Noam Chomsky Quotes
Up until the First World War, when people turned anti-German, Germany had been described by American political scientists as the model of democracy.
Chomsky, Noam. Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky. Edited by Peter R. Mitchell and John Schoeffel, The New Press, 2002, p. 94.
This was very much a minority opinion at the time, and has much historical significance as he was the father of the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, 1869-1940, whose appeasement of Germany led to Word War II. . See {585941}.
A few months later, that is exactly what Germany did. She was hoping that England would not enter the war despite her treaty obligations, but she was willing to risk the possibility. The Czar had a strong espionage and intelligence service active in Germany, but, like so many other intelligence failures, the intelligence operatives and analysts had military and economic facts but had little understanding of the German culture which propelled Germany to what to most other cultures was “irrational policy making.” People and nations often engage in irrational activities, even against their own self-interest.
The Hapsburgs were the ruling family of the Austrian Empire who wanted to invade Serbia in retaliation for their complicity in the assassination of the Austrian Archduke. This would likely bring Russia in the war in support of Serbia. The editor thought that there was no obligation to support Austria when they were planning a war of choice. What the editor did not know was that the German leadership very much wanted war at the time and supporting Austria was the perfect excuse to fight without them starting the conflict. However, the evidence became clear later than it was German aggression that turned the dispute into a World War.
But that is exactly what they did and the First World War was on. Europeans and Americans have often underestimated the political force of the common membership in the Orthodox Church.
The Times regretted that the Germans did not speak to the Austrians more vigorously when they were threatening to attack Serbia who harbored anti-Austro-Hungarian terrorists (see {642085}). What the Times editors did not realize was that the Germans had already made their war plans (see {642092}) and the Serbian issue was just the justification they needed to implement them. So there was no real reason for the Germans to discourage the Austro-Hungarian Empire from its mission to punish Serbia.
The Kaiser was very interested in the details of the German military activities and would often micro-manage by instructing individual officers about anything that struck him as important, Motke and the other Chiefs of Staff had the management of the Kaiser as one of his most critical tasks.
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He is Laureate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona and Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and is the author of more than 150 books on topics such as linguistics, war, politics, and mass media. Ideologically, he aligns with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism.
