He also pointed out that anarchism has been revived as a term of abuse, as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) derided Tea Partiers as “anarchists,” and some Republicans have made the same charge against North Carolina union organizers. Chomsky, Schneider said, represents that neglected tradition. Schneider described how Occupy activists had a kind of “amnesia” about leftist activism, knowing little of the history and practices of previous generations of activists since few of them had any prior experience. He was introduced by Nathan Schneider, a journalist who covered the Occupy movement for The Nation, Harper’s, and the Boston Review.

That man was Noam Chomsky, and his subject was anarchism.Ĭhomsky has had an influential academic career in linguistics, but achieved celebrity status as a political philosopher and activist, beginning with his opposition to the Vietnam War and continuing through today with the charges of imperialism he levels at American foreign policy, and the criticism he makes of capitalism, and the totalitarian strains he traces through both the left and the right. Monday evening, in a standard Massachusetts Institute of Technology auditorium of muted colors and uncomfortable chairs, a wizened, stooped, silver-haired man in an ugly sweater held a packed house of nearly 300 people-most of them young, fashionably dressed, and capable of affording to attend one of the most prestigious private universities in the country-spellbound for about an hour and a half.

On anarchy noam chomsky