Global Information and Disinformation in the Online Era

The West’s Leftist Male ‘Intellectuals’ Who Traffic in Genocide Denial, From Srebrenica to Syria” (Oz Katerji, Haaretz, November 24 2017)

I have no idea about all this. Although I am suspicious about journalists’ (sometimes unconscious yet systematic) complicity in state agendas (which Chomsky has repeatedly exposed), the Serbian genocides have all the hallmarks of having been real (though I suspect all sides would have done likewise, if they had had a chance).

I think the attributions of “conspiracy theory” to Chomsky sound suspiciously shrill. It sounds like there’s an agenda at work here (in this Haaretz article) too.

I do agree that some (perhaps a lot) of Chomsky’s following is cult-like. But that may be true of all activism. (I see it in the animal movement too.)

And I never understood how Chomsky managed to be so well-informed about US/UK crimes, but he was. It would be a disappointment if his uncanny spider-like global vigilance had fallen prey to misinformation (together with wishful thinking) but it may occasionally have happened. He has admitted other errors (such as endorsing the work of a Nazi holocaust denier) so I don’t think he himself is in the grip of a cult — but he is by now 88 and statistics suggest cognitive decline is increasing in likelihood just as the the global plot is increasing in complexity and subterfuge in an unprecedented era of mass networked rumor and disinformation, including state disinformation.

I just don’t know; perhaps one no longer can.

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