While the digital grapevine teemed with rumors of the death of celebrated linguist and social critic Noam Chomsky on Tuesday, his wife, Valeria Wasserman Chomsky, swiftly squashed them. The foundation of the whisperings? Merely an elaborate fiction.
In an email response to an avid investigation led by The Associated Press, she firmly stated, “No, it is false.” At the grand age of 95, Chomsky had indeed been in hospital—not knocking on death’s door, but right in the tough but capable hands of a Brazilian hospital where he was recuperating from a stroke that had befallen him a year ago.
Valeria relayed to the AP that the Beneficencia Portuguesa hospital in Sao Paulo had unhooked Chomsky from its antiseptic-scented premises that same Tuesday, sanctioning his journey back home where he continues to receive concurrent care.
Beside the disparagement of her husband’s supposed death, came a flurry of additional preposterous statements. On Tuesday, the illustrious Chomsky skyrocketed to trending status on ‘X,’ with claims of his demise bloating the platform in an unparalleled buzz.
In hasty moves, news publications such as Jacobin and The New Statesman rallied to immortalize the linguist, both releasing obituaries that would soon underscore their premature blunders. Jolted to its senses, Jacobin hurriedly amended its headline from “We Remember Noam Chomsky” to “Let’s Celebrate Noam Chomsky,” while The New Statesman decided on a more definitive course of action—yanking from existence its penned homage by Yanis Varoufakis. Even Brazilian news portal, Diario do Centro do Mundo, was left red-faced, compelled as it was to retract its account of Chomsky’s ‘passing,’ eventually gracing its readers with a retraction.
Nestled amidst the back-and-forth that marked their abode in Brazil—a home they’ve maintained since 2015—the Chomskys, no doubt, absorb the day’s events in stride. Throughout his career, Noam Chomsky’s enlightened perspectives on U.S. foreign policy have marked him a household name. His wisdom has flowed through the educational veins of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, captivated audiences for decades, and found a new haven in 2017 in the College of Social & Behavioral Sciences at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
In the face of rampant rumors and presumptuous hurried eulogies, one thing remains clear: Noam Chomsky is still very much with us, continuing his journey of recovery—and inevitably, his journey of intellectual rebellion.
