A Few Soundbites to Accompany the Left’s Chomstein Outfreakage

“At the peak of the disco outfreakage, the stray energies in that area came to the fore, and ultimately, monsters were created.”

—Bruce Bickford, Clay Animator-in-Residence at The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen (i.e., Zappa’s basement)

In the grand tradition of The Golden Treasury of America’s Most Beloved Chomsky Soundbites, here are some relevant quotes that the left might consider while snooping through Chomsky’s private communications that have garnered him national headlines for the first time ever, much to the delight of Democrats and others who have long despised him.

PRIVACY

Chomsky: “The idea of publishing personal correspondence is pretty weird, a strange form of exhibitionism—whatever the content. Personally, I can’t imagine doing it.”

Chomsky: “It shouldn’t be necessary to defend privacy as a value to be respected and protected—but unfortunately it is necessary, a sign of serious social pathology in my opinion.”

Chomsky (to the Wall Street Journal): “First response is that it is none of your business. Or anyone’s. Second is that I knew him and we met occasionally.”

CAUGHT IN THE SAME ROOM WITH EPSTEIN

Question: What do you think about striking tactical alliances with groups or individuals that you ordinarily wouldn’t be caught in the same room with?

Chomsky: “I don’t see anything wrong with issue-oriented alliances, up to a limit. I wouldn’t want to join with a Nazi organization. But certainly many alliances bring together people who differ very sharply on other issues. For example, for years the only journal I could publish in as long as it existed was a right-wing libertarian journal, Inquiry. I think it was supported by the Cato Institute. We had a lot of beliefs and interests in common. The editor is a personal friend. But we also differed very sharply on many things. But that didn’t make me feel I shouldn’t publish there. We’re not a cult, after all. If we’re serious, we know we could be wrong. Anyone who’s too confident about their beliefs on topics like this is in serious trouble. So where there are differences of opinion, there may well be reason for self-questioning, too. You just make your choices. There’s no formula for it.”

THE “STAINED” LEGACY

Chris Hedges (who Chomsky once called “one of the few journalists…who merits the title”) captures much of the lefty mood when he writes of Chomsky that palling around with Epstein has left “a permanent stain on his legacy.”

Does it stain his legacy as defined by Edward Said, who described Chomsky’s political work as “a protracted war between fact and a series of myths”?

Edward Said again: “The facts are there to be recognized for Chomsky, although no one else has ever recognized them so systematically.” His “sources are staggeringly complete, and he is capable of registering contradictions, distinctions, and lapses which occur between them…. Having rehearsed the ‘official’ narrative, he then blows it away with vast amounts of counter-evidence.”

Does it stain his legacy as a lefty hero?

Chomsky: “We shouldn’t be looking for heroes. We should be looking for good ideas.”

Does it stain his legacy as a lefty saint?

Chomsky: “None of us are saints, at least I’m not. I haven’t given up my house, my car, I don’t live in a hovel. I don’t spend 24 hours a day working for the benefit of the human race or anything like that. I don’t even come close. I devote an awful lot of my energy and activity to things that I just enjoy, like scientific work. I just like it. I do it out of pleasure.”

Does it stain his legacy as a lefty god?

Chomsky: “As a rule of thumb, any concept with a person’s name on it belongs to religion, not rational discourse. There aren’t any physicists who call themselves Einsteinians. And the same would be true of anybody crazy enough to call themselves Chomskian. In the real world you have individuals who were in the right place at the right time, or maybe they got a good brain wave or something, and they did something interesting. But I never heard of anyone who didn’t make mistakes and whose work wasn’t quickly improved on by others. That means if you identify yourself as a Marxist or a Freudian or anything else, you’re worshipping at someone’s shrine.”

Does it stain his legacy as an antiestablishmentarianist?

Chomsky: “If you take a look at my early publications, they all say something about Air Force, Navy, and so on, because I was in a military lab, the Research Lab for Electronics…. I am funded by the Defense Department, whether I have a contract with them or not—because if the Defense Department weren’t funding the Electrical Engineering Department, which MIT needs, the Institute would not be able to fund my department…. I don’t see a whole lot of difference as to whether that money works its way through the Department of Defense or through some other mechanism—that’s why I’ve never made a big fuss about this…. As far as the moral issue goes, it’s not as if there’s some clean money somewhere. If you’re in a university, you’re on dirty money….”

BURROWING INTO PILES OF VIOLENT AND DISGUSTING EVIL

Michael Albert, Chomsky’s friend and publisher for decades: “Noam would burrow into piles and piles of reportage of violent and disgusting evil to the point that I used to wonder how he could immerse so far in it, over and over, and not be undone by the proximity. How could he not become immobilized, cynical, despondent? The disgusting gore and inhumanity and immorality he would research and dissect was enormous. To do so was not fun. It was not fulfilling. It did not expand his horizons. So why persist? Noam’s answer: If we are to counter the lies and violence and especially if we are to do better such reporting is needed. The task needs doing and it turns out that I am able to do it. So I do.”

NOT BURROWING INTO CELEBRITIES

Question from audience member after a speech: “I don’t know if you saw the recent Barbara Walters program…”

Chomsky (interrupting the question): “The answer is No, by definition.”

Michael Albert again: “If you named twenty prominent athletes, actors, and musicians over the past thirty years, Noam would probably have heard of two or three, or maybe five at most, but he would be able to offer essentially zero information about any of them. Noam sees maybe two or three movies a year. He sees a few hours of TV a year. He listens to almost no radio.”

NOT BURROWING INTO SEX SCANDALS

Chomsky (regarding President Clinton): “Who cares if some guy had an affair?”

Chomsky (regarding “the fascination of elite opinion with tawdry details of Clinton’s affairs”): “My guess is that one factor, maybe a large one, is a pathetic streak of obsessive fascination with pornography and a love/fear relation to power. Furthermore, the actors are folks in high places, which apparently adds to the titillation. A tempting feast for various pathologies.”

TREATING EPSTEIN LIKE BIN LADEN

Valeria Chomsky: “In 2023, Noam’s initial public response to inquiries about Epstein failed to adequately acknowledge the gravity of Epstein’s crimes and the enduring pain of his victims, primarily because Noam took it as obvious that he condemned such crimes.”

Washington Post reader (from online Q&A): “Why don’t you direct your hatred of George Bush toward someone more worthy of such venom, such as Osama bin Laden?”

Chomsky: “I take for granted, like everyone else, that Osama bin Laden is a murderous thug…and don’t see any point reiterating what 100% of us believe about him.”

THE ETHICAL VALUE OF ONE’S ACTIONS

Chomsky: “My own concern is primarily the terror and violence carried out by my own state, for two reasons. For one thing, because it happens to be the larger component of international violence. But also for a much more important reason than that; namely, I can do something about it. So even if the U.S. was responsible for 2 percent of the violence in the world instead of the majority of it, it would be that 2 percent I would be primarily responsible for. And that is a simple ethical judgment. That is, the ethical value of one’s actions depends on their anticipated and predictable consequences. It is very easy to denounce the atrocities of someone else. That has about as much ethical value as denouncing atrocities that took place in the 18th century.”

Sources for all quotes may be requested from newbonner@gmail.com.

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