Latest news with #Chomsky
Time of India
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Like, share, collapse: The curious case of manufactured modern consent
Excerpt: We agreed to everything. Even the crash. Especially the crash. That's the magic of consent in the age of capital: you won't even notice when you're nodding your way into ruin—with a selfie filter and a 'Let's Go Brandon' mug in hand. There's something perversely elegant about a society that can manufacture both iPhones and ideologies with the same ruthless efficiency. Yanis Varoufakis [a Greek politician and economist], riffing off Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent, tosses us a neat little paradox wrapped in economic angst: that the more financialized our lives become, the more agreeable we get—and the more spectacular our breakdowns. Consent, it seems, isn't what it used to be. Once upon a time, it had to be extracted—with religion, kings, or gulags. These days, it's delivered via push notification and monetized outrage. Capitalism doesn't just want your labour; it wants your belief system bundled in prime-time infotainment and Facebook Lives. All dynamic societies, Varoufakis says, thrive on two processes: the making of surplus and the making of consent. The former fills your wallet (or used to). The latter convinces you that it's okay the neighbour got a fatter wallet for doing the same job. But somewhere along the way, as finance ballooned and factories vanished, this little duet hit a remix. Consent stopped being coerced and became curated. The age of propaganda gave way to the era of the podcast. Enter Trump, stage right—red tie flapping, indictment count rising. A real-estate mogul-turned-cable news messiah who understood early on that if you can't manufacture consent, just manufacture chaos and sell it in trucker hats. His genius wasn't policy; it was narrative ownership. He turned politics into pro wrestling and got half the country to cheer the heel turn. The other half? They rage-tweeted, which was basically a form of engagement. The algorithm doesn't care why you're angry, only that you are. And it's not just America. From Modi's WhatsApp bhakts to Europe's Hungary Games, the playbook is being photocopied at scale. Financial precarity? Blame the migrants. Sky-high inequality? Distract with culture wars. It's cheaper than redistributing wealth, and it polls better in the suburbs. So we scroll. We shop. We 'stand with' whatever the feed suggests today. We nod along to leaders who promise to make things great again—no one quite asks for whom. And then, once every few years, the scaffolding collapses and we wonder how no one saw it coming. Maybe we didn't need to. Maybe deep down, we agreed to the fall too. Late capitalism doesn't knock. It slides into your DMs with a 20% coupon, a righteous cause, and a man in a suit yelling on TikTok or those Meta platforms. All it asks for is your consent—and your complicity when the crash comes dressed as patriotism.
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Commentary: Scholars failed to tell the truth about the genocidal Khmer Rouge
People who start their regime by vacating a capital city probably have some disturbing plans. Fifty years ago, in April 1975, the Khmer Rouge forcibly evacuated all residents (including bedridden hospital patients) of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and all other sizable population centers. Those who survived the evacuation were sent to do agrarian work at labor camps in rural areas. This unusual and alarming development elicited a very strange reaction, though, from relevant scholars in such countries as the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, France and Sweden, which seemed to think the forcible relocation was a positive step forward. In ensuing months, emaciated Cambodian refugees began to surface at the border with Thailand. These refugees largely gave reports of forced labor, starvation and appalling savagery. And yet positive views of the Khmer Rouge remained prevalent among Western scholars who — embracing revolution from thousands of miles away — dismissed the myriad Cambodian refugee reports and pounced on anyone who wrote stories that corresponded with refugee accounts. Cambodia, also known in that period by the euphemistic name Democratic Kampuchea, had basically ended all contact with the outside world. But it might have been fruitful to visit the Thai side of the Cambodian border, where thousands of emaciated and traumatized refugees had gathered. This type of setting could have helped even the most intransigent of scholars realize that reports of Khmer Rouge atrocities likely had validity. Among those who took up the cause of minimizing Khmer Rouge misdeeds was Massachusetts Institute of Technology linguist and all-around guru Noam Chomsky, who contended that reports of atrocity were part of a 'vast and unprecedented propaganda campaign' perpetrated by Western media. Though Chomsky was the most prominent Khmer Rouge apologist, he was by no means the only significant one. Far from being the pursuit of a kooky fringe, the defense of the Khmer Rouge came to represent a mainstream view among relevant scholars. This viewpoint was so prevalent in the West that it was labeled the 'standard total academic view' (STAV) on Cambodia by Sophal Ear, a Cambodian refugee who became a political scientist in the U.S. and is now an associate professor in the Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University. 'Many academics indeed treated Cambodia as a testing ground for their theories,' Ear said. He said they were also enamored with the concept of peasant revolutions and the Khmer Rouge policies of self-reliance, which they viewed as 'an authentic anti-colonial stance.' Additionally, it was feared that acknowledgment of Khmer Rouge atrocities would validate the U.S. military endeavors in Indochina, which many people — especially leading scholars — had come to excoriate. In their 1976 book 'Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution,' co-authors George C. Hildebrand and Gareth Porter stated, 'Cambodia is only the latest victim of the enforcement of an ideology that demands that social revolutions be portrayed as negatively as possible.' But perhaps no one was drawn to Pol Pot as much as Scottish scholar Malcolm Caldwell. Caldwell had written that the Khmer Rouge revolution 'opens vistas of hope not only for the people of Cambodia but also for the peoples of all other poor third world countries.' Caldwell received a rare invite to visit the utopia and even scored a private meeting with Pol Pot on Dec. 22, 1978. But hanging out with 'Brother Number One' was always rather risky, and later that night, the visiting scholar was gunned down. It is likely this case would have received more interest from Western media, but less than three days after Caldwell's murder, Vietnam invaded Cambodia. The Vietnamese were fed up by that point: In addition to committing a genocide against Cambodians of Vietnamese ancestry, the Khmer Rouge had launched repeated attacks on Vietnamese soil, including the massacre of an entire village. Vietnam's military was superior in size, organization and morale. Troops easily invaded Phnom Penh, causing high-ranking Khmer Rouge to flee to western Cambodia's mountainous terrain along the Thai border. With Cambodia's door forcibly opened, the ensuing revelations of killing fields and grisly interrogation centers was about as close as you can get to incontrovertible proof of widespread atrocity. Among Western scholars, some former supporters emerged to recant their previous statements. Other supporters quietly withdrew from the now-obvious horror they had spent several years denying. However, some scholars remained as unrepentant as the war criminals, unmoved by any amount of ghastly hard evidence, or at least not sufficiently moved to forsake the revolution. 'Saying, 'I'm sorry, I was wrong,' is just too much for some people,' Ear said. 'They want to be correct in their minds, always.' Even in 1981, after the consequences became grotesquely clear, Egyptian-French scholar Samir Amin described the Khmer Rouge period as 'one of the major successes of the struggle for socialism in our era.' Not only did Amin express approval for what happened in Cambodia, but he also recommended that African nations adopt the Khmer Rouge model. As if Africa had not endured enough, what it really needed, according to Amin, was its own Khmer Rouge. Meanwhile, the real Khmer Rouge was not dead yet. Although forced out of Phnom Penh very quickly, the group still controlled much of Cambodia, particularly in the geographically rugged western part of the country. Along with holding significant military resources, the Khmer Rouge enjoyed a degree of international legitimacy: Into the early 1990s, the party of Pol Pot managed to hold Cambodia's seat at the United Nations. Moreover, many Cambodians thought the Khmer Rouge was going to make a comeback in the 1990s, regain control of the country and repeat the nightmare. Ear said, 'This fear persisted until the Khmer Rouge's final dissolution,' which did not occur until the end of the millennium. Now 50 years since the invasion, both the Khmer Rouge and their Western apologists serve as a cautionary tale of the depths to which people can sink for their ideals. ____ Ray Cavanaugh is a freelance writer with an interest in Cambodian history. ___
Chicago Tribune
03-04-2025
- Politics
- Chicago Tribune
Ray Cavanaugh: Scholars failed to tell the truth about the genocidal Khmer Rouge
People who start their regime by vacating a capital city probably have some disturbing plans. Fifty years ago, in April 1975, the Khmer Rouge forcibly evacuated all residents (including bedridden hospital patients) of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and all other sizable population centers. Those who survived the evacuation were sent to do agrarian work at labor camps in rural areas. This unusual and alarming development elicited a very strange reaction, though, from relevant scholars in such countries as the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, France and Sweden, which seemed to think the forcible relocation was a positive step forward. In ensuing months, emaciated Cambodian refugees began to surface at the border with Thailand. These refugees largely gave reports of forced labor, starvation and appalling savagery. And yet positive views of the Khmer Rouge remained prevalent among Western scholars who — embracing revolution from thousands of miles away — dismissed the myriad Cambodian refugee reports and pounced on anyone who wrote stories that corresponded with refugee accounts. Cambodia, also known in that period by the euphemistic name Democratic Kampuchea, had basically ended all contact with the outside world. But it might have been fruitful to visit the Thai side of the Cambodian border, where thousands of emaciated and traumatized refugees had gathered. This type of setting could have helped even the most intransigent of scholars realize that reports of Khmer Rouge atrocities likely had validity. Among those who took up the cause of minimizing Khmer Rouge misdeeds was Massachusetts Institute of Technology linguist and all-around guru Noam Chomsky, who contended that reports of atrocity were part of a 'vast and unprecedented propaganda campaign' perpetrated by Western media. Though Chomsky was the most prominent Khmer Rouge apologist, he was by no means the only significant one. Far from being the pursuit of a kooky fringe, the defense of the Khmer Rouge came to represent a mainstream view among relevant scholars. This viewpoint was so prevalent in the West that it was labeled the 'standard total academic view' (STAV) on Cambodia by Sophal Ear, a Cambodian refugee who became a political scientist in the U.S. and is now an associate professor in the Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University. 'Many academics indeed treated Cambodia as a testing ground for their theories,' Ear said. He said they were also enamored with the concept of peasant revolutions and the Khmer Rouge policies of self-reliance, which they viewed as 'an authentic anti-colonial stance.' Additionally, it was feared that acknowledgment of Khmer Rouge atrocities would validate the U.S. military endeavors in Indochina, which many people — especially leading scholars — had come to excoriate. In their 1976 book 'Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution,' co-authors George C. Hildebrand and Gareth Porter stated, 'Cambodia is only the latest victim of the enforcement of an ideology that demands that social revolutions be portrayed as negatively as possible.' But perhaps no one was drawn to Pol Pot as much as Scottish scholar Malcolm Caldwell. Caldwell had written that the Khmer Rouge revolution 'opens vistas of hope not only for the people of Cambodia but also for the peoples of all other poor third world countries.' Caldwell received a rare invite to visit the utopia and even scored a private meeting with Pol Pot on Dec. 22, 1978. But hanging out with 'Brother Number One' was always rather risky, and later that night, the visiting scholar was gunned down. It is likely this case would have received more interest from Western media, but less than three days after Caldwell's murder, Vietnam invaded Cambodia. The Vietnamese were fed up by that point: In addition to committing a genocide against Cambodians of Vietnamese ancestry, the Khmer Rouge had launched repeated attacks on Vietnamese soil, including the massacre of an entire village. Vietnam's military was superior in size, organization and morale. Troops easily invaded Phnom Penh, causing high-ranking Khmer Rouge to flee to western Cambodia's mountainous terrain along the Thai border. With Cambodia's door forcibly opened, the ensuing revelations of killing fields and grisly interrogation centers was about as close as you can get to incontrovertible proof of widespread atrocity. Among Western scholars, some former supporters emerged to recant their previous statements. Other supporters quietly withdrew from the now-obvious horror they had spent several years denying. However, some scholars remained as unrepentant as the war criminals, unmoved by any amount of ghastly hard evidence, or at least not sufficiently moved to forsake the revolution. 'Saying, 'I'm sorry, I was wrong,' is just too much for some people,' Ear said. 'They want to be correct in their minds, always.' Even in 1981, after the consequences became grotesquely clear, Egyptian-French scholar Samir Amin described the Khmer Rouge period as 'one of the major successes of the struggle for socialism in our era.' Not only did Amin express approval for what happened in Cambodia, but he also recommended that African nations adopt the Khmer Rouge model. As if Africa had not endured enough, what it really needed, according to Amin, was its own Khmer Rouge. Meanwhile, the real Khmer Rouge was not dead yet. Although forced out of Phnom Penh very quickly, the group still controlled much of Cambodia, particularly in the geographically rugged western part of the country. Along with holding significant military resources, the Khmer Rouge enjoyed a degree of international legitimacy: Into the early 1990s, the party of Pol Pot managed to hold Cambodia's seat at the United Nations. Moreover, many Cambodians thought the Khmer Rouge was going to make a comeback in the 1990s, regain control of the country and repeat the nightmare. Ear said, 'This fear persisted until the Khmer Rouge's final dissolution,' which did not occur until the end of the millennium. Now 50 years since the invasion, both the Khmer Rouge and their Western apologists serve as a cautionary tale of the depths to which people can sink for their ideals. Ray Cavanaugh is a freelance writer with an interest in Cambodian history.
Yahoo
07-02-2025
- Yahoo
'Where is the justice?' Plea offer in fatal crash draws ire from family of woman who died
BOYNTON BEACH — Sitting in his suburban Boynton Beach home, Ayal Chomsky described the heartbreak of losing his wife Caryn last summer when a car struck and killed her while she ran with a training partner west of Delray Beach. As the case against the driver nears its conclusion, Chomsky voiced his anger at the penalties the 20-year-old driver may face. 'Where is the accountability?" he asked. "Where is the justice?' Myles Denard Scott is scheduled to appear in court on Monday, Feb. 10, where he could accept a plea that would send him to jail for a month. The Palm Beach County State Attorney's Office has extended an offer that would require Scott to spend 30 days in jail as a condition of receiving six months of probation. He also would have to complete a 12-hour driving course. Chomsky and other relatives said they intend to attend the hearing to ask County Judge Marni Bryson to reject the plea, arguing that Scott should face harsher penalties in the wreck that killed his wife at age 44. Prosecutors charged Scott with driving with a suspended license and cited him for careless driving and failing to maintain a single lane in the June 9 death of Caryn Chomsky, a longtime physical therapist who once gained national attention in her fight against cervical cancer. Wearing a shirt reading 'Justice for Caryn Chomsky,' Ayal Chomsky questioned why Scott was charged with careless driving, a moving violation under state law, instead of either reckless driving or vehicular homicide, both criminal offenses. The family recently met with prosecutors from the state attorney's office seeking to have Scott charged with vehicular homicide. Their request was denied, Chomsky said. 'It is mind-boggling to think that you could kill someone in such a brutal fashion and walk away unscathed and be charged with a suspended license," Chomsky said. In a statement to The Palm Beach Post, the state attorney's office said its charging decision was based on evidence presented by the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office. "The loss of Ms. Chomsky, who was a beloved member of the community, is a tragedy," the statement read in part. "A Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office investigation determined that reckless driving did not happen prior to the crash. Under Florida law, a charge of vehicular homicide must be based on reckless driving. The PBSO investigation determined it was careless driving, which is a civil traffic citation. "As a result, the only criminal charge presented to our office was a misdemeanor DUS, or driving while license suspended, revoked, canceled, or disqualified." Phone messages left for Scott's attorney, Larry Handfield, were not returned. According to a crash report from the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, Scott was traveling west on Atlantic Avenue near Florida's Turnpike at about 7 that morning as Chomsky was running east on the north sidewalk. Scott's 2019 Honda Civic ran off the roadway and up onto the sidewalk, striking Chomsky and vaulting her onto the shoulder of the roadway. The vehicle went down an embankment and into a ditch, the report said. Chomsky died at the scene. Body-worn camera footage provided by the sheriff's office showed that Scott told deputies he fell asleep behind the wheel and woke up to find Caryn Chomsky's body on his windshield. He also told investigators he was returning home that morning after a trip to Fort Lauderdale. After initially speaking to deputies at the scene, Scott requested an attorney when a PBSO traffic homicide investigator attempted to conduct a formal inquiry. Under state law, reckless driving is a second-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to 90 days in jail for a first-time conviction and up to six months for a subsequent conviction. Vehicular homicide is a second-degree felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Careless driving is a noncriminal traffic offense punishable by fines and points on the offender's driver's license. 'Careless driving is you don't stop at a stop sign properly. You're five miles over the speed limit, ' Chomsky said. 'Maybe you're in someone else's lane. Careless driving is not going across multiple lanes onto a sidewalk and killing someone. That is not careless driving — that is reckless driving. The case law seems very clear.' Marc Consalo, an assistant law professor at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, said that from an elemental standpoint, a reckless driving charge requires a 'willful or wanton disregard for the safety of persons or property.' 'Typically, when discussing the reckless driving statute to juries, attorneys will say that 'willful' means acting with intention, knowledge, or on purpose,' he said in an email to The Palm Beach Post. 'While 'wanton' means behaving with a conscious disregard to consequences that likely will cause damage to persons or property.' Consalo said law-enforcement officers having difficulty establishing the standard of willful or wanton behavior may often cite a driver for careless driving instead. 'Without speaking to the officer, my guess would be that unless the driver made a statement to the officer that he knew he was sleepy or drowsy before he drove, police did not have enough to meet the burden of 'willful and wanton' behavior,' he said. Ayal Chomsky questioned why sheriff's investigators did not conduct a field sobriety test or request a blood draw from Scott. A sheriff's spokesperson said deputies did not have probable cause to do so. A sheriff's investigator wrote in his report that Scott "did not display any indicators of impairment." Consalo said a law-enforcement officer would need a reasonable suspicion to initiate a DUI investigation. "Typically, (probable cause) is a very low standard. But even being low, you still need something," he said, citing the smell of alcohol, bloodshot eyes, slurred speech and empty bottles or cans in plain view as examples. A man training with Chomsky on the morning of the crash told a sheriff's detective that Scott's vehicle never slowed down as it veered into their path. He said the vehicle appeared to be traveling at a normal speed. Sheriff's records indicated that the posted speed limit for the area was 45 mph. A man who had been cycling on Atlantic told an investigator the Honda Civic briefly straddled two lanes before stopping at a traffic light. The vehicle pulled away as the light changed to green, overtaking a vehicle in the next lane and traveled just more than 100 yards before drifting to the right and going onto the sidewalk, the cyclist said. The cyclist said the vehicle showed no indication of braking. In one body-camera video, Scott, who was 19 at the time, could be seen breaking down into tears before taking a phone call from a relative. "I just sent someone to their eternal life unintentionally," he told the caller. "She thought she was having a beautiful morning and I thought I was going to make it home safe." He told an investigator he had just gotten off the turnpike. A relative told investigators Scott was traveling from his grandmother's house. A sheriff's investigative report indicated that Scott's license had been suspended in April 2023 for failing to pay a traffic fine. Ayal Chomsky said his wife was a voice for others in the community, using her ability to speak sign language to communicate with hearing-impaired patients. Caryn, a longtime physical therapist, was president of Partners in Motion Physical Therapy, with offices in Boynton Beach and Lake Worth. At age 25, she overcame a cervical cancer diagnosis and her story gained national attention when her mother became a surrogate, giving birth to Caryn and Ayal's twin children, Etai and Maya. "Caryn was my everything," Ayal Chomsky said. "My best friend, the love of my life, my world. She was an amazing mother, amazing wife, amazing sister, sister-in-law and an amazing physical therapist that gave back a lot to the community." He vowed that the family will continue its fight for justice no matter what happens in court Monday. He filed a civil lawsuit in December naming Scott and Scott's mother as defendants. Court records show he is seeking damages between $50,000 and $75,000. But Chomsky said that was not his primary concern. 'The monetary compensation is almost irrelevant,' he said. 'What I'm seeking is justice for Caryn. I'm seeking accountability. I'm seeking for the laws to be enforced." Sign up for our Post on Boynton Beach weekly newsletter, delivered every Thursday! Julius Whigham II is a criminal justice and public safety reporter for The Palm Beach Post. You can reach him at jwhigham@ and follow him on Twitter at @JuliusWhigham. Help support our work: Subscribe today. This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Family to fight plea deal for driver who killed woman out for a run
