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Comment by dane-pgp | Hacker News Reader

I agree that Chomsky is a great thinker, but that doesn't mean he's right about everything. Consider this hot take from the article:

> Putin has settled it for the time being by providing Washington with its fondest wish: a Europe so subservient that an Italian university tried to ban a series of lectures on Dostoyevsky, to take just one of many egregious examples of how Europeans are making fools of themselves.

Subservient? Is he saying that Biden is demanding Italian universities ban discussion of Dostoyevsky, and the helpless Italians are unable to refuse? Could it not be that Europe has suddenly found a sense of common identity in opposing Putin's authoritarianism and military expansion? The unnamed Italian university may be over-reacting, but that's hardly proof that they are taking orders from Washington, or even care about what the US thinks at all.

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Chomsky, for all his intellect and raw brainpower still falls prey to American exceptionalism. I don't fault him either, but the United States is - for now - not a party to this conflict and if they are not willing to guarantee a cease fire they have no place at the table. It has already been proven that any treaty with Russia regarding Ukraine is worth zilch so without a very large stick to back it up there is no point to even go there.

Also, I think the analogy of Mexico joining China is way off base, and an overly simplistic view of everyday reality in Europe.

> Chomsky ... still falls prey to American exceptionalism.

i think that's wrong, but i think you could say he believes in a type of american exceptionalism if your definition of that phrase is something like

    - "unique in the world among nations to be able to act with near-total impunity in any way they/we please -- including committing obvious and ongoing war crimes."

We got away with invading Iraq (2004). Russia invades Ukraine (2022) and a world of sanctions come down on it.

Where were the sanctions against the US? They didn't happen - at least, not large ones. Why? Because the US is, by definition, exceptional. We can do what we want.

> the United States is - for now - not a party to this conflict

hasn't, and isn't, the US providing BILLIONS of military and financial aid and training, diplomatic, ideological, and media support, and more, to Ukraine -- for years already?

do you not believe that the US largely controls the world, including Europe, largely runs Nato as a private army to guarantee US supremacy in trade and other geopolitical interests?

do you claim that Nato, in spite of all its offenses and offensives, is for defense only?

> Also, I think the analogy of Mexico joining China is way off base, and an overly simplistic view of everyday reality in Europe.

i'm not sure what is so complicated about the comparison, or Europe today.

was the cuban missile crisis also too complicated?

He and Mearsheimer fall into the same trap of thinking only the Americans have free will. Everything else is just the natural reaction to what America does, the people in other countries always simply act in response to America provocation or encouragement. Or they react to other countries acting the only way they possibly can to American or provocation or encouragement

He sounds like Bismarck in this interview: casually discussing the US and Russia carving up Ukraine. Pretentious ideologue.

Yes, this is indeed what is irritating, as though Ukraine isn't a sovereign entity that has the ability to make up it's own mind about what it wants. Ukrainian people are the only party that should have a say in any of that. Neither Russia nor the United States have a legitimate interest there other than what the Ukrainians are willing to let them have.

i'm legit baffled every time i see this type of comment.

i don't understand how you listen to, or read, what chomsky says -- and come away with the idea that chomsky thinks the US and/or Russia carving up a country is a _good_ thing, or that he's in _favor of it_, etc.

that's just weird.

> Subservient? Is he saying that Biden is demanding Italian universities ban discussion of Dostoyevsky, and the helpless Italians are unable to refuse? Could it not be that Europe has suddenly found a sense of common identity in opposing Putin's authoritarianism and military expansion?

No. He's saying that Europe is completely subservient to the US, and this extreme subservience is what leads to foolish acts like banning the discussion of Russian authors -- presumably because Russian authors are the enemy... because they are Russian.

The preceding sentences say as much:

> The major effect, I suspect, will be what I mentioned: more firm imposition of the U.S.-run, NATO-based Atlanticist model and curtailing once again the repeated efforts to create a European system independent of the U.S., a “third force” in world affairs, as it was sometimes called. That has been a fundamental issue since the end of World War II. Putin has settled it for the time being by providing Washington with its fondest wish...

> Is he saying that Biden is demanding Italian universities ban discussion of Dostoyevsky, and the helpless Italians are unable to refuse?

No, I believe he is talking about Putin’s mockery of western values. You can see this in Putin’s insistence that Ukraine recognize its issues with white supremacy, instead of recognizing this, the west responds with banning Russian artistic works as an example of how

> Europeans are making fools of themselves

> that's hardly proof that they are taking orders from Washington, or even care about what the US thinks at all.

If you’ve read Chomsky’s works on the propaganda model, his main claims are around the continuation of American hegemony. This sounds like what he’s talking about. That the US interests and order are imposed on a subservient population (in this case, Europe) to meet American demands. In this case, fucking anything that is Russian.

Sometimes I see Chomsky is a victim of his own definition of flak within the propaganda model. Basically by laying claim to the hypocrisy of western media making himself a target for them has made him an unperson, so thanks for expanding your views.

Chomsky (or your summary of Chomsky) seems to me to be interestingly parallel to Putin's view of NATO. Putin says it's the US driving NATO expansion to the east. Reality says that it's a bunch of countries that were in the Warsaw Pact desperately trying to get into NATO to protect them from Russia trying to re-add them to a new Russian Empire.

In the same way, I question how much "American hegemony" is pushed by America, and how much of it is "pulled" by other countries finding "American" values, perspectives, and positions to be more attractive than other alternatives.

Ukraine has agency. The other countries that joined NATO have agency. The Italian universities have agency. They aren't just helpless pawns of "American hegemony".

> In the same way, I question how much "American hegemony" is pushed by America, and how much of it is "pulled" by other countries finding "American" values, perspectives, and positions to be more attractive than other alternatives.

i think the pull exists, at least a little, mainly in areas in free speech, personal wealth accumulation, etc.

but i think 99.99% is push, not pull.

for the 'push' part, you can read this by chomsky (free, online there):

https://zcomm.org/deterring-democracy/

it's not necessarily light reading, but...well, i think our reading abilities have dropped so low that it probably does qualify as complex reading now.

if you don't share chomsky's professed values -- The Golden Rule, elementary moral principles, democracy (not just formal, but actually-functional/functioning), etc. -- you'd probably pretty quickly come to hate that book and all of Chomsky's professed views.

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