There's something satisfying about seeing Chomsky on this list after he spent 2021 saying that people who didn't take the COVID shots should be removed from society and left to fend for themselves in obtaining food.
I fail to see how being on that list implies anything. Imagine for example if you are a person with some status which implies that you are socially/politically active, and some rich folk calls you and invites you to have a talk at a dinner, would you instantly decline it? For example even if you dislike this class of people, don't you at least feel curious how will this meeting pass? Isn't it an interesting, even useful experience even if you know that you are going to decline any offer he will propose there anyway?
Your notions of why Chomsky was meeting with Epstein (or more than that, why Epstein was meeting with Chomsky) are touchingly naive, especially given everything we know about how Epstein influenced other MIT faculty via funding. It certainly casts Chomsky's constant inveighing against any form of conspiratorial analysis from the left in a new light, just as Chomsky's meeting with Ehud Barak calls his criticisms of BDS into question.
Why is that satisfying? I find it disturbing that someone who is otherwise well respected appears on this list.
I don't agree with his Covid vaccination statement (though I can relate to it), as there are always going to be parts of society that are not able to be vaccinated, so it seems unnecessary for those who abstain out of choice to remove themselves from society (N.B. his quote was that they should have the decency to remove themselves from society, not so much "be removed").
I don't respect Chomsky and think he has built a career out of building a "compatible left" which completely fails to meaningfully oppose and often even carries water for corporate and institutional power, of which their widespread support for various forms of COVID fascism like vaccine mandates was a particularly glaring example.
