Would you be disappointed if your university spent eight to ten grand to have a Neo-Nazi supporter come deliver a lecture? I should hope so, especially if your university is UMass, and doesn’t even have enough money to buy any new books for its library.

That wasn’t the main reason that I was upset with the Political Economy Research Institute at UMass or PERI for sponsoring Tuesday night’s speaker. Personally I have a hard time when anyone who supports Neo-Nazi’s steps foot on my campus.

In Bowker auditorium this past Tuesday, an MIT lecturer by the name of Noam Chomsky gave a lecture entitled “Iraq and Beyond,” and regardless of his opinion on the issue, this person should not be anyone’s role model. A while back, he wrote an introduction to a book by Robert Faurisson, who denied the Holocaust in Germany, where over 9 million civilians were murdered, 6 million of which were Jews.

According to the book “Chomsky and the Neo-Nazis,” Chomsky stated “I see no anti-Semitic implications in denial of the existence of gas chambers, or even denial of the Holocaust… I see no hint of anti-Semitic implications in Faurisson’s work…”

Furthermore, by helping Faurisson write a book on holocaust denial he is supporting Faurisson’s message. In Faurisson’s book, he states, “The alleged Hitlerian gas chambers and the so-called genocide of the Jews form a single historical lie whose principal beneficiaries are the State of Israel and international Zionism…what remains today is the truth. Let us dare to proclaim it. The non-existence of the gas chambers is… good news that it would be wrong to keep hidden any longer.”

How can we vow that such a tragedy will never happen again if we deny that it happened it the first place? Neo-Nazi extremist groups and skinheads have adopted holocaust denier’s arguments, which is quite evident on their websites; at least there are some people out there who can agree with Chomsky on this one.

Chomsky goes on to say that “Anti-Semitism is no longer a problem, fortunately. It’s raised, but it’s raised because privileged people want to make sure they have total control, not just 98 percent control. That’s why anti-Semitism is becoming an issue.” So Chomsky believes that the reason that Jews say that anti-Semitism is a problem is because they want more power and control.

Never mind that swastika’s were found on this campus a few years ago, and that hundreds upon hundreds of Neo-Nazi and white power groups exist in this country alone. In fact, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) website reports “an opinion survey of adults in five European countries found that 21 percent harbor strong anti-Semitic views. The survey also concluded that 40 percent of Europeans and in Spain alone an unbelievable 7 percent “believe that Jews have too much power in international financial markets.”

Meanwhile, over 140 anti-Semitic incidents occurred in France in the past year alone, from synagogues becoming firebombed to Rabbis stabbed, resulting in thousands of French Jews fleeing the country, but Chomsky says that anti-Semitism is no longer a problem. Perhaps he meant that anti-Semitism wasn’t a problem in Greenland.

The recent UMass guest also claims that the millions killed by Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge in Cambodia is fiction. The Khmer Rouge went on in the 1970’s to kill intellectuals, city dwellers, and hundreds of thousands of others in the country. This led to people dying from execution, starvation, or forced labor.

Chomsky claims in an article “Distortion at Fourth Hand” in the Nation that, “the ‘slaughter’ by the Khmer Rouge is a Moss-New York Times creation…”

Apparently millions of people didn’t die as the whole world and everyone in Cambodia thinks, but rather a newspaper made it all up. He argues that a lying and corrupt American Press presented distortions of facts and lies (from Cambodian refugees) about the “killing fields” to a large audience of duped Americans. Even though this genocide has been proven countless times, Chomsky refuses to apologize or acknowledge being wrong. Chomsky, perhaps China never took over Tibet either; maybe that’s an invention of some newspaper as well?

It’s odd how this man claims to be the “conscience of the American people” but profits considerably on his speaking tours and books. He looks to me like more of successful capitalist than a conscience. He’s made millions upon millions on the numerous books that he’s written and needs eight to ten grand, the price of a new car, to come speak for an hour or two.

This wealthy genocide denier has some other interesting opinions. About five years ago in the Progressive he said that the point of sports are “to build up irrational attitudes of submission to authority”. Be careful next time you are asked to join a game of football by your hallmates. The list goes on and on about this man’s strange theories and opinions, and books upon books could be filled regarding this subject.

I can’t respect a man who denies that millions of people were murdered and supports those that deny the Holocaust. Fortunately, no other UMass club or organization other than PERI sponsored him. I’d like to hear an apology from Chomsky one day for the things that he’s said, but I doubt that he’s mature enough to do such.

At least I’d like an apology from PERI for sponsoring him. I agree that the man is a brilliant linguist and may have some intelligent things to say in regards to what’s going on in the world, but I’m sure that Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, or perhaps some other white supremacist out there may have some insightful things to say about the U.S. and the international world, and I wouldn’t want to pay them 10 grand to speak or to come here either.

Gilad Skolnick is a Collegian columnist.