But we also know a whole fucking lot of them did know exactly what was going on and partook in some manner.
And as an everyday person who can realistically make zero impact on any of these people? Fuck if I've got the time to try and sort out which person falls into which group. The courts can figure that out if they actually start doing anything about all of this.
For me? I'm writing 'em all off.
And thus why I'm writing the whole lot of them off it looks like they had real interaction with Epstein.
Actually, you don’t know that. You’re merely assuming it.
If you deal with the same people over time -- even highly intelligent ones -- you will notice the stark decline in intelligence in the later years. I didn't even like Chomsky when he had his marbles, but it's hard to get worked-up over "Old guy gets mixed-up with the wrong people and does dumb shit."
But even in 2016, even with his diminished faculties, Chomsky was not just a news-hound, but a news BEAST. This, "oh, we didn't know until 2019" is a massive load of shit.
The only HERO I've come across in these e-mails is Norman Finkelstein.
We need more goodness in the world hence why I’m asking
https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%209/EFTA007101...
Maxwell's family is highest-level states intelligence, media control, and arms trade. Robert Maxwell, died in an unfortunate boating accident on yacht named for his daughter!
Epstein's sexploitation crimes seems relatively innocuous compared to the costs of war and value of the kompromat, which reaches into the highest state offices of U.S. and UK (I choose the word kompromat for its literal meaning not for its national connotations, although Epstein's network is said to include Israeli, UK, and Russian intelligence services).
The way the Epstein files are being managed seems designed to generate maximum confusion, distress and distraction, which is a helpful modality for burying the hatchet once the conflict has served its purpose; make a big mess so there will be no getting to the bottom of it.
"Noam’s email to Epstein, in which Epstein sought advice about the press, should be read in context. Epstein had claimed to Noam that he [Epstein] was being unfairly persecuted".
and
"2019 did we learn the full extent"
Full extent? So what did you know before? All of this does not make any sense.
Did you have some prior beef with Chomsky?
I think the difference with Chomsky is that he is in many ways a modern-day guru with adherents who are naturally resistant to viewing their teacher and leader in a negative light.
This part honestly makes no sense. There is no 'Chomsky linguistic challenge'. I guess the claim is that Chomsky was paid as a consultant to develop the supposed challenge which was then to be administered by Epstein (who – guess what – did nothing of the sort). But it sounds an awful lot like an entirely spurious reason for sending someone $20k.
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.
It makes no sense to me.
Honestly, Chomsky I am willing to believe unconditionally. He has spent his entire life speaking out on US imperialism, and Israel. His career is longer than Epstein's whole life.
Tinfoil hat on, I'd rather believe this was Israels attempt to discredit Chomsky, through Epstein.
Yeah. What? This paragraph answers nothing and just raises more questions. Epstein just magically walked Noam through making 270k just reappear in his account? This is played off like he accidentally sent a quarter of a million dollars to his checking account instead of his savings account and Epstein told him how to use the bank's website to transfer funds between the two.
https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/the-cia-reads-french-theor...
https://indecentbazaar.wordpress.com/2010/12/20/deleuze-and-...
There's so much more evidence than just this. I'm tired of always linking it all and getting me that much deeper into shit with people who I hopefully will never meet face-to-face.
It would be another matter if Chomsky had paid Epstein for mystery services or whatever.
Epstein was the kind of villain that Wilson Fisk or Norman Osborn or Alexander Pierce are/were.
The former don't make any attempt to hide their evil.
The latter go to great effort to have public personas that do good.
Wilson Fisk for example was known to the public and most authorities as a philanthropic New York City businessman known for his major donations that the city and its institutions. Behind the scenes he was know as the Kingpin of Crime running a large organized crime, human trafficking, drug, and assassination operation. But only a few heroes (Daredevil and Spider-Man) and some officials knew or suspected.
To succeed in the latter kind of villainy it is essential that you cultivate relationships with a lot of respectable people who you make sure do not get involved in the evil side so you can keep the public persona's reputation clean.
He took the wrong positioning on the war in Ukraine. Along with others.
And it looks here like he made a series of personal relationship mistakes.
The man can't speak for himself anymore, but it's not a good look and I don't think his partner has done him any favours here by deflecting responsibility.
Clearly awful mistakes were made.
It is entirely in line with Chomsky's historical pattern that Epstein could walk up to him, say "the US government hates me and claims I'm a pedophile" and for Chomsky to then treat him like his best friend. It is also worth noting that when he eventually recanted his Cambodian genocide denial, he basically said something along the lines of "how could anyone have possibly known just how bad the regime was?" which is... essentially what this response is attempting to be, "how could we have possibly known that Epstein was actually a pedophile?"
> The philosopher and the sex trafficker were in contact long after Epstein was convicted of soliciting prostitution from a minor, documents reveal
> The letter recounted how Epstein had arranged for Chomsky – a political activist, too – to meet with someone he had “studied carefully and written about”: the former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/22/noam-chomsky...
> There additionally was an exchange in which Chomsky wrote to Steve Bannon, the rightwing chief White House strategist during Donald Trump’s first presidency, requesting an introductory meeting. “Lots to talk about,” Chomsky wrote, adding that he had been provided Bannon’s contact information by Epstein, a former friend of Trump.
> Undated photo of Jeffrey Epstein, right, speaking to academic and linguist Noam Chomsky. [in Epsteins private jet!]
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/03/epstein-file...
> A photograph of Steve Bannon and Noam Chomsky released from Epstein files. [Having a laugh!]
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/feb/03/jeffre...
I used to idolize Chomsky when I was young. People went to war for much less.
Nothing sophisticated. Nothing inspired. Just what the most atavistic parts of the brain stem want.
They were billionaires and high ranking academics and politicians. They could have done so many things but that’s where a huge portion of their energy went. It was clearly one of the most important things to them.
Makes me think of the paperclip maximizers idea. We are paperclip maximizers. This is how a paperclip maximizer would behave. They could extend health and life and explore the universe, but paperclips. Must make paperclips.
I also get the impression that the reason a lot of these guys are attracted to authoritarian right wing ideology, neo-monarchism, etc. is the same. It’s because it would let them have little girls without pesky enlightenment notions like rights or woke nonsense about equality getting in the way.
Gotta make paperclips. Burn the world to make paperclips.
That and I'm not sure what Chomsky actually advocated. He was a tireless critic of American and Western imperial ambitions, but what would he replace them with? I get the impression it'd be some kind of authoritarian command economy socialism, which anyone with half a brain knows will turn into a totalitarian system where the ones running it are "more equal" than everyone else. These days, knowing what I know now, I wonder if he's always just been a Russian asset or useful idiot.
I've never been a Chomsky fan anyway. His criticisms are sometimes valid but it's easy to criticize. It's orders of magnitude harder to propose better alternatives. Being a witty and incisive critic is easy compared to fixing.
LLMs have also indirectly proven a lot of his linguistic theories wrong. We didn't crack natural language with NLP and grammars. We cracked it by loosely imitating biology.
I hate when people act like there was no way they could have known about Epstein's criminal behavior. It was widely reported in the New York Times ( https://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/03/us/questions-of-preferent... ), and there was more extensive coverage in the Palm Beach Post ( https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/2006/08/14/had-ever... ) among other sources. There was also another wave of coverage when Epstein was indicted for child trafficking in 2010. We're expected to believe that none of these powerful and intelligent people could have ever bothered googling the name "Jeffrey Epstein".
> We had lunch, at Epstein’s ranch, once, in connection with a professional event; we attended dinners at his townhouse in Manhattan and stayed a few times in an apartment he offered when we visited New York City. We also visited Epstein’s Paris apartment one afternoon for the occasion of a work trip. In all cases, these visits were related to Noam’s professional commitments. We never went to his island or knew about anything that happened there.
There's no way they could have visited Epstein's townhouse without thinking that something seriously wrong was going on there. Chomsky also knew about Epstein's island, there's an email where he said that visiting it was his "special fantasy". https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%2011/EFTA02465...
> Noam’s email to Epstein, in which Epstein sought advice about the press, should be read in context. Epstein had claimed to Noam that he [Epstein] was being unfairly persecuted, and Noam spoke from his own experience in political controversies with the media. Epstein created a manipulative narrative about his case, which Noam, in good faith, believed in. It is now clear that it was all orchestrated, having as, at least, one of Epstein’s intentions to try to have someone like Noam repairing Epstein’s reputation by association.
From looking at the email, Chomsky clearly knew about the accusations (this was after the Miami Herald exposé in 2018) and still decided to stick with Epstein and help him defend himself https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%209/EFTA010325... .
I also find it disappointing that the article doesn't even try to explain Chomsky palling around with Steve Bannon at all. Chomsky publicly referred to the Republican party as the "most dangerous organization in human history" and a "serious danger to human survival" ( https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/noam-choms... ) while secretly hanging out with the man most responsible for Trump's rise. I think it casts a shadow over Chomsky's legacy that he chose to abandon his values to spend his last few good years being a court jester intellectual performing for a billionaire pedophile and a right-wing propagandist.
(For transparency: I met Chomsky twice.)
