Noam Chomsky

The USA’s greatest dissident intellectual

Last year, I made a post about Noam Chomsky in my forum, and it is time for a Substack post, as part of my “lives of the great” series. Noam had a debilitating stroke in 2023 and he will likely never engage the public again, which spurred these Noam posts.

I first heard of Noam from a roommate when my partner, Dennis Lee, was in jail, in early 1989. The next year, while driving to work in LA, I heard of a new magazine that exposed the media’s lies. I had witnessed the media incessantly lie about my companies over the previous several years (1, 2), as it worked on behalf of the energy and medical rackets, and I was so ready for the message. I subscribed to that new magazine later that year (Lies of Our Times – “LOOT”), and the first page of my first issue is still the one that I remember best, as the New York Times made it up as it went along in “translating” Arabic script for its readers.

Noam wrote an article each month for LOOT, which were eventually compiled into a book, and so began my studies of his work. I slowly became aware of Ed Herman, who was LOOT’s editor and who also contributed at least one article a month in LOOT. Little did I suspect that I would become Ed’s first and so far only biographer. I grew up around literal rocket scientists and people far smarter than me, and I became a student of genius from a young age. Noam was obviously another world-class genius, and I devoted myself to understanding his work. I have only a passing familiarity with his scientific work, but I focused on his political writings. It took me about two years to understand what he was saying, which coincided with the movie about his life. A few days after watching it with my wife, I was driven from my sleep to write a 17-page letter to Noam on the free-energy issue, and I asked why the left media did not cover it. I was amazed to receive a reply from Noam a couple of weeks later, which is about the most gracious reply that I ever received from the American “left.” Noam soon politely brushed me off, which I sympathized with. I recently read a book by his longtime assistant at MIT, which greatly humanized him, and I marvel at how he was besieged daily and was still as gracious as he was. He could be combative with fellow academics, which is not very unusual, but his responsiveness to the public’s demands on his time was second to none.

I eventually became a bigger fan of Ed’s work than Noam’s, but I cannot overstate the impact that Noam’s work had on me. His ethical stance became clear immediately. As an American, he had a responsibility to call out American crimes in international relations, not the crimes of other nations. On that subject, Noam was likely second to none, and he will go down in history as the USA’s greatest dissident intellectual for that work. Noam’s most memorable political work was Manufacturing Consent, for which Ed was the primary author, and Noam insisted that Ed got due credit for it, as Ed’s name is listed first as the author on the book’s cover. Subsequent mentions of Manufacturing Consent could completely omit Ed’s name, but Ed was fine with it. Ed had a bit of a falling out with Noam over Ed’s criticisms of imperial leftists, such as the “Cruise Missile Left,” as Noam thought that it divided the left.

I never saw a stauncher supporter of free speech than Noam, who defended the freedom of speech of Holocaust Deniers and even journalists who had smeared him. Noam’s first joint work with Ed was subjected to one of history’s most outrageous censorship incidents. Six years later, they wrote a two-volume work that greatly expanded on their censored work, which led to a propaganda campaign that lasts to this day to portray Noam and Ed as Khmer Rouge supporters instead of what they really were: critics of the media’s treatment of Cambodia. Their final joint book was Manufacturing Consent.

The range and power of Noam’s thought was extraordinary, but he also got in over his head as he strayed into topics that he probably should have avoided. His book that presented his arguments that the CIA would not have been motivated to kill JFK was a misguided effort, in my opinion, as the CIA was definitely involved in the operation that got JFK killed, and the man that Kennedy fired as the Director of Central Intelligence covered up the CIA’s role. I caught plenty of grief over Noam’s stance on the COVID vaccine, as he argued that unvaccinated people like me should be locked up. Just as my college roomies were likely crippled and killed by the COVID vaccine, I have to wonder if Noam’s stroke was related to the vaccine.

Noam was only human and made his missteps, which made me even more careful about what I write about. I only write about subjects after I have deeply studied them, and nearly all are related to my personal experience.

Noam would have been at the forefront, writing about the genocide in Gaza, if he was still active, as Ed would have also been. The huge shoes that Noam, Ed, and Howard Zinn left behind have yet to be filled and may never be. Their passing from the public scene marks the end of an era.