“The Responsibility of Intellectuals” (February 23rd 1967) is an essay Noam Chomsky wrote 50 years ago at the height of the Vietnam War. It is the essay that made him a public intellectual in the US and not just an MIT professor of linguistics. It laid out the course of action he has followed ever since, speaking out against US imperialism.
Chomsky:
“It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies.”
In particular:
“Intellectuals are in a position to expose the lies of governments, to analyze actions according to their causes and motives and often hidden intentions. In the Western world, at least, they have the power that comes from political liberty, from access to information and freedom of expression. For a privileged minority, Western democracy provides the leisure, the facilities, and the training to seek the truth lying hidden behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation, ideology and class interest, through which the events of current history are presented to us.”
Most citizens do not have the time or training to do it:
“The facts are known to all who care to know. The press, foreign and domestic, has presented documentation to refute each falsehood as it appears. But the power of the government’s propaganda apparatus is such that the citizen who does not undertake a research project on the subject can hardly hope to confront government pronouncements with fact.”
But US thinkers were not speaking truth to power. Instead they became the handmaidens of imperialism, people like Henry Kissinger, Arthur Schlesinger, and Irving Kristol.
They dismissed those who spoke out against the war as “hysterical”, “emotional”, “sentimental”, as not being “responsible”, as being out of touch with the highest circles of government thinking – the very thinking that led to ideas like “free bombing zones” where the US military gave itself permission to kill anything that moved.
US intellectuals prided themselves on being realistic, on knowing how the world works, and yet seem to believe stuff like:
- US innocence: US motives are pure, unlike every other powerful country in recorded history.
- US paternalism: The US knows best, so much so that it is all right for it to use force to get its way, even if it means destroying countries.
This hypocritical moralism goes back to at least the 1840s when Christian missionaries saw the destruction of China in the Opium Wars as an act of mercy by their god.
Chomsky on US innocence:
“No one would be disturbed by an analysis of the political behavior of the Russians, French, or Tanzanians questioning their motives and interpreting their actions by the long-range interests concealed behind their official rhetoric. But it is an article of faith that American motives are pure, and not subject to analysis.”
“The long tradition of naiveté and self-righteousness that disfigures our intellectual history, however, must serve as a warning to the third world, if such a warning is needed, as to how our protestations of sincerity and benign intent are to be interpreted.”
– Abagond, 2017.
See also:
- “The Responsibility of the Intellectual” – read the whole essay (about 24 pages long)
- Noam Chomsky
- White Liberals
- White paternalism
- Martin Luther King Jr
Chomsky and similiar are certainly important voices in the US. My problem with them is that they hugely overestimate US influence on the state of the world, everything is always the nefarious influence of US foreign policy. In Germany they are often cited by far-right and -left extremists. Anti-americanism outside of the US is mostly just a cover for authoritarianism.
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After reading his book, “Manufactured Consent” in the nineteen-nineties, I instantly became a huge fan of Noam Chomsky. This book essentially breaks down how the mass media or corporate owned media within the US is utilized as a socio-political/military arm of the US government to broadcast propaganda, amongst many other unsavory things.
“Everyone’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s really an easy way: stop participating in it” – Noam Chomsky (Oct. 2013)
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Chomsky is the head gatekeeper of the left. A great disappointment.
(https://youtu.be/BhrZ57XxYJU)
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‘Tis a pity he couldn’t apply this principle to the JFK assassination or 911. What an insouciant intellectual. Only an insouciant intellectual can answer queries about these subjects with “Who cares?”
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Our brave and vigilant lefty intellectuals.
Zinn, Cockburn, Chomsky. What’s up with these guys?
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i have never been a fan, ie a ‘chomskyite?’; but this article speaks to me, however far i am from enjoying the privlieges of a genius, see supra…
i think he means academian not intellectual, or maybe they all just got think tank jobs back then? idk, I’m slowly digesting this article, that is, the original
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perhaps this is partially or mainly due to the fact that i was introduced to his writing by a post-doc linguist, ugh! philology, calamity, something like that
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Chomsky:
“It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies.”
With the exception of a rancid few, intellectuals, especially the black intelligentsia, have failed miserably in this post 911 age.
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[…] literally, here is noam chomsky protesting in […]
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