Noam Chomsky is a hypocritical piece of shit

Subject: Noam Chomsky is a hypocritical piece of shit Mon Mar 03, 2008 5:39 pm

One of the most persistent themes in Noam Chomsky's work has been class warfare. The iconic MIT linguist and left-wing activist frequently has lashed out against the "massive use of tax havens to shift the burden to the general population and away from the rich," and criticized the concentration of wealth in "trusts" by the wealthiest 1%. He says the U.S. tax code is rigged with "complicated devices for ensuring that the poor -- like 80% of the population -- pay off the rich."

But trusts can't be all bad. After all, Chomsky, with a net worth north of US$2-million, decided to create one for himself. A few years back he went to Boston's venerable white-shoe law firm, Palmer and Dodge, and, with the help of a tax attorney specializing in "income-tax planning," set up an irrevocable trust to protect his assets from Uncle Sam. He named his tax attorney (every socialist radical needs one!) and a daughter as trustees. To the Diane Chomsky Irrevocable Trust (named for another daughter) he has assigned the copyright of several of his books, including multiple international editions.

Chomsky favours massive income redistribution -- just not the redistribution of his income. No reason to let radical politics get in the way of sound estate planning.

When I challenged Chomsky about his trust, he suddenly started to sound very bourgeois: "I don't apologize for putting aside money for my children and grandchildren," he wrote in one e-mail. Chomsky offered no explanation for why he condemns others who are equally proud of their provision for their children and who try to protect their assets from Uncle Sam. (However, Chomsky did say that his tax shelter is OK because he and his family are "trying to help suffering people.")

Indeed, Chomsky is rich precisely because he has been such an enormously successful capitalist. Despite his anti-profit rhetoric, like any other corporate capitalist Chomsky has turned himself into a brand name. As John Lloyd recently put it in the lefty New Statesman, Chomsky is among those "open to being "commodified" -- that is, to being simply one of the many wares of a capitalist media market place, in a way that the badly paid and overworked writers and journalists for the revolutionary parties could rarely be."

Link

I just had to laugh...

Noam Chomsky is a pretty normal communist. It's almost beyond belief just how savagely communists will fight to protect their own property rights. There is no such thing as "the badly paid and overworked writers and journalists for the revolutionary parties". The closest thing to it are the kids who get into this sort of stuff essentialy for fun and haven't yet been integrated into the communist culture.

How did you develop your interest in communism? What prompted it?

I'm surrounded by communism. Society here is drenched in it, as such, I had communist sympathies as a kid. Then as I learned history, I realized the importance of the communist movement and it's absolute evil. I eventualy did the same with Islam, which I also used to sympathise with. There was no eureka moment.

Noam Chomsky is a hypocritical piece of shit

Noam Chomsky is a hypocritical piece of shit

Anarcho-Capitalist Categorical Imperatives

AnCaps On Rights, Individualism & Lifestyles