Culture

Noam Chomsky: World's #1 living intellectual

Noam ChomskyThe Scotsman reports:

Noam Chomsky, the renegade linguistics professor who has become the lone voice of the left in the United States, has been voted the world’s No 1 living intellectual.
In a poll organised by Prospect magazine in conjunction with the US publication Foreign Policy, Chomsky was voted the most influential thinker of the times.

Members of the tribe scored an impressive 7 out of the top 20 spots with position #5 going to Christopher Hitchens, #6 to Paul Krugman, #9 to Jared Diamond, #11 to Naomi Klein, #16 to Thomas Friedman and #19 to Paul Wolfowitz.
Full story.

30 thoughts on “Noam Chomsky: World's #1 living intellectual

  1. Chomsky gets to involved in subjects he isn’t an expert in. Like History. He is a great linguist, but he loses some of his brilliance when he leaves his field of expertise.

  2. Since when did Chomsky become “the lone voice of the left”? Last time I checked…there were still a significant number of vocal, liberal thinkers…particularly in academia…I think this dude gets way too much credit. Most influential to WHO, exactly?

  3. What an odd list. Chomsky, Eco, and Havel, fine. But Hitchens? He’s not a particularly original thinker, just as a noisy attention-seeker. Klein, too, seems like an odd choice. Sure, she’s a big name, but to even put her on the same list as, say, Eco, seems to me to be blowing her a bit out of proportion.

  4. How strange to read that Hitchens is Jewish! Google says his maternal grandmother is Jewish. No idea whether Hitchens considers himself a Jew, ‘course. (Clearly John Brown does, anyhow.)

  5. Just another libtard putz who wastes the gifts G_d gave him when he branches out on politics. I really wish liberal Jews would wake up and see the forest. He is considered erudite by the lib establishment because he is anti-Israel, anti-zionist, anti-American and anti-Bush. He could crap and liberals would collect it in bags and sell it on ebay.

  6. All Googly-eyed wrote: “How strange to read that Hitchens is Jewish! Google says his maternal grandmother is Jewish. No idea whether Hitchens considers himself a Jew, ‘course.
    What kind of clumsy phrasing is that – “his maternal grandmother is Jewish” ? If his maternal grandmother is/was Jewish than logic would dictate that his mother is/was therefore Jewish and then so is he. Isn’t that how it works?
    I only know about it because of what he has written, such as this piece in the Forward
    “According to the laws of Moses, the Law of Return, Israel’s civil code and the Nuremburg Laws, I am a Jew.” -Christopher Hitchens, in the Forward

  7. Pretty sad that the #1 “intellectual” is a neuropathic self loathing fool. Brainwashing another generation of American college students to hate their country and celebrate our enemies concerns.

  8. neuropathic self-loathing fool? the guy was a zionist youth camp counselor; he was alan dershowitz’s zionist youth camp counselor to be precise. and his father was a hebraicist partially responsible for the development of the modern hebrew language. he has never called for an end of the state of israel, and he has never opposed its existence. and in the case where he’s accused of defending a holocaust denier, that myth has been debunked several times over.
    so what exactly makes him self-loathing? the fact that every person who bases their opinion of him on uninformed “communal consensus” says so?

  9. I’ll bet if this survey were done in America, Friedman and Wolfowitz would rant at the top David Horowitz would be up there and Noam and Naomi wouldn’t register at all. I am really glad Naomi made it and I hope Noam stays healthy for a while. Obviously his book manufacturing consent should be mandatory reading in this day of Fox News, Clear Channel, and the other media oligarchies.

  10. Muffti always has a chuckle when people get worked up about a poll taken in a journal. It’s about as interesting as when some group of whackos decided to administer IQ tests to long dead intellectuals, guess what their answers would be and then determine the highest IQs in history.

  11. Chomsky rose to initial fame and position based on his brilliant work in linguistics. As a computer scientist, I’ve studied his work on formal language theory, and it is impressive.
    Yet those who clamor for his anointment as a top intellectual, let’s be honest here. It’s not for his Chomsky language hierarchy or his other seminal scientific contributions. It’s for his editorializing. And that’s what it is: editorializing. Nothing more. I’m no more impressed with his political views than I would be with a radical leftist archaeologist.
    One of the most humorous things that I witnessed regarding the mob following he has, was a lecture that he held at UC Berkeley. Most of the audience stayed for the entire lecture on psycho-linguistic theory, but left bitterly disappointed. They were hoping for a tirade on Israel and the US. 🙂

  12. he has never called for an end of the state of israel
    Mobius: even though he does consider himself a Zionist of some stripe, he supports a bi-national state. He justifies that by saying that before the creation of the State of Israel, that was a legitimate position. Yet I believe most mainstream Zionists would agree that a retro-active creation of a bi-national state from the destruction/dismantelin g of the current State of Israel is contrary to the goals of Zionism. Therefore despite his own self-perceptions, many consider him to be anti-Zionist.

  13. Chomsky has stated over and over that he supports two states, not the binationalism option. He doesn’t believe either Israelis or Palestinians would go for it.

  14. Not meaning to rain on your parade or anything but the article states that:
    Mr Goodhart said he thought the huge response to the poll was as a result of the growth of internet blogging over the last year…He said a supporter of Chomsky had exhorted net users to vote for him …
    20,000 people voted in total. Chomsky got 4,800 votes while Umberto Ecco got 2,500 votes. So basically a bunch of Chomskyite Internet geeks went on a rampage and voted for their man. I place as much importance on this poll as I do on the poll that Jewlicious just released naming Muffti’s ass the world’s #1 living intellectual. Woohooo!

  15. Dameocrat – Can you post a link to where Chomsky says he supports a two state solution to the Palestinian problem? Shouldn’t be too much to ask, given that he says it “over and over.” In fact, he says a lot of things over and over but none of them include the words “Palestinian” and “responsibility” together in one sentence.
    Btw, the binational state is not an “option” as you call it. It is neither the official position of the Israeli government nor the Palestinian Authority. It is nothing more than a code word used by Israel haters meaning “the destruction of Israel.” But since using the real words would only expose those people as the haters that they are, they use a euphemism. Lets not pretend that reasonable people actually believe this would lead to anything other than more bloodshed.

  16. “The poll, which was largely conducted over the internet, asked participants to pick five intellectuals from a list of one hundred. An astonishing 20,000 people voted.”
    Internet poll…
    As our Ashkenasic brethren would say: “gurnisht mit gurnisht” (or is it “gurnisht, meet gurnisht!”?)

  17. Kalman Rushdie wrote: “Btw, the binational state is not an “option” as you call it. It is neither the official position of the Israeli government nor the Palestinian Authority. It is nothing more than a code word used by Israel haters meaning “the destruction of Israel.”
    In Israel – under the Basic Law – any party advocating binationalism is banned from running for the Knesset – so if it’s not considered an option in Israel that could be why.. I hate to echo the Kahanists but that’s not Democracy.

  18. John Brown,
    The fact that you are willing to note that you are echoing the Kahanists even though it is unpleasant to do so is a sure sign of menschkeit on your part.
    Democracy is usually modified and limited during a period of war, and Israel has usually been at war since day one.

  19. The possible selections are loaded.
    Three great Jewish intellectuals from history that people should take more of an interest in are :
    Mar Samuel
    Vilna Gaon
    Bertha Pappenheim
    FYI, the Jewish orthodox rationalist, Mar Samuel, of the Academy of Sara, Babylon, from about the year 220 ace was a brilliant man. He made a famous decision, which by the way most affected the Jews, and was expressed in the phrase, Dina d’malchuthah dina “The law of the land is the law for us.” This means that it was the duty of all people including the Jews to obey the laws of the countries in which we live.
    Jeremiah’s famous quote, which should be etched into every adult’s consciousness, was “Seek the peace of the country whither ye are exiled and pray to the Lord-for its welfare.” The ultimate result of Samuel’s dictum was that the better the Jew, the better the patriot.
    Jeremiah out trumps Jabotinsky in the Wisdom Card Game by a mile.
    The above may explain somewhat my worldview/belief system.

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