From: Mark Steven Heyman (markheyman@infoproconsulting.com)
Date: Sun Jun 06 2004 - 23:20:47 BST
Hi all,
For those of you who believe that NC sees some sort of "moral
equivalence" between the US/UK and the Nazis, here's a response from
today's batch of emails. The questioner was "dismayed" to hear that
NC thought the US should have gotten involved in the European
conflict sooner, since the questioner sees no difference between
Nazism and the US-UK system .
Best to all,
msh
Reply from NC,
I still stand by those feelings. Just for the record, the
first article I remember writing was in a school newspaper
in February 1939, after the fall of Barcelona, expressing
dismay and fear about the expansion of the fascist plague
over Europe. I still feel the same way. It has little if
anything to do with `"really" defending democracy and
freedom.' Even at age 10 I was skeptical enough about
that. But I strongly disagreed then, and still do, with
the rather favorable attitudes of the US and British
governments towards Hitler, and think it would have been
critically important to stop him much earlier -- as could
have been done without war, though possibly not by 1939.
Recall that after Munich, Roosevelt's chief adviser, Sumner
Welles, was hailing the prospects for peace with a benign
Germany playing a crucial role, and Mussolini was always
greatly admired, across a very wide spectrum. That was
very frightening in the 1930s, from a child's perspective.
And is so even more from an adult perspective, supported by
a lot of evidence not available then.
You ask what differentiates US intervention then from US
intervention today. One crucial difference is that there
was no intervention then. Contrary to current propaganda,
the US did not intervene in the European or Asian wars,
except indirectly (by supplying Britain, etc.). The
country was neutralist, until attacked. That's not
intervention.
I'm sorry that you don't see the difference between Nazism
and the US-UK system. It's very real. Luckily for India,
it was never conquered by the Nazis. The British were bad
enough, but the Nazis were incomparably worse. And not
just a matter of gas chambers. Putting them aside, what
about the plans to exterminate 10s of millions of Slavs so
as to create Lebensraum for the master race -- just for
starters?
I'd really suggest that you rethink all of this. All evils
are not identical.
Noam Chomsky
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