Noam Chomsky and Life on Epstein’s Jet

That, at least, was how I was when I saw the picture of Noam Chomsky, now 97, sitting next to Jeffrey Epstein on a private jet, in one of 68 pictures released this week by Democrats on the House oversight committee.

The late Epstein, of course, is by now a known monster, the scale and scope of whose crimes are still being detailed. Chomsky, an MIT linguist and a key architect of the modern post-colonial Palestine movement, is a different type of monster whose legacy will feed dark cultural currents for many years to come. Indeed, it would be hard to find a more evil list of ideologies than the ones to which Chomsky has devoted his life.

Chomsky, an America and Israel-hating anti-capitalist, is a long-professed “anarcho-syndicalist” and/or “socialist libertarian”. Anarcho-syndicalism, for those that haven’t yet troubled themselves to learn about it, is a form of anarchism that “centres trade unions as a vehicle for conflict”.

It is, in other words, a piece of Leftist theatre designed to showcase support – through direct action and sabotage – for the (inevitably violent) reign of the proletariat. Socialist libertarianism is also all about anti-capitalism. More specifically, Chomsky has devoted himself to condemning the “elite corporatocracy” and explains himself as duty-bound to use his “privilege” to support efforts to disrupt it, such as the Occupy movement.

All of which makes Chomsky’s smugly comfortable presence in the pale leather embrace of arch capitalist Epstein’s private jet – a category of luxury good only made possible by the “elite corporatocracy” – hilarious. But only, of course, in a way that is familiar to observers of more than a century of clever Marxist bullyboys.

And so, aside from the literal criminality of Epstein, there is one key difference between Epstein and Chomsky. Epstein, as far as I know, didn’t pretend to be a saint, or, more precisely, a feminist theorist, sex-work campaigner or woman’s right activist.

But Chomsky has thrown his every waking breath into proclaiming his own sainthood. For a man who has devoted his intellectual life to the destruction of the very possibility of a private jet at all, to look so darn at home riding on such a jet with such a man is just too good.

I hope this picture tarnishes Chomsky’s last days and, above all, his legacy. The damage he has done over his long life is immeasurable and inexcusable. It is not just through his writings, which include a litany of Israel and West-hating books such as On Palestine, The Myth of American Idealism, Occupy and Gaza in Crisis – but through every hipster and crank inspired by them.

About the Author

Wayne Creed

Administrator

View All Posts