Kevin Barrett – The Unz Review May 4, 2023

In early summer 1992 I caught the documentary film Manufacturing Consent when it opened in San Francisco’s Castro Theater. That film changed my life. It showcased Noam Chomsky, an accomplished linguistics professor, and his analysis of corporate media propaganda. Manufacturing Consent convinced me that the American academy could tolerate, and indeed celebrate, serious social criticism. If Chomsky, a radical opponent of America’s most powerful institutions, could not only survive but thrive in academia, speaking truth to power and building a huge audience along the way, why couldn’t others do the same?

Before that screening, I had been a profoundly alienated bohemian haunting the margins of academia, so disgusted by all of America’s institutions that I could scarcely have imagined working for them. (Learning the facts about the JFK assassination at age 16 can do that to a person.) But Chomsky’s example inspired me. It made me want to join him and the other academic critics of US empire, convince our colleagues of the truth of our arguments using logic and evidence, and help the USA return to its anti-imperial roots and then some.

So it was largely thanks to Chomsky that I entered a Ph.D. program in 1995. But by then I had noticed two glaring anomalies in his political thought. The first, and most important, was that his analysis of the JFK assassination seemed insane. Chomsky argued that the assassination was obviously a conspiracy, and not the work of a lone nut as the official story has it—but that it didn’t matter who killed JFK, because the assassination didn’t change any policies! Since he felt it was so utterly unimportant that the president was murdered by conspirators powerful enough to force their ludicrous cover story on the world, Chomsky evinced no interest whatsoever in identifying the perpetrators, and discouraged his followers from further interest in the topic.

“Take for example all this frenzy about the JFK assassination. I mean I don’t know who assassinated him and I don’t care, but what difference does it make?” –Noam Chomsky

The other anomaly involved the question of Palestine. Though Chomsky has verbally sympathized with Palestinian suffering, and admitted the justice of the Palestinian cause, he has vociferously obstructed the two most promising strategic efforts that could help Palestine defeat Zionism: The boycott-divestment-sanctions (BDS) movement, and the campaign to expose Zionist control over US Mideast policy.

Alison Weir once asked Chomsky why he opposed BDS and why he had falsely claimed that it was bad for Palestinians (who almost unanimously support it). “The reason is very simple. It’s so utterly hypocritical that it’s basically a gift to the hardliners. They can say, ‘Look, you’re calling for a boycott of Israel, but you’re not calling for a boycott of the United States which has a much worse record…’”

Would Israeli hardliners ever actually say such a thing? And would it matter even if they did? Of course not. Here again, Chomsky is spouting sheer nonsense, prefaced by the obligatory disclaimer “it’s very simple.” When someone as seemingly intelligent as Chomsky says such things, there are really only two possible interpretations: Either he is suffering from some bizarre mental dysfunction, or he is lying and gaslighting us.

Chomsky’s occasional habit of emitting streams of discombobulated blather repeatedly surfaces when he is asked about Israel’s control of US Mideast policy. As James Petras writes, “Noam Chomsky has long been one of the great obfuscators of AIPAC and the existence of Zionist power over US Middle East policy.” The nonsensical gnome ludicrously argues that US policymakers’ enslavement to Israel actually serves US national and imperial interests. For him, Israel is basically a powerless appendage of US empire. Chomsky’s implicit subtext is that anyone who notices Israel’s death grip on US foreign policy, including Walt and Mearsheimer, Alan Hart, James Petras, J. William Fulbright, James Abourezk, Paul Findley, and indeed every honest and informed analyst who has considered the question, must be “anti-Semitic.”

My issues with Chomsky’s repeated bouts of apparent insanity came to a head after 9/11. In November 2001, Chomsky published a “surprise” bestseller. Entitled 9/11 and republished ten years later as 9/11: Was There an Alternative?, the book basically repeats Chomsky’s vacuous diatribes about the JFK coup d’état—“it doesn’t matter who did it, do NOT look behind the curtain”—and applies them to 9/11.

“If if it were true [9/11 conspiracy theories], which is extremely unlikely, what difference does it make? I mean, it doesn’t have any significance.” –Noam Chomsky, interview with David Barsamian

While I was participating in the rise of the 9/11 truth movement from 2004 onwards, I noticed that Chomsky was growing ever-more-strident in attacking truth-seekers and insisting that it didn’t matter who did 9/11. In 2008 I invited him on my radio show, which led to an exchange of emails culminating in his last-minute refusal to appear. I was flabbergasted by Chomsky’s seemingly insane statements and positions. When he finally started lying outright, I concluded that he must be acting in bad faith. I published the private emails in their entirety because I thought the world needed to know the truth about the evident gross immorality (or, charitably, insanity) of America’s most celebrated (fake) dissident.

Then in 2016 I gave a talk at the Left Forum on “Why Chomsky Is Wrong About 9/11.” Though my criticisms of Chomsky were quite restrained in tone, given his appalling betrayals, I was banned from the Left Forum the following year. Apparently going to the Left Forum to criticize Chomsky is like going to the Vatican to criticize the Pope.

Read the full text of “Why Chomsky Is Wrong About 9/11”

Over the years, it dawned on me that if Chomsky were deliberately leading people astray, there would have to be some sort of method in his apparent madness. Why would he herd the critical thinkers and idealists of the left away from the truth about the JFK assassination, 9/11, Zionist control of US policy, and the best strategy for saving Palestine? Whose interests would be served by those four acts of deception?

The question, of course, answers itself. As Michael Collins Piper, Laurent Guyénot, Ron Unz, Alan Hart, and so many others have suggested, the leading suspect in both the JFK and 9/11 coups is the state of Israel and its “American” acolytes. Chomsky has been consistently, systematically gaslighting his followers on the four issues most crucial to the preservation and expansion of Zionist power. As Jeffrey Blankfort writes:

“At the end of the day, it is evident that Chomsky’s affection for Israel, his sojourn on a kibbutz, his Jewish identity, and his early experiences with anti-Semitism to which he occasionally refers have colored his approach to every aspect of Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians and explain his defense of Israel. That is his right, of course, but not to pretend at the same that he is an advocate for justice in Palestine.”

Since our ill-starred 2008 email exchange I have leaned towards acknowledging the likelihood that Chomsky is a lying, gaslighting Zionist scumbag. But I wasn’t sure until a few days ago, when the news broke that Chomsky had repeatedly hobnobbed with then-convicted-sex-criminal Jeffrey Epstein, including meeting Epstein together with pervert and 9/11 suspect Ehud Barak, apparently even flying on Jeffrey Epstein’s Lolita Express. Characteristically, Chomsky dissembled: “If there was a flight (with Epstein), which I doubt…” If Chomsky hadn’t flown with Epstein, of course, he would just say so. His mealymouthed evasions of the truth, whether of JFK, 9/11, Israeli occupation of America, or his relations with Epstein and Barak, have a vacuously passive-aggressive tone that is inimitably Chomsky-esque, but jarringly incommensurate with his reputation as one of the world’s greatest linguists.

Chomsky’s response to journalists’ questions about his relationship with Epstein began: “First response is that it is none of your business. Or anyone’s.” That is, of course, exactly what many people would say when questioned about their sexual activities with consenting adults. So why is Chomsky proffering a stock “don’t ask me about my sex life” response when questioned about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and his stable of underage prostitutes?

Methinks the gnome doth protest too much.

More troubling than whether Chomsky (statutorily) raped young girls is the question of why he was meeting with Israel’s top blackmailer of American leaders, Jeffrey Epstein, alongside the likely mastermind of 9/11, Ehud Barak. Barak resigned as Prime Minister of Israel in May of 2001 and disappeared from public view, presumably spending June through early September working on plans to demolish the World Trade Center, attack the Pentagon, and blame the carnage on Israel’s enemies. Barak’s work on the lead-up to 9/11 recalls Ben Gurion’s resignation as Israeli Prime Minister and disappearance from public view in June, 1963, after which he went underground and presumably orchestrated the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November. The moral: When Israeli PMs resign in the spring, get ready for something big come fall.

Ehud Barak was conveniently pre-placed in BBC’s London studios so he could go live an hour after 9/11, where he recited what would become the official story:

Barak’s coercion was aimed at the masses, who were traumatized by the horrific images they had just seen on TV and open to hypnotic suggestion—which Barak obligingly provided, implanting the pre-scripted official version deep in their subconscious minds. Chomsky, by contrast, was deployed a few months later against leftists and intellectuals, who were understandably suspicious and predisposed to mistrust the Bush Administration and its rush to war against Israel’s enemies. (That Chomsky’s coverup-propaganda broadside 9/11 shot up the bestseller lists in November 2001 was hardly surprising, given the realities of power in America’s media, book publishing and distribution industries.)

Many languages have one or more proverbs that roughly translate as “A man is known by the company he keeps.” By simultaneously meeting Epstein and Barak, Noam Chomsky has unmasked himself as a top-level Zionist sheepdog tasked with keeping the dumb American goyim cattle blind, ignorant, and cooped up in their pens, bleating out the platitudes they are taught by their Zionist betters. To say that the scandal will tarnish Chomsky’s legacy is inaccurate, because there is no legacy to tarnish. Chomsky is a charlatan and a fraud. He stands revealed as an agent of the world’s most genocidal and most systematically terrorist state—a state that has attacked the United States of America repeatedly since 1954, assassinating its best leaders, murdering its sailors and civilians, looting its nuclear arsenal and its treasury, and generally assuming much of the responsibility for its impending destruction.

So what did Chomsky talk about with Israel’s top blackmailer Epstein and 9/11 perp Barak? Did the conversation sound like Netanyahu’s talk with his cronies at Fink’s Bar in Jerusalem in 1990?

At the head of the table was Netanyahu. The group at the table had just stolen 5 American KG 84 cryptographic devices with the help of Canadians serving with the UNTSO on the Golan Heights, giving this Israeli-led cabal real-time access to all US State Department, Naval and NATO communications. This is a transcribed quote taken from an audio recording of Netanyahu at that meeting:

“If we get caught they will just replace us with persons of the same cloth. So it does not matter what you do, America is a golden calf and we will suck it dry, chop it up, and sell it off piece by piece until there is nothing left but the world’s biggest welfare state that we will create and control. Why? Because it is the will of God, and America is big enough to take the hit so we can do it again and again and again. This is what we do to countries that we hate. We destroy them very slowly and make them suffer for refusing to be our slaves.”

Chomsky’s contempt for Americans, and for the intelligence of his American audience, is every bit as palpable as Netanyahu’s. And Epstein’s. And Barak’s.

Maybe it’s time for him to make aliyah…and thank Yahweh that Israel won’t sign extradition treaties.

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