Chomsky and Epstein: What the Evidence Actually Shows

The recent release of emails and documents revealing Noam Chomsky's relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has sparked predictable outrage across the political spectrum.

Conservative, liberal, and left-leaning outlets alike have used the story to delegitimize one of the left's most influential intellectuals, while many on the left, including myself, have felt surprise and disappointment that Chomsky would associate with someone so morally reprehensible.

But beneath the sensational headlines and photos circulating online without context lies a more complex story—one that demands we distinguish between actual evidence of wrongdoing and politically motivated character assassination.

As someone who has devoted decades to exposing American war crimes, corporate power, and the propaganda systems that sustain them, Chomsky deserves better than trial by association.

The evidence released thus far, while certainly worthy of examination, falls far short of implicating Chomsky in Epstein's crimes or even suggesting he possessed knowledge of the full extent of Epstein's predatory behavior during their association.

What we're witnessing is not a reckoning with complicity, but rather a manufactured scandal designed to delegitimize a figure whose entire body of work stands in opposition to the very systems of elite power that Epstein represented.

As William Pettus writes, “The attacks say far more about the political moment than about him. His life’s work was built on the idea that power seeks to discredit critics not by refuting arguments, but by contaminating reputations. What’s happening now follows that pattern almost perfectly.”

The Facts of the Relationship

Let's begin by establishing what the documentary record actually shows. According to emails and documents released by the House Oversight Committee, Chomsky met Epstein sometime around 2011—approximately three years after Epstein's 2008 guilty plea to two Florida state charges: solicitation of prostitution and procuring a person under 18 for prostitution. The correspondence shows they maintained periodic contact through early 2018, discussing topics ranging from global finance and artificial intelligence to Middle Eastern politics and linguistics.

The documents also describe Epstein acting as a facilitator. Epstein reportedly arranged a call with a Norwegian diplomat involved in the Oslo Accords and helped arrange a meeting with former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, a figure Chomsky had written about critically. Epstein also offered Chomsky access to his residences in New York and New Mexico, though it's unclear whether those offers were accepted.

There was also a financial link. In March 2018, approximately $270,000 was transferred to Chomsky from an account associated with Epstein. Chomsky has publicly stated that this money was his own, routed through Epstein-linked accounts while reorganizing shared funds after the death of his first wife, and that it "did not involve one penny from Epstein." Chomsky called it “a pure technicality.” This has understandably raised questions, but it makes more sense in light of recently revealed context.

Last month, Jennifer Loewenstein, a close friend of Chomsky for nearly 30 years, shared new details from her personal exchanges with Chomsky in 2023. Jennifer writes:

“Chomsky did invest money through Epstein, whose financial services were used by a number of staff and faculty at MIT. According to one source, Chomsky may have been encouraged to invest with him because so many of these people claimed to have done very well by trusting Epstein’s financial advice. In an email to me, Chomsky said that yes, he’d invested money with him - and that it was a relatively small amount.”

So with this financial precedent being established and Epstein's reputation of being a knowledgeable financial contact, it makes sense that Chomsky would reach out to Epstein again to handle an annoying estate‑related technical problem.

The Problematic Letter

The most troubling document in the release is an undated letter addressed "To whom it may concern" that appears to praise Epstein effusively. The letter, which would have been written in or after 2017 (as it references Chomsky's position at the University of Arizona, which began in 2017), describes Epstein's "limitless curiosity, extensive knowledge, penetrating insights, and thoughtful appraisals" and calls him "a highly valued friend and regular source of intellectual exchange and stimulation."

However, as Greg Grandin notes in The Nation, there are serious questions about this letter's authenticity. Most significantly: "There is no university letterhead, signature, or any log or e-mail suggesting Chomsky sent the letter to Epstein as an attachment. The unsigned document was found in Epstein's private files."

Grandin goes further: "I'd wager that Chomsky didn't write this gushy letter. It sounds nothing like him. Someone should run the text through stylometry software and compare it to other references we are sure that Chomsky did personally write. My guess is that Epstein wrote the letter himself (since it portrays him exactly as he wanted to be portrayed, as a polymath of 'limitless curiosity, extensive knowledge, penetrating insights, and thoughtful appraisals'). Chomsky's name appears at the bottom of the recommendation, but only in typed form."

Jennifer Loewenstein agreed, stating: “That was my first reaction. Epstein might have had an assistant write it up for Noam to sign later.”

Norman Finkelstein also chimed in: "Most of the letter does not sound at all like him. How this letter came to be is, at this point, anyone’s guess."

Finally, Bev Stohl, Chomsky's office secretary for 24 years, wrote, “So saddened to see such a misleading article about Noam Chomsky in today’s Globe [Nov 20]. A rec letter, undated, unsigned. Please don’t buy in. As an aside, MIT and Harvard received major donations from Epstein years back, and this led to lots of correspondence between many faculty members and Epstein, before anybody knew what was up.”

This is crucial context that most media coverage has ignored. The letter that has generated the most damaging headlines may not even be authentic—it may be a forgery Epstein created to burnish his reputation as part of his well-documented post-conviction PR campaign. Without Chomsky's signature, university letterhead, or any evidence he actually sent it, treating this as definitive proof of Chomsky's opinion of Epstein is journalistically irresponsible.

Jennifer Loewenstein's Take

Based on her decades-long friendship with Chomsky, Loewenstein pushes back further:

"Noam Chomsky never had a 'close personal relationship' with Jeffrey Epstein nor did he go jet-setting around with billionaires and elites as some of the comments on Twitter are suggesting. Chomsky was a workaholic who rarely spent any time away from his study. He rarely went out, never took vacations, and definitely did not hobnob with the elites. The latter were his least favorite people and invariably the targets of his most withering criticism.

"During these years (2007-2017) he and those around him would not have known anything about Epstein’s sex trafficking ring because, as I explained earlier, it was kept from the public owing to the NPA, or non prosecution agreement, granted Epstein in 2008. That deal was kept under wraps and very few people knew of it until after 2018.

“As for Noam’s dinner with Epstein, Woody Allen, Soon-Yi Previn, et al., this was out of character for Noam as he so rarely took off any time from his work to ‘schmooze’ with anyone. We don’t know whether he went to this dinner at someone’s else’s urging or of his own choosing. Either way, Chomsky and his wife, Valeria, flew with Epstein once, from Boston to New York (a very short flight) for the dinner. That was the extent of it.”

What Chomsky Actually Knew

As Jennifer Loewenstein explains, the general public during 2008-2017 knew only that Epstein had been convicted of solicitation of prostitution and procurement of a minor for prostitution, and served 13 months. What they didn't know was that behind this lenient arrangement was a secret sweetheart deal "kept secret for over a year from the many victims who had by then come forward," and that these victims would later learn no further charges could be brought—that their evidence had been "effectively dismissed by higher-ups in Florida and Washington."

The full extent of Epstein's sex trafficking operation and the systematic nature of his abuse of children only became widely known after the Miami Herald's November 2018 investigation by Julie K. Brown, which led to Epstein's 2019 arrest on federal sex trafficking charges.

When Chomsky was asked about his relationship with Epstein in 2023, after these revelations, his response was characteristically blunt. As The Harvard Crimson reported: "First response is that it is none of your business. Or anyone's. Second is that I knew him and we met occasionally."

Now to those that don't know him, this could easily be read as evasive. But Noam and his family are well known for valuing their privacy and discretion in personal matters. Around this time he refused to name other faculty that had attended a Harvard meeting with Epstein because he didn't want to subject them to "slanderous attacks."

Chomsky did go on to elaborate further, telling The Wall Street Journal:

“Like all of those in Cambridge who met and knew him, we knew that he had been convicted and served his time, which means that he re-enters society under prevailing norms — which, it is true, are rejected by the far right in the US and sometimes by unscrupulous employers… I’ve had no pause about close friends who spent many years in prison, and were released. That's quite normal in free societies.”

The Old School Principle of Talking to Everyone

This shouldn't be controversial. Chomsky's position is entirely consistent with his decades-long practice of speaking with all manner of people, including those whose views and actions he finds abhorrent.

When asked if he regretted his association with Epstein, Chomsky responded:

“I've met [all] sorts of people, including major war criminals. I don't regret having met any of them.”

Critics will say this argument about war criminals isn't convincing because Chomsky didn't treat Epstein as a criminal during their association pre-2018, and that's true. Email records and other evidence suggests Chomsky and his wife had a sporadic but friendly rapport. But the question was whether Chomsky regretted the association, and his answer was no—because he doesn't regret meeting anyone, whether people he engaged with to understand power or professional contacts who later proved morally abhorrent.

This principle can be seen throughout his life.

As Grandin writes in The Nation, Chomsky "earned a reputation early in his career as someone whose door was always open—who talked to anyone who knocked and answered any letter delivered." When email arrived at MIT in the mid-1980s, "the stream of letters Chomsky received was largely replaced by a torrent of e-mails. But Chomsky's open-door policy continued. He still felt obligated to answer all, or nearly all, the people who wrote him."

Norman Finkelstein commented on this in his Dec 3 statement: "It is an incontrovertible fact that Professor Chomsky met and corresponded with everyone. He didn’t discriminate; that was his modus operandi. That disposes of the bulk of the accusations leveled against Professor Chomsky."

This openness extended across the political spectrum—including, as recently released documents show, to Steve Bannon. A photo of Chomsky and Bannon was found in Epstein's files, and there's evidence Epstein tried to arrange a Bannon interview with Chomsky for a never-finished documentary meant to rehabilitate Epstein's image.

Michael Albert, who has worked alongside Chomsky for decades and co-founded Z Magazine, commented on this in his Dec 23 piece, “Chomsky Reassessed?”:

"You may wonder, why would Noam actually want to talk to Bannon, for example, if in his proximity? Or to Epstein?

Explanation one: he admired Bannon and Epstein and wanted to aid them or he even just enjoyed being around such people.

Explanation two: He was curious and given the chance he wanted to learn things useful to his work of dismantling lies and violence. When face-to-face, even with the Devil, Noam would be civil. It was his way. So I admit that I find it hard to fathom why explanation one beats out explanation two, given the existence of Noam’s history. I get why mainstream media would joyously rush toward the disparaging explanation, though remarkably they are lagging well behind some leftists. But I don’t get why anyone who wants to win a new world and who knows anything of Noam would rush there as well."

The Principles Worth Defending

The question isn't whether Epstein deserved harsher consequences than his 2008 sweetheart plea deal—he absolutely did, and his subsequent crimes warranted life in prison. The failure of prosecutors to charge him appropriately represents a massive injustice to his victims.

But here's the central question: Should Chomsky be condemned for associating with Epstein during a period (2011-2017) when Epstein was not yet a social pariah, when numerous faculty and staff at MIT were using his financial services, when he was still being invited to academic conferences and hosting dinners with scientists and intellectuals, and when the full scope of his crimes remained sealed from public view?

Bill Gates met with Epstein repeatedly after his conviction, even staying at his mansion. Dozens of academics and scientists accepted his funding and attended his gatherings. MIT's Media Lab took his donations and hosted him for nine visits between 2013 and 2017, while Harvard gave him a personal office, a key card, and hosted him for more than 40 documented visits.

Collectively, hundreds of men and women in respected academic circles associated with Epstein, post-2008 conviction. Yet the media treatment of these associations has largely been "errors in judgment" or "unfortunate lapses."

Chomsky, by contrast, faces calls for wholesale delegitimization of his life's work—a response his longtime friends and colleagues find both disproportionate and disconnected from the actual facts.

The counterargument is that Chomsky should have known better than everyone else. But is it really realistic that Noam, alone out of all the people at MIT and Harvard who similarly associated with Epstein, should have been the one to suspect the true extent of Epstein's depraved and ongoing crimes?

We should remember that Epstein's public legitimacy depended on appearing reformed, credible and respectable in the circles Chomsky frequented. That's no doubt why Epstein would have focused on building relationships with Chomsky and other luminary figures and diplomats, to insulate him from potential scrutiny.

As Chomsky's friend Jennifer Loewenstein concludes, “it warrants mentioning that when Noam Chomsky and Jeffrey Epstein met, Chomsky would have been about 88 years old. The point is simply that to pillory an 88 year old man for words & actions that may not even have been his, and without even the slightest verifiable context, is irresponsible, disrespectful, & highly unprofessional.”

"He Knew Epstein Was a Registered Sex Offender"

One of the most common and understandable criticisms I've received since first publishing this piece is: "Chomsky knew Epstein was a convicted sex offender in 2011 and didn't care. He associated with him anyway. That alone is disqualifying."

This framing assumes there's only one obvious moral response, and that those who choose otherwise must not care about victims or, worse, condone such behavior. But the question it raises—what obligations we have toward people who've served their sentences—is far more complex than it appears.

There are two fundamentally different views about post-conviction reintegration:

View 1: Certain crimes—particularly sex crimes—warrant permanent social exile regardless of legal consequences served. Association with such individuals, even years after release, reflects moral failure, indifference to victims, or social acceptance of their crimes.

View 2: People who serve court-ordered sentences deserve a path back to civil society. Permanent exile creates a permanent underclass and undermines any notion of rehabilitation. This principle applies even when we find the crime abhorrent and the punishment inadequate.

Chomsky has consistently held View 2.

Since first publishing this piece, a reader forwarded an email exchange he had with Chomsky about Epstein, shared here with permission. Chomsky's response, dated May 4, 2023, provides important insight into his reasoning:

"There's an old principle, particularly on the left but much more broadly, that someone who has served a sentence re-enters society without prejudice. One close friend spent years in prison. Epstein was well-known in Cambridge, taking part in scientific conferences in Nowak's lab, meeting people, bringing important scientists and mathematicians to the meetings. It was well-known that he'd served his sentence. I don't recall anyone even mentioning it.

Much later, after his incarceration, a flood of lurid stories and charges came out. But no one who knew him, Valeria and me included, ever [heard] or saw a remote hint of anything like that, and all were quite shocked, sometimes skeptical because he was so remote from anything they'd ever heard of."

This provides important context: Chomsky wasn't making an exception for Epstein—he was applying a principle he'd lived by throughout his life. And crucially, neither he nor his wife ever witnessed or heard anything that suggested Epstein's predatory behavior, which was carefully concealed from the academic circles where they encountered him.

In that same exchange, Chomsky explained what he sees as a broader cultural shift:

“It used to be a truism on the left that all of us have the potential to be saints or sinners. It's not an innate disposition. Circumstances, upbringing, social norms, all sorts of things enter into good and bad behavior. That's why the left always stressed the need for efforts for rehabilitation. By now it's virtually gone. In the US at least.”

From this perspective, abandoning the principle because it catastrophically failed in one case means accepting permanent exile for entire categories of offenders—regardless of what work they've done toward genuine accountability.

Critics counter that someone who spent a career scrutinizing how power protects itself should have been more skeptical when encountering a wealthy financier with a sex offense conviction. That's a fair point. But demanding he investigate everyone's rehabilitation status before professional engagement sets an impossible standard—he's spoken with war criminals, corporate executives, and government officials responsible for mass deaths without vetting their moral transformation. We also know Epstein was spending millions of dollars to infiltrate academic circles to ensure he appeared respectable and reformed.

Does this criticism hold up? It depends on answering a key question first: what kind of relationship was this? We can't evaluate either the appropriateness of the contact or the adequacy of his due diligence without knowing whether this was a close personal friendship or a limited professional association.

To summarize what we know from the documentary record: sporadic email exchanges over six years (suggesting the same intellectual engagement he engaged in with thousands), occasional meetings to discuss academic topics or facilitate diplomatic connections (like the meeting with Ehud Barak), use of Epstein's financial services (which was common among MIT faculty), and one dinner with Woody Allen that included Chomsky's wife.

Whether this demonstrates poor judgment depends on one's view of post-conviction reintegration. From the perspective that sex offenders should face permanent social exile, any professional contact was inappropriate. From the perspective that people who serve their sentences deserve a path back to society, maintaining limited professional contact warrants no more scrutiny than any of the hundreds of academics who had similar contact. Whether even this limited contact was appropriate is a question shaped more by hindsight than by what was knowable at the time.

What the evidence doesn't support, regardless of which view one holds, is the "close personal friendship" often described in media coverage. The relationship appears to have been primarily professional—responding to Epstein's emails like he did with everyone and using Epstein as a facilitator for meetings and financial services that many of Chomsky's colleagues also used.

As a final note of clarity: The arguments here concern (1) what was publicly known during 2011-2017, and (2) differing views on how we treat those who've served their time.

Neither argument suggests Epstein's crimes weren't serious or attempt to minimize the gravity of Epstein's 2008 conviction.

Reasonable people can disagree about whether the reintegration principle should apply to sex offenders, whether Chomsky applied it with sufficient scrutiny, and whether this level of professional contact was appropriate.

What the Record Doesn't Show

Here's what the evidence doesn't establish:

• Any evidence Chomsky knew about or participated in Epstein's sex crimes
• Any evidence Chomsky received money directly from Epstein
• Any evidence Chomsky was at locations where abuse occurred
• Any victim testimony implicating Chomsky
• Any evidence Chomsky provided material support for Epstein's criminal activities
• Any corroborating evidence that verifies Chomsky's letter of effusive praise was written by him

As the Epstein Web Tracker (an independent documentation project) concludes: “A name in a document is not proof of a crime. Being on a calendar or guest list shows contact, not guilt. Context matters. A scheduled dinner or intellectual meeting belongs in a different category than a wire-transfer record or a co-ownership filing for a shell company.”

The Political Function of This Scandal

It's worth asking who benefits from the Chomsky-Epstein scandal. Chomsky has spent his career arguing that American presidents are war criminals, that capitalism is fundamentally exploitative, and that mainstream media manufactures consent for elite interests. He is, in short, a figure the establishment has every reason to want discredited.

The Epstein scandal provides the perfect vehicle: guilt by association dressed up as moral reckoning. It allows critics to avoid engaging with Chomsky's actual arguments about power, imperialism, and propaganda while casting him as a hypocrite who consorted with the very elites he claimed to oppose.

But this critique fundamentally misunderstands Chomsky's project.

He has never argued that intellectuals should refuse to speak with powerful people or that we should create a cordon sanitaire around anyone who has committed crimes. On the contrary, his entire method has been to understand how power works by engaging directly with those who wield it, analyzing their justifications, and exposing the contradictions between their rhetoric and their actions.

An astute question to this, I've seen, is that if Noam engaged with radioactive figures for research purposes, where are his published findings? But from what I've learned, Noam didn't feel obligated to write about every single individual he encountered. Noam was more focused on systems and big picture issues over individuals. I think his experiences contributed to his ever evolving understanding of the world, which then fed into his wider work.

"Not long after he was photographed with Steve Bannon," Greg Grandin writes, " Chomsky gave a speech at Boston’s Old South Church denouncing Bannon as “the impresario” of an “ultranationalist, reactionary international” movement.

Grandin concludes in his well-researched and recommended piece, “Chomsky was not a sentimental member of what Giridharadas calls the ‘Epstein Class.’”

His Life's Work Still Stands

Whatever one makes of Chomsky's relationship with Epstein, I don't believe it should overshadow the monumental contributions he has made to our understanding of power, propaganda, imperialism, and corporate capitalism. His work on:

• Manufacturing Consent and the propaganda model of media
• The Pentagon Papers and Vietnam War crimes
• East Timor and Indonesia's U.S.-backed genocide
• Central America and Reagan's terrorist campaigns
• The Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• Neoliberalism and corporate power
• Linguistic theory and cognitive science

...has shaped multiple generations of scholars, activists, and journalists. These contributions don't evaporate because he acted according to principles he's held throughout his life—despite those principles failing him in this case.

Defending Principles, Not Perfection

I want to be clear: I'm not arguing Chomsky made the right call in maintaining a relationship with Epstein.

His lack of a forceful condemnation of Epstein before his stroke is undeniably disappointing.

But what I am arguing is that:

1. The evidence released thus far does not implicate Chomsky or his wife in Epstein's crimes or suggest they had knowledge of the full scope of Epstein's predatory behavior during their association.

2. The most damaging document—the effusive letter of recommendation—has serious questions about its authenticity and may be a forgery.

3. There is no evidence “Chomsky didn't care about the victims” or saw Epstein's 2008 crimes as “not a big deal.” His disposition reflects debatable but legitimate differences on the left about reintegration norms.

As Michael Albert, a long-time colleague attests:

"I am confident that Noam’s hate for sexism, misogyny, racism, exploitation and fascism didn’t lose even a tiny fraction of its passion and clarity due to his “time spent with” Epstein and/or Bannon. Just like his understanding of the American political system didn’t somehow disappear when he said we should vote for the lessor evil in swing states. And just like his compassion for victims of Nazism didn’t diminish when he defended Faurisson’s free speech."

4. Chomsky is 97 years old and can no longer speak after a stroke. It falls to those of us who understand his contributions, and who refuse to participate in guilt-by-association politics, to make the case for intellectual honesty and proportional judgment.

5. We can debate Chomsky's old school ethic of engaging with unscrupulous actors (whether Epstein, Bannon or others) without participating in what is essentially a politically motivated smear campaign.

6. We need to resist the impulse to demand moral perfection from those whose work we admire. If we insist our intellectual heroes be completely untainted—free from any questionable associations, poor judgment calls, or ethical blind spots—we will have no heroes left. This standard serves power perfectly: it ensures the public constantly purges its most effective voices over human fallibility while establishment figures face no comparable scrutiny.

Chomsky has spent seven decades doing work most of us will never approach—documenting atrocities, exposing propaganda systems, standing against empire when it was deeply unpopular. We can hold complexity: acknowledging Chomsky's oversights while refusing to participate in his delegitimization. The alternative—purity politics that treats any flaw as disqualifying—leaves us with no one to learn from and no capacity to build the movements we desperately need.

7. This rush to discard our most important voices over imperfect judgment is not a new pattern on the left. Bernie Sanders has also been called a "sellout" and a “traitor" for endorsing Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden—strategic choices aimed at preventing worse outcomes. Chomsky has been condemned for all number of statements and positions he's made over his lifetime. The left's circular firing squad tendency treats any moral complexity, legitimate disagreement or tactical compromise within unjust systems as grounds for complete dismissal, erasing decades of contribution with alarming speed. This asymmetry of focus and attention isn't accidental. It's easier to tear down our own than to sustain the difficult work of building power against entrenched interests.

Loewenstein pushes back on this dynamic as well, “I've also seen the alleged connection between Chomsky and Epstein being used as a bizarre pretext to launch into scathing critiques of Chomsky's political views, especially concerning Israel-Palestine… The critiques of his politics I have thus far read do an enormous disservice to what Chomsky believed, what he did or did not support, and the effect of his views on the overall Palestinian rights movement.”

She continues: "What I have read along these lines, to date, shows a mixture of misinformation, outright lies, and the usual garbage that goes along with taking a hatchet to the political views of someone you dislike. Again, I would simply like to add that, without any supporting facts, this kind of smear campaign belongs in the dust bin of gossip columns by unreliable, reckless, and petty individuals who apparently have nothing better to do."

That may sound harsh, but there's real value in a society capable of defending core principles—like due process, proportional judgment, and the distinction between association and complicity—even when doing so is uncomfortable or politically inconvenient.

In Defense of Reasoned Disagreement

The evidence may change. More documents may be released that fundamentally alter our understanding of Chomsky's relationship with Epstein. If and when that happens, we should reassess accordingly. But based on what we know now, these associations complicate his legacy, but certainly don't warrant the blanket condemnation he's faced across the political spectrum.

In my book, Chomsky is still a legend—human, flaws and all.

His work exposing how elites manufacture consent for the status quo was instrumental in me becoming an activist and co-founding Films For Action. I've never agreed with Chomsky on everything or revered him as infallible, but my respect for him or anyone has never depended on that. Nor Chris Hedges, Amy Goodman or Bernie Sanders. Nor activists in my community who I often disagree with.

One of the principles I learned from Chomsky's work was how to engage with ideas I oppose: through reasoned argument rather than moral condemnation, by addressing the strongest version of an opponent's case rather than caricaturing it, and by maintaining that people can disagree in good faith without being enemies. He modeled this even when dealing with his harshest critics—responding to their arguments rather than attacking their character.

Though a majority appears to appreciate my article, the critical responses so far have been predictable. Despite my critiques of Chomsky throughout the piece, my refusal to condemn him wholesale has been met with equally forceful condemnation.

Some critiques are bad faith smears. Some deliberately misread my argument. Some admit they didn't read the article at all. Others offer legitimately understandable counterarguments that I respect.

It's that last category that matters. There are legitimate disagreements on the left about what Chomsky's association with Epstein means and whether it's disqualifying. The same goes for any number of his ideas and positions.

What I object to is the refusal to acknowledge that legitimate disagreement exists at all. The insistence that anyone who weighs this evidence differently must be defending sexual predation, or deserves to be dismissed with the same contempt they reserve for Chomsky himself. That pattern—treating moral complexity as moral failure, demanding unanimous condemnation as proof of virtue—is exactly what I'm critiquing.

It's an old school ethic, one Chomsky practiced throughout his career, to maintain space for principled disagreement without resorting to character assassination.

We can argue vigorously about whether Chomsky's judgment failed him (I agree it did), about what standards we should apply, about whether this episode undermines his legacy—and still treat each other as people attempting to navigate complex issues in good faith.

Against Hero Worship

One recurring criticism in left circles dismisses Chomsky as a "poor man's Michael Parenti," someone who didn't lead the revolution, who sold out, who wasn't radical enough. Similar attacks target Bernie Sanders for working within the Democratic Party, or dismiss any activist who doesn't meet some imagined purity threshold.

This is ironically its own form of hero worship—just inverted. It assumes the only activists we should respect are those with the most radically uncompromising politics.

But here's the thing: I'm actually doing the opposite of holding Noam on a pedestal. I don't expect any single activist, intellectual, or politician to lead us to liberation. That's not how change works, and placing that burden on individuals sets us up for endless cycles of disappointment and denunciation.

Instead, I appreciate contributions for what they are. Chomsky introduced millions of people to sophisticated critiques of power and manufacturing consent. That's valuable. Bernie Sanders moved policy conversations leftward and inspired a generation of organizers. That's valuable. Anarchists blockading pipelines risk their freedom to slow ecological collapse. That's valuable. None of them are perfect. None of them will save us. All of them contribute something worth building on.

We never needed Chomsky or any movement figure like Michael Parenti, Kshama Sawant, Chris Hedges, Amy Goodman, Bernie Sanders, Cornel West, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or anyone else to be a perfect avatar for our politics. What we've always needed is millions of people to get off the sidelines and into the game, taking the best from these influences, learning from their mistakes and respecting a diversity of perspectives and contributions.

The rush to judge, not just Chomsky, but all of our movement leaders, reflects the same mistake as hero worship—just with the valence flipped. Both approaches treat individuals as either saints or frauds, saviors or sellouts, rather than as humans with mixed records whose work we can learn from while remaining clear-eyed about their limitations.

Real movements need many people contributing in different ways—some writing theory, some organizing unions, some running for office, some engaging in direct action, some building alternative institutions. Demanding that everyone pursue the most radical possible path, or dismissing anyone whose life doesn't match an imaginary revolutionary ideal, doesn't build power. It just ensures we keep eating our own while the actual structures of concentrated power remain untouched.

That serves power far more effectively than any of Chomsky's mistakes ever could.

Tim Hjersted is the director and co-founder of Films For Action. You can contact the author here.