medialens details a sloppy attack on Chomsky initiated by the Guardian when it published this “interview” by Emma Brockes, ‘The greatest intellectual?‘ (The Guardian, October 31, 2005). There’s much more to it and you can read about it here.
Prospect‘s poll asking who is the world’s leading “public intellectual” was won by Chomsky and by a wide margin. The journal solicited Robin Blackburn and Oliver Kamm to write ‘For and against Chomsky‘ in response to the results.
Chomsky and Herman attempted to cast doubt on the reports of the brutal, forced evacuation of Pnomh Penh by the Khmer Rouge. The reports, written by Sidney Schanberg of The New York Times and Jon Swain of The Times (London), were based solely on personal observation from their refuge in the French embassy. Schanberg and Swain observed numerous bizarre details, including the crippled and severely wounded being forced to crawl or being wheeled in their hospital beds by their relatives out into the countryside. But Chomsky and Herman are not convinced. They have managed to come across an important, hitherto undiscovered document which casts the whole issue in a new light. It is nothing less than News From Kampuchea, a broadsheet published by Khmer Rouge sympathizers living in Australia. In this important publication Chomsky and Herman have found a very different account of the evacuation. It is by the noted authority Shane Tarr and his wife Chou Meng, New Zealand residents whose principal claim to fame is the pro-Pol Pot newsletter they co-edit. The Tarrs also claim to have participated in the long march out of Phnom Penh into the countryside, but after three days returned (or were returned) to the French Embassy to await their deportation from the country. The Tarrs claimed that the march was not forced, that everyone was willing to go, and that there was no suffering or executions as the insidious Western press reported. They were happy to have been able to participate in the “wonderful” revolution. And Chomsky and Herman found them to be more credible and reliable than the journalists who observed the Khmer Rouge atrocities.
The Guardian Backs Down
Beardy – the charge you write about has generated many arguments pro and con Chomsky over the years that are still available through Google. I don’t have anything new to add to them.
What do you think of Washington’s angry reaction to Vietnam’s overthrowing of Pol Pot’s gov’t in 1979?