Judging by the delirium that has accompanied the latest release of “Epstein Files,” modern Americans no longer have any standing to snicker at their seventeenth-century forebears who convinced themselves that witches were terrorizing Colonial Massachusetts. It was comforting to imagine such outbreaks of superstitious mania were a thing of the very distant past. How wrong we were. Because if the upheaval around Jeffrey Epstein proves anything, it’s that Americans circa 2026 are as ready as ever to plunge into the most sub-rational of mob frenzies.
At the moment, anyone who so much as exchanged some light email banter with Epstein can expect to face instant, ostentatious censure. For what crime, one might ask? The answer is seldom articulated with any precision, other than a general certitude that this depraved past association must attest to some spiritual (and perhaps literal) guilt. Mere proximity to Epstein, whether physical or digital—and no matter how fleeting the interaction—consigns the newly damned to be maligned as Pedophile Enablers, would-be Child Sex-Traffickers, or perhaps even culpable in child-sex criminality themselves. No actual crimes need be verified, nor even specifically alleged, for the castigations to come thundering down.
“Among the strangest casualties of the entire affair is Noam Chomsky.”
Among the strangest casualties of the entire affair is Noam Chomsky. Whatever one thinks of his contributions to linguistics, or his political history, it would be impossible to seriously contest Chomsky’s impact as a researcher, theorist, and advocate. But suddenly, we are being told that his reputation is in tatters and his life’s work tainted because he socialized and corresponded with Jeffrey Epstein. None of those rushing forward with melodramatic denunciations betray the slightest hint of an essential trait that Chomsky himself exhibited: a willingness to examine the actual facts and follow them to their logical conclusion, notwithstanding the opprobrium that may be unleashed as a consequence.
Here is that unutterable conclusion for present purposes: Chomsky was substantively correct in his judgments about the Epstein hysteria. That he should now be repudiated for this—by a parade of former friends and collaborators, no less—merely underscores how pervasive the hysteria is.