Radical sheep Quite like
Dr Noam Chomsky, award-wining writer, Arundhati Roy, can be one of the most predictable intellectuals this side of the post-Cold-War left. And also like Chomsky (and Naomi Klein),
Roy too is fast becoming the provider of the intellectual fodder that loud, post-9/11 advocates of right-wing claptrap sumptuously feed upon..... people like Chomsky, Kalian and Roy somewhat ineffectual in fully elaborating their otherwise progressive intent. Hijacked by the noises emitting from right-wing playmakers within the contemporary anti-US populism, Roy, Kalian and Chomsky have tended to sound equally hyperbolic to keep the dwindling left in a race featuring the kind of intellectual pomposity and demagoguism that these days is so spectacularly unveiling itself on TV screens and in seminars.
......leftist counterparts like Roy, Klein and Chomsky can be equally blamed for failing to openly condemn those who are using their work to forward a clearly intransigent agenda. These are tricky times we live in; a time when the media can neither be called liberal nor entirely conservative. T
ake the case of the Pakistani electronic media’s darling, Imran Khan. Within a few sentences he manages to sound like a dedicated socialist, a Taliban sympathiser and a conscientious democrat without even batting an eyelid. In other words, just like the media today,
the great Khan is merely playing to a gallery of jumbled up ideas that have been constructed by the media itself.
...... Coming back to Roy, it wasn’t her terrific novel, 'The god of small things', that turned her into a celebrity in Pakistan; rather,
it is her stand on matters such as Kashmir and (albeit hackneyed) understanding of ‘American colonial designs’. Conscious of the ideological dichotomy generated by the acceptance that she receives from Pakistani right-wing circles, Roy soon started to add an anti-Taliban angle to her on-going narrative. But this angle, in fact, negates itself in the wake of her verbose ramblings about ‘American imperialism’, ‘globalisation’, et al.
To those who are more concerned about the impact religious extremism and anti-democratic moves are having in Pakistan, Roy and Chomsky’s ramblings become an irritant when they are liberally quoted by their rightist counterparts.
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Topic: Conversations With History_ Pakistan ., Great videos