Lots of Noam Chomsky in the files

[SamuelTheThird]

[JBTaurus83]

1. Intellegent people can be gross pigs too

It’s pretty eye opening who all is in there. I’ll be interested to hear what the Clinton’s have to say.

[leftstreet]

2. Misogynistic twat n/t

[newdeal2]

3. He's still alive apparently

Wonder if he will say anything now, if directly questioned.

[LeftInTX]

4. Not a fan.

He's always seemed arrogant/eccentric etc.

[fujiyamasan]

6. I never cared for his political opinions either

I’ll admit I’m not familiar with his work on linguistics (which is his actual area of expertise), and I can’t comment on that.

Epstein’s breadth of reach is so depressing. I guess we really do have an elitist ring of pedophiles and pedophile enablers running the world.

[MineralMan]

21. When it came to linguistics, he would defend his theories

vehemently. If you dared to disagree with him, he would say the most dismissive things he could think of. He was always, in his own opinion, correct in everything.

Very rigid.

[haele]

24. Epstein's psychopathic "genius" was his ability to charm people...

The sex and excess Hellfire Club extortion racket wasn't the only game he played. He cultivated access to "interesting personalities" by flattery and just paying attention to the needs of people he wanted to collect, and then he'd set himself up as a facilitator of resources - you want a plane, he had one or knew a guy, you need access to a business in another country to partner with your business initiative off the ground, he knew a guy...

Devils need to be charming and seem helpful; to fully capture the smart and powerful, they have to appeal to more than fear

[sheshe2]

8. About " bad apples"...

They keep coming back, chant and be blissed.

[Cha]

9. Not that it matters to anyone but me...

I never liked him, either.

I'd see his name here and pass right on by.

[Violet_Crumble]

13. Likely not, but I'm not surprised you don't like him..

Chomsky is highly intelligent, was a leader in the field of linguistics, and his political writing was left-wing. I never liked him not hated him, but I admire his political writing. Fateful Triangle and Manufacturing Consent are brilliant books, with the latter pretty applicable to the self-censoring of sections of the US media now.

[Dave says]

19. I'd add Necessary Illusions to the Chomsky book list

[leftstreet]

22. There is something glaringly obvious here

I don't think Chomsky participated in any creepy Epstein stuff. However the emails reveal an issue that blinded his understanding of class analysis throughout his career.

In his email to Epstein re: the sexual abuse accusations he refers to "the hysteria that has developed about abuse of women."

wtaf

That he could engage in a decades long analysis of power that ignored sex and gender..

Well

[Mosby]

30. You sure?

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220995209

[Mosby]

29. He's also apparently a rape apologist

Color me surprised.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220995209

[Kid Berwyn]

5. Oswald did it type, too.

Odd what sexual blackmail does to one’s understanding of the world.

[AZJonnie]

12. So now Chomsky must've been engaged in sexual misconduct and Epstein was blackmailing him?

I don't find that be the most likely scenario. This is actually part of a longer pattern of his when it comes to prominent Jewish men being accused of sexual misconduct. You can certainly find fault with that tendency (I know I do) but I think it's a stretch to say he's done so because he's also abusing minors himself. Nobody has accused him of that over the years.

Also, it does not make sense for someone being blackmailed for sexual misconduct to write a *private* note to their blackmailer expressing sentiments like this. Their conversations would logically look much different, if they were even speaking at all.

MHO, fwiw.

[Happy Hoosier]

17. I doubt it. He just didn't care that his buddy trafficked young girls. NT

[AZJonnie]

20. That, and/or he believed his buddy when he told everyone around him he didn't do it, was being framed, etc

I mean, that's kinda the main gist of this message. That's pretty fucking blind, obviously, but given the totality of the picture, it seems like Epstein was a highly adept liar, I'll give him that one thing.

[Kid Berwyn]

18. Epstein moved in interesting circles.

Today CounterPunch publishes a piece on the shocking relationship between the "liberal intellectual" and the sex trafficker.

On the Emails Between Jeffrey Epstein and Noam Chomsky

by Vijay Prishad
CounterPunch, February 3, 2026

Excerpt...

But of course, it was impossible to ignore the emails between my friend and collaborator Noam Chomsky and Epstein. I have read what I can, and I have seen what I need to see. Noam has been a great mentor for me, and we have made two books together (the last one, his final book). Both books were written around the time that he was in correspondence with Epstein. But nothing in our many discussions brought up any of the themes in that correspondence or of the fact that he was meeting Epstein. Noam and I talked about US imperialism and its crimes, and then about Cuba. The only personal other thing we talked about other than these political matters was our love of dogs and the Arabic language.

Since Noam cannot speak or write and explain his relationship with Epstein, the matter is fraught. There is nothing to say on his behalf. When the photos and emails appeared, I was immediately disgusted by Epstein’s paedophilia, and so by Noam’s friendship with him. There is no defence for this, in my view, no context that can explain this outrage.

I asked Jeffery St. Clair, the editor of CounterPunch, what our common friend Alexander Cockburn would have made of these revelations. ‘Alex would have been troubled, I think’, Jeffrey wrote, ‘about Noam having such a close relationship with an ultra-Zionist, and probable Israeli agent…Seriously bad judgment from someone who usually makes such considered and thoroughly reasoned decisions’. Epstein was a man of the Far Right and a Zionist – an accumulator of men of power and influence who want to turn the world into their paradise and our hell. He introduced Noam to Ehud Barak, a man who had faced corruption allegations in the early 2000s and who had committed war crimes during his tenure as Israeli Prime Minister. In 2009, Barak conducted a terrible war against the Palestinians in Gaza, murdering about 1500 Palestinians in cold blood. The United Nations investigation committee, chaired by Richard Goldstone, found in its report that the Israeli government – led by Barak – had committed war crimes. When Barak visited the United Kingdom that year, solicitors took a case to the City of Westminster to ask for a warrant under the 1988 Criminal Justice Act, which provides for universal jurisdiction in war crimes cases. No such warrant materialised. Why would Noam meet a war criminal in 2015, six years after these events? When I asked Noam in 2021, for our first book The Withdrawal, if he would have gone to meet with Henry Kissinger, he laughed and said, no. And yet, he had earlier – unbeknownst to me, met with a war criminal.

Why consort so freely with a person of that disposition? Why provide comfort and advice to a paedophile for his crimes?

Source: https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/02/03/on-the-emails-between-jeffrey-epstein-and-noam-chomsky/

Chomsky and the late Alexander Coburn, the co-founder of CounterPunch, were leftists who wrote in "Rethinking Camelot: JFK, the Vietnam War, and U.S. Political Culture" (1999), that the JFK assassination was the work of a lone gunman. Furthermore, they have amplified the fiction over the decades that there was no difference between JFK and his successors as far as foreign and domestic policy go. Nothing could be further from the truth.

So, who benefits from such a relationship between intellectuals and sex traffickers, besides the liars? Who suffers, besides the missing and sexually exploited children, and the truth?

[Jose Garcia]

23. It's quite telling that the Tankies are upset about Chomsky being friends with a Zionist, rather

than being upset that he is friends with a sex trafficker.

[yardwork]

25. Priorities.

[AZJonnie]

10. Well this is a pretty bad look, on so many levels. Dismaying to say the least (nt)

[flvegan]

11. If Chomsky is guilty of participating, then he can rot in prison too.

See how simple that is? If there's smoke and then fire, maybe raging fire, and the facts show that he's involved with any of the Epstein crimes, then fuck this guy too.

[Polybius]

15. Probably past the statute of limitations

The dude is 97, he probably hasn't had sex in 25 years or more.

[Polybius]

14. He was linked a few years ago, and had an angry reply when questioned

No surprise here.

[Dave Bowman]

16. "Manufacturing Consent" is a disgustingly ironic title.

[Clouds Passing]

26. He always gave me the creeps.

[Scruffy1]

27. He became a caricature of himself a long time ago.

he was interesting at times 50 years ago.

[JHB]

28. Reminds me of why I call an affliction of superlefties "overdosing on Noam Chomsky"

...by which I mean viewing all sorts of problems as rooted at such a high level that working within the system for reform seems futile so they want more radical solutions. The end result of which is that they make those reforms harder because they don't want to be "co-opted" or whatever.