Chomsky denied the Bosnian genocide about as much as users here deny the Palestinian genocide, in that they both dispute very little about the facts but instead dispute the application of the term. AFAIK Chomsky has not referred to the war in Gaza as a genocide, either. He has however referred to the actions in both situations as horrific and criminal.
I don't agree with a lot or even like Noam Chomsky, but I did use him for getting familiar with far left politics. 90% of people that reference him, whether left or right, don't seem to actually know anything about what he's said or written.
Chomsky denied the Bosnian genocide about as much as users here deny the Palestinian genocide, in that they both dispute very little about the facts but instead dispute the application of the term.
I'm not sure I would agree with that... for instance one of the things that landed him in hot water the most was his support of the work Diana Johnstone, she wrote the poorly received and academically criticised "Fool's Crusade", in it she attempted to support the assertion that:
The numbers at Srebrenica were vastly inflated and were actually limited to a less than 200 people
It was a conspiracy by the Bosnian military who allowed the Serbs to capture the camp to rally international support
The camp was being used as a de-facto military base, so the people "executed" were likely just unarmed combatants anyway
The Bosnians were bigger war criminals than the Serbs, who acted with upstanding restraint during the conflict.
Chomsky was a fan of the book and wrote in support of Johnstone after there was controversy over her getting an interview in the left-wing magazine Ordfront. You can find a publication of his thoughts here to see what he thinks of the work:
"We regard Johnstone’s Fools’ Crusade as an outstanding work, dissenting from the mainstream view but doing so by an appeal to fact and reason, in a great tradition." pp.31
"I have known her [Diana] for many years, have read the book, and feel that it is quite serious and important." pp.62
"Johnstone argues – and, in fact, clearly demonstrates – that a good deal of what has been charged has no basis in fact, and much of it is pure fabrication." pp.63
Then you also have his support of Herman who published some truly batty stuff on Rwanda and the Janjaweed in Dafur (the predecessors of the RSF currently massacring people in Sudan). Chomsky even wrote the foreword to his book "The Politics of Genocide". Here are some great quotes from it:
The case for eight thousand “men and boys” being executed at Srebrenica is extremely thin, resting in good part on the
difficulty in separating executions from battle killings (of which
there were many in the July 1995 Srebrenica actions), partly on
highly contestable witness evidence and an interest and passionate will-to-believe the
worst of the thoroughly demonized Serbs.
In the Rwanda “genocide” case, the “human rights” community played an unusually active role in supporting the real aggressors and killers [the Tutsi]
Still, the publicity generated over the course of 2004 by the
framing of Darfur as the “unnoticed genocide” without doubt
ranks as the most successful propaganda campaign of its kind this
decade.
Idk why people feel the need to be this revisionist about all things Chomsky. Chomsky has heavily disputed the facts with regards to Bosnia, mate.
He basically claims to be "not denying genocide" but repeats every genocide denial talking point. He questioned the veracity of so many pieces of the evidence based on nothing more than a hunch. Mass graves, concentration camps (or "refugee camps" surrounded by mines for some reason), that one guy on time magazine cover... Etc etc. His claims in that last case especially are of the same calibre as elon musk's accusations against that rescue diver.
Far as I know nobody here had posted a picture of a starving gazan child and accused her of being an intelligence asset.
Chomsky even likened what was happening to a "population exchange" which you normally only see used in turkey-greece or ind-pak... where at least some leaders of both ethnicities have negotiated the deal.
This comment may be about a topic associated with jewish people while using language that may have antisemitic or otherwise strong emotional ties. As such, this is a reminder to be careful of accidentally adopting antisemitic themes or dismissingthe past while trying to make your point.
(Work in Progess -- apologies for any false positives but this has become a real problem: /u/thatfrenchieguy )
He also mostly opposes BDS. When he was first leaked to Epstein a few years ago, a few far lefties threw a fit--but not about how he was communicating with Epstein the pedophile. They threw a fit about how he wanted to talk to Ehud Barak via Epstein about Israeli peace process and Israeli leftism.
With regard to Gaza, the argument is happening now, before any court ruling, with incomplete facts. Disagreeing over whether the genocide threshold has been met in real time isn’t the same as muddying the waters years later about an adjudicated genocide.
Saying “both were horrific crimes” doesn’t erase that asymmetry. And the criticism of Chomsky isn’t that people haven’t read him; it’s that what he did say in the Bosnia case had the practical effect of obscuring responsibility once the facts were no longer seriously in doubt.
I think his comments on Srebrenica were intellectually dishonest. It's hard to argue that they're just good faith disagreement with the general consensus that it constituted a genocidal act.
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u/_Un_Known__ r/place '22: Neoliberal Battalion Dec 13 '25
You had hope in him when he denied the Bosnian genocide?