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Although I'm not a fan of Chomsky, neither of his political-philosophical, nor his linguistic work, he's never come across as dishonest, and I won't believe implications until corroborated by hard evidence.
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The nicest spin you can put on it is that it wouldn't be the first time that Chomsky had endorsed something without too much scrutiny because it aligned with his personal beliefs about who were motivated to manufacture lies, and the others involved politics rather than paedophiles
>In order to clarify the check: Epstein asked Noam to develop a linguistic challenge that Epstein wished to establish as a regular prize. Noam worked on it, and Epstein sent a check for US$20,000 as payment. Epstein’s office contacted me to arrange for the check to be sent to our home address. This part honestly makes no sense. There is no 'Chomsky linguistic challenge'. I guess the claim is that Chomsky was paid as…
Bezos paying tens of millions to Trump's current wife to make a "documentary" about her hats is similar. The only difference is, Bezos is not (yet?) accused of statutory rape. But the idea is the same.
You never "bribe" people up front, offering them money in a direct, obvious quid pro quo. You're sincerely excited to contribute to their pet project.
(For transparency: I met Chomsky twice.)
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This is your third top-level comment on this thread, when you're still in the edit window for the first. These are also pretty poor comments. Did you have some prior beef with Chomsky?
You're always hit hardest when it's your idols. Also: Nothing better to do.
This is the part that annoys the crap out of me in today's environment -- and if more people had more sense, it would annoy them too. Sufficiently radioactive accusation is enough to make person not available for public consumption. Like.. if he he guilty ( there is a good evidence suggesting that ), charge him and see where it lands.
Prevalence of a court of public opinion indicates a real problem with real courts.
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The guy is literally photographed inside a plane with Epstein. And supported him after accusations had been made.
Did this letter change anything for you? Being on his plane is by itself a crime?
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Chomsky, like most involved in arguing for or against Post-modernism/post-structuralism/Neo Marxism, was likely doing it on purpose to neuter any meaningful left wing opposition to US policy and keep them in "fashionable nonsense" territory. Anyone engaging with them in anyway is suspect by definition. https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/the-cia-reads-french-theor... https://indecentbazaar.wordpress.com/2010/12/20/dele…
Chomsky is about as far from post-modernist and post-structuralist as you can get in terms of the American left. He spent his career insisting on rational & logical discourse and using reason as a tool and opposing the postmodernist turn in the left. He believed in true and false, and insisted those were tools to be used to disarm the powerful. Which... man that would be nice right about now. I don't always like the…
See the foucault chomsky debate.
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Taking the narrative as presented in this article seems plausible Epstein just crumpled it up and threw it out. He just wanted a way to further endear himself to Noam in order to have someone credible vouching for him. Work like this is a good way to do that, like that old Ben Franklin trick of having someone do something for you.
Yeah, of course. But the question is what Chomsky thought about all this. His wife seems to want us to think that Chomsky genuinely believed he was being paid $20k to develop a 'linguistic challenge'. I think what's nearer the truth is that he was happy to receive mystery money from rich financiers without asking too many inconvenient questions. And this is someone who we know was very good at asking inconvenient que…