Perhaps most strikingly, in late February 2019, Epstein represented to an associate that he had gotten advice from Chomsky over how to navigate “the horrible way you are being treated in the press and public”.

“The best way to proceed is to ignore it,” Chomsky wrote, according to text signed under his first name that Epstein sent to a lawyer and publicist. “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.”

How did anyone ever consider this guy an intellectual giant of the western left is beyond me.

[–] neo@hexbear.net 18 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

The actual answer and reason why he’s an intellectual giant in the west is he made a significant contribution to the field of linguistics. I even studied him briefly in college because the Chomsky hierarchy is useful for understanding programming language theory and development, and notably Chomsky was not a computer scientist. It’s rare to have cross-discipline reach.

[–] Leegh@hexbear.net 9 points 14 hours ago

Oh, I don't disagree with that, I'm more peeved at all the Western leftists that continue to uphold someone who has always held a complete and utter distain towards AES in the same vein Slavoj Zizek does.

[–] MaoTheLawn@hexbear.net 24 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (5 children)

Because he wrote hugely important works for informing people in their understanding of how much of empire and media manipulation works AND in language development theory?

His seminal works are lauded for a reason, and while we like to say he's palatable to liberals these days, at the time his work was important, well researched, and quite bold. Go watch him dismantle Thomas Buckley - he used to have the sauce. Furthermore, a large amount of his credit also comes from his work in Linguistics - which he arguably contributed more to than politics.

Ok, sure, he's now been shown to be a pedophile sympathiser, and in his later years had a bunch of shit takes, but that doesn't really affect how he rightly came to be known as a prominent public intellectual.

EDIT: got a lot of replies here, not going to reply to each individual one, but briefly:

Ok, Herman wrote a lot of Manufacturing Consent. Chomsky wrote about 10 other books that have been pathways for people to 'get into' knowing more about US hegemony.
No, he wasn't a socialist visionary or anything. He was just an active chronicler of some of the darker parts of US history, and I think that's where his comfortability and relevance lies. He never really suggests anything new apart from something vaguely demsoc/anarchist, and that's fine. He never really claimed to come up with a better framework.
RE Michael Parenti - love the guy, have read most books by him. Hot Take however, he's a much better orator than writer, and as a writer a much better polemicist than documentarian. I find Parenti more fun to read/listen to, and it makes me want to get off my couch and do something - but he doesn't have the same sustained analysis with citations that Chomsky has. Chomsky is generally drab but very information dense, and as he proposes no real ideology of his own, his work rarely slides into emotive writing. No, he's not a Marxist or anything - but his information is useful for Marxists to use.
Yeah alright, this Epstein stuff is damning. But I suppose in response to the original commenter, I only meant to say that he rose to prominence a long time ago with a heap of accolades, so it's not hard to see why he became a prominent 'left' academic.

[–] mar_k@hexbear.net 2 points 4 hours ago

I feel like a lot of people's beliefs and core values twist/fall apart with age bc after 40, human brains gradually shrink/stiffen and become less empathetic/open-minded over the decades

Chomsky's def beyond saving, but sometimes I wonder if someone like Angela Davis would become a proper communist again if she took shrooms to reactivate youthful neuroplasticity

[–] purpleworm@hexbear.net 27 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

Manufacturing Consent, by Chomsky's own admission, was mainly written by Edward S. Herman, but he ends up more associated with it because he's more famous. He was also a bastard with a malignant influence on "the left" for several decades now.

I don't think he's that different from Dawkins, where he was a serious figure in his field but parlayed that into being a reactionary pseudo-intellectual in political commentary.

[–] SnakeEyes@hexbear.net 14 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

Later years? The krakker was against protesting the Vietnam war, he has always been a barbarian, even congratulating the new CIA director

[–] TreadOnMe@hexbear.net 15 points 16 hours ago

Yeah 'in his later years', and not always and constantly. He didn't even actually write the section about media manipulation.

[–] Leegh@hexbear.net 6 points 14 hours ago

I won't deny he made significant contributions to the field of linguistics, although his rationalist position on the Human language is debatable, but in regard to geopolitics and socioeconomics? My guy, Michael Parenti's works and lectures are right there. Hell, there are a plethora of Western Marxist thinkers in the last century that have far better input on how Base and Superstructure operates than Chomsky ever did. Even fucking Einstein had better takes on Socialism than he did.

Just because Chomsky is more popular and his works are cited more by liberals, doesn't mean he should be lauded by anyone on the left as an arbiter of 'socialist' thought. Especially when his views on AES have always been downright reactionary and orientalist (no, not "in his late years" but for decades), calling states like the DPRK "the most horrible regime in Human history" and China "a very brutal society, a brutal government. I don’t feel any particular interest in improving relations with it.".

As someone who descended from a family who came from that "very brutal society" I do not have any qualms denouncing someone like Chomsky who peddles bigoted views against non-western societies.

Also, I think simply calling him a "pedophile sympathizer" is minimizing his complicity don't you think? You're acting as if he just questioned age of consent laws or expressed sympathy to Epstein when what he really did was actively collaborate with and defend a Billionaire paedophile that he was VERY close with. He even received tens of thousands of dollars from Epstein to fund his linguistic academic pursuits lmao. Even if you ignore the whole pedo ring, he was still an active class collaborator with the American bourgeoisie (which honestly, explains his anti-communist views a lot). He may be an intellectual, but an ally of the socialist left he is not.