Press Action

Civilization vs. Barbarism? An Interview with Noam Chomsky

Posted 12/27 |

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Fortunately, one (wo)man’s trash is indeed another (wo)man’s treasure. I enjoyed the substance of the interview, even if some of the interview’s mechanics were less than perfect.

Posted by Nader Rider from on 12/27 at 02:09 PM

Jeez I go to a friend’s cottage for a week, only go online once on a blackberry )see hock comment ( ...and am now checking out Press Action (great stuff this week, so it seems, a hand to Hand) Seems what we have here is a whole bunch of sectarian and/or angry liberal types or those posing as one or the other leaving all sorts of nasty comments, this one being the most instructive in that he brings together four excellent radical websites as some kind of “joke.” I would be curious as to where in Switzerland Mr. Von Gergen comes from, given the obviously Swiss name...or what position from which he is arguing, beyond the perhaps unpercieved bourgeois layout critique, but I’ll let that one rest. While I can’t say I miss him, this makes one want a former denizen to chase these folks away.

Mr. Von Gergen, what types of knockoffs do you prefer? As a proud subscriber of Northrop Frye’s theory that there is a finite amount of plots/ideas/aesthetics that exist in human thought, who the #### cares?

Posted by j cummings from Canada on 12/27 at 11:21 PM

Hey j, I think you are being a bit hard on Herr von Gergen there. He only took shots at Left Hook (’What a joke from lefthook.org’). He did not say CP, PA, DV and LH were all collectively begging for a laugh track.

Posted by Theo from Greece on 12/28 at 04:58 AM

Hardly. In fact, I complimented those three and juxtaposed them with the horrific lefthook.org More typical garbage from Jordy Cummings, PA’s resident hack.

Posted by Ludwig von Gergen from on 12/28 at 11:56 AM

Hi Ludwig. Although it’s clear you disagree, personally, I like Jordy’s style. Obviously, I read your comment differently. Thanks for clarifying. As for lefthook.org, keep in mind that it’s a youth publication. I do not know them and when I have occasionally complimented them on a good piece, found them unresponsive. That said, I think it’s a decent e-zine. As far as its orginal content (or what you see to be the lack thereof) is concerned, I will risk pointing out that most web journals tend to cannibalize one another these days and that a lot of articles and interviews by the Left Hook crew appear on the other sites as well.

Posted by Theo from Greece on 12/28 at 12:34 PM

I, personally, enjoy most of Left Hook’s work. Young radicalism often has a different flavor than older radicalism, I have found. It comes with the territory of being both young and radical. And because yesterday’s unconventionalism often becomes today’s coventionalism, I encourage Left Hook to be as unconventionally radical as they can be. God knows we needs a radically different radicalism in our future.

Posted by Nader Rider from on 12/28 at 10:56 PM

M. Junaid Alam: Left Hook Editor. So cool:
http://msalam.net/J2.JPG

Posted by Ludwig von Gergen from on 12/29 at 02:20 AM

Che Guevara… revolutionary… so cool too.
http://www.che-lives.com/pics/che22.jpg

Posted by Nader Rider from on 12/29 at 03:10 AM

Hi Nader Rider,

Yeah ... I like Left Hook too. I will even say I am FOR Left Hook. However, I do not think radicalism is better or worse or even different in any significant way if it’s espoused by the young or the old. Nor do I think it can, by nature, become something all that conventional. Why? Because it’s grounded in root analyses and these are almost always a bit racy and run counter to the conventional. I was an archetypal radical youth ... My favorite maxim had been the young Marx’s eleventh thesis on Feuerbach. Then I savored the less than tasty wisdom of Aristotle’s Ethica Nicomachea: ‘[A] young man is not a proper hearer of lectures on political science; for he is inexperienced in the actions that occur in life, but its (political science’s) discussions start from these and are about these; and, further, since he tends to follow his passions, his study will be vain and unprofitable, because the end aimed at is not knowledge but action.’ So I took about a decade off from commenting on political matters. I am getting too autobiographical here now. Of course I agree that radical youthfulness is a normal and valuable part of politics.

Posted by Theo from Greece on 12/29 at 08:00 AM

“However, I do not think radicalism is better or worse or even different in any significant way if it’s espoused by the young or the old.” (Theo)

I don’t agree, Theo. There is a recognizable difference (not a matter of better or worse), to me, between youthful idealism/radicalism and not-so-youthful idealism/radicalism. It may explain why Socrates spent the time that he did with the youth of his time. I appreciate that difference, and I encourage our continued support of it.

Posted by Nader Rider from on 12/29 at 01:07 PM

It has to do with believing what is possible, Theo. The young, generally speaking, are not as constrained with notions of impossibility as adults are. They are much grander perceivers of the possible, generally speaking, than adults are. As GBS once said, “Some men see things as they are and say, why; I dream things that never were and say, why not.” I believe that that is an apt comparison between an adult’s and a child’s lens of possibility. And I rarely see a child living a life of quiet desparation too. I can’t say the same thing for some adults, however.

Posted by Nader Rider from on 12/29 at 02:45 PM

Right then ... the ‘Demand The Impossible’ motivation ... I accept that. Good reply. I like to think that all our strainings and hopings for a better world were not dependent on analysis, but just indicative of our simple and shared humanity, compassion. Something that ought to have nothing to do with age, sex, culture, race and whatever other dividers I could care to think up now. This could be wishful thinking. My original thought was simply that being politically radical is about getting down to the nitty-gritty.

Posted by Theo from Greece on 12/30 at 09:20 AM

This is why we need to bring back Robespierre’s cult of Reason, if not the guillotine (yet?) What people forget about the French Revolution was its theology.

Posted by j cummings from Canada on 12/30 at 07:26 PM

I can’t help but get silly now. How about this protest prop? A mini-guillotine designed to slice melons for a hungry crowd.

Posted by Theo from Greece on 12/30 at 07:49 PM

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