From The New Arab
Last week it was falsely reported across social media that the renowned left-wing intellectual and linguist Noam Chomsky had passed away.
Unlike most fake death stories on social media, the Chomsky one led to major progressive media outlets like The New Statesman and Jacobin running obituaries for the 95-year-old.
It wasn’t until his wife confirmed to the AFP that Chomsky was still alive that the premature obituaries were pulled, with apologies hastily assembled.
However, having read the obituaries, particularly the one in The New Statesman, which was written by the left-wing politician, intellectual and activist Yanis Varoufakis and titled The Chomsky that I Knew, I began to think of the Chomsky I knew.
It would be a major overstatement to say I knew Chomsky on a personal or anything other than a superficial manner. But, in the era of the so-called ‘Global War on Terror’, my newly politicised self turned towards Chomsky for a sense of understanding in what seemed like a world spiralling out of control.
Sam Hamad is a writer and History PhD candidate at the University of Glasgow focusing on totalitarian ideologies.