Much of the propaganda and deceit that’s purveyed today, particularly by “our” political class and their boughten allies in the media, can be defeated by cultivating a retentive memory. In that regard, the Internet’s “memory” is a great aid, for the Internet remembers everything: right, wrong, or indifferent.
I have a cassette tape on which Noam Chomsky, the linguist who turned into a hard-Left spokesperson and figure of adulation, told of an episode involving dissident historian Robert Faurisson. Faurisson is best known for his claim that the Holocaust – i.e., the Third Reich’s determined campaign of genocide against European Jews – never happened. The French government, which is not restricted by a Constitutional guarantee of freedom of expression, prosecuted and fined him for those claims.
About 600 intellectuals signed a petition in defense of Faurisson’s freedom of expression:
In the fall of 1979, American scholar Noam Chomsky contributed his name to a petition—signed by roughly 600 people, many disgraced academics, including Holocaust deniers Serge Thion, Arthur Butz, John Tuson Bennett and Mark Weber—concerning the affair:
Dr. Robert Faurisson has served as a respected professor of twentieth-century French literature and document criticism for over four years at the University of Lyon-2 in France. Since 1974 he has been conducting extensive historical research into the “Holocaust” question.
Since he began making his findings public, Professor Faurisson has been subject to a vicious campaign of harassment, intimidation, slander and physical violence in a crude attempt to silence him. Fearful officials have even tried to stop him from further research by denying him access to public libraries and archives.
We strongly protest these efforts to deprive Professor Faurisson of his freedom of speech and expression, and we condemn the shameful campaign to silence him.
We strongly support Professor Faurisson’s just right of academic freedom and we demand that university and government officials do everything possible to ensure his safety and the free exercise of his legal rights.[5]
In a taped interview, Chomsky said quite plainly that he’d joined with other prominent academics purely in defense of Faurisson’s civil right to freedom of speech. He was meticulous in stating that he didn’t agree with Faurisson’s anti-Holocaust assertions. Rather, he supported Faurisson because “I am an anti-Fascist.” By which, he said, he meant that he was opposed to the “fascist” drive to define the truth and punish deviations from it.
Keep that firmly in mind as you view the video below. It only takes about five minutes to get to the meat of the matter:
Chomsky: “One rather shocking fact that I learned recently is that during the Trump years, among Republicans a belief that a global warming is a serious problem — not even an urgent problem just a serious problem — declined about 20 percent. That’s very serious. Here we’re talking not just about the spread of a pandemic; they’re about marching over the precipice and ending the prospects for a sustained organized human life. That’s the kind of thing we’re facing. Well, you can talk about the origins of the skepticism, but it has to be dealt with and overcome and very decisively and without delay or else the whole human species and all the others that we are casually destroying will be in severe danger.”
Interviewer: “Noam, can you talk about how you think that skepticism can be overcome? I mean, you yourself are a serious critic of the, um, you know the corporate government alliance. Why people should trust large pharmaceutical companies like Moderna and Pfizer that are making billions? Why in this case we should trust that vaccines will save the population?”
Chomsky: “If the information came from Pfizer and Moderna there would be no reason to trust it, but it just happens that a hundred percent of health agencies throughout the world and the vast majority of the medical profession and the health sciences accept the actually quite overwhelming evidence that vaccination radically reduces, uh, onset of infection and deaths. The evidence on that is very compelling and it’s therefore not surprising that it’s basically universally accepted by relevant authorities.”[Emphasis added by FWP]
The Left is determined to silence all opposing voices. Noam Chomsky, the supposed free-speech champion, is fully onboard with that determination. This is the “freedom of speech but” position: a.k.a. “You have to draw the line somewhere.” The earlier Chomsky, the staunch defender of colleague Faurisson’s rights, labeled that “fascism.”
“Save the receipts,” Gentle Reader. Always!
