Chris Knight writes:

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). There were, I believe, always two ‘Noam Chomskys’ – one working for the US military and the other working tirelessly against that same military. This contradiction cannot explain every aspect of Chomsky’s puzzling friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. But it is the underlying contradiction that helps us understand why someone as radical as Chomsky ended up being involved with someone as reactionary as Epstein.

In May 2023, when it was first revealed that Chomsky had met with Epstein ‘a number of times’, the exact nature of their relationship wasn’t clear. Such vagueness meant that those of us who had always admired his anti-militarist politics could still feel inspired by his critiques of US power, particularly after Israel set out to destroy Gaza, with full US support, in October that year.

Anyone who reads the correspondence between Chomsky and Epstein in the January 2026 release of the Epstein files, however, will now find it difficult to respect Chomsky’s opinions on Gaza or anything else.

One email from Chomsky and his second wife Valeria describes the couple’s friendship with Epstein as ‘deep and sincere and everlasting’. Another from Valeria describes Epstein as: ‘our best friend. I mean “the” one.’ Meanwhile other messages – signed only by Chomsky himself – are equally generous to the convicted sex offender, saying, for example, ‘we’re with you all the way’ and ‘you’re constantly with us in spirit and in our thoughts.’

Other documents suggest that Chomsky visited Epstein’s properties not only in New York but also in New Mexico and Paris. The files even show that shortly before Epstein’s arrest and death, in July and August 2019, Chomsky was still intending to be interviewed for a documentary that Epstein was making. It seems that Chomsky really was loyal to Epstein until the end. The question is why. [Continue reading…]