His 1967 essay “The Responsibility of Intellectuals”, published in the New York Review of Books, pilloried the American intellectual class for helping to sanitise their government’s actions abroad and the atrocities committed in Vietnam. The conflict marks a time of great fluctuation in the international order, which one might think would test the convictions of Chomsky, whose critical view of US foreign policy came to international prominence during the Vietnam War. When I spoke to Chomsky over video call from his home in Arizona, we spent most of our time discussing the war in Ukraine. The interviews span a period from March 2021 to June 2022, covering in particular the prelude to and first months of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In May, the American political commentator and linguist will publish his latest book, Illegitimate Authority, a collection of interviews with the political scientist CJ Polychroniou, primarily focusing on foreign policy. At 94 years old, Noam Chomsky is as vocal as ever.
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