This article emphasizes how Noam Chomsky is prioritizing the ecological crisis and abrupt global warming as by far the biggest threat humanity faces.
Noam Chomsky has even begun to recognize that our precarious environmental predicament – primarily envisioned as the issue of climate change, though it encompasses so much more – is the most crucial existential threat to human life on the planet. Of late, whenever you see Chomsky interviewed or hear him speak, he tends to emphasize that of many injustices and dire risks to the people of the United States, the people oppressed by U.S. empire, and humanity as a whole, all pale in comparison to the our environmental crisis.So I sent her an email and got a nice response, asking me to see the correspondence, regarding my master's thesis on radical ecology, and my analysis of Chomsky.
http://archive.is/ySaHW#selection-3999.1-4481.8
Luckily it did get "archived" -
From: Noam Chomsky
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 15:56:25 -0500
To: Drew W Hempel <hemp0027@...> (by way of Noam Chomsky
Subject: Re: Minnesota
Dear Drew Hempel,
God save us from our friends -- not for the first time. I'm a little
surprised that Brokaw would credit a source like that. Surely he wouldn't
in the case of anyone who falls within approved doctrinal bounds.
You're quite right about activists not being willing to read. I get a good
measure of it when publishers send sales records or in the signing frenzies
after I give talks. In both cases it's overwhelmingly the small pamphlets
with interviews, etc.; easy reads, and short. But it's not just activists.
Same with academic scholars. It's very rare for them to go beyond the
limits of the guild, a practice far more pronounced in the social sciences,
history, etc., than in the sciences, something I've observed from a lot of
first-hand experience in the last 1/2-century. It's too bad about
Guerin-Rocker, and in fact all of the rich literature on anarchism.
Contemporary anarchists -- at least those who use the name -- seem to
divide, mostly, between people who don't want to read and those who are
immersed in often arcane scholarship. There are exceptions, of course, but
the tendencies are noticeable. It was quite different in the days when
workers education was a normal part of everyday life for great numbers of
people, and labor-based media were common fare.
No plans for reissue of At War with Asia or For Reasons of State, much to
my regret. In fact, they were scarcely looked at in the first place.
Wrong story. Even left academics don't want to hear such things, and it
went -- and goes -- beyond the interests of most activists. How far the
anti-war movement was from understanding anything that was going on was
revealed pretty dramatically by the reception of McNamara's awful memoirs
-- actually welcomed by leading figures as a vindication of their stand.
Few could comprehend what an incredible display of apologetics it was.
Wrote a few things about it, which I noticed could not be understood even
by left academics, for the most part. The Party Line is much more
influential than many think.
Thanks for sending along the excerpt from what you've been writing.
Interesting, and well done I think -- but then, I would. I've read some of
what Zerzan has written, under various names. Occasionally, out of
curiosity, I've written brief letters asking if he could supply some of the
sources for particular quotes, which I know he has invented (though I
didn't say so). I'm constantly promised that they'll be coming. They
won't, of course. This is just a silly game, in my opinion, defaming the
good name of anarchism -- not for the first time; there's a rich history of
that.
Noam
At 01:46 PM 2/20/01 -0500, you wrote:
>Dear Professor Chomsky:taken
>
>Wishing you the best again. I wrote you a letter about six months ago and
>I thank you for your response. You had asked me for clarification
>regarding Tom Brokaw's reference to your work and there's a lesson behind
>it.
>
>I wrote an expose on the U of Minnesota as an institution of
>neocolonialism. One of my segments was on Hubert H. Humphrey's support of
>"Food for Peace" (Cargill, etc.) and also his support of concentration
>camps to hold political dissidents. No need to elaborate on these issues
>since you were my main source.
>
>I have taken much time to read your work but unfortunately part of the
>indoctrination of corporate culture is a lack of respect for intellectual
>work -- for detailed documented analysis. So when I passed out my report
>to fellow activists my hope was that it would be a tool that others could
>build from.
>
>You can see where the story goes. Instead your reference of Humphrey in
>the introduction of "Cointelpro" became transformed into H.H.H. supported
>the Nazis or H.H.H. was a fascist. That loose rendition was actually
>as a good enough statement to include in a press release by a local Maoistthe
>clic.
>
>Well maybe if the documentation hadn't degenerated like that then it
>wouldn't have caught Tom Brokaw's eye. Apparently he was privy to the
>actual press release sent out by the protesters (I was among them as well)
>so Brokaw stated, to a packed large auditorium, that us activists must not
>be credible if we believe that H.H.H. was a fascist. That is the somewhat
>amusing connection Brokaw had to your work.
>
>Again I spent alot of time immersed in your work and I greatly appreciate
>the degree of freedom it affords. Also I continually used your work as a
>practical tool for direct activism -- whether sitting across from
>employment managers in union dealings, arguing with the General Counsel at
>the U in extended meetings about sweatshops, lobbying the Minneapolis City
>Council for Burma corporate divestment, presenting to professor committees
>for divestment, doing direct action, etc.
>
>I have worked on issues across the board from Earth First! to pro-choice
>and lately I have maintained an email list networking many otherwise
>disconnected small groups in Minnesota. Again your work is invaluable for
>cutting through the dense indoctrination. But also again I want to
>emphasize that your work demands a level of self-discipline that I have
>found others often do not relate to -- because of the dynamics of
>corporate culture. Sure activists like to use your name but how many have
>really taken the time to digest the intensity of your writing? I have
>found that even the two books you recommend on anarchism (Guerin/Rocker)
>are effectively completely unknown in the U.S. -- even by supposed
>"anarchists!" Talk about "alienated intellectuals."
>
>Will "At War with Asia" and "For Reasons of State" be republished?
>
>"At War with Asia" is the best book that I've seen for getting past all
>lies surrounding our "Vietnam Syndrome." Really this book is soin
>important!!!
>
>Regarding "For Reasons of State" I have to tell you that I dropped out my
>graduate program and I referenced your writings on the university when I
>did so. I believe that the university is now intelllectually "coercive"
>and therefore not defendable as an institution. That is the change since
>you wrote your essay.
>
>I should also mention that I reentered my graduate program but only to
>finish it through self-directed studies in meditation -- something you may
>not think you have an interest in at all. I had sent you an early version
>of my graduate thesis and I apologize for that version being quite
>inaccessible. A later version was published on the web at
>http://lightmind.com/library/hempel/epicenters.html
>
>Below is an excerpt from my thesis on sound-current nondualism -- the part
>where I discuss the relation of my work to yours. Beyond the below
>discussion my thesis also connects linguistics to activism.
>
>I have effectively stopped "normal" activism because through my experience
>in direct struggle I have found that the problem is how power is defined
>western culture (radical activist culture included) and this goes back totheory in the arguments of freedom found in classical liberalism.
>Pythagoras -- not just Aristotle. In otherwords I believe that for the
>movement to reach any level of meaningful success we will have to
>reorganize by overcoming the inccurate foundational limitation of western
>materialism.
>
>Thanks so much for your time and consideration. drew
>
>From: http://lightmind.com/library/hempel/epicenters.html
>
>"Noam Chomsky, the most-well known proponent of anarchism, bases his
>Anarcho-primitivist John Zerzan has, like some other grassroots activiststheorists looking to climb the intellectual ladder are too quick to want
>working for social justice, incorrectly critiqued Chomsky, mainly labeling
>him as a statist or a pro-technology industrialist. The expositions on
>anarchism that are classic anti-statist documents and, according to
>Chomsky, the best theoretical overviews of anarchism to date are, for the
>most part, unknown even by those who claim to be anarchists! Most
to dethrone Chomsky, assuming the details in his prolific writings are not
worth the
>time.334on the contrary, he was one of the first main New Left theorists to support
>
> As far as Chomsky being a pro-technology industrialist,
a questioning of this issue. He states, "Students are also reacting against
>the values of industrial society.... In fact, there may be very seriousroots in the Enlightenment. But I have shown that there is nothing
>questioning, in coming years, of the basic assumption of modern society
>that development of technology is inherently a desirable, inevitable
>process."335
>
> Although one would think Chomsky would be hesitant to
>support sound-current nondualism since he frequently cites his strong
irrational about the knowledge system. Chomsky, as I mentioned, was largely
influenced by the spiritual scholar Martin Buber. Chomsky refers more than
once to Wilhelm von Humboldt's promotion of "the spiritual life." Chomsky
commonly states that there will need to be a change of consciousness for
justice to be achieved. The passage of Rousseau that Chomsky refers to
regularly for his example of freedom emphasizes an "against civilization"
perspective: "... when I see multitudes of entirely naked savages scorn
European voluptuousness and endure hunger, fire, the sword and death to
preserve only their independence,..."336
>understandably marginalized by the corporate-state structural crisis that
> Even though Chomsky's political analysis is
he exposes, a recent review in Business Week made the following remarks:
"With relentless logic, Chomsky bids us to listen closely to what our
leaders tell us ( and to discern what they are leaving out.... If there is
anything new about our age, it is that the questions Chomsky raises will
eventually have to be answered. Agree with him or not, we lose out by not
listening." 337
>Pantheon
>334 For the two most lucid explanations of anarchism see Rudolf Rocker,
>preface by Noam Chomsky, Anarcho-Syndicalism (London: Pluto Press, 1989)
>and Daniel Gurin, introduction by Noam Chomsky, Anarchism: From Theory to
>Practice (NY: Monthly Review Press, 1970). For current proposals see the
>GEO (Grassroots Economic Organizing) Newsletter at
>http://www.geonewsletter.org/
>
> 335 Noam Chomsky, For Reasons of State (New York,
>Books, 1973), p. 310.Estate
>
> 336 Noam Chomsky, For Reasons of State, p. 298. On
>Rousseau quote, Milan Rai, Chomsky's Politics (NY: Verso, 1995), p. 161.
>
> 337 Patrick Smith, "The New World Disorder," Business
>Week, April 17, 2000. For the connection between Taoism and anarchism see
>Chris Kortright, "The Tao and biocentric anarchism," Earth First! Journal
>17 (Feb. 1997), p. 9 and John Clark, "The Tao of anarchy," The Fifth
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