Saturday, March 18, 2023

Professor Michael Parenti apparently Misquoted Noam Chomsky? and said Misquote has spread around the Interwebs

Rob Musorpheus
Voidisyinyang Voidisyinyang Try reading Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti as a start. It might lead you away from the capitalist indoctrination I mentioned as a form of colonialism.

Your "leader" Michael Parenti tries to dismiss Noam Chomsky by citing Chomsky in "Blackshirts and Reds" page 17 (and made the focus of numerous interweb discussions with no one daring to investigate the authenticity of the quote.  Supposed SOURCE of the quote as cited by Professor Michael Parenti: Chomsky interviewed by Husayn Al-Kurdi, Perception, March/April 1996.

So I looked up the quote since I have realized over the years that people like to misquote Chomsky. Sure enough there is no interview with Chomsky in the March/April issue of 1996 journal Perception. There is a "Perceptions, Vol 3 No 3 ( Issue 15), May-June 1996" interview with Chomsky by Husayn Al-Kurdi Al-Kurdi called "Part two" but also has nothing of the quote that Parenti claims Chomsky wrote or said.

 https://ia802801.us.archive.org/31/items/PerceptionsVol3No3Issue15MayJune1996/Perceptions%2C%20Vol%203%20No%203%20%28Issue%2015%29%2C%20May-June%201996.pdf

 An Interview with Noam Chomsky by Husayn Al-Kurdi originally appeared in issue #35 (Summer, 1995) - Globalization and Resistance. With Husayn Al-Kurdi. Summer, 1995.  

this DOES have similar statements (see below) by Chomsky that Parenti is claiming to quote but definitely does NOT have the supposed quote that Parenti claims. So we can infer that was the article Parenti was wrongly claiming to quote. To be honest I expected better from Michael Parenti since he's a Professor! Obviously he has some kind of bias that he needs to cover up. I'll be blogging this error since I find it completely unacceptable by a supposed professional scholar. 

https://www.angelfire.com/il/wvrights/gar.html 

An Interview with Noam Chomsky by Husayn Al-Kurdi

This article originally appeared in issue #35 (Summer, 1995) of Kick It Over

 Globalization and Resistance. With Husayn Al-Kurdi. Summer, 1995.

is the ONLY interview listed on the https://chomsky.info/interviews/ site.

So this is further corroboration that the Perception magazine interview, listed as Part Two was based on the first interview in the magazine, Kick It Over.

 Volume 3, Number 2 (Issue #14): (80 pages)
The World According to Chomsky

 OK I did find that interview referenced in #15. 

NC: The Soviet Union was pretty much what Lenin and Trotsky said it was. The Bolshevik revolution was a counter-revolution. Its first moves were to destroy and eliminate every socialist tendency that had developed in the pre-revolutionary period. Their goal was as they said; it wasn't a big secret. They regarded the Soviet Union as sort a backwater. They were orthodox Marxists, expecting a revolution in Germany. They moved toward what they themselves called "state capitalism," then they moved on to Stalinism. They called it democracy and called it socialism. The one claim was as ludicrous as the other. However, when you read about the end of the Soviet Union, it's always about the "death of socialism." They never say "the death of democracy." But it makes about the same sense.

I should add to this that Western intellectuals, and also Third World intellectuals, were attracted to the Bolshevik counter-revolution because Leninism is, after all, a doctrine which says that the radical intelligentsia have a right to take state power and to run their countries by force, and that is an idea which is rather appealing to intellectuals.

 You obviously haven't read "The Bolsheviks & Workers' Control" by Maurice Brinton (Solidarity, 1970), reissued in 1972 and 1975 is the edition I have. That's the book that Noam Chomsky recommends. good luck breaking out of your simplistic cult. Communism is definitely not the answer to the ecological crisis! It's already caused a huge part of the ecological crisis. too late now. As usual Parenti tries to "glob on" environmental issues at the very end of his book as if it's an after thought. Hilarious.

 see The Bolshevik Position -- Lenin Was Not A Socialist -- 4 on the youtube channel IntellectualFreedom uploaded on Nov 18, 2018 for a presentation of The Bolsheviks & Workers' Control" by Maurice Brinton. You can run but you can't hide from the truth about Lenin and the Bolsheviks.

 

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