Chomsky Before the Court of Logic

IN FOCUS, 30 Mar 2026

Asier Arias and Joan Pedro-Carañana – TRANSCEND Media Service

Noam Chomsky assumed that Epstein was not lying to him and could therefore respond to the accusations “in the court of logic and fairness.”

20 Mar 2026 – The total absence of evidence-based arguments—whether suggesting collusion, acquiescence, or culpable omission—is the defining hallmark of the statements issued by those seeking to distance themselves from Noam Chomsky amid the smear campaign following the Epstein disclosures. While some have sought to protect their own reputation through strategic withdrawal, others have been strikingly aggressive in a reputation-destroying crusade. It has been particularly disheartening, yet telling, to see figures like Vijay Prashad or Chris Hedges join this bandwagon. Their statements serve as the canon of this new genre: sentences handed down by judges who refuse to hold the corresponding trials. Why bother with the usual parade of witnesses, evidence, and allegations? “No context” is relevant; “there is no defense.” They speak as if it were a settled fact that Chomsky “knew about Epstein’s abuse of children” and simply “did not care”.

It is no accident that these statements share that feature, since the evidence in question simply does not exist. In fact, no plausible interpretation of the available documentation suggests that Chomsky committed the alleged offenses. The context of the few lines prone to distortion is clear: Chomsky assumes his interlocutor is not lying regarding his innocence. One must tortuously twist those lines to suggest they do not mean exactly that. Many simply bypass the text to join a bandwagon of gratuitous denigration that also targets fellow leftists while attempting to invert everything we know about Chomsky’s career-long defiance of power.

The way in which media outlets closely linked to Noam Chomsky have joined this campaign has been disappointing. One would have expected them to tackle the situation using the “Chomsky method”: going through the available record, attempting to separate the signal from the noise, and then applying basic moral criteria. Prior attempts to approach the record using this method were already available. Instead of continuing this work of factual analysis and rational argumentation, these statements have become a collection of virtue-signaling gestures with no intent to point beyond themselves, much less to contribute to an adequate understanding and assessment of the facts.

In the private communications at issue here, it is clear that Noam Chomsky assumed that his interlocutor was not lying to him and could therefore respond to the accusations “in the court of logic and fairness,” laying out the relevant “arguments and factual details.” To make things even clearer, Chomsky adds that he speaks from experience: “many years of having been accused of Holocaust denial, for example.” Anyone who wants to convince themselves that Noam Chomsky did not assume the sincerity of his interlocutor must also convince themselves that Noam Chomsky believed that Noam Chomsky was a Holocaust denier. Once again, we can also dispense with the “factual details,” the meaning of words, and the “court of logic” to happily join the wave of efforts to either impose or escape the logic of guilt by association.

“Epstein had claimed to Noam that he was being unfairly persecuted, and Noam spoke from his own experience in political controversies with the media. […]. Epstein took advantage of Noam’s public criticism towards what came to be known as ‘cancel culture’ to present himself as a victim of it.” The difference between these two sentences from the statement by Valeria Chomsky (Noam Chomsky’s second wife, since 2014) and the genre of guilt-by-association disclaimers is clear: not only do they respect the basic principle that words mean what they actually mean—and not, for example, what we might fear they will end up meaning after going through successive rounds of contortion on social media—but they are also perfectly consistent with the entire body of declassified documents and the thousands of hours of audio and tens of thousands of pages by and about Chomsky that make up the broader context of this sad episode. Chomsky was applying his lifelong distrust of media demonization and social cancellation, two pernicious social dynamics that he has always endured and is currently being victim of at a time when he cannot respond. The accused cannot be present in the court of logic, leaving only the accusers to shout their verdicts to the public.

It is not pleasant to join in the invasion of Chomsky’s private life (he always tried to keep it separate from his public activities), but a brief note could help shed some light on one of the smaller circles of that larger context. What we find in the personal communications that have surfaced with the declassified documents is disturbing—because it is difficult to imagine a friendly conversation between Diké and Adikía—but also predictable: Chomsky responds to Epstein with the same candor with which he always responded to everyone (he devoted several hours a day to this task), and Epstein does with Chomsky what he did with everyone else: cultivate contacts with influential people. This relationship took place during a period of Chomsky’s life when he was experiencing isolation, loneliness, and a bitter family conflict that left him estranged from his children: “a painful family dispute over money and inheritance, relating to trusts set up with his first wife Carol, who had died of brain cancer in 2008 […]. Epstein inserted himself directly into this crisis, offering financial expertise and emotional support.” It is not unreasonable to assume that this context could help unravel at least some threads of the case.

Chomsky made a serious error in judgment by trusting Epstein, an error that went so far as to get him entangled in a relationship that included financial advice—Epstein presented himself to Chomsky as a financial expert and philanthropist who sponsored scientific projects and institutions—and various kinds of help in personal and professional contexts (accommodation, contacts). This, as we said, is what is disturbing: that Chomsky did not see through this detestable character and flee in terror. Even when one considers the personal context superficially sketched, together with Chomsky’s trusting and generous nature, his willingness to engage with anyone who approached him, his almost limitless patience, and his well-known blindness to pop culture et tout le gotha, the error of judgment remains difficult to explain.

From our comfortable position—external, ex post facto—we may wonder—surprised, disappointed—how he could have allowed himself to be entangled. Assuming there were any, the moral consequences of the answer to that question would be, at the very least, ambiguous. But the decisive point here is that none of this would, after all, have any bearing on the crucial moral question, preemptively settled within the genre of guilt-by-association disclaimers: the alleged tacit consent of Noam Chomsky to Epstein’s abuses. The private communications that have been made public demonstrate that this accusation is untenable.

Chomsky, let us insist, made a serious error of judgment. However, that error does not make him an accomplice to a nauseating criminal network or, more generally, to the well-oiled machinery of patriarchal power, which he always criticized with his usual forcefulness and insight. We believe that the attempt to defenestrate Chomsky and portray him as a villain also results from a misjudgment, in this case stemming from the binary logic of digital communication and the prevalent Cainite culture within the left.

The widespread witch-hunt against Chomsky has led to extreme reactions (Chomsky is a “scumbag” with “low moral standards”; “Chomsky was never a beacon or a sage”), too often of the “it [is] difficult to respect Chomsky’s views on anything at all” and “ [we should] bury his legacy for good” variety. Perhaps the architects of the campaign do not intend to do so, but they are helping to rob us of two inexhaustible sources of understanding and inspiration at a time when we need them most: the writings of Noam Chomsky and his example of support and solidarity with the victims of capitalist rapacity and imperial policies—the solidarity of a man who put not only his meticulous analyses at the service of those victims, but also his body, in the United States and in Kurdistan, in Central American villages during Reagan’s terrorist wars and in Laos during Nixon’s, in Lebanon under Israeli attack and in a Palestine for which no Western ‘intellectual’ has fought with comparable courage.

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This article is an adapted English translation of the work originally published in Spanish: https://www.publico.es/opinion/columnas/chomsky-tribunal-logica.html.

Joan Pedro-Carañana is Associate Professor at Computense University of Madrid and a member of the Latin Union of Political Economy of Information, Communication and Culture (ULEPICC).

Asier Arias is a lecturer at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Complutense University of Madrid.

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 30 Mar 2026.

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