Chomsky:
Work is tyranny!
Also Chomsky:
Srebenica never happend. Communist do not commit genocide! Rwandan genocide never happend! Cambodian genocide never happend!
Just wanted to point out, that Chomsky has no problem with tyranny.
Is this what you’re talking about? Sometimes I feel like Chomsky is so good at English he loops back around to being really bad at it again.
Yeah stuff like that. This is a correspondence for an article to a book called “The Politics of Genocide” for which Chomsky wrote the forward. In the book the two authors Herman and Peterson argue that the massacre in Srebeniza was not a gencoide, because it did only kill 1% of Bosnians, besides being a clearly planned mass murder, with the state attempt to kill all Bosnians. Similar story with Rwanda. The book argues that most of the victims were Hutu and that there was a gencoide only not against the Tutsi, but against the Hutu, of which supposedly millions died.
That is the background to these latters and Chomsky a master of the English language, does not apologies for making a mistake, but rather chooses to say, that if US crimes are not considered genocide, none US crimes should not either. When pressed about Rwanda, which is much worse, his defence is to basicly state that nobody really can clearly state who is responsible for nearly a million deaths in Rwanda. Given the context of this exchange, the message is very clear on this one.
OK so I don’t want to defend him too much here, because he was asked something pretty clearly and didn’t put anyone at ease. On top of that, he’s kind of an ideologue, and doesn’t understand that most people aren’t playing 4D chess they’re just doing a shit in the kitchen because we’re all just fancy monkeys. However, I don’t think he’s trying to avoid answering the question. What he’s saying is (IIUC):
- The western media keeps saying “Genocide” but if that’s true, then the west itself commits genocide 3 times before breakfast. However, the west is very quick to label something non-western as genocide, but western stuff is not. So which is it? Answer: The western media is just using the term “Genocide” to invoke a visceral reaction (those monsters) rather than a logical one (“we killed some folks”).
- I don’t know about the details of the book, but the gist of it was good.
I don’t mind the former point (words mean things, and they are being used carelessly here; why not just use the right words?), but I do object to the latter. Information is the plural of data, and if the data is wrong, then the overall picture has not been constructed fairly. This is a common issue with Chomsky: He works from instinct and goes backwards to attach data, that’s not right.
Can you give a source to what he actually said? I’ve seen opinions that this is his pedanticism more than anything.
I don‘t really care if he said other wrong things, even a blind chicken finds corn sometimes, and with this he struck a chord in me.
Even though I’m in country with social safety nets, which DOES help with being able to leave a shit job don‘t get me wrong, but they also look down on you if you ever make use of them and you do get forced back to any job no matter how shit ASAP.
So all in all just feels demeaning to work anyway like a game of “choose your own kingdom” and so as if under a dictator, mainly for me cause some company owners do behave lordly and like to order around others and flex their power over people.
So to escape what always felt wrong to me, as much as I am allowed to by the system, I chose to work less on my own, I chose a “lying flat” lifestyle and it‘s opened up more freedom in my life to stop and think about what I want and why.
It‘s pretty decent for me now (my current king is kind) and I‘m lucky to have this sort of privileged position where I can do this, though it requires sacrifices too (will never own anything or have kids for one) and when I tell others they look at me as if I‘m crazy. Still worth it.
Yeah, I’m doing quite similar, but I will try to do a PhD, and I want to do some kind of remote software worker coop because I know machine learning, still after I started applying for normal jobs I figured fuck that shit that you have to fight for them to exploit you. For now I can survive by remote math + programming tutoring.
For a lot of people their chains are the reason for their “success”, if you tell them to destroy the chains to get free they will deem you a madman.
Yeah so I edited my comment like 5 times cause I felt so insecure voicing all this, cause I did get a lot of pushback from pretty much anyone I know and ridiculed before even online. So I was afraid they are right, so far it works for me though and I went from suicidal to alright, just from working less.
I hope you can make your coop work, seems like a cool idea too, though it‘s also so hard for small business, a friend of mine has one and it‘s almost like he is his own king and he isn‘t kind to himself either, mainly cause the competition is so fierce.
Maybe try finding other anarchists near you? On average they should be less obsessed with workerism, maybe you can cooperate with them on some project, at least you will be less socially isolated because unfortunately social isolation is very harmful - which is one of the biggest issues with changing even clearly oppressive systems like our states/capitalism. Even though you may behave rationally, other people may take their suffering as a badge of honor and deem you not worthy of their respect just because you have better perspective on exploitation of the current system. If you are in Europe you may be interested in attending big anarchist congress in St Imier, Switzerland: https://anarchy2023.org/
Thank you a good suggestion, this is interesting and actually maybe I could make it to this!
Wait what if there was a robust welfare system?
It is indeed a bit of a reformist partial answer to that argument, hoverer it probably just makes you starve a bit later, if you pass those specific criteria for the state help.
Yes but what if you didn’t. What if you were just fine, more or less, because the state had a decent UBI?
I feel like Chomsky is looking holistically, coming at a big problem, then tying it back to a concrete thing, but these things are not necessarily this way.
Often, people will look at first past the post voting in the US, and talk about how democracy is flawed, but like, most places don’t have first past the post voting? So what about them? You can’t look at “holistic” but then ignore most other nations with moderating systems in place.
