What is your opinion on Noam Chomsky's political writings?

I adore him and his writings and teachings. I saw him speak last summer…it was absolutely awesome.

Never actually read anything by him but I have listened to tons of his speeches. The man is brilliant and I love what he has to say, but its always so horribly depressing (which isn’t his fault, its the world’s fault for being such a way)

@benjaminlevi I highly recommend the book I mentioned above. If memory serves, it’s his newest (despite being ~2 years old) and it’s still fairly relevant.

Also (for everyone), here’s an interview from a couple of weeks ago.

His ideas about the the complete immorality of pumping money into the IMF is right on. We prop up an institition which enslaves the populations of the Third World. This has absolutely no place in a forward thinking democratic world vision.

Let me be contrary and say that his views on the Arab-Israeli conflict and the “control” of the USA by Israel are wrong.

Face it, he’s one of the smartest people on the planet.

Particularly his views on mass manipulation by the mainstream media are dead on, and no one makes anarchy sound as sexy as Chomsky.

One of the great minds of our time.

I generally tend to agree with him, but not all the time. I can’t really give examples because it’s been a while since I read anything of his. One thing I find interesting, though, is the ordered and precise nature of his mind. I do not believe he is a musician, but if he had chosen to go that way, he probably would have been a good one.

He holds up a mirror to our collective consciensness!

His arguments and critiques, are difficult to refute, furthermore such is the growing popularity and acceptance of his writings within the English Speaking western consciousness, that Capitalism will never again be sold to the world as the force of global emancipation…(this being the standard marketing ploy) instead we are shown the stark and ugly truth of naked greed, aggression and imperialism.

@mammal
The thing is they’ll still buy what we have to sell and that’s all corporations care about. Red China is hardly a bastion of liberty but it’s not stopping Coke and Microsoft. They don’t really care what the governments do.

@SeventhSense the apathy and resignation, perhaps as consumers we should regulate our consuming habits, until the revolution gets underway…

@mammal
Revolution? I’d love to see the plan

One of the English speaking Worlds greatest contemporary intellectuals, put to the test by one of the world’s most skillful and searching interviewers

@mammal
and that’s the litmus test as to why he doesn’t have even more influence. You can’t be a leader if you can be interviewed by an Ali G. or Stephen Colbert but fail to realize it’s a joke.

@SeventhSense Ha, Ha, i like to think Noam or `Norman’ to Ali G, handled that interview with a good deal of openess and patience, quite sweet really :)

@mammal
Nah he was actually like a deer in the headlights-he didn’t see it…and if he had gone on much further he wouild have gotten really irate I imagine. It’s like the old Stuttering John(Howard Stern) interviews, some celebrities had a sense of humor and others didn’t.

@SeventhSense yeah spot on, but mercifully it wasn’t long enough to get that cruel