I just noticed, via Chun the Unavoidable, that the Chomsky haters in the blogosphere are all fuming over the following banal remark from an interview given by Chomsky in The Independent:
Question: Is anti-Semitism on the increase?
Answer: In the West, fortunately, it scarcely exists now, though it did in the past.
All the worldclass lightweights of the blogosphere have now gone beserk (for example, here and here). Now admittedly, it doesn't take much for these sorry souls to go beserk. But why over this?
In the U.S. and Western Europe, almost every institutional manifestation of anti-semitism--restrictions on employment, housing, education, and on and on--has been eliminated. This is a fact, and it is the obvious meaning of Chomsky's statement. Here's what Chomsky himself said on the subject on an earlier occasion:
"In the US when I was growing up anti-Semitism was a severe problem. In the 1930’s depression when my father finally had enough money to buy a second-hand car and could take the family on a trip to the mountains, if we wanted to stop at a motel we had to check it didn’t have a sign saying ‘Restricted’. ‘Restricted’ meant no Jews, so not for us; of course no Blacks. Even when I got to Harvard 50 years ago you could cut the anti-Semitism with a knife. There was almost no Jewish faculty. I think the first Jewish maths professor was appointed while I was there in the early ‘50s. One of the reasons MIT (where I now am) became a great university is because a lot of people who went on to become academic stars couldn’t get jobs at Harvard--so they came to the engineering school down the street. Just 30 years ago (1960s) when my wife and I had young children, we decided to move to a Boston suburb (we couldn’t afford the rents near Cambridge any longer). We asked a real estate agent about one town we were interested in, he told us: ‘Well, you wouldn’t be happy there.’ Meaning they don’t allow Jews. It’s not like sending people to concentration and termination camps, but that’s anti-Semitism. That was almost completely national."
But it isn't national any longer--and the same is true in Europe. So in this sense, it is an utterly banal observation that anti-semitism in the West "scarcely exists now."
So why have the blogosphere right-wingers gone beserk over this banal remark? Stupidity plainly plays a role in some cases. A Chomsky-hating predisposition on the part of many supports the least plausible reading of any statement made by the man. A tendency by some on the left to pander to the right through displays of distancing oneself from Chomsky is a factor in still other cases.
Some advice to Chomsky haters: calm yourselves! Rest assured that the great man will say things that genuinely challenge your prejudices and ignorance, and then you can resume ranting. And do try to remember that Chomsky is a man of genuine intellectual accomplishment, having invented a real scholarly discipline in its modern form, and who participates at the highest level in theoretical debates in cognate fields. This might, at least, create a presumption that when he writes about subjects that make only modest intellectual demands--like foreign relations or politics--that he is unlikely to make gross mistakes, and that he may, in fact, have legitimate reasons for saying what he does.
UPDATE: More sober analysis of the Chomsky matter here. (And see also this interesting exchange at the same site.)
UPDATE: And yet more sober analysis of the anti-semitism phenomenon here: "people who criticize Israeli policy are often called anti-Semitic, a convenient amalgamation whose purpose is to stop criticism of Israel. The rise in European 'anti-Semitism' is really a rise in criticism of the Sharon government."
UPDATE: My friend and former colleague Mike Rappaport has posted some remarks on the Chomsky matter. Here is what I wrote to him (for anyone who is interested):
If you are reading a statement by someone who is manifestly not a fool, then one ought, as a requirement of the principle of charity (even the Davidsonian one!), interpret the statement so that it isn't patently irrational. Many things might be said about Chomsky, but I assume it is uncontroversial that he is no fool, and he is not stupid. So if the question is, as it was, "Is anti-Semitism on the increase?" and the answer given is "In the West, fortunately, it scarcely exists now, though it did in the past," the obvious meaning is that de jure and de facto institutional anti-semitism scarcely exists--the point Chomsky made in the other remarks I quoted. (The principle of charity is, in your terms, the "justification" for reading the Q&A in a quite natural way.) I'm not sure what "evidence" you are looking for, but let me put this the other way around: where is the evidence of continuing institutional anti-semitism? There is none I am aware of, in the US or Western Europe. Even public expressions of anti-semitism by elite opinion-makers are now taboo--something which is not true about expressions of anti-Arab racism, as Chomsky notes.
If the question had been "Are anti-Semitic acts by individuals on the increase in the West?" then Chomsky's answer would have made no sense. But that wasn't the question, obviously, and, to put the shoe on the other foot, there is no justification for treating the actual question as *really* being a question about individual acts, which is what you and almost all the other bloggers who have attacked Chomsky have done.
Nothing I said disputed the accuracy of the reports of anti-semitic acts by individuals that you mention--they are irrelevant to Chomsky's point--though since you raise them again, I must question the credibility of the letter to Andrew Sullivan. I have a lot of friends all over the UK, including many Jews, and they have never reported anything like this. So let me just say I'm skeptical. But in any case, it is irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
ADDENDUM: I asked a friend on the Cambridge faculty about whether s/he had experienced anti-semitism in the city of Cambridge. I did not mention Andrew Sullivan. S/he responded as follows:
"About four or five weeks ago, Andrew Sullivan posted on
his Web site a missive from a Jewish American who apparently studied Law
in Cambridge. The writer of the missive (whose name was not revealed)
claimed that he had experienced anti-Semitism in a number of contexts
while in Cambridge. Having never encountered any anti-Semitism here
myself, I asked several of my Jewish students whether they regarded
Cambridge as an anti-Semitic place. (Because I'm not obviously Jewish
from my appearance, and because I don't participate in religious
ceremonies at all, I don't regard myself as a reliable barometer of
anti-Semitism.) Although, in line with what I already knew, the students
reported that there is a lot of anti-Israel sentiment expressed in certain
quarters -- much of it ignorant and strident -- they further reported that
they had felt no animosity directed toward them as Jews. Two of these
students regularly wear yarmulkes, and are therefore immediately
identifiable as Jewish. Neither of those students has experienced any
untoward incidents. Thus, contrary to the impression conveyed by the
letter posted on Sullivan's Web site, I have to conclude that my initial
sense of things was correct. Cambridge for its size is a highly
cosmopolitan city, and is therefore a place in which Jews can feel
comfortable and welcome."
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