The Anti Chomsky Reader [Paperback]

To be honest, you don't need to buy this book. You've heard it all before, whether conservative or liberal.

The bias in these reviews is blinding - use of the term 'anti-american' to describe someone who disagrees with the government is typical, shortsighted, and frankly a little pathetic. Try going to Italy, and telling someone on the streets of Rome that because he dislikes Berlusconi, he is 'un-Italian', and watch him roll around on the floor with laughter. The idea that disliking a leader and seeing fault with the sytem makes you a 'traitor' of some kind, IS laughable.

Other typical conservative attacks are obvious too - someone who recognises Israel's illegitimacy is 'anti-semitic', a 'nazi sympathiser', even a 'holocaust denier'

The arguments used in the book are no more compelling than those used by the reviewers. The venom, and fear-driven hate are evident throughout, and little to no evidence is used in support of their rebuttals. The slightest digging into the listed sources immediately shows the transparency and shallowness of the arguments used by the authors.

As I said at the beginning, you don't need to buy this book.

If you're conservative, you've probably already denounced Chomsky as a 'red', and this book would serve only as self-gratifying trash.

If you're a fan of Chomsky, you'll know his opinions already (most of which THIS book gets completely wrong, whether intentionally or accidentally it's hard to tell), and the arguments they use against him will be debunked with 5 minutes of further reading.

Either way, it's a waste of money. Save the 11 quid (or 20 when i bought it...)

The authors here seem to bend over backwards to find fault with Noam Chomsky - do they do this as a service to the cause of honest, scrupulous scholarship? Most people who have read any Chomsky will have their own answer to that, but, for those who don't know him, a few explanatory words are necessary to assess this book.

Chomsky has been voted the world's no 1 living intellectual in several polls,only partly because of his groundbreaking work in linguistics (he is sometimes called the Einstein of linguistics), but mainly because his political criticism/journalism has, despite every obstruction from the powerful and almost total blackout by the media (though his name has cropped up more often recently), worked it's way over 40 years into the mind's of millions as the most lucid, thorough and consistent appraisal of the inadequacies of the 'system' we live under and of the venality and inhumanity of the elites who run it - his main focus being on how the mainstream media present us a propagandised version of world events.

There are increasingly many critics of his linguistic work, as of Einstein's work (but no-one would deny their huge contributions); I don't share his admiration for anarchism; some may quibble with his style - I think he overuses elaborate sarcasms to the extent that, while always entertaining, they sometimes necessitate a couple of readings to get the point; he may get things wrong occasionally - he is the first to admit this - he doesn't claim to be an infallible prophet, but I find it remarkable how hard it is to find anything at all that he DID get wrong, which is why his critics are usually reduced to misrepresenting him i.e. the most recurring slander that he praised Pol Pot and excused his crimes - in fact, AT THE TIME of the initial Khmer Rouge takeover, Chomsky asked why the media were giving so much attention to alleged crimes in Cambodia, for which, AT THE TIME, there was next to no substantial evidence, while the media ignored the concurrent Indonesian massacres in East Timor for which, AT THE TIME, there was massive evidence - because Indonesia was 'our type of people'( see ' the Political Economy of Human Rights vol 2: After the Cataclysm' - a lot more readable than it sounds). Like everyone else, when the evidence became more solid he accepted it (which doesn't in any way invalidate his earlier point), and, like John Pilger, Chomsky has written much on the support by the USA and the UK for the Khmer Rouge regime after their crimes were well known, which led to a member of the Khmer Rouge, at a time when they were reduced to a guerrilla band living in the jungle, representing Cambodia at the UN, rather than a representative of the Cambodian government - this is a matter of public record and was openly and widely reported in the mainstream media, but the authors of the anti Chomsky reader hope that their readers missed that.
Another common criticism of Chomsky is that he 'gave credibility to Holocaust denial' by writing an introduction to a 'revisionist' book by Robert Faurisson. Given that the substance of his piece was a defence of free speech, rather than an assessment of Faurisson's arguments, I would regard it as odd, rather than reprehensible, had Chomsky done this; but he didn't - he published the piece somewhere else, and Faurisson's publishers included it in the book without asking his permission.

The other charges against Chomsky just as readily fall apart on inspection - particularly the sort of inspection that involves comparing what Chomsky actually wrote with what Collier et al claim that he wrote, and checking to find that he gave ample sources and notes for statements they claim were unsupported.
In short, the best that can be said of the Anti Chomsky Reader's scholarship is that it is sloppy. I think a good case could also be made for calling it highly partisan, to say the least.
If there is a future in which books can be freely read and published (in whatever format)Chomsky will be revered in the way we revere the great Greek and Roman writers, as the most perceptive analyst of our times. God forbid that any future generations should find themselves living in a world in which the Anti Chomsky Reader is widely read.

I have this book by my toilet, but not for reading...

Seriously atrocious stuff that was refuted years ago, it's as if they hope people will read this and not look at the counter-arguments. This book is brimming with fatuous calumny and defamation. Anyone who agrees with the thesis of this "book" most likely came into it already hating Chomsky.