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The Chomsky Moment And The Cracks In Cultural Hegemony - The end of moral asymmetry in American intellectual life.
American Thinker ^ | 18 Feb, 2026 | S.R. Piccoli |

Posted on 02/18/2026 4:40:15 AM PST by MtnClimber

In 2023, newly disclosed documents related to the late financier Jeffrey Epstein revealed meetings and financial interactions between Epstein and the eminent linguist and public intellectual Noam Chomsky. The disclosures did not accuse Chomsky of criminal conduct. But they confirmed that, years after Epstein’s 2008 conviction for soliciting a minor, Chomsky met with him multiple times and discussed financial matters.

Chomsky’s response was characteristically blunt: his meetings with Epstein, he said, were “none of your business.” The tone may have been legally defensible. Culturally and symbolically, it was something else.

Because Chomsky is not merely a professor emeritus at MIT. For over half a century, he has been one of the central intellectual pillars of the American Left — a figure whose authority extends far beyond linguistics into foreign policy, media criticism, and moral judgment on American power. His 1988 book Manufacturing Consent shaped generations of students’ understanding of media, propaganda, and elite influence. To admirers, he has represented intellectual courage against empire; to critics, an implacable critic of Western liberal democracies.

But in either case, he has stood as a moral voice.

And that is precisely why the Epstein association matters — not as a criminal allegation, but as a symbolic rupture.

From the 1960s to Cultural Hegemony

To understand the magnitude of that rupture, one must place Chomsky within the broader intellectual ecosystem that reshaped American academia after the 1960s. While not formally a member of the Frankfurt School, his work converged with its critique of capitalist modernity, mass culture, and liberal-democratic institutions. Thinkers such as Herbert Marcuse and Theodor Adorno helped institutionalize a style of critical theory that viewed Western society as structurally oppressive beneath its democratic veneer.

Overlay that with the influence of Antonio Gramsci and his theory of cultural hegemony: the idea that ruling classes maintain

(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...


TOPICS: Education; Society
KEYWORDS: criminal; crook; immoralvoice; jeffreyepstein; leftism; moralvoicemyass; noamchomsky
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1 posted on 02/18/2026 4:40:15 AM PST by MtnClimber
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To: MtnClimber

It is clear that Epstein was a man of the left. He had no principles or conscience.


2 posted on 02/18/2026 4:40:28 AM PST by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery, wildlife and climbing, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
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To: MtnClimber
...the eminent linguist and public intellectual Noam Chomsky...
3 posted on 02/18/2026 4:54:27 AM PST by ComputerGuy
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To: MtnClimber

Had to study Chomsky to get a Teaching Certificate.

Lot of happy horseshit and convoluted thinking.

May be part of the reason our teachers are often perverts and losers.


4 posted on 02/18/2026 5:00:58 AM PST by Aevery_Freeman (We don't need an election - We need an exorcism!)
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To: MtnClimber

If you go through his guest list it’s so heavily weighted to the left that those on the right are mere tokens.


5 posted on 02/18/2026 5:17:04 AM PST by xp38
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To: MtnClimber
And yet the fact that Epstein also had a personally signed copy of Rules For Radicals on his bookshelf remains unmentioned.
6 posted on 02/18/2026 5:30:01 AM PST by Gay State Conservative (Import The Third World,Become The Third World)
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To: MtnClimber
Money quote from the article - way down in text that 80% won't read anyway: "The Epstein revelations do not topple Chomsky’s scholarly contributions to linguistics. They do not erase his influence. But they puncture the myth that critique equals virtue."
7 posted on 02/18/2026 5:46:28 AM PST by larrytown (I will not be rage-baited.)
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To: MtnClimber

All else being the same, it must be cool to have a business card that says “Public Intellectual.”


8 posted on 02/18/2026 5:48:23 AM PST by misterdarcey (Abandon all nuance, ye who enter here.)
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To: MtnClimber

Chomsky is, and always has been, a pompous, gas filled, far Leftist POS.

Of course he would have dealings with Epstein.


9 posted on 02/18/2026 6:04:18 AM PST by rlmorel (Factio Communistica Sinensis Delenda Est)
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To: Aevery_Freeman

That sucks. Having that BS shoveled down your throat against your will. I read one of Chomsky’s books many years ago, and that was all I needed to take his full measure. A total Leftist douchecanoe.


10 posted on 02/18/2026 6:06:17 AM PST by rlmorel (Factio Communistica Sinensis Delenda Est)
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To: sauropod

.


11 posted on 02/18/2026 6:20:12 AM PST by sauropod
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To: MtnClimber
"...The Chomsky episode does not invalidate every argument he has ever made..."

No. An objective view of reality has done that.

12 posted on 02/18/2026 6:21:27 AM PST by rlmorel (Factio Communistica Sinensis Delenda Est)
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To: MtnClimber

Chomsky was always the “do as I say, not as I do” type.


13 posted on 02/18/2026 6:40:22 AM PST by A_perfect_lady (The greatest wealth is to live content with little. -Plato)
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To: MtnClimber

they claimed to be gods, because they said there was no God.
“14 For this God is our God for ever and ever: he will be our guide even unto death.”Psalm 48


14 posted on 02/18/2026 6:41:12 AM PST by sopo
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To: larrytown

Inside trader, influence peddler, filthy rich pecker puss Pelosi is an excellent example of the hypocrisy of the left. She pretended to be the good Catholic who legislated “for the children” while enriching herself like the pig.


15 posted on 02/18/2026 7:25:58 AM PST by DeplorablePaul
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To: MtnClimber

Chomsky is as evil as Epstein


16 posted on 02/18/2026 7:41:10 AM PST by ckilmer (`61)
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To: MtnClimber

Not Trump, the left doesn’t care.


17 posted on 02/18/2026 7:58:33 AM PST by FrankRizzo890
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To: MtnClimber

Title looks like something written as a doctoral dissertation. I believe I’ll pass.


18 posted on 02/18/2026 8:15:51 AM PST by torqemada
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To: rlmorel

Not many people have the honor of having a chimpanzee named after them. In his case, Nim Chimpsky.


19 posted on 02/18/2026 8:35:55 AM PST by Verginius Rufus
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To: rlmorel
"...The Chomsky episode does not invalidate every argument he has ever made..."

No. An objective view of reality has done that.

Bravo! Succinctly put!

20 posted on 02/18/2026 9:18:03 AM PST by spankalib
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