Note that again criticism of Chomsky focuses on what he doesn't say, because what he does say is so devastating.
<<< Still more controversially, Chomsky has been criticised, particularly from the right, for being soft on communism and third-world authoritarianism. He has always concentrated his fire on the US and has consistently argued for solidarity with the victims of US policy. Where, ask the critics, are his polemics against the Soviet Union's intervention in Afghanistan, Pol Pot's genocide, Cuba's drug-running or the PLO's terrorism?
Chomsky dismisses this line of criticism out of hand. "If you look at all of the stuff I wrote about the Vietnam war, there's not one word supporting the Vietcong," he says. "The left was all backing Ho Chi Minh: I was saying that North Vietnam is a brutal Stalinist dictatorship. But it wasn't my job to tell the Vietnamese how to run the show. My view is that solidarity means taking my country, where I have some responsibility and some influence, and compelling it to get its dirty hands out of other people's affairs. You give solidarity to the people of a country, not the authorities. You don't give solidarity to governments, you don't give it to revolutionary leaders, you don't give it to political parties. >>>
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