Left: Steve Bannon. Republican strategist, Trump ally, active fascist piece of shit.

Right: Noam Chomsky. Linguist, activist, self-descibed anarchist. If you asked him, he would say he’s one of us. Many of us here probably read Chomsky. Frankly, most people on the left, even non-anarchists, routinely use the logic in Manufacturing Consent to analyze how capitalist media manufactures consent from the working class for their various atrocities.

I’ve had my critiques of Chomsky for a long time, but his apparently deep connections with Epstein (not just this picture) and willingness to talk politely to fascists are absolutely beyond the pale.

I took the photo straight from the pictures released yesterday by the House Oversight Democrats, which itself came from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein.

I listened to a lot of Chomskys talks on YouTube, which have always been very critical of capitalism and the elite.

Yeah if Chomsky is to be taken at his word, he was an anarcho-syndicalist. Too bad he betrayed his principles, if he ever really held them in the first place 😮‍💨.

Is the dude just too old to give a shit now?

One of my critiques of Chomsky even before this Epstein shit is that he’s too tolerant of monsters. For example, he defended freedom of speech, which okay cool, but even for fascists. I always chalked it up to the fact that he has been cancelled various times throughout his career for his anti-war stances and probably found the experience unenlightening, and the fact that he’s a bit of a liberal. And honestly, I can agree to disagree with others to some extent about who is worth talking to, especially since some of those people are more likely to listen to Chomsky based on his background and signals of privilege. And personally, I do lie closer to “I’m willing to talk it out” than “We should to beat up people with bad ideas”.

But this…this is beyond reasonable disagreement. Even if he ends up being cleared of Epstein-related crimes (which I gotta be real with you, I fully believe at this point that he knew what was going on), he is clearly in bed with the monsters destroying our world. Steve Bannon is not going to listen to a loony “”“leftist”“” like Chomsky, and Chomsky is not gonna get anything from Bannon that he couldn’t have figured out by watching the news.

Like even if Chomsky didn’t want to tell the guy off, he could have declined the invitation or left the room. And it’s Noam fucking Chomsky. No shot he didn’t know who Bannon was! And it would be an abdication of duty for a so-called leftist so-called academic to not know the names in his field. I.e. even if this was an accident on his part, it should seriously damage his credibility.

All this to say, Chomsky became what he wanted to destroy.

Idolize no one, unless they die a hero.

IMO we can pick and choose parts of a person to admire without idolizing them.

Even before this Epstein shit, I knew he had severe liberal tendencies (yes even from an anarchist position) and yeah honestly he became a court jester for capitalism, but at least he has some good takes in his past. Like at a bare minimum he had Manufacturing Consent.

Unironically if you have an alternative recommendation for Manufacturing Consent that doesn’t have his prints on it, I’d love to see it because I’m so tired having to cite this fucking clown 😮‍💨

Freedom of speech just can’t be applied selectively, tho.

I mean, for freedom of speech with respect to the State, yeah I’m with you. But if I remember correctly, Chomsky was arguing against antifascists deplatforming fascists, using freedom of speech to justify that opinion, which I think is a weak argument because the whole point of deplatforming fascists is to allow the maximal subset of people to speak.

One day you restrict someone’s speech, the next day they are in power and restrict yours.

IMO deplatforming oppressive groups should be considered the maximalist position for freedom of speech. Letting them speak is equivalent to letting them win, which results in a net loss of free speech averaged over the whole community (e.g., LGBTQ people feel less likely to speak freely when homophobes are allowed to freely express LGBTQ-phobic views).

I know Parenti’s not a fan of us anarchists but I’ll take it, I’m so sick of Chomsky 😮‍💨

I mean it would be nice if you could say that without throwing disabled people under the bus with that r slur. Which I’m sure you can, so I’m not sure why you’re choosing not to, especially since we’re an anarchist community and ableism is a hierarchical structure of domination.

Yeah but if you chose a different word you wouldn’t have to later clarify that you stand with disabled people