More Chomskyite Anti-Semitism

Chomskyite activist and presidential candidate Ralph Nader has taken some time off from slandering every public figure in the country besides himself to defend his recent anti-semitic remarks:

In early July, after Nader made the "puppet" comment, Foxman and Barbara Balser, ADL's national chairman, wrote to Nader, saying, "the image of the Jewish State as a 'puppeteer,' controlling the powerful US Congress feeds into many age-old stereotypes which have no place in legitimate public discourse."

In a three-page letter dated August 5, Nader responded to Foxman by noting, "The Israelis have a joke for the obvious – that the United States is the second state of Israel." "How often, if ever, has the United States – either the Congress of the White House – pursued a course of action, since 1956, that contradicted the Israeli government's position?"

Nader lamented what he described as the lack of freedom in the US to debate and discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and he attacked the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel lobby, for its influence on Capitol Hill.

Like the master, Nader seems to completely lack any conscience or capacity for objective self-reflection whatsoever. Nader could easily criticize Israel without making ridiculously racist comments like claiming Israel runs the US government; and he could easily apologize for such obnoxious rhetoric like any honest person would, issue a mea culpa and be done with it. Instead, in classic Chomskyite fashion, he tries to obfuscate the issue with lousy history -- I could name numerous examples of the US government contradicting Israeli policy, the strong-arming of Yitzhak Shamir in the run up to the Madrid Conference is one of the most prominent examples -- and spurious inuenndo, i.e. claiming that AIPAC influence and Jewish lobbying success are somehow proof that Israel runs the US government. As with Chomsky, the real issue here is Nader's faith in his own infallibility and his rage at those who would dare question it; on a larger level, its a statement about the danger inherent in the authoritarian personality, in the intellectual who ascribes to himself a messianic perception of events cemented in place by a fanatic's morality.