Criticism of Socialist Nations for Rights Violations by the Left

Dershowitz writes that I have been “silent about China, according to his secretary,” although I “rarely let a day go by without some joyful condemnation of Western democracies” and have “defended Holocaust deniers against charges of anti-Semitism.” For 16 years, I have been correcting published lies by Dershowitz, beginning with his vicious defamation of a leading Israeli civil libertarian.

I condemned the massacre in Beijing at once in radio interviews. My first opportunity to comment in print was in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, where I was invited to write about Gorbachev’s reforms and took the occasion (June 7) to add a condemnation of the use of “deadly force” against “popular struggles for democracy and human rights,” citing Tian An Men Square and Tbilisi. His reference to my secretary apparently has to do with a call from the Boston Herald asking if I had released a statement on the killings in Beijing. Of course I had not; I have never released a statement on any event, ever.

In contrast, I have (to my regret) been silent for long periods (or always) about atrocities in U.S. domains and elsewhere, among them, U.S. atrocities in Indochina, the U.S.-supported slaughter in Timor, the Sabra-Shatila massacre, etc. To cite merely one example relevant here, in June, 1980, the army of El Salvador invaded the national university, killing the rector, dozens of faculty members, and unknown numbers of students, wrecking libraries and laboratories, burning down the humanities building, etc. I mentioned nothing for 5 years. I am sorry to say that this list could go on and on. Notice that I do not, reciprocally, condemn Dershowitz for his failure to issue public statements on horrendous atrocities; that would be as idiotic as his charges, since, plainly, no human being does this.

Dershowitz’s second charge is his rendition of my carefully qualified statement that denial of the existence of gas chambers is not, per se, proof of anti-Semitism; and more generally, that we cannot automatically deduce racist intent from denial of minimization of atrocities, whatever the scale, for example, denial of U.S. atrocities in Indochina, Dershowitz’s apologetics for torture and repression in Israel, the denial by scholars of the Armenian genocide and the slaughter of millions of Native Americans, the serious underestimate of Pol Pot killings by the CIA, etc. Racism is too important a phenomenon to be cheapened by exploitation as a political weapon.

Dershowitz is quite right, for once, in saying that we should have a single standard for compliance for human rights. It would be a welcome change if he would begin to observe this principle instead of publishing absurd lies concerning those who do not accept his doctrinal commitments and shameful double standard.

NOAM CHOMSKY

Cambridge, Mass.