Representative Press Blog

Dear Ms. Brockes:

You wrote this about Chomsky: "... his conclusions remain controversial: ... that during the Bosnian war the "massacre" at Srebrenica was probably overstated. (Chomsky uses quotations marks to undermine things he disagrees with and, in print at least, it can come across less as academic than as witheringly teenage; like, Srebrenica was so not a massacre.)"

Are you claiming that Chomsky made a gesture to indicate quotes when he said the word "massacre"? Did you then make the assumption that he has written massacre with quotes around it? You should try to find a source for that. In his book Hegemony or Survival, he doesn't use quotes around the word. If you haven't, and it seems as if you haven't, you should consider reading some of the books that he has written. Hegemony or Survival and Understanding Power are really good.