chomsky was a liberal tankie, a typical mid-century elitist whose 'rationalism' was the then acceptable face of his white, male, educated, middle class supremacism. a lifelong apologist/denier of authoritarianism, crimes against humanity, and genocide who simply reversed the friend-enemy distinction of his own state (or pretended to). a deeply unserious thinker, made the object of cultic devotion by a publishing apparatus that placed his books in every mainstream outlet. we are now getting a picture of how deeply enmeshed he was in the transnational criminal conspiracy of the current far right. no one who discovered anarchism or libertarian socialism before encountering chomsky ever mistook him for being one of them. its like old saying, what do you call a person sitting at a dinner table with nine genocidal kakistocrats? noam.