Noam Chomsky is still the Left’s hero – but this book shows him at his worst
Chomsky #Chomsky
There are two kinds of celebrity intellectuals: those who ripen with time, becoming more expansive and enigmatic (Michel Foucault, Friedrich Hayek) and those who only become more vinegary and dogmatic with the years (AC Grayling, Ayn Rand). Noam Chomsky – more irascible than ever at the age of 94 – may well be destined for the latter category.
Chomsky is an important, even tragic, figure. He encapsulates the birth of one Left tradition and the death of another: an MIT professor who ruffled feathers in the 1960s protesting against Vietnam, he practically invented the role of the “academic-activist”, much to the horror of conservative circles. But as a Left-wing radical with an uncompromising attitude to academic freedom, he is now a breed on the edge of extinction. A devotee of Enlightenment values with an ardent belief in objective truth, he has, since an infamous televised showdown with Foucault in 1971 – in which the two debated the existence of a universal human nature – proved unsuccessful in coaxing his comrades from the rabbit-hole of postmodern navel-gazing.
Chomsky nonetheless remains a legacy figure on the Left, with a sustained demand for his rough pearls of wisdom and street-combat polemics. So much so that the social scientist CJ Polychroniou has put together a new collection of interviews with him, on topics ranging from climate change and the state of American democracy to geopolitical instability. Yet this swirling, breathless and at times confused compilation, awkwardly titled Illegitimate Authority, only reflects the Left’s desperate search for intellectual clarity in a world of which it is struggling to make sense.
Polychroniou’s frantic preface is an early warning not to expect too much. He informs us that we are living in “dangerous and disconcerting times”, plagued by economic degradation and proto-fascism. Perhaps because he shares so many of Chomsky’s radical views and is, by first order, an academic rather than a journalist, his interview technique is cliquey, rambling and unprobing. His questions are absurdly leading: he asks whether Chomsky “shares the view that neofascism is gaining ground” in America, and solicits his wisdom on “why… the transition to clean energy [is] so slow”. (Apparently it goes without saying that the West’s terrifically ambitious net zero targets are, on the contrary, scandalously insufficient.) On the topic of Israeli forces storming the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem in 2021, he mundanely inquires after Chomsky’s take on “this latest round of neocolonial Israeli violence”.
Such an approach gives Chomsky permission to slouch into his laziest armchair-intellectual mode. We’re treated to a potted history of “the Zionist goal to rid the country of Palestinians”, from Israel’s choice of “expansion over security and diplomatic settlement” in 1967 to the “free reign for Israeli crimes” under Trump. That this cartoonish account of the conflict glosses over vital twists, such as the Arab rejection (but Jewish acceptance) of a two-state solution in 1947, goes unchallenged. Neither interviewer nor interviewee seem to have the faintest grasp of the conflict’s crux: both sides’ refusal to recognise the other’s right to self-determination. In the end, we’re treated to militant Chomsky on autopilot, rapid-firing on an impressive range of targets from US Republican racism and climate denialism to British imperialism.
It’s a shame, because there is a more interesting side to Chomsky. His views on human nature, freedom of speech, the dangers of the corporate-state complex, the disconnect of Left-leaning academics from working people and the perils of postmodernism are worthy of engagement, whatever one’s position on the political spectrum. And, despite Polychroniou’s best efforts, that incisive Chomsky threatens on occasion to seep to the surface. On the demise of neoliberalism, his quoting of Marxist Antonio Gramsci that “the crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born” is devastatingly accurate. His analysis on the pathology of American foreign policy – the weakness for hubris, the overlooked capacity for petty vindictiveness – is pertinent, however harsh. On the need for compromise in Ukraine, he is refreshingly measured.
Ultimately, though, Chomsky’s weakness for conspiratorial pseudo-theorising triumphs. The US system, for instance, is “broken” because of the neoliberal destruction of the unions and the “masters of mankind’s” grip on the policy agenda. Such a bare-boned take fails to engage with the meaty question of the culture wars – a topic out of Chomsky’s comfort-zone – and the religio-philosophical divide that has characterised America since its inception, between the (Northern) activistic evangelicalism and the (Southern) individualised kind. Barren analysis is, sadly, a running theme. The Republican party is a “radical insurgency” with “fascist symptoms” including “extreme racism, violence” and worship of a leader sent by God. Trump, we are told, implemented policies purely “for the benefit of his primary constituency of great wealth and corporate power”. These comic-book views are risibly far from the heart of the matter, which is that the American Right has been thrown into turmoil as it shifts economically Leftwards in the light of neoliberalism’s implosion. When Chomsky’s logic threatens to lead the conversation into millennial-triggering territory, he has a habit of holding back. He mentions his “contempt for the wild men in the wings” of liberal intellectual life, but keeps that diplomatically vague.
Strangest of all, though, is that Polychroniou’s bid to tap the wisdom of Chomsky in his twilight years should not also engage with his major academic contributions. While his universal grammar theory might, at first glance, seem of little relevance to the questions of climate change, divided America and Middle Eastern wars, it was surely worth exploring to what extent Chomsky’s academic work reflects and informs his political worldview. A failure to do so may explain why Illegitimate Authority never gets stuck into the most interesting aspects of Chomsky, not least his adamant rejection of the moral relativism that now dominates liberal-Left discourse, and his faith in a universal human essence.
It may also explain why Polychroniou falls into the trap of revering Chomsky as a tribal elder, rather than quizzing him as a distinguished but ultimately fallible academic. It’s a fatal oversight: his muse’s academic journey is actually rather instructive. Chomsky, for instance, is yet to seriously respond to the latest academic criticisms of his neat, reductionist linguistic theory. This may reveal a certain defensive stubbornness and a weakness for simple, arresting ideas over messy, uncomfortable realities – which has, of course, always been the Left’s weakness when it comes to grappling with the issues of the day.
At best, Illegitimate Authority is a mildly entertaining insight into the blinkered thought patterns of the liberal Left. But this particular compilation of interviews doesn’t get beyond the level of JCR politics. It is tofu-bait for climate activists, anti-racists and the anti-capitalist tin-foil hat brigade. As an exercise, it preys on – instead of reflecting on – the hysterical tone of our age.
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