Chomsky has never supported totalitarianism. He opposed the Soviet Union in the 1950s, when many other leftists supported it, because of it's totalitarian tendencies. He has vocally complained at restrictions on freedom of speech, of movement, and of general human rights abuses in any state where it has happened, no matter the form of government.
Even in Yugoslavia, where the economic order was closer to his preferred model, he would criticize the occassional totalitarian measure. Any infringement on individual freedom of speech or of freedom of association would never go unprotested by Chomsky.
The answer below, the one collecting quotes other people make about Chomsky, the one making Chomsky out to be a closeted totalitarian, is simply lying about his political activities, and is deplorable.
His politics are a form of anarchic socialism, like Spain the 1930s, where committees of citizens direct an economy, without top-down control. He is opposed to top-down control in any form, whether economic coercion or political state coercion.
His stance is so much the opposite of totalitarianism that any attempt to link him to totalitarian government is simply a joke.
Besides his main legacy is in mathematical linguistics, and there is nothing about it in that answer.
I would hope folks downvote that answer. The author kept on deleting this comment when I made it in the appropriate place, below that dishonest thing.
There's the Chomsky Schutzenberger hierarchy of formal languages, and his legacy is secure in this regard--- the stack languages, the context free grammars, are indeed the ones that describe modern grammatical recursion in linguistics and also computer grammars of C and other similar languages.
The mathematical theory of generative grammars is interesting, and provides the best model of complex sentence structure so far. It hasn't completely exhausted natural language grammar, in the sense that there is no BNF for the New York Times, but it's close. I think it won't take a large modification of this idea to fully describe natural language, but most linguists completely disagree (for what I think are purely academic political reasons --- the examples they trot out for this are stupid).
On politics, I think he has always spoken clearly and cogently, but I think there he is a citizen, like any other, except he tends to be exceptionally well read and informed. I don't know how you can have a legacy in politics, it's ephemeral. But I admire his structural views on media propaganda in capitalist states, the things in "Manufacturing Consent". That's like a structural Marxist view of media which is very informative, without the ponderous bullshitty baggage of formal Marxist theory.
But unfortunately, he has backpedalled on stronger claims in recent years. He refuses to acknowledge that the lack of recursion in ancient pre-written languages like Piraha simply falsifies the claim that linguistic recursion in ancient and fundamental to human evolution. I think this is a deplorable and uncharacteristic lapse in scientific honesty. But he might be forgiven for this, because the retrenchment came in stages, first with Warlpiri and other things in the 1970s, leading to the "merge" retrenchement, simplifying the grammar to just "merge" operations, and then finally Piraha, which had no recursion at all. But it's not good, because the original Chomsky thesis, that linguistic recursion is the foundation of human thought, is original, insightful, and wrong.
But that doesn't make Chomsky's linguistics dead, it is just a theory of post-written language structure and artificial language structure, rather than a fundamental theory of natural language structure in the pre-written days.
EDIT: In response to the atrocious lying political nonsense in anonymous's answer below, I am reminded that there is a lot of automatic propaganda made against any honest academic leftist with a long career. I will counter it below, although for anyone familiar with Chomsky, that answer is a joke in bad taste.
Chomsky has always opposed totalitarianism, he has never wavered, even when it made him unpopular on the left. He opposed the Soviet Union in the 1950s because of the restrictions of individual rights. He signed a letter protesting Tito when Yugoslavia restricted freedom of speech and assembly in the 1970s, even though Yugoslavia's decentralized socialism was the closest to his vision of a non-hierarchical society. He has always, consistently, opposed any form of totalitarianism, and he has never spoken up in support of an immoral act by any government at any time, even when this cost him politically.
Chomsky opposes the control of people using money too, just as much as the control of people using governments. He supports anarchic local socialism, like in Spain in the 1930s. His commentary is brave, and accurate, and his stands have always been on the side of justice. His politics is entirely commendable.
The only single place in his entire career where I have disagreed with him is his dismissal of 9/11 truth. He is just wrong on this, but perhaps he can be forgiven here too, as this type of thing is simply inconceivable for his generation.
>> "The only single place in his entire career where I have disagreed with him is his dismissal of 9/11 truth."
Aaaand there goes your credibility in a puff of smoke.
Aaaand you would be wrong. My self-description is "truther", it's so far not been any problem for credibility, quite the opposite. With the help of google, I can turn you into a truther too, although it requires you to do some searching.
To do this, all you have to know is that the 9/11 inside job did not require a conspiracy. It can be pulled off by one person, the person in charge of the known drills of that morning. No one else has to know about it.
The drills involved drones in the sky, flight simulations, and false radar blips (google the drills and you can find them documented). By doing a little switcheroo, the person in charge of the drills can arrange 9/11 with no co-conspirators (although that doesn't mean there weren't any co-conspirators, I tend to believe it was the work of a single person).
Since those simultaneous drills were going on that day, and they are inexplicably strange except as a method to stage the attack, this is enough evidence to be sure. You need to review the drills to understand this, but I'll let you do this yourself.
>> "My description is "truther", it's so far not made any trouble for me."
I'm sure that's what all the other truthers tell you.
There are a lot of truthers in the world, if you include MIHOP, they are probably the majority globally. Since truth is true, it is incumbant upon you to change your mind, instead of pretending to know things you don't know anything about. My advice, don't listen to authority so much, and learn to think.
>> "There are a lot of truthers in the world"
There are a lot of paranoid schizophrenics in the world. Doesn't make their delusions any more credible.
I agree, numbers don't matter. Except it is you that is the paranoid schitzophrenic here.
Right. By not believing in a sinister, unprovable conspiracy, a conspiracy that flies in the face of all credible evidence, a conspiracy that would implicate an entire Presidential administration in an act of mass murder, that makes me the paranoid schizophrenic.
Be sure and tell that to the nice men in white coats when they finally come for you. They'll love to hear about it as they're strapping you into a nice warm canvas jacket.
No conspiracy required. You didn't read my comments. It was probably one guy in the administration, maybe, maybe two, but no more. And yes, you are the paranoid schitzophrenic, because you believe a conspiracy of 19 people did it, rather than just one crazy guy.
>> "No conspiracy required."
Well it was either a massive conspiracy or some sort of alien mind control technology was involved. Take your pick.
>> "And yes, you are the paranoid schitzophrenic, because you believe a conspiracy of 19 people did it, rather than just one crazy guy."
Right. Even though Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attacks. Even though multiple foreign governments confirmed the evidence that Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden were responsible. Even though independent sources like Popular Mechanics debunked every aspect of the 9/11 Truth movement. Or were they all mind controlled and/or part of the conspiracy too?
You are conveniently forgetting that Al Qaeda denied responsibility in the days after the attack. I also urge you to find the video confession of Bin Laden--- and please look at the video. Is it Bin Laden? Be honest, now. We're trying to do "truth" here.
The "multiple foreign governments" were responding to a wave of intelligence agency rumors that there was something up with hijacking airplanes using Al-Qaeda agents. Al-Qaeda has been CIA infilitrated and has close contacts with the US since the 1980s, when they opposed the Soviets. All this intelligence stuff is rumors and innuendo, there is no peer review, and I agree that there were rumors that a 9/11 style attack was going to happen, and these rumors reached a crescendo right before 9/11. It is likely to me that these rumors were planted by our fellow, the single lone conspirator.
The popular mechanics article is a piece of shit, and you would know that if you read it. All the science in it is bunk, and it is refuted all over the internet, correctly and cogently. The folks who wrote it were not part of any conspiracy. There was no conspiracy! It was just one guy. These people are just crap scientists, who follow authority to determine what is true, rather than solving equations.
There was no mind control technology either. It was done by one person, using nothing except military drills and the bureaucratic version of slight of hand. Because nobody knows anything at the end, they will naturally find the most parsimonious answer and stick with it, because they have no better answer. It's just like any other magic trick.
The reconstruction I will give you is largely my own, but the details match with most truther accounts.
There were four military drills on that morning, happening simultaneously:
put big remote-control planes in the sky
fake radar blips, malfunctioning radar
fake hijacking on real planes
simulate flying airplanes into WTC and Pentagon.
Drill 1 is known--- there were military planes in the sky, weird ones, flying all over the East Coast that day. I'll let you look online to verify this.
Drill 2 is known and came out on 9/11. The radar system was being mucked with for a military drill simulating multiple simultaneous hijacking. The simulation just coincidentally happened to coincide with a "real" attack. What a coinki-dink.
Drill 3: I made this one up to complete the story. It is supported by the recollection of some folks at the airport that Mohammad Atta was seated in the cockpit, not in a regular seat. But I just used it to finish the story.
Drill 4: Is "Vigilant Warrior" (not to be confused with "Northern Vigilance" "Vigilant Guardian" or "Northern Guardian", three other unrelated drills that day). This drill involved simulating flights into buildings. There were simulated buildings, various simulated flights, this exercize was going on on 9/11.
So given these drills, what do you do on 9/11?
You just use drill 2 (radar blips) to switch the radar blips for the drones from drill 1 and the planes from drill 3, and use drill 4 to get unwitting piots to fly your real drones into the WTC and Pentagon, while they are thinking they are doing a simulation!
Then it looks like 3 planes have been hijacked and flown into the WTC and Pentagon. But not quite. If you examine the WTC plane closely, you can see the underbelly is consistent with a standard remote-piloted 767 size military plane and not a passenger jet. The military plane has a remote guidance system attached, which is a bump on the bottom, and you can see it with your own eyes in every photo taken of the bottom of the second plane.
Nobody has any clue at the beginning. Only three or so people know at the end, the simulation pilots. and they are as freaked out as anyone else.
Regarding the hijackings for drill 3--- there are 5 CIA agents on each flight, 4 in the passenger area, 1 in the cockpit. Someone stands up in the back and says "I have a bomb", the pilots are told to pretend it is a hijacking. The passengers call home saying they are being hijacked. The planes are landed at an air-force base (there is a base on the path of flight 11 and flight 175) and the passengers are transferred to flight 11.
Then flight 93 passengers are transferred to flight 11 (I am not sure if the flight 77 passnegers were transferred already at the gate, or if they were also transferred at a base). Finally, flight 11 (as flight 93) is shot down with a missile (even non-truthers know that flight 93 was shot down, this was authorized by the VP).
The planes for flight 93 and flight 175 are flown (empty) to Cincinatti, and are possibly still in operation. These flights were identified in Pilots for 9/11 Truth, from ACARS data, as headed to Cincinatti long after they were supposed to be destroyed. Flight 93 was reported to have landed in Cincinatti, confusing people on 9/11 (truthers are confused on this also, most think a conspiracy was required to get rid of the passengers). The Pilots for 9/11 Truth also have radar data explicitly showing the switcheroo of military drone and jet for flight 175 (one of the WTC flights)
All of these things are done within the scope of the military drills of that day. To get the intelligence agencies to play along, you just plant some secret intelligence regarding Al-Qaeda. To keep the pilots quiet, you need a CIA agency buddy to do terrorist things. Since nobody knows what really happened, they will go with the easiest explanation they can come up with, which is that Bin Laden did it.
Bush probably didn't know a thing. He probably seriously thought Saddam Hussein did it (since he probably knew for sure that Bin Laden didn't do it, since he had ties to the Bin Laden family).
This is my best reconstruction of what happened on 9/11. It is probably accurate, as it matches all the data.
I have explained it several times on ths site. I must add that the only evidence I need is the fact that these suspicious enabling drills were happening on that day. Only these drills can be used to stage the attack, and most of these drills were happening on that day, and there can be no innocent explanation for such a coincidence. If you are simulating multiple simultaneous hijackings on the same day as actual simultaneous hijackings, you're the prime suspect.
I’m trying to give this a fair shake, Ron. Correct me if I’m wrong – it wasn’t easy to follow – but here are the elements I think you’re laying out:
The Drills:
A military drone drill
Radar blip drill
The CIA hijacks real planes drill
A flight simulator drill
The Sequence:
Per drill 3, CIA agents hijack four planes as a training exercise
Pilots are told to pretend it is a hijacking.
Passengers are not told, and call home
Flights 11, 93, and 175 land at an AF base, transfer to Flight 11.
Flight 77 passengers had already transferred at the gate or also land at the base.
Per drill 2, radar blips switch from planes to drones.
Per drill 4, flight simulators are given control of the drones. They eventually hit WTC/Pentagon.
Flight 11 takes off again (now a drone), but as Flight 93, and is shot down.
The real Flight 93 & Flight 175 fly (empty) to Cincinnati
And Some Questions:
What happened to the passengers? Were they executed in Cincinnati?
Do you really think the CIA hijacks civilian plans for training exercises?
Why do the simulator pilots need to bother with detailed simulations of crashing into buildings?
Do you really think one person could have eyes on the drones at the AF base (ready for takeoff, etc) and the status multiple flight simulators, and patch those flight simulators into those drones, and no one would know?
Yes, you got it, except flight 11 wasn't a drone when it took off, it was a normal plane piloted by the pilots and told to go to Washington DC. It was just shot down on the way there, when it's blip was identified as the hijacked flight 93.
It took me a while to figure out how the heck it was done, I was completely mystified by how to pull off 9/11, because, really, nobody can know what they are doing the whole time.
The passengers died on the plane of flight 11 (identified as flight 93) when it was shot down. There were no passengers at Cincinnatti, they were all killed. There were exactly 200 passengers on all the planes together, just enough to fit on one plane.
That's another of the anomalies of 9/11, the mysteriously empty flights-- all the flights were seriously underbooked.
The simulator pilots are told they are doing it to see if terrorist can do it. They don't know what they are doing, they just do as they are told. They did this before in a practice run, 4 months earlier (something like this is documented if you look at the previous months drill).
I think the patching was done under opaque orders by people who didn't know what they were doing. Nobody puts the whole picture together, all they hear is "retrofit this simulator to put the plane under the control of this device". They have no idea what it's used for.
As for coordinating this, there is a special bunker where one particular person, the person in charge of the drills of that day, was present all day during 9/11, with a complete map of all the airspace in the US, all flights, all data, coming in constantly, constantly monitered.
>> "You are conveniently forgetting that Al Qaeda denied responsibility in the days after the attack."
And then claimed responsibility later. So was it the alien mind control again? Did this mysterious person you've posited mind-control an Al Qaeda spokesman to make him take credit for 9/11?
>> "All this intelligence stuff is rumors and innuendo, there is no peer review"
So you're saying that the global intelligence community just sucks at their jobs? They don't bother to authenticate the information they receive, they just repeat it?
>> "and I agree that there were rumors that a 9/11 style attack was going to happen, and these rumors reached a crescendo right before 9/11. It is likely to me that these rumors were planted by our fellow, the single lone conspirator."
LOL So now this "single lone conspirator" is deeply connected with multiple foreign intelligence agencies, and skilled enough to plant rumors all over the world of the 9/11 attacks that completely fooled every intelligence agency in the world?
>> "The popular mechanics article is a piece of shit"
And your credentials for saying so are...what exactly? Yeah, I'm sure it's been "refuted" by all your favorite Truther websites. Just like the Holocaust has been "refuted" by tons of Neo-Nazi websites.
>> "Drill 1 is known"
Known by whom? Just because you read it on a Truther website doesn't make it true.
>> "Drill 2 is known and came out on 9/11. The radar system was being mucked with for a military drill simulating multiple simultaneous hijacking."
Again, known by whom? Where is your proof for any of this?
>> "Drill 3: I made this one up to complete the story."
Oh, you made it up yourself? Well gosh, that makes it extra believable. /sarc
>> "It is supported by the recollection of some folks at the airport that Mohammad Atta was seated in the cockpit, not in a regular seat."
The recollection of whom? Who are they and where are they now?
So basically your argument is that someone in the government (A) put 3 remote-controlled airliners in the air, (B) manipulated radar readings all over New England, (C) "faked" a hijacking on the three actual planes, and (D) flew the drone planes into the WTC and the Pentagon.
And this was all done by ONE PERSON, according to you. ONE PERSON was controlling those remote planes, ONE PERSON was futzing with every radar system in the area, and ONE PERSON somehow hijacked three actual planes full of actual people and flew them somewhere. And the people on those flights were all killed? They must have all been killed, otherwise they would have been getting a lot of phone calls from friends and family when their names appeared on the lists of 9/11 victims. And they can't be fictional people because their friends and family have been interviewed by the media.
So it's your contention that this sinister person tricked at least four Air Force pilots into riding "simulated" flights into the Pentagon and the Twin Towers, and also tricked an AA battery into firing on a civilian aircraft, and none of those people came forward later? The Air Force pilots who flew the "simulated" flights into the WTC didn't wonder why their "simulated" mission was so eerily similar to the attack that happened on the same day? The person who fired the AA gun or missile that took down the last plane never told anyone that flight 93 was actually shot down by him, rather than crashing on its own?
Sheesh. You know, at this point "alien mind control device" would actually make more sense.
One person in charge of the drills, everyone else was just doing their jobs, and did the attack for him, without knowing it.
He didn't trick anyone, the shooting down of the civilian aircraft is well attested by witnesses, everyone knowns flight 93 was shot down, even nontruthers.
There's no one to come forward, nobody knows they did anything wrong. The only people who know the attack was a hoax were the three pilots piloting the drones, and these people were kept quiet.
The intelligence stuff can be planted by one person, once one document is there, all the spies in other agencies read it and copy the intelligence. You can't keep a secret in intelligence, at least not from other agencies.
>> "everyone else was just doing their jobs"
Right. Their "jobs" that day just happened to be acting out the worst terrorist attack on American soil. And none of them noticed at all, is that what you're saying?
Those simulator pilots, they just straight-up ignored the fact that their "mission" was identical to the terrorist attack that happened on the same day? And the person who fired the gun/missile that shot down flight 93, they just happened to not file a report about the civilian aircraft they shot down over American soil? And they just happened to not come forward about it to the media?
This is the problem with conspiracy theories. It relies on the assumption of a vast network of actors, all of which must perform their roles perfectly without a single screw-up, a single person getting cold feet, or a single unwitting pawn realizing what happened after the fact and blabbing to the media.
>> "The only people who know the attack was a hoax were the three pilots piloting the drones, and these people were kept quiet."
In other words, all that BS you've been spewing about this all being the work of one person was a lie. Got it.
So, how were they kept quiet? Were they killed? If so, by whom? If not, how were they persuaded not to confess afterward? How much money would it take for you to murder 4000 Americans in cold blood?
>> "The intelligence stuff can be planted by one person"
Except...it can't. Because that's not how intelligence works.
>> "You can't keep a secret in intelligence"
Except your entire theory relies on the assumption that you can keep a secret from the entire intelligence community. So which is it? Can you keep a secret in intelligence or not?
Nobody kept a secret, each individual involved has no information of value about how they were helping carry out the attack. If you read the description of the attack I gave just a few comments above, you can see that nobody knew anything that was incriminating, they just see that they were taking part is a seemingly innocuous drill on that day.
The drills were terribly suspicious, but people spoke out about those. There is a mountain of testimony regarding these drills, even though they were secret as all heck.
Please review what I wrote, it doesn't take long. i explained how it was done in detail, and you can see that nobody would have any clue. Don't be lazy.
The planting is easy if you have top security clearence, because you outrank everyone on a lower level. So you can insert a top secret high level document that then trickles down to lower levels, and asks for confirmation, which you can always get.
You can even ask person 1 to ask agent A to make a plan about planes, and ask person 2 to spy on agent A and confirm that there is a plan about planes. It's stupid office tricks, it's easy in a compartmentalized agency with tiers of secrecy, I don't want to argue about this, because it is trivial to figure out compared to the actual attack, which is detailed above.
>> "Nobody kept a secret"
Except...they did keep a secret, according to you. They all participated in reenactments of the 9/11 attacks on the same day as 9/11, and according to you, none of them thought this was weird, especially the pilots of the drone planes that crashed into the Twin Towers, and the person who fired on flight 93.
If this did happen the way you think it did, where are the official reports confirming it? Show me proof that these "drills" took place, particularly the ones involving simulator pilots flying planes into the WTC. Show me the massive pile of paperwork that would result if any civilian aircraft was shot down over American soil by an AA battery.
If you can't document these things which you claim have happened, then your "theory" is nothing more than wild imaginings.
>> "If you read the description of the attack I gave just a few comments above"
The description you admitted to essentially making up, don't forget. You have no actual proof of any of this, only vague suspicions that you have pieced together into this fantasy scenario.
>> "The planting is easy if you have top security clearence, because you outrank everyone on a lower level."
Yeah, no, that's not how it works. Intelligence can't just be "planted" like that. The intelligence community is a community, not a network of paper pushers. People do actually talk to each other, and that's what makes your theory so impossible. If someone "planted" this intelligence they would have to include names of agents and sources where it came from, and they can only be confirmed by speaking to those agents and sources. So either the names would have to be fictional (in which case the intelligence couldn't be confirmed) or they would be real people who would of course deny ever reporting the false intelligence.
>> "It's stupid office tricks"
No, it's lunacy. The scenario you describe can't actually happen. It's based on a complete misunderstanding of how the intelligence community and the US government in general actually works.
Oh speak up about the DRILLS. Yes, they did speak up about the drills, that's how we know about them. They were all classified, and all the documents relating to them were shredded in 2002. But people spoke up, because they thought they were fishy.
But the drills only obliquely enable the attack, no one drill resembles 9/11, except in gross outline.
But yes, people did speak up with their suspicions, that's why we have truthers.
I don't want to debate you, please read the literature, the drills are documented, and were considered weird by Bush too.
The scenario I described, or one which differs in inessential details, is exactly what happened, to my mind with certain confidence.
>> “ yes, you are the paranoid schitzophrenic, because you believe a conspiracy of 19 people did it, rather than just one crazy guy”
This is the dumbest thing I have ever read from a “truther”, next to everything else written my Ron Maimon here.
This comment has been deleted January 10, 2016
Modern controlled demolition is often by electromagnetic remote control, no cables, the signals are coordinated by radio (Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth explain this). You don't have to hide anything, no one can see the core--- this is not a building where you can see the support columns. This building was brought down largely by thermite, probably by melting all the steel in the core into a gigantic puddle of molten steel in the basement.
Once the thermite melted all the steel, I am not sure that you need a large number of charges to cut the external frame. The collapse, once the entire core is melted by thermite, only needs to be vaguely helped along at best. There were probably charges around the outside to cut the external steel frame, but they wouldn't need to be enormous, and they can be put in between floors.
But it really doesn't matter what I think or speculate, the science regarding controlled demolition is conclusive, just read it. Your personal "Ridiculous!" "Absurd!" is just your brain revolting against new information, and I can't help you with that.
But all the cell phone use in and around the buildings didn’t trigger your electromagnetic remotes?
As accepted by the US Government through investigation and subsequent criminal prosecutions, and virtually all experts: Explosives were planted in the WTC prior to 9/11 by driving a yellow Ryder truck into the public parking garage beneath WTC. They parked on underground B-2. A non-electronic fuse was lit, and the attackers left the building on foot.
There were explosives in the building on 9/11/2001, and making joke of is just a way of copping out.