Noam Chomsky

[HelenaWaiting]

Another Epstein crony makes a grovelling apology, or rather, his wife makes one for him. Am I being too harsh to think that his comment about "the hysteria that has developed about abuse of women" is pretty much unforgivable?

I agree, I’m so disappointed as Chomsky was a bit of a hero of mine.

Sorry, here's the link: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/08/noam-chomsky-epstein-ties-wife-apology

I've wondered about Chomsky for a long time. He seems to make a point of dehumanising situations and events, and strike a predictably contrarian note about human tragedies, which undoubtedly have political contexts, but..

For instance, JFK was shot? Meh, lots of people get shot.
Nasty things were done by Serbs which might be called atrocities? Well, maybe but NATO made them do it.
2,977 innocent people die on 9/11? That's nothing compared to the number of innocent people killed by American imperialism!

There's nothing wrong with putting historical events in context, that's what academics do, but maybe acknowledge the suffering inflicted and maybe hold off on the 'yeah but' theorising while people are still actually grieving?

His statement that “a hysteria that has developed about abuse of women” fits into this pattern of theorising humans out of the picture.

I think it's unfortunate that he's only getting called out now that he's 97. I wish he had been identified as an Epstein associate and challenged about it sooner in his life.

I am not surprised. Chomsky has never been a person I respected. 'Hysteria about women' indeed.

I agree with you OP. They claim they had no idea who he was - someone comes to you asking for advice on dealing with rehabilitating their image when they are the subject of SEX TRAFFICKING accusations and you don’t google to see what all the fuss is about? You would then clearly see that Epstein had a previous conviction. Absolute bullshit.

Epstein invited the Chomskys to holiday with him in New York or the Caribbean. Noam wrote he was “really fantasising about the Caribbean island”. Just the nice weather, one would hope, but who knows?

Noam Chomsky wrote in 1967 that “it is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies.” He’s yet another disappointment.

That’s a good point.

“I’ve watched the horrible way you are being treated in the press and public. It’s painful to say, but I think the best way to proceed is to ignore it,”
"Some of Noam Chomsky’s communications with Epstein took place after the Miami Herald published a bombshell story in 2018 detailing how Epstein preyed on underage girls and received an unusually lenient plea deal in 2008. On Saturday, Valeria Chomsky acknowledged the couple had read that story, but said the couple wasn’t aware of the extent of Epstein’s crimes until after his second arrest in July 2019."
So the first "story" wasn't bad enough for them to have nothing to do with him. The lenient sentence he received stunned them into thinking he hadn't done anything wrong by procuring a child for prostitution and solicitation of prostitution did it. The fact that he was filthy rich and able to afford the tippity top lawyers money could buy didn't make them think his sentence was way too lenient. Or was it just the fact that Chomsky didn't give a monkeys chuff that Epstein had "procured" a child for prostitution. The image and reputation of a rich man was far too important, compared to the safety of a child.
They make me sick, all these excuses are complete cobblers. They just didn't care basically.

I sometimes think the academics who spend their whole adult lives in ivory towers see people and their problems as nothing more that a thought experiment. There's such a thing as being to cerable.

With all due respect, I find it hard to think why any one would a man(even if he is supposed to be clever or whatever) would not behave in the same way as all men did, and in fact still do.

Gail Dines wrote about how upset she was.

You would think someone with her background of researching pornograpy etc., would know it is all men.

Who care is they say something clever. Or even stand up for the environment. As men they have shared values. And that is that women are irrelevant.

Or it would seem sub human, and so of course noble men have no need to consider what is being said and done to women.

Not too harsh at all.
It put me in mind of something DH came home with after going to see Dune*, it's not that power corrupts but that it attracts the corruptible. And oh how very easily corruptible they all turned out to be.

*credit to Frank Herbert I suppose, but it's a veeeery long time since I read it.

I just read the apology; my eyes couldn’t have rolled further back in my head if I’d tried. These scumbags are sorry they got caught. That’s all.

I'm not sure I ever liked him, but I can remember going off him in big bundles quite some years ago.

I was dealing with far too many academics at the time, and I was out of patience with the posturing.

I foolishly looked up to the guy in some ways and I feel like an idiot

though actually it was the picture of him and Steve Fucking Bannon that made me realise what a damned fraud he must be.

He's perpetually on the wrong side of history with his opinions so I wasn't surprised that he knew Epstein. An odious man.

Noam Chomsky is a cunt who can get in the sea.

Best line ever.

It is really jarring that on a feminist forum the word used to say how terrible a man is, is to compare him to a part of the female anatomy.

Talk about the male culture still being in our heads.

Is that really the best word you can come up with to say a man is a piece of shit.

Or is that just internalised disgust of the female body.

I've been saying Chomsky's a wrongun since the 90s, so I can't say I'm surprised. Admittedly my reasons were nothing to do with the current revelations but because of his attitude to animal cognition and communication, and the intellectual dishonesty of constantly changing his definitions when confronted with evidence he was wrong, then using those new definitions to cling to his original conclusion instead of considering he might be wrong about the fundamental point.

It makes sense that this type of arrogance and his absolute prioritisation of Man-the-species goes alongside a similar prioritisation of men-the-sex.

For info: https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/official-statement-from-valeria-chomsky-regarding-jeffrey-epstein/

There’s no misogynist like a left wing misogynist.

“That’s particularly true now with the hysteria that has developed about abuse of women, which has reached the point that even questioning a charge is a crime worse than murder.”

Really, Noam? A crime worse than murder? And you’re accusing other people of hysteria?

Even less credible than your wife’s cringingly thin excuses for palling around with a paedo.

Other messages released by the justice department show Epstein sharing a phallic joke with Chomsky, and Chomsky “fantasizing about the Caribbean island”.

Yet

She said they “never went to his island or knew about anything that happened there”.

Hmmm

And then there's

She also said Epstein helped Noam recover $270,000. Epstein helped after Noam Chomsky discovered “inconsistencies in his retirement resources that threatened his economic independence and caused him great distress”.

Somehow I doubt $270K is going to make a critical difference to Noam’s retirement resources one way or another.

Zero sympathy. 'When we thought it was potentially just a bit of underage trafficking we could look the other way, but now we know the full extent of it (and that it risks our reputations) we are very sorry'.

Very true.

And if good men do obtain power and they're not corruptable, they'll just be taken out in a US-backed coup anyway.