An Open Letter to Noam Chomsky
Dear Mr. Chomsky,
There’s very little chance that you will remember me, but we met briefly years ago at your home in Massachusetts. Perhaps you might recall your former assistant Charngchi, originally from Taiwan? He’s the one who invited me up to Boston one weekend during the summer of 2010 to help cover an immigration protest for the anarchist radio show we were working on together at the time. By the way, this daily show and our analysis of current events was very much informed by your work. When Charngchi told me that there was a possibility to see the great Noam Chomsky’s house I was of course excited at the prospect of getting a glimpse of where the magic happened. I remember falling asleep to your three and four hour long talks on youtube back in 2009 soon after I first discovered your work. It was so refreshing to hear someone so calm yet so radical and uncompromising. I also recall working at the Philadelphia airport on the late shift and finding a quiet cubbyhole to curl up in with one of your books when there was nothing much to do. Your writings and talks have been an important part of my life. The centrality of your thought and analysis to the political and intellectual development of folks like myself is a major reason why I’m reaching out to you this way. Your work has been especially valuable in terms of my ability to see through harmful and misleading mainstream media propaganda; especially now as someone managing chronic illness during the ongoing covid pandemic, this ability to discern fact from capitalist propaganda has likely saved my life. Sincerely, I thank you.
I am reaching out to you in the spirit of cross cultural dialogue and seeking mutual understanding. With Trump looming on the horizon again, I believe it is important that we intentionally seek dialogue across racial, ethnic and class lines — especially those of us who are threatened by Trumpism. The need for dialogue is complicated by the fact that we are living in the era of difficult and sometimes painful conversations that can no longer be avoided. This open letter concerns such topics. Because of the potentially fraught nature of these subjects I hope you’ll bear with me as I ease into it and hopefully thoroughly explain my point of view and my intentions.
I realized that this letter to you was necessary while reflecting on the origins of my socially engaged artistic practice. Really, it’s quite incredible. It was at your home in 2010 where I discovered the work of an individual whose understanding and analysis has functioned like a lighthouse guiding me through the dark and turbulent seas of these troubled times. Someone likely sent you a copy of Victor Klemperer’s ‘The Language of the Third Reich’ because he was a philologist who, like yourself, was also very interested in understanding the role language plays in our lives. Charngchi saw I was interested in the book and said, “people are always sending him random stuff that he never gets around to reading, so you might as well keep it.”
Years later, my interest in Klemperer and meditating specifically on the words of his wife (“A Red Indian fate” is how she described the situation for Palestinians) led me to the Dresden Mayan Codex that lives at the same university where Klemperer used to work as a professor of Romance languages. Because of my longstanding interest in decolonization and Indigenous solidarity, this felt significant. While writing this letter to you I remembered your wise and prescient words about the role of Indigenous people in today’s world:
All over the world, it’s the Indigenous communities trying to hold us back: First Nations in Canada, Indigenous people in Bolivia, Aborigines in Australia, tribal people in India. It’s phenomenal all over the world that those who we call ‘primitive’ are trying to save those of us who we call ‘enlightened’ from total disaster…
With your work as part of a general radical foundation, the work and thought of Klemperer has given me the language I need to manifest the perspective I’m now consciously embodying, that of the “subaltern” — those within the imperial core who are generally overlooked, demonized, misrepresented and tossed to the wolves. This accurately describes Indigenous people on their reservations, those consigned to ghettos, homeless folks, the neurodivergent, sex workers, some strata of queer people, and generally anyone who has been thrust to the fringes of society. It is this perspective that I hope you are open to engaging with, especially as you have inadvertently been part of this journey I’ve been on to develop and articulate this perspective.
Mr. Chomsky, both of us were born and raised in Philadelphia, an interesting city with many challenges. My perspective is very much informed by growing up in this area. Unfortunately, Philadelphia remains the poorest large city in the country and is a clear example of the pernicious nature of racial capitalism. Philly is a place where subalterns are routinely created, exploited and then sacrificed on the altar of capitalism. Below are the two major definitions that are relevant here:
A subaltern is someone with a low ranking in a social, political, or other hierarchy. It can also mean someone who has been marginalized or oppressed.
In postcolonial studies and in critical theory, subalterns are the colonial populations who are socially, politically, and geographically excluded from the hierarchy of power of an imperial colony and from the metropolitan homeland of an empire.
Another person who was born here in Philadelphia was the author and historian Noel Ignatiev who co-founded the Race Traitor Journal. For an understanding of some of the issues underlying my particular perspective take a look at the Bridges and Boundaries chapter of the first issue of Race Traitor. Presented as a series of email exchanges, this correspondence reveals the source of the main tensions that have historically crept up between the Black and Jewish communities (hint: it rhymes with lightness). These are tensions I cannot ignore, yet when folks like myself raise these issues, we’re almost always browbeaten with spurious charges of antisemitism. During this time of a conspiracy of silence regarding an ongoing genocide, and during this time of reckless Zionist machinations in support of the state of Israel, these tensions must be confronted and not swept under the rug. I hope to explain from my subaltern perspective why this ongoing conspiracy of silence in particular is so harmful to those being victimized.
The above definitions of what it means to be a subaltern perfectly describe large swathes of the poor and disenfranchised here in Philadelphia suffering under our uniquely local brand of racial capitalism, but they also describe the reality for folks like Paula Waisman, a young woman I recently discovered during my artistic practice-related independent research. It is her photo that I have superimposed against the photo I took of your study in 2010.
Paula Waisman was born in an impoverished shtetl in rural Poland, firmly on the fringes of European power and prestige. She was ensnared by a notorious sex trafficker in Warsaw who was attempting to take her to Mexico when they were both arrested in Berlin in 1925 with fake passports. Her story was first revealed to the public during a 2012 art exhibition in Berlin.
The importance of discovering this young woman’s story at this time cannot be overstated, mainly because her story aligns with the struggles of colonized and systemically marginalized people today. Her life and story are a reminder of those who have been ignored and swept aside because their lived experiences are inconvenient, like the sex workers whose exploited labor provided Donald Trump’s grandfather with the resources he needed to build the family business and name. Before I discovered this young woman’s story and the associated history I struggled to find the words to address you about this unfortunate Epstein business. Yet this piece of hidden history is a way forward towards understanding what it means to grapple with uncomfortable issues and stand in solidarity with the oppressed. This hidden history calls on us to center the most vulnerable and oppressed despite our anxieties, despite social pressure and, yes, despite our justified fears of feeding into antisemitic narratives. All of these concerns once hindered the respectable and bourgie Western European Jewish communities from acknowledging the fate of tens of thousands of Jewish women and girls like Paula Waisman who were being trafficked from Eastern Europe to brothels and arranged marriages in the Americas. These women and girls were the poorest of the poor and were considered disposable by the well educated and well appointed. They were the subalterns of both Europe and of the European Jewish community. They were so easily overlooked and disposable that it took nearly fifty years for their mainstream coreligionists to muster the courage to address the crisis. I believe the reasons why privileged communities avoided the trafficking issue for so long were similar to what we’re seeing today with the conspiracy of silence around political Zionism. Folks back then were justifiably worried about signal boosting harmful narratives or drawing attention to Jewish wrongdoing lest they give antisemites more ammunition. However, it should be self-evident that antisemitism will not be effectively combated by ignoring or rationalizing wrongdoing, exploitation and criminal behavior within the Jewish community and leaving people to draw their own conclusions while living in an inherently antisemitic society.
As an independent researcher, what I have noticed through examining this “hidden history” of the rampant sex trafficking of impoverished Jewish women and girls is that it sounds all too familiar. What we’re dealing with concerns the underbelly of Western civilization in general, and it’s a topic that is not addressed nearly enough. Pimping and hoeing, being exploited, being an exploiter, and the need to rely on one’s own flesh to survive — these are all aspects of the exploitation that’s deeply ingrained in our society going way back. The issue of sexual exploitation is of course not specific to the Jewish community and it’s important to reiterate this during these sorts of discussions because, yes, some antisemites have certainly tried to use Epstein for the purposes of spreading hatred. In reality, Epstein was a symptom of a much bigger problem that often goes undiscussed. People don’t like to talk about it, but if we look back at history we can see how the patriarchal pathology that’s buried deep within Western society manifested here as soon as Columbus stepped foot in the “New World”.
Less known is that Columbus and his men raped, abducted, traded, and sold for sex Indigenous women and girls. According to Columbus’s notes, men “seized about five women each as their concubines, while others marauded across the island in search of villages with gold.”
Columbus wrote about the Taino, the first Indigenous people he encountered. “A hundred castellanoes [Spanish coin] are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm … there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls. Those from nine to ten [years old] are now in demand.”
Mr. Chomsky, you’ve spoken very eloquently about the plight of Native Americans and Indigenous people in general. Maybe you’re aware of the statistics, like how Native Americans are around 2% of the population but 40% of the sex trafficking victims, the vast majority impoverished women and girls:
In 2015 the National Congress of American Indians found that an estimated 40 percent of women who are victims of sex trafficking identify as American Indian, Alaska Native, or First Nations. Phoenix, Arizona — which has a large Native community — has also been identified as a major jurisdiction for trafficking for sexual exploitation by the US Department of Justice. Despite this evidence, “Native Americans are largely overlooked as victims,” explained Cindy McCain, co-chair of the Arizona Human Trafficking Council.
The situation with the Lev Tahor sect in Guatemala is a good example of how we need to find the language to criticize what needs to be criticized without trafficking in antisemitic narratives. This tragedy shows us how people within the Jewish community are also being harmed and brutalized by this patriarchal pathology; this conspiracy of silence around issues of sex doesn’t do them any favors either. When folks feel discomfort over these issues being raised they should remember Paula Waisman and the many young women like her who were denied support for so long because of privileged people’s inability to face harsh and uncomfortable realities.
The issue of the sexual exploitation of poor people and vulnerable minorities is one that is easy for privileged people to overlook and ignore and I can understand why. It can be messy. It can be difficult. And it can be embarrassing to face these things, especially when people from our own communities are complicit. But as James Baldwin once said, nothing can be changed until it is faced. I have my own personal history with this subject going back nearly twenty years and this is why the Paula Waisman story and related history has been so compelling to me. When I look at Paula’s photo she seems to say, “I understand…”
After aging out of the foster care system at 21 years of age I found myself working at an adult bookstore after scrambling to find a job, any job once all my DHS benefits were abruptly cut off. A few short years later I was in Germany being sexually exploited in the widespread and pervasive industry they have there shortly before my 23rd birthday. Like many of those eastern European Jewish women and girls, I made a conscious choice to accept exploitation in order to avoid a possibly worse fate. Of course I was also a bit delusional about how much choice I actually had in the matter. I’m sharing this personal information not only because baring it all is a key aspect of my artistic practice, but because I want to highlight that this open letter is not about moralizing. I’m certainly not approaching this topic as someone up on some moral high horse, far from it. This is more so about recognizing a very significant aspect of oppression under capitalism and colonialism that often gets swept under the rug. These issues are usually swept under the rug and ignored because they concern sex and because they concern individuals who are the most powerless in society. However, I cannot ignore these difficult subjects because these subjects concern my life, my family, and people who come from where I come from. We’ve been ignored and swept aside for far too long. Privileged people’s feelings and anxieties have been prioritized over our material realities for far too long.
Mr. Chomsky, as someone who has been a principled critic of systems of oppression, I know that you have not shied away from difficult conversations in the past. Regarding the matter at hand, I can appreciate your reluctance to engage in a sordid media frenzy simply for the sake of satisfying people’s curiosity. I can appreciate that you most likely did not want to give the issue of your problematic association any more oxygen. It’s obvious to me that Jeffrey Epstein purposefully used his wealth and influence to ingratiate himself with famous and well known people like yourself — the only question is why. Perhaps it has something to do with his rumored connections to certain security state apparatuses, who knows. We will likely never know the full story because dead men tell no tales, very conveniently.
Mr. Chomsky, I have never believed for a moment that you were involved in any sordid activities with this Epstein individual. However, I do feel the need to critique your response to this situation from my humble subaltern and leftist perspective. It specifically concerns you telling the media that the association was “none of your business.” It’s a bit triggering to consider because it’s so tragically familiar. Because essentially that’s what I’ve been told as I try to find a way to break through this conspiracy of silence that has descended very dramatically since October 7th. Essentially, what I’m being told is that my work and my analysis are irrelevant and not worth supporting because “it’s none of my business” when I critique Zionism or people’s reactions to it, or when I examine European history. As leftists and dissidents and counter-culture people, we must make supporting the most oppressed our business whether they be Palestinians, impoverished ghetto dwellers, oppressed Indigenous people, sex trafficking victims, or the homeless and destitute.
The silence of privileged people is not something we can accept moving forward because the continuation of oppression relies on it. Specifically regarding what I’ve noticed going on around here in Philadelphia, what I can say is that most of the folks zipping their lips and refusing to acknowledge the genocide of Palestinians and the harms being committed by Zionists are not inherently bad people. But like the upper middle class European communities confronted with the sex trafficking issue decades ago they are indeed paralyzed by anxiety and fear that acknowledging reality will somehow feed into antisemitism. Most regrettably, they have decided to disregard the voices and experiences of those being victimized and literally obliterated. It’s too much for them to cope with and so they fall silent. I fully realized the perniciousness of this silence when I attempted to share a compelling and eerily prescient photo essay I recently published featuring two Palestinian artists and our day trip to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
To get this published I had to submit it to a Berlin based, online leftist magazine. No one around here, even the so-called anarchists, were willing to engage with it. I was actually surprised that no one asked questions about the photo essay or about the artists involved; very few people went on to share it. I’ve been an activist around here and so forth for well over twelve years, by the way. Folks know me and what I’m working on, but they didn’t want to acknowledge this work or these Palestinian artists because their anxieties over antisemitism trump the lived experiences of the victims of political Zionism. I recognize these same anxieties and blind spots in your response to the media regarding the matter at hand. The underlying problem is the same — a myopic focus on anxieties while neglecting to pay attention to or consider those who are being victimized.
What I’ve realized over the past year especially is that silence can be deadly for those who are marginalized and targeted. This is why I hope you will reconsider your silence on the matter at hand and stand on the side of those who have been victimized, one more time… We cannot ignore their voices. Here are a few victim testimonies from a few years ago when Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislane Maxwell’s victims were given an opportunity to speak:
“Something I think is very important to communicate is that loss of innocence, trust, and joy that is not recoverable. The abuse, spanning several years, was devaluing beyond measure and affected my ability to form and maintain healthy relationships, both in my work and my personal life. He could not begin to fathom what he took from us.”
— Anouska Georgiou
“What happened to me occurred many years ago when I was in high school, but it still affects my life. I was told then that Jeffrey Epstein was going to be held accountable, but he was not. In fact, the government worked out a secret deal and didn’t tell me about it. … The fact that I mattered this time and the other victims mattered is what counts.”
— Michelle Licata
“I was going to start this statement by saying that I was a victim of Jeffrey Epstein. But that’s not the case. I’m still a victim of Jeffrey Epstein. I’m still a victim because the fear of not being heard stopped me from telling my story for so many years… I’m still a victim because I am fearful for my daughters and everyone’s daughters… I’m still a victim because the 17-year-old Teala was manipulated into thinking she had found someone who cared, someone who wanted to help.”
— Teala Davies
The above photo from the 2012 Yellow Permit exhibition in Berlin perfectly illustrates what it is we must grapple with. On the left, the Jewish young women victims; on the right, their Jewish exploiters and traffickers. It took decades for the mainstream Jewish communities to face what was happening, and while they dithered and made excuses for looking the other way, more people were victimized. When privileged people shut their eyes and zip their lips concerning what is complicated and messy, this often allows these injustices to continue. What Paula Waisman and those like her are communicating to us across time and history is that as we ascend to the lofty heights we cannot forget our humble beginnings.
When I saw that Paula Waisman was in the process of being trafficked to Mexico when she was apprehended in Berlin I thought of the current president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, a Jewish woman. How far the Jewish community/diaspora has come, and that’s a good thing in general. When I saw a video of Sheinbaum’s inauguration I thought of the stark contrast with incoming Trump. I thought about the unique role Jewish people can play in healing the harms of the past 500 years of white supremacy. While white privilege is not a good thing, escaping from the ghetto and institutionalized poverty and oppression is something to celebrate. Observing how Claudia Sheinbaum is going out of her way to uplift the marginalized and oppressed in her country, wow. It’s such an incredibly stark contrast to the shitshow we face here with Donald Trump. Mr. Chomsky, I’d like to begin winding down this letter by highlighting the importance of Claudia Sheinbaum because her story and her perspective are an inspiration and a way forward; she represents the mobilizing of privilege to reach back and uplift those who have been left behind.
I’d like to close this open letter to you with a personal anecdote. When someone said “the personal is political,” truer words were never spoken. Why did Paula Waisman resonate with me so much? In part because of her experiences with exploitation, but also because she shares her first name with my own grandmother. Unfortunately, it’s only recently, years after she passed, that I’ve finally begun to understand her, both the struggles she faced as a Black woman in this kind of society and the depth of her understanding. My grandmother and I had a complicated relationship to say the least. She passed away in May of 2010, several months before I briefly met you and discovered Klemperer’s work at your home. Back then I remember seeing photos of your first wife spread out over the dining room table; it was clear that you were still in mourning, and there was a decidedly somber atmosphere that I resonated with because I was also in mourning. Ironically, my grandmother’s guidance is part of why we crossed paths. She was the one who taught me to read at a precocious age and who instilled in me an appreciation for books in the first place; she also nurtured my interest in current events, talk radio and expressing myself. Tragically, not having access to the resources she needed meant that she was not able to be the person she should have been. Other people had to step in. And I’m grateful they did. Earlier in this letter I alluded to the demographics of Philadelphia and the impact of certain communities on my life. Well, here’s one more example. While in 9th grade I performed in a school play sponsored by the Walnut Street theater’s “adopt a school” program. This play, aptly titled ‘Runaways’, coincidentally reflected the circumstances that had led to me being in that part of the city far from the ghetto of west Philadelphia and the deep poverty I’d run away from. My English teacher, a Jewish woman, attended the play with her son who I recognized from my brief time at Cheltenham high. Because of my family situation at the time no one was there in the audience cheering me on. I remember feeling simultaneously exhilarated after the performance but also very awkwardly alone while watching the other kids gathering with their families. My English teacher appeared to notice this aloneness because she took me aside to chat with her and her son, and she looked out for me from that moment forward; she perceived the challenges I was facing and saw that I did not have the support systems most other kids had. Later on she was patient with my truancy and helped me get into Saturday school so I would graduate with my class in the year 2000; I know that without her support that milestone of graduating with my class wouldn’t have happened. There are other examples, but this one stands out the most.
When I think of the complications and recriminations and frustrations of this current moment I try to hold on to this memory in particular. When I discovered Paula Waisman and her interesting hidden history recently it felt like a kind of intervention. It felt like, somehow, a way forward was opening up from a most unexpected direction — from the bottom, from the too long overlooked and ignored realm of the subalterns.
Mr. Chomsky, I have heard over the years that you’re fairly easy to approach and have often responded to “random” people who contact you. I would love to hear your thoughts on the issues raised here, but regardless of whether or not you feel moved to respond, I hope my letter has given you some things to consider. I also need to acknowledge that in addition to speaking directly to you there is a rhetorical angle here. And it concerns the fact that we’ve reached a crisis moment where dialogue has essentially been shut down by privileged people who prioritize their feelings and emotions over the lived realities of poor, dispossessed and colonized people like myself.
Living through a time of genocide while seeing hypocritical white supremacy raging out of control has motivated me to finally tell my own story, especially after the events of the past year. The situation is becoming intolerable, especially for folks who have already been facing systemic oppression here. With Trump looming on the horizon; with Black folks still being regularly murdered by police and vigilantes; with gentrification and displacement raging out of control; with a continued lack of redress or reparations for past harms — with all of this and more going on, we’re going to need dialogue in order to avoid a chaotic and dangerous situation. I sincerely hope that folks will seek dialogue with the subalterns while it’s still possible, and I sincerely hope that we can begin having the difficult conversations that can no longer be avoided.
