CONTENTS
INTRO
Ever since I began reading Chomsky, I've felt compelled to pencil-mark passages that particularly caught my attention. In 1996, I compiled a bunch of those quotes into a zine that I called An Incomplete Categorical Index of Chomsky Soundbites, and circulated it to a handful of readers of the zine review magazine Factsheet Five. The present collection is an enlarged version of the previous volume, including many additional quotes from most of Chomsky's books that have been published since that time.
The Golden Treasury of America's Most Beloved Chomsky Soundbites (a title chosen for its vintage Reader's Digest aroma) is restricted solely to Chomsky's words that have been published on paper—that is, books and magazine articles. It does not include the torrential output of his articles, interviews, etc. that have appeared exclusively on the internet. But even limiting myself to paper & ink, I have made no attempt at being comprehensive. I did not go searching for these quotes, but merely made note of them while reading-as-usual.
With most of the quotes, the context is either obvious, or else I have added a bit of context for clarification. Others are mere fragments with no hint of context. But sources are always provided.
As for formatting, all quotes appear exactly as they are in the source document. I have used ellipses marks to indicate missing words within a quote, but not at the beginning or end of a quote. Some quotes appear in more than one category, because the categories themselves are not mutually exclusive.
The absurd idea of Chomsky soundbites was inspired by ABC "political analyst" Jeff Greenfield. When asked why Chomsky was never invited to be on Nightline, he said that Chomsky "lacks concision." Well, here you go.
David Bonner / Austin Tx / newbonner@gmail.com
"You shouldn't believe what I say is true. The footnotes are there, so you can find out if you feel like it, but if you don't want to bother, nothing can be done. Nobody is going to pour the truth into your brain. It's something you have to find out for yourself." (ppm 145)
THE LAND OF THE FREE
"The Bill of Rights represents an effort of great historical significance to protect the citizen from state power." (frs 19)
"The 1969 Supreme Court decision [protecting free speech apart from "incitement to imminent lawless action"] formulated a libertarian standard which, I believe, is unique in the world." (dd 400)
PRESIDENTS
"every American president since the Second World War" as "either outright war criminals or involved in serious war crimes" (wusrw 32)
"If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged." (mcf 154)
"the outlandish cult of George Washington that was developed in the early nineteenth century" (ia 98)
"In the early years of the Republic, an absurd George Washington cult was contrived" (dd 75)
"George Washington set forth in 1779 on the conquest of the advanced Iroquois civilization" (hos 101)
"China's refusal to accept opium from Britain's Indian colony was denounced by John Quincy Adams as a violation of the Christian principle of 'love thy neighbor'" (y501 228)
"General Andrew Jackson rampaged through Florida, annihilating much of its native population and leaving the Spanish province under US control." (dd 34)
Theodore Roosevelt’s "racist fanaticism and thuggery" (y501 201)
"the racist historian Theodore Roosevelt" (z 7-8/95 28)
"President Woodrow Wilson, the great apostle of self-determination, who celebrated this doctrine by invading Hispaniola among other exercises" (opi 62)
"Woodrow Wilson, keeping to a long tradition, launched his murderous invasions of Haiti and the Dominican Republic" (pap 97)
"Kennedy's brutal strategic hamlet program, which aimed to drive millions of peasants into concentration camps" (rc 2)
"Lyndon Johnson, probably the most liberal president in American history" (opi 34)
"Johnson, whatever you think about him, was a kind of populist. He was not a fake Texan like George Bush but a real one." (ia 166)
"Nixon’s mafia overstepped the bounds of acceptable trickery and deceit with such obtuseness and blundering vulgarity" (nyrb 9/20/73 5)
"A peanut farmer from Georgia starts the human-rights crusade, and, amazingly, people take it seriously." (mr 11/81 7)
"Jimmy Carter, for example, in what must count as one of the most incredible comments from any head of state anywhere, told a news conference that we owe no debt to Vietnam because 'the destruction was mutual.'" (ppm 58)
"Ronald Reagan, who in reality had shown the courage of a Mafia don who sends a goon squad to break the bones of children" (z 5/89 32; dd 86)
"Reagan was an incredible coward." (ia 96)
Reagan as "pathetic clown" (rs 5/28/92 73)
"For eight years, the U.S. government functioned virtually without a chief executive. That is an important fact." (z 5/89 26; dd 73)
"It is therefore of some interest that the United States functioned virtually without a chief executive for eight years." (ni 5)
"Ronald Reagan wasn’t president" (rs 5/28/92 73)
Reagan’s statements as like "the random babbling of a young child" (ttt 174)
"President Reagan had only the vaguest conception of the policies enacted in his name" (ni 5)
"It is not really [Reagan’s] business if the bosses left mounds of mutilated corpses in death squad dumping grounds in El Salvador or millions of homeless in the streets." (z 5/89 27; dd 74)
"As Reagan took over in 1981, the massacres [in El Salvador] increased in both sadism and scale" (ttt 18)
"Under Reagan, support for near-genocide in Guatemala became positively ecstatic" (wusrw 49)
"The Reaganites were also instrumental in maintaining slaughter and terror from Mozambique to Angola" (y501 29)
"Reagan loves to prate about the Bible.... Perhaps he might begin his reading of the scriptures with the definition of ‘hypocrite’ in the Gospel according to St. Matthew, 7.5." (ttt 169)
"It is useful and instructive to pay heed to Reaganite fanaticism." (opi 90)
Reagan's funeral as "much like what you might find in North Korea about Kim Il Sung." (ia 99)
George H.W. Bush as "effete New England aristocrat" (3/90 10; dd 146)
"It emphasizes what he [George H.W. Bush] wants to go down in history as his one achievement, namely killing a lot of people without getting shot at." (krl 62)
George H.W. Bush's outrage over atrocities as "another likely story" (z 12/89 14)
Clinton as "the old draft dodger" (z 9/93 34)
"Clinton’s war crime" (z 1/94)
"Clinton administration efforts to undermine Haitian democracy have reached such a sordid level" (z 5/94 31)
"the Clinton administration has called for a change in policy toward the Colombian killers: more active U.S. participation" (z 5/94 30)
"The Clinton Administration is regarded as even more extreme in rejection of Palestinian rights than the government of Israel itself" (z 9/93 34; tft 526; wo 235)
"Clinton's bombing of Sudan and Afghanistan in 1998 effectively created Al Qaeda" (ia 108)
Clinton as "the deeply religious president" (enter a world that is truly surreal 2)
Clinton "has not yet been invited by Jimmy Carter to teach his Sunday School class" (z 11/94 59)
KISSINGER
Kissinger as "lunatic" (z 5/93 30), "genial adviser" (frs xi), "abject flunkey" (z 1/91 21), "odd figure of twentieth century America" (ft 431), "one of the great mass murderers of the modern period" (nyrb 9/20/73 8)
Kissinger's declassified memo initiating bombing of Cambodia as "the most explicit call for what we call genocide when other people do it that I've ever seen in the historical record." (ia 100)
"For some further examples of Kissinger’s astonishing inanities" (tft 83)
Kissinger’s "despised enemy Secretary of State Rogers" (z 5/93 30)
"Kissinger, no great genius but able to recognize the mailed fist" (z 12/91 39)
"Kissinger's ignorance and blind reliance on force" (tft 67)
"Kissinger, in one of his rare moments of lucidity" (ttt 188)
"Kissinger, mad as he is..." (krl 297)
"The Post reports that Kissinger refuses to have his articles archived." (fs 276)
"One can always count on K. for some comic relief" (rs 48)
DEMOCRACY, AMERICAN-STYLE
"Democracy, Washington-style" (y501 29)
"The hatred and contempt for democracy [is] revealed with such stark clarity across the political spectrum." (z 5/90 28)
"Again we see exactly what is meant by ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ in the elite political culture" (z 5/90 29)
"how deeply rooted is the fear and contempt for democracy in the elite culture" (7-8/89 20)
"The concept of democracy shines through bright and clear." (z 5/90 24)
"The form of ‘democracy’ envisioned...brings out the reality behind the rhetoric in which they are masked." (frs 107)
"The conception of democracy advanced by our various ambassadors also makes interesting reading.... Interchanging a few names, what commissar could disagree?" (frs 107)
"the protoscience of democracy promotion" (fs 158)
"All that is missing is evidence." (rs 160) [Regarding George W. Bush being dedicated to democracy in the Middle East.]
"Thus we have another demonstration of the Bush vision of democracy in the Middle East: no media can be tolerated that are not under US control" (rs 161)
"anything resembling democracy in the United States has completely collapsed" (up 280)
Perot as "ridiculous billionaire savior" (z 7-8/92 13)
"They may look for a savior, like a guy from Mars like Ross Perot." (krl 57)
"Congress abandoned its constitutional role" (frs 289)
"The best political leaders are the ones who are lazy and corrupt." (mcf 153)
INTELLECTUALS
"It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies." (apnm 326)
"I speak of Senator Mansfield precisely because he is not a breast-beating superpatriot who wants America to rule the world, but rather is an American intellectual in the best sense, a scholarly and reasonable man—the kind of man who is the terror of our age." (apnm 371)
"If the New York Times and its educated readers ever get to the stage that they think there is something wrong about carrying out the vicious war crimes that the Times is depicting on the front page, that's when the educated classes will begin to become civilized." (ia 160)
"an intellectual class of truly awe-inspiring moral cowardice" (y501 151)
"The moral cowardice would be stunning, if it were not such a routine feature of intellectual life." (dd 72)
"our intellectual culture was virtually founded on the twin pillars of hypocrisy and moral cowardice" (ttt 169)
"Rarely have hypocrisy and moral cowardice been so explicit, and admired with such reverence for centuries." (opi 13)
"The moral cowardice reeks even more than the hypocrisy." (z 5/90 28)
"the vicious terror and racism...will be transmuted to sweet charity as it reaches the educated classes" (z 11/94 58)
"The exultant display of fascist values is worthy of notice along with the self- righteous moralism, a traditional feature of the intellectual culture." (wo 12)
"It is hard to think of a more distinguished and truly honorable intellectual—or a more disgraceful example of apologetics for terrible crimes." (hos 45) [Regarding John Stuart Mill's essay A Few Words on Non-Intervention.]
"Disciplined Western circles, mired in ideological fanaticism and blind to the elementary (but unacceptable) realities of the world" (z 4/91 44)
"Throughout, we see with great clarity the image of a highly disciplined political culture, deeply imbued with totalitarian values." (z 5/90 22)
"It is impressive to see how quickly the well-bred intellectual can learn his or her lines" (z 3/89 18)
"it may raise in some minds the question whether the intellectual culture is real, or a script by Jonathon Swift" (y501 259)
"the well-disciplined commissar culture at home" (z 1/91 10)
"The idea cannot be expressed, probably even thought, at the dissident extreme of the commissar culture." (y 501 150)
Angelo Codevilla as a "so-called scholar" and author of an article of "stupendous ignorance that is so colossal that it can only appear among respected intellectuals" (krl 92)
"the idiocies of the Rambo cult and the equivalent among the jingoist intellectuals" (ttt 216)
"Europe, far more culturally colonized by the United States than European intellectuals like to believe" (z 3/89 21)
"the latest lunacies of Paris culture" (krl 164)
"The fact tells us a great deal about our own political and intellectual culture." (z 1/90 15)
"If you want to know whether a country is liberated, ask the population. They should be the ones to decide, not the intellectuals and politicians of the invading country." (ia 78)
"Americans inclined to ridicule such 'Kim Il Sungism' on the part of the Israeli underclass might turn to some of their own sophisticates" (tft 175)
"liberal intellectuals secretly cherish the pronouncements of TV evangelist Pat Robertson and the John Birch society" (dd 320)
WAR PLANNERS AND APOLOGISTS
"Actually, he's correct about the values. If somebody tries to disobey us, our values are that they have to be crushed and massacred. Those are our values. They go back hundreds of years, and those are exactly the values they acted upon." (cw 71) [Referring to Robert McNamera's statement that the Vietnam War planners acted according to American principles and traditions.]
"the [Vietnam War] planners in Washington and academia, insulated from the facts, posing as technical experts and problem solvers" (frs 9)
"Kennan’s Policy Planning Staff, which had considerable influence in determining the contours of the postwar world" (opi 127)
"The whole affair is a remarkable example of the totalitarian instincts of the planners." (frs 110)
"Here we see exposed, with full clarity, the thinking of a gang of international outlaws." (frs 126)
"state managers who prefer to carry out their crimes in secret" (race and class, vol. 4, 1984, 50)
U.S. war planners as "arrogant and deluded men" (apnm 325)
"The planners in Washington are the real war criminals, not the soldiers in the field." (ia 130)
Eugene Rostow as "pathetic" and "one of the more extreme apologists" (z 12/91 39)
"Contrary to the fantasies of Walt Rostow" (frs 55)
"Was the problem really that the Bundy and Rostow brothers hadn’t had good college courses in Vietnamese history?" (tncw 401)
"If only William Bundy had had a course in Vietnamese history at Yale" (frs 53)
Regarding John McNaughton’s "proposal that the U.S. engage in explicit war crimes of the sort punished after World War II" (frs 67)
"legendary" Edward Lansdale as "a typical colonialist fantasy-monger" (atc 314)
"Maxwell Taylor, who can always be counted on to add just the right note of black humor" (frs 77)
"Shortly after, Morgenthau, to his credit, was to abandon this conventional stance and become one of the few principled critics of the Indochina war among US scholars." (ttt 279)
Reagan's advisors as "Frightened little men...[strutting] about their offices in awe of their cowboy hero" (z 5/89 32; dd 86)
"Jeane Kirkpatrick, chief sadist-in-residence of the Reagan administration" (ttt 8)
"Elliot Abrams, obsessed as always by the attraction of violence in Nicaragua" (dd 161)
on Elliot Abrams "expressing his admiration for the most savage of the thugs who have ruled Guatemala with US support" (ttt 32)
"an incompetent blowhard of the Oliver North variety" (cot 65)
George Shultz’s "lugubrious voice" (z 3/89 21)
"Senator Moynihan (whose gall knows no limits)" (tncw 467)
"It is even useful to watch the tone of hysteria mounting among the more accomplished comic artists–for example Charles Krauthammer" (dd 99)
Charles Krauthammer as "real fanatic" (z 7/89 20)
"Pentagon fanatic Richard Perle" (ttt 286)
"It is superfluous to invoke the thoughts of Jeane Kirkpatrick, George Will, and the like" (dd 377)
Paul Johnson as "A notorious apologist for terrorism and atrocities" (dd88)
Paul Johnson’s "swooning over the manliness of his idol Ronald Reagan" (z 5/89 32)
"[Michael Kinsley’s] doctrine, which could readily be accepted by Abu Nidal" (z 5/90 26)
"Radical statists of the [William] Bennett variety" (z 11/89 16; dd 123)
Tom Wolfe as "a spokesman for the culture of cruelty" (y501 281)
"James Reston, long the leading political thinker of the New York Times" (dd 18)
"James Reston made a career out of having lunch with Dean Acheson and writing a column the next day from what Dean Acheson told him to say." (rs 5/28/92 47)
"Reston had performed yeoman service in the cause of freedom, as when he took pride in the US contribution to the huge slaughter in Indonesia in 1965" (dd 18)
"[Alan] Dershowitz’s casual attitude toward the facts" (tncw 434)
"Dershowitz is not very bright.... He’s basically a clown." (cod 348-9)
"people of the Dershowitz variety, who are very much committed to preventing free speech on the Arab-Israeli issues" (cod 353)
"People like Dershowitz, who is just an Israeli hack, a strict party liner" (lap 528)
"Dershowitz has done admirable work in defense of civil rights in the United States, but—typically—all standards disappear when the scene shifts to Israel." (pme 197)
Elie Wiesel as "loyal commissar" (cod 290)
"Take, say, Elie Wiesel. His position is that one must maintain silence in the face of atrocities carried out by one’s favorite state. That is his position, reiterated over and over again in the clearest possible terms." (lap 529)
Nat Hentoff as "a committed civil libertarian" who "has expressed great admiration for committed opponents of civil rights...as long as this opposition is restricted to the Israeli context." (tft 379)
"Few surpassed Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda in their support for the invasion [of Lebanon by Israel, 1982]" (tft 267)
"some guy named Edward Alexander, from America for a Safe Israel, quasi- Kahane, right-wing nuts" (cod 291)
Bellow’s To Jerusalem and Back as "classic contribution to a familiar 20th Century genre [apologetics]" (ft 178)
"my review of Saul Bellow's To Jerusalem and Back...aroused such anger that it caused the suspension of the journal in which it originally appeared" (ni 389)
"New Republic editor Martin Peretz, one of the more extreme anti-Arab racists and apologists for Israeli atrocities" (z 12/91 41)
"Peretz’s racist outpourings" (manuscript for z 5/88 19 note 29)
"Peretz regularly intervenes to prevent publication of responses to his slanders, a practice on the part of an owner-editor that reveals an unusual degree of moral cowardice" (ft 326)
"Reverend Timothy Dwight, president of Yale College and a respected author and exponent of Puritan values, devoted a poem to the savage slaughter of the Pequot Indians." (dd 34)
"Jack London, a progressive writer, a leading socialist figure, wrote stories in which he literally called for exterminating the entire population of China by bacteriological warfare" (ia 166)
"signed by Martin Peretz and Leon Wieseltier of the New Republic, along with such regular apologists for US atrocities as Sidney Hook and John Silber and numerous other luminaries: Morris Abram, Hyman Bookbinder, Penn Kemble, Samuel Huntington, Seymour Martin Lipset, Michael Novak, Albert Shanker, Allen Weinstein, Ben Wattenberg, etc." (ttt 257)
"To my knowledge, this is the first explicit defense of torture to have appeared in the West [New Republic July 23, 1977]" (ft 127)
Peter Braestrup’s "magnificent self-refutation" (race and class, vol. ??, 1978; more, June 1978)
"the self-refuting study published by Freedom House" (ni 382)
"James LeMoyne is an absolute crook; he's one of the most dishonest journalists I've ever seen." (up 114)
"the gushing tribute to colonialist atrocities...by Angelo Codevilla of Stanford University's Hoover Institute" (rc 149)
Angelo Codevilla as a "so-called scholar" and author of an article of "stupendous ignorance that is so colossal that it can only appear among respected intellectuals" (krl 92)
"[Sidney] Hook's commentary on [Bertrand] Russell will be familiar to anyone acquainted with attacks on dissidents in the Communist Party press in the Stalinist years." (ni 365)
"One of the more outlandish contributions, that of Ronald Radosh, now in his 'God that failed' phase and therefore with ready access to the media, previously denied" (ni 368)
"[Morton] Kondracke's appreciation for successful violence" (ni 369)
WARS
"A soldier with a rope pulling a skinny, half-naked Vietnamese captive behind him.... That's a universal image of unconstrained power being exercised over helpless victims." (ia 119-20)
"This vicious counterinsurgency war [of the US against the Philippines] has virtually disappeared from American history." (opi 62)
"Three times in a generation American technology has laid waste a helpless Asian country." (apnm 4)
Korean War as "one of the most critical events of modern history" (review blurb for Cumings and Halliday, Korea the Unknown War)
"just remember what we did to that country [North Korea]—it was absolutely flattened. Here people may not be aware of what we did to them, but they certainly know it well enough." (up 302)
"Our treatment of North Korean prisoners of war also was absolutely grotesque— it was kind of like the Nazis." (up 302)
U.S. invasion of Indochina as "a depraved act by weak and miserable men" (apnm 9)
"The deceit and distortion surrounding the American invasion of Vietnam are by now so familiar that they have lost their power to shock." (apnm 326)
"What we have done in Vietnam" as "monstrous crimes" (apnm 371)
"This kind of thinking, if that is the right word, goes a long way towards explaining the barbarism of the Vietnam war" (frs 8)
"At this moment of national disgrace" (apnm 310)
In Vietnam, "Our job is to destroy, nothing more." (z 5/91 57)
"No degree of cruelty is too great for Washington sadists." (wusrw 59)
"The Nixon-Kissinger terror bombings" (tncw 413)
"The terror bombing of urban centers in North Vietnam ensued." (tncw122)
"deformed fetuses in the hospitals [of South Vietnam] that do not touch the heartstrings of ‘pro-life’ activists" (y501 252)
"Nixon and Kissinger were unable to kill as many Cambodians as they would have liked" (nyrb 9/20/73 3)
Kissinger's declassified memo initiating bombing of Cambodia as "the most explicit call for what we call genocide when other people do it that I've ever seen in the historical record." (ia 100)
Indochina wars as "one of the major catastrophes of the modern era" (ttt 217)
Vietnamese resistance as "historical event of the first magnitude" (Open Secret 11)
Vietcong as "enjoying more popular support than George Washington could claim" (rc 2)
"I'm one of the few people who don't agree that the United States lost the war in Vietnam" (ia 120)
"The question 'What have I done?' is one that we may well ask ourselves, as we read, each day, of fresh atrocities in Vietnam—as we create, or mouth, or tolerate the deceptions that will be used to justify the next defense of freedom." (apnm 359)
"In 1962, the [Kennedy] Administration made a decision which, in terms of its consequences, is one of the most significant of modern history." (opi 77) [Referring to Latin American military’s shift from "hemispheric defense" to "internal security"]
In Central America, "Some 200,000 people had been killed, most of them slaughtered outright in a paroxysm of sadistic terror conducted by the forces armed, trained, and advised by the United States." (z 11/90 16)
"Costa Rica’s cooperation in the Anti-Sandinista jihad" (z 11/90 20)
"Colonel Sigifredo Ochoa, who has many massacres to his credit and is much admired here for his prowess" (ttt 24)
"The Salvadoran military were trained and advised by Americans, while the security forces were instructed in torture methods by imported Argentine neo- Nazis." (ttt 21)
In Central America "no rational person can doubt that we are implicated in terrible crimes" (ttt 26)
"The Reaganites were also instrumental in maintaining slaughter and terror from Mozambique to Angola" (y501 29)
"The vulgar display by the US military outside the Vatican Embassy [in Panama, during the US invasion], with rock music blaring, and other childish antics" (z 3/90 16; dd 159)
First Gulf War as "sales promotion device" (z 3/92 25; y501 105)
"under strong international and domestic pressure, Clinton reversed the 25-year policy of support for Indonesia's crimes in East Timor, and informed the Indonesian military that Washington would no longer support their crimes" (hos 54)
"As priorities shifted in 2002, it was claimed that those who shared responsibility for twenty years of torture of Iraqis were entitled to resort to violence to bring about democracy." (hos 140)
TERRORISM
"The U.S. may be the only country that is officially and publicly committed to wholesale international terrorism as a standard policy instrument." (z 5/93)
"The biggest international terror operations that are known are the ones that are run out of Washington." (mcf 150)
"Consider, for example, the U.S. terrorist war against Cuba" (ttt 175)
"Kennedy launched a huge international terrorist campaign against Cuba" (wusrw 96)
"Immediately after the Bay of Pigs failure, Kennedy initiated a program of international terrorism to overthrow the regime, reaching quite remarkable dimensions." (y 501 147)
"the vast campaign of international terrorism launched against Cuba by the Kennedy Administration, far exceeding anything attributed to official enemies, does not exist in respected academic discourse or the mainstream media" (dd 378)
Kennedy's "terrorist operations were formally called off by Lyndon Johnson. They continued, however, and were escalated by Nixon." (y501 147)
"Under the Reagan Doctrine, the United States has created something new in the annals of international terrorism" (cot 43)
"a collection of Nazis, fanatic anti-Semites, death-squad assassins, and some of the worst killers and thugs around the world, mobilized by the Reagan Administration into an effective network of murderers and torturers, worldwide in scope" (pe 158)
"The Nixon-Kissinger terror bombings" (tncw 413)
"the terrorist commanders in Washington" (cot 69)
"British terror bombing of civilians" (z 2/91 62)
"There was virtually no reaction to the appointment of a leading international terrorist [John Negroponte] to the top counterterrorism position in the world." (fs 35)
"US terrorist attacks against Nicaragua under Oliver North's direction" (hos 86)
"the success of the CIA and its associates during the 1980s in recruiting radical Islamists and organizing them into a military and terrorist force" (hos 110)
"After the Russians withdrew, the terror organizations recruited, armed, and trained by the US and its allies (among them Al Qaeda and similar jihadis) turned there attention elsewhere" (hos 111)
"[Michael Kinsley's] more humane conception [of terrorism] would readily be accepted by Saddam Hussein, Abu Nidal, and the Hizbollah kidnappers, who, presumably, also consider terror pointless unless it is of value for their ends." (dd 378)
"Terrorist violence is rarely purposeless." (ttt 26)
"administering sufficient pain and anguish to achieve our ends [is] regarded as quite unremarkable in a terrorist culture" (cot 253)
"Osama bin Laden himself only became anti-American around 1991" (ia 109)
"The United States and Saudi Arabia refused to allow him [Osama bin Laden] to carry out a jihad against Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf War." (ia 109)
IMPERIALISM
"The emergence of Western racism with such stunning clarity is worth notice." (z 5/91 63)
"This is pretty much the course of history, as the plague of European civilization devastated much of the world." (z 8/91 13; dd 360)
"After all, the history of Europe is basically robbery and plunder and destruction all over the world." (our generation, vol 22 #1-2, 43)
"From the earliest stages of colonization, religion has served as a cloak for pillage, torture, and massacre." (twc 388)
"Catholic missionaries have long been notorious for their role in colonial oppression." (atc 329)
"as Britain engaged in some of the worst crimes of its imperial reign" (hos 45)
"Sir Robert’s concept of ‘free choice’ provides a good insight into the colonialist mentality." (frs 106)
"...the mentality of the colonial civil servant, persuaded of the benevolence of the mother country and the correctness of its vision of world order, and convinced that he understands the true interests of the backward peoples whose welfare he is to administer." (apnm 41)
INTERNATIONAL LAW
"The hideous crimes of the twentieth century led to dedicated efforts to save humans from the curse of war." (fs 79)
"International law will only work if the powers subjected to it are willing to accept it, and the United States is not willing to accept it." (up 314)
"The soft Europeans believe in old-fashioned notions like criminal justice and law. The tough Americans just go ahead and get the job done, as in cowboy movies." (fs 35)
on International Law regarded by U.S. as "waste heap" (z 12/89 12)
1973 Vietnam peace treaty as "scrap of paper" (tncw 144)
"From these events, we perceive with great clarity the self-image of American elites: the U.S. is a lawless and violent state and must remain so, independently of such nonsense as international law, the World Court, the UN, or other international institutions." (cot 69)
"Domestic and international law are not formal axiom systems. There is scope for interpretation, but their general meaning and implications are clear enough." (fs 85)
"the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by every member state except the United States and Somalia (which has no functioning government)" (fs 231)
"Thus the front page of the world's leading newspaper was cheerfully depicting war crimes for which the political leadership could be sentenced to severe penalties under US law, [including] the death penalty" (fs 48)
"who follows the crucial decisions of the GATT negotiators or the IMF?" (z 7-8/92 13; y501 64)
CAPITALISM
"Such facts as these provide a most remarkable commentary on the variety of state capitalism practiced in the richest country in the world, with incomparable advantages." (z 5/89 31; dd 85)
"The catastrophes of capitalism" (z 1/91 16; dd 233)
"hideous catastrophe of capitalism" (z 7-8/91 11; dd 357)
"The catastrophe of capitalism could not be more vivid and dramatic" (z 4/91 43)
"The catastrophe of capitalism in the 1980s" (z 10/91 20; y 501 52)
"The catastrophe of capitalism was particularly severe in the 1980s" (wusrw 73)
"devastated by the catastrophe of capitalism in the 1980s" (pap 143)
"huge catastrophe of capitalism that swept over most of the world in the 1980s and just ruined the Third World" (mcf 124)
"The catastrophe of capitalism that swept the traditional colonial domains of the West in the 1980s left the Third World mired in general despair" (tft 534)
"major catastrophe of capitalism that swept over much of the traditional colonial domains" (rc 10)
"catastrophe of capitalism that swept through traditional colonial domains in the 1980s" (wo 4)
"When I say there's a catastrophe of capitalism in the Third World, that doesn't mean for the rich people. They're doing just great." (krl 103)
"the forgotten people of South Central Los Angeles" (z 7-8/92 13; y501 63)
"There's a growing Third World at home." (wusrw 101)
"If you're rich, the system is working just right." (ia 192)
NOTABLE PUBLICATIONS, SCHOLARS, JOURNALISTS
"All of this was predicted by Bakunin; probably the only prediction in the social sciences that’s ever come true." (Grand Street, Fall 1994, 175)
Borkenau’s Spanish Cockpit as "a brilliant study" (apnm 310)
Kolko’s Politics of War as "a terrific piece of work" (sld 91), "extremely valuable, and unique in its scope and depth" (dd 349)
J.and G. Kolko’s Limits of Power as "the most important analytic study of evolving U.S. policy in this period" (tncw 423)
Politics of War and Limits of Power as "two seminal contributions to a large literature" (ttt 265), "invaluable for understanding the general wartime and postwar period" (ft 34)
"the groundbreaking work of Gabriel and Joyce Kolko" (dd 67)
"Recent scholarship largely confirms and extends the pioneering work of Gabriel and Joyce Kolko 20-25 years ago." (y501 294)
"Diana Johnstone, who has long been the most informative commentator on European affairs" (dd 105)
Hanna Batatu's The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq as "the classic scholarly study" (fs 287)
Michael Dawson's The Consumer Trap as "an important contribution to a substantial literature" (fs 295)
"William Hinton’s magnificent study Fanshen," which is unparalleled, to my knowledge, as an analysis of a moment of profound revolutionary change" (apnm 137)
"Jeffery Race, a US Army adviser in South Vietnam who compiled one of the most important documentary records" (rc 56)
"outstanding work of Jeffrey Race" (More, June 1978 22)
Jeffery Race’s War Comes To Long An as "valuable study" (frs 168), "the best account of the origins of the insurgency under the U.S.-Diem regime" (twc 422), "the major study of the period preceding the outright U.S. invasion" (mc 373), "the major book on this period"(ttt 107), "influenced my own understanding of the war" (rc 153)
"George Kahin's Intervention remains indispensable" (fs 282)
Richard Aldrich, The Hidden Hand, as "an invaluable source on British secret intelligence" (fs 283)
Homage to Catalonia as "brilliant little book" and "what has always seemed to me as Orwell’s greatest work" (apnm 141; z 7-8/91 14)
Robert Brady’s Business as a System of Power as "important study" (tncw 380)
Herman and Broadhead’s Demonstration Elections as "important study" (cr 129)
Herman, Preston, and Schiller's Hope and Folly as "important book" (z 7-8/92 9)
LeFeber’s Inevitable Revolutions as "valuable book" (cr 125)
Franck and Weisband’s Word Politics as "important study" (nyrb 9/20/73 4)
Philip Jones Griffiths' Agent Orange as "a shattering graphic portrayal" (fs 273)
"the indispensable journal Haiti Info" (z 7-8/94 58)
"This journal [New Outlook] has...provided sane and highly informative commentary on the Palestine problem." (pme 86)
Dwight MacDonald’s journal Politics as "a real eye opener" and "classic stuff" (cod 360)
"Allan Nairn’s important study" (ttt 264) [Referring to "Behind the Death Squads," The Progressive, 5/84]"
"The reporter's job is to report what he sees before his eyes; many have done so with courage and even brilliance." (apnm 43)
Allan Nairn as "serious journalist" (z 11/94 50)
Thomas Palmer as "outstanding journalist" (z 7-8/92 17)
Amnon Kapeliouk as "outstanding Israeli journalist" (ft 34)
"The excellent reporting of Amnon Kapeliouk, Yehuda Litani, and Dani Rubinstein" (tncw 450)
Dani Rubinstein, "who has been covering the occupied territories with distinction for years"(z 9/93 34), as "very knowlegeable Israeli correspondent" (z 5/93 25), "one of Israel’s most knowledgable and acute observers of policy in the territories" (z 10/93 21; dd 421; tft 535), "one of the most acute observers of the occupation" (wo 223)
"Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, whose reporting from the territories is difficult to match in quality anywhere..." (fs 193)
"the knowledgable Israeli analyst Meron Benvenisti" (tft 541)
"the remarkable journalism of P. Sainath, mostly in the Hindu" (fs 284)
"the important but mostly neglected exposés by Alfonso Chardy of the Miami Herald" (hos 240)
John Kifner as "a fine journalist for many years," "a very good professional journalist" (ni 403, lap 515)
"When they [New York Times] send John Kifner somewhere, it's because they want the story to come out, not because they want it to be covered up." (lap 515)
"[Mary] Curtius is an independent and knowledgable Middle East correspondent" (ni 402)
"I was very pleased to see that the New York Times withdrew Thomas Friedman. That made it possible for some good reporting." (lap 515)
on Friedman's "racism and megalomania" (lap 436)
on Friedman as being "extremely interesting to read for students of propaganda" (lap 438)
Chris Hedges (Dallas Morning News) and Chris Norton (Christian Science Monitor) as "two of the few US journalists in Central America who merit the title" (ttt 259)
"Ray Bonner's important book" [Weakness and Deceit] (ttt 79) "Neil Sheehan, in a classic and often-quoted article" (apnm 43)
"Orwell, whose eyewitness account of the May Days is unforgettable" (apnm 147)
CLASSIC PATTERNS
"aid to the military is standard operating procedure for overthrowing a civilian government" (y501 163)
"classic mode of pre-coup planning" (z 9/90 16; y501 122)
"the practice is quite standard" (z 9/90 21)
rehearsal of invasion as "standard technique of intimidation" (z 3/92 32; y501 153)
"the successful affair largely disappeared from view, the normal pattern" (z 11/90 21; dd 163)
"the policy is routine" (z 5/90 30; dd 327)
"this is a classic pattern" (rp 292)
"it would be no simple matter to find an exception to this pattern" (z 11/88 18)
"A standard journalistic device to suppress unwanted facts that have unfortunately come to light is to report them only in the context of government denials." (z 12/90 23; dd 193)
"fear of the public is a normal feature of statecraft" (z 2/91 63; see also cot 6; hos 39; z 2/91 63)
"Noriega’s career fits a standard pattern" (z 3/90 17)
"a replay of the Noriega story a year earlier" (z 1/91 20; dd 240)
"The standard policies were then set into motion." (z 5/91 56)
"Another device that is regularly exploited is the fear of imminent destruction by an enemy of boundless evil." (fs 213)
"this concern breaks no new ground" (z 7-8/91 14; dd 364)
"Inversion of the scale of atrocities of friends and enemies is routine, but recognition of the occupied territories as part of Israel breaks new ground" [regarding article in "KidsPost" column, Washington Post] (fs 291)
"New records may have been broken for supercilious arrogance and racism..." (z 11/94 56)
OUR ROGUE'S GALLERY OF FRIENDS
D’Aubuisson as "notorious killer" (z 12/89 14; dd 293), "Nazi-like" (cr 131)
Rios Montt as "the most extreme of the Guatemalan Hitlers" (wusrw 49)
"Rios Montt, perhaps the greatest [Guatemalan] killer of them all" (y501 29)
Rios Montt "lauded by Reagan as a man totally committed to democracy" (wusrw 49)
"One of the grandest of the Guatemalan killers, General Hector Gramajo" (y501 29)
"General Gramajo, to mention someone who might aspire to Suharto’s league" (y501 131)
Suharto's "genocidal invasion of East Timor" (z 10/90 21)
Suharto as "Butcher of Jakarta" (z 2/91 52)
"Suharto of Indonesia, arguably the worst killer of them all" (wusrw 55)
Indonesian government "severely beating two U.S. reporters, Alan Nairn and Amy Goodman" (y501 136)
Saddam Hussein as "blood-stained murderer (tft 372), "murderous thug" (z 10/90 23; dd 194), "major criminal" (z 2/91 62), "one of the world’s most savage tyrants" (z 5/91 56)
Saddam Hussein as "amiable friend" of George Bush (z 10/90 23)
"Cuba was added to the official list of terrorist states in 1982, replacing Iraq, which was removed so as to make Saddam Hussein eligible for US aid." (hos 95)
"nothing has been heard from the present incumbents—with their alleged concern for Iraqi democracy—to indicate that they have any regrets for their previous support for Saddam Hussein" (hos 130)
"In comparison to Bush’s friends in Beijing and Baghdad, Noriega could pass for a choir boy." (z 3/90 15)
"Bush's friends in Beijing and Baghdad, who made Noriega look like a choir boy in comparison" (y 501 89)
"Bloody tyrants of the Hafez el-Assad variety" (z 5/91 64)
Hafez el-Assad as "a clone of Saddam Hussein" (z 5/91 55)
Hafez el-Assad as "tyrant and murderer who is indistinguishable from Saddam Hussein" (z 10/91 24)
Hafez el-Assad as "Bush’s other friend" (z 12/91 30)
Ferdinand Marcos as "another fine killer and torturer" (z 5/91 54)
Ferdinand Marcos as "another gangster for whom Reagan and Bush had expressed their admiration, even ‘love’" (y501 208)
Reagan and Bush as "the major supporter of Siad Barre, the Saddam Hussein clone who was then destroying Somali society"
"Romania’s mad dictator Ceausescu" (y501 100)
"In 1983, Vice President Bush expressed his admiration for Ceausescu's political and economic progress and 'respect for human rights.'" (hos 113)
"Shortly after, Secretary of State Shultz praised Romania as among the 'good Communists,' rewarding Ceausescu with a visit and economic favors." (hos 114)
"[George W. Bush] and his admirers failed to mention just how his father and his own colleagues had honored the prescription that iron-fisted tyrants like Ceausescu 'must always be opposed.' The answer turns out to be a familiar one: by supporting them." (fos 113)
"Teodor Obiang of Equatorial Guinea, who ranks high in the competition among bloody tyrants and was duly received with full honors by President Bush in September 2002" (hos 114)
"Bush carried support for terror and torture [in Algeria] to new extremes, offering military aid and assistance to the Algerian government." (hos 115)
on the official US position regarding Hilter as a "moderate" during the 1930s (rc 20)
on the 1937 position of the European Division of the State Department that fascism "must succeed" (ppm 148)
"The rise of fascism...was generally regarded rather favorably by the US and British governments, the business world, and a good deal of elite opinion." (hos 67)
"Support for Mussolini was effusive." (hos 67)
on FDR’s reference to Mussolini as "that admirable Italian gentleman" (z 7-8/94 54; dd 40; hos 67; rc 20; ppm 148; wo 41; cw 70; lap 722)
"In 1939, FDR continued to regard Italian fascism as 'of great importance to the world'" (hos 68)
"Support extended to Hitler's Germany as well." (hos 67)
"In 1938, FDR and his close confidant Sumner Welles approved of Hitler's Munich settlement, which dismembered Czechoslovakia." (hos 68)
"How about Hitler's taking over the Sudetenland in 1938? One of Roosevelt's major advisers was A.A. Berle. He said that there's nothing alarming about the takeover. It was probably necessary for the Austrian Empire to be reconstituted under German rule, so it's all right." (ppm 148)
on George Kennan's position that the Nazis are "most anxious that their new subjects should be happy in their care" (hos 68)
"During World War II, Joseph Stalin became an ally, the beloved 'Uncle Joe'" (fs 121)
"It should be stressed that Stalin's awesome crimes were of no concern to Truman and other high officials.... As with a host of other murderers and torturers of lesser scale, the unacceptable crime is disobedience" (rc 22-3)
on Truman's perception of Stalin as "a decent fellow" (fs 122)
on the reference that "Truman liked" Stalin (y501 71)
Arab states as "ruled and managed by princes and Harvard Business School graduates" (z 10/90 26)
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar as "the CIA’s favorite terrorist and Islamic fundamentalist fanatic" and leader of "probably the most fanatic Islamic fundamentalist group in the world" (z 5/93 27, 21)
"US favorite Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the terrorist leader of the fundamentalist Hizbe-Islami Party" (dd 118)
"Probably one of the most fanatic Islamic fundamentalist groups in the world in recent years was led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the terrorist extremist who had been a CIA favorite and prime recipient of the $3.3 billion in (official) US aid given to the Afghan rebels" (tft xi)
"the extremist Islamic fundamentalist forces of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the US favorite of the 1980s who has been tearing the remnants of Afghanistan to shreds" (pop 166)
Jonas Savimbi as "a long-time US client extolled as a 'freedom fighter' by leading political figures, even declared to be 'one of the few authentic heroes of our time' by Jeane Kirkpatrick after his forces had boasted of shooting down civilian airliners with hundreds killed, along with numerous other atrocities, while murdering and destroying on a truly heroic scale with US and South African support." (wo 25)
U.S. effort to "maintain the rule of an array of murderous gangsters for over three decades" in Guatemala, and to "help lay the groundwork for a coup and successful mass slaughter in Indonesia" (z 1/89 22; dd 333)
"gangsters installed and backed by the U.S. to terrorize the population" in El Salvador (radical priorities 292)
US as "the country that funds and trains the assassins" in El Salvador (z 5/90 30)
on U.S. "providing the [Columbian] mass murderers and torturers with military equipment, putting our taxes to good use" (z 5/94 33)
"Costa Rica’s cooperation in the anti-Sandinista jihad" (z 11/90 20)
"Washington lost its Argentine killers after the fall of the military dictatorship there" (fs 286)
ISRAEL / PALESTINE
"Basically the United States doesn't give a damn about Israel: if it goes down the drain, US planners don't care one way or the other; there's no moral obligation or anything else. But what they do care about is control of the enormous oil resources of the Middle East." (up 125)
"Israel's future as an efficient Sparta, at permanent war with its enemies and surviving at the whim of the US" (tft xii)
"Israel is so utterly dependent on the United States at this point that no group can attain any degree of credibility in Israel unless is has substantial American support." (lap 645)
"The American liberal community since 1967 has been mobilized at an almost fanatic level of support of an expansionist Israel, and they have been consistently opposed to any political settlement." (cod 74; lap 571)
"those who describe themselves as 'supporters of Israel' (more accurately, in my opinion, supporters of Israel's degeneration and ultimate destruction)" (lfl 151)
"Reagan's first significant move in the Middle East was in 1981 when he said the United States did not oppose Israeli settlements in the West Bank. He was the first American president to say that these were legal" (lap 397)
"...I've always thought that the PLO is the most corrupt and incompetent Third World movement I've ever seen." (up 311)
"[The PLO] has proven over the years to be incompetent, corrupt, foolish, and often murderous, particularly in the early 1970s." (ni 404)
"[The PLO’s] incompetence, to put it in the kindest terms, is monumental." (manuscript for z 5/88 17)
"Predictably, the PLO allowed itself to be carried along" (z 1/90 16; tft 509)
"PLO tactics of more than the usual ineptitude" (z 10/93 21; tft 534; wo 233)
"Arafat can now be held to the pledges he has not made, and the Palestinians can be punished if they fail to live up to the solemn commitments that the U.S. has invented." (z 3/89 24; ni 310)
Israel appears to be the only country in the world that relies on this mode of population control [expulsion] as a regular practice. (z 1/90 9; tft 476)
"The people [Palestinians] have been humiliated, abused, their homes destroyed, their children beaten, arrested without charge, deported, murdered, their press closed—all of this for 20 years, while the world looked the other way..." (z 3/89 25)
"One of George [W.] Bush's dreams is to establish a Palestinian state somewhere, sometime, in some unspecified place—maybe in the Saudi desert. And we are supposed to praise that as a magnificent vision." (ia 10)
"the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights and its courageous chairman, Dr. Israel Shahak" "an outspoken opponent of all terrorism and violence and a courageous defender of civil rights" (tncw 290, 434)
"the courageous Abie Nathan, jailed once again" (z 12/91 33)
"This is one of the standard slogans, reflecting the almost hysterical love for [Menachem] Begin in large circles." (ft 175)
"The Times weekly book review section appears to be reserved for ‘supporters of Israel’ as a matter of editorial policy, a topic that merits a special study" (ft 171)
THE FREE PRESS
"Fortunately, the United States is a very free society, so it is possible to obtain the information. Unfortunately, an individual research project is required to discover it." (rs 235)
"business state media complex" (z 11/92 13; y501 282)
on the Wall Street Journal’s "Maoist-style ranting" (z 1/94 27)
Reaganomics "had no more enthusiastic champion than the Wall Street Journal" (y501 110)
"The Kim Il Sung-style unanimity considered so natural and appropriate by the Times" (dd 316)
"One can write the editorials in advance." (z 5/90 28; dd 326)
"One can virtually write the articles and editorials in advance." (tft 429)
"The US population was protected from that information by the press, which refused—not failed, but refused—to publish it." (fs 169)
"I’m talking about the real world, not the one in the PBS television series." (cr 322)
"National Public Radio amused its elite intellectual audience with an interview with a fruit and vegetable dealer who was asked whether Noreiga's pock-marked face really did look like a pineapple." (dd 159)
on Neil Sheehan’s evasion of evidence (frs 248)
"Maureen Dowd...who's basically a gossip columnist for the New York Times" (up 264)
"connoisseurs who miss Pravda" (y501 150)
"these pussycats like Sam Donaldson and the rest of them, who would never ask an embarrassing question in a million years" (up 79)
"The Times weekly book review section appears to be reserved for ‘supporters of Israel’ as a matter of editorial policy, a topic that merits a special study" (ft 171)
"Throughout, the media have successfully concealed what is happening." (z 5/89 29)
"This record is almost completely suppressed in the media and is destined to be eliminated from history" (dd 301)
"the New Yorker, often virtually alone in the mainstream in its departures from official theology" (dd 323)
"one journal, the New York Review of Books, was open to dissident opinion during the peak years of popular protest. Those doors closed in the early 1970s" (ni 384)
"Duarte's security services and their associates extended their grim work while the Times obligingly looked the other way" (ni 237)
"When the London Sunday Times released Mordechai Vanunu's testimony on Israel's nuclear arsenal in 1986, the New York Times looked the other way" (lfl 44)
"the media once again politely looked the other way" (dd 151)
"pounded Laos to dust while the Monitor looked the other way" (atc 127)
"the press and the intellectual community looked the other way" (rs 185)
"the Times refused to print the facts or even letters referring to them" (ni 292; wo 241)
"the readers of the New York Times were spared these facts" (ni 236)
"neither the Times nor the Washington Post mentioned these facts (mc 208)
OUR GOOD INTENTIONS
On Jefferson Morley’s remark about Nicaragua being "beyond the reach of our good intentions" (z 9/88 11; dd 257)
"the doctrine of 'good intentions' is beyond challenge, even beyond awareness" (cot 49)
"the best of intentions go awry when we have such poor human material to work with" (z 11/90 21; dd 164)
On Anthony Lewis’ position that U.S. role in Vietnam War consisted of "blundering efforts to do good" (tncw 144)
On John K. Fairbank’s position that U.S. Vietnam War policy consisted of "an excess of righteousness and disinterested benevolence" (cr 316)
"No problems are perceived in the U.S.-backed terror states, presumably, because they are already within the reach of our benevolence." (z 9/88 18; dd 270)
"prior to the dose of benevolence administered by the U.S. government and its Indonesian associates" (tncw 472)
On Schlesinger’s perception of U.S. Vietnam War policy as being "part of our overall program of international goodwill" (cr 63)
On Krauthammer’s remark regarding "America’s historic purpose of advancing freedom" (z 11/89 12)
On Karnow’s perception of U.S. Vietnam War policy as being guided by the "loftiest intentions" (cr 316)
"sober voices warn [that we are] neglecting our own legitimate interests in our dedicated service to others" (hos 44)
"The Clinton panel determined to put an end to the era of altruism. No more 'nice guy,' as in the days when we turned much of the world into graveyards and deserts." (z 12/93 32)
"No longer will we be guided by altruism, the Clinton Administration determined, as in the days when we turned large parts of the world into graveyards and deserts, bringing starvation and despair to Central America, Southeast Asia, and numerous other targets of our benevolence." (wo 25)
AXIOMS / RULES / PRINCIPLES / DOCTRINES
"Axiom One of International Affairs": "The major energy reserves of the world are to be dominated by the U.S., its regional clients, and its oil corporations." (z 10/90 18; dd 56)
"a cardinal rule of international etiquette: if you intend to engage in mass murder, then do so when there are not too many reporters in the vicinity or when the editorial offices at home understand the virtues of silence" (tft 372)
"The basic principle, rarely violated, is that what conflicts with the requirements of power and privilege does not exist." (z 5/89 29; dd 79)
"the profound commitment to the doctrine that no one has a right to defend themselves from U.S. attack" (z 12/89 11; dd 289)
"To the rules of the game we must add yet another: truth is an utter irrelevance when it does not serve power." (z 12/89 16; dd 298)
"Policy adhered to the principle: First force, then talk." (frs 112)
"the [government-media] doctrine has another crucial feature: the right to violence is reserved to the United States." (z 3/90 15; dd 156)
"These are, again, the rules of the game[:] the White House, with congressional approval, violates agreements as it chooses, and the Free Press provides the required falsehoods and misinterpretations to permit the farce to proceed." (z 12/89 12)
"To the rules of the game we must add yet another: truth is an utter irrelevance when it does not serve power." (z 12/89 16)
"hypocrisy is the name of the game" (z 12/89 11; dd 288)
"The standard doctrine bears little resemblance to reality." (z 5/88 manuscript footnote 3)
"A standard journalistic device to suppress unwanted facts that have unfortunately come to light is to report them only in the context of government denials." (z 10/90 23; dd 193)
"One of the rules of journalism is that when you mention George [W.] Bush's name in an article, the headline has to speak of his 'vision' and the article has to talk about his 'dreams.'" (ia 10)
"U.S. military doctrine is unusual, perhaps unique, in holding that U.S. soldiers are not permitted to face any threat." (z 11/94 59)
"it is understood across the spectrum that it would be ‘imprudent’ to attack anyone capable of fighting back" (z 3/90 11)
on George H.W. Bush requiring "guarantee that no one would shoot back" (y501 254)
"the designated targets should be weak enough to be attacked without cost; the wrong color helps" (z 11/89 14; dd 114)
"approved doctrine holds that the trickle down and export promotion policies that have always led to disaster in the past will succeed today" (z 7-8/92 10)
"When matters of doctrine are at stake, questions of fact and logic are irrelevant." (tncw 427)
"the usual pattern when atrocities and crimes afford an opportunity for service to power" (z 12/91 30)
"First force, then talk" (frs 112)
"people with power tend to understand only one thing: violence" (z 3/89)
"when intelligence fails, there is always plenty of force in reserve" (frs 99)
"As in the case of Stalin, Saddam Hussein's crimes were of no account, until he committed the crime of disobedience" (y501 89)
"The problem is not crimes, but insubordination, a fact illustrated by a host of gangsters from Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin to Saddam Hussein." (y501 71)
"The Iraqi tyrant—a great friend and ally of the West before his crime of disobedience, the first one that mattered" (pap 213)
"Torture, tyranny, aggression, slaughter of civilians are all acceptable by U.S.- U.K. standards, but not stepping on our toes." (z 5/91 56)
"the crime of disobedience" as "the only one that matters" (z 12/91 41)
"crime of disobedience" (dd 408; pe 155; pap 213; y501 89)
"If somebody tries to disobey us, our values are that they have to be crushed and massacred." (cw 71)
LIES AND DOUBLESPEAK
"We live entangled in webs of endless deceit" (ttt 1)
"as government lies are reiterated day after day, year after year, falsehood becomes truth" (frs xi)
"Thus are myths created" (frs 105)
"the terms of political discourse are designed so as to prevent thought" (up 41)
"Consider the reasoning of the American planners" (frs 126)
"This kind of thinking, if that is the right word" (frs 8)
"the line of argument, where detectable" (apnm 340)
"Thus, by Orwellian logic, we are actually defending national independence when we intervene with military force to protect a ruling elite from internal insurgency." (apnm 57)
"This conclusion does hold if we exclude Europeans from Europe" (hos 133)
"the curious incapacity to understand that chanting of government slogans does not constitute argument" (cr 469)
"overlooking the fact that before seeking the cause for X it is necessary to show that X is true" (more 6/78 22)
"In short, the world does not agree with us, so it follows, by simple logic, that the world is wrong." (z 3/89 23; ni 88)
"In short, whatever the situation, bomb." (frs 111)
"In short, Nicaragua should be free—free to do what we want them to do; they should choose their own course independently, as long as their choice conforms to U.S. interests." (z 9/89 13; dd 261-62)
"The successful CIA coup of 1954 that terminated Guatemala’s 10-year experiment in capitalist democracy—or, as the intelligence analysts prefer to put it, after ‘the Arbenz regime collapsed in June 1954’" (z 9/89 13; dd 262)
"those preparing to ‘face the responsibilities of power,’ or in plain English, to set forth on a life of crime" (y501 232)
"Congress at once voted to violate the agreement (while explicitly pledging to observe it)" (z 5/89 29; dd 79)
"the congressional decision to advance the cause of peace by undermining the cease-fire agreement and contradicting the terms of their own legislation." (z 5/89 29; dd 79)
"Arafat can now be held to the pledges he has not made, and the Palestinians can be punished if they fail to live up to the solemn commitments that the U.S. has invented." (z 3/89 24; ni 310)
"first, the media suppress a major story, then a journal devoted to the performance of the media is unwilling to investigate the suppression because it has been so effective" (tncw 471)
"resist Soviet influence" as "the usual code word for resistance to unwanted forms of nationalism" (tft 35)
"'stability' has long served as a code word, referring to a 'favorable orientation of the political elite'" (rs 55) [Quoting Robert McNamera]
stability as "a code word for subordination to US power interests" (pe 156)
"'stability' is a code word for obedience" (ttt 66)
"growth" as "a code word meaning ‘profits’" (z 7-8/92 12)
"jobs" as "a code word meaning ‘profits’" (z 7-8/92 12)
"'jobs,' a term that has taken on the meaning of the unpronounceable word 'profits' in conventional Newspeak" (z 12/93)
"the term ‘developing societies’ is the standard euphemism for those who are not developing" (z 3/92 25)
"'unlawful use of force'—international terrorism, in lay terms." (hos 99)
"Free Enterprise" as "public subsidy, private profit" (dd 21)
"The word 'conflict' is a common euphemism for US aggression" (fs 47)
"'internal security—a euphemism for war against the domestic population" (pap 96)
counterinsurgency as "hardly more than a euphemism for state-directed international terrorism" (pe 177)
"'Preventive war' is just a euphemism for aggression at will." (int 74
"Socialism" as "a term used freely to apply to anything we are not supposed to like" (z 1/91 19; dd 240)
"supporters of Israel" as "supporters of Israel's degeneration and ultimate destruction" (lfl 151)
"an ‘economic miracle’ by statistical measures, a disaster for most of the population" (z 11/90 16; opi 77)
"falsified by government propagandists, called ‘scholars’" (ttt 273)
"left-fascists" as terminology used in the "attack on so-called political correctness" (cod 351)
"usual PC meanings" (y501 38)
"The term ‘peace process’ is another of those to be mastered: in PC rhetoric, it refers to whatever the US happens to be doing" (y501 39)
"Peace Process" as "whatever the U.S. government happens to be doing at the time" (z 3/89 19)
"The term 'peace process' itself is a standard Orwellism [referring] to whatever the US leadership happens to be doing at the moment—often undermining the peace process in the literal sense of the term" (pap 132-33)
"The term 'peace process' is another of those to be mastered: in PC rhetoric, it refers to whatever the US happens to be doing, perhaps blocking the peace process" (y501 39)
"So the Baker Plan is the Shamir Plan, which is the Peace Process" (z 1/90 12)
"societies in which the general public is expected to stand aside—that is, all existing societies" (y501 17)
"our Nazis, to translate from Newspeak" (y501 131)
"The apparent inconsistency vanishes as soon as doctrinal constraints are put aside." (z 3/90 15; dd 152; lfl 23)
"Only a step away, the veil lifts and elementary truths are perceived." (z 12/89 16)
"I don’t even know what the word ‘deconstruct’ means, let alone how to use it." (cod 354)
"I read all kinds of things which talk about dialectical materialism. I haven’t the foggiest idea what it is." (z 1/95 39)
"The word 'conflict' is a common euphemism for US aggression" (fs 47)
"the term 'anti-American' and its variants ('hating America,' and the like) are regularly used to defame critics of state policy who may admire and respect the country, its culture, and its achievements, indeed think it is the greatest place on earth. Nevertheless, they 'hate America' and are 'anti-American' on the tacit assumption that the society and people are to be identified with state power. This usage is drawn directly from the lexicon of totalitarianism." (hos 45)
"civics textbooks are one thing, the real world, quite another." (ttt 268)
"Few are willing to undertake the tedious task of refuting the regular flood of lies" (ttt 78)
"'stability' is a code word for obedience" (ttt 66)
"one of the conventional devices employed to prevent understanding of the world in which we live" (ttt 49)
"Algeria, which had already been singled out for praise by Clinton's State Department for its achievements in combating terror—meaning, its horrendous record of state terrorist atrocities." (hos 115)
ANALOGIES
"I leave it to the reader to construct the Nazi analogue." (y501 308)
"could have been readily evoked by Hitler" (z 3/90 10)
"these values, familiar from the Nazi era, in no way diminish the reputation of the journal [New Republic]." (z 5/90 21; dd 308)
"Any Nazi would nod his head in approval." (z 5/93 30)
"One who is so inclined will have little difficulty in extracting similar pronouncements from Nazi archives." (tncw 220)
"Exploring Nazi archives, one might find..." (frs xix)
"this claim, which, if correct, sets American policy at the moral level of Nazi Germany..." (awwa 96)
"By Himmler’s standards, the toughness of the American government must be exalted indeed." (tncw 146)
"Any Nazi could have said the same about Winston Churchill" (frs 94) "these values, familiar from the Nazi era" (z 5/90 21; dd 308)
"to me it seems that what is needed is a kind of denazification" (apnm16)
"we may now rest easy in the knowledge that Washington did all it could to encourage the greatest massacre since the days of Hitler and Stalin" (z 9/90 23; y501 133)
"Guatemala, whose rulers for the past 40 years could easily rub shoulders with Himmler and Mengele" (Harbury, Bridge of Courage)
"Guatemalan Himmlers" (opi 30)
"We see here the grip of doctrine in a form that would have deeply impressed the medieval church, or the mullahs in Qom today." (z 3/89 23; dd 109)
"Apart from the reference to God, it would be hard to tell whether the quote is from Lenin, or—as indeed is the case—Robert McNamera." (tncw 64)
"the performance in the mainstream would have impressed any dictator" (z 5/90 25)
"Interchanging a few names, what commissar could disagree?" (frs 107)
"Maoist-style ranting" (z 1/94 27)
"Perhaps there are also enlightened Germans who are in the process of forgiving the Jews." (atc 77)
Third World debt crisis as "huge hemorrhage" (z 4/91 44; dd 98)
"To accept the official American government position, one must believe that the Vietnamese are supermen" (awwa 212; frs 129)
"The open admiration for fascist values is a matter of some interest." (z 5/91 52)
"The exultant display of fascist values is worthy of notice along with the self- righteous moralism, a traditional feature of the intellectual culture." (wo 12)
"those who pretend to be anti-communist while mimicking Stalinist practice" (ft 176)
"one of the most remarkable propaganda campaigns in human history--the ‘human rights’ movement of the 1970s" (monthly review 11/81 6)
"like standing up in the Vatican and saying Jesus didn’t exist" (krl 158)
Contras as phony guerrillas (z 3/90 24; 5/89 29; cot 42)
Business press as "kind of vulgar Marxist, but inverted" (krl 106)
THE SECRET RECORD
"Classified information is continually leaked to correspondents for the particular purposes of the administration, and it is a common practice for ex-officials to release such information and documents in memoirs." (frs 144)
NSC 68 [April 1950] as "the major planning document of the early cold war" (monthly review 11/81 4), "the basic US Cold War document" (dd 10), "one of the crucial documents of modern history"(opi15)
NSC 5429/2 as "highly significant document" that "is in clear and explicit violation of the law" (frs 101)
"the important NSAM288 of March 1964" (frs 44)
the "important" Department of State Policy Statement on Indochina, September 27, 1948 (frs 143; see also rc 15, opi 42)
"the almost fanatic level of lying in internal documents" (tncw 472)
"The vulgar Marxist rhetoric...is common in internal documents, as in the business press." (y501 162)
"classification of documents on the largely fraudulent pretext of national security" (z 7-8/91 13; dd 359)
"Reagan era censorship reached unprecedented levels, including suppression and falsification of past history so extreme that the chairman of the academic advisory board for the State Department resigned with a public protest." (z 7- 8/92, 13)
"When the history of this period emerges, if it ever does..." (z 2/91 62)
"as the documentary record will doubtless reveal when it is released in many years" (z 7-8/89 21)
"The Pentagon Papers are a study of decision making, nothing more." (frs 6)
"The most striking feature of the historical record, as presented in the Pentagon study, is its remarkable continuity." (frs 28)
"The [Pentagon] study deals, not with the war, but with the perception of the war in Washington, a rather different matter." (frs 4)
"The general bias of the analysts must be appreciated by anyone who hopes to make serious use of this material [Pentagon Papers]." (frs 28)
"With regard to long-term United States objectives, the Pentagon Papers again add useful documentation..." (frs 31)
"One of the few really surprising disclosures in the Pentagon Papers was that in an intelligence record of 25 years, the analysts could find only one paper that even raised the question whether Hanoi was pursuing its national interest, not following the orders of its foreign masters."(rc 13; see also frs 5ttt 51, opi 42)
On official scholarship’s avoidance of secret documents (opi 16; tncw 100; race and class, vol. 4, 1984 50; more 6/78 19)
On Kennan’s avoidance of referring to his own record of secret planning (ttt 265; opi 16)
"CONSERVATISM" AND REAGANOMICS
Reaganomics as "a form of destructive economic mismanagement at a level of stupidity and incompetence that has no parallel." (lap 606)
"statist reactionaries of the Reaganite variety ('conservatives'), who reject the right of the public even to know what their leaders are doing" (z 7-8/92 13; y501 64)
"Reaganite economic mismanagement" (z 5/89 31; dd 340)
"decade of Reaganite folly" (y501 106)
"state-organized party for the rich" (z 11/89 13; dd 113)
"serious social pathology" (z 11/89 18; dd 135)
"costs of the Reaganite welfare state measures for the wealthy" (7-8/89 17; dd 93)
"Reagan-Bush ‘trickle-down’ economics—in practice, an upward flood" (z 2/93 30)
"Class war is not easy to fine tune." (y501 111)
quoting "The Reagan nightmare of supply-side economics and Military Keynesianism" (y501 110)
"the reactionary jingoists who have misappropriated the term ‘conservative’" (ttt 4)
"the curious current amalgam of Maoism and contemporary neoliberalism- neoconservatism" (cot 68)
"Contra Lobbyist Robert Leiken, a hitherto unknown Maoist" (dd 105)
"Maoist-style ranting" of the Wall Street Journal (z 1/94 27)
"North’s performance was a particularly chilling illustration of the fanatic commitment of latter-day ‘conservatism’ to state power and violence, and its fear and hatred of democracy" (cot 64)
"Don’t waste time on the mind; use the rod (but only against the weak). A perfect expression of modern ‘conservatism’." (z 3/90 15)
"so-called conservatives, a highly misleading term for those committed to an enhancement of state power and violence" (tncw 372)
"This mobilization of state power to control the public was illegal...but entirely in keeping with what is called ‘conservatism’ in the latest corruption of political discourse" (z 5/89 27)
"trickle-down...policies...have always led to disaster in the past" (z 7-8/92 10)
SARCASM
"Jonathon Swift, where are you when we need you?" (z 7-8/89 22; dd 104)
"we may now rest easy in the knowledge that Washington did all it could to encourage the greatest massacre since the days of Hitler and Stalin" (z 9/90 23; y501 133)
"Comparable rhetoric would merely elicit ridicule outside of remnants of pre- Enlightenment fanaticism, such as Khomeini’s Iran or disciplined Western intellectual circles." (z 11/89 12; dd 109)
"In a political culture that is more free and independent than ours—the military- run terror state of Guatemala, for example" (z 5/90 26; lfl 37)
"in more honest and intellectually advanced societies, such as medieval theology" (cod 78)
"We await, with bated breath, the arrest of Lyndon Johnson and others." (frs 144)
"Reagan even revealed himself to be a closet Leninist" (z 7-8/89 17; dd 93)
Newt Gingrich as "Mr. Family Values" (z 2/95 29)
"Gingrich has not yet announced legislation to authorize state kidnapping of children" (z 2/95 29)
"During these years of too much democracy" (z 9/88 14; see also dd 263)
"Any democracy, after all, must take special measures to exclude communists." (frs 108)
"[Stamping out Commies]...as a solid commitment to democracy would demand." (z 11/88 19)
"The Bush Administration has joined congressional doves in preferring to emphasize the ‘kinder, gentler’ methods of torture." (z 12/89 17)
"Things are looking up for our side." (frs 5)
"How significant and gratifying that the peasants should seek security on our side, joining the righteous cause." (frs 86)
"But this glorious hope was dashed." (awwa 298)
"If children in a burn ward at the Quang Ngai hospital disagree, well, they probably don’t understand the laws of physics either." (frs 8) [Responding to the claim that counterinsurgency is "as practical and as neutral in an ethical sense as the laws of physics."]
"It takes no military genius to predict what will happen to the people who are being protected in this way." (frs 83)
"it may be argued that the American government did not know that [Agent Orange] was so dangerous. That is true. It was merely an experiment. Virtually nothing was known about what the effects might be.... How could we know, without trying?" (awwa 94-5)
"once the dream of a better future is abandoned and 'the masses' understand that their only hope is to shine shoes for Whitey" (z 5/90 30; dd 327)
"Aristide...has not learned that his job is to shuffle quietly with a friendly smile while thanking Massa for his kindness." (z 11/94 57)
"France, Brazil, India, and other insignificant corners of the world" (z 11/89 13)
on the US-perceived "psychic disorders of the Third World" (z 10/90 24)
"the threat to our existence posed by Soviet influence in South Yemen, Laos, and other such powerhouses" (z 11/89 13; dd 112)
in the Philippines, "the U.S. has had so little time to exercise its tutelage; only 90 years, after all" (z 1/91 17)
"Doubtless it is ridiculous to expect the country’s effective rulers to purge themselves" (z 12/89 14; dd 293)
"the noted Marxist Thomas Jefferson in a letter to his fellow-subversive James Madison" (z 1/95 25)
Defense Department planners as "committed Marxists" (opi 23; y501 302) [referring to the DOD’s Study of U.S. Policy Toward Latin America Military Forces, 11 June 1965]
"the vicious terror and racism...will be transmuted to sweet charity as it reaches the educated classes" (z 11/94 58)
"If they use the freedom we accord them unwisely, naturally we must respond in self-defense." (z 9/89 13)
"it is understood across the spectrum that it would be ‘imprudent’ to attack anyone capable of fighting back" (z 3/90 11)
Elliot Abrams as "another noted pacifist" (z 7-8/94 59)
"the dedication to democracy for which he [Elliot Abrams] was famous" (y501 208)
"Surely they did not believe that Ho Chi Minh was going to conquer Thailand or Malaya or set sail for Jakarta or Tokyo." (frs 34; cr 230)
"Ho Chi Minh will take off to Jakarta in a canoe and conquer the Archipegalo" (dd 57)
"Ho Chi Minh will climb into a canoe, conquer Indonesia, land in San Francisco, and rape your grandmother" (opi 34)
"Sandinistas marching on Texas" (z 5/91 52; dd 408)
"whimpering about Sandinistas marching on Texas, monstrous air bases in Grenada, and other such grim threats to our existence" (wo 20)
"Qaddafi's hordes of international terrorists, Sandinistas marching on Texas, Grenada interdicting sea lanes and threatening the homeland itself, Hispanic narcotraffickers directed by the arch-maniac Noriega, and crazed Arabs generally, most recently, the Beast of Baghdad, after the underwent the usual conversion from favored friend to Attila the Hun" (dd 408)
"perhaps [Arafat] was planning to take over the Pentagon, or at least hijack a taxi cab" (z 3/89 21)
"who knows what thoughts this devious creature [Aristide] might convey by the tone of his voice?" (z 7-8/94 62)
"One might almost think, reading some of these analyses, that American Jews are standing at the gates of the crematoria, barely fending off the Black Panthers." (pme 190)
"British jingoists, dreaming of the good old days when they had ‘the right to bomb niggers’" (y 501 50)
"before PC left-fascists begin to interfere with lucrative mass murder" (y501 58)
"all they can do is watch and cheer and drink beer" (krl 260)
"standing up in the Vatican and saying Jesus Christ didn’t exist" (krl 158)
"As soon as you say the word ‘class,’ everybody falls down dead. There’s some Marxist raving again." (krl 109)
everyone "alone in front of the T.V. screen" (z 7-8/91 16)
"the best of intentions go awry when we have such poor human material to work with" (z 11/90 21; dd 164)
"Nixon and Kissinger were unable to kill as many Cambodians as they would have liked" (nyrb 9/20/73 3)
Guatemala’s "world championship for DDT in mother’s milk" (y501 174)
"the Clinton administration has called for a change in policy toward the Colombian killers: more active U.S. participation" (z 5/94 30)
on the US "providing the [Columbian] mass murderers and torturers with military equipment, putting our taxes to good use" (z 5/94 33)
"[James] Reston had performed yeoman service in the cause of freedom, as when he took pride in the US contribution to the huge slaughter in Indonesia in 1965" (dd 18)
"the beneficiaries may be too backward to benefit from our solicitude" (fs 131)
"if kindly old Uncle Sam occasionally flicks his ashes on someone by mistake, that is surely no reason for tantrums" (apnm 43)
"connoisseurs who miss Pravda" (y501 150)
"Sir Robert Thompson, one of Britain's gifts to the Vietnamese people" (frs 106)
"architects of policy—honorable men, always guided by the most benevolent intentions, which, fortuitously, happen to coincide with their own interests" (y501 232)
"Another mistake, with more unintended consequences" (frs 83)
"Another of those ethically neutral dilemmas of counterinsurgency" (frs 129)
"Just a mistake in judgment, one of those ironies of history, according to the official story." (z 12/90 23; dd 195)
"What a pity Goebbels could not have lived to see his final triumph over his enemies." (frs xi)
UNWANTED FACTS
"This NIE is typical of the genre in the scrupulous evasion of unwanted fact" (z 9/88 14, dd 263)
"Such reconstruction of unwanted facts is not unusual." (ft 172)
"the hysterical abuse elicited by his [Bertrand Russell's] exposure of unwelcome truths" (ni 384)
"the almost fanatic level of lying in internal documents, as the government tries to conceal the ugly truth from itself" (tncw 472)
"an unacceptable insight into the reality that must be concealed even in an internal intelligence analysis" (dd 262)
"standard journalistic device to suppress unwanted facts" (z 10/90 23; dd 193)
"it is one of the conventions of respectable journalism and scholarship that research that does not adhere to accepted doctrine must remain unmentioned" (ft 316)
"political Alzheimer’s" (y501 153)
"Beyond the reach of evidence" (frs 63)
"How easy is the life of the true believer." (z 9/90 23; y501 133)
"When matters of doctrine are at stake, questions of fact and logic are irrelevant." (tncw 427)
"passes into the same oblivion as all other inquiries into the catastrophies of Capitalism" (z 1/91 16; dd 233)
"the flow of necessary lies" (z 7-8/92 9; y501 53)
"We see here the ultimate achievement of thought control, well beyond what Orwell imagined." (z 5/90 25; dd 317)
"Since the Commission reached all the wrong conclusions...." (z 12/89 12)
"The secret can be kept" (awwa 98)
"All these facts are unacceptable. Therefore, they have disappeared." (z 3/89 20)
"These facts are unacceptable. Accordingly, they quickly disappeared from official history and have remained unmentionable." (ni 290)
"mere fact is never allowed to get in the way" (atc 331)
"And so on, through the byways of historical irrelevance" (z10/90, 29; dd 210)
"Barringer’s gentle admonition suffers from only one flaw: the facts." (z 10/90 21; dd 188)
"that what conflicts with the requirements of power and privilege does not exist" (z 5/89 29; dd 79)
"quickly consigned to the proper oblivion" (z 9/90 22)
"dismissed to the proper oblivion" (lfl 155)
"the American public was spared knowledge of these facts" (manuscript for z 5/88, 14)
"falsehood becomes truth" (frs xi)
"beyond the reach of evidence or debate" (frs 63)
"a simple truth that plainly cannot be expressed" (z 2/91 51)
"cannot even be heard in these circles" (cr 469)
"a truism that cannot be perceived" (cot 63)
"deeply buried in the memory hole" (z 10/90 20; pap 59; y501 246)
"the media and congress chose not to know" (z 5/89 28; dd 77)
"The Times...chose to suppress it" (z 2/91 50)
"The Times refused--not failed, refused--to report the fact" (manuscript for z 5/88 14)
"the Newspaper of Record managed to evade the matter" (z 12/89 14)
"truth is an utter irrelevance when it does not serve power" (z 12/89 16)
"Throughout, the media have successfully concealed what is happening." (z 5/89 29)
"The silence here was deafening" (z 5/91 57; dd 415)
"Israeli nuclear weapons" "is a phrase that can’t be written or uttered by any official U.S. government source" (wusrw 65)
"the Israeli connection, which could hardly be discussed in this journal [New Republic]" (ft 36)
"Alfred M. Lilienthal, The Zionist Connection, a book that could hardly be reviewed in a major U.S. journal" (ft 436)
"since they [Gabriel & Joyce Kolko] do not adhere to approved orthodoxies, it is considered a violation of scholarly ethics to refer to their contributions" (ft 35)
"[Alan Tomlinson’s] total incapacity to perceive the words" (lap 681)
"the words don’t penetrate [Steven Kinzer’s] mind" (pal 726)
"[Tom Wolfe] can’t even hear the words." (mcf 61)
"The actual reasons...are rated X here" (z 9/93 33; tft 523)
"Operation Brain Wash" (tncw 133)
"to survey Third World opinion is no simple matter" (z 10/91 19)
PATHOLOGIES
"Ortega may not understand the psychotic streak in the dominant U.S. intellectual culture." (z 12/89 11; dd 289)
"We cannot lightly dismiss recent history in hope that it will prove to be some mad aberration" (frs viii)
on the conception that "American actions in Vietnam are simply an outburst of criminal insanity" (apnm 311)
Reaganite domestic policy as "serious social pathology" (z 11/89 18; dd 135)
"productions of psychotics" (z 7/89; dd 101)
"one has the impression of living in a madhouse" (frs 138)
OTHER COUNTRIES
Japanese as "honorary whites" (z 3/92 24)
"the North Koreans, crazy as they are" (up 311)
North Korea as "one of the poorest and most miserable countries in the world" (hos 151)
"do we want to improve relations with China? China's a very brutal society, a brutal government. I don't feel any particular interest in improving relations with it." (up 292)
"The defense of Angola was one of Cuba's most significant contributions to the liberation of Africa." (hos 94)
"India has a wonderful software industry and sectors of great wealth... also hundreds of millions of people living under some of the worst conditions in the world, where the plight of women is not very different from life under the Taliban" (hos 134)
the "ferocity of the hatred for Cuban independence" (z 3/92 32; dd 153)
Gorbachev as "the powerless leader of a country that scarcely exists" (z 12/91 33; dd 426)
"disintegration of the Soviet tyranny and its virtual disappearance from the world scene" (z 10/91 20)
"collapse of Soviet tyranny" (z 2/91 63)
"For its victims, the collapse of Soviet tyranny was a remarkable triumph and liberation" (pe 155)
"For authentic socialists, the collapse of Soviet tyranny would have been a time of rejoicing" (wo 38)
Singapore’s "appreciation of the merits of fascism" (z 1/91 18; dd 237)
MISCELLANEOUS
"Education is a system of imposed ignorance." (mcf 157)
"Friends and enemies can be identified, to a rather good first approximation, in terms of their role in maintaining an integrated global economy in which American capital can operate with relative freedom." (frs 60)
"With regard to freedom of expression, there are basically two positions: you defend it vigorously for views you hate, or you reject it in favor of Stalinist/Fascist standards" (z 7-8/92 24; dd 401)
"If you want to know whether a country is liberated, ask the population. They should be the ones to decide, not the intellectuals and politicians of the invading country." (ia 78)
"You don't 'rally to the leader' in a democracy—you do whatever you like." (up 107)
"you can learn more [about human nature] from a novel than you can from the sciences" (cod 354)
"we learn much more of human interest about how people think and feel and act by reading novels or studying history than from all of naturalistic psychology" (language and thought 42)
"The Bible is probably the most genocidal in our total canon." (mcf 156)
Gramsci’s "pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will" as "the only reasonable strategy" (cod 354)
"I go to a teach-in on Central America, a teach-in on the Middle East, a teach-in on Vietnam. That’s all nonsense. Everything’s happening in Washington. It’s just the same things in Washington playing themselves out in different parts of the world." (lap 729)
"The problem of getting organized is a problem of will." (krl 149)
"It is not pleasant to speculate about the likely consequences if concentrated power continues on its present course, protected from the scrutiny that would be second nature if we were to take seriously the legacy of freedom we enjoy." (hos 216)
"I don't know any way to predict human affairs." (ia 12)
"If you give up every time you don't achieve the immediate gain you want, you're just guaranteeing that the worst is going to happen." (ia 16)
"There is no difficulty in finding and joining groups that are working hard on issues that concern you." (ia 90)
"nobody's smart enough to design a society; you've got to experiment" (up 195)
"nobody's ever going to read more than a tiny fraction of the things you wished you knew" (up 235)
"you're not going to be effective as a political activist unless you have a satisfying life" (up 354)
"unless you begin with an elementary class analysis, you aren't even in the real world" (up 378)
"jingoism, racism, fear, religious fundamentalism: these are the ways of appealing to people if you're trying to organize a mass base of support for policies that are really intended to crush them" (up 395)
"It's hard to imagine a better way to demoralize people than to have them watch T.V. for seven hours a day" (up 397)
"I can't see how anybody can fail to have an interest in trying to help people become more engaged in thinking about these problems and doing something about them." (ia 183)
 |
| apnm dedication |
SOURCE KEY
Book sources are indicated by an abbreviation of the source, followed by the page number. For example, "frs 19" refers to page 19 of For Reasons of State.
Periodical sources are indicated by an abbreviation of the source, followed by the date (and/or volume number), followed by the page number. For example, "z 5/89 32" refers to page 32 of the May 1989 issue of Z Magazine.
Any source that does not appear in the list below is referred to by its full title.
Books:
awwa = At War With Asia
cod = Chronicles of Dissent
cr = Chomsky Reader
cot = Culture of Terrorism
dd = Deterring Democracy
frs = For Reasons of State
int = Interventions
ia = Imperial Ambitions
krl = Keeping the Rabble in Line
lap = Language and Politics
lfl = Letters From Lexington
mc = Manufacturing Consent
mcf= Manufacturing Consent, film companion book
opi = On Power and Ideology
pap = Powers and Prospects
pe = Pirates and Emperors
pkf = Problems of Knowledge and Freedom
pme = Peace in the Middle East?
rs = Rogue States
sld = Secrets Lies and Democracy
ttt = Turning the Tide
tncw = Towards a New Cold War
tft = The Fateful Triangle
twc = The Washington Connection
wo = World Orders, Old and New
wusrw = What Uncle Sam Really Wants
y501 = Year 501
Periodicals:
rs = Rolling Stone
z = Z Magazine
nyrb = New York Review of Books