Police disperse protesters outside MIT's nuclear missile laboratories, November 1969. Courtesy of MIT Museum. All rights reserved.
For several decades Noam Chomsky has been the writer most widely read among leftwing and anti-imperialist activists. The numerous reasons are familiar. His writings analyse crimes of the powerful, contrast their Realpolitik motives with their euphemistic cover-stories, mock them with a sardonic wit, and provide documentary evidence from original sources. His critical, engaging approach has been extended to a broad range of topics – without parallel in the literature.
By the 1970s his political writings had gained an enormous readership from global anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist movements. Meanwhile his linguistics writings gained a specialised readership. Reviewing his book, Language and Responsibility, a 1979 essay began as follows: ’Judged in terms of the power, range, novelty and influence of his thought, Noam Chomsky is arguably the most important intellectual alive today. He is also a disturbingly divided intellectual….’ (New York Times). The essay noted a gap between his ‘highly technical linguistic scholarship’ and his political writings: ‘The “Chomsky problem” is to explain how these two fit together.’
