Forum Post: What is the big deal about Noam Chomsky? I don't get it

Noam Chomsky is a brilliant man. However, the natural course of his life contradicts the Anarchists obsession with him, and I do not understand why so many Anarchists put him on a pedestal. Chomsky is very quick to refer to Kropotkin, as well as Bakunin, and he should because these are our "Founding Fathers" of Libertarian Socialism/Anarchism, a political ideology that Chomsky and I both seem to agree on. However, Anarchists may want to put more weight on what their very own working class lives have taught them about this culture and this society, and view Chomsky, a man of Anarcho-brilliance, as a man who shares the same political ideology; and leave it at that. Our "Founding Fathers" of Anarchism have stated as clear as day that in order for a member of the middle class to become an Anarchist, the first thing he must do upon that decision, is to become a member of the working class. Unfortunately Chomsky, from birth, was never a member of our class. Although the mental capacity the man has to absorb every detail of every international ill and the names those involved from what seems to be since the beginning of recorded history with the Sumarians more than makes up for not directly being a man of working class origins and we know that he is a man that sincerly knows what he is speaking in favor of when he claims Anarchism, but that does not change the fact that he is non worker.

As Anarchists, we must leave the intellectual aspects of Anarchism to the middle class sympathizers and allow ourselves, those of us who are of working class origins, grow and evolve in the part of our movement that the workers were born and bred to participate in; the frontlines of organizing our class by any means necessary. Chomsky is a great speaker with the knowledge that seems to be that of an encyclopedia, which is better than perfect, for someone who has not 1 inkling as to what is and has been going on with governments and corporations in the world since the 2 were created. And no, I do not feel that Chomsky deserves any praise whatsoever. If you need to listen to Chomsky, or anyone for that matter to tell you to rebel or to teach you Anarchist politics, than you underestimate yourself. Look at your day to day life. As a working wo/man, you already knew these politics simply because they are common sense to us. You just didn't know that there was an actual name or ideology for what you were thinking.