Product Description

This description is based on the MIT professor's writings on linguistics in the 1950s; but beginning with his criticism of the Vietnam War in the 1960s, Chomsky became much better known for his radical politics than for his theories of language. Over the past forty years he has gained a devoted following in the United States and Europe for his increasingly bitter--some say hysterical--censure of U.S. "crimes." Chomsky has complained about being ignored by mainstream publications such as the "New York Times," but in fact his steady stream of polemical works, like the best-selling "9-11," have made him the center of a veritable cult.

In "The Anti-Chomsky Reader," editors Peter Collier and David Horowitz have assembled a set of essays that analyze Chomsky's intellectual career and the evolution of his anti-Americanism. The essays in this provocative book focus on subjects such as Chomsky's bizarre involvement with Holocaust revisionism, his apologies for Khmer Rouge tyrant Pol Pot, and his claim that America's policies in Latin America in the 1980s were comparable to Nazism. Scholar Paul Bogdanor writes about Chomsky's hatred of Israel. Ronald Radosh and David Horowitz discuss his gloating reaction to the September 11 attack. Linguists Paul Postal and Robert Levine reevaluate Chomsky's linguistics and find the same qualities there that others see in his politics: "a deep contempt for the truth, descents into incoherence, and verbal abuse of those who disagree with him."

"The Anti-Chomsky Reader" presents a fascinating composite portrait of a man who arguably is our most influential public intellectual.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #404984 in Books
• Published on: 2004-09-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Review
"Collier, Horowitz, and their six other authors have produced a book that has long been needed. It provides a penetrating coverage of the disgraceful career of a disgraceful but very influential man, who has so far avoided a criticism as thoroughgoing as this." --New Criterion

About the Author
Peter Collier and David Horowitz have written well-regarded biographies of the Rockefellers, the Kennedys and the Fords. They also co-authored "Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts about the Sixties." David Horowitz's essays appear regularly in frontpagemagazine.com

Customer Reviews

Miserable Failure
First I would like to address some issues that come up in the other reviews on this page, and then I'll get into the "book". They put Chomsky as an "Anti-American" and Marxist who hates Jewish people. His use of free speech is more American than the blind support of Israel and hatred of people who follow the ideologies of Marx (which he doesn't). Noam Chomsky isn't a Marxist, he is a social libertarian. Misinformation is not a great way to criticize an author, it just shows ignorance. Many of the points brought against Chomsky are about small issues like a single quote from one of his books, but the criticism is out of context and misleading. \

I would like to make a special response to the charges of antisemitism that have been insinuated against Avram 'Noam' Chomsky ( ). He has been tied to holocaust deniers by standing up merely for freedom of speech, and seen as critical of the Jewish people for being critical of Israel. But objecting to a state must never be confused with objecting to the individual people.

This book is a vast collection of the above mentioned deceptions and half truths. There is more wrong with this book then I could list off without a book of my own. It is sad to see the work of a man who lives a life which represents the freedoms that America itself should represent, attacked by those who have not made the effort, at least, to understand the work.

Read if you can't look in the mirror
I read much of the book at the bookstore and don't know why I gave it any of my time. The arguments are very superficial. For example, the book makes a big deal about Chomsky supporting a man losing his free speech. This is an old story, pretty much the only story a lot of the media ever covered on the one of the world's greatest intellectuals. You can be in support of someone's freespeech and not support their views--plain and simple. Enough said.

The other arguments leave out the whole picture and are pretty invaluable. This book might make some feel better that they don't read Chomsky but that's because they can't look at themselves and their own country becuase they're drones of some kind. Chomsky presents much of the truth, and it's not pretty much of the time. This book just distorts the truth.

Imperialist Propaganda
I have not read this book, and do not need to. After one reviewer compared Chomsky to Grima Wormtonge in The Lord of the Rings, I had to laugh. Any one who has read Chomsky will know that these pathetic attempts to undermine one of the only people who has a pretty clear idea of what is happening in the world today are just one more attempt by the imperialists to create misinformation. America is a country founded on genocide and control and the real apologists are those who would justify our terrorist actions agasinst the rest of the world. But for those readers who want to continue living in an ethnocentric fantasy world where America is a benevolent super power fighting evil terrorists, this book will probably provide plenty of self-deluding niceties.