Saturday, November 19, 2005

The Guardian Capitulates to Chomskyite Censorship

The Guardian has apparently given in to Chomskyite pressure and withdrawn their critical interview with the good professor. I don’t see anything in this mea culpa that would justify such an act, but the inability of an ostentatiously leftist publication to sustain such a heresy as an actual piece of journalism is hardly much of a surprise. The speed with which the partisans of free thought and inquiry resort to censorship when their sureties are challenged can be absolutely breathtaking. In my opinion, they should have printed the interview and their correction side by side and allowed Brockes a chance to respond. For the record, nothing in Brockes’ article suggested that the Srebrenica massacre was denied, only that certain partisans had claimed it was exaggerated, and that Chomsky had expressed effusive praise of their work. The Guardian appears overly eager to renounce its transgressions, even where none exist. In that context, this line has to be marvelously ironic: “Both Prof Chomsky and Ms Johnstone, who has also written to the Guardian, have made it clear that Prof Chomsky's support for Ms Johnstone, made in the form of an open letter with other signatories, related entirely to her right to freedom of speech.” He said the same thing about Robert Faurisson, and it wasn’t true then either. Free speech, apparently, absolves a multitude of sins; that is, if you’re on the right side of the Chomskyite divide.