(Washington) The American linguist Noam Chomsky, one of the most influential intellectuals of recent decades, close to Jeffrey Epstein, expressed his solidarity with him in 2019 for the “horrible way” in which he was, according to him, treated in the media and public opinion.
Published yesterday at
In an exchange of emails included in the mass of documents published on January 30 by the US Department of Justice, dated February 2019, a few months before his suicide in prison, Jeffrey Epstein asks advice from his friend, accustomed to finding himself at the heart of fierce controversies.
“I would really like to have your opinion on how to manage my nauseating media coverage, it is going completely wrong,” wrote Jeffrey Epstein to the linguist and radical left-wing intellectual, then aged 90.
Noam Chomsky recommends that he keep a low profile, deploring “the horrible way in which (Epstein) is treated in the press and public opinion”.
“It’s hard to say, but the best way to react is to ignore it,” he explains, saying that he himself “experienced it extensively, but of course not on this scale.”
“What the vultures want is a public reaction, which thus provides a public opening for a wave of virulent attacks, many of them motivated by the search for publicity or hoaxes of all kinds,” says Noam Chomsky, referring to the media.
“This is especially true now of the hysteria that has spread around the exploitation of women, which has gotten to the point where simply questioning an accusation is a crime worse than murder,” he says.
Photos published in December illustrated the proximity between Jeffrey Epstein and personalities like Noam Chomsky, Steve Bannon, former advisor to Donald Trump, and the filmmaker Woody Allen.
Considered the founder of modern linguistics, Noam Chomsky has become a central figure of the 20the and XXIe centuries especially for his role as a committed intellectual, in his radical criticism of the foreign policy of the United States and Israel, as well as the media.
He has often played devil’s advocate in the face of an American society whose duplicity he denounces, through radical positions which have sparked controversy.
Cancellation of a hearing scheduled for Wednesday with victims
PHOTO JON ELSWICK, ASSOCIATED PRESS
A document included in the new wave of publications surrounding the Epstein affair.
A judge on Tuesday canceled the hearing scheduled for the next day in New York with victims of the Epstein affair who deplore that private documents concerning them had been made public by the American government.
In a letter to lawyers consulted by AFP, Judge Richard Berman justifies the cancellation by the fact that the Department of Justice quickly mobilized to remove this information, which is part of the new wave of some 3 million documents published since the weekend.
“The court is pleased, without being surprised, that the parties were able to resolve the privacy issues and that they did so quickly and in a manner that effectively protected the victims from any further harm,” he wrote.
Identities, photos… Some victims, around a hundred according to their lawyers, were outraged to see documents concerning them released without any precaution.
Sunday, the New York Times had notably reported the publication of around forty photos of naked young women, possibly teenage girls, from a “personal collection”.
In a letter to the judge dated Monday, Attorney General Pam Bondi assures that all “efforts are underway to protect the privacy of victims”.
“All documents whose withdrawal was requested by victims or their lawyers” have been withdrawn and the ministry “continues to process any new requests”. It also conducts “its own research to identify any other documents that may require additional cuts.”
A figure of the New York jet set in the 1990s and 2000s, Jeffrey Epstein was accused of having sexually exploited more than a thousand young women, including minors.
He was found hanged in his New York cell in 2019 before his trial for sex crimes.
