Noam's naivete, Valéria's veracity

No last name should be needed, if you’re in my general political circles and you’ve been following the revelations about one of the big issues from the Epstein files’ recent revelations.

Anyway, to now mention that name, this is a follow-up to

my original piece here about Noam Chomsky’s appearance in the Epstein files, mainly with a pull-out from one section of an update to a Blogger post I started a day later.

Valéria, of course, is Noam’s wife, Valéria Chomsky.

A week ago, as more and more shit hit the fan, she wrote a public relations piece, to call it what it is, which was run in full

Noam Chomsky's wife responds to Epstein controversy

by Aaron Maté on his Substack.

Here are some of my thoughts.

As stated there, and in restacking Aaron’s Substack, since he has not limited comments to paid subscribers but has turned them off, period?

This doesn’t talk about Noam’s PR advice to Epstein and other things. At a minimum, it looks like a degree of whataboutism or hand-waving. In maximum, it walks, talks and quacks in the neighborhood of gaslighting. And shock me that Aaron has disabled comments on his Substack.

Gack.

That said, some specifics of the “gack.”

First:

As is widely known, one of Noam’s characteristics is to believe in the good faith of people. Noam’s overly trust[ing] nature, in this specific case, led to severe poor judgment on both our parts.

Really? The author of “Manufacturing Consent” was too trusting?

And this:

Epstein began to encircle Noam, sending gifts and creating opportunities for interesting discussions in areas Noam has been working on extensively. We regret that we did not perceive this as a strategy to ensnare us and to try to undermine the causes Noam stands for.

Valeria, you yourself called Epstein “the one.” In 2017.

Then, some possible selective amnesia, or handwaving further, or more gaslighting, with this:

Noam and I were introduced to Epstein at the same time, during one of Noam’s professional events in 2015, when Epstein’s 2008 conviction in the State of Florida was known by very few people, while most of the public – including Noam and I – was unaware of it. That only changed after the November 2018 report by Miami Herald.

In reality, a quick teh Google shows the Daily Mail published an interview with Virginia Giuffre in 2011. Gawker published his “little black book” in 2015. (Sidebar: The Peter Thiel-funded lawsuits against Gawker hit the fan a year later.)

As for the insinuation that the Chomskys cut their ties and their losses after that 2018 reportage? A late 2025 piece from the same Miami Herald begs to differ:

With Jeffrey Epstein’s reputation in tatters following a 2018 Miami Herald investigation into his sex crimes – and how he evaded serious consequences – the financier hit on a plan: He would produce a documentary to present himself in a favorable light. He had several ideas about who could appear on it and provide favorable testimonies, emails and phone messages show. And one of the first friends to allegedly give Epstein the thumbs up was famed left-wing academic Noam Chomsky. “Spoke to Chomsky, he’s all in,” Epstein wrote in a text message to an undisclosed associate.

Pretty straightforward. If that’s not enough? This:

[T]he Herald’s findings reveal that Chomsky continued to correspond with him at least until the summer of 2019, even after the Herald’s series led to widespread outcry and the Justice Department publicly announced a fresh probe.

Straightforward.

In reality, per Chris Knight’s piece, Chomsky surely knew that the oleaginous Alan Dershowitz negotiated getting 2006 charges against Epstein dropped, as far as the Chomskys taking the issues seriously. And, Epstein also met Dersh at Harvard as well as Chomsky. At the same time, as Harvard Crimson admits, the university refused to return Epstein’s money in 2006.

So, this idea that Noam would assume that because Epstein had “done his time,” he was rehabilitated, is also bullshit. That’s bullshit on his part, though, not Valeria’s. As for the rich and powerful’s ability to get matters criminal squashed, Noam is, once again, a fake leftist if he doesn’t take that into account and hasn’t done so before.

As for Valéria’s insinuation that she and Noam are all alone in the darkness?

She was quick and hot to react two years ago when certain leftists like Yanis Varoufakis were rushing like good little online-world tribalists to be “first” or nearly so to talk about Noam’s alleged death and how close they allegedly were to him.

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To background Knight, from his tagline at that Counterpunch piece: Professor Chris Knight is a senior research fellow at University College London. His book Decoding Chomsky: science and revolutionary politics came out in 2016. The Revolutionary Origins of Language will be published by Yale in 2026.

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I will extract all the add-ons to my Blogger piece into a second piece there, and use some of it, with a different angle, for a third piece here, sometime next week.