Nuance does not seem possible on the left right now, especially with regard to our political heroes. This has been apparent in the gatekeeping around the memory of Jesse Jackson, and the revelations of Noam Chomsky’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. In either case, to even acknowledge the imperfections and shortcomings of either, indeed their very humanity, is to invite attack from our friends on the left who insist on their moral perfection and political purity – indeed, their divinity.
It has been instructive to see friends tie themselves up in knots to explain away Jackson’s “hymies” and “hymietown” comments in 1984 as “not antisemitic,” despite the fact that they were explicitly antisemitic, and that Jackson meant them that way. Not only did it take him several weeks to apologize for the remarks after dodging responsibility, but they were absolutely consistent with an antisemitic narrative at the intersections of race and class that was then (and might still be) prominent in African American politics.
It is perhaps shocking to many on the left that African Americans, event great political leaders committed to liberation and civil rights, can be antisemites. It really is no different than people who insist that Jews “can’t be racists,” because we have experienced oppression and genocide. Neither is true. And one need only read James Baldwin – one of my favourite American writers and a great advocate for freedom – to know that antisemitism was (and perhaps still is) hardly unknown to some of the greatest advocates for racial equality. One can no more deny Jackson’s, and Baldwin’s, antisemitism than one can deny their genius and their political importance.
So too with the justifying, excusing, rationalizing, and explaining-away of Noam Chomsky’s documented relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. His spouse Valeria Chomsky has gone to great lengths to turn this relationship into a nothingburger, and a great many of our friends on the left have gone to great lengths to explain it away. The energy with which they are doing this, and denouncing even the mildest criticism as a “MAGA-inspired attack” has been intense.
Chomsky (always “Professor Chomsky” to his most rabid champions, so please address me as Dr. Friedman for now on) is certainly a great thinker of the left and an important linguist. I have not always been a great admirer of his interventions in cultural theory (I land pretty squarely on the post-structuralist side of the debate), but I do recognize some of his work, notably Manufacturing Consent, as absolutely essential to anti-capitalist and anti-totalitarian political thought. I assign a chapter in one of the courses that I teach. I endorse it. Chomsky’s intellectual legacy is secure.
It is also well-documented that he had a personal and professional relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, even after the latter’s conviction for sex trafficking. It is clear that, even if he did not initiate this relationship, he certainly sought it out. After all, he referred to Epstein as a “highly valued friend and regular source of intellectual exchange and stimulation.” And Valeria Chomsky noted that they sought Epstein’s assistance in financial transactions. None of this means that he participated in Epstein’s sex-trafficking activities, but there is a good chance that he knew about it.
While there is no hint of criminality here, it is clear that this eloquent opponent of capitalism and totalitarianism was nonetheless comfortable socializing with the agents of crony capitalism, like Epstein, and champions of totalitarianism, like Steve Bannon, and in not looking too closely at the sexual exploitation of young women and girls. It is clear that Chomsky sought personal and friendly connections to the centres of power he publicly opposed. This is hardly unusual; history is replete with great thinkers and advocates of freedom and justice who were willing to sell at least part of their souls for a place at court.
None of this means that Chomsky is a fraud, or that Jackson was evil; it merely means that they were and are complex and inconsistent. In other words, it means that they are and were human beings, with human failings, and not beings of divine perfection deserving of our uncritical veneration. Indeed, if their accomplishments are to mean anything at all, we must approach them critically, as the long-forgotten Enlightenment once demanded of thinking people, and to accept and inspect their shortcomings. There is a lot to be learned, for example, from a man like Jackson who could speak so eloquently and work so tirelessly for freedom and equality, while also harbouring casual, uninterrogated antisemitic beliefs. Acknowledging his fallibility does not undermine his accomplishments; rather, it can enhance them. It turns out that one does not have to be a being of divine perfection to pursue justice.
Yet, in the age of social media, when politics and political commitment is a performative act for consumption in the online ideological economy, such nuance does not appear to be possible. We demand perfection of our leaders and intellectual pathfinders, as we do of our artistic heroes. We wash our hands of Nick Cave because his opinions on the State of Israel differ from ours, laying his art on the trash heap, devoid of aesthetic value. We insist that Karl Marx’s virulent antisemitic screed “Zur Judenfrage” can’t possibly be Jew-hate because he was one of the greatest political philosophers of the 19th century and, besides, “he was Jewish.” (He was not.)
Our heroes cannot tolerate imperfection, or disagreement, or critical examination; our politics much be pure, and thus eternally self-sufficient and unchanging, and we will defend that purity like crusader knights in the Holy Land. And we demand that everyone acknowledge the perfection of the stars of our political firmament or condemn them as heretics.
This is one reason why the totalitarians won the revolution, and why the left lost so disastrously. One might even venture the observation that the left, certainly in the United States, barely exists at all, except as an impotent theatre of performative virtue feeding the algorithms of corporate social media. Rather than embracing disagreement, heterodoxy, and accepting the shortcomings of both comrades and leaders, we have been reduced to defending the purity of our gods.
I guess Gustave Flaubert was right: “Il ne faut pas toucher aux idoles, la dorure en reste aux mains.” But that is hardly a formula for an effective politics.