<<Please wait; my initial reaction was the same as Mr. Bell's; I'm not
very familiar with Mr. Chomsky's work, though I know he is thought to be
one of the premier linguists and induced some sort of paradigm shift in
the field with a publication in the 1950s (?) Could you inform those of
us who are ignorant of what he has accomplished?>>
He was prominent in left wing circles in the sixties, speaking and writing
against the war. I think that's what Russell was driving at, though it's
difficult to tell because there was no elaboration.
The problem is Chomsky's influence was not anything like a Martin Luther King
or William Wilberforce. He was one voice within the socialist movement, which
was itself only one small strand of the anti-war movement. The latter was made
up of more traditional religious pacifists and Catholics than it was of
socialists. The largest block, however, seemed to be students who had one main
motivation in mind: they didn't want to be drafted.
This question came up when Russell opined that just as much "materialist" evil
had been corrected by materialism as Christianity had corrected Christian
evils. I mean, we're talking about the entire course of history here. And his
only answer was: "Ever heard of Noam Chomsky?" That might just as well have
been, "Ever heard of Jane Fonda?"
Jim