http://www.barrettforcongress.us/chomsky.htm
Noam Chomsky Does Not Want You to Read This
By Dr. Kevin Barrett
Noam Chomsky Does Not Want You to Read This
By Dr. Kevin Barrett
I have decided to go ahead and post my recent email correspondence with Noam Chomsky, without his permission, and against his wishes, despite his claim that by doing so I am violating his privacy, and despite my earlier statement to him that I would respect his privacy.
In my most recent newsletter (sign up by emailing me at kbarrett@merr.com) I explained that Chomsky had backed out of our scheduled interview on false pretenses, and that I was considering posting the correspondence, in which he falsely calls me a liar. I do not like being called a liar, and I would like to find out what others think about this when they read the email record.
There seems to be no legal objection to publication. One of my newsletter subscribers, Bill Scott, sent me his unsolicited opinion: "In the opinion of William Sumner Scott, Esquire of The Scott Law Firm, P. A. of Miami, FL, Prof Chomsky may be quoted without direct comment upon what he said or edits without his permission - his voluntary transmission of his email to me includes the right for me to republish was he said as long as my publication is accurate."
Whatever the law says, I would normally respect my email correspondents' right to privacy. But in Chomsky's case I am making an exception.
Chomsky has accused me of lying, based on this email record. If he is right, I need to know that, so I can apologize to him and avoid making the same kind of mistake in the future. If he is wrong, as I believe he is, I think his persistence in a clinging to a demonstrably false belief, as shown by this correspondence, needs to be taken into consideration by those who take seriously his statements on gravely important subjects, especially the 9/11 controversies.
Our correspondence, in which we largely agreed in our critiques of empire, "agreed to disagree" on 9/11, and scheduled a radio interview, hit two major snags, foundered, and finally sank.
The first snag was Chomsky's claim that I had promised to completely avoid bringing up the subject of 9/11 in our interview. In fact, had I made no such promise. I had simply suggested that we "emphasize our areas of agreement." When one emphasizes one aspect of a topic, that does not mean that one completely eliminates all mention of the other aspects. Chomksy's misreading of the email record, and his persistence in clinging to that misreading after I had called his attention to it, is symptomatic of the deep irrationality, tinged with reflexive hostility, that colors his attitude toward those who question the official version of 9/11. A psychologist might suspect that Chomsky has such a strong desire to avoid any discussion of the empirical facts of 9/11 that he misreads by projecting his desire upon words that clearly say the opposite. As the French saying goes, "il prend ses désirs pour des réalités" - he mistakes his desires for realities.
The other snag was the question of whether Chomsky thinks it really matters who did 9/11. He has been widely quoted as saying "it doesn't matter." Those quotes, along with Chomsky's unremitting hostility to the 9/11 truth movement, his blithe insistence that even if the World Trade Center was taken down by controlled demolition that would simply prove that Bin Laden did it, his complete refusal to examine and debate empirical evidence, and so on, seem to suggest that he thinks the truth about 9/11 is unimportant. When I posted those quotes, along with William Blum's million-dollar question - "Why doesn't Chomsky think it would be important to prove 9/11 was an inside job?" - Chomsky responded with an angry tirade, claiming that the "it doesn't matter" quotes were taken out of context, and that in fact he thinks it WOULD matter very much to prove that 9/11 was an inside job, because it would be important to convict Bush and Cheney. I responded by accepting his explanation about the quotes, and apologizing for taking them out of context. His response was another angry tirade. So I apologized again, and then a third time - eliciting more angry demands that I apologize, as if I had not already done so three times!
A charitable inference from Chomsky's statements is that he thinks the only reason it would be important to prove 9/11 was a false-flag attack is to convict Bush and Cheney before they leave office. Informed that 9/11 lawsuits such as Ellen Mariani's were quashed for "national security" reasons, Chomsky wrote: "Rather, you and your associates should file a lawsuit that does not request any evidence, and therefore won't hit a national security barrier. That conclusion follows directly from your assertions and charges. The TM has already delayed so long that it may not be worthwhile, but at least there are a few months left." (My emphasis.)
Chomsky ignores the obvious: 9/11 doubled the military budget overnight, stripped Americans of their liberties and destroyed their Constitution, launched two illegal Nazi-style wars of aggression, and justified the murder of more than one million Muslims because they are Muslims. None of this will magically end when Bush and Cheney step down. The military budget will not return to pre-9/11 levels. The Constitution will not be magically restored, and the many blatant unconstitutional acts, approved by Democrats as well as Republicans, will not magically vanish. The wars of aggression in Afghanistan, Iraq, and perhaps Pakistan and Iran - all psychologically justified by the demonization of the "Muslim" 9/11 patsies and by extension Muslims in general - will not magically end. The one-million-Muslim holocaust launched by 9/11 will not magically cease; it will in all probability expand, as oil prices rise and Israel's strategic situation becomes more precarious. And the use of murderous false-flag attacks to trigger wars, authoritarianism and genocide will not magically follow Bush and Cheney into the proverbial dustbin of history.
Only the full exposure of 9/11 truth - the truth that 9/11 was a false-flag attack designed to demonize Muslims and justify their mass murder, while destroying liberty and militarizing society - will undo all this damage, and then some. Full exposure of 9/11 truth will enrage Americans, who will demand that the military-industrial complex and its national security state be destroyed once and for all. It will enrage them into slashing the military budget by more than 90% and returning to a "defend the borders" rather than "conquer the world" posture. It will enrage them into demanding a return to Constitutional rule. It will enrage them into cutting US ties to Israel, and thereby restoring good relations with the Muslim peoples of the oil-producing lands.
For some reason, Chomsky does not seem to want this to happen. Why not? Read our correspondence, and the rest of Chomsky's writings on 9/11, along with "The Shame of Noam Chomsky and the Gatekeepers of the Left" in Barrie Zwicker's Towers of Deception...and see if you can figure it out. Maybe it will seem obvious to you, "so simple a five-year-old child could understand it." Well, to quote Groucho, please find me a five-year-old child, because I can't make heads or tails of it.
-Kevin Barrett, 5/22/08
----- Original Message -----
From: Kevin Barrett
To: Noam Chomsky
Sent: Saturday, April 19, 2008 11:55 AM
Subject: radio interview request
Dear Noam Chomsky,
As one of three American scholars to have lost a tenured or tenure-track job due to questioning the official story of 9/11 (the other two are Steven Jones, who just co-published a paper in a peer-reviewed engineering journal on the case, and Judy Wood) I would appreciate the chance to discuss this and other issues with you on one of my three talk radio shows: http://www.mujca.com/airwaves.htm
I have recently interviewed Richard Falk and Daniel Ellsberg, among others. My shows feature lengthy, detailed, thoughtful discussions of the most important issues. Richard Falk recently wrote:
"Thanks! It was one of the most satisfying interviews I have ever done. You were wonderfully well prepared, and raised the right issues." The interview is archived at: _http://www.alexjonesfan58.com/mp3/20080324_kevinbarrett_richardfalk.mp3
An appearance on my show could help heal some of the bad feelings that have developed among those who admire your work but not your interpretation of 9/11. This recent peer-reviewed engineering journal article may give you a chance to pause, reflect, and temper some of your earlier views:
_http://www.bentham.org/open/tociej/openaccess2.htm
Please let me know if you would be willing to do an interview. Currently all May dates are available, including:
Mondays and Fridays, 5-7 pm Eastern
Tuesdays 9-11 pm Eastern
Saturdays 6-8 pm Eastern
Thank you for all the excellent work you have done, and I look forward to hearing from you.
Kevin
608-583-2132
Dr. Kevin Barrett
Co-founder, MUJCA-NET: http://mujca.com
Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance for 9/11 Truth
Author,
Truth Jihad: My Epic Struggle Against the 9/11 Big Lie
Editor,
9/11 & American Empire: Christians, Jews, and Muslims Speak Out
Please look at
_http://patriotsquestion911.com
On Apr 19, 2009, at 1:38 PM, Noam Chomsky wrote:
Appreciate the invitation, and would like to arrange it, but I'm afraid I cannot do so soon. My time is very limited under difficult current circumstances, and every free moment, literally, is scheduled far ahead. I can check at my office, but I think for over a month, at least. That aside, I'm afraid if we can arrange it, it would have to be pre-recorded. I cannot schedule anything at the hours you mention. Not to be mysterious, my wife is severely ill, needs constant attention, and I can only schedule when proper home care is available, not after 5.
Thanks for the reference to the journal. I looked through the article, but it can't temper my views about the collapse of the buildings just for reasons of logic: I have never expressed any views on the topic, and have none. I do not have the expert knowledge of civil-mechanical engineering and the structure of the buildings to investigate the arguments presented, and do not intend to spend the enormous amount of time and effort required to attain it. Therefore I treat the matter exactly as I (and scientists generally) treat other technical matters beyond their specialist knowledge: intelligent design, global warming, etc. Namely, wait until the material is presented in some scientific journal (say Science, Nature, the professional journals of civil engineering, etc.), where it can be evaluated by other specialists, permitting outsiders to arrive at some evaluation. I still do not understand why those who believe in one or another theory about the collapse of the buildings do not do that. I've never heard of this journal, but will be interested to see if specialists take the journal and the article seriously and will react, either by accepting the views, or responding to them. As in other cases. Until then, I'll be compelled to continue to have no opinion, just as no one who lacks the specialist knowledge can have an opinion. Hence I'll also express no opinion, as in the past, so therefore cannot temper my opinions.
Very sorry to hear about your dismissal for expressing your views. That's plainly intolerable, and I hope some action has been taken. It's not only intolerable, but quite surprising. I have my own experience in these matters, and have only rarely come across cases of dismissal even for expressing view that are far more offensive to power interests. Just to take a personal example, I was one of the organizers of resistance during the Vietnam war, and was saved from a probable long prison sentence only because of the Tet offensive, which led the government to cancel the announced trial, in which I was to be the main defendant. But even though MIT was almost entirely funded by the Pentagon, neither I nor others in the lab where I worked -- the main academic center of the resistance movement -- were threatened in any way within the university. I was in fact teaching courses on international affairs, and did not hesitate to express my opinions, which were well known. But I did this (for over 25 years) on my own time, not within the framework of professional responsibilities.
I'm struck by your reference to "bad feelings." That's a curious feature of the Truth Movement, one of many that distinguishes it from activist movements generally. The source, perhaps, is reliance on rumors, perhaps the kind of rumors that led you to believe that I have opinions on the collapse of the buildings, though I have never expressed any, and cannot, for the reasons mentioned. I suppose another source is the curious "with us or against us" mentality that pervades much of the movement: either you accept our claims, or you're a "left gatekeeper." I've never seen anything like that in 60 years of activist engagement.
Noam Chomsky
----- Original Message -----
From: Kevin Barrett
To: Noam Chomsky
Sent: Sunday, April 20, 2008 11:59 AM
Subject: Re: radio interview request
Dear Noam Chomsky,
Thank you for your quick and thoughtful reply.
I am very sorry about your wife’s illness. I wish you both well in your trying situation.
I just spent a few minutes on the porch of our log cabin overlooking a bow lake of the Wisconsin River. It is just past dawn on the second warm day of springtime here, and the birds are at the peak of their symphony. It occurred to me, as I listened to them, that each species’ song is opaque to the other species. Like humans according to Steiner’s After Babel, the birds guard their secrets. The beauty of their song is not unrelated to its tendency toward idiolect.
You would enjoy the scene here—the mist rising from the lake, the ebb and swell of warbling and twittering, the warm, rich smell of recently-melted earth.
If we could sit together on the porch, and converse over a pot of tea, we would find plenty of common ground. Curiosity about the miracle of language and its place in the larger miracle of existence (the subject of The Conference of the Birds by the Sufi poet Attar)...a commitment to the life of the mind under the moral imperative “speak truth to power”...a preference for rationalist traditions over brute empiricism...and of course a certain critique of the US empire and the inhuman technocratic capitalism of unenlightened self-interest it represents.
If the subject of 9/11 came up, we would bemusedly discover that our views are as incommensurate as the songs of different species of bird. Bemusedly, I say, not angrily. There is no reason for the cardinal to be angry at the robin! What’s more, we humans are capable of reflection and a high degree of self-awareness, though we rarely use those abilities. Critical thinking, and the kind of disinterestedness the Buddhists call non-attachment, can also help human dialogue, however incommensurate the positions it begins with, amount to something more than the chirping of birds.
Speaking of the destruction of the three New York skyscrapers on 9/11, you say “I do not have the expert knowledge of civil-mechanical engineering and the structure of the buildings to investigate the arguments presented...” I accept that you sincerely hold this position. (David Griffin’s new book, 9/11 Contradictions, was specifically written for you and others who feel this way.) Still, I find it puzzling that you feel you need expert knowledge to understand the paper by Dr. Jones et. al., while I find it fairly easy to understand, despite my lack of training in relevant fields. While I would like to flatter myself by imagining myself more intelligent than you, I am afraid that any such imaginings would be delusional. Perhaps my years of study of the disputes about the WTC have prepared me to understand Dr. Jones' paper. If so, I have no doubt that you could spend far less time on the material than I have, and understand it far better.
From my perspective, this is not a matter that requires expertise. Frankly, I cannot understand how anyone with eyes, who employs them to witness the many extant videotapes of the destruction of these buildings, can fail to understand that these buildings did not fall down—they exploded. Look at the multi-ton steel beams being hurled upward and outward more than 500 feet to impale themselves in neighboring buildings. One only needs a four-year-old’s grasp of the physical world to know that objects fall down, not up-and-out. (I could continue listing the many obvious visual proofs of explosive demolition, but I’m sure you have heard it before.)
Additionally, a few simple facts, easily grasped by anyone, offer a strong prima facie case for demolition. It is an undisputed matter of record that no tall building anywhere on earth, in more than 100 years of architectural history, has ever completely collapsed for any reason other than controlled demolition, with the alleged exception of the three New York skyscrapers on 9/11. It is also an undisputed matter of record that the destruction of all three of these buildings bore at least ten exclusive characteristics of controlled demolition. Not one of these phenomena has ever occurred anywhere on earth except during controlled demolitions. Even one such characteristic would be prima facie evidence for controlled demolition. Ten suggests ironclad proof. Whether one holds a degree in engineering, as my father did, or four advanced degrees in languages and literature, as I do, these facts are the same. Having argued this subject with dozens of engineers who have insisted on such howlers as “the buildings fell seconds after the planes knocked out their columns” and “steel melts at 1500 degrees f.” and so on, I would be amazed that the American engineering community produces cars that roll, planes that fly, and buildings that remain standing for awhile, if I had not studied the psychological processes of coercion that operate below the level of conscious thought, and produce irrational beliefs in scientists and laypeople alike: http://www.mujca.com/apocalypse.htm
You express puzzlement that many 9/11 truth activists hold “bad feelings” toward you and others who don’t share their interpretations of 9/11. Such negative affect, you write, is a “curious feature of the Truth Movement, one of many that distinguishes it from activist movements generally.” I confess to having intermittently harbored such bad feelings since late 2003, when I discovered the overwhelming evidence that 9/11 was a false-flag operation. Perhaps I can help your sense of empathy expand enough to embrace this “curious feature” of our movement.
Consider: It is only human to get angry when one discovers one has been victimized by a lie. And the strength of the anger is likely to be proportional to the size, and the destructiveness or hurtfulness, of the lie.
As an exercise in empathy, imagine that you have carefully examined the evidence and concluded not only that 9/11 was a false-flag operation, but that it was a botched false-flag operation that left overwhelming, undeniable evidence pointing to its true nature and authors. Then imagine that for whatever reason, most of the consent-manufacturing industry refused to acknowledge the existence of this evidence, and instead pumped out transparently false propaganda supporting the cover story and the wars it was designed to unleash. Finally, imagine that many of those you had taken to be the leading critics of the empire and its consent-manufacturers not only refused to acknowledge the existence of the relevant evidence, but even asserted that it did not matter whether 9/11 was a false-flag operation or not! Surely you can understand why the discovery of such a gigantic and destructive lie would stimulate extreme anger, and why some of that anger would spill over in the direction of those critics of imperial propaganda who, for whatever reason, will not acknowledge the relevant evidence and its obvious importance.
My own intermittent anger is also bound up in my situation as a Muslim personally affected by 9/11, and an academic barred from my chosen profession due to having carefully and painstakingly researched 9/11, the most important historical event of the 21st century, and spoken publicly about the conclusions of my research.
As a Muslim living in the Islamophobic climate of post-9/11 America, I have had to pull my children out of school and home-school them due to the harassment they were experiencing. I have also suffered under the grotesquely bigoted portrayal of Islam and Muslims in general, and our attitudes toward 9/11 and the 9/11 wars in particular, in the consent-manufacturing industry. Virtually all Muslims understand that no intelligent Muslim, especially one strongly opposed to US/Zionist incursions in the Middle East, would want to perpetrate an attack like 9/11. Just as no intelligent Viet Cong would have wanted to have the destruction of the Twin Towers blamed on the Viet Cong, and no sane ANC fighter against US-supported South Africa would have contemplated blowing up the Empire State Building, no anti-empire Muslim would want to have the destruction of the Twin Towers blamed on anti-empire Muslims! This shatteringly obvious reality, not bigotry, paranoia, or naiveté, explains why the world Muslim community has almost unanimously viewed 9/11 as a probable false-flag operation from the moment it happened. (Even after years of media propaganda, Pew Surveys show that 80 percent of the world’s Muslims still view 9/11 as a probable false-flag operation, a figure that is essentially unchanged from late 2001.) The notion that radical Muslims, more so than other anti-empire folks, are crazed, irrational, suicide-loving fanatics, is a propaganda industry staple and a blood libel.
As a Muslim whose views are in harmony with those of most of the world Muslim community, my voice on these matters has been silenced. And as an honest academic, my voice has also been silenced. Howard Ross, then-Dean of Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, has publicly stated that as part of a 2006 hiring process for a tenure-track job teaching Arabic and Humanities, I was originally the best of three finalists, and then the only remaining finalist after the other two went elsewhere—yet the hiring committee chose to leave the post unfilled in order to deny me the job, purely on the basis of my views on 9/11. Since then, I have been turned down for three lecturing jobs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison—the same kinds of jobs I routinely held from 1995, when I began my Ph.D. program there, through 2006, when I became the focus of an astroturf hate campaign. I have been attacked by 61 state legislators, pilloried in the mainstream media, and held up as a horrible example of an academic who questions 9/11 “pour décourager les autres.” (Unlike you, though, I have not faced political prosecution, perhaps because the sacred, mythic event of 9/11 has allowed dissidents to be silenced as heretics rather than prosecuted.)
As I am sure you can imagine, this trajectory has left me with occasional flashes of anger and bitterness. And I confess that some of that anger and bitterness has been directed toward academics, especially critics of empire, who refuse to engage with the evidence that 9/11 was a false-flag operation. By “engage” I do not mean “accept our claims” but “acknowledge the supreme importance of the issue, study it, and discuss and debate the evidence.”
Ridiculous as it may seem, I cannot find a qualified person to debate me on 9/11—nor can the hundreds of other academics, engineers, architects, retired military and intelligence officers, pilots, and other 9/11 truth advocates who are seeking qualified debating partners. The National 9/11 Debates Project fell apart because no qualified person would agree to defend the official story. Last year, the History Club here at the University of Wisconsin-Madison wanted to set up a debate on 9/11, yet after canvassing the several university departments they could not find a single professor willing to defend the official story--so Jim Fetzer and I “debated” an empty chair. Likewise, at the University of Michigan last year, Kevin Ryan and I were slated to engage in a 9/11 debate with professors there, yet after more than 1,000 invitations were issued, the only response was from a couple of engineering professors who privately acknowledged that the destruction of the WTC was an obvious controlled demolition, but that they could not say so in public without risking their jobs and their department’s funding. Meanwhile, I have been told that the University of Wisconsin-Madison lost more than $500,000 in private contributions to their Engineering Department because of my notoriety, and perhaps quite a bit of public funding as well. No wonder they won’t rehire me.
But why not study and debate this issue? Because it “doesn’t matter”? As a Muslim who has watched more than a million of my people butchered on the basis of what seems to me to be an obvious, easily-disproven blood libel—and as an American who has witnessed what appears to me to be the obvious, pre-planned controlled demolition of the Constitution—and as a citizen of the world who believes the American public needs a profound psychic shock, such as the public revelation of the truth about 9/11, to make us recoil from militarism and begin planetary disarmament— I am at a loss to understand those who say it doesn’t matter whether or not 9/11 was a false-flag operation.
But being at a loss does not equal small-mindedness or ineluctable anger. Bewilderment, according to some Sufis, is the highest stage of enlightenment. I embrace the painful joy of bewilderment at your position on 9/11, and would enjoy exploring that bewilderment with you, whether or not it can be even partially resolved. Whether in the form of a friendly conversation, or a debate, or a bit of both, I think our conversation could be rewarding in many ways, not least of all by helping calm relations between the left and the 9/11truth movement.
I understand your time constraints, and sympathize with the personal difficulties and pain you are experiencing. Perhaps we could schedule an interview at a time of your convenience in, say, June? Any time, any day, would be agreeable to me.
Thank you again for your quick reply, and for the inspiration you have provided so many of us who seek to bear the burden of speaking truth to power.
Sincerely,
Kevin Barrett
On Apr 20, 2009, at 12:19 PM, Noam Chomsky wrote:
Sounds like a marvellous scene, and I wish I could enjoy it with you.
On the substantive matters, I'd first like to make clear that this is a personal letter, not to be distributed. One of the many remarkable features of the Truth Movement is its reliance on gossip for its extensive and passionate vilification campaigns, based on circulating personal letters, phrases extracted from interviews, etc. I'm assuming we agree on this, and so will continue.
I do lack the technical expertise to assess Jones's claims. And having studied the sciences all my life, and spent half a century in the world's leading scientific-engineering university, much of it at the Research Lab of Electronics, I know that it is no simple matter to gain such expertise. Therefore, I treat the matter exactly as I (and all scientists) do when complex technical claims are presented that they are not competent to assess: I mentioned a few examples in my last letter. It's surprising that TM advocates think that this unique case should be treated differently.
On the "bad feelings," your letter expands on what I said about the remarkable features of the Truth Movement (quite apart from its name), which distinguishes it from activist movements. You say, correctly, that "It is only human to get angry when one discovers one has been victimized by a lie. And the strength of the anger is likely to be proportional to the size, and the destructiveness or hurtfulness, of the lie." That's true. Suppose that the government demolished WTC and lied about it. That would rank so low among "the size, and the destructiveness or hurtfulness of the lie," that it would take some work even to go down the list to find it. Consider the lies that led to the massacre of perhaps 4 million people in Indochina and the destruction of three countries (not to speak of creating the Khmer Rouge). Or the lies that led to acquiescence in Reaganite terror, leaving some 200,000 tortured and mutilated bodies in Central America and four countries ruined, perhaps forever; along with 1.5 million corpses in the countries subjected to Reagan-backed South African depredations; and on, and on. Or, since you appropriately see things from a Muslim perspective, consider one of the very minor pecadilloes and lies of leaders, Clinton's destruction of most of the pharmaceutical industry in a poor African (mostly Muslim) country, with an estimated tens of thousands dead -- small by our standards. People who care about atrocities and lies do get angry about the silencing of the facts, the incredible lies, and the vilification of those who try to break the silence. But they don't react in the TM manner, unique in my experience of 60 years, or in anything I've read.
One of the remarkable features of the TM is its ranking of scale of atrocities. I have found that many (I suspect most) of TM adherents have little or no experience with political activism. I don't recognize their names among active protestors of the Indochina wars, Reagan's vicious crimes, Clinton's sanctions against Iraq that were condemned as "genocidal" by the Westerners who know most about Iraq (the two highly respected international diplomats who ran the "oil for food" program and resigned in protest), killing perhaps 1 million people, and on through a long list. Perhaps that explains their extraordinary reactions, so different from those of people who have spent their lives engaged in trying to end incomparably worse atrocities.
On 9/11 dissidents being silenced, that belief may also result from lack of engagement in activism regarding horrendous crimes. In fact, 9/11 dissidents have been granted kid gloves treatment that is quite unusual -- the reason, I suspect, is that the establishment welcomes their main contribution, which has been to draw a great deal of energy and attention away from protest over ongoing crimes that vastly exceed what the TM charges concerning 9/11. They repeatedly appear on CSPAN, are all over talk radio, the books are best-sellers prominently displayed in bookstores, they receive nothing like the hysterical denunciations and slanders to which political activists are subjected regularly, and on, and on. What happened to you is deplorable, and should be vigorously protested. It is also most unusual. I've heard of nothing remotely comparable concerning Griffen, Falk, or other very prominent advocates of the TM, though it's not uncommon, regrettably, in the case of political activists and dissidents.
I have also never seen anything like the incredible arrogance of the TM. To take just one example of the many familiar to activists and dissidents, the US-backed Indonesian invasion of East Timor killed perhaps 1/4 of the population, probably the leading genocide of the late 20th century. Those who spent a great deal of effort for 25 years trying to do something about it were naturally angry about the incredible lies of the press and the intellectual community (Samantha Power, to take a recent example) and their unwillingness to allow the truth to emerge so that the horrors could be ended: continuing horrors, as in the other cases I mentioned. But I can't recall that any of us produced a flood of denunciations of those who went along with the government/media line -- that is, virtually everyone -- condemning them as "gatekeepers," sell-outs, or worse. These reactions are unique to the TM, in my experience.
Also unique is its unwillingness to think through simple questions. Let's suppose it turns out that the WTC was destroyed by a controlled demolition. Then who would the finger point to? Osama bin Laden, obviously. After all, related groups came close to blowing up the WTC in 1993, and with a little better planning, would have killed perhaps 10,000 people. Furthermore, no one else gains by attributing the crime to Saudis, bin Laden's main enemy. In contrast, for the US government to implicate Saudis would be near lunacy. That undercuts their alleged goal of laying the basis for an invasion of Iraq -- for that, they would have certainly implicated Iraqis, so that they wouldn't have had to concoct fantasies, quickly demolished, about Saddam's responsibility. The choice of Saudis also seriously harmed relations with one of their most valued allies, and caused them extreme embarrassment, including the need to fly Saudi businessmen quickly out of the country in violation of their closing of air space (and rather odd, if they'd planned to implicate Saudis). That's just for starters.
You and others have every right to pursue your priorities, but not to have "bad feelings" about others who pursue what they regard as much more urgent priorities (rightly, even transparently in my opinion). Your concern over what you see as lies is appropriate, but as noted, far down the list of such regular behavior of states, media, and the general intellectual community. And the extraordinary arrogance and self-indulgence of the TM ought to concern people who adopt its priorities.
Noam Chomsky
----- Original Message -----
From: Kevin Barrett
To: Noam Chomsky [Chomsky's responses included]
Sent: Sunday, April 20, 2008 6:04 PM
Subject: Re: radio interview request
Thank you for this eloquent letter. I will respect your wish for privacy.
I am in complete agreement with you about the relative scale of the atrocities you cite, including 9/11. But I am in complete disagreement with several of your other points.
First, you claim that the lies about these much larger atrocities are bigger than the lie about 9/11. The size of a lie does not depend on the size of the atrocity it falsely describes. Instead, it depends primarily on how loudly and widely the lie is disseminated, the psychological and especially emotional impact of the lie, and the audacity with which the lie contravenes the truth. In my opinion, these factors raise the 9/11 big lie far beyond any specific lie about any specific event ever told in history. I admit that there have been general lies of equivalent scale -- blood libels against Jews, repeated claims that the Soviets were ahead in the arms race when in fact they were far behind and suing for disarmament, and so on. But no single lie about any single event--not even "Oswald acted alone"-- comes close to that of 9/11. The emotional impact of 9/11 on Americans was overwhelming. A great many, probably the great majority, reacted by entering a long-term state of murderous hatred of Arabs and Muslims. That is why Americans perpetrated the cargo container massacres in Afghanistan. That is why they built a worldwide sex torture gulag. That is why they film themselves sodomizing Iraqi children in front of their parents. That is why the American people as a whole tacitly approves of those activities. And that is why, when they wake up and understand that the enemies of Muslims, rather than Muslims, perpetrated the crimes of 9/11, they feel a tremendous anger at the lie that turned them into subhuman, ravening beasts. Never before in history has a lie about a specific event had such a profoundly dehumanizing effect on a people.
Chomsky: You're so wrong about this I barely know how to begin. The crimes you mention are real, but aren't even a minute fraction of the crimes in Vietnam. Or Iraq. In the 1990s, for example, Clinton's sanctions killed probably 1 million Iraqis, but the lying was so phenomenal that the most knowledgeable Westerners were completely silenced: the highly respected international diplomats who ran the "oil for food" program, both of whom resigned because they regarded it as "genocidal." Von Sponeck's crucially important book about this did not receive a word of mention in the US, and he himself was completely silenced, as was Halliday. These crimes against Muslims preceded 9/11, and are far worse than those you describe -- which are, in fact, bitterly condemned by Americans, including the mainstream media, contrary to your remarkable claim. And that's the merest fragment.
While I agree with you that the US empire has been perpetrating much larger atrocities during much of its existence, I disagree with your claim that the 9/11 truth movement is impeding effective action to stop those crimes and end that empire.
Chomsky: There is one particle of truth in what you say. The TM appears to consist almost entirely of people who are remote from activism, so the huge amount of attention and energy they devote to this does not in itself reduce activism. But they draw in many others, who find it a lot easier to blog and discuss on the internet and to post on Youtube than to carry out the difficult and demanding work of organizing and activism. Another respect in which the TM differs from activist movements, apart from those I've mentioned, is how little it does about any ongoing crime. According to polls, maybe 1/3 to 1/2 of the population either believe the TM view or consider it plausible. With a fraction of that kind of support serious activists would have made an enormous difference in policy, but the TM organizes no demonstrations against ongoing crimes , no tax resistance or other forms of resistance, no law suits, in fact none of the actions that are second-nature to activists. Just filling cyberspace. That's a large part of the reason why there isn't much more protest against the Iraq war.
On the contrary, I am convinced that the vast majority of the American people will never feel the degree of revulsion that would bring them to end that empire without 9/11 truth. If we take people as they are, rather than as they should be, we must recognize that most will never be profoundly affected by American-sponsored atrocities in places like Indonesia, Vietnam, Central Africa, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
Chomsky: I don't know of any basis for your utter contempt for the American people. I don't think that you and I live on some higher moral plane. And the evidence is strongly opposed to you. By 1969, about 70% of Americans (though not elites) considered the Vietnam war "fundamentally wrong and immoral," not "a mistake," and many millions were directly engaged in actions to stop it. And succeeded: read the last section of the Pentagon Papers on why the Joint Chiefs were unwilling to send more forces to Vietnam after the Tet offensive. In dramatic contrast, the TM is of no concern to the powerful -- it doesn't seem to bother them at all, and it wouldn't be a great surprise if that is confirmed by internal documents, as we have learned about the JFK assassination.
In fact, this correspondence (and the huge number of others like it) itself illustrates how the TM is taken energy and attention away from genuine activism confronting horrifying ongoing crimes. The time we're taking for this discussion is taken away from such activism, on my part at least. And that's multiplied massively. By now, I mostly respond only with form letters for this reason. Maybe TMers have infinite time to pursue their specific interest, instead of acting to put an end to terrible ongoing crimes. But I don't.
But they will be and are being profoundly shaken by the knowledge that forces in their own government blew up the World Trade Center with thousands of Americans inside. That knowledge allows them to emotionally identify with the victims of empire. Millions of conservative, nationalistic Americans--the same people who wanted to kill the Muslims after 9/11--are now supporting Ron Paul's proposal to close every foreign military base, abolish the CIA and the Federal Reserve, scale down the military to a defend-the-borders posture, and effectively end the empire and its long history of atrocities. Their thousands of small contributions has made Dr. Paul's campaign the biggest grassroots fundraising success in US political history.
Chomsky: Ron Paul's campaign has had essentially no effect on policy, and there is not the slightest indication that it will. Fortunately. His ultranationalism, and policies to place the country under the rule of unaccountable corporate tyranny, would be an utter disaster.
Your claim that 9/11 activists get "kid gloves treatment" and that the media and big book chains are promoting the movement strikes me as bizarre. Until the publication of Alten's novel The Shell Game two months ago, the big chains and even many left-leaning independents had refused to stock most 9/11 books while hiding away the few they do stock.
Chomsky: That is completely false. Years ago I saw Griffen's book and others prominently displayed in chains. That's entirely unlike dissident literature, which really is suppressed.
In six years that have seen the publication of at least twenty extremely important critical studies of 9/11, not one of them has ever gotten display space in any major bookstore, to my knowledge. My book, for example, got great reviews, even from Publisher's Weekly, but no bookstores will stock it--not even in liberal Madison, my home town, where I have personally sold several hundred! Even most of the left and alternative media has boycotted these books, usually refusing to even review them. Your book 9/11, by contrast, was massively promoted by the foundation-funded "alternative" media and became a bestseller, convincing a great many people who should know better that radical Muslims were responsible for the single biggest strike against their interests ever perpetrated.
Chomsky: The fact that your book got great reviews reveals how little the TM threatens power and how the TM gets kid-gloves treatment, as compared with activist and dissident literature, which scarcely gets reviews at all, including the left press, and if there is a review, it is almost invariably vilification. That's all well-known to activists. As for the foundation-funded "alternative media," that's as much of a fantasy as the "massive promotion" of my interviews on 9/11. It was a hand-to-mouth operation by a tiny press, with virtually no funding. And to believe that it is that pamphlet that convinced people that al-Qaeda was responsible for 9/11 is to live in a dream world so remote from reality that comment is impossible.
Griffin's books became semi-bestsellers because people like me went into debt (in my case I now owe almost $200,000 counting student loans), sacrificing everything we had to buy dozens or even hundreds of copies and give them away. (I have now given away hundreds of books and more than ten thousand DVDs while raising children below the poverty line and drowning in debt.) When talk radio wouldn't touch the topic, we called in repeatedly and mentioned these books. Finally, today, 6 years after the truth movement arose, we have exactly two second-tier national talk radio hosts, Richard Greene of Air America and Alex Jones of GCN, who are taking on the issue.
Chomsky: I'm glad to learn that you do what activists and organizers do routinely, except that they don't posture about it, but take it for granted. Some day you might want to learn something about people who really have devoted their lives to activism, and who have given up promising careers and livelihoods to live in poverty and vilification (if they are noticed at all). Your two national talk shows are two national talk shows more than available to those who have devoted themselves to state crimes that (you concede) are far more extreme than what you claim about 9/11. Can't you see that you are simply contradicting yourself?
The truth movement has invented or pioneered all sorts of new activism techniques, from parodying the currency, to freeway blogging, to asking the hard questions of public figures and posting the videos on youtube. We have turned the internet into the subversive tool it was meant to be. In short, we are the purest grassroots movement around, and we haven't gotten a dime's worth of help from any foundation or political party or government grant. All of that gets cancelled the moment we speak out. Bob Bowman, who ran for Congress against a forever-incumbent and got 45% on Diebold machines, would have easily won if the Democratic party had given him funding--but his pro-9/11 truth stance got him blackballed by his own party. Many of us, myself included, have had to put up with sporadic death threats, vandalism attacks, and physical assaults. Yet nobody will debate us! If your thesis was correct, and the powers that be wanted to heighten the visibility of the truth movement, why in the world have I been unable to find a single qualified debate opponent after four years of trying and many thousands of invitations issued?
Chomsky: As I said, the TM does essentially nothing about ongoing crimes, contenting itself with internet debates on its sole concern, alleged government involvement in 9/11: again, no demonstrations, no tax or other resistance, no law suits, in fact nothing like what is done by groups with far less outreach, and about ongoing crimes. I'm sorry that you face the routine treatment of activists -- death threats, for example. I suppose you also have to have police protection if you are giving a talk. I'm sure you can think of many reasons why no one wants to take time to debate you.
Your question "who would the finger point to?" puzzles me, because the answer seems so obvious: The many interlaced groups that had something to gain. Those who wanted to invade Afghanistan to restore the CIA-controlled heroin business and snatch the gas pipeline rights from Bridas; those who wanted to invade Iraq to establish permanent US bases and smash the country into ethnic mini-states; those who wanted a new enemy image to replace Communism and justify the military-industrial complex; those who wanted massive military budget increases; those like Silverstein's buddy Netanyahu who felt Israel's survival depended on bringing the US into the Middle East to smash its enemies and balkanize the large states in the region; those who wanted to turn the US into a presidential dictatorship via the unitary executive theory; those who felt that a much higher level of imperial mobilization would be necessary to preserve American hegemony in the next century; those who felt that a pre-emptive mass mobilization against terrorism might help stave off a genuinely debilitating attack (see Bobbit's The Shield of Achilles); those who anticipate a "Peak Oil" civilizational crisis and believe that whoever controls Middle Eastern oilfields will determine who lives and who dies during the upcoming mass die-off (see Mike Ruppert and Jim Kunstler)...this list could go on, but I'm sure you get the idea. Which of these motivations were primary and which were secondary is an open question, of course.
Chomsky: The question was who stood to gain by implicating Saudis. The answer, trivially, is Osama bin Laden, since they are his main enemy. For Bush it was obviously an extremely harmful choice. It undermined efforts to build up support for a war against Iraq (they surely would have implicated Iraqis for that purpose), it seriously harmed relations with a most valued ally, and it embarrassed the hell out of them when they had to fly Saudi businessmen out of the country, violating the closure of air space. All of this is strong evidence that they didn't know even know about it.
Evading that question, the only one that was raised, you are responding to a different question: who gained from 9/11? I think your answers are mostly wrong, and I've explained why in print frequently, but there is no point explaining because you are evading the crucial question, not surprisingly: it is one of the most obvious arguments against TM speculations.
This evasion should make it clear to both of us that there's no point going on. And I won't. I think we can agree that it is a pointless waste of time for both of us.
The one group that clearly would never want a 9/11 would be Muslims who want to roll back the US-Zionist presence in the Middle East. Bin Laden, if we take his statements at face value, approved of anti-US attacks in Arabia and Africa, but repeatedly deplored the 9/11 attacks, which he called un-Islamic and blamed on American Zionists in interviews with Pakistani journalists in September and October of 2001. The media portrayal of Bin Laden as a 9/11 criminal ignores the obvious inauthenticity of the so-called "confession video" of December 2001, which leading Bin Laden expert Bruce Lawrence, chair of Religious Studies at Duke University, says is "bogus," adding that his many acquaintances in the CIA's Bin Laden detail all know it is bogus. Lawrence and other Islamologists, including myself, strongly doubt the authenticity of recent Bin Laden videos. To this day, the FBI insists Bin Laden is "not wanted" for 9/11 because there is "no hard evidence" against him. Yet despite all this and much more, the tacit assumption that Bin Laden and "radical Muslims" did it is still being promoted by people who claim to be leftist critics of empire.
Bin Laden, by the way, almost certainly had nothing to do with the 1993 WTC attack, which was arranged by an FBI informant (and manipulated patsies) who taped himself discussing the fact that the FBI built the bomb with his FBI handler. (The FBI now says Bin Laden is wanted for the African embassy bombings and the USS Cole attack, but not for either World Trade Center attack.) The false-flag nature of the 1993 event is not particularly surprising, given the history of National Security State terrorism against friendly civilians in Gladio, Northwoods, Oklahoma City, and so on; the proven false-flag nature of the attacks in London and Bali; and the suspected false-flag nature of Madrid.
As for the Saudi royals, they may have cut a deal with the US/Zionist 9/11 perps in order to get US forces out of their country and into Iraq and then Iran, thereby solving of their two biggest geopolitical problems, just as it solves Israel's. But they obviously were not the major players nor the major beneficiaries.
I apologize if my expression of my views seems arrogant. I have studied these matters carefully for four years and feel strongly about them. If anything I am saying is incorrect or arrogant, please let me know. Also, I would be interested in learning which 9/11 truth advocates have so alienated you, and how they have done so. To my knowledge, most of the leaders in the field--Griffin, Jones, Ahmed, Gage, PD Scott, Chossudovsky, Thompson,and even your tough critic Barrie Zwicker--are far from arrogant. (Ruppert, Tarpley, and Fetzer can be a bit arrogant, I admit.)
Take care, and thank you again for writing.
Kevin Barrett
----- Original Message -----
From: Kevin Barrett
To: Noam Chomsky
Sent: Sunday, April 20, 2008 10:55 PM
Subject: Re: radio interview request
On Apr 20, 2008, at 9:13 PM, Noam Chomsky wrote:
I understand your point, but completely disagree. Take say the Vietnam and Iraq wars. Transparently, the crimes are far worse than 9/11, but the lies are far worse too. The major lie is the denial that the US is guilty of aggression. That's unspeakable. In the case of Vietnam, the most extreme critics at the left end of the mainstream spectrum could say, at the end of the war in 1975, that the US "intervention" began with "bungling efforts to do good" but by 1969 it was clear that the efforts were a "disaster" and that we could not bring democracy to Vietnam at an acceptable cost. Every word in that account is a flat out lie, comparable to Hitler's claim to have fought a war of self-defense. And the lie was uniform, across the spectrum.
Barrett: You're right.
Today the debate rages between those who say if the US military hadn't been hampered we would have won, and the Lewis position at the opposite end. This lie is vastly more extreme than what you take to be the lies about 9/11, and it led to the slaughter of many millions of people and the destruction of three countries (and the Khmer Rouge, and worse). Exactly the same is true in the case of Iraq. It is impossible to find a principled critique of the US invasion in the mainstream. At most it's a "strategic blunder" (Obama) or we're involved in a "civil war" we can't win (Clinton). Try to find a single voice in the mainstream with a principled critique -- a notion we understand very well, the way we reflexively react with the Russians invade Hungary or Czechoslovakia or Afghanistan or Chechnya, or Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait. I haven't found a word. In fact, the plain truth is unthinkable, and any attempt to state it leads to hysteria, vilification, etc. -- not the kid gloves treatment of the TM.
Barrett: I agree with you completely except for the kid gloves and TM part. I consistently call the Iraq and Afghanistan wars what they are--examples of the supreme war crime, aggression. I consistently laud the Iraq, Afghan, and Palestinian resistance for upholding international law. You should listen to my show some time! The TM is far more receptive to this than the non-TM left-liberals.
These are only a few of the lies of state-media-intellectual culture that are far more extreme than the worst that's claimed about 9/11, and have had utterly horrendous effects.
Barrett: I see 9/11 as the emotional wallop that made these wars, and the lies about them, politically possible. Let the 9/11 lie stand, and the others will stand also, given the unfortunate psycho-cultural realities that make the treasonous murder of even one person of ones own nation FEEL worse than the murder of a million strangers. (Emotions rule the world, not logic.) Take down the 9/11 lie, and the wars, the lies excusing them, and hopefully the whole empire and its military-industrial context will be politically vulnerable in a way they never have been before. I would think you would want to be a part of that!
There are indeed outrageous lies about 9/11. The worst is the near-univeral claim that it is a monstrous act that is unparalled, and therefore changed history to the post-9/11 world. In reality, by any rational measure, it was nowhere near as horrible as what Latin Americans call "the first 9/11," in 1973. But since we were crucially involved in carrying out that atrocity, the thought is inexpressible -- except, of course, in Latin America and elsewhere in the third world.
Barrett: I agree completely. My most-repeated statement about 9/11 is "we're going to shred the Constitution, and commit criminal wars of aggression, for two days' worth of cigarette fatalities; four days worth of deaths caused by medical treatment; or twenty-nine days worth of automobile deaths?" I endlessly repeat this to show that the "war on terror" is a farce, regardless of what you think happened on 9/11.
More below, but I'm afraid I'll have to stop after this, because the chances of our making any progress are too slight for us to be spending our time this way.
Barrett: Well, you've achieved my near-complete agreement with you.
Kevin
On Apr 21, 2008, at 12:18 AM, Noam Chomsky wrote:
Glad to see that we've achieved at least a partial meeting of minds. That's a good sign.
Noam Chomsky
--- Original Message -----
From: Kevin Barrett
To: Noam Chomsky
Sent: Monday, April 21, 2008 8:19 AM
Subject: Re: radio interview request
I think we are in essentially complete agreement on all substantive matters except (1) the strength of the evidence that 9/11 was a false-flag operation, (2) the importance of false-flag operations as a tool of authoritarian and imperial rulers, and (3) the best political strategy for curtailing imperial abuses and hopefully empire itself, in light of (1) and (2).
I'd love to have a radio conversation emphasizing our points of agreement, which are many, and helping educate my TM audience about the history of imperial atrocities much greater than 9/11, and lies arguably greater than 9/11. I have had that kind of conversation with William Blum, John Perkins, and others who emphasize the historical context of empire and its abuses. You are supremely qualified for that kind of conversation, and I would be honored if you would join me at a date and time of your choosing.
Thank you again for your many decades of excellent work, which have been a great inspiration to me.
Kevin
On Apr 21, 2008, at 11:42 PM, Noam Chomsky wrote:
Letter went off before I finished.
I'd be glad to arrange a radio conversation, if it's possible. But the timing you suggested doesn't work for me, as I wrote. And even if we could work something out, there'd be a long wait, necessarily. Demands are far beyond what I can deal with.
And thanks for the generous remarks, appreciated.
NC
Original Message -----
From: Kevin Barrett
To: Noam Chomsky
Sent: Saturday, April 26, 2008 10:39 AM
Subject: Re: radio interview request
Could we go ahead and set a radio date for however far ahead?
Mondays and Fridays, 5-7 pm Eastern
Tuesdays 9-11 pm Eastern
Saturdays 6-8 pm Eastern
The interviews, which are punctuated by commercial breaks, can last from a half hour to the full two hours. I prefer the longer ones, which allow time to really cover the territory, as in my Richard Falk interview.
_http://www.alexjonesfan58.com/mp3/20080324_kevinbarrett_richardfalk.mp3
But however much time you can spare would be greatly appreciated.
I'll be running for Congress on an End the Empire platform throughout the summer. (Libertarian, Wisconsin's 3rd District.) It would be great to have a conversation with the leading critic of empire during the campaign!
Kevin
