r/AskReddit • u/DrCompenomics • 13h ago

Who’s the best real-life example of “you either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain,” and what happened?

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u/[deleted] 8h ago

[deleted]

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u/Puck85 8h ago

I stopped paying attention to him and didn't know this. Wow. How does he square that up with his lifelong critique of US foreign policy?

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u/hpaddict 8h ago

He wasn't critiquing the foreign policy he was critiquing the US.

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u/HenkieVV 7h ago

His arguments were... complicated. He did decry the Russian invasion as a criminal act of aggression, and accused them of major war crimes.

And then he kept going. He probably shouldn't have.

How does he square that up with his lifelong critique of US foreign policy?

Honestly, by focusing on it as an opportunity to critique US foreign policy. He seems to have bought into the Russian framing of Moscow having legitimate fears of NATO expanding it's sphere of influence, and American military aid as unnecessarily egging on the violence and causing escalation.

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u/VelvetyDogLips 7h ago

I wonder where the money trails that endowed Prof Chomsky's chair or underwrote the grants for his scholarship lead back to. I suspect, like Scott Ritter, Scott Atran, and Patrick Wolfe, he got RICK-rolled: bankrolled by Russia, Iran, China, and/or [North] Korea.

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u/HenkieVV 7h ago

Maybe, but to be fair, it fully fits in with the kind of arguments Chomsky has been putting out since the '70s.

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u/adamgerd 6h ago

Chomsky has always been problematic on anti American dictators and aggressors, since well the 1970’s, it’s not a new trend so I think it’s just ideology not any financial motive

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u/POGtastic 7h ago

It's only imperialism when the US does it. Otherwise, it's just sparkling foreign policy.

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u/tedivm 7h ago

Can you share some examples? I tried googling and all I could find was the opposite.

Whatever the explanation for the Russian invasion, an important, crucial question, the invasion itself was a criminal act, a criminal act of aggression, a supreme international crime on par with other such horrific violations of international law and fundamental human rights like the US invasion of Iraq, the Hitler-Stalin invasion of Poland, and all too many other examples.

That's a direct quote of his. He does go on to talk about why he thinks the invasion happened, and what US policies made it more likely, but I've never heard him defend the invasion or Putin.

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u/MaximumFlow7491 8h ago

did he?

I don't follow him but last time I read him he said Russia's invasion of Ukraine is akin to Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland

I mean he legit did defend a bunch of horrible 3rd world dictators but I don't think Putin was one of them

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u/petmoo23 7h ago

A too brief summary of his thoughts on Russia/Ukraine would be 'imperialism is bad and the invasion shouldn't happen, but NATO expansion contributed to the war, the war should be ended immediately by diplomacy, territorial disputes can be settled later, and the US shouldn’t use Ukraine as a proxy to degrade Russian power, and this needs to happen immediately to reduce the potential for nuclear war'. So yea, he's not in favor of the 'the fight doesn't end until Ukraine has recovered it's territory' notion to say the least. Actually reading it would be much more comprehensive, but that is the gist.

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u/n_mcrae_1982 7h ago

Technically, Putin would be a SECOND world dictator.

(“Third World” doesn’t actually mean what most people think it does).

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u/rabidpygmymarmoset 7h ago

Not true at all. He has a nuanced opinion on it. Which means bad faith actors like you purposefully twist his words to make them sound bad.