Noam Chomsky’s life and work cannot be understood without taking into account his militarily-funded linguistics research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)…
… [W]hen confronted by journalists about his involvement with Epstein, Chomsky … explained his behaviour by saying (a) that Epstein had ‘served his sentence, which wiped the slate clean’ and (b) that ‘far worse criminals’ were associated with MIT. When speaking to the Harvard Crimson, Chomsky was still more forthright, pointing out that MIT’s donors included the ‘worst criminals’ and that he’d met all sorts of people in his lifetime including ‘major war criminals’ and didn’t regret having met any of them.
Chomsky knew all about Epstein and continued to defend him publicly until his death.
Again, from the article:
There is not much benefit of the doubt here. Chomsky was aware of what Epstein was about, and was at the very least sympathetic.
People forget that Chomsky is from an inherently misogynistic era. He was born in 1928 for fucks sake. I wouldn’t ever expect his thoughts on gender politics to be particularly illuminating or forward thinking.
Not that this justifies anything, just more to me why it’s not shocking that he absolutely sucks in this regard.