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→Controversies
#Chomsky denied any genocide or mass reprisals in [[Laos]] after the Communist victory, stating that the Pathet Lao "have made some efforts to achieve a reconciliation with the mountain tribesmen who had been organized in the CIA clandestine army."<ref>After the Cataclysm (South End Press, 1979), p122.</ref> Some 100,000 tribespeople had been exterminated in a campaign of genocide at the time.<ref>Forced Back and Forgotten (Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights, 1989), p8 (estimate); Jane Hamilton-Merritt, Tragic Mountains: The Hmong, the Americans, and the Secret Wars for Laos, 1942-1992 (Indiana Uniersity Press, 1999), pp337-460 (atrocities).</ref>
#Chomsky denied any genocide or mass reprisals in [[Laos]] after the Communist victory, stating that the Pathet Lao "have made some efforts to achieve a reconciliation with the mountain tribesmen who had been organized in the CIA clandestine army."<ref>After the Cataclysm (South End Press, 1979), p122.</ref> Some 100,000 tribespeople had been exterminated in a campaign of genocide at the time.<ref>Forced Back and Forgotten (Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights, 1989), p8 (estimate); Jane Hamilton-Merritt, Tragic Mountains: The Hmong, the Americans, and the Secret Wars for Laos, 1942-1992 (Indiana Uniersity Press, 1999), pp337-460 (atrocities).</ref>
#Chomsky once wrote: “At the end of 1978 Cambodia [under the Khmer Rouge] was the only country in Indochina that had succeeded at all in overcoming the agricultural crisis that was left by the American destruction.”<ref>Language and Politics (AK Press, 2004), pp245-6. Cf.: “it was a condition of survival to turn (or return) the populations to productive work. The victors in Cambodia undertook drastic and often brutal measures to accomplish this task… At a heavy cost, these measures appear to have overcome the dire and destructive consequences of the US war by 1978,” After the Cataclysm (South End Press, 1979), pviii.</ref> By late 1979, UN and Red Cross officials were warning that another 2.25 million Cambodians faced death by starvation due to “the near destruction of Cambodian society under the regime of ousted Prime Minister Pol Pot,”<ref>New York Times, August 8, 1979.</ref><ref>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,912511,00.html</ref> who were saved by American and international aid. The Cambodian communists' economic plans were, at times, utterly surreal. Scholar David Chandler notes that, in a Democratic Kampuchea report on General Political Tasks of 1976, there are three lines devoted to education, and six devoted to urine. The document states that, regarding human urine, "We collect thirty per cent. That leaves a surplus of 70%." These were indicative of the types of policies that Chomsky and his co-writer, Edward Herman, claimed had lifted Cambodia out of the ashes of war.
#Chomsky once wrote: “At the end of 1978 Cambodia [under the Khmer Rouge] was the only country in Indochina that had succeeded at all in overcoming the agricultural crisis that was left by the American destruction.”<ref>Language and Politics (AK Press, 2004), pp245-6. Cf.: “it was a condition of survival to turn (or return) the populations to productive work. The victors in Cambodia undertook drastic and often brutal measures to accomplish this task… At a heavy cost, these measures appear to have overcome the dire and destructive consequences of the US war by 1978,” After the Cataclysm (South End Press, 1979), pviii.</ref> By late 1979, UN and Red Cross officials were warning that another 2.25 million Cambodians faced death by starvation due to “the near destruction of Cambodian society under the regime of ousted Prime Minister Pol Pot,”<ref>New York Times, August 8, 1979.</ref><ref>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,912511,00.html</ref> who were saved by American and international aid. The Cambodian communists' economic plans were, at times, utterly surreal. Scholar David Chandler notes that, in a Democratic Kampuchea report on General Political Tasks of 1976, there are three lines devoted to education, and six devoted to urine. The document states that, regarding human urine, "We collect thirty per cent. That leaves a surplus of 70%." These were indicative of the types of policies that Chomsky and his co-writer, Edward Herman, claimed had lifted Cambodia out of the ashes of war.
#Chomsky openly claimed in 1977 that Pol Pot had saved more than one million lives.<ref>http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomsky/cambodiacomments.pdf</ref> He did so by citing a Nixon administration statement that US aid to Cambodia should continue because the Khmer Rouge would likely kill more than one million people if they took over, and then falsely restating it to imply that more than one million Cambodians would starve to death if aid was cut off. At the time of this essay, the Khmer Rouge had probably already killed more than one million people, but Chomsky was still claiming that "executions numbered at most in the thousands," that Khmer Rouge atrocities had been "inflated by a factor of 100" and that those the Khmer Rouge had allegedly refrained from killing were actually saved by the Khmer Rouge. One million people had not died since aid was terminated, he said, therefore one million lives had been saved from starvation by the Khmer Rouge's ingenious economic policies. (Chomsky is also implying that the US cut off aid to Cambodia, when it actually had an unconditional offer to supply aid to it. Aid was terminated ''by the Khmer Rouge'').
#Chomsky openly claimed in 1977 that Pol Pot had saved more than one million lives.<ref>http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomsky/cambodiacomments.pdf</ref> He did so by citing a Nixon administration statement that US aid to Cambodia should continue because the Khmer Rouge would likely kill more than one million people if they took over, and then falsely restating it to imply that more than one million Cambodians would starve to death if aid was cut off. At the time of this essay, the Khmer Rouge had probably already killed more than one million people, but Chomsky was still claiming that "executions numbered at most in the thousands," that Khmer Rouge atrocities had been "inflated by a factor of 100" and that those the Khmer Rouge had allegedly refrained from killing were actually ''saved'' by the Khmer Rouge. One million people had not died since aid was terminated, he said, therefore one million lives had been saved from starvation by the Khmer Rouge's ingenious economic policies. Thus did Chomsky praise Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge for "saving" the lives of dead people ''who they had murdered''. (Chomsky is also implying that the US cut off aid to Cambodia, when it actually had an unconditional offer to supply aid to it. Aid was terminated ''by the Khmer Rouge'').
#Chomsky has praised Imperial Japan for allegedly "saving maybe tens of millions of lives."<ref>Interview, International Socialist Review, September-October 2002.</ref>
#Chomsky has praised Imperial Japan for allegedly "saving maybe tens of millions of lives."<ref>Interview, International Socialist Review, September-October 2002.</ref>
#Chomsky has expressed support for the former Communist dictatorship of [[Angola]]: “The defense of Angola was one of Cuba’s most significant contributions to the liberation of Africa.”<ref>Hegemony or Survival (Penguin, 2004), p94.</ref> Cuban military intervention in support of the communist MPLA dictatorship in Angola led to decades of civil war that cost 1 million lives. Other Cuban “contributions to the liberation of Africa” include fighting for the communist dictatorship in Ethiopia, which killed 1.25 million people by massacre and forced starvation.<ref>Médecins Sans Frontières, “Angola: An Alarming Nutritional Situation,” August 1999 (Angola death toll); Washington Post, March 18, 1978 (Ethiopia intervention); New York Times, December 14, 1994(Ethiopia death toll).</ref>
#Chomsky has expressed support for the former Communist dictatorship of [[Angola]]: “The defense of Angola was one of Cuba’s most significant contributions to the liberation of Africa.”<ref>Hegemony or Survival (Penguin, 2004), p94.</ref> Cuban military intervention in support of the communist MPLA dictatorship in Angola led to decades of civil war that cost 1 million lives. Other Cuban “contributions to the liberation of Africa” include fighting for the communist dictatorship in Ethiopia, which killed 1.25 million people by massacre and forced starvation.<ref>Médecins Sans Frontières, “Angola: An Alarming Nutritional Situation,” August 1999 (Angola death toll); Washington Post, March 18, 1978 (Ethiopia intervention); New York Times, December 14, 1994(Ethiopia death toll).</ref>
#Chomsky believes that there are “no anti-Semitic implications in denial of the existence of gas chambers, or even denial of the Holocaust.”<ref>Quoted in W.D. Rubinstein, “Chomsky and the Neo-Nazis,” Quadrant, October 1981.</ref>
#Chomsky believes that there are “no anti-Semitic implications in denial of the existence of gas chambers, or even denial of the Holocaust.”<ref>Quoted in W.D. Rubinstein, “Chomsky and the Neo-Nazis,” Quadrant, October 1981.</ref>
#Chomsky has repeatedly claimed that there has never been so much as a misplaced comma in any of his writings and that no valid criticism of any of his statements or ideas has ever been published by anyone.<ref>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKPtwYzehYM</ref>
#Chomsky has repeatedly claimed that there has never been so much as a misplaced comma in any of his writings and that no valid criticism of any of his statements or ideas has ever been published by anyone.<ref>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKPtwYzehYM</ref>
#Chomsky has lied about the views of Holocaust deniers (Faurisson, Serge Thion) by praising them as "libertarian Socialists with a long-standing record of opposition to all forms of totalitarianism."<ref>“His Right to Say It,” The Nation, February 28, 1981.</ref> He also published one of his books (The Political Economy of Human Rights, a book filled with more noble efforts to disprove the bloodbath in Cambodia) in a series directed by a Holocaust denier (Pierre Guillaume). He has praised Holocaust deniers, endorsed their political and academic credentials, collaborated in their propaganda campaigns, and whitewashed their antisemitic and neo-Nazi agenda.<ref>http://www.paulbogdanor.com/200chomskylies.pdf</ref> He signed a petition in support of Faurisson's denials of the Holocaust; although he claimed that he was only expressing solidarity with his right to free speech, the petition that Chomsky signed dignified Faurisson’s writings by affirming his scholarly credentials (“a respected professor” of “document criticism”); describing his lies as “extensive historical research”; placing the term “Holocaust” in derisory quotation marks; and portraying his lies as "findings" (a very typical Chomsky propaganda technique).<ref>The text of the petition is reproduced in Werner Cohn, Partners in Hate: Noam Chomsky and the Holocaust Deniers (Avukah Press, 1995), pp53-4.</ref> More obscenely, Chomsky added that "I sign innumerable petitions of this nature, and do not recall ever having refused to sign one."<ref>Language and Politics (AK Press, 2004), p290.</ref> At the time of this controversy, Chomsky had just finished publicly bragging about his outspoken refusual to sign petitions calling for human rights in Communist Vietnam--even as it massacred many hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese men, women, and children en masse and drowned at sea hundreds of thousands more. On that occasion, he had explained that “public protest is a political act, to be judged in terms of its likely human consequences,” which included the likelihood that the American media “would distort and exploit it for their propagandistic purposes.”<ref>Unpublished interview, March 28, 1977; Language and Politics (AK Press, 2004), p176.</ref>
===Chomsky's Criticisms of the West===
===Chomsky's Criticisms of the West===