Decoding the Tragedy of Noam Chomsky with Dr. Chris Knight

 In this episode of Varn Vlog, we welcome back British anthropologist and activist Dr. Chris Knight, author of Decoding Chomsky, to discuss the startling revelations surrounding Noam Chomsky’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. We go beyond the headlines to examine the deep-seated contradictions in Chomsky’s career, his historical ties to the military-industrial complex, and what these scandals mean for the future of the American Left.

Key Topics Covered:
The Epstein Revelations: Analyzing the surprising extent of emails and mutual involvement between the Chomskys and Jeffrey Epstein, including claims of financial advice and legal support during family disputes.
The "Two Chomskys": Dr. Knight explains the "firewall" between Chomsky’s public persona as an anti-militarist critic and his decades-long career at MIT, working within Pentagon-funded laboratories alongside figures he regarded as war criminals.
Science vs. Politics: A deep dive into how Chomsky’s linguistic theories—specifically Universal Grammar and the "language module"—may have served the interests of military command and control systems.
The Cognitive Revolution’s Legacy: How the shift toward "mind over matter" in the human sciences served as a counter-materialist program that undermined traditional Marxist and scientific analysis on the Left.

About Our Guest:
Dr. Chris Knight is a renowned British anthropologist and a leading critic of Noam Chomsky’s scientific and political legacy. His book, Decoding Chomsky: Science and Revolutionary Politics, has seen a massive resurgence in interest as scholars and activists seek to understand the collapse of Chomsky’s reputation.

Supplementary Reading
Grandin, G.  (2025, December 15). What the Noam Chomsky–Jeffrey Epstein e-mails tell us. The Nation. https://www.thenation.com/article/society/noam-chomsky-jeffrey-epstein-emails/
Brown, Justin (2026, February 17).  In defence of Noam Chomsky. (2026, February 11). Countercurrents. https://countercurrents.org/2026/02/in-defence-of-noam-chomsky/
Knight, C. (2026, February 6). The Chomsky/Epstein puzzle. CounterPunch. https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/02/06/the-chomsky-epstein-puzzle/
Knight, C. (2026, February 9). There are two Noam Chomskys: The one you love, and the one that was friends with Jeffrey Epstein. Novara Media. https://novaramedia.com/2026/02/09/there-are-two-noam-chomskys-the-one-you-love-and-the-one-that-was-friends-with-jeffrey-epstein/
Structural silence: Chomsky, Epstein, and the architecture of elite immunity. (2025, December 8). UniLiterate. https://uniliterate.com/2025/12/structural-silence-chomsky-epstein-and-the-architecture-of-elite-immunity/
Vadrot, F., & Giudice, F. (2026, February 15). The moment critical capital meets financial capital. Substack. https://substack.com/home/post/p-187860978
Hedges, C. (2026, February 14). Noam Chomsky, Jeffrey Epstein and the philosophy of despair.

Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to Bitterlake

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Welcome And Why This Matters

C. Derick Varn 0:48

Hello and welcome to Varmblog. And returning to the show is Dr. Chris Knight, British anthropologist and activist whose work is overlapping extensively on the history of Chomsky. Your book, Dicody Chomsky, came out a while back now. I'm actually trying to remember when it came out, but I feel like I've had it on my shelf.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

2016 and the paper two years later.

C. Derick Varn 1:18

Yeah. Okay. And um I also will be referring to an appearance you made on Navarra Media in February, as well as an article you wrote for Counterpunch in a series of articles going back to I guess Greg Grandin's kind of splitting of the baby towards Chomsky and the Nation in December. And as well as maybe referring to Chris Hedge's critique in February as well. I'm going to, you know, I'm going to preface this with we've known about Chomsky's relationship to Epstein for a couple of years, but the extent of which he was in the selection of the material that was released by the Department of Justice in America was surprising. And that includes chumming around pictures of him chumming around with Steve Bannon and maybe potentially fitting into a documentary defending Epstein. What I do want to be clear on is as of yet, and I don't see any way for us to know any more than what we already have, but as of yet, he has not been implicated in anything involving the island of any of that. But I was gonna ask you because I was fairly

The Epstein Files Shockwave

C. Derick Varn 2:57

convinced by your article on Counterpunch, and you know you've been working on Chomsky now for you know over a decade. What do you make of the extent in which he seemed to be a defender of Epstein significantly later than a lot of even other people who have you know mild implications or Chomsky's is not so mild in the files.

SPEAKER_01 3:28

Well, I think I'm as shocked as anybody else. It's hard to know what to make of it. And I certainly don't claim that my research that went into the book on Chomsky explains it. What I have been saying is that for Chomsky finding positives in somebody who is or was has been considered by Noah himself as a criminal, uh he's been doing that all his life because he's been working with war criminals at MIT, people working on chemical warfare and nuclear missile design and so on. When he was working in the electronics research laboratory of electronics on what he called linguistics, which I don't really think was linguistics at all. It was more like command and control of electronically organized weapon systems. When he was doing that, he he he was it was normal for him to be working with people that he regarded as criminals, and then and then finding all sorts of lovely things about them. So getting close to somebody who is kind of well known in the even in his own eyes as a criminal was second nature to Tomsky. But that doesn't explain this particular case, which has its own explanations, I'm sure. And we may we can discuss them. I know a little bit about it, but it's it's not my res it's not my area of research interests. I'm I'm much more interested in the thing called the cognitive revolution and Noah's role in all that, and the way in which he transformed so many very significantly, you know, uh critical disciplines, sociology and psychology and uh anthropology and archaeology, all those disciplines connected with what it means to be human were radically transformed by Noam. And that's my main interest, what was behind all that, and what and in what way were these fields of thought transformed. But yes, I mean it is absolutely shocking and surprising. I suppose particularly surprising because it turns out that the volume of emails between Noem and Valeria and Epstein is actually orders of magnitude more than has been found connecting Trump or various other people at Prince Andrew, for example, and Epstein. There was just a vast amount of involvement, mutual involvement and interchange, and and they're almost love letters. I mean, you know, Valeria's letters to Epstein were about her love and and Noah's and Noam backed that up. So it is really very, very shocking.

C. Derick Varn 6:23

Yeah, it it it it shocked me. I mean, there are academics around elite institutions like Stephen Pinker, who we'd known about, who I was frankly surprised how little were implicated, at least a batch of of information that we have, compared to Chomsky. You know, what I know we've known about meetings that he had with him as far back as 2023 that that was somewhat made public. Uh it also puts Chomsky as meeting with Epstein in some fairly questionable and elite groups like dinners with Woody Allen and and Ehud Barak, you know, his now somewhat infamous willingness to Powell out what's in Bannon, as I mentioned earlier, and maybe even appear in a documentary trying to defend Epstein. His email, I think what you know, the the one that struck a lot of people is the emails in 2019 suggesting that Epstein had been mistreated by the US press, and that the best path ahead was to ignore the hysteria around it. You know, on one hand, I I'm I'm with you, we we do have evidence that that uh Chomsky was you know historically somewhat trusting of elite institutions and elite figures, even when he you know knew or thought they were war criminals. But the level uh the the the most charitable reading I can give, and I'm gonna offer it first, is the level of naivete involved in this is to put it mildly concerning in itself, and I know a lot of people on you know certain left uh commentariates have you know said, oh, this confirmed their view of Chomsky, blah blah blah blah blah. But even me as a Chomsky critic, and I've been a critic of Chomsky for a long, long time, I was I was floored. So I guess to get to get a little bit along past the flooring. What do we know about the financial advice I mean he got from Epstein? And what do we know about must let's make it in a more general sense, Chomsky's relationship to elite circles in general prior to this revelation?

SPEAKER_01 9:19

Uh well, uh I mean Chomsky, of course, was close friends with John Deutsch, who became the director of the CIA. He was I I I got close friends with all sorts of military advisors of the Kennedys and later on. So, I mean he was used to you know moving around in very, very, very elite circles. And of course, it was because he was an insider within the sort of Pentagon circle in many ways that he was so effective as a critic of you know the the Pentagon

Why Defend A Known Criminal

SPEAKER_01 9:52

and the US military. He was an insider, he knew what was going on, he chatted with these people he regarded as criminals every other day, every other week, and and so that already explains a lot. As for financial advice from Epstein, well, I mean, we know, don't we, that it was in 2018 that Chomsky's son, um Harry, got very upset with the way in which Chomsky was disinheriting in many ways him and and Chomsky's two other children, his daughters, by cutting them out from any future royalties from his from Chomsky's political books. And Harry took Noam to court as as I understand it. Some of this may not be wholly accurate because it's a bit difficult to find out exactly what was going on, but there's no question that Noam needed legal advice and legal support. Now, when you say that, you say, poor man, he was in a bit of trouble with his with his son and needed some legal advice. I really don't see why that had to be a sex criminal, like Jeffrey Epstein. He could get legal advice from all sorts of places. But of course, looking at it from the other side, you can see why Jeffrey Epstein was very anxious to improve his image, shall we say, by having around him all sorts of famous people, well-respected people, people not known for you know wanting sex with underage girls, and you couldn't find somebody more useful to Epstein than this extraordinarily respectable figure, Noam Chomsky. And if you could and once you've once Epstein had brought him into his circle, he could then of course present himself as a as a as a as a as a figure of some you know some respectability and and and bring others. And so getting hold of Chomsky as the first sort of captive almost by by offering him all sorts of things, I mean, all sorts of lovely benefits, and in terms of travel and holidays and and meals out, and uh and and but of course advice. And so I think we have to say that in some ways Noam was a victim, but to to sort of talk about it, to sort of excuse it by talking about his naivety, I mean, how on earth can anyone think of Noam Tromsky as naive when it comes to establishment figures, figures of power? I mean, he he was the one who more than anyone else said we always have to look behind the scenes to find out what's really going on, don't believe what people say, look at what they do, do some proper investigation. I mean, he was he was brilliant at looking behind the the the appearances to what was going on underneath. So why on earth did he suddenly lose that when it came to this um terrible, horrible uh criminal? It's hard to know what to how to what how to relate to it all. It really is very, very hard. But what we do know is that his new wife, Valeria, was very anxious on his behalf, that he was very anxious to make sure that Noam was able to go ahead with this um um transfer of royalties to her and him at the expense of Tromsky's three children by Carol, his his his his wife who died in 2008. And I don't know, you know, obviously we've got to be quite careful. I mean, it's sort of blaming the wife isn't too sensible either. That's all too easily done. And of course, it's hard to know how to approach any of this now that Tromsky's out of action or having suffered this terrible stroke a couple of years ago, three years ago. But Derek, I mean, what do we do? Yeah.

C. Derick Varn 14:05

Yeah, it's hard to know. I mean, one of the things that can confound me about it is that Chomsky enters the playing field with Epstein so much later than a lot of other figures that are similar to him. I mean, like, I I have people who really follow the the Epstein files and its implications for Ivy League intellectuals with with public footprints may know about Epstein's relationships to John Brockman and the Edge group, which were a bunch of you know public-facing scientists who were supposed to bridge the the two culture gap. Brockman was a literary agent, worked with people like Stephen Pinker. There's kind of an infamous release of I think there were 68 photos that were at an edge group's dinner with Epstein there, and it you know it implicated all kinds of people, including your normal tech mogels like Bezos, Musk, Sergi Brenn, but also a lot of Harvard and MIT academics. And you know, Chomsky wasn't part of that, but these moves to get into academic circles as a way to get some kind of respectability and a kind of I don't know, mission for all the various I mean uh it's financial crimes that uh you know, in addition to all the other the sexual crimes and everything else. I mean, the the the a number of of financial crimes that we discovered in this in this red in this batch of information is kind of staggering. And these are and these are not just from you know random FBI interviews that are unfollowed up, they're in the emails and email logs. And what I find interesting about that is however, whatever you say about it, and a lot of these people are pretty deeply implicated in the files, that's relatively that's after they should have known better, but relatively early on. But by like 2017, 2018, 2019, you have to kind of know. Like if if you're in those circles, like this was not hidden at this point. I I am I guess that element of it is one of the most is one of the most baffling is how late the Chomsky seem to have been uh pulled into the circle, but also how thoroughly um we and I I guess you know you're right on the we we can't like the the the most positive and I don't even think of that positive take on Chomsky's naive really is hard for me to square with the access to these kinds of people that he already had. And that is kind of impressive. I guess what one point that you have made though, and in your article in Counterpunch that maybe we could talk a little bit about is Chomsky's ability to bifurcate his public personas, his research, uh, his relation to MIT, his like where he thought the line was with working with MIT, but where you know how he's going to avoid direct implications in military research, but had all kinds of indirect implications in the military research, etc. etc. etc. How do you think this kind of let's for lack of a better term, and I'm usually when you use dualism affected his ability to you know

Elite Circles And Legal Advice

C. Derick Varn 18:23

how much did he basically I'm trying to figure out the most charitable way to say this, but go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 18:31

Well, it's I mean, he he was in some you know in very significant ways too timing all all his adult life. I mean, he was uh extraordinarily clever in sort of it's it's hard to quite explain how the left could have been so blind, but I mean all the time he was criticizing the military, he was working for the military. I mean, how come the left just it was in plain sight, but they somehow didn't see it? And and because I think because the voice he used, the way in which he spoke, the identity he assumed in opposing the military, the US military in the Pentagon, was so different and almost unrecognizable compared with the voice he used inside the research laboratory of electronics, and when he was uh having, say, lunch, you know, with the future director of the CIA or any of his other people. I mean, there was they he was so successful in being sort of two people and not letting one interfere with the other. That was a critical thing that there was no, there was a like a firewall between the anti-militarist Noam Chomsky and the and the actively, you know, working for the military Noam Chomsky. There was there was so little in common between them that somehow he managed to get away with it. And it's only since you know, since there's these recent scandalous developments that everything's completely imploded because the whole world can now see the two Chomskis, see the contradictions between them, and and somehow this extraordinary sort of conjuring act of being two people almost invisible to each other, never mind, never mind to the rest of the world, uh, has completely collapsed. And and somehow we can see the almost the entire conjuring trick. And it's been obviously just so, so, so difficult for so many on the American left. I mean, in over over here in Britain, we we we we've never been so much under the sway of Chomsky. We've been more likely to be Trotskyists and various various versions of revolutionary communists like myself. But in the States, of course, being a being a Chomsky has been a really significant part of the very existence of the left. And and it all depended on that kind of conjuring trick, that that that that firewall concealing one Chomsky from his diametrical opposite. I mean, it is as as I think I said in the last interview with you, that the the thing that for all of us to get is that working for the US military is just not the same thing as spending your whole life working on you know as an activist against the US military. They're more than just different, they're diametric opposites, and it's hard to imagine how one can exist alongside the other. But in some ways, I've always felt that the two Chomskys kind of needed each other in the way, say with the magnet, the North Pole sort of needs the South Pole, the two opposites kind of benefit from each other, and it's it's an astonishing trick that Tromsky managed to work, but I don't think it was just because he was clever, I think it was very much very largely because the US military industrial establishment actually sort of in so many ways benefited from having somebody who was able to with with all the best intentions, I'm sure, on his part, fulfill a very strange intermediary function in straddling the divide, the political divide in the US society.

C. Derick Varn 22:12

Yeah, I I um I think about in some ways this this kind of dual nature and and a kind of hyper focus on an awareness of what you know the US role uh in the world was, and yet also a trust are it's not the right word, but a belief that you know some of these elite circles were in some ways still valid if for no other Reason than skills seems to come through. And I think it, I think it led to, I mean, I don't just think unlike Epstein, it's led to political mistakes for a long time. Somewhat famously, Chomsky's stances on Cambodia were very bad. And I always initially chalked that up to you know diehard anti-Sovietism and just you know belief in the common critiques of the Soviet Union at the time, a lot of which came from Maoists who were in the Sino-Soviet split aligned with Mao support of the Khmer Rouge. But the more you know now about you know the relationship of Kissinger to using the Vietnam-Cambodian conflicts as a way to even further drive a wedge in the Sino-Soviet split. I mean, when you have Marxist-Leninists killing each other, it's pretty good at driving a wedge. And I now have to, I've now been asking, like, how much is that also because at some level he at least partially trusted stuff coming out of the US State Department and military? I I've wondered about this a lot, and I don't think I I know we can't know. We don't know Chomsky's heart. We know you know that that's not something that I can figure out, and he's not he's not conscious enough for us to ask him, and I don't know that his close associates would necessarily tell us either. But I was thinking about that when I was reading you your writing on his relationship with Jerome Wesner, and I wanted you to talk about, you know, the the way in which Chomsky, despite you know, trying to nominally set up a firewall between his work and the US military, how much Wesner's probably used Chomsky's linguistics for his command and control systems and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 25:09

Go ahead. Well, I I I don't I don't think Jerome Wiesner was able to use it because as far as I can work out, it it none of it worked. None of it worked at all. But I mean there was this there was this huge, massive sort of hope that this young Jewish, you know, very, very clever intellectual might come up with something quite extraordinary. I mean, to sort of compare it with the Manhattan Project was is going too far, but I mean they certainly were hoping that that uh that uh in effect a weapon would come out of Chomsky's work. Not exactly a you know something which would explode, but but this if they would if Chomsky could come up with universal drama, which would then enable you know extraordinarily powerful ways of of you know exercising command and control over electronic weaponry, at that time nuclear weaponry, it could give the you know the US military an astonishing uh military advantage in the world. And so there was always that hope. And Tonsky sort of played along with that hope while at the same time being quite careful to stress that in no way was he going to roll up his sleeves and get out a screwdriver or any other sort of actual material equipment and start making making such you know such such devices. I mean, he he would he what he always said was that he's happy, rather like Einstein with the with the with you know eventually having some connection with nuclear weaponry, Einstein would work on, if you like, theory, physics, you know, and and Chomsky made it clear that he would work on some of the theory that would be required to actually make a you know make a operationalize the work and actually make a weapon, but he wouldn't go any further than that. And so he could he

The Two Chomskys Problem

SPEAKER_01 26:57

could always calm his conscience. I'm not making weaponry, I'm doing deep theory about about you know computational systems and and and relevant to all sorts of areas of of the study of cognition, you know, in all sorts of different f fields. So so I mean I I definitely don't think that what's so interesting is that even when it became absolutely clear that none of Chomsky's theories would work, it didn't make any difference to his standing, any difference to his value to Jerome Wiesner and uh and others, you know, with such extraordinary standing, you know, in in terms of you know organizing the US's nuclear weapons build-up. And then what we find, of course, is that Noam was reciprocating that support by, I mean, again, rather weirdly, trying to trying to trying to picture Viesner as a not exactly a pacifist, but uh but as somebody on the side of controlling and reducing the insane multiplication of nuclear weapons on on you know in in the states, uh to some extent by what the Soviet Union was doing. So it so somehow Trumpsky managed to pick put these people who were almost insane militarists, to put them into a different light and picture them as as kind of doves as opposed to hawks, which was just wasn't true of Vicena. And of course we've got to remember that Vicena was Chomsky's, I mean, in a big, you know, academic institution, you don't exactly have workers and bosses. If anyone was Chomsky's boss, it was Vicena, and who was responsible for them for the initial huge buildup of nuclear weaponry by by Kennedy and then subsequent pre presidents. So it so the issue is what what were they what was the Pentagon getting out of Noam if they weren't getting anything which would actually work technically? And I think they were they were well aware of Chomsky's appeal, uh political appeal, to so many people on the left, particularly in the States, and they realized it would be quite useful from their point of view, I think, to keep him in that position, because someone's gonna be sort of in some sense, I don't think, in charge of the left, but of being a leading figure, helping to lead the the left in the state. There was always going to be some kind of left. And if it wasn't, and if Chomsky wasn't a major figure and an inspirational figure for the left, who would it be? It could be somebody that the, you know, that the Reese and others wouldn't know who they were, wouldn't be able to have meals with them, wouldn't be able to sort of cope with them. It would be much less controllable from their point of view. It was having Chomsky kind of in charge, I'm saying in charge in a sort of obviously metaphorical sense. I'm not saying Chomsky was in charge of the left exactly, but he was he was probably the most persuasive and influential figure. Why not keep him there? Because then you're you've got somebody with a massive influence over the left that you uh within the Pentagon can relate to and meet up with and find out what they're thinking and have quite intimate conversations. Because there's no doubt that Chomsky was having intimate conversations with people that he regarded as war criminals and pretty much all his life.

C. Derick Varn 30:26

This this brings me to, you know, I I remember one of Chomsky's responses to you when he was more cognizant after your book first came out, which is that the Pentagon during the Cold War was just funneling taxpayer money for all kinds of basic science, and they weren't they didn't really care what the researchers actually did, which may to some degree from what I've read about the the funding of of this stuff in the cold war. I particularly think about Louis Manan's book about the the way co-war large really drove a lot of strange things in academia. I can also think about Gabriel Rockill's recent book, finding that like most academics had some relationship to either the State Department or the CAA, and I was like, duh, do you know how academic funding works? Clearly you do actually because you're an academic, but me like like I do but what I do find interesting about this is people will respond to that. We're like, well, this is guilt by association, and I don't think that's what you're doing. I actually, what I'm more interested in is even if you don't believe that that that these intellectuals and Chomsky is one, but you can think about Marcus's relationship to both the OSS and the State Department, you can think about all kinds of people, and even if you don't think that their their relationship to these governmental organizations was actually shaping their research, which is, I think, more of an open question than has currently been established. And I don't know how you'd prove some of it, unless you found a smoking gun in a letter from, I don't know, some CAA official telling somebody to do something. And I don't think those things exist. I find it interesting to think about what the purpose of having, you know, so many uh intellectual figures in these kinds of places would have been to the military and the intelligence establishment in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Because it wasn't just Chomsky. I mean, like, you find it in weird places like Terrence McKenna, Gloria Steinem. You can just go through it and Marcuse, as I mentioned. What's interesting about Chomsky is you don't find him as directly implicated in quite as many, like, oh, I took a grant from the OSS. But I do think we need to think about what the federal government was doing with having so many, you know, opposition to the American government kind of close to these military officials in academia during the Cold War and after. And uh you're right to me about Chomsky being so important. When I was a teenager, I mean, I think I was 13 or 14, and you went into a left-wing book, and if you uh a left-wing bookstore that wasn't an anarchist or Marxist bookstore led by somebody who was probably not to be vulgar, but your age, if you didn't go in one of those, you the only thing that you were gonna encounter that wasn't like a progressive Democrat writing a book that was probably about a campaign was all these little short books by Chomsky. I mean, particularly after 9-11, but like uh even in the 1990s, I would find these little books, they were just Chomsky interviews on American foreign policy. I think the what the time that I remember him focusing on was East Timor, and that would be your introduction to a kind of high-level critique of American militarism, and it was something that was kind of strangely culturally ubiquitous because we would treat Chomsky as if he was a anti-establishment figure outside of those things. We'd go and buy these little books in bit in like big corporate bookstores, and yet also, you know, Chomsky was interviewed in Zines. Chomsky's open you know, so-called open door policy meant that like all kinds of uh small you know publishers or whatever could could have access to him if he had time to talk to you that week, and it it meant he was everywhere. And I think I think it's interesting when you're like, well, who else would it have been? Now, the only other figure I can think about like that in that time period was Michael Parenti. And I'm not gonna go into all the specifics of Parenti's politics, and I'm not gonna do the Parenti versus Chomsky thing, but it is sort of interesting that those were the kinds of options on the table, because you know, you had Parenti who was defending the USSR, but also had actually some very strange opinions, and never even, I think, formally called himself like a Marxist Leninist. I'm not even sure if he called himself a Marxist. I'd have to go back. So I find this, I find this kind of like idea that there was zero pressure, and by talking about the zero pressure, we're like somehow tarring Chomsky by association. I do think we have to ask ourselves, what was the military getting out of that? Like you said, like that there was a reason they kept funding these people and and doing something. Was it just like, you know, I it could have been as simple as, well, if we have these

MIT Research And Military Hopes

C. Derick Varn 36:07

dissidents and we can just talk to them and we got intelligence? Like, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 36:13

Well, clearly, clearly the CIA and the Pentagon in the in the you know, the struggle against communism, as they called it, and the Soviet Union weren't just interested in physical weaponry. I mean, clearly they were interested in undermining communism, as they called it, and and and obviously that included Marxism. And I for me, I I I'm not really I've never been very keen on Marxism as a kind of religion. To me, the the the the product which Karl Marx and Frederick Engels were attempting to get off the ground was the product of connecting up the different um areas of science, including Darwinism, of course, but all sorts of other uh branches of science, preventing them from appearing to contradict each other and making it allowing them to come together into a more or less coherent image, and and then following science as as connected up. And to do that, of course, these days would be when you think of climate science and all the other versions of science, which we are so much in need of giving political primacy to, that would be absolutely revolutionary. And in my own view, whether consciously or not, probably not all that consciously, Tromsky's contribution was to cut science out of left-wing politics, to make sure that nobody turned to science so that you could have all these criticisms of all sorts of different things going on, but no revolutionary, creative, optimistic, realistic alternative. And how did Tromsky do that? Well, he reversed, or you know, got a very long way in reversing the whole materialist program that that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were so keen on. In other words, the very idea of conditions determined consciousness and the very idea that that material changes are needed in order to put give rise to changes in in consciousness. There's no revolutionary consciousness, which is just sort of in the head. You have to be connected up, you have to feel powerful, the working class has to feel confident in itself and its ability to win allies and become revolutionary, and becoming, if you like, aware of so many different branches of science which which makes sense. Well, um, Chomsky's contribution was to put mind over matter as opposed to matter over mind, and to actually directly turn upside down, turn on its head the that communist or Marxist project. And it all happened with this peculiar idea of a language module, a language organ inside the head. This this module then became, in addition to something which gave rise to a purely internal talking-to-yourself version of language, which is just obviously it's just thought, can't possibly be language if it never gets out of your head. So you had this language module, and then people like Stephen Pinker and so many others, I could list a whole lot of names, and you'd be familiar familiar with them, but what's the point exactly? But you you had a face recognition module, a cheek detection module, all these different modules, and that gave rise to this wretched kind of doctrine called it called evolutionary psychology. And I'm I'm now talking about the US version of evolutionary psychology. So the whole thing, so the head is full of all these different computer modules, they hardly even talk to each other, they each do their own sort of job. And and when something happens that changes politics, it's because one or other of these modules has got active. And and so you you had this, and this was this was called the cognitive revolution in the human sciences. So psychology, uh archaeology, human archaeology, and uh primatology, and all were all supposed to be influenced by this thing called the cognitive revolution. And the cognitive revolution was, I mean, it's obviously a pretty complicated thing, but uh completely right wing in its actual, you know, in terms of many, most of its recruits and advocates and as well as in its policies, was the idea that different modules get switched off and on, and as a result of that, you get changes in social relationships and all that and and and and history get his history is sort of the story of the changes introduced as modules get switched off and on. It's a completely mind over matter concept and the the exact reverse of Marxism. And it's been very, it's been very influential, particularly in the States. I mean, you know, cognitive archaeology, cognitive anthropology, cognitive, anything called cognitive, uh, you know, you you as soon as you see that word, you know that it's not materialist. Unfortunately, of course, it's of course, as I say in in the book on Chomsky, my book, uh, that there was a huge benefit in a lot of that stuff, post-war stuff, because at least it meant that people, you know, people, scientists were aware there is such a thing as mind. It wasn't a huge advance on the wretched behaviorist nonsense that you know, that there's there's no such thing as mind, that humans haven't got, you know, we just we just we respond to rewards and punishments as we do, as we learn things that rather like rats in a maze or mice in a maze. So there was all sorts of, in some ways, you know, positive outcomes of all that, but overwhelmingly it was it was it was it was reflected the fact the reasons the CIA and the and the American establishments supported all that, and it did come originally from Noam Chomsky, the first module to be respected and regarded as real was this language module. It it was anti-communist in its essence, in its and and of course, you know, to somehow remove science from politics was no small achievement. And every time, every time Noam was asked by some radical, oh Noam, you know, I I so I so want to know more about your linguistics. How is it going to help the cause, the you know, the anarchist cause, the socialist cause, the revolutionary cause, he'd always say, no, no, no, don't go there. It's sort of, you'd more or less tell them it's none of your business. And it and it wasn't their business. It was this the whole of his linguistics was, if you like, the business of, you know, the as I say, these pentagon-fronted scientists attempting to increase the control over their weaponry. And just for one more thing, mind of a matter means it sort of means religion. And uh, and in, I think it was 2014 when Tromsky gave a talk to the Vatican. He was applauded for his theory of the origin of language because it was it was creationism. That you know, it said that language suddenly emerged without any evolution, nothing to do with Darwin, just it just popped up suddenly in perfect form, in an instant. You know, the uh the the the assembled theologians and cardinals were were thrilled, and and that was a very important part of Chomsky's sort of objective role. I'm not saying he was set out to be a sort of religious leader, but in my own view, his his version of cognitivism was kind of religion. I call it scientism as opposed to science, scientism with a big capital S. It's it's uh, you know, and this language module effectively is the soul, it's the thing which makes us human, not the body. Bodies aren't intelligent, there's no such concept as body, Chomsky would often say. So you have mind of a body that goes with patriarchy, of course, because men have mind and women have bodies. You can go on forever of all the about all the implications of this absolute gibberish. Well what I'm sort of wanting to get across is the way in which Noam Chomsky didn't want any science at all to have political meaning, to have political relevance. He wanted to just in the end, you you had this complete disjunction, just you know, like a firewall between his politics and his science, between that in other words, between the two versions of himself. And insofar as that became sort of apparently authoritative on the left, it just meant you could be you could be active without being scientifically aware. And and whereas for me, and I think You know, if Marx and Engels were still alive, and you know, obviously there are plenty of Marxists around, but not very

Cold War Funding And Managing Dissent

SPEAKER_01 44:52

influential these days, the critical thing is that science needs to be given a voice. Science needs to be given all the different branches of science which are now so so critical to our survival of the species on this planet. Climate scientists, you know, first and foremost, but if they all link up with each other, they need to be given a voice because our future depends on that. I mean, if if if science doesn't govern politics, politics governs, you know, everything. And we end up with Donald Trump, who doesn't believe in science at all. But we and of course it's not just Donald Trump, it's so many other people that no longer believe in even in even that we're destroying the the climate every time we drive a drive a car, you know, you know, a petrol gasling car. So I mean to me the the if there is to be a future, somehow we've got to empower the sciences, help them connect together, help them to have to drive a voice. Clearly that voice would have to be a political voice, but it would mean science governing politics as opposed to the terrible alternative, which is politics governing science, which is increasingly what we've got now. Politicians just making things up, like like Donald Trump does. But it's not just Donald Trump, all over the place, people just starting to make things up.

C. Derick Varn 46:11

Yeah, I I find this maybe this is where I might drop the the argument about this whole like counter-materialism thing project as a coherent project and really focus in on something that I've always found strange about Chomsky, and you've talked a lot about, and we can maybe tie this into what what happened with Epstein and all that, and but is that Chomsky would insist there was a human nature, right? He would insist it, he would talk about it a lot in his political writings, but he'd also insist that we could learn nothing about human nature from his linguistics, which you know, until I read your book, actually completely baffled me. Because I'm like, but you're using linguistics to define what is human, you're saying it's innate in our brains, and yet you're also saying it's completely unrelated to our political nature. And I know you're fighting Foucault's and behaviorists or whatever, you know, but where then it's uh where then does our human nature come from for you, and how would we understand it? And I was thinking about that, I was thinking about Chris Hedges' article that he wrote around the same time as the one you wrote for Counterpunch, where he he said that Chomsky had a crit uh a clinical hyper-rationalist worldview that led to a failure of moral imagination. And I was like, I don't think that's right, Hedges. I actually think what's more interesting is this way in which he'd make uh assertions about essential things about humanity, cooperation, etc., etc. etc. But then somehow would remove it from discussions of any science for which have uh as a means of knowing what that was. And I find that interesting, and I don't, and I guess what I'm what what I want to uh what your work has led me to believe is maybe in trying to separate those two things, you know, descriptive claims about the world and some kind of set of universal moral norms or uh or whatever, it actually does have ethical implications for how you conduct yourself uh if you split it in half like that.

SPEAKER_01 48:37

Well, my view was and remains, although it's hard to be optimistic these days. Maybe you know, obviously, well there's life, there's hope, but my view is that if if we are to bring together the sciences, and and that means overcoming fundamentally the chasm between the natural sciences, physics, chemistry, biology, and so on, and the and the social sciences, we need to go back in history and prehistory to the point where there were not the that split, that that dichotomy between natural and social science hadn't yet hadn't yet formed. And one of the reasons I think that Noam Chomsky is so hostile to the very idea that language had an origin, an evolutionary origin, his his the way in which he he just makes a nonsense of the whole idea that there's such such a a discipline as as the study of how language itself evolved in our species, the way in which he makes a sort of joke of it with his ridiculous story about a cosmic ratio and a macrimutation, which without any precursor or warning or reason suddenly you know implants a perfectly functioning language organ in a single individual's brain where it from this individual starts talking to itself. I mean, that is such a complete nonsense, nowhere near what 95% of people who've ever thought about the origin of language think. And my own view is that actually to try to work out how language analysis did evolve, did emerge, it does take you to some amazing places and it and very much about forms of kinship which connect people together, forms of solidarity, uh, agency of females in addition to males, primary agency of females in many respects, because of course females would have been the um you know the the core of communities with with all the you know the strength of their different relationships and hunter-gatherer of you know camps, uh the buzzing, powerful core of the whole the whole place is where the children are and the parents are, and the men tend to be a little bit more peripheral because they're mostly out hunting at a distance. I mean, I I don't want to go into all that in any detail now, but the the origin of language was revolutionary. It was it was a revolution, it produced a species which was kind of radically different from all the rest of nature. We're clearly part of nature, but we're obviously quite clearly with the peculiar symbolic capacities and uh you know that we have, and language above all, but we're a revolutionary species. And if there is to be a revolution which somehow recovers all that and and and you know re-establishes some of what it means to be human, we would need a revolution not too different from that early human revolution, as as I call it. So I'm just saying the you know that putting science first would mean allowing the sciences to speak to each other, to connect up with each other, and that would be revolutionary. And the and the voice of those scientists, I mean, it's that's to me, it's so wretched that we have marvelously devoted climate scientists all drilling in the Arctic, the Antarctic, finding out all sorts of different things about different stages of the evolution of life on earth, right back to when when a huge um uh nearby planet collided with us and turned into the moon. I mean, there's so many amazing things happened. It's a wonderful story, it can be put together now with all the resources that we have, and it certainly needs to be put together. And somehow,

The Cognitive Revolution And Mind Over Matter

SPEAKER_01 52:13

you know, Chomsky's dishing of science is his idea that science does see he has this idea that science is little tiny little bits of information, little, little, tiny little steps of a sort of an advance of knowledge which you can't really connect up. I mean, that's the opposite of what we need today by way of a vision, a vision which has, you know, might have some purchase given the the you know what's actually happening as we speak, by the way. I mean, what's happening in Lebanon and Gaza and Iran and I mean the absolute cataclysmic disasters of a world run by uh idiots, I mean, just ignorant, ignorant buffoons and idiots, criminals, more or less criminally insane uh you know, figures. So we won't go into it right now, but I mean what's going on on it now is what happens when we lose our bearings, when we lose all sense of proportion, when we lose all uh concepts of what morality and civilization and and so on can you know can involve. And I'm not I'm certainly not blaming Chomsky for that for all that, by the way. I mean, and and actually I I would say the reverse. I mean, you know, we do actually miss Noam in so many ways. I mean, he was a, as I've said so often, he was a voice of reason in an in an increasingly deranged world. It's just that the limitations of Noam Chomsky were also far, far, far more damaging than most people on the left seem to have realized. We wanted to go way beyond Chomsky several decades ago to, you know, to get to a better place than what we're at at the moment.

C. Derick Varn 53:48

Yeah, I that's I think that's that's a pretty pretty strong point when I think about it. When I when I look at Chomsky, I also don't want to say like no, like everything Chomsky wrote is not condemned by his relationship and Epstein any more than it was condemned by his working at MIT. You know, there's there's still books that he wrote that that on US foreign policy in particular that really moved me. I I I did find a couple of things about him frustrating because you know, for all his syndicalism as a kind of moral norm, he was often a defensive institutionalist simultaneously, and that you know, we have to defend the Democrats to get this onslaught of even though they're terrible, that the opposition is worse. And that for for years that was my main complaint about him is just like, well, but this is a system which as long as you're bought into one of these sides, you're a captive player, and and there's not much you can do about these elites. And the other thing I think that you point out is it it does lead to this weird like political norms come out of just just moral convention, although you know for Chauncey somehow that moral convention was like almost a county and universal it's it's it does seem to me that there is some continuity between the kind of of uh of bifurcation that Chomsky was willing to do between science and human nature, between science and politics, that that also involves this bifurcation of him and elite circles versus him talking to like anybody. I mean the the thing about Chomsky is he really would talk to like I had people you know I know people who just email him and he'd do an interview to to nobody. I mean, he was incredibly generous with stuff like that. And it it was always hard for me to square. I think for me, the the the Epstein revelations has just got me really thinking about the way participation in these institutions, if you're not very, very aware and careful, can implicate you in far larger things, and bifurcating it or trying to separate things out doesn't really get you out of the problem.

SPEAKER_01 56:31

One of the one of the strange, sad things seems to have been that Chomps Chomsky was so much doing what you've been describing, so much responding to emails, staying up late, every last email had to be responded to, no matter who it came from, that he he wasn't really living much of a life. I mean, he when he he actually has been saying that recently, he's he's he's always been very lonely without much social life. I think his his children must have been a bit fed up with him. When's dad got around for us? I mean, he he he wasn't. And I think what seems to have happened really ironically and and sadly is that it was when with uh Valeria he bec he became befriended by Jeffrey Epstein that suddenly he realized that you could have fun, you could go out, you could have meals, you could go, you know, you could, you know, I don't know, all sorts of things which most humans take for granted as part of being alive, suddenly became given to him, or not exactly given to him, but I mean Jeffrey Epstein, I mean, evidently allowed Chomsky to, with his new wife, go places, do things, enjoy enjoy you know, aspects of life which most of us think, well, that's is part of being a person, but you know, actually alive, in ways which he hadn't done before. And it's just so so ironic and sad that it it it had to be with Jeffrey Epstein, a guy who was you know made money out of you know abusing underage girls as a as a living, and then and then obviously to you know wanting to sort of, I think with Epstein, sort of almost like run the world by having so many top, top, top, top, top people sort of you know, uh under his spell, partly blackmail, I think, because if obviously if these people have had underage sex and the only person who knows about it is Epstein, he can get them to do stuff. And it's just so so tragic that of all people Durham Chomsky should have sort of discovered life, real social life, real enjoyment with a with a with a young woman, um his his his new wife, and you know, uh under the auspices of that that sex criminal. I mean, what a what a I mean, I don't know, it's just it's it's it's it's it's kind of worse, better and worse than Shakespearean tragedy. It's kind of laughable in some ways. You can s you can sort of laugh. Sometimes it's hard not to, it's so ridiculous all of it. And yet, of course, it genuinely has been an absolute tragedy, not only for Chomsky himself, but for his family and all those who expected so much more of him. A real tragedy. And and he's now I know there are still people who try to make you know make allowances and I don't know, just say poor Chomsky was taken for a ride, he was too trusting, he was too too good a person, even, you know. No, not really. I mean, it was um it shows he I'll I'll tell you what it shows. It shows that that intellectuals are corruptible, that Noam Chomsky himself, while he could have stuck to his principles about the Vietnam War, he could have left MIT, said, I'm not doing all this stuff, I'm not helping the Pentagon to make weapons to kill peasants in another country far away. Obviously, had he done that, he wouldn't have been so influential, he would have been like most of the rest of us could have got a voice, but who's listening to that voice? And in a sense, by staying at MIT, he chose a sort of level of corruption. I mean, a level of getting the income, the good life that you can have by doing something which he knew was immoral. I no question he knew he must have known it was absolutely immoral because he keeps on denying that he was doing any military work. It's absolutely ridiculous. Of course he was doing, he was doing military work in the sense he was working for the military in an electronics lab who expected him to come up with some useful stuff, you know, which would be operationalized in this big building of the Mitre Corporation where they actually turned theory into practice. There's no question that the military wanted some usable hardware at some point in the future. And but Chomsky was, despite everything, he was kind of willing to be corrupted, but never corrupted so much as he was by Jeffrey Epstein when he and Valeria decided to get on his plane, you know, go places, do all this all this fun stuff, which you know he'd he'd not been able to do before. So, yes, I mean, it is very, very, very sad that turned out to be every bit as corruptible as all the other various intellectuals that he warned us against, by the way, of course, in that early New York Review of Books article, The Responsibility of Intellectuals, when he was urging people who are intellectuals, who've got all his privileges to take their responsibility very you know, very seriously. And he himself, at the end of the day, failed on that count, failed by his own standards calamitously. And and even in many ways, even worse in connection with Epstein, because it just turned out that when he was actually talking to Epstein, he had an almost a contempt for women who stand up for themselves. When he talked about the B-2 movement and described those women sort of complaining, that's obviously a rather mild word, uh, about being raped by their boss. He he said he called he uh accused them of hysteria. And but he only accused them of hysteria in a private message to of all people, Jeffrey Epstone. And, you know, so very, very, very sad. And there's so many people on the left in the States. I've been reading a few of their emails, they're just saying it leaves people feeling that at the end of the day, you can't trust anybody, and that is really, really a tragic outcome.

C. Derick Varn 1:02:25

Yeah, I would I would say we're definitely the left in the United States is definitely struggling with some severe paranoia right now. The uh some of it justified. Um but I think you know, thinking about what we talked about today, one of the things that I really think about a lot is the dangers of compartmentalization, both like socially, intellectually, but even between the spheres of knowledge, like science, activism, theory, these things all have to be in strong dialogue

Language Origins And Science In Politics

C. Derick Varn 1:02:57

with each other, with some kind of you know a commitment to a truth relationship, etc. etc. That you integrate, and also you know, if you're if you're constantly serving the people but not participating with them, you don't actually have skin in the game, and you probably don't actually empathize with them enough. You can't really stand apart. And if you stand apart, I I do think you know, I just one thing I do agree with Hedges about because of the trap of the great man, but you can really be easily manipulated because your your actual social and embodied and integrated self is so removed from you know for lack of a better term, the struggle. And I I if that's the tragedy I see in what happened with Chomsky, that that's a that's a pretty big lesson. I don't know. I mean, I guess I'll give you the the last question would be just you know, what is your responses to that?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:03

Uh well, I mean you put it very well. You you clearly know as as much, if not quite a bit, more about this these aspects of Chomsky and intellectual life and political life in the States and than I than I uh than I do. Yes, it's very, very sad. How do we respond? Uh uh again, uh very, very difficult time. Uh I I I'm I'm almost lost for words with all this. I you know, I I wrote a book which I think is a very good one, uh decoding Chomsky. I'm very proud of it. It's it by the way, I should perhaps say this it's um the the the the um hits on Wikipedia and various other sites on them on my book have gone up from about three a day to about seven thousand a day. Extraordinary. It's as if the book I wrote is the only one which measures up in any way to the cataclysmic events that have happened to destroy Chomsky's reputation. Something has to be salvaged from it all. And and as you you said, and I would echo that, I mean, his political writings are still very, very, very much worth reading, but as information, not as not as inspiration. There's no program, no project, no future, no nothing coming out of those books except very legitimate, very powerful, very moving condemnation. Noam Chomsky has been all his life in so many ways the moral conscience of the United States, insofar as America has had such a conscience. He's gone. And we're looking at what happens to a whole country, America, when there's absolutely no sign of any intelligence, conscience, morality or anywhere near these the summits, anywhere near the sources of state power. Quite an unusual situation for a country to be in, and of course, extremely threatening to our whole planet. Yeah.

C. Derick Varn 1:06:23

Well, thank you for your time. Hopefully, if we speak again on the show, it will be about the more hopeful elements of anthropology and not another to put it put it mildly, disaster and the myriad of disasters of of the the last

Lessons On Compartmentalization And Trust

C. Derick Varn 1:06:42

few decades. Uh thank you, Dr. Knight.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:45

Okay, Drake, thank you.

C. Derick Varn 1:06:47

No, have a good rest of your day.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:49

Yeah.