When I found about a recent book called The Left at War by Michael Bérubé, I was expecting a researched venture to find out why the left has had trouble organizing and getting together over the years. Well, to my surprise it's actually more like a call to war against a certain kind of left, what Bérubé calls the "Manichean left" of Noam Chomsky and Slavoj Zizek.
The basic idea is that these leftists are too extreme, wrong, simple minded and "Manichean" and should thus be purged (or at least of their credibility) from the rest of the responsible left. A good deal of the book, if not most of it, deals with Noam Chomsky and his supposed errors and misgivings. If anything, it feels like a calmer version of The Anti-Chomsky Reader.
Truth be told I only skimmed it through Google books and want to be careful with my critique as the book puts a lot of effort into separating shrieking from legitimate criticism but it seems insightful to go over a few things.
As such, these are what you might call my "preliminary findings" in case the book becomes noteworthy enough for me to want to read it further.
From the outset, Bérubé immediately gets Herman and Chomsky's propaganda model wrong or is intentionally mischaracterizing it. In an effort to show how Chomsky supposedly rationalizes that everyone is indoctrinated by the media, Bérubé claims that Herman and Chomsky present a theory of "false consciousness" and uses this phrase throughout the book.
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 purpose is to "manufacture consent" the outcome usually fails. To claim that the book shows a "false consciousness" is dishonest at best.
Bérubé also makes a big deal out of the exchange between Chomsky and Hitches over the Al-Shifa medical factory bombing for which Chomsky says is comparable to 9/11 because it lead to the deaths of tens of thousands in Sudan. What's interesting are Bérubé's reasons for why he's wrong or misleading:
* It's wrong to make the comparison, period.
* Chomsky is wrong for citing a member of the board of the Al-Shifa medical factory who said the attack was worse than 9/11, because that person, one of the few Pharmacologists in Sudan, is also wrong.
* One critic said there's no evidence that tens of thousands of people died (contrary to numerous reports that it in fact did).
As well, when Chomsky dismissed that he made the original "claim" that the bombing was worse then 9/11 when actually it was made by the pharmacologist, Bérubé interprets this as "Chomsky insist[ing] that it is ludicrous to imagine he endorsed Huband's account by citing it." That would be a ridiculous, which is why basic reading comprehension would lead us to believe otherwise.
In fact, at no point does Bérubé directly address why it's wrong to compare the Al-Shifa bombing to 9/11, only that it just obviously is and anyone that does so is wrong and Chomsky is extra wrong about it.
My impression is despite being what many on the left have always wanted, a well constructed criticism of Chomsky et al. it didn't catch on because of glaring errors and seeming lack of coherence.
If in the Al-Shifa section for instance, Bérubé had said something like, "In this section I will say that Chomsky's comparison is wrong and will provide no evidence as to why it is but will just try to nit pick what he says and say it's wrong" it would have helped. You're basically waiting for him address a broader point but his point turns out to be: Look at how wrong Chomsky is!
The odd thing is it almost helps bolster the "Manichean left," after all, why can't the book simply make the claim that an issue is wrong because of X, Y and Z and then go through destroy the authors? Instead it ends up looking like something written by David Horowitz but with less textually hysterical screaming.
My guess is, people on the moderate left who wanted a book on why Chomsky is wrong but didn't get it, they got a book that looks at different claims he makes and just says that they're wrong.