Brief aan Noam Chomsky
Fragment uit het Medisch Bestel
Tussen 2015 en 2019 schreef ik bijna elke week wel iets naar een
‘kwaliteitskrant’ of ander nieuwsmedium waarin ik mezelf tot de wereld
objectiveerde en van daaruit een mening gaf. Een mening die veelal niet gehoord
werd of verdween tussen de honderden andere commentaren die je op anonieme
blogs en sociale media kunt achterlaten. Het was een vormende tijd voor mij,
maar ook een tijd waarin ik rap afstand nam van de denkbeelden van mijn
mede-mens. De snelheid waarmee dat ging is iets waar ik, achteraf, toch wel van
opkijk. Heel snel werden grote denkers, professoren, journalisten en
andere persoonlijkheden klein voor mij.
[...] als u
bovengenoemde brieven leest hoop ik dat u het met mij eens bent dat ik tussen
2015 en 2019 vervreemde van de dagelijkse omgeving die doorging met alles wat
steeds verder van mij af kwam te staan, juist doordat ik mij verdiepte. In mijn
werk hield ik stand, enerzijds door de acteur te spelen (ik praatte beleefd mee
als het hoofd van de afdeling een mening vormde over Brexit of over de oorlog
in Syrië, of over de verbazing dat Trump de Amerikaanse verkiezingen had
gewonnen). Anderzijds begaf ik me steeds meer in een parallelle wereld waarin
alles anders was, maar ook, meer eenzaam was. Ik leed er niet echt onder, want
geloofde dat ik binnen de wetenschap nog wel ruimte had om mijn mening te laten
gelden, buiten the rabbit hole. Ik deed onderzoek met promovendi en kon
me beheersen door het alleen over wetenschappelijke zaken met hen te hebben als
bijvoorbeeld de waarde van antistolling, de reden waarom opiaten steeds meer
werden voorgeschreven of de wetenschappelijke methode an sich.
Vereenzamen deed ik niet. Maar over wat me echt bezighield, daar hield ik me in het openbare leven steeds vaker stil over.
Ik verstuurde een brief naar Noam Chomsky, die gaat over de hypocrisie/debiliteit in de academie die ik al in 2019 voorvoelde en die, zoals ik verderop zal beschrijven, post 2020 aloverheersend werd.
Dear Mr Chomsky,
That you use scientific methods in your political reasoning, like the natural experiment, the before-after study, and the active comparator study, has been very useful for me to see how the world works. Examples where you use one of these methods are
1. The difference between worthy and unworthy victims
2. That the cause of media bias is not the media, but our education system
3. That there is a difference between Adam Smith's free market and the free market that is promoted as if it comes from Adam Smith
The reason why I consider abovementioned political analyses scientific is because you compare. Not all your political analyses are scientific or comparative though, which include
A. The way we should live
B. The way we should change powerful structures
Now that you cannot compare the truthfulness of ad A) with another ethic is insurmountable. I understand that you cannot compare the truthfulness of a statement that 'intellectuals should speak the truth and expose lies' (as you state in the responsibility of intellectuals) with another ethical statement of how we should live. Your definition on how intellectuals should live is a value statement that I happen to agree with, but my agreement with you can in no way be scientific. Nietzsche was equally right to consider that might is right as Gandhi was in claiming that the only way of resistance is non-violent resistance. It is Baudelaire who made evil beautiful, and Edgar Allan Poe who made the terrible inevitable, showing that ethical statements are value statements that do not need science but persuasion and argument in order to become compelling. Enter propaganda, advertisement, conventional wisdom, lies, deceit, war.
However, even though you cannot compare value statements with each other in the hope to find truth, you can compare an individual with himself to see how consistent he is in the value statements he imposes to himself and to others.
Although I have been reading your essays and interviews for years, only recently I noticed that you are not consistent in your value statement that 'intellectuals should speak the truth and expose lies'. I also only noticed recently that this inconsistency is systematic, that is that you are inconsistent about this value statement at moments when you talk about the way how we should challenge powerful structures (ad B).
Example 1. On the origin of who committed 911, your argument is that it does not matter ('who cares') and that one should look at the consequences, not the causes of 911. I agree with this agnostic view as I think that 911 is an event of which the perpetrators are made unknown by design, so why should we try to find out the unknown? However, you are not truthful in your assessment because even though you think that one should not care about who 'did' 911, you dismiss the ‘ludicrous’ idea that the US government was behind 911. Why? Why do you make a value statement of people who think that the US government was behind this as 'ludicrous' instead of using the comparative method of who did 911 as compared with who for instance did sink the US Main, who instigated the Hay Market affair, etc? If you were agnostic towards 911 you should really not care about who did it, including the idea that it might be the US government. Instead you do 'not care' while at the same time making a value statement of those who happen to think that the US government is behind 911. That position is quite beneficial for power structures like the US government as their power will go unchallenged. It is not a truthful stance either as you only appear to be agnostic, while in reality you are only agnostic to some degree.
Example 2. According to you the 911 truth movement is a powerless organization that should not be taken into consideration, as they hold the US government accountable for 911, yet do not know how to change the government. Again, this value statement is quite beneficial for power structures like the US government as their power will go unchallenged. What you do not consider is that all movements against power structures are heavily infected by people from the government in order to make these organizations ineffective. This happened in the past century under COINTELPRO, yet you do not consider that the 911 truth movement may have been made ineffective by a similar program like COINTELPRO. You also do not consider that a truth movement can only gather power if its views are represented in the media instead of being suppressed or ridiculed like for instance by you in the regular media. You are not exposing lies, but keep them in the dark by not really arguing what the 911 truth movement is about.
Example 3. The official enemies of the US government, are also your enemies. According to you Khaddaffi was about to commit genocide in Benghazi in 2011, similar to the line that the US government held at the time. What you never mentioned was the following
16 Things Libya Will Never See Again October 24, 2011 (Michael Parenti)
1. There was no electricity bill in Libya; electricity was free for all its citizens.
2. There was no interest on loans, banks in Libya were state-owned and loans given to all its citizens at zero percent interest by law.
3. Having a home was considered a human right in Libya.
4. All newlyweds in Libya used to receive $60,000 dinar (U.S.$50,000) by the government to buy their first apartment so to help start up the family.
5. Education and medical treatments were free in Libya. Before Gaddafi only 25 percent of Libyans were literate. Today, the figure is 83 percent.
6. If Libyans wanted to take up a farming career, they would have received farming land, a farming house, equipments, seeds and livestock to kickstart their farms… all for free.
7. If Libyans could not find the education or medical facilities they needed, the government funded them to go abroad. For it was not only paid for, but they got a U.S.$2,300/month for accommodation and car allowance.
8. If a Libyan bought a car, the government used to subsidize 50 percent of the price.
9. The price of petrol in Libya was $0.14 per liter.
10. Libya had no external debt and its reserves amounted to $150 billion -which are now frozen globally.
11. If a Libyan was unable to get employment after graduation, the state would pay the average salary of the profession, as if he or she was employed, until employment was found.
12. A portion of every Libyan oil sale was credited directly to the bank accounts of all Libyan citizens.
13. A mother who gave birth to a child received U.S. $5,000.
14. 40 loaves of bread in Libya used to cost $0.15.
15. 25 percent of Libyans have a university degree.
16. Gaddafi carried out the world’s largest irrigation project, known as the Great Manmade River project, to make water readily available throughout the desert country.
Libya as a country is in deep trouble since Khadaffi was murdered and his death opened an influx of immigration to the EU with a lot of hatred towards 'refugees' and Islam. You do not discuss these things as you did not compare Khaddaffi with the good things he did for Libya, you only made him look like a cartoon villain. That position is quite beneficial for power structures like the US government as their power will go unchallenged. Similar examples can be found when you talk about Lenin, Stalin, Putin, Milosevic.
Here is your take on Islamophobia in an Al Jazeera interview with Mehdi Hasan in 2016.
'Just take a look at what its led to in the last 15 years. There’s been what’s called a global war on terror. When it began – there’s been one device to deal with it: sledgehammer. Smash ’em up, don’t find out what’s going on, smash ’em up. What’s happened? 15 years ago it was confined to a tiny tribal area in Afghanistan. Now it’s all over the world. Every time you hit it with a sledgehammer, you expand it. Every single time. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, everywhere. Can you learn something from that?'
Again, just one cartoonish story from you, with just one interpretation that we have to believe as you do not pose an alternative. In this case you cheerlead the story of the benevolent US empire, fighting global terrorism with the only tool they have: a sledgehammer. Which is the imperialist way of saying that 'we' acted against 'our' interests in Iraq and Afghanistan. And that this caused the rise of ISIS and other fundamentalism. That position is quite beneficial for power structures like the US government as their power will go unchallenged.
Of course 'we' didn't cause ISIS in that way. Recently I went to a conference in Australia and flew over Iraq and the Persian Gulf. I had a window seat and therefore had a good view of what happened below me. What did I see? Sand, stone, oil fields (huge black lakes), oil tankers, gas fields. I also flew over Mosul, the city in Iraq that 'we' recently liberated from ISIS by destroying it. Mosul is a big city in Northern Iraq, with hundreds of Miles North and South, East and West nothing else to see but sand and stone. With Mosul destroyed, it is much more simple to run your own schemes as nobody will see what you are doing in that oil rich desert. Which is perfect for looting minecraft. Admittedly, that is also just a 'story'. But it is an alternative story, one that could be researched. But why should one research that alternative story or any alternative story if he or she believes that the US fought and fights global terrorism with a sledgehammer? Which is the whole point. Those who read or listen to your idea of how ISIS was developed will not get into the idea that anti-terrorism was a little bit more than acting with a sledgehammer in order to fight against those who committed 911.
****
After meeting TS Eliot in New Oxford Street in October 1914, Bertrand Russell asked Eliot what to think of the war, Eliot replied: 'I don't know, I only know that I am not a pacifist', which led to the following remark made by Russell: '[Eliot] considered any excuse good enough for homicide. I became great friends with him'. It is this thing of playing the game that defined Russell, but also defines you. It is the stance of the person who accepts the world as it is and maximumly tries to enlarge that world by stretching it, without breaking it. If that means that you have to become great friends with murderers, so be it; it is part of the game. It is you who said that it is smart to keep the people passive and obedient by strictly limiting the spectrum of acceptable opinion but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. You stay within the narrow boundaries of possible dissent where all official enemies are our enemies and where people should not care about false flags. Why?
Mr Chomsky, I hold you in high esteem, although not as high as I hold Michael Parenti in high esteem or other dissident writers (most of them dead by now). This is not a strange position as much of your thinking has been useful for my own thinking, but not all of your thinking. Some of your thoughts are pure distractions, leading people away from the causes of the causes.
Example 4. You torpedoed Bernie Sanders in the primaries of the US elections in 2016 saying that Sanders is an interesting phenomenon, not a Socialist, but a New Dealer, who would never win from Hillary Clinton, thereby implicitly saying: 'don't vote for that loser'. Why did you act like that? And why did you call Hillary Clinton 'The lesser evil' as compared with Trump even though the comparison that Assange made (Choosing between Trump an Clinton is like choosing between chlamydia and gonorrhea) was a much more honest comparison?
Mr Chomsky, it appears to me that if you want to be a successful dissident writer in your own lifetime, you have to pay lip service to some powerful people or powerful institutions. Otherwise you will never become a successful dissident writer. A successful dissident writer must have friends with benefits. Plato's uncle was leader of the 30 tyrants. Immanuel Kant replaced God for King Frederick of Prussia in his essays on enlightenment. One of Mark Twain's best friends was Ulysses Grant, and he also dined with Kaiser Wilhelm II. Russell went to prison for his thoughts (which he did not mind) and was protected in jail by Arthur Balfour. Orwell only became famous after he decided to work as a propagandist for the BBC in WWII. Karl Popper is remembered for his attacks against fascism and communism, but not for his attacks against capitalism (he never attacked capitalism). Varoufakis best friends are those who built neoliberalism to its deadly consequences in the US and abroad like Jeff Sachs, Larry Summers and Christine Lagarde. In the Netherlands we have this 'dissident' writer Arnon Grunberg who is always happy to tell you that he converses with ambassadors, statemen and military leaders. And then there is you who, despite all you say about Republicans ("off the political chart") and Democrats ("right of the political center"), still believe in democracy as it is practiced today and that US citizens should vote for the lesser evil (a Democrat).
And the real dissidents? Democritus only survives in fragments. Spinoza was excommunicated and ended his life as a lens grinder in dull Rijnsburg, his main works were published long after his death. David Hume was not seen as a philosopher in his time, but as a librarian who was remembered for writing the history of England. Multatuli had to live in poverty for years after he exposed how the Dutch exploited the East Indies and its population. Schopenhauer did not receive a hearing for most of his lifetime, although he wrote his Magnum Opus (about the age of dishonesty) before he was 30 years old. Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake. Antonio Gramsci died shortly after he was released out of prison. Rosa Luxembourg was killed. Malcolm X was killed. David Irving was financially ruined, and dissident writers like Emma Goldman, WF Hermans and Jose Saramago had to live in exile. And then there must be millions of other dissidents of whom I do not know their names or stories as they were and are never mentioned in a newspaper, history book, on tv, the social media.
Mr Chomsky, my question to you is the following: Do you consider it worthwhile to live as a successful dissident writer?
****
We all have to make decisions which sometimes proof to be wrong. We can learn from each other’s mistakes though, and I think that you made the mistake to think that you were capable to remain sincere in an environment that is insincere. But it seems to me that remaining sincere and just in an insincere world is a problem that can only be tackled in the way that Odysseus tackled the problem with the sirens. Your error, it seems to me, is that you should not have associated yourself with the insincere, but for some reason you couldn't. Why couldn't you?
Kind regards,
Willem Lijfering
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