Chomsky and Cambodia

Chomsky and Cambodia

 

By: timesonline.typepad.com

This is a subject with a tortuous history. But you should read one item in today's Observer.

That newspaper published last month a long and illuminating article by Andrew Anthony about an obscure academic, Malcolm Caldwell, who had acted as a cheerleader for the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, where he was murdered. In the article, Andrew made a brief observation about the role of Noam Chomsky in 1970s polemic on the crimes of Pol Pot. I wrote a post about Andrew's article, along with one on a couple of authors called George Hildebrand and Gareth Porter, whose whitewashing of the regime had served as one of the sources relied on by Chomsky.
As is his custom when he sees a critical reference to himself in print, Chomsky sent The Observer a convoluted exercise in self-justification. His letter is here; I commented sceptically on it here. Chomsky's rubbishing of the refugee accounts emerging from Cambodia in the 1970s was a disgrace. He relied on a work of disinformation; of its authors (Porter) was pointedly cross-examined in Congressional hearings, where his writings were compared to those of a notorious Holocaust denier called Arthur Butz.
The Observer, to its credit, hasn't left Chomsky's contortions as the last word. It publishes today a long letter (scroll down) by Sophal Ear, an American academic who fled Cambodia as a child. Professor Ear has a remarkable story to tell. His conclusion is damning and beyond serious dispute. It's important for its own sake, recalling the most brutal regime of the last century, and for what it tells us about Chomsky, who unaccountably has a reputation as a sage political analyst:

'Writing about American leaders in At War with Asia (Pantheon, 1970), Chomsky poignantly argued that: "Perhaps someday they will acknowledge their 'honest errors' in their memoirs, speaking of the burdens of world leadership and the tragic irony of history. Their victims, the peasants of Indochina, will write no memoirs and will be forgotten. They will join the countless millions of earlier victims of tyrants and oppressors." Indeed, perhaps someday Chomsky will acknowledge his "honest errors" in his memoirs, speaking of the burdens of academia and the tragic irony of history. His victims, the peasants of Indochina, will write no memoirs and will be forgotten. They will be joined by his North Korean and Bosnian victims.
'For decades, Chomsky has vilified his critics as only a world class linguist can. However, for me and the surviving members of my family, questions about life under the Khmer Rouge are not intellectual parlour games. While he is a legend in linguistics, in international affairs Noam Chomsky consistently falls short of Thomas Jefferson's maxim that universities are "based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it."'

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