg in the 1970s... When the US was against Pol Pot, after the news of his killing fields came about, Chomsky said it was actually the CIA at fault and that Pol Pot was a victim of American imperialism.

[henrythesteinberg]

@millec60

Cont'd: If you can find me any Chomsky quote sympathetic to Pol Pot, or using the word "victim", I'll close down my account.

I can give you citations and quotes for everything I've mentioned.

[bapyou]

@millec60 "Chomsky said it was actually the CIA at fault and that Pol Pot was a victim of American imperialism."

No, Chomsky never wrote any such thing. What IS true is American imperialism -- specifically America's bombing of Cambodia & the resulting destabilization of the entire countryside -- gave rise to demagogues such as Pol. Further, following Pol's murderous campaign, when he began to fight the Vietnamese, the US had no qualms giving him millions in aid.

[millec60]

@henrythesteinberg (cont'd)  Then, Pol Pot was invaded by Vietnam, and the US was butthurt over losing to 'nam still, so they opposed that invasion and started to give weapons to Pol Pot (incredibly horrible thing for the US to do at this point, especially considering that Pol had killed 1/3 of his country by then), and then Chomsky suddenly decided that Pol Pot was bad, only because the US was helping him suddenly.

[henrythesteinberg]

@millec60

That's totally untrue. Chomsky repeated a State Department line that the accounts of refugees fleeing from Pol Pot's terror had to be taken with scepticism. Which is the standard line for all refugee accounts over the world. He also attacked the hysterical US press, who were blaming Pol Pot for millions of deaths as early as 1975, when the true number was a few hundred thousand. When the actual numbers reached the hysterical predictions later on in the decade, he noted it.

[Mjhavok]

@millec60 You have never read Chomsky defending Pol Pot. You have read someone else saying he has done this. Pseudointellectuals like yourself are staples of the propaganda machine. You repeat what you have been told without any fact checking. You disgust me.

[readtomdotcom]

Thank you kindly for the post. I AM A CHOMSKIAN POET...

[faithdelusion]

Just like Boxer the horse.

[raderator]

Jewish rule is a disaster. Fascism works. It worked in Italy and Germany and it is working in China today. Only the fascists will do what needs to be done. We have to remove the Jews from positions of power, restrict the female vote, secure the borders, revive the white birth rate, purge the schools of Marxists and deport the blacks and illegal aliens. For that, we are going to need a one-party Nationalist state, at least for a while.

[nocturnezero]

@raderator If your goals include killing all minorities, then yes, Fascism works, but those goals are simply unaccepting of diversity and progress. If my goals are to get my dick chopped off, then putting it in a tomato dicer works, but those are the wrong goals.

[tommyneumann]

noam chomsky is an incredible mind

[gsa5600]

Jews are afraid , people are waking up and stopping to believe their lies .

[Deeraise]

this was a great talk, I"m glad I could attend. The line was around the block, was an amazing turnout!

[MrNationalistpride]

Chomsky also describes tensions he personally experienced with Irish Catholics and German Catholics and anti-semitism in the mid-1930s. He recalls German-American "Beer parties" celebrating the fall of Paris to the Nazis. I grew up with a visceral fear of Catholics. They're the people who beat you up on your way to school. So I knew when they came out of that building down the street, which was the Jesuit school, they were raving anti-Semites.

I heard many of stories of your azz beatings

[55ella2007k]

Excellent! Thanks for uploading this. I had only read excerpts from this talk, and it's good to hear it in its entirety. Chomsky's analysis is dead on!

[force67able]

New World Order Marxist Communist!

[haroldsmegma1]

Watch out for those child molesters on Election Ink, they are using this video to promote socialism. Three of them, Hotep, Army Shabazz and DaddyMac are convicted child molesters.

[AngryManWhite]

And no one ever asks what led to the rise of the Nazis do they?

When people start asking questions like this, only then will they be free.

[CrimeReport]

If protesting this government is 'fascist,' than I am a fascist to the core.

Molti nemici. Molto onore.

I just hope we can take chomsky's millions of capitalistically earned dollars when we take power.

[Mjhavok]

@CrimeReport Millions? You have access to his bank balance do you? You know what he earns do you? Do you expect him to be homeless and live on the street? Why do morons expect people who are critical of the government and the current ecocnomic system to shoot themselves in the foot? The current culture makes it nearly impossible to live outside of it. Your argument is stupid and so are you.

[Mjhavok]

@CrimeReport "If protesting this government is 'fascist,' than I am a fascist to the core."

Who said it was?

[samiemma]

Oh, awesome! I was at this packed house event.

Chomsky is the man!

[KentAllard]

the people making up the teabaggers were holding crazy beliefs and easily swayed long before this, so there are other reasons they were never engaged by the left.

[futsal1958]

Many thanks for posting! Is the Q&A going to be shared as well?

[wnxsilence]

Noam Chomsky is truly one of the great minds of the 20th and 21st century, a scientist, honest scholar, activist, and dissident. I think not only a beacon of enlightenment for America, but the world. For me he has been a inspiration, to what can be achieved by principled rational dissidence. If America has anything left to call the "envy of the world" I think it would be Chomsky.

[andyx1205]

@wnxsilence indeed he is.

Before we used to have intellectuals like Bertrand Russell, Aldous Huxley, and others. And in our generation we had Howard Zinn (RIP), Chomsky, Robert Fisk, Tariq Ali, Said, and several others who advocate peace and reform.

[wnxsilence]

I thought there was a little too much irrational giggling and laughter by the audience here, I really didn't find much of what Chomsky said humorous. These are real and serious issues, of particular contemporary importance. Americans, for many reasons can be immature and childish, and this is probably one of the least severe examples.

[Mjhavok]

@wnxsilence Chomsky has a sly sense of humour that is present in most of his work.

[KentAllard]

Rightwing Noise Machine is working overtime whipping this group, who weren't already the most stable and intelligent of people if we're honest although yes we shouldn't be mocking them, into a frenzied mass hysteria

[TheNicomacheanEthics]

God bless uncle Chomsky.

[CrimeReport]

@TheNicomacheanEthics No not God bless Chomsy, goddamn chomsky and all of his millions of dollars that he earned murdering innocent trees.

[Mjhavok]

@CrimeReport Were you high when you wrote this?

[lastcapitalist]

Thank you so much for posting this revealing lecture. You are doing the work that we so desperately need right now. My love to you.

[nihilozero]

Despite some of the inane questions, I'd really like to see video footage of the Q&A period.

[spartan2600]

@nihilozero ya, some questions were awful, but a couple were decent.

it seems that there are 2 trends questions to Chomsky fall under;

1 What can I do?

2 What will happen in the future?

[jguterman]

Super! Thanks for posting.