Noam Chomsky, a linguist at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology, revolutionized linguistics with his innatist theory of language, but he is perhaps best known for his left wing political views. Although rarely receiving much attention from mainstream media, Chomsky is an icon on college campuses and within the radical political movement which formed from the ashes of the New Left.

There is plenty of material on the web about Chomsky, but unfortunately almost all of it is bland hero worship which ignores the fact that while Chomsky is certainly right about many things, he is wrong about numerous others and is ultimately not all that far from those he subjects to intense scrutiny and criticism.

This page contains original essays pointing out some of Chomsky’s factual errors and his tendency to not apply the same standards to the Left that he applies (for the most part correctly) to the Right.

Articles on this site about Chomsky:

• Chomsky Backpedals on "Silent Genocide" in Afghanistan (4/15/2004)
• I Screwed Up On Cuba Crackdown Story (9/7/2003)
• Keith Windschuttle on Noam Chomsky (9/7/2003)
• Why Didn't We Listen to Project Censored about the Space Shuttle? (6/11/2002)
• Dershowitz vs. Chomsky (5/31/2002)
• Chomsky: Take Bin Laden at His Word (3/4/2002)
• Chomsky's Turkish Publisher Acquitted (2/13/2002)
• How Many People Died as a Result of U.S. Bombing in Sudan? (1/24/2002)
• Chomsky Needs a Fact Checker (1/24/2002)
• Noam Chomsky on Christopher Hitchens: He Doesn't Really Believe What He Says (1/9/2002)
• Noam Chomsky on David Horowitz (1/8/2002)
• That's the Sound of Silent Famine Relief (1/1/2002)
• Heads: Chomsky's Right; Tales: His Critics Are Wrong (12/5/2001)
• Manufacturing Dissent (10/24/2001)
• What Next? The Right and Left Offer Absurd Proposals for Responding to 9/11 Attacks (9/28/2001)
• Noam Chomsky on Yugoslavia Elections (10/12/2000)
• Buchanan/Chomsky 2000? (10/5/2000)
• The Politics of Public Education (9/19/2000)
• Noam Chomsky: religious belief is a 'self-destructive' (9/16/2000)
• Horowitz, History and the Left (7/10/2000)
• Chomsky Sacrifices Children At the Altar of Solidarity (6/6/2000)
• Are 30 Million People Hungry? (4/21/2000)
• Did the Reagan Administration Let Workers Die? (4/21/2000)
• Gun Control and the Zapatistas (1/11/2000)
• Workplace Injury Rates Keep on Falling (12/16/1999)
• The Nation, Chomsky and the War In Kosovo (12/10/1999)
• The Left's Version of the Culture Wars Featured in Lingua Franca (12/9/1999)

Resources on other web sites:
Note: I do not endorse or necessarily even agree with the views expressed by the authors below, especially on the Cambodia issue, but you can judge for yourself.

• Chomsky lies by James Donald
  Donald is almost universally hated by Chomsky fans who say he distorts Chomsky's position on the Cambodian genocides
  
  
• Excerpt from Destructive Generation by Peter Collier and David Horowitz
  Apply Ronald Reagan's maxim to anything by Horowitz -- trust but verify (ironically most on the Left now are willing to note that Horowtiz is often unreliable -- where were they when he was spouting Leftist BS in the 1960s?)
  
  
• The Khmer Rouge Canon 1975-1979: The Standard Total Academic View on Cambodia by Sophal Ear
  Ear makes the case that Chomsky and Edward Herman became apologists for the Cambodian genocide carried out by the Khmer Rouge.
  
  
• Noam Chomsky, Punk Hero by K.L. Billingsley