Event: Michael Tracey

Michael Tracey on the hysterical cancellation campaign following the Epstein Files. Following the release of the Epstein Files, anyone who had any kind of interaction with the disgraced financier, or whose name fleetingly appears somewhere in the hundreds of thousands of emails, has been declared guilty by dint of association alone. Among those caught up in the witch-hunt is the 97-year-old left-wing academic, Noam Chomsky, who corresponded with Epstein after his release from prison. Journalist Michael Tracey joined Brendan O’Neill on The Brendan O’Neill Show to discuss the increasingly dangerous fallout of the Epstein panic and its dire implications for justice and due process. What follows is an edited version of that conversation. You can watch the full thing here. Brendan O’Neill: It has emerged that Noam Chomsky had a connection to Jeffrey Epstein. What does the reaction to this reveal about the climate surrounding the Epstein files? Michael Tracey: Noam Chomsky is one of the most bizarre casualties of all this. Whatever you think of the man, his political analyses or his theories of linguistics, I think it’s inarguable that he’s one of the most titanic intellectual figures of our time. The deranged, utterly despicable onslaught of defamatory nonsense being spewed about him is all the more ugly because he’s 97 years old and has been incapacitated by a stroke since 2023. He can’t respond or communicate. My understanding, from having spoken to people who are aware of his condition, is that he has a limited ability to comprehend external stimuli and circumstances. So theoretically, he may well learn of the garbage that’s being hurled at him in an attempt to destroy his reputation, but will be unable to respond to any of it, which is just a heinous position for anybody to be in. For Chomsky to be…