It seems like most of the posters in this group are far more supportive of US foreign policy than any criticism thereof. Noam Chomsky is one of the most hated men on this sub, second only to whoever "Foreign Bad Man" is this week. You listen to people here talk about him, you'd think you were sitting in on a meeting of the John Birch Society. If there's any 20th century luminary whose philosophy and actions are truly supported and represented by this sub, it would be either Henry Kissinger or the Dulles Brothers. This is no longer a leftist sub, anyone promoting any leftist ideas is immediately called a "tankie" and mass downvoted. So I see no reason why this sub should continue to be named after a man who is viewed by most of the posters here as a "tankie" or a "Russia simp, and the sub should be named after somone whose beliefs are actually represented here.

How did it come to this? I just can't believe my eyes. The sheer amount of Putin apologists in this sub seems overwhelming, is there some kind of coordinated effort?

A simple statement from Chomsky in a recent interview, edit: here it is: https://truthout.org/articles/us-approach-to-ukraine-and-russia-has-left-the-domain-of-rational-discourse/ , it not only sums up the Russia/Ukraine conflict but many other crisis in the world today created by efforts to maintain control and then used to justify that control.

Given the age we live in, guilt by association is a great tool to take down people you dislike.

I've gone to bat for Chomsky on this sub a thousand times, and I'm still going to bat for him on this occasion. The recent report is even LESS of a big deal, seeing as the accusation is that Epstein HELPED Chomsky with a rearrangement of funds after his wife's death.

In response to questions from the Journal, Chomsky confirmed that he received a March 2018 transfer of roughly $270,000 from an Epstein-linked account. He said it was “restricted to rearrangement of my own funds, and did not involve one penny from Epstein.”

Chomsky explained that he asked Epstein for help with a “technical matter” that he said involved the disbursement of common funds related to his first marriage.

“My late wife died 15 years ago after a long illness. We paid no attention to financial issues,” he said in an email that cc’d his current wife. “We asked Epstein for advice. The simplest way seemed to be to transfer funds from one account in my name to another, by way of his office.”

Chomsky said he didn’t hire Epstein. “It was a simple, quick, transfer of funds,” he said.

The public reaction will, undoubtedly, carry over from the previous reports of Chomsky interacting with Epstein on multiple occasions. The accusations are baseless, but the public outcry seems to be limited to:

• Why would he interact with a convicted pedophile, especially Epstein?
• Why would he interact with billionaires at all, he's a socialist/anarchist/etc.?

Given the previous reports hubub, I had gotten in touch with Bev Stohl, Noam's personal assistant for 24 years (and who was present both during the loss of Noams first wife and the Epstein interactions), and with her blessing, she's allowed me to share her response to the whole ordeal.

Me: Mrs. Stohl, you were his assistant during the timeline of events the WSJ is quoting. If you have any opportunity, could you write something to provide some necessary context to how Noam took interviews?

• Did he do any background checks on the people who asked to meet with him? Did he ever do any kind of check, even as much as looking them up on Wikipedia?
• Was Noam, particularly in the 2010s, going anywhere by himself that he wouldn't have had you or other colleagues accompanying him?
• Was it out of the ordinary for billionaires to come visit or ask him to talk? Did Noam ever discriminate because someone was percieved to be "too rich"?

Bev: Hi - darn, I wrote you a long reply and it disappeared. I’ll try again.

Noam took people at their word when they wrote him - it didn’t matter if they were billionaires, jobless, well known, unknown. In fact, as much as he kept his finger on the pulse of human rights and social justice, he didn’t pay attention to gossip or hearsay and in some cases whether people were jailed and why. He never feels he or anyone should have to explain or defend themselves. He believes in freedom of speech, whether or not he agrees with what someone has said or done. He meets with all sorts of people because he wants to know what they think, and I suppose how they think. He’s always gathering information.

As I said, he doesn’t feel he needs to explain himself or apologize. While I know a simple statement could sometimes get him out of the fray of those who want to continue to muckrake him, he refuses to go there.

If he met with Epstein in our office, it would have been just another meeting. In my experience, he never looked anyone up. He glanced at the schedule minutes before a person arrived, and took it from there. Noam has never acted with ill or malicious intent. Never.

Bev

Edit: Here's some more context from the Guardian's report (thanks to u/Seeking-Something-3)

”He went on to confirm that in March 2018, he received a transfer of approximately $270,000 from an account linked to Epstein, telling the Journal that it was “restricted to rearrangement of my own funds, and did not involve one penny from Epstein”. In response to further questions from the Guardian, Chomsky responded: “My late wife Carol and I were married for 60 years. We never bothered with financial details. She had a long debilitating illness when we paid no attention at all to such matters. Several years after her death, I had to sort some things out. I asked Epstein for advice. There were no financial transactions except from one account of mine to another.” “These are all personal matters of no one’s concern,” Chomsky said.”

I would hope that people who frequent this subreddit would have an interest in Chomsky, including trying to understand why he did the things he did. The arguments on the latest posts seem to continue with the same guilt by association.

With the context that Bev provides, I would hope that there would be a more measured discussion in the comments. However, given the current hatred that Noam gets for his position on the War in Ukraine, I do not expect that much charitability. But for those that new Noam the most, his capacity to interact with everyone without prejudice was what made him so accessible to millions of people.

I hope this extra context helps inform those who might visit this subreddit.

I look forward to the comments.

Palestine is not even just about Palestine.

It is the litmus test if you're on the Left, and even then - you don't have to be on the Left to support the Palestinian struggle.

The Palestinian struggle is a moral issue, not a political one.

But it also overlaps with other important issues which are political - ie global capitalism, imperialism. etc.

Stuffing this subject into a megathread is a huge red flag and we should be wary of anyone proposing that.

Using a CQS score, Reddit can assign you an arbitrary rating based upon their criteria and your history.

This means they can remove the ability of any user to comment, even if they have a long post history and high karma.

...

reddit com /r/modnews/s/B84Sb9VBsH

Edit: Emphasis my own

Because some of you morons can't read, and other's just chose to post the worst sounding clips from the article, here's more quotes from the article to clarify just how tenuous the inferences and accusations are.

Mr. Barak also met Epstein in 2015 with Mr. Chomsky, now 94, a linguistics professor and political activist who has been critical of capitalism and U.S. foreign policy.

Mr. Chomsky said Epstein arranged the meeting with Mr. Barak for them to discuss “Israel’s policies with regard to Palestinian issues and the international arena.”

Mr. Barak said he often met with Epstein on trips to New York and was introduced to people such as Mr. Ramo and Mr. Chomsky to discuss geopolitics or other topics. “He often brought other interesting persons, from art or culture, law or science, finance, diplomacy or philanthropy,” Mr. Barak said.

Epstein arranged several meetings in 2015 and 2016 with Mr. Chomsky, while he was a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

When asked about his relationship with Epstein, Mr. Chomsky replied in an email: “First response is that it is none of your business. Or anyone’s. Second is that I knew him and we met occasionally.”

In March 2015, Epstein scheduled a gathering with Mr. Chomsky and Harvard University professor Martin Nowak and other academics, according to the documents. Mr. Chomsky said they had several meetings at Mr. Nowak’s research institute to discuss neuroscience and other topics.

Two months later, Epstein planned to fly with Mr. Chomsky and his wife to have dinner with them and movie director Woody Allen and his wife, Soon-Yi Previn, the documents show.

“If there was a flight, which I doubt, it would have been from Boston to New York, 30 minutes,” Mr. Chomsky said. “I’m unaware of the principle that requires that I inform you about an evening spent with a great artist.”

Epstein donated at least $850,000 to MIT between 2002 and 2017, and more than $9.1 million to Harvard from 1998 to 2008, the schools have said. In 2021, Harvard said it was sanctioning Mr. Nowak for violating university policies in his dealings with Epstein, and was shutting a research center he ran that Epstein had funded. MIT said it was inappropriate to accept Epstein’s gifts, and that it later donated $850,000 to nonprofits supporting survivors of sexual abuse.

In a 2020 interview with the “dunc tank” podcast, Mr. Chomsky said that people he considered worse than Epstein had donated to MIT. He didn’t mention any of his meetings with Epstein.

Mr. Chomsky told the Journal that at the time of his meetings “what was known about Jeffrey Epstein was that he had been convicted of a crime and had served his sentence. According to U.S. laws and norms, that yields a clean slate.”

MIT said lawyers investigating its ties to Epstein didn’t find that Mr. Chomsky met with Epstein on its campus or received funding from him.

So not only do these connections all look pretty above board, but they're so incredibly tenuous. It's insane that ANYONE would start making accusations that Noam is a pedophile based on THIS kind of a connection.

I would really encourage you to watch the clip where he was asked about Epstein in 2020.

INTERVIEWER: one of the things that I did want to make sure that I ask you about...a lot of these issues we've been talking about in many ways seem to fall back to a lack of accountability for especially people in power and it really does seem like when you get through a certain level of wealth and power that you're really just not going to face the kind of consequences that ordinary people would face and one of the cases recently that has really underscored that phenomenon in a dramatic way was the case of Jeffrey Epstein, and I only asked you because he was vaguely affiliated with MIT where you had taught for many years. and he had donated to the Media Lab, interacted with top scientists and intellectuals, and this is after his first conviction which the MIT Media Lab knew about.

CHOMSKY: After the conviction, but also after serving his sentence. There's a principle of Western law that once a person has served the sentence, he's the same as everybody else. Seems to be forgotten. So there's some other interesting questions. Jeffrey Epstein gave, I wanna say, a million dollars to MIT. Is he the worst person who's contributed to MIT? What about in my office at MIT when I was there (I'm not there anymore). I looked out the window, was my office then, I saw the David Koch Cancer Center. David Koch is surely a candidate, for being one of the most extraordinary criminals in human history. He was personally responsible for shifting the Republican Party from being a moderately saying...minimally saying on global warming, to being the most dangerous organization human history which may destroy us all. Is that serious? Pretty serious. Does anybody say anything about. Well let's take a look. When David koch died a couple of months ago, institute president produced a lauditory encomium about how he's one of the model MIT graduates, who did such wonderful things for MIT, he even funded the basketball team.

There's something strikingly strange about all this.

So while the WSJ may very well have information about Epstein meeting with Chomsky, the characterization of Chomsky's dismissal of Epstein really misses the point of the question asked, which was that of accountability for people who are rich.

The argument people make about people meeting Epstein after his first conviction is more of people's frustration with how anyone could associate with a criminal like that. And Chomsky's point in that interview question is that we DO associate with criminals, even when they're directly responsible for committing equally heinous crimes, we just choose to ignore those crimes and that person's guilt.

Hopefully this adds a balancing force to counter the influx of Chomsky hate that always comes from those who choose not to read.

First perma ban for me and Im a long time on Reddit. I know I was being somewhat alarmist and controversial, but I was replying to a dumb-ass (IMO) question on how come we are even talking about Israel's responsibilities when Israel bomb and attack hospitals.

Im banned, but the sub is full of people cheering on IDF and calling anyone who raises concerns "gravy seals". Which is apparently fine. I worry about that sub.

​

Another user said it well when they commented on yet another outdated, decontextualized video clip posted with another misleading headline: this subreddit is turning into a “boomer mom’s facebook page.”

I agree. While I am certainly sympathetic to those who have arrived here recently because of their support for the Palestinian people (which I share), I am troubled by the way the discourse has devolved away from reality and toward a manufactured narrative of the truth through exploitation of media clips.

To me, the reality is bad enough as it is, and doesn’t require any sleight of hand to demonize individuals or groups in dishonest ways, which actually serves to undermine the critical analysis that leads to actions which support political accountability. All it does is give the opposition fodder to dismiss us more easily out of hand. For all we know, these posts are being planted here exactly for that very reason, in order to undermine Chomsky’s powerful and influential work (which I assume they are afraid of).

Can we talk about how moderation can help to keep things on track, keeping in mind that requiring accuracy does not mean suppressing ideas? For starters, I suggest that posts with inaccurate or misleading headlines be prohibited. Posters are free to repost their content with corrected headlines, but frequent offenders should be limited or banned for multiple offenses.

I think we should also consider instituting a rule requiring the posting of original source material for heavily edited or truncated content.

In addition, it might be helpful to require some kind of submission statement that substantively identifies the specific content from Chomsky that makes the submission relevant. It’s not enough to just say that he is critical of Israel, for instance. Posters should identify how the posted content aligns with a specific idea made popular by Chomsky, in order to start a conversation about how his work applies to it or is elucidated by it.

I appreciate any additional feedback you have to share, and hope the moderation team will take notice and respond as well.

I mean at least there's some ideological diversity amongst the spammers but can you guys chill out? At this point the sub is basically just u/ijustlikeunionsalot and u/sweatymorning4 arguing with each other. You don't need to post every blog post you read on here.

A couple days ago I suggested making a search engine for Chomsky's works. I decided to create a knowledge graph of his works first. That way it is easy to use this knowledge graph to create a search engine from it. Which I may yet do.

This is is basically a network of every entity mentioned in his collected works, every name, every question that is raised in his works, all of his online works are processed into a scheme of meta data, including time stamps, sources, urls, and such.

Here is a summary report on what the graph contains: https://huggingface.co/datasets/ClovenDoug/ChomskyArxiv

Total works: 1,282

Total questions: 596

Total keynames: 7,389

Total keyphrases: 10,859

Total paragraphs: 16,145

https://huggingface.co/datasets/ClovenDoug/ChomskyArxivhttps://huggingface.co/datasets/ClovenDoug/ChomskyArxiv

Perhaps quotes can be ok if they are longer than 280 characters (Twitter's character limit).

But everything shorter is annoying, meaningless and doesn't belong here.

This is a place to share and discuss content related to History, Politics, Media, Anarchism, Linguistics, Cognitive Science, Free Speech and everything else by people familiar with, or interested in learning about, Noam Chomsky.

If the content is some inane meme without depth it prevents discussion.

I would like to cite Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman to substantiate my argument here to ban memes. You might know it from this comic that uses the opening paragraph in AOtD. But this comic does a disservice to the book as the book argues much, much more than this comic.

Electronic media inherently leads to sensationalism. Whether it's radio or tv, facebook or reddit, even the most radical of groups that are based on the internet are not immune. Because communication is done at light speed from anywhere at anytime, the most trivial information reaches us, and that which is consumed fastest and with the least effort gets favored. Memes win over essays. Sound-bite politics reign over rational dialogue and an image based culture akin to propaganda ensues, rendering logical discourse obsolete.

If you can think of another way to resolve this issue than an outright ban, I'm all ears. But as a moderator of the tiny subreddit dedicated to Neil Postman, /r/postman, I cannot think of any other way for a subreddit of almost 60,000 people to do this. Maybe if this wasn't on reddit, breaking up into a confederated, anarchist system of communes each of a few dozen people would help. Yet the programming of this website doesn't allow that.

What policy should we decide and how do we enact it? Should we vote on this?

" ... Israel was once described as ‘the equivalent of a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Middle East’ 4 for US ruling class interests. The metaphor is vulgar and simplistic, portraying Israel as a Trojan Horse at the Gates of the Silk Roads. Still, it captures the impression of Israel from American and European ruling class perspectives. Let’s put a name on it: colonial imperialism. Can it be in any doubt? As far back as 1983, Noam Chomsky wrote that ‘the US remains committed […] to financing Israel’s settlement programs in the occupied territories5 […] This US commitment eliminates the possibility for a peaceful resolution of the Israel-Arab conflict and for any recognition of the elementary rights of the Palestinians’

https://proletarianperspective.wordpress.com/2024/10/22/western-capitalism-and-israel-a-class-perspective/

Right before anyone tells me that im an Israeli agent or "Hasbarah" or whatever other nonsense anyone wants to cook up. I am pro-Palestine, Israel is a fascist, colonialist empire intent on subjugating and exterminating the Palestinian people and noone in the world should support them.

Everyone knows that Israel has a strong propaganda machine that is and has been in full swing for a long time now, constantly reframing the conversations from what Israel is doing to anything else. That is very well known.

This employment of propaganda is something that many of us are against, and when stories about children being beheaded etc come out with no proof, we rightfully scoff at that, especially when Israel says that they have proof but dont want to provide it.

Chomsky himself has made a lot of writings about propaganda.

So why then may i ask, are threads like this - https://www.reddit.com/r/chomsky/comments/17reig4/israel_shot_at_their_own_citizens_in_festival/ are allowed by the moderators?

Not only is there already a megathread for ANYTHING that is not "expert opinion", Right now half of the posts in the subreddit are just straight up propaganda barely relevant to the conflict, the thread above is just straight up misinfo. The video is not of the music festival, yet people seem to blindly believe that it is of the festival because a random account that can barely strong together an english sentence says so?

An account which, when it was pointed out that the video was not of the festival, constantly refuses to engage with that and switches the topic?

Tell me everyone, when you read Chomskys writings about propaganda, did you actually read them? Or did you just skim over them and continued on believing that everything that supports your position is true? You do realize that NONE of us are immune to propaganda? RIGHT? So why in the hell are half of the threads here these days pushing literal propaganda!?

And mods, are you asleep or something???

EDIT: Apologies i wont be able to respond to anyone here and their claims that im a Hasbra agent (Which should break the subs rules for ad hom attacks, but i doubt the mods care). Apparently posting literal misinfo is A-okay, responding to is is bad.

There used to be sparse but great conversation on here. Then all of a sudden it was a ghost town and then it turned into what appears to be anti-semetic bots/people and some alt-right-ish people started coming in and I'm not sure why. Or where it came from.

There's lots of dog whistles lately though and I'm not digging it.

I'm calling on the mods to remove posts attempting to manufacture consent for war in Ukraine and falsely paint the left as being supportive of Putin. These posts are blatant propaganda and are routinely the featured posts of this sub. While it may fly in the face of Chomsky's stance on free speech these are blatantly bad faith attacks intended to manufacture consent. A cursory glance at the poster's accounts shows someone who solely makes these posts in leftist subs and is basically all they talk about. If you're not going to ban them then at least tag them as the propaganda they clearly are but stop letting these frauds pass themselves as reasonable and concerned citizens when the only thing they are is concern trolls.

I do not deny that Epstein hobknobbed, Prof. Chomsky hobknobs and everybody famous did and does. We have waited years for the list of names associated with Epstein and this is what we get? We know that list is huge, but its been whittled down to Prof. Chomsky? Its a lie of omission done with obvious intent.

The guilt by association that obvious trolls to this sub are trying to create regarding Chomsky hobknobbing with Jeffrey Epstein are obvious, sickening and working by sheer volume of postings and sheer volume of trolls.

Few people are intellectually capable of treating any topic that might be remotely related to sex with any sort of logic or fairness. There is no other topic I know where people can experience an IQ drop like a fall from a cliff, which is probably why Prof. Chomsky has avoided nearly all sex talk throughout his entire career. Just saying the name "Epstein" now creates images of sexual impropriety now even if none exist.

For these reasons I request that talk of Chomsky meeting Epstein be confined to a megathread.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/31/renowned-australian-journalist-john-pilger-passes-away-at-84