Diemer.ca

Radical Digressions

• Home
• Articles
• The Attic
• Browse
• Quotes
• Links
• Contact

Noam Chomsky birthday greetings

By Ulli Diemer

In the summer of 1973, newly settled into our own flat, my partner and I took the leap and made a long-term commitment: we acquired two kittens. Determined to give them the best of everything, we decided to name them after two of the public intellectuals we most admired: "Stone", for I.F. Stone, and "Chomsky", after Noam. Whether Izzy and Noam would appreciate the "honour", we didn't know, but since it seemed unlikely they'd ever find out about it, it didn't really matter.(1)

My first encounter with Chomsky's writings had come about four years earlier, when I read his essay "The Responsibility of Intellectuals". I had recently become involved in the student movement at the University of Toronto, had been immersing myself in the writings of Karl Marx and Rosa Luxemburg, and considered myself a marxist (as I still do today). At the same time, I was uneasy with aspects of the radical student movement - tendencies to dogmatism, anti-intellectualism, and authoritarian Leninist models of political organizing - which seemed to be increasingly in the ascendancy.

Discovering Chomsky was a revelation. Here was a voice of rationality and of moral outrage. Chomsky's writings were radical, anti-authoritarian, and critical, as well as closely argued, thoroughly researched, and copiously footnoted. He opposed the war against Vietnam on principle, because it was morally indefensible, not because it was costly, he was prepared to risk imprisonment for resisting the war, yet warned against lashing out with tactics which seemed likely to increase popular support for the forces of domestic repression.

I thought he was wonderful. Of course, we radical libertarian socialist types don't believe in having heroes, but if we did....

I've been reading Chomsky ever since and foisting his books and articles on others. (I've also got the video, in case anyone wants to borrow it....)

Though much of what he writes about as a critic of the existing world order is necessarily horrendous - Vietnam, Cambodia, East Timor, the moral blindness of intellectuals and the media - I find that I almost always come away energized after reading Chomsky. He is an amazing source of information and analysis on so many topics. Beyond that, he makes me feel that research and critical thought, coupled with principled activism, can help to bring about change. I agree with him that one has a responsibility to act whether one feels optimistic or pessimistic about the chances of success, but Chomsky's own immense contributions have helped me feel more optimistic and thereby helped me keep my energies focused on activism for the past thirty years.

Thanks, Noam.

1. No authentic tribute to Noam Chomsky would be complete without footnotes, so this is the place to record that years later, I discovered from a comment of Alexander Cockburn's that Chomsky apparently doesn't even like cats - an inexplicable deficiency in an otherwise wholly admirable person!

Ulli Diemer

Ulli Diemer
Contact