Žižek and Israel: what limits to criticism?
Posted on Wednesday 26 August, 2009
Filed Under International
SLAVOJ Žižek seems to be taking over from the ageing Noam Chomsky as intellectual superhero of choice for the more academically-inclined sections of the far left.
The fact that he got top billing on the extensive fly posting undertaken for the recent Marxism 2009 conference, organised by the Socialist Workers’ Party, is surely illustrative of the almost exclusively postgrad student audience that organisation seems to crave right now.
Force the average office drone or angry NEET to hazard a guess, and a goodly proportion would probably tell you is was a midfielder for Newcastle United.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not coming on all crudely workerist and I’m not belittling the intellectual endeavour involved in using Lacanian psychoanalysis as a privileged intellectual tool to reactualise German Idealism. Gosh, I wouldn’t do that, even if I knew what it meant.
I’m merely suggesting that union reps looking for a smartarse one-liner for use against HR next time they take a personal case may be better served looking elsewhere.
I digress. Žižek has attracted plenty of flack of late for an article – carried in a number of other outlets – in which he accused the state of Israel of seeking to make Palestinian territory ‘Palestinian-frei’. The neologism can only have been purposely intended to invoke the official Third Reich term Judenfrei, applied to an area from which all Jews had been removed.
That is how the piece initially appeared on Comment is Free, anyway. Two days later, the print edition of the Guardian redacted the phrase to the less emotive ‘Palestinian-free’. Retrospectively, the website was similarly altered:
The state of Israel is clearly engaged in a slow, invisible process, ignored by the media; one day, the world will awake and discover that there is no more Palestinian West Bank, that the land is Palestinian-free, and that we must accept the fact.
Some feel that our sophisticated philosopher is here crudely equating Israel with Nazi Germany, in the same manner as the Star of David = swastika stickers produced by some Islamist organisations. I am going to argue that Žižek stays on the right side of the line, if only just.
Israel, of course, disposes of an extensive ‘my mother, drunk or sober’ fan club, for whom any suggestion that Israeli conduct is ever anything than impeccable is tantamount to virulent anti-semitism.
Thus they defend Israel’s documented resort to extrajudicial killing and administrative detention, and fiercely deny that the IDF incursion into Gaza was anything other than an entirely proportionate response to rocket attacks on Sderot.
To take such stances is obviously to deny reality, and evinces a light-minded selectivity inconsistent with genuine belief in human rights, which has either to be universal or not at all.
Moreover, it is perfectly intellectually consonant broadly to support any given state while being critical – even sharply critical – of its internal or external policies.
Serious debate demands that it is admissible to mount polemic directed against Israel, and aiming childish chants of ‘anti-semitic! anti-semitic!’ against everyone who does so is by now a well-worn and thus patently see-through tactic.
Exaggeration is widely recognised as a legitimate polemical device. Only yesterday, shadow home secretary Chris Grayling compared gang crime in inner Manchester to Baltimore. This was surely intended as a persuasive trope rather than a truth claim.
The meat of the charge against Žižek is that he has resorted to implicit Nazi analogy. For anybody in possession of even elementary historical literacy, that is something that can never be done lightly. Moreover, he faces earlier accusations of anti-semitism, even overt fascist sympathies.
Then again, there are elements of Israel’s coalition government that would undoubtedly like see a Palestinian-free West Bank, and have openly called for mass murder to advance ultranationalist political ends.
Reputable newspaper Ha’aretz claimed in 2003 that Avigdor Lieberman – now foreign minister – demanded that thousands of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel be drowned in the Dead Sea.
There are also reports that he has demanded that 90% of Arabs be expelled from Israel, maintaining: ‘They have no place here. They can take their bundles and get lost.’ I have not been able to source the widely-used quote, although by the same token, I am unaware of any denials.
Just talk, you say? Well, yes. Lieberman fortunately remains in no position to instantiate what he obviously desires. But this is a mentality seen before in history.
Likewise, Žižek’s remark is ‘just talk’. His jibe is certainly contentious, maybe unpleasant and perhaps unjustified. But it remains a jibe, and cannot be read as the meaningful identification of Israel with Nazi Germany.
In any case, with Mr Lieberman on board, Israel’s more sensitive friends are in no position to feign outrage over a loose formulation from a loose cannon philosophy prof.
<<Go back
Comments
90 Responses to “Žižek and Israel: what limits to criticism?”
Force the average office worker or angry NEET to hazard a guess, and a goodly proportion would probably tell you he was a midfielder for Newcastle United.
Why can’t we find a modern version of Albert Camus?
Chomsky offers an excellent example: he has patiently and meticulously cataloged the behaviour of the USA and Israel over decades and rarely (if ever) resorts to the hyperbole of Nazi analogies yet his work gets largely ignored in its detail. Or rather, the debate often focuses on particular facts in dispute where opponents claim error on his part (thus invalidating the whole they claim) while avoiding the larger argument supported by the bulk of the incontestable evidence.
As you said about shadow home secretaries, no one recalls the specific policy proposals laid out in a speech only the slogans and sound-bites. Build a detailed, factually based analysis and people’s eyes glaze over. Shout crude Nazi insults and you get their attention and guarantee recall.
I think Zizek likes to shock. There is a touch of [I]epater la bourgeoisie[/I] about his style.
I am however, not sure Lieberman is in no position to fulfil exterminatory fantasies. He is a government minister, after all, not a powerless academic like Zizek.
Very funny but on a serious note I read Zizek’s article and thought it was excellent, raised important points being ignored by the much of the left at the moment.
I particularly liked his conclusion below and one that the Denham’s and Modernity’s of this world should digest.
“Taking all this into account in no way implies sympathy for inexcusable terrorist acts. On the contrary, it provides the only ground from which one can condemn the terrorist attacks without hypocrisy.”
What I spooky coincidence! I have started writing something about Zizek as well. It was his defence of Robespierre on a recent BBC programme that impressed me enough to buy one of his books. His prose lacks Chomsky’s clarity or I’m a bit thick. Or both.
The piece on the Israeli state, as I recall, was pretty uncontroversial but anyone with a public profile who criticises the place can expect similar treatment even poor Jimmy Carter. For what it’s worth I thought that the depiction of the Warsaw Ghetto in some scenes of Polanski’s film the pianist was deliberately evocative of the Palestinan territories.
Osler posts this anti-intellectual article and again the twat wing (or the political wing of the English Defence League as I now call them) uses the pathetic lazy studentist slur against the far left.
Isn’t it funny how the only other people to use this tired, empty slur are the neo cons on the right and their idiotic dancing monkeys. (see David Duff et al). Once again the Twat wing (now to be called the EDL political wing) and the neo cons go hand in hand.
More than a coincidence, surely.
For more on what the views of the political wing of the English Defence League are please visit Haryy’s Place.
Ahh yes, Chomsky, marvelous intellectual, shame he didn’t have the wits to distance himself from Robert Faurisson or his old mates, Serge Thion and Pierre Guillaum.
It is no coincidence that Post Modernism and the jumble of ideas around it, is very popular with the Far Right Holocaust denying set, as it can be used as a tool for disseminating their views into the mainstream under its camouflage.
I usually see Žižek as some sort of court jester, and don’t take him that seriously, but I saw nothing untoward in that article on Israel. I thought that it was pretty uncontroversial.
Perhaps the press in Britain may start describing Lieberman as what he is; after all, if a British politician spoke about blacks or Asians in the way he talks about Arabs, he would soon be consigned to the far right of the Tory party or even beyond.
Modernity,
your stupidity is coming along nicely.
Dr Paul, Zizek will be mortified to be chastised by a giant such as you. Please elaborate about why you don’t take him seriously, intellectuals are not usually prone to such throw away phrases without some rational behind it.
But maybe you are no ordinary intellectual.
“It is no coincidence that Post Modernism and the jumble of ideas around it”
Who in the original post is connected to postmodernism?
Aye right enough, JimD
I imagine that you won’t get the allusion to Faurisson or his mates, Thion and Guillaum?
But this time, JimD, I can’t be troubled to explain it to you four+ times, you wore me out in that last thread, where I had to belabour the points time after time for your benefit.
Still, if you manage to use Google you might just, be able to see the point concerning Chomsky and Faurisson, although that’s probably being a bit optimistic about your powers of reasoning.
The Nazis (officially at any rate, whatever their private, unprincipled view) treated their bogus ‘racial science’ as objective fact. They didn’t adopt the skeptical stance of contemporary Post Modernists. You seem to believe that because Post Modernism disclaims all assertions of objectivity that this bestows some kind of legitimacy on any group, no matter how ludicrous its world view. Everyone’s ideas are equally unfounded therefore they are all equally true. Denying the truth of History somehow endorses Holocaust denial. In fact, this skeptical position denies the Holocaust deniers version of History as much as the orthodoxy. Both groups vie with each other over the one objective account of the course of events. PMers deny any such narrative can ever exist.
@ FT
Agree entirely. Take deconstruction to its logical conclusion, and Auschwitz becomes ‘a discourse’.
@ Liam
It’s cos we is such clever bastards, Liam. We do it because we can.
Dave writes about I/P.
Modernity turns up to give his usual “Israel, right or wrong” guff and, unable to find anything wrong with the Dave’s post, instead tries to slur Noam Chomsky as a Nazi-sympathising anti-semite.
Laughable.
Zizek is a stand-up comedian not an intellectual. But as Dave pointed out his pomo-philosopher act is just the ticket for the ultra (bit still essentially patronising Fabian) left; nothing like a bit of psychobabble for scaring off uppity proles who think socialism means that they get to have a say in things.
Yawn,
I suppose that you can’t read?
But I didn’t mention that country at all, then again I’d guess that you can’t work out why Holocaust denial should be opposed either?
Can I suggest that you use the web to better inform yourself on the topic?
It is a shame that basic antifascism has declined so much in the past 30 years, and your obvious ignorance seems to contribute to that poor state of affairs.
Morality:
“I imagine that you won’t get the allusion to Faurisson or his mates, Thion and Guillaum?”
I suspect most people who know about Chomsky understand ‘the allusion’ insofar as Chomsky defended Faurisson’s right to free speech. (After that things get messy, of course.)
So what are you ‘alluding to’, Morality? Is Chomsky a Holocaust denier or an anti-Semite? What are you saying?
(And please, try not accuse me of either an ability to read, or stupidity – try to understand that maybe you fail to make relevant points. Are or were you a school teacher?)
Where I wrote ‘ability’ I meant ‘inability’
Who cares?
Morality, you are a creepy person.
Holocaust deniers ought to be opposed on the basis of their politics – what they propose for the present and the future of society – and not for their view of a historical event. The argument over what really happened in the past obscures what they intend to do now.
Anyway, since when has Zizek been a postmodernist? The guy has no time at all for PoMo.
I assume Morality is referencing Deborah Lipstadt’s theory that Paul de Man’s deconstructionist theories find their expression in Holocaust denial. Au contraire, deniers of the Irving or Leuchter stamp are absolute positivists, and Lipstadt’s diversion into Lit Crit doesn’t help her case much. It makes more sense to read de Man’s later work as expiation for his wartime fascism, but then that would spoil a neat rhetorical symmetry.
What interests me about Modernity’s contribution is his attempt to divert the discussion away from the abuses and crimes of Israel to an idiotic slur against so called post modernists and holocaust denial.
I mean are you saying Zizek’s criticisms are due to the fact that he is a closet holocaust denier and Jew hater?
I think Modernity is a blog trooper for the Israeli state, albeit an unpaid one!
Fellow Traveller wrote:
Holocaust deniers ought to be opposed on the basis of their politics – what they propose for the present and the future of society – and not for their view of a historical event.
That’s an extraordinary statement befitting the addled thinking of the “post-modernist”. You’re saying holocaust deniers version of history shouldn’t be opposed?
I tend to agree with Howard.
Holocaust denial tends to be more than a ‘view of an historical event’. It is not simply ‘a detail of history’, after all.
I have said it before and I will say it again, even if there was no holocaust the Nazi’s should be damned forever based on what they actually admitted to. Therefore I am very suspicious of people who devote their energies to deny the holocaust.
Anyway, typical of Liberals like Osler to focus on Zizek and his use of language, rather than focus on the substance of the article, that is, the abuses against the Palestinians.
Socialists should be discussing the best strategies to assist the Palestinians.
It struck me as incredible that in all the bruhaha about this article no-one notices that the phrase “judenrein” is regularly used by the Israeli right, and now the Israeli Prime Minister, to describe the terrible impact of a peace settlement issuing in a two state solution. Might Zizek not have been mocking this appalling trivialisation of the Nazi Holocaust systematically engaged in over and over again by the current Israeli government and its apologists? The long record of grotesque misuse of the Nazi metaphore (everything from the construction of Palestinian supermarkets in Hebron, described as “worst then the holocaust” by local settlers, through to PLO head quarters in Beirut being “Hitlers bunker” in 1982, through to repeated nonsense suggesting that anti-semitic Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was a key actor in the Nazi Holocaust itself) within both right wing and more mainstream Israeli politics makes much of the supposed outrage farcical. And what any of this has to do with ‘Post-Modernism” (Zizek’s popularity is in part the product of a backlash against post-modernism amongst younger academics) is somewhat unclear.
What interests me about the contributions here is the inability to read, comprehend and digest
the arguments of others, without being spoon fed.
I am never quite sure if this is a result of previous cult/sect membership or a hang over from the influence of vulgar Leninism, and the seeming necessity to be told what to think on each particular subject, which tends to reduce intellectual initiative and curiosity to a minimum.
Anyway, it would be amusing if it wasn’t so simple, as the issue of Chomsky and Holocaust denial is bleeding obvious to anyone who can read a wiki page or think momentarily like an antifascist.
Chomsky was an idiot for agreeing to sign that letter supporting Robert Faurisson, and in all probability he was manipulated by those two nasty French holocaust deniers, Thion and Guillaum.
But Chomsky like many of the middle classes is incapable, or seemingly so, of admitting when he makes a bad mistake.
He would rather dig his heels in and use all of his considerable intellectual talents to defend the indefensible (which is supporting a neofascist such as Robert Faurisson, etc).
Another peculiarity which Chomsky shares with the middle classes is his clumsy political style when faced with real life issues.
No doubt Chomsky is wonderful at churning out books but should he have to employ his renowned academic skills in the real world then he’s less than surefooted.
Another characteristic which is found amongst some sections of the middle class left is, being able to talk a good game but unable to execute it.
Then again that’s the situation we are in, 40 years of poor leadership, student politics, crass argumentation, off putting middle-class mannerisms, poor grasp of history, petty little schemes, dodgy dealing and continual failure.
The sooner people get their heads around basic antifascism, and all related issues, including Holocaust denial, etc the better, then they won’t be confused by elementary issues such as Chomsky and Robert Faurisson, or have to ask stupid questions on the topic
The more ruthless and brazen the Israeli state actually is, the more frantic its apologists will be.
South African apartheid apologists were equally brazen. They were fending off Communism, defending the “Free World”, the ANC was “terrorist”, what have you. But the reality of apartheid could not be hidden.
What has Chomsky’s anarchist libertarian take on free speech got to do with the substance of Zizek’s article? Which like a good post-modernist Modernity succedes in ignoring completely.
Modernity,
I 100% agree with you about holocaust denial but what about the substance of Zizeks illuminating article. What do you have to say about that.
Žižek’s remarks about Israel are a bit rich coming from a Balkan (okay, a Slovene) where there have been some real attempts at making the various mini-states ethnically pure (clean – rein). With pretty murderous results if I recall rightly. Which one would wish him to talk about before launching into this subject with such blithe disregard for measured judgement.
There’s plenty to criticise Israel for without always indulging oneself in this Zionism=Hitlerism trope. Žižek does in fact make good points about the exclusive nature of nationalism. No-one on the left can do other than be utterly opposed to its repression of the Palestinians, its fostering of Islamicism (now its chief enemy), and the tacit accord given far-right colonists in the West Bank. So why the expression? No doubt it makes the user feel better. You just wonder what words are left for describing something like the Pol Pot regime.
Still it’s this lack of tact and serious ethical thinking that makes Žižek (often) entertaining, and his stuff against Islamicism (in Violence and elsewhere) would not encourage the usual suspects from the pro-Islamicist ‘anti-imperialist’ front of fools. His favourable views on the enemy of the left, and atheism, Robespierre are frankly, by contrast, pitiful.
But at root, if anyone thinks his Lacanian-Hegelian ideas are ‘Marxist’, they are well short of the dialectic. I note his latest stuff has been veereing towards the milleniallist trend that anticipates some kind of transcendental break to usher in socialism. Heavily tainted with analogies to religious ideas.
PS: If you need me to explain my above comment, then probably you didn’t read it too carefully.
Start again and if after the 2nd or 3rd reading you still don’t see how it relates to the wider question, well I can’t help cos if I took another 800 words to explain the above, you probably wouldn’t get that either and we’d be back to square one.
Andrew,
The Israeli state has a long record of making ethically inappropriate comparisons between its enemies and the Nazies (I provided some examples above). Use of the term Judenrein to describe the reversal of illegal settlement is just the most recent (and pretty ubiquitous) example. There has to be fair, been some comment on this on HP, and the response was hysterical fury and denial that such parrallels were inappropriate from the bulk of pro-Israeli posters. This is the first problem with the bruhaha about this article. A lack of consistancy.
Its also true that many participants in the new government in Israel are on the far right, and many liberal Israeli’s have themselves drawn parrallels between their politics and those of fascists. If aspects of Israeli policies towards the Palestinians reflect the politics of a far right in Israel which parrallel policies of the European far right, would it always be inappropriate to use such analogies? (is it inappropriate to use such analogies about Le Pen or about Nick Griffen?).
I also wonder what exactly is inappropriate or unmeasured about the substance of Zizek’s article (aside from a single metaphore). The deliberate attempt by the Israeli government to make a peace settlement impossible and the continuing expropriation of Palestinians both in Jerusalem and elsewhere, seems pretty serious really. His points about the failings of a frame of analyses which simply ignore these things and see the conflict as symmetrical seem pretty well observed. The real objection to this rather obvious point is simply nationalism. In this case Israeli nationalism.
You’re saying holocaust deniers version of history shouldn’t be opposed?
It diverts attention and energy from the here and now into the past. What bearing does the Holocaust have on the current situation in Palestine? Can one resolve the contemporary political conflict by winning the historical debate?
Basing the future on an understanding of the past belongs to conservatism.
“His favourable views on the enemy of the left, and atheism, Robespierre are frankly, by contrast, pitiful.”
Zizek defends Robespierre from revisionists and liberals who place him in their idealised world and then damn him accordingly. Zizek attempts to put him in an historical context. I do not see a problem with this defence of historical materialism.
I have read you comments 4 times and the problem Modernity is that in interpreting your words I have drawn the conclusion of unqualified support for Israel. I just wanted you to say it more explicitly but your refusal to say anything does indeed say it all.
That incidentally was the conclusion from my first reading of your comments, what a waste of time!
I’ve been paying attention, and I think what Modernity means is that -
a) When discussing how certain internet twunts use hilariously transparent smear tactics to portray their political adversaries as Nazis, all good left wingers should
b) Immediately denounce Noam Chomsky for his suspicious Nazi mates in precisely the terms that Modernity himself sets out, and that
c) Those who do not immediately denounce Noam Chomsky in precisely the terms that Modernity sets out should be regarded as suspiciously soft on Nazis.
Hence, IF Dave Osler argues that internet twunts talk bullshit for political advantage, THEN everyone must condemn Chomsky OR else.
Way to refute the point, Mod.
“I think what Modernity means is that – “
Flying rodent,
Let me tell you from the outset, that you’re wrong.
You are not a telepath, nor do your abilities allow you to discern what others mean.
But I’m not sure that you’ll understand that as you’re not a particularly political individual, despite your obvious quality education, my point was political.
It is fairly simple, if someone is incapable of understanding simple concepts, then it is highly unlikely that they will manage to understand complex issues.
That was my point.
Again, because you won’t understand it.
If people have such a low level of political consciousness that they don’t understand what Chomsky’s mistake was, why and what the issues surrounding it are, which clearly neither you, (Lobby Ludd, JimD, Johnno, splintered sunrise or JohnG) do, then how would it be possible to discuss the complex issues surrounding the Middle East, with any degree of civility and understanding ?
It wouldn’t be, cos you and others couldn’t manage it.
Once more, you are too damn politically thick to understand Chomsky’s blunder and thus are incapable of understanding anyone else’s views on the Middle East, should they be at variance with your own. I am not interested in discussing the Middle East with thickarses, who don’t know the political basics.
As for Zizek, I am not the least interested in his views. No doubt, your good selves and other members of the lumpen petty bourgeoisie hang on his very words, but I don’t.
It is Moralityblog who is too thick re l’affair Chomsky/Faurisson
The Chorus and Cassandra
Christopher Hitchens [excerpt)
...
The Case of the Negated Holocaust
"Here, Dr. Arbuthnot gives way to Ryszard Kapuscinski. The tactic is not to circulate a part-untruth so much as it is to associate the victim with an unpardonable out-group, against which preexisting revulsion and contempt can be mobilized.
My tutor at Oxford was Dr. Steven Lukes, a brilliant and humane man with an equal commitment to scholarship and to liberty. His books on Durkheim, on power, on utopianism, and on Marxism and morality are, as people tend to say, landmarks in their field. He took me as his guest to one of Chomsky's private seminars in that spring of 1969. When, in 1980, he told me that Chomsky had written an introduction to a book by a Nazi apologist, and that the book described the extermination of the Jews as a Zionist lie, I was thunderstruck. Like Noam Chomsky, Steven Lukes is Jewish. Like Chomsky, he was and is much opposed to the usurpation of Israel by the heirs of Jabotinsky. But this seemed incomprehensible. The political rights of hateful persons was one question (rather a vexed one in the British case, where the police and not the courts usually decide who may or may not speak in public), but keeping company with them was quite another. More, it appeared that Chomsky had dignified this character's book with a preface and had not even bothered to read the text he was decorating. I admit that I allowed myself a reflection or two about the potentially harmful effects on Chomsky of his political and personal isolation on the Middle East.
When I began to write this article, I wrote to Lukes at Balliol and asked him to furnish me with the background material to l'affaire Faurisson. I also pursued all the other references in print. I do not read French very well, but I have studied Nadine Fresco's famous article "The Denial of the Dead," adapted in Dissent from Les Temps modernes; Pierre Vidal-Naquet's "A Paper Eichmann?" reprinted in Democracy; and Arno J. Mayer's "Explorations" column on the same theme in the same magazine. There is also Paul Berman's article in The Village Voice of June 10, 1981, "Gas Chamber Games: Crackpot History and the Right to Lie," which is a sort of macedoine of the first three.
Let us not waste any time on Robert Faurisson. He is an insanitary figure who maintains contact with neo-Nazi circles and whose project is the rehabilitation, in pseudoscholarly form, of the Third Reich. How he came to be appointed in the first place I cannot imagine (from what I have seen his literary criticism is pitiful), but in 1979 he was a teacher in good standing of French literature at the University of Lyons. If, like our own Arthur Butz, who publishes "historical revisionist" garbage from Northwestern University, he had been left to stew in his own sty, we might have heard no more of him. But in that year he published an article entitled " `The Problem of the Gas Chambers' or the Rumor of Auschwitz.' " The whole appeared in Maurice Bardeche's sheet, Defense de l'Occident, and extracts were reprinted in Le Monde. Faurisson summarized his conclusions in a supplement:
(1) Hitler's "gas chambers" never existed. (2) The "genocide" (or the "attempted genocide") of the Jews never took place; clearly, Hitler never ordered (nor permitted) that someone be killed for racial or religious reasons. (3) The alleged gas chambers and the alleged "genocide' are one and the same lie. (4) This lie, essentially of Zionist origin, permitted a gigantic politico-financial swindle whose principal beneficiary is the State of Israel. (5) The principal victims of this lie and swindle are the Germans and the Palestinians.
The rest of the "supplement" concerned the sinister ways in which the media had prevented these truths from becoming generally known.
I have no idea whether Faurisson hoped to attract unpleasant attention by the publication of this stuff, but the consequences were fairly immediate. His sternist critic, Nadine Fresco, records: "At Lyons, there were displays of antipathy and Faurisson was lightly molested by Jewish students. Consequently, the president of the university chose to suspend his classes." Fresco slightly minimizes (if that is the word I want) the fact that a subsequent suit, brought against Faurisson for "falsification of history" and for allowing others to use his work for their own fell purposes, was successful and he was condemned by a French court.
In the early stages of this process, Chomsky received a request, from his friend Serge Thion, that he add his name to a petition upholding Faurisson's right to free expression. This, on standard First Amendment grounds and in company with many others, he did. The resulting uproar, in which he was accused of defending Faurisson's theses, led to another request from Thion. Would Chomsky write a statement asserting the right to free speech even in the case of the most loathsome extremist? To this he also assented, pointing out that it was precisely such cases that tested the adherence of a society to such principles and adding in a covering letter that Thion could make what use of it he wished. At this stage, only the conservative Alfred Grosser among French intellectuals had been prepared to say that Faurisson's suspension by the University of Lyons set a bad example of academic courage and independence. Chomsky's pedantic recitation of Voltairean principles would probably have aroused no comment at all had Thion not taker rather promiscuous advantage of the permission to use it as he wished. Without notification to Chomsky, he added the little essay as an avis to Faurisson's pretrial Memiore en defense.
Chomsky's seven-page comment received more attention in the international press, as Paul Berman noted, than any other piece of work for which he had been responsible. Let me summarize those reactions, which are still worth quoting and which are still (when occasion demands) being repeated:
Of these criticisms, the most nearly fair seems to me the one offered by Vidal-Naquet (an early hero of mine because of his book on torture in Algeria). But he is wrong on one factual point. Fresco herself confirmed, and justified, the refusal of certain archivists and documentation centers to permit access to Faurisson. And he is at risk in his distinction between truth and false witness, a distinction which Milton understood better in Aeropagitica when he argued that the two must be allowed to confront one another if truth is to prevail. There is therefore no obligation, in defending or asserting the right to speak, to pass any comment on the truth or merit of what may be, or is being, said. This is elementary.
Also rather unsafe is the injunction (employed above most crudely by Vidal-Naquet's colleague Arno Mayer) to be careful of the use that may be made of one's remarks or signatures. Elsewhere in the same essay, for example, Vidal-Naquet asserts, "In the case of the genocide of Jews, it is perfectly evident that one of the Jewish ideologies, Zionism, exploits this terrible massacre in a way that is at times quite "scandalous." Scandalous -- the same word that he attaches to Chomsky's signature on a petition. But he supplies the corrective himself -- "that an ideology seizes upon a fact does not make this fact inexistent." Precisely. And the "fact" here is that Chomsky defended not Faurisson's work but his right to research and publish it. Vidal-Naquet undoubtedly knows better than to resort to the old Stalinist "aid and comfort" ruse. Where, then, is the core of his objection?
Does this not leave Arno Mayer, also, in some difficulty? The fact that neo-Nazis may have seized upon Noam Chomsky's civil-libertarian defense does not, of itself, make that defense invalid. Or, if it does, then by himself seizing upon what they have seized upon, Mayer is "objectively" associating civil-libertarian principles with the Nazis -- an unintended compliment that the latter scarcely deserve. Vidal-Naquet's point about Zionism's exploitation of the Holocaust could, if cleverly enough ripped from its context, be used to support point (4) in Faurisson's "supplement" above. Who but a malicious falsifier would make such a confusion as to who was in whose galere?
I wouldn't accuse any of the critics listed here of deliberate falsification. But it is nevertheless untrue to describe Chomsky's purloined avis as a preface, as Fresco does on almost a dozen occasions and as Mayer does twice. It is also snide, at best, to accuse Chomsky of "breaking with his usual pattern" in praising "the traditions of American support for civil liberty." He has, as a matter of record, upheld these traditions more staunchly than most -- speaking up for the right of extremist academics like [Walter] Rostow, for example, at a time during the Vietnam War when some campuses were too turbulent to accommodate them. It is irrelevant, at least, to do as Fresco also does and mention Voltaire’s anti-Semitism. (As absurd a suggestion, in the circumstances, as the vulgar connection between Locke and imperialism.) Would she never quote Voltaire? Finally, she says that no question of legal rights arises because the suit against Faurisson was “private.” What difference does that make? An authoritarian law, giving the state the right to pronounce on truth, is an authoritarian law whoever invokes it.
Chomsky can be faulted here on three grounds only. First, for giving a power of attorney to Serge Thion, who seems rather a protean and quicksilvery fellow. Second, for once unguardedly describing Faurisson as “a sort of relatively apolitical liberal.” Admittedly, this came in the context of an assertion that Faurisson’s opinions were a closed book to him; still, all the more reason not to speculate. The whole point is that Faurisson’s opinions are not the point. Third, for attempting at the last minute, when he discovered too late that he was being bound into the same volume as a work he had not read, to have his commentary excised. He writes of this that “in the climate of hysteria among Paris intellectuals it would be impossible to distinguish defense of the man’s right to express his views from endorsement of these views.” Maybe. But Voltairean precepts involve precisely the running of that risk.
This is still nothing to do with “endorsement” and explains the repeated feverish sarcasm with which his critics claim that he had not “even read the endorsed” volume. Again, the irony would seem to be at their expense. An unread book is an unendorsed one, unless one assumes that Chomsky would endorse any Holocaust revisionist on principle — an allegation so fantastic that it has not “even” been made. If, by any action or statement, Chomsky had hinted at sympathy for Faurisson’s views, I think that we would know about it by now. The recurring attempt, therefore, to bracket him with the century’s most heinous movement must be adjudged a smear. And the wider attempt — to classify all critics of Israel as infected or compromised with anti-Semitism — is, of course, itself a trivialization of the Holocaust.”
http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/1985—-.htm
I know little about Mr Zizek and I would personally not choose to make an analogy between Israel and the Nazis, but it does seem to me that he is, roughly speaking, the good guy here. I mean, he’s opposed to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, whereas I suspect that many of his critics are apologists for that occupation.
“Israel, of course, disposes of an extensive ‘my mother, drunk or sober’ fan club, for whom any suggestion that Israeli conduct is ever anything than impeccable is tantamount to virulent anti-semitism.”
Can you name names ?
Once more, you are too damn politically thick to understand Chomsky’s blunder and thus are incapable of understanding anyone else’s views on the Middle East…
No, I think I can wrap my well-educated yet limited intellect around this – Zizek has fallen foul of your mates’ self-serving, weirdo form of political correctness, ergo Chomsky is a bastard and all men are Socrates.
Geez, oh, revenge of the Christopher Hitchens’ sycophants??
Would that be the same Christopher Hitchens who was a good mate of David Irving and couldn’t see thru him?
Would that be the brother of that Right-wing foaming at the mouth, homophobic Daily Mail head banger, Peter Hitchens, ex-SWP member and paid loud mouth ?
Aye, the Hitchens bros are a real pair of fucking political geniuses**
Why anyone would feel compelled to admire either of the Hitchens, or seek political wisdom from these rather dubious characters, is beyond me.
Why there is this compunction to look up to these ham-fisted would-be political seers (Chomsky, Zizek, the Hitchens Brothers or other public school rejects, etc) is a curious phenomena.
It is as if otherwise intelligent people can’t make up their own minds and need some political leader to tell them what to think and how to think it?
It is a very capitalist way of thinking, a hierarchy, a pecking order and the strange desire to somehow take guidance from these clumsy, imperfect prophets, these faulty political bosses.
Surely, 80+ years of looking back at the Left will show you where such an attitude got us? Nowhere.
The sooner people learn to think for themselves the better.
—
** That sarcasm for those with a tin ear
Again with the obsessive bashing of Chomsky, this time with the Hitchens brothers thrown in. And on a thread that’s supposed to be about Zizek!
I don’t know what itch Morality is compelled to scratch here. Given the backgrounds of the three individuals he’s singled out, I suspect it’s his latent antisemitism.
“As for Zizek, I am not the least interested in his views. No doubt, your good selves and other members of the lumpen petty bourgeoisie hang on his very words, but I don’t.”
Interest = “hang on [their] every word“?
Fascinating, Modernity. Presumably, you’ve never listened to anyone, for fear that you become a sycophant?
Splintered Sunrise,
I am pointing out that these political sages are basically useless and over-rated.
If you like listening to them and it helps you think, fine, but it is a very middle class way of thinking, that we need leaders, gurus, bosses, etc to recieve their wisdom. We don’t.
Did you get that?
Or maybe someone else could explain my points to you, some political guru?
Marko (fourth comment from the top): “I particularly liked his conclusion below and one that the Denham’s and Modernity’s of this world should digest.”
Meaning what, exactly? I’ve read the article and am in general agreement with it (including that conclusion). I don’t particularly like his use of the term ‘Palestinian-frei’, but that doesn’t invalidate his basic point in my eyes. So what should I be “digesting”. Marko?
Marko (fourth comment from the top): “I particularly liked his conclusion below and one that the Denham’s and Modernity’s of this world should digest.”
Meaning what, exactly? I’ve read the article and am in general agreement with it (including that conclusion). I don’t particularly like his use of the term ‘Palestinian-frei’, but that doesn’t invalidate his basic point in my eyes. So what should I be “digesting”. Marko?
Marko (fourth comment from the top): “I particularly liked his conclusion below and one that the Denham’s and Modernity’s of this world should digest.”
Meaning what, exactly? I’ve read the article and am in general agreement with it (including that conclusion). I don’t particularly like his use of the term ‘Palestinian-frei’, but that doesn’t invalidate his basic point in my eyes. So what should I be “digesting”. Marko?
Modernity where has anyone said they worship Zizek or see him as a great leader?
Now you claim that listening to other people who have ideas and opinions is somehow middle class or capitalist thinking and that ‘intelligent’ people should ‘think for themselves’, this is beyond me.
How do you think intelligent people become intelligent, it is by discovering the ideas of others and forming conclusions upon them.
You present the bourgeois notion of pure individuality, unaffected by society and social relations; you exhibit the Robinson Crusoe mentality of the 18th century!
Some would even call it the mindset of a fundamentalist.