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What, that he wrote the foreword? It's not a secret, check the authors listed.

Chomsky's response upon being questioned about this book's claims was as follows:

>There’s no “implicit endorsement.” I made no reference to their claims about these or other matters, but kept to their main thesis, which is extremely important and not understood at all. It would, in my opinion, have been totally inappropriate to comment on these or many other claims in the book. I was not writing a review, but pickup the main thesis and elaborating on it. True, it might have been “wise” — if my goal were to appease British intellectuals. It wasn’t.

He declined to comment on these claims in the remainder of this correspondence as well. Herman and Chomsky have worked together frequently in the past (eg, on "Manufacturing Consent"), and many observers have interpreted his extreme reticence to make any direct follow-up comment about the incidents in question as indicating a tacit acceptance of said claims. The book reflects more poorly on Herman than Chomsky, to be sure, but it does seem (at a minimum) to have been a bit of a tactless move.

If you're interested, here is a fuller examination of the book's claims about Rwanda.

I enjoy critiques of intellectuals and learning relations between them. You should also check out The Seduction of Unreason: The Intellectual Romance with Fascism by him. Mark Lilla is very similar, The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals and Politics and The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction Of course philosophers and politics would be very lacking without Isaiah Berlin Also Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: The Thinkers of The New Left is very good. Lastly The Opium of Intellectuals of Raymon Aron is a must-read classic.

I used to have shitty internet arguments with a liberal democrat on a local forum board back around 2000-2005. We met for drinks a few times. Couldn't tolerate his politics but he was a decent human being. It wasn't until he died a few years ago that I found out he was a published author, among other things. One of his books dealt specifically with how democrats had abandoned the white working class and didn't understand them. Sadly, guys like Joe Bageant are few and far between, and the only reason Joe saw the problems that have led to the democrats current woes in middle America was because of the time and place he was born and lived. So you're probably right in general when you say "liberal democrats" (even though I'm sure you're joking), but I'd hope there's still a few people like Joe around who are traditionally liberal and don't just use their politics to virtue signal their superiority over "those people" in the backwater parts of the country.

Would that be before or after the USSR looted East Germany for anything of economic value?

As for growth, there's a reason I said "long term". Some measure of central planning is necessary for economic development (and, in fact, it is argued by some that the developed, capitalist world today owes its success to central planning and restricted trade during its earlier stages of development), but the levels of growth seen in the Eastern bloc were unsustainable. The collapse was not just some unfortunate event that derailed the great socialist experiment, it was its consequence.

https://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Consent-Political-Economy-Media/dp/0375714499

Very eye opening book I would recommend :)

Try reading these. Then maybe you'll see.

Here's step one.

Snapshots:

1. This Post - archive.org, [megalodon.jp*](http://megalodon.jp/pc/get_simple/decide?url=https://www.amazon.com/Cover-Up-Amerikants-Peter-Marinker/dp/B074WC2ZWV "could not auto-archive; click to resubmit it!"), archive.is
   
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Yes, it is disingenuous to represent economic theory as black and white, and yes, laissez-faire is bad.

Now I won't speak as someone who is well versed in the works of Marx, but I think his ideas in general were correctly identifying the ends to equality in a society. The means of production should not belong to anyone who isn't doing the very labour that produces the commodities a society needs. Personally, I'm looking into what Proudhon, who was an anarchist, has to say about property. I think that property is an extent of the means of production. The proposition that property is theft is something I'm interested in exploring more.

Liberals are liberals. Someone calling themselves a liberal but holding beliefs that aren't core to liberalism, and instead ultranationalism, is what I would call a crypto-fascist.

As someone who is somewhat active in r/ENLIGHTENEDCENTRISM, I've seen the occasional person come by and say that you guys don't understand what centrism is. Maybe some redditors in that community don't understand, and just hop on the bandwagon of clowning on "centrists." What I think the focal point is for why they're calling centrists fascist is to highlight the disproportionate amount of time and energy being spent into disavowing antifa counter protesters than actual fascists, even when the centrist will say both sides are wrong. They'll say "I don't like nazis, but..." and then go on to defend the nazis freedom of speech.

I'm not denying that there are calls for violence by those left of center, but it would be unequivocally false to claim it is equal in magnitude. Neo-nazis use their free speech to harm others.

And finally, even though I don't think I need to say it, it isn't every centrist they're attacking. It's likely those that make the false equivalence of neo-nazis with antifa

I'd be happy to, but you all invited me. Sort of. By insulting me. Here's some reading for you in the meantime: https://www.amazon.com/Fraud-Famine-Fascism-Ukrainian-Genocide/dp/0919396518

> I always thought that part of the movie was rather silly, he's in charge for just a few years and the whole ecosystem falls apart? How can anyone fuck up that badly?

The Soviets kind of did.