This is an essay-formatted version of a long thread I wrote on Mastodon: https://mastodon.design/@alx/116029405888557250

Disclamers:

1) My heart and thoughts are for and with the victims first and foremost. The direct ones, towards whom I express all my solidarity: I believe and support you, sisters. 
2) My response was prompted by Chris Knight's piece on Chomsky/Epstein Puzzle, but it's not a personal attack on him: this is a general critique towards (or better my personal rant against) the entire leftist meltdown that focuses on Chomsky, eclipsing the only people that matter in this story: the direct victims (the abused women and children) and the indirect victims (all the rest of us who suffers under patriarchy and capitalism).   
3) My critique is circumscribed to this particular aspect and in no ways invalidate the immense work and contribution that professor Chris Knight and all the Radical Anthropology Group do regarding patriarchy and inequalities. Their scholarship is amazing and informs a lot of my thinking, and I will be for ever grateful for that and invite anyone who hasn’t yet to look at their work. 

The real question from the Epstein files should be about unchecked power in patriarchal capitalist societies, instead, we have another leftist scholar writing words and words on the life and psychology of another pathetic narcissistic man who loved his guru position and access to power more than a genuine critique of power (and behaving accordingly). Focus should be on the victims, the structure of power, and in the case of names like Chomsky, the horrible tendency of the Left to behave like a cult around "strong man"¹.

It's not that I don't understand the shock, but really, who cares about Chomsky's psychology.
Probably is my allergy to cults, but to me Chomsky has always felt more like a grifter than a genuine thinker. 
He was good on American Imperialism, but lacked any critical analysis of situations like Syria, Bosnia, or Ukraine, and he was totally dismissive of the leftist voices from these areas. 
That said, if we see how academia works,"Chomsky loves Epstein" becomes very understandable.

First, Academia is a hierarchy. You start as a student and little by little you progress to graduate, post-graduate, post-doc, early-career researcher, research fellow, lecturer, associate professor, professor, dean, director, rector, chancellor, etc.
Each step is a screening point: fewer and fewer people are allowed to pass. The gods of metrics used for this screening come straight from a business buzzword handbooks: impact, entrepreneurship, leadership. 

The dynamics through which the business and the political world rewards sociopath narcissistic men are reproduced in academia. Ambition and self-confidence over integrity are the most rewarded aspects, because unfortunately they are also the ones who get most grants, issued by other sociopath wealthy powerful men (private or public). It doesn't take a genius to see that the system is self-reinforcing, with the dynamic of wealthy narcissistic men rewarding other narcissistic men.

It's easy to see that when power is unchecked, the corruption that comes with it can only grow. The men cozying up with Epstein have exactly all these traits in common: powerful figures that society already put on some sort of pedestal, the special people, the real thinkers, extraordinary men. They love the attention and the power that comes with it. You are above your fellows, and that gives you tools and rights upon them. So, what about Chomsky? Just a man. An healthy son of the patriarchy.

The psychology of Chomsky is nothing special, it's exactly how a famous and powerful man grown up under patriarchy, capitalism, and media narcissism, would behave. Epstein's friends aren't people propped up by him. They are all figures that society already designed as special: they had influence, reputational power, and a large pool of people looking up to them. In narcissistic dynamics, violence is the culmination of the relationship, never the beginning. 

The morbidity of the Epstein files is disgusting and the way they've been released for voyeuristic media consumption is actually having the effects sought: people melting down on "Oh, and even him?", "Was he also a rapist?", "But that was my hero!", "His book changed my life", "How is it possible?"
You know were I saw it already? Fandoms. The same meltdown of fans around for example Neil Gaiman, which resulted in the experience of the victims being cast aside to "process our personal shattered feelings".

Epstein exploited the dynamics the entire system was already built on: you might say that your exploitation in a company is not as violent as the exploitation of workers in illegal mines, but it doesn't take away that they are both exploitative systems. The fact that someone can write to their wealthy bestie "you are just the victim of the hysteria around sexual assault" is not the same of assaulting someone, but it still rooted in a misogynistic worldview that condones abuse.  
  
The fact that a linguist, of all people, uses the word "hysteria", the fake disease ascribed to women that didn't fall in line and that misogynistic doctors have used as an excuse to entertain themselves in sadistic "science experiments" and "medical trials", tells all you need to know about your self-appointed "anarchist". For someone who didn't believe in hierarchies, he certainly spoke like one at a top of a pyramid. 

Because he was at the top, with all fans happily keeping him there ready to receive more Verbum to follow.
And here is my point, to finally start drawing all of this to a conclusion. Wasting your time or everyone's time to understand how could Chomsky or any other of the pathetic men cozying up with a pedophile and serial rapist (and many actively participating in it), it's not an intellectual service, it's you processing your feelings. It's the fandom dream shattered. 

It's reality finally kicking in and telling you all those red flags you happily ignored cannot be ignored anymore.
I understand that, I've rant about Arcane, Yona of the Dawn, Attack on Titan, ecc. a lot (yes, they are cartoons and anime)². And I, as many other women, also know how difficult is to make peace with your own blindness. 

The same people who have allowed a genocide being carried in front of our eyes; the ones who condemned the one in Palestine but deny the one in Bosnia (Hello, Chomsky, again!); the ones who take away our reproductive rights while screaming "protect the children"; they are the same one who, in exchange of first class flights, notoriety, money, expensive holidays, press coverage, etc…basically the ones who value their own interest more than anything else, when not actively participating in violence again women and children (that same violence they ascribe to migrants, transpeople, indigenous people, black people - all magically absent from Epstein's best friends circle), these same people are happy to turn a blind eye on it.  

Welcome to Patriarchy, whose pet project "Capitalism" has been the most successful of all, permeating also these spaces that theoretically are against hierarchies and oppression. You know what's the first thing patriarchy teaches to young women? Ignore and minimise the red flags, and never dare to fight back.

That's been cathartic, thank you for reading, and apologies for typos or not super-well-expressed thoughts, I wrote it on a whim. 
Go forth, the rant is ended.