Noam Chomsky is one of those people that some people will defend reflexively without even thinking.
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If you're defending Chomsky because you think we need him & his insight, I think you should try broadening your reading list.
I'm serious. Marginalized folks (and the folks who actually live & work in solidarity with them) can offer you so much more & open up your imagination in transformative ways.
We don't need the intellectual elite. We definitely don't need anyone who is "well respected" among dishonorable & abusive people.
I always end up linking to Firestorm, but I am freaking in love with their curated catalog. I've ordered several books from them just based on description with no prior knowledge, & every single one has been
.A huge number of them are written by people along multiple axes of oppression. Also they throw in goodies sometimes like zines & other additional materials. That's how I found Crimethinc!
Cooperation, Connection, Collective Liberation
Firestorm is a radical bookstore co-operative & community event space in Asheville, NC. Browse staff picks, bestsellers, and more!
(firestorm.coop)
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Noam Chomsky is one of those people that some people will defend reflexively without even thinking.
Try not to have powerful people that you defend reflexively without even thinking.
That's abuse culture.
@artemis
I just threw away a bunch of his books.Maybe he didn't have sex with any underage or trafficked women, I don't know, and can't know.
But I know stink when I smell it, and him corresponding with Epstein after the sentencing just reeks.
Chomsky willingly engaged with and provided support for that guy, and for that, they can both go to hell -
Why TF in the year 2026 is anyone who wants to be taken seriously saying "this man's work is too valuable for it to matter how he harmed women & girls"?
@artemis
Nobody's work is "too important" -
And let me just say this: we don't freaking need Chomsky.
Yes, I have read things he has written that seemed true & useful. You know where else you can find similar insights? In a million fucking other places from people who are NOT among the "intellectual elite" & who do not rub elbows with a whole community of abusive oppressors.
Read stuff written by Black people. By indigenous people. By people who are not in the power establishment.
I *promise you*, you don't need Chomsky.
@artemis Chomsky hasn’t been needed for decades. Chomsky was a convenient bozo detector for anybody in progressive circles ever since Srebrenica.
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I always end up linking to Firestorm, but I am freaking in love with their curated catalog. I've ordered several books from them just based on description with no prior knowledge, & every single one has been
.A huge number of them are written by people along multiple axes of oppression. Also they throw in goodies sometimes like zines & other additional materials. That's how I found Crimethinc!
Cooperation, Connection, Collective Liberation
Firestorm is a radical bookstore co-operative & community event space in Asheville, NC. Browse staff picks, bestsellers, and more!
(firestorm.coop)
If you want to have your mind expanded, want to come to new & different ways of organizing the world to end violence & oppression, you should go somewhere other than old white dudes with a vested interest in the existing system.
Honestly, we shouldn't put aside the abusive, predatory people he cozied up to, but aside from that Chomsky invested heavily with Epstein. The world's premiere leftist thinker has enough capital to "invest heavily". Dude ain't who he says he is.
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@artemis a huge traitor. so bad i hope the IWW has rescinded his membership.
@burnitdown @artemis he was still a member?
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If you want to have your mind expanded, want to come to new & different ways of organizing the world to end violence & oppression, you should go somewhere other than old white dudes with a vested interest in the existing system.
Honestly, we shouldn't put aside the abusive, predatory people he cozied up to, but aside from that Chomsky invested heavily with Epstein. The world's premiere leftist thinker has enough capital to "invest heavily". Dude ain't who he says he is.
@artemis i feel u. exactly what i was just thinking.
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Why TF in the year 2026 is anyone who wants to be taken seriously saying "this man's work is too valuable for it to matter how he harmed women & girls"?
They will only do so as long as they can get away with it because that means that they can get away with whatever they want to.
When they start losing their position or even their heads, we will see change.
It has always been thus
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R relay@relay.infosec.exchange shared this topic
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If you want to have your mind expanded, want to come to new & different ways of organizing the world to end violence & oppression, you should go somewhere other than old white dudes with a vested interest in the existing system.
Honestly, we shouldn't put aside the abusive, predatory people he cozied up to, but aside from that Chomsky invested heavily with Epstein. The world's premiere leftist thinker has enough capital to "invest heavily". Dude ain't who he says he is.
So yeah, frankly, if you think "we" need Chomsky, then you & I are not part of the same "we".
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@shadowfals
Someone else could do a better job summarizing him, but he's a public "leftist" intellectual. In his heyday he was frequently the only supposed "far left" guy getting high profile interviews & he was kind of supposed to be a one-of-a-kind genius.Now that we know he was besties with billionaires, it's easy to see why HIS was the "leftist" voice that was given air.
@artemis @shadowfals Yep. To expand, he was famous for two academic fields: Initially as a linguist, famous for his work on the relationship between syntax and grammar for conveying meaning ("Colorful green ideas sleep furiously" is grammatically correct with no meaning — that's his — as is the claim that "cellar door" is the most beautiful phrase in English). And later for his far-left politics, specifically as a vocal proponent of anarchism and for calling out US imperialism before it was common to hear such things. He famously called out the US government for maintaining the dictatorship in East Timor over the will of its people. Which was my first awareness that the US did such things.
I wasn't a huge fan but I found his work thought-provoking. But I've gotten used to dumping figures if they're outed as abusers. There are so many people I've loved so much more that I've dumped over far less. He had his place in history, and that moment has moved on.
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@burnitdown @artemis he was still a member?
@artemis @BigTittyBimbo he hasn't given up his membership afaik
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So yeah, frankly, if you think "we" need Chomsky, then you & I are not part of the same "we".
If you learned something from Chomsky at some point, if he turned you onto a truth you didn't know, that doesn't get erased: YOU learned something.
But look, it was fucking RON PAUL who convinced me widespread abuse by police in this country actually exists, & I ain't looking to Ron Paul to tell me how to think, even if he happened to be the catalyst that helped change my opinion for the better one time.
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@shadowfals
Someone else could do a better job summarizing him, but he's a public "leftist" intellectual. In his heyday he was frequently the only supposed "far left" guy getting high profile interviews & he was kind of supposed to be a one-of-a-kind genius.Now that we know he was besties with billionaires, it's easy to see why HIS was the "leftist" voice that was given air.
@artemis @shadowfals Yeah, this is right.
I find I'm often needing to point out that, until the early 2000s, popular discourse in the US was severely constricted and dominated by commercial media, which systematically censored any mention of leftist groups or ideas.
Chomsky was about at the limit of what they'd tolerate, in detailing US atrocities and malign foreign policy, based on public records and mainstream journalistic accounts. Significantly, Chomsky would always deflect any questions about what alternatives he'd support, rarely going further than supporting abstract resistance.
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I always end up linking to Firestorm, but I am freaking in love with their curated catalog. I've ordered several books from them just based on description with no prior knowledge, & every single one has been
.A huge number of them are written by people along multiple axes of oppression. Also they throw in goodies sometimes like zines & other additional materials. That's how I found Crimethinc!
Cooperation, Connection, Collective Liberation
Firestorm is a radical bookstore co-operative & community event space in Asheville, NC. Browse staff picks, bestsellers, and more!
(firestorm.coop)
@artemis @firestorm @CrimethInc
i like Firestorm. i've visited and bought books from them.can't see their posts anymore, though. not sure why, maybe they're auto-deleted or follower-only, maybe i'm blocked
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Noam Chomsky is one of those people that some people will defend reflexively without even thinking.
Try not to have powerful people that you defend reflexively without even thinking.
That's abuse culture.
@artemis maybe the left has to come to the realization that you can be politically perfectly right and still personally be an asshole. many such cases.
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If you learned something from Chomsky at some point, if he turned you onto a truth you didn't know, that doesn't get erased: YOU learned something.
But look, it was fucking RON PAUL who convinced me widespread abuse by police in this country actually exists, & I ain't looking to Ron Paul to tell me how to think, even if he happened to be the catalyst that helped change my opinion for the better one time.
You don't owe your loyalty to someone just because they happened to be useful in the evolution of your thinking. You can be glad you found something of use & move the fuck on.
As previously stated, plenty of marginalized folks (Black, indigenous, queer, disabled, etc.) have more to offer to you, especially if you bring it all together.
Even there though, don't fucking idolize people. There is no amount of "good" someone can do that should shield them from accountability for their own actions.
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Noam Chomsky is one of those people that some people will defend reflexively without even thinking.
Try not to have powerful people that you defend reflexively without even thinking.
That's abuse culture.
@artemis Chomsky doesn't even deserve this level of passionate defense he's getting.
His entire career is wrecking. He admits the system is bad but offers no solution and then criticizes everyone who tries to find one. That he has ties to Epstein - an established Western & Israeli intelligence - coupled with how he gets mainstream recognition & acknowledgment while people like Michael Parenti get buried in obscurity just establishes that he's only here to stop radicalism; not foster it.
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@artemis Chomsky doesn't even deserve this level of passionate defense he's getting.
His entire career is wrecking. He admits the system is bad but offers no solution and then criticizes everyone who tries to find one. That he has ties to Epstein - an established Western & Israeli intelligence - coupled with how he gets mainstream recognition & acknowledgment while people like Michael Parenti get buried in obscurity just establishes that he's only here to stop radicalism; not foster it.
@artemis That he's a pedophile is just icing on the cake. Chomsky always sucked.
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Some people are absolutely refusing to understand the abuse culture that the Epstein files are pulling back the curtain on.
Epstein's "friends" were all accomplices. Stop making excuses. I don't need to establish whether Chomsky physically harmed a child himself to state with confidence that he was complicit as fuck.
If Chomsky is 1/3 as smart as some people think he is, then he understood just fine what was going on.
@artemis Every single person in the Epstein email archive who wasn't just sending something legally/clerically/whatever necessary to send, any kind of personal correspondence of any form, belongs under a guillotine. No question about it.
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@lykso
I might need to put this on a T-shirt.
