Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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A RECENT LETTER by Vijay Prashad in Counterpunch is a poor attempt at damage control. In effect, with it now known that Noam Chomsky was an associate of Jeffrey Epstein, as disclosed in what has come to popularly be known as the Epstein files, Prashad attempts to cut ties with Chomsky–this being an effort at damage control shortly after co-authoring a book with Chomsky.
Prashad first starts by raising his own story of having experienced sexual violence, so as to draw sympathy from readers. He then moves on to express his disappointment with Chomsky– not only through his association with a predator and pedophile as Epstein, but also because Epstein was an agent of Zionist imperialism.
Prashad refers to Chomsky as having been a “great mentor” regarding his criticisms of US imperialism, but also expresses disappointment about Chomsky having met with figures who are collaborators with Israel’s genocidal actions against Palestinians. While Chomsky’s acquaintance with far-right-wing figures such as Steve Bannon through Epstein is unremarked upon in Prashad’s letter, to be fair, this may be a result of that this had not yet been unearthed in the Epstein files at the time of his writing.
Thankfully, Prashad does not attempt to defend Chomsky, though he does raise that because of the deterioration of his health, Chomsky has no way of defending himself. At the same time, one notes that Prashad’s attempt to cut ties with Chomsky should not be taken at face value. After all, Prashad has himself built a career off of defending authoritarian actors that commit sexual violence on a mass scale.
Prashad is, of course, a denier of China’s ethnic cleansing of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, having claimed that there was little evidence to the effect. At other occasions, Prashad aligns directly with Chinese state officials to praise China in the loftiest of terms.
Yet the Chinese state has itself made little attempt to hide its actions toward Uyghurs; even as it may brand the detention camps that Uyghurs are held in as “reeducation camps” officially, one only needs to examine Chinese state-run media to see when China echoes US War on Terror discourse to claim that Muslim-majority Uyghurs are in need of pacification through reeducation. Nevertheless, reports indicate that torture and sexual violence occur in these camps.
Through the “Pair Up and Become Family” program, Han men are sent to monitor Uyghur women whose husbands are detained in such reeducation camps–often sleeping in the same bed as them. This, then, serves as the official framework for sexual violence on a mass scale. Sources for the existence of such programs, too, come from the Chinese state.
The “Pair Up and Become Family” program is colonial sexual violence in the most banal–and historically commonplace–of terms. If Prashad and others do not believe that attitudes by the male cadres of the Chinese state toward Uyghur women and other so-called “ethnic minorities”- are colonial in nature, he is well-served by simply watching any of the “ethnic minority” films produced by China over the decades, whether this be the many cinematic representations of the Tibetan Princess Wencheng, or more contemporary examples that largely align with an “Avatar” or “Dance with Wolves” narrative in its depiction of exoticized, native women who are to be subjugated and civilized by the Han man.
Prashad, of course, has denied other genocides committed by authoritarian actors. Apart from Xinjiang, this also includes the Tigrayan genocide, as committed by the Ethiopian government, and the Tamil genocide, as committed by the Sri Lankan government. As any scholar of genocide knows well, part and parcel of genocide is–in all cases–sexual assault. So, too, then, with these other contexts.
Prashad has faced accusations in the past of attempting to cover up sexual violence committed by political actors that he backs as the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPM. In 2007, an article published in Counterpunch by Prashad–now unable to be found on the website but still visible in the Internet Archive–dismisses the rape and murder of eighteen-year-old Tapasi Malik as “blown out of context.” Specifically, in an article co-authored with Sudhanva Deshpande, Prashad writes:
“Stories were blown out of context, and allegations flew around (sexual assaults, murders) that have since been shown to be false. The most sensational was the murder of a young woman, Tapasi Malik, who had been a leader in the Singur struggle against the land acquisition. The blogs and the capitalist media blamed this death on the CPM. The Central Bureau of Investigation is now of the view that she was killed by her father and brother.”
This did not correspond with the Central Bureau of Investigation’s actual investigation, which focused not on Malik’s father and brother, but CPM cadre Debu Malik. Other allegations at the time suggest that the CPM–the political force backed by Prashad in this case–carried out the rape and murder to teach others a lesson about resisting it.
More generally, then, one notes a tendency by Prashad to downplay accusations of sexual violence against political forces he backs. The rest seems to be merely propaganda.
In the case of Chomsky, then, one can label Prashad’s comments to merely be damage control. Prashad is concerned about Chomsky’s association with Epstein in light of Epstein’s Zionism and links with the US. But one sees that, in other cases, Prashad has no issue in being dismissive of sexual violence, inclusive of that conducted on a mass scale. Any attempt by Prashad to cut ties with Chomsky is merely that, then–crocodile tears at best and a poor effort at damage control at the worst.