Noam Chomsky is a goddamn moron. The proof:
Add Noam Chomsky to the growing list of people using the Nazi analogy lately. Speaking to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, he alluded to right-wing media as “substantive content — crazy content, but it does give answers,” and warned that if Americans weren’t properly educated about what was really happening to them, they could be in for a repeat of the Nazi takeover of Germany in the 1930s.
Jesus Freakin’ Christ! It’s bad enough when people use the word “Nazi” as an epithet against anyone they don’t like or don’t agree with, but it’s just goddamn pathetic when they actually think the target of said epithet is going to cause a replay of the rise of fascism in early 20th century Germany, presumably with the corresponding violations of basic human rights up to and including a genocidal campaign. In the Chomskyverse, centuries of American history and political culture that are utterly dissimilar from that of 1920s-30s Germany count for nothing when faced with the alleged threat of the Drudgereport, The O’Reilly Factor, and Rush Limbaugh.
Incidentally, why is it that so many liberals who claim to worry about our freedoms being taken away from us seem to have no problem with raising taxes, increasing government regulation of business, restricting consumer choice purportedly in the name of protecting the environment, and expanding the role of government in damn near everything? The political right in the United States has quite a bit wrong with it, but do idiots like Chomsky really believe that the minority of voices in the American media that can be classified as conservative, libertarian, or independent will ultimately cause the United States to abandon basic human rights to such an extent that this will be the result?
Perhaps nutjobs like Chomsky really do think Matt Drudge posting a link revealing liberal hypocrisy or PJTV criticizing government-run health care proposals will somehow lead to American equivalents to Auschwitz and Buchenwald. More likely, they don’t believe anything like that and merely hope that by demonizing the alternative, non-liberal media they will not have to actually compete in the marketplace of ideas. Of course, Chomsky is concerned that Americans aren’t being “properly educated”. His model of public discourse is the classroom, not the marketplace. To Chomsky, the American people are not consumers of information and opinion to whom the pundits and ideologues of both the left and right must make their respective sales pitches. To him the American people are students who should sit attentively in class like good little boys and girls and be “properly educated”.
Sorry, Noam. It doesn’t work that way. You have to market and sell your ideas to the American people. And when you feel the need to resort to Godwin’s law violations to make your point, it generally means you have no ideas that anyone is interested in buying.
