“An extraordinary and twisted man, turning many true gifts to evil purpose. . . . Malcolm X had the ingredients for leadership, but his ruthless and fanatical belief in violence . . . set him apart from the responsible leaders of the civil rights movement and the overwhelming majority of Negroes.”—New York Times, February 22, 1965 (one day after Malcolm X’s assassination)
“Malcolm X had been a pimp, a cocaine addict and a thief. He was an unashamed demagogue. His gospel was hatred.”—Time, March 5, 1965
“I can assure you he [Noam Chomsky] is not as passive or gullible as his wife claims. He knew about Epstein’s abuse of children. They all knew. And like others in the Epstein orbit, he did not care. . . . His association with Epstein is a terrible and, to many, unforgivable stain. It irreparably tarnishes his legacy.” —Chris Hedges, “Noam Chomsky, Jeffrey Epstein and the Politics of Betrayal,” February 8, 2026
Malcolm X was far more deeply involved with a sexual predator—his superior, Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Nation of Islam (NOI)—than Noam Chomsky was involved with Jeffrey Epstein. However, Malcolm X’s association with Muhammad has had virtually no effect on Malcolm’s legacy, which has skyrocketed among the general public since his death.
In “This American Life: The Making and Remaking of Malcolm X” (New Yorker, 2011), David Remnick writes, “In 1992, Spike Lee set off a bout of ‘Malcolmania,’ with his three-hour-plus film. In its wake, people as unlikely as Dan Quayle talked sympathetically about Malcolm. . . . Bill Clinton wore an ‘X’ cap.” In 1999, 34 years after Malcolm X’s 1965 assassination (which at the time was applauded by most of U.S. society), the U.S. post office issued a Malcolm X stamp. This elevation, for labor and socialist activist Ike Naheem (“To the Memory of Malcolm X: Fifty Years After His Assassination,” 2015), has unfortunately come at the expense of Malcolm X being: “transformed by ‘mainstream’ forces into a harmless icon, with his sharp revolutionary anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist political program diluted and softened,” which for Naheem, “is a travesty of the actual Malcolm X and his actual political and moral trajectory.”
What about Malcolm X’s deep association with Elijah Muhammad? Malcolm X’s biographer, Manning Marable, concludes Malcolm should have known that Muhammad was a sexual predator well before Malcolm publicly acknowledged it, however, he stayed in denial because of powerful psychological forces. Marable was a great admirer of Malcolm, but his love for him does not prevent Marable from being highly critical of Malcolm’s flaws and blind spots:
Yet the central irony of Malcolm’s career was that his critical powers of observation, so important in fashioning his dynamic public addresses, virtually disappeared in his mundane evaluations of those in his day-to-day personal circle. —Manning Marable, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (2011)
The initial psychological attractiveness for Malcolm X to Elijah Muhammad’s NOI is understandable, as it validated Malcolm’s feelings about the illegitimacy of white authority, offered him a strong community, and provided the previously criminal and selfish Malcolm with a spiritual path to care about something larger than himself. Malcolm put all his trust and faith in Elijah Muhammad; however, no different than Epstein, Muhammad was not only a sexual predator but a consummate exploiter of people, and he used Malcolm X’s charisma, speaking talents, and organizing skills to greatly expand his power.
Ultimately, Malcolm X publicly acknowledged that Elijah Muhammad was sexually involved with several young NOI secretaries and had fathered children with them. The African American Historical Society reports that Elijah Muhammad “impregnated seven women, including several of his teenaged secretaries, and fathered thirteen children outside of his marriage.”
When should Malcolm X have known that Elijah Muhammad was a sexual predator? When did Malcolm acknowledge it to himself, and when did he acknowledge it to the world? What psychological forces kept Malcolm in denial, and then what political forces did Malcolm have to transcend for him to publicly acknowledge it?
To answer these questions, I am not alone in trusting Manning Marable. Cornell West says of Marable and his biography of Malcolm X: “Manning Marable is the exemplary black scholar of radical democracy and black freedom in our time. His long-awaited magisterial book on Malcolm X is the definitive treatment of the greatest black radical voice and figure of the mid-twentieth century.”
Marable tells us, “The revelations [about Elijah Muhammad] should not have been a complete surprise to Malcolm, who first heard hints about Muhammad’s sexual misconduct in the mid-1950s. Yet for years, it had been impossible for Malcolm to imagine that . . . [Muhammad] was using his exalted position to sexually molest his secretarial staff.” By late 1962, Marable notes that tales of Muhammad’s “sexual adventures had reached New York City and the West Coast. . . . [but] Malcolm pretended that he knew nothing about the rumors, desperately hoping that somehow they would go away.”
However, when Malcolm was told in 1963 by one of Elijah Muhammed’s sons, Wallace, that the rumors were true, Malcolm sought proof. Malcolm met with three of Elijah Muhammed’s former secretaries, and all had similar stories, which were even uglier than sexual misconduct alone. Malcolm learned, as Marable reports, “Once their pregnancies had been discovered, they had been summoned before secret NOI courts and received sentences of isolation. Muhammed provided little or no financial support for his out-of-wedlock children.” Malcolm was both shaken and appalled, and in 1964, Malcolm X would expose this to the general public.
Today, Malcolm is deeply admired as a truth teller—not only of racial and political truths but of truths about his own failings. A major reason that Malcolm X is forgiven by his admirers for his denial of the horrors of Muhammed is that in that brief period between Malcolm’s acknowledgement and his assassination, Malcolm was able to be bluntly honest about his own failings with profound humility. In an interview, he described his psychology of denial:
When you understand the makeup of the Muslim movement and the psychology of the Muslim movement, as long as . . . if I tie myself in by having confidence in the leader of the Muslim movement, if someone came to me and I had no knowledge whatsoever of what had taken place, and they told me what I’m saying [about Muhammad’s predatory behavior], I would kill them myself. The only thing that would prevent me from killing someone who made a statement like this [is that] they would have to be able to let me know that it’s true. Now if anyone had come to me other than Mr. Muhammad’s son, I never would have believed it even enough to look into it. But I had been around [Elijah Muhammad] so closely I had seen indications of it . . . the reality of it, but my religious sincerity made me block it out of my mind.
Even after Malcolm X was no longer in denial of the reality of the monstrous behavior of Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm describes the existential quandary he experienced as to whether or not to reveal it: “The only reason that I didn’t make this public knowledge was I knew the implications, and I felt that if the Muslims who were in the Nation of Islam knew it, that which enables them to be so strongly religious and exercise moral discipline, [they] would be shattered, and it would cause all of them to go right back and start doing the things that they had been doing previously.”
Malcolm felt strongly about the value of NOI in building self-respect, dignity, and empowerment for African Americans, and he knew that a major part of followers’ belief in the teachings of NOI had to do with their faith in Elijah Muhammad, and so he felt a need to, as he put it, “protect Mr. Muhammad himself primarily because the image that he had created was the image that enabled his followers to remain strong in faith . . . and I didn’t want to see any adverse effect or negative result developed in the faith of all of his followers.”
Ultimately, Malcolm’s passion for truth prevailed. When he exposed the ugly truths about Elijah Muhammad, he knew full well that doing so would likely cost him his life. During that brief period after Malcolm X parted from NOI and before his assassination, Marable reports that Malcolm intellectually liberated himself from NOI policies. Elijah Muhammad had opposed involvement in politics, but Malcolm transformed himself into a political thinker who before his life was cut short, Marable notes, “publicly made the connection between racial oppression and capitalism.”
Malcolm X admirers can thank an incompetent FBI in part for Malcolm’s positive legacy. The FBI, along with other law enforcement agencies, would have loved to see Malcolm discredited or even killed (there is evidence that the FBI and other law enforcement agencies knew about Malcolm’s impending NOI assassination but did nothing to stop it). The FBI likely knew about Elijah Muhammad’s predatory behaviors, and the FBI could have exposed it before Malcolm did and then accused Malcolm of covering it up. If the FBI had done so prior to Malcolm himself having confirmed Muhammad’s predatory behaviors, Malcolm’s distrust for the FBI and law enforcement agencies would have certainly resulted in him attacking the FBI and defending Muhammad. And in such a hypothetical scenario, given that the entire mainstream media despised Malcolm X, when he finally did acknowledge that Muhammad was a sexual predator, there likely would have been a chorus of: “I can assure you Malcolm X is not gullible. He knew about Elijah Muhammad’s sexual predatory behaviors. Everyone in the Nation of Islam knew. They all knew. And like all of them, Malcolm X did not care.”
Ultimately, Malcolm X’s capacity for brutal self-honesty, humility, self-correction and redemption enabled him to evolve into one of the most extraordinary anti-authoritarians in U.S. history.
The trajectory of Malcolm X’s life is Shakespearean in the sense of high-stakes drama, life-and-death power struggles, tragically misplaced trust, heroic redemption, and assassination. And the psychological sources of his denial and the political reasons for his delay in exposing the monstrous reality of Elijah Muhammad are also epic.
In contrast to the Shakespearean arc of Malcolm X’s life, the trajectory of Noam Chomsky’s life is quite pedestrian. And so the possible psychological sources for Noam Chomsky’s denial of the monstrous reality of Jeffrey Epstein would also be quite pedestrian.
Just as Manning Marable tells us that Malcolm X should have known that Elijah Muhammad was a sexual predator and a monster, Noam Chomsky should have known that Jeffrey Epstein was a sexual predator and a monster. However, in contrast to what Marable and many of us conclude about Malcolm, Chris Hedges concludes that Noam not only should have known the truth of Epstein but did know and did not care.
Noam certainly should have known. By 2015, the time Valéria Chomsky reports when the Chomskys were first introduced to Epstein, it was widely known that Epstein was not simply a convicted sex offender who made a mistake, but that he had long been—and continued to be—an unrepentant scumbag who traveled in circles with other arrogant sleazebags.
In June 2008, Epstein plead guilty to one count of soliciting prostitution and one count of soliciting prostitution from someone under 18, but in a “sweetheart deal,” he was sentenced to serve most of his sentence in a work-release program that allowed him to leave jail during the day; and under a secret arrangement, the U.S. attorney Alexander Acosta agreed not to prosecute him for federal crimes. In November 2018, the Miami Herald did a series of stories focusing partly on Acosta, who had become the labor secretary in Trump’s first administration; and this Miami Herald coverage intensified public interest in Epstein. On July 6, 2019, Epstein was arrested on new sex trafficking charges brought by federal prosecutors in New York, and on August 10, 2019, Epstein was found dead in his jail cell in New York (officially ruled suicide but believed by some, including Epstein’s brother, to have been murder).
The slew of email exchanges between Jeffrey Epstein and Noam Chomsky released on January 30, 2026 provided shocking revelations that have now been widely reported: With the walls closing in on Epstein prior to his 2019 arrest for child sex trafficking, Epstein asked Chomsky for advice, and in response, Chomsky emailed him what amounts to crisis management ideas and sympathized with the “horrible way you are being treated in the press and public”; Chomsky flew on Epstein’s infamous private jet nicknamed the Lolita Express; Chomsky accepted invitations to stay at Epstein mansions; Chomsky met not only with Epstein but with Steve Bannon and Woody Allen; and Noam Chomsky and his wife Valéria were clearly appreciative of Epstein as a friend and advisor.
Noam Chomsky, now 97, suffered a debilitating stroke in 2023 leaving him unable to speak, but Valéria Chomsky released an official statement on February 9, 2026 that attempted to explain his relationship with Epstein. She stated that “Epstein’s 2008 conviction in the state of Florida was known by very few people, while most of the public—including Noam and I—was unaware of it. That only changed after the November 2018 report by the Miami Herald.”
The truth is that long before the Miami Herald story, it was widely known that Epstein was a sleazebag. Even in 2006, prior to Epstein’s initial 2008 conviction, Epstein was seen as notorious enough for Eliot Spitzer, then running for governor of New York, to return a $50,000 Epstein contribution to his campaign. Spitzer, as did many others, would have known that in July 2005, Epstein had retained a high-profile legal team, including Alan Dershowitz and Ken Starr, to defend him against charges of soliciting prostitution; and all of this was reported by the New York Times in 2008 following Epstein’s conviction. And in 2015, the Guardian reported that three charities, including New York City’s Mount Sinai hospital, would not accept any more gifts from Epstein.
Valéria Chomsky stated, “Only after Epstein’s second arrest in [July] 2019 did we learn the full extent and gravity of what were then accusations—and are now confirmed—heinous crimes against women and children. We were careless in not thoroughly researching his background.”
In response to Valéria Chomsky’s statement, Chris Hedges essentially calls her a liar. As noted, Hedges stated, “I can assure you he [Noam Chomsky] is not as passive or gullible as his wife claims. He knew about Epstein’s abuse of children. They all knew. And like others in the Epstein orbit, he did not care.”
If Hedges is correct that Noam “knew about Epstein’s abuse of children” and “he did not care,” then Noam is simply a despicable human being. For Hedges, it does not seem possible that Noam Chomsky could be so stupidly in denial when it came to Epstein. In other words, it does not seem possible to Hedges that the brilliant Noam Chomsky could be as humanly psychologically flawed as the brilliant Malcolm X.
What creates the conditions for denial? It is obvious in the case of Malcolm X that supreme intelligence is no antidote to denial, and in fact such intelligence can be used to justify and rationalize denial. The conditions for denial include arrogant ego attachments, including to one’s beliefs, as well as overwhelming emotions, especially to emotions one may be unaccustomed to experiencing.
While I have my own speculations for the sources of Noam’s possible denial—speculations based on my dive into the released emails, my clinical experience, and previous research on him—these are only speculations, and my hunch is that the best answers will come one day from Noam’s children Aviva, Diane, and Harry, but they have made no public statement. They are probably wise to be silent in the current climate, as their explanation for their father’s awful behavior would likely be condemned as a defense of it.
So what were Noam Chomsky’s ego attachments and overwhelming emotions he was likely unaccustomed to experiencing? We can only speculate.
Noam has long taken unpopular stands, and he has perhaps been even ego attached to being fearless in this regard. He has a history of being highly critical of any type of interference to free thought and free speech, and he was increasingly critical of what has come to be called “cancel culture”; this could was likely have been exploited by Epstein. Chomsky justified having a relationship with Epstein with this rationalization: “What was known about Jeffrey Epstein was that he had been convicted of a crime and had served his sentence. According to U.S. laws and norms, that yields a clean slate.” Chomsky was too arrogant to put in the small effort required to discover that Epstein had not just been convicted of a crime and served his sentence, but that he was an unrepentant sleazebag.
There may well have been an even more important fuel for Noam Chomsky’s denial. Emails between Noam and his children reveal an emotional state that Noam had perhaps never navigated before. Noam was extremely upset about being confronted by his children regarding Valéria and Noam’s increase in spending since Noam’s remarriage (his children emailed him: “Your spending has increased dramatically and unexplainably since you got married and this unprecedented outflow is placing your financial future at risk”); as well as Noam having been upset by conflicts with his children over a trust fund (for which Noam and Valéria sought Epstein’s advice and help). In one email to his son, Noam states, “I’m more than sorry, not just about the conversation. Worst thing that’s ever happened to me. Could never have imagined that this would happen in my late years.”
Such an emotional state will subvert critical thinking, including one’s capacity to recognize that such a state renders one vulnerable to exploitation. Valéria forwarded the correspondence between Noam and his children to Epstein, who appeared to inflame the conflict and then used it to deepen his bond with the Chomskys.
To be clear, I am only speculating. Maybe Chris Hedges turns out to be right that Noam Chomsky “knew about Epstein’s abuse of children” and “he did not care.” However, I consider it to be arrogance on Hedges’s part to be so certain of the truth of his speculations about Noam Chomsky’s state of mind; and while money is certainly a root of evil, so too is arrogance. Arrogance was a major root of the evil of both Jeffrey Epstein and Elijah Muhammad, as it was for other infamous sexual predators, including Bill Cosby, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, and Harvey Weinstein.
One does not have to be a clinical psychologist to observe tragic denials in many intelligent and otherwise highly ethical people, just as one does not have to be a historian to recognize denial has long occurred in brilliant and otherwise admirable famous people. And most of us—at least those with any degree of humility—will acknowledge having experienced some type of “stupid” denial in our lives.
