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on on resistance (aka: "Nutbush City Limits")
part of "animal farm: conservatives and their turtles" series
There is a difference between public intellectuals and regular nerds. The former includes professors and celebrities. They daily access funding, foundations, departments and (most importantly) students that could sustain an independent researcher for a lifetime. This pipeline is conditioned on institutional (or national) fealty and shifting socio-political mores. Independents can play in the margins while public intellectuals must color within the lines.
The dialectic of "legitimacy" within these two paths is one way. That is, relevant independents must address public researchers. Public researchers consider themselves siloed and peerless as a class. There are some public intellectuals that transgress this boundary and engage with the indefensible, un-credentialed and (most importantly) student-less independents.
That is one thing that made Professor Chomsky special. He engaged with everyone from left wing writers to right wing pod casters. Every independent is responsible for understanding the Edward Herman / Chomsky thesis from Manufacturing Consent (1988). This is some of the most famous popular theory this side of Richard Hofstadter. But it is not groundbreaking or original. Todd Gitlin's Inside Primetime (1983) and Michael Parenti's Inventing Reality (1986) covered this territory. Chomsky provided celebrity which readers confused as legitimacy.
My first exposure to Chomsky was Failed States (2006) during the Second Iraq War (2003-11). This book explained the folly of "nation building" during the height of America's hubristic period of extraordinary rendition, Guantanamo Bay and unverified drone strikes. Hauling that book around a liberal arts college campus signified the same legitimacy as a Che Guevara t-shirt, Bob Marley poster or Nirvana's Unplugged album. Public intellectuals benefit from this para-social relationship when publishing, scheduling media and (most importantly) rostering their classes.
"On Resistance" (1967) is the Chomsky I return to. The authenticity of this article comes from Chomsky's participation in civil rights marches and his professorial tone was legitimized by publisher The New York Review of Books. These twenty pages have more popular purchase than Professor Gitlin's five hundred page personal narrative of the period Years of Hope... (1987) published by Bantam. Celebrity, length (or Project Mockingbird style institutional support) could explain the difference in popularity. Access is not the reason Gitlin, the SDS president who organized marches on Washington like the one Chomsky described, is less known.
Professor Chomsky was tenured for decades at a comfy chair within view of the national intelligence recruiters at MIT. He was recommended by structuralist Roman Jakobson and started teaching in 1957: post-McCarthy but still a deeply chauvinistic period of the Red Scare. His debut as a public intellectual was probably "The Responsibility of Intellectuals" published by the NY RoB some eleven months before "On Resistance" in 1967. This early article is also unoriginal. The concept was popularized by a better writer, five years earlier. Vonnegut's Mother Night was a fictionalization of the Eichmann trial. Chomsky's thesis is quoted (and cited) from Trotskyist-turned-Anarchist (and sometimes CIA patsy) Dwight Macdonald.
For example: "Only those who are willing to resist authority themselves when it conflicts too intolerably with their personal moral code, only they have the right to condemn the death-camp paymaster." These are Macdonald's words analyzing historical Nazis--and Vonnegut was able to make the thing into a hilarious tragedy. Chomsky's flourish was applying the Nuremberg Tribunal to Vienam. Chomsky launders illegitimate authors picked from historical materialists (or pulp fiction) and adopts their radical cloak for public consumption. Chomsky might have been the Malcolm Gladwell of the American left.
He is more famous than any of the authors he cribbed: Herman, Gitlin, Parenti and Macdonald. He is the object of so many para-social relationships, connecting less influential theorists to (the most important thing) students. That is the public intellectual's function within the structure of "legitimacy." The result has the advantage of promoting radical scholarship. That the ideas are interpreted by public intellectuals, like Chomsky, Hofstadter or Gladwell, is a disadvantage.
Chomsky is venerated by the left because his lens seemed authentic. After all, he was a prolific anti-war writer during the height of the New Left. But unlike contemporaries like Angela Davis or Murray Bookchin, his anarcho-syndicalist politics were never useful for organizing communities. If unions are the organizing unit of class consciousness then the Red Flag is the successful model--the Angela Davis CPUSA route. Dismissing Marx while organizing unions is ahistorical. Organizing under the Black Flag, Murray Bookchin's libertarian socialism--environmentalism without authoritarians--worked in autonomous zones during the WTO protests, Zuccotti Park and Capitol Hill. Chomsky supported Occupy but he is a precise linguist that claims both anarcho-synd. and lib_soc loyalties. These are nominally, theoretically and functionally (and structurally) different ideologies.
People are allowed to change their mind but there is an implication to this distinction and it presents as Chomsky abiding capital. This is not a leftist trait. Chomsky's employment at MIT and relationship with capitalists like Jeffery Epstein and fascists like Steve Bannon would have been impossible if he was as repulsed by capital or authority as communists and anarchists. Compared to Bookchin and Davis, Chomsky's version of anarcho-syndicalism is akin to Jimmy Hoffa.
Professor Norman Finklestein--also influenced by secular progressive Jewish traditions--has defended Chomsky's right wing friendships as the modus operandi of a public intellectual. He also dismissed physical correspondence between Epstein and Professor Chomsky. [1] Greg Grandin wrote something similar for The Nation but he does not dismiss electronic correspondence between the two. [2]
Chomsky has spent his entire career digesting right wing media like the NYT to amplify left wing truths hidden in plain sight. This is the same skill, albeit politically inverted, as presenting Gitlin and Parenti on Democracy Now!. Celebrity is important but celebrities are held to a different standard than independent researchers. The photo of Chomsky and Bannon on Epstein's Island is more damaging than a propensity to respond to emails.
With all of this in mind, Noam Chomsky needs a re-conceptualization before his work is allowed back into the dialectic. His politics matter because he appears a leftist when compared to bourgeoisie Democrats like David Duke. He is left of Reganite Republicans. He's too anti-authoritarian to be a technocrat like Dukakis. He isn't a warmonger like Oliver North and was an outspoken critic of genocide. He isn't a Wall-Street liberal like Hillary Clinton but he teaches their kids. He doesn't have the populist credentials of a Michael Moore or the organization of Michael Harrington. Among fellow travelers, Chomsky is a conservative who worked within the national security state and should be saddled with that baggage.
The first step in reintegrating Chomsky is rediscovering and prioritizing his sources. Then putting his work in a context among other leftists. The alternative has been allowing Chomsky to be the one counterexample among the thousand JDs, MBAs, Reps, and Sens that substantiate institutional bureaucracy. Third--its the Epstein thing.
If a public intellectual's career is buoyed by para-social followers then they are responsible for abiding by social mores. The alternative is awakening students (the most important part) to a class consciousness that can be revoked at any time by a digital photograph of a mentor with a pedophile. Nobody would care if some democratic socialist was a transgressive hippie. But a professor that parents dread and students distrust because "ick" has lost their function within the structure of "legitimacy."
Chomsky is the main character of "On Resistance." His confessional meditations always have him at the center. But the peripheral character is radical pacifist AJ Muste. In reality, the story is about Muste and his candle witnessing the maelstrom in DC. But now Chomsky's description of the stoic Muste standing witness to the Peace Movement will be one footnote deeper in the public consciousness--pushed down by a chummy snapshot. Chomsky preferred a fleeting dalliance with power to deification by generations of students (they are the important thing). It is hard to trust the authority on anti-authority when he is friendly with the Masters of the Universe.
Instead of personal responsibility, it appears there is a memory hole enveloping this story. According to People on December 12 "[n]ineteen new photos from [Epstein's] estate were shared by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee..." The end of the article promises "a rundown of each of the 19 newly shared images..." but only includes seventeen pictures. Chomsky's photo is not one of them.[3]
CNN has a slightly different story posted on December 12th. It explains "Democrats initially made public 19 images," and "released 70 additional pictures" later in the day: a Friday news-dump. These photos "show different angles of previously released images" and "others depicted Epstein himself." Chomsky was in one of the twenty-two photos that CNN featured in their article but they credited him as "an unidentified man." Chomsky's name is nowhere in the article.[4]
CNN and People reference the House Oversight Committee. Rep. Robert Garcia is the Ranking member. His press release on December 12 includes a dropbox link with 92 images. These photos are provided to the public with no context outside of the press release. The metadata has been scrubbed and frames have been added but the images don't appear to have been filtered or altered. Most of it is landscape scenery and plumbing. There are many pictures of famous men as well. [5]
Bannon is in many photos but Chomsky is only in one. Titled "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_083591.JPG", the two men embrace. The dissident professor's wedding ring is faintly visible as he waves his hand in low light. The fascist podcaster is laughing at his friend's joke. Chomsky is hard to read if you don't care about Descartes and the rationalists. He's not particularly funny--not like Professor Finklestein. The early stuff, before Herman, Foucault, Vietnam and Occupy, is boring if you're looking for anti-war anarchism.
I listened to him read his essays, especially the linguistics stuff, as audio books. This was less discouraging with my shallow education. I was able to listen over and over until it began to stick. Having an author read to you is one of the most intimate experiences. It is amplified by reverence. I will probably only read Professor Chomsky from now on. Like any other flawed genius separated from his art.
A public intellectual risks so much just by existing--this is compounded by a shifting morality that outlives everyone. Nobody has a favorite Ike Turner song.
addendum:
The House Oversight Committee released another photo trove on 18 December 2025. Chomsky is in two of these photos (e_HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_065656_Clean-Copy.JPG and e_HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_065659_Clean-Copy.JPG). Both photos also feature Epstein. The two men are on the latter's private airplane. Many of the men who are questioned about their trips on this jet claim convenience versus commercial air travel. According to the numbering, there were two photos taken between these two featured by the House Oversight Committee. Without knowing why they were redacted, one is left to ascribe ulterior political motivations.
These photos didn't create the same visceral revulsion. That isn't because Epstein is less creepy than Bannon. Instead, Chomsky has surrendered his grandfatherly status. Now, Chomsky is just another paraphiliac among his tribe. This is sad because he used to be a fellow traveler.
notes:
[1] @normfinkelstein Twitter/X (3 December 2025) accessed 15 December 2025.
"PROFESSOR CHOMSKY
I have been asked to comment on allegations of a "relationship" between Professor Chomsky and Jeffrey Epstein. It is an incontrovertible fact that Professor Chomsky met and corresponded with everyone. He didn't discriminate; that was his modus operandi. That disposes of the bulk of the accusations leveled against Professor Chomsky. However, a portion of the allegations do puzzle: for example, a mysterious undated, unsigned, and unaddressed letter that Professor Chomsky supposedly wrote in support of Epstein. Most of the letter does not sound at all like him. How this letter came to be is, at this point, anyone's guess."
[2] Greg Grandin "What the Noam Chomsky–Jeffrey Epstein E-mails Tell Us" Society The Nation 15 December 2025. accessed 15 December 2025.
"...given his inability to gatekeep himself, it is not surprising, especially considering the close connection MIT had with Epstein, that Chomsky found himself in Epstein’s orbit."
[3] Kyler Alvord "Every Photo from the Epstein Estate Released Release: BDSM Gear, Trump-Branded Condoms and Several Famous Men...House Democrats released 19 new photos — and promised many more in the near future — that were turned over by Jeffrey Epstein's estate, which show powerful figures like Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Woody Allen and Steve Bannon in Epstein's presence" People 12 December 12 2025. accessed 15 December 2025.
[4] Kaitlan Collins and Annie Grayer "New photos released from Epstein’s estate showing Trump, Bannon, Bill Clinton and other high-profile people" Politics CNN updated 12 December 2025. accessed 15 December 2025.
[5] "Ranking Member Robert Garcia Statement After Oversight Democrats Receive 95,000 New Photos from Epstein Estate; Includes Images with Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Steve Bannon, Bill Gates, Larry Summers" December 12, 2025. accessed 15 December 2025.
"Washington, D.C. — Today, Rep. Robert Garcia, Ranking Member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, released the following statement after the Oversight Committee received new photos from the Epstein estate. This latest production contains over 95,000 photos, including images of the wealthy and powerful men who spent time with Jeffrey Epstein. Images also include thousands of photographs of women and Epstein properties. Oversight Democrats are reviewing the full set of photos and will continue to release photos to the public in the days and weeks ahead. Committee Democrats are committed to protecting the identities of the survivors. 19 photos can be accessed here.
"It is time to end this White House cover-up and bring justice to the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and his powerful friends," said Ranking Member Robert Garcia. "These disturbing photos raise even more questions about Epstein and his relationships with some of the most powerful men in the world. We will not rest until the American people get the truth. The Department of Justice must release all the files, NOW."
photo credit:
"HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_083591.JPG" released by the US House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. 12 December 2025.