Noam Chomsky Death Rumours Lie And Fake News: Brazilian Writer Shares Update From Family (Image: sbs.arizona.edu)
Writer, critic, and social activist Noam Chomsky’s wife Valeria Wasserman (Valeria Chomsky) has confirmed to a Brazilian writer that the rumors about her husband’s death are lies and fake news. Valeria, Noam Chomsky‘s second wife, whom Chomsky married in his 80s, dialled Eduardo Moreira to say the rumors are a “lie” and “fake news,” urging anyone who spread them to retract them.
The writer has shared a video on the social media platform X detailing the call received from Valeria Chomsky.
Meanwhile, news agency Associated Press quoted a statement from the hospital where Noam Chomsky was admitted to report that the activist-critic has been discharged from there to continue his treatment at home.
Earlier on Tuesday, at least two of American portals published obituaries of Noam Chomsky to later withdraw or change the headlines. These obituaries caused the spreading of the death rumours which was trending on social media as well.
Earlier last week, reports emerged that Noam Chomsky, one of the most influential intellectuals of the 20th and 21st centuries, had been hospitalized in Brazil after he suffered a massive stroke. The stroke happened a year ago, and he has been admitted to a Sao Paulo hospital in his wife’s native country, Brazil.
According to reports, the couple has had a residence in Brazil since 2015.
In an email to a media house, Valeria confirmed that Chomsky has difficulty speaking and that the right side of his body is affected. The public intellectual, who has not made an appearance for over a year, is visited daily by a neurologist, speech therapist, and lung specialist.
According to reports, Valeria Chomsky has told the daily that Chomsky, who is among the most noted critics of Israeli aggression in Palestine and American military activities in various parts of the world, “follows the news, and when he sees images of the war in Gaza, he raises his left arm in a gesture of lament and anger.”
Here’s the very reliable Brazilian writer Eduardo Moreira saying Valeria Chomsky just called him to say these rumors are a “lie” and Fake News and urging anyone who spread it to retract it.
Again, nobody knows the future but this is as close to first-hand as it will get: https://t.co/uRz8S1aBMd
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) June 18, 2024
Chomsky’s academic work and political activism have left an indelible mark on a range of fields including linguistics, cognitive science, philosophy, and political theory. In the light of Gaza war, in which Israel unleased the most cruel attack and destruction that has resulted in the death of more than 37,000 Palestinians, Chomsky’s silence and absence was noted by many and people have been wondering about his health status. His last public appearance was reportedly with Piers Morgan on June 5, 2023.
Chomsky, born December 7, 1928, in Philadelphia, whose academic journey began at the University of Pennsylvania, where he developed an interest in structural linguistics. Under the mentorship of Zellig Harris, he received his Ph.D. in linguistics in 1955. His dissertation laid the groundwork for what would become known as transformational-generative grammar, a theory that revolutionized the study of language by proposing that the ability to generate grammatical sentences is hard-wired into the human brain. This theory was elaborated in his landmark book “Syntactic Structures” (1957), which challenged the behaviorist view of language acquisition and established Chomsky as a leading figure in modern linguistics.
