The influential American linguist, known for his opposition to the Vietnam War and his close ties to left-wing leaders like Fidel Castro, had already publicly acknowledged in 2023 that he had met Jeffrey Epstein.

What is a libertarian intellectual with anarchist leanings doing alongside a sex offender? The presence of the renowned American linguist Noam Chomsky in photographs of the Epstein affair released this week by American Democrats has sparked disappointed reactions online. These images, made public without mention of a date or context, notably show Noam Chomsky on a plane with the disgraced financier, without any explanation of the circumstances of their meeting.

While these photographs are new, the relationship between the two men had already been made public. Chomsky himself had acknowledged meeting Epstein in a 2023 interview with the Wall Street Journal. The intellectual described the meetings as infrequent and motivated by Jeffrey Epstein's extensive network. Since then, Noam Chomsky has not spoken publicly on the subject. Subsequently, the release of Epstein's diaries revealed meetings with academics, including Chomsky, in 2015 and 2016.

Despite the silence of the man in question, now 96 years old, comments have never ceased regarding his possible ties to the financier. "It's particularly painful to see," commented French lawyer Juan Branco on X. "Noam Chomsky, the world's most famous critic of power structures, photographed at 9,144 meters altitude with Jeffrey Epstein," reacted another internet user.

Considered the founder of modern linguistics, Noam Chomsky asserted in his book Syntactic Structures (1957) that language is an innate faculty and that a "generative grammar," a set of universal rules of language, is inscribed in the human brain. But he became a central figure of the 20th and 21st centuries primarily for his role as an engaged intellectual, particularly for his radical critique of the foreign policy of the United States and Israel, as well as the media.

This opponent of the Vietnam War and the American invasion of Iraq also forged close ties with Latin American left-wing leaders such as Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, and the current Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. For many years, the American was a member of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and is currently a professor emeritus of linguistics at the University of Arizona. His reputation as an anti-establishment intellectual has been tarnished by the release of photographs of him alongside Jeffrey Epstein.