By the East Bay Syndicalists
We are disappointed to learn that the renowned linguist and critic of U.S. imperialism Noam Chomsky struck up a friendship with the infamous billionaire sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein in 2015. This came after the pedophile’s conviction for soliciting prostitution from girls as young as 14 in 2008, presumably in line with the standard left-wing “reparative justice” view that ex-convicts should be reintegrated into society. In fact, when asked by The Wall Street Journal about his relationship with Epstein, Chomsky first replied that it was “none of your business. Or anyone’s,” before adding that he knew that Epstein “had been convicted of a crime and had served his sentence. According to US laws and norms, that yields a clean slate.”
Whatever one makes of such responses, considering that most of Epstein’s victims were working-class girls, Chomsky famously advocates anarcho-syndicalism as “the appropriate form of social organisation for an advanced technological society” in his well-known 1971 debate with Michel Foucault. In a 2010 address, he suggests that workers could take over and reconvert production to create more ecological alternatives. In reality, though, Chomsky has not participated much in the international anarcho-syndicalist movement, and legitimate questions have been raised about how accurately this term describes his politics, despite the affinity he does have for industrial democracy. Moreover, as this ongoing scandal illustrates, Chomsky lacks any real gender politics.
The unanticipated bond between this much-celebrated intellectual and the late billionaire sex-trafficker, which spanned from at least 2015 until Epstein’s death in 2019, apparently involved Chomsky traveling with Epstein on his private plane, visiting his properties, and receiving at least $20,000 from him, together with a mutual “trading [of] friendly advice” between the two. In a 2017 letter, Chomsky’s wife Valeria strikingly describes Epstein as “our best friend.” Yet, perhaps above all, it is disheartening to consider that Chomsky counseled this notorious child abuser on how to dodge accountability for his crimes against humanity.
Shockingly, in one email contained within the latest release of the so-called Epstein Files—which may end up being known as the Trump-Epstein Files, considering that the president reportedly appears a million times in the unredacted version of the available documents—Epstein cites Chomsky’s advice on how to deal with “the horrible way [sic] you are being treated in the press and public.” Supposedly, Chomsky was referring to the major exposé published in 2018 by Miami Herald journalist Julie K. Brown about Epstein’s extensive sex-trafficking operation.
In the wake of this bombshell reporting, Chomsky told Epstein to just ignore the bad press, likening it to the vast numbers of attacks he had received for his scholarship and activism. In the interest of reputation management, the elder academic told his hanger-on: “The best way to proceed is to ignore it.” He went so far as to mention “the hysteria [sic] that has developed about abuse of women”!
Tim Hjersted’s examination of their relationship emphasizes that Chomsky’s counsel to Epstein showed seriously poor judgment—something that Valeria readily concedes. Indeed, this conundrum reflects the fact that Chomsky is clueless about feminism and gender issues. As such, he does not adequately grasp the power dynamics between men and boys on the one hand and women and girls on the other in patriarchal societies. As Guardian journalist Marina Hyde writes, his counsel both “trivialise[d Epstein’s] crimes” and featured “a drive-by [shooting] on the notion of female victimhood.” She continues, with reference to a well-known book co-authored by Chomsky:
“Wow. Never mind Manufacturing Consent – have a read of Not Giving A Shit About Consent. I thought Chomsky cared about power and exploitative elites? Still, nice photo of him laughing it up with Steve Bannon.”
Hyde alludes here to a telling photograph of Chomsky and President Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon that was released by the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Assuming it is real, the photo in question was presumably recorded during a 2019 visit hosted at the Chomskys’ home in Arizona. Taken together with the corresponding emails involving Bannon, Chomsky, and Valeria, the divulged picture suggests camaraderie rather than antagonism between the white nationalist and libertarian socialist in question. Reflecting on this disturbing finding in Freedom News, Kell w Farshéa writes:
“No one expected Chomsky to appear in the files, and absolutely no one expected him to be a drinking buddy with an international fascist. What were the Chomskys doing hosting him on 10 February 2019 for lunch?”
This is a great question that Valeria avoids addressing in her press release following the revelations about the Chomsky-Epstein nexus. (For his part, Chomsky cannot respond on his own after suffering a debilitating stroke in 2023.) His former co-author Vijay Prashad—whose campist support for the Chinese Communist Party we reject—has publicly condemned Chomsky’s newly uncovered ties to Epstein, while his protégé Norman Finkelstein called for “both Epstein and [Alan] Dershowitz” to be “promptly throttle[d]” due to the former’s sexual abuse of girls, and the latter’s complicity with the same, back in 2015.
In light of this, Kell w Farshéa rightly asks: “how were the Chomskys so secluded in their ivory tower that they hadn’t heard these rumours when Noam attended the town house soirées in 2015?” It is clear that Epstein was trying to relate to well-known academics to rehabilitate his image, so his cultivating a relationship with Chomsky was a calculated ploy. Still, this does not explain the couple’s naïveté about Epstein’s character prior to Brown’s exposé in the Miami Herald, much less Chomsky’s questionable dismissal of the serious charges of child sexual abuse that were raised against his investor friend thereafter. While it may be little consolation, the best that can be said for Chomsky here is that there is no evidence he knew about Epstein’s child sex-trafficking operation before late 2018.
As East Bay Syndicalists, we believe that the counsel and defense Chomsky provided to Epstein over allegations of child sex-trafficking (which we know to be true) reflect the fact that his extensive corpus—being one of the most-cited authors of all time—lacks much interest in, or commitment to, feminism and women’s liberation. At the same time, for what it’s worth, we still recognize the value and relevance of much of Chomsky’s research and analysis to this day, including important pieces like “The Responsibility of Intellectuals,” The Fateful Triangle, Manufacturing Consent, and Hegemony or Survival, among others.
Before closing, it should be noted that Chomsky’s lending of support to Epstein has not constituted his only lapse of judgment. After all, the man has unthinkably backed up authoritarian non-Western leaders for decades, from the late Serbian ultra-nationalist President Slobodan Milošević to former Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and current Russian President Vladimir Putin. In reality, Chomsky has contributed a great deal to the toxic phenomenon of campism that plagues the left to this day.
With that being said, despite our disagreements with him and our dismay over his closeness with Epstein and Bannon, we don’t think Chomsky should necessarily be banned from consideration, or his works ignored, because of these recent disclosures from the Epstein Files. Taken less reverently, more critically and skeptically—of course, he and his works should be. For our part, we demand the full release of the Files (with proper redaction, yet only for the protection of victims—not perpetrators), plus the prosecution of all involved abusers.
No gods, no masters—and solidarity with Epstein’s victims and survivors!
[…] Published on East Bay Syndicalists, 1 March 2026 […]