1·
5 days agoHe exchanged emails in 2019, advising Epstein on how to rebuild his reputation and lementing how hysterical people are about abuse of women.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce9ykjlyv50o
This is after his 2008 conviction for soliciting a minor as part of his plea deal to avoid going to trial where the prosecution had identified 36 victims between the ages of 14 and 17.
So I guess Chomsky’s well honed epistemology wasn’t able to detect a pattern here, or his moral clarity is worth spit. I’m fine with either because I think he’s correct about 70% of the time, and a populist grifter for the rest.
I don’t care about any of that, I’m sure Chomsky’s takes suck as well, but my point is that he sucks and you’re trying to minimise what he actually did with a half-baked analogue.
If you really want my opinion on what he said in the original comment then sure, I think it’s misguided in the age of the internet where the overton window covers all sorts of extreme views to suggest censorship is a pervasive issue. It wouldn’t surprise me if the story of this journalist getting fired got far wider coverage than any of the pieces that got her fired. Even in the quote it’s dubious because Chomsky is apparently sitting right next to the person he implies wouldn’t be there if he had Chomsky’s beliefs.
But again, I don’t want to waste time debating the articulations of a faux-dissident loser like Chomsky because he’s just a mouthpiece for common truisms you can find around ever corner being peddled by people who don’t have the same reputation of being an asshat. Like, I’m sure those people would also be brainrotted populist freaks, but at least I wouldn’t be dunking on them for being pedo defenders.