After my previous post, I decided to actually read The Left at War all the way through and honestly, the more the book is brought up and read, the more self-defeating it becomes for people like Mike Bérubé and others who distance themselves from Noam Chomsky et al.
As I’ve said before, the book is part attack and call to war with what Bérubé calls the “Manichean left” and part apologia for the relevance of cultural studies, Bérubé’s field of study.
As another reviewer brought up, most of the criticism is basically a “how dare they!“ argument where instead of addressing why the left is wrong on a particular issue, he simply takes them to be wrong and attacks what he sees as excessive rhetoric. It thus ends up not having any substance and instead is just a bunch of watered-down, David Horowitz-esque angry yelling, which is fine for leftists like Bérubé but not fine if you have say, an actual point to make.
Aside from the problematic approach, the book is plagued with non-stop straw man arguments and what can only be called Kettle-logic in which Bérubé lobs every bit of criticism he can against the Manicheans until it becomes incoherent and inconsistent.
“Manichean”
His biggest criticism is with what he calls the “Manichean” or “Countercultural” left of which Chomsky seems to be the main target.
For Bérubé, the Manichean left is defined by a left that sees “everyone and everything that is not on side is on the other” in which for example, “to criticize the US war in Afghanistan, one must defend the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan…”
This is already problematic for numerous reasons; for one, Chomsky makes it a habit to compare failure to critique US wars with the Soviet press not critiquing the invasion into Afghanistan, i.e. both are crimes of aggression, not exactly extoling the virtues of the Soviet Union.
As Chomsky points out:
By those standards [criticizing a war for being too costly], no one had a right to criticize the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia: it worked and casualties were very few. Virtually no one in the mainstream was capable of even imagining the position that everyone took in the case of Czechoslovakia [and applying it to the US]: aggression is wrong, even if it succeeds and at a small cost.
The best example of this is comparison with Israel/Palestine:
Chomsky: Those who defend suicide bombing, and there are very few, don't have a leg to stand on. Those who defend the Israeli atrocities, including the U.S. government, most intellectual opinion, a good bit of the West generally, they don't have a leg to stand on either and they have a much weaker position.
Indeed, not exactly “We are Hezbollah now.”
Oddly, there is literally one single example for which Chomsky is “Manichean,” (over the course of about a hundred pages) in which Chomsky comments on the “astonishing endurance” of the Taliban, not the best words to use, but extremely minor for an article mentioning the terribleness of the regime and even more minor given the entirety of his work.
To put this in perspective, we have a leader of the “Manichean” left, who, after over a hundred books and dozens of articles, only has one tiny phrase which can be called Manichean. This goes beyond grasping at straws and reaches grasping-at-dust mites territory.
Media
From the outset, Bérubé either misunderstands or deliberately falsifies the Herman-Chomsky propaganda model. He calls it a theory of “false consciousness” throughout the book and claims it’s used as a way for Chomsky et al. to supposedly rationalize that everyone is too indoctrinated by the media.
The problem is that in the book Manufacturing Consent, Herman and Chomsky explicitly state that they "are talking about media structure and performance, not the effects of the media on the public." The theory does not claim to be effective and indeed is probably ineffective as "the official line may be widely doubted." Note this is from page xii of the 2002 version, to get an idea of how early they make this point. Thus while the point is to “manufacture consent” the outcome isn’t effective.
This is highlighted by evidence in the book which shows a wide media divergence from public opinion, for example most people on opinion polls thought the Vietnam War was “More than a mistake, fundamentally wrong and immoral” but to say so in the media in the media would be “unthinkable.”
Thus, to say that Manufacturing Consent constitutes an argument of “false consciousness” is disingenuous at best and is actually a commonly used right-wing critique especially in books like The Anti-Chomsky Reader.
For the record I don’t think Bérubé is outright fabricating, my guess is he skimmed the book and just assumed from the title that’s what it meant.
Note this isn’t some small point; the “false consciousness” straw man basically runs through the whole book and is a major argument against Chomsky et al.
9/11, the Al-Shifa Bombing and the Balkans
The basic outline for much of Bérubé’s criticism is to point out a claim, not say why it’s wrong and then turn to quoting some discredited person who made a similar quote to show just how craaazy it is.
Some of the examples include:
• Kosovo was done for humanitarian reasons, how dare you! Here’s a Phyllis Schlafly quote that makes you sound craaazy.
• The Al-Shifa bombing isn’t comparable to 9/11, how dare you! Here’s a quote from an Islamist that makes you sound craaazy.
Other outright falsifications are:
• Asserting the Chomsky claimed that the Al-Shifa bombing is (1) a response to terrorism and (2) a typical response to terrorism (neither of which is ever claimed).
• Chomsky asserted that the invasion of Afghanistan was done deliberately to create a “silent genocide”
And of course:
• That Chomsky asserted that 9/11 was America “getting what it deserved” which is combined with craaazy quotes from Pat Robinson et al.
Needless to say the latter claim is probably what disqualified the book from being reviewed outside of sympathetic and un-sympathetic blogs.
Cultural Studies
Bérubé feels the need to have lengthy chapters on defending cultural studies which is largely done to contrast with his straw man of the alleged Chomsky-Herman “false consciousness.”
In many ways, his Chapter on Stuart Hall’s analysis of Thatcherism isn’t wrong but seems to overstate its case (in much the same way people like David Harvey did with the supposed popularity of neoliberalism). Essentially, there was no popular “right-turn” as people on opinion polls disapproved of the Reagan-Thatcher programs as it took a war to sustain Thatcher into office, often considered the most unpopular PM in modern history.
The point of the chapter, other than to counter the false consciousness straw man, is to basically say that the left has to moderate its tone and create tailor it’s message accordingly.
Bérubé’s Kettle logic
The most dizzying part of his criticism is the sheer Kettle logic of lobbing every possible criticism at Chomsky.
After reading some of his claims, and going “how dare they!” it goes something like “well they’re just competing to be Most Oppositional, and actually they’re trying to convince public opinion and failing at it, and actually they’re trying to be countercultural.”
Never mind that most of the claims aren’t true but it’s truly something when someone accuses Chomsky et al. of both competing to be “Most Oppositional” and of attempting to shift public opinion at the same time.
In fact, how about a quote from a supposed “Manichean” leftist:
...the war itself, which was a criminal adventure and a huge crime by our country, which the lives of almost a million Afghans. It was a war of annihilation, a terrible sin
The leftist was Andrei Sakharov who was addressing a Soviet veteran who lost his legs in the war.
No doubt the Bérubé’s of the world would yell “How dare they!” accuse him of trying to be “Most Oppositional”, failing to moderate his tone and convince the public, and claim that he thinks there is a theory of “false consciousness” for why the legless Soviet veteran was antagonistic to Sakharov, all the while not explaining why he’s wrong.
PS: Also I didn’t realize it but the book cost $20, so if this feels a bit long it’s because I’m hitting as much of it as I can.
