Trump is ‘undeniably’ the worst criminal in history, Noam Chomsky says

Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox

Get our free Inside Washington email

Please enter a valid email address

Please enter a valid email address

SIGN UP

I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy

Political activist and public intellectual Noam Chomsky has escalated his criticism of Donald Trump as “undeniably” the worst criminal in history.

In his latest comments on the president, Mr Chomsky told the socialist quarterly Jacobin magazine that Mr Trump was a “tin-pot dictator” and that Republicans were “worse than the old Communist Party”.

“This sounds strong, but it’s true: Trump is the worst criminal in history, undeniably. There has never been a figure in political history who was so passionately dedicated to destroying the projects for organised human life on earth in the near future,” he said.

“That is not an exaggeration.”

That apex of criminal history would place Mr Trump ahead of notorious figures like Ponzi fraudster Bernie Madoff, presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, gangster Al Capone, drug lord Pablo Escobar, paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, outlaw Jesse James, the “extremely wicked” Ted Bundy, bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde, and serial killer Jack the Ripper.

The comments come after Mr Chomsky said in an interview with The Guardian in May that the president is culpable in the deaths of “thousands” for cuts to healthcare funding and offloading his leadership responsibilities to state governors during the coronavirus pandemic.

“It’s a great strategy for killing a lot of people and improving his electoral politics,” Mr Chomsky said.

Mr Chomsky has been critical of the global response to coronavirus, condemning the US reaction and the European leaders’ “very sad dereliction of duty”, he said during an April interview with Democracy Now!.

In his latest interview, Mr Chomsky said the world would emerge from the pandemic at a terrible cost, but would not emerge from Mr Trump’s crime of climate change.

“The cost is greatly amplified by the gangster in the White House, who has killed tens of thousands of Americans, making this the worst place in the world [for the coronavirus],” Mr Chomsky said.

“We will emerge [from the pandemic, but] we’re not going to emerge from another crime that Trump has committed, the heating of the globe. The worst of it is coming -- we’re not going to emerge from that.”

The professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology continued that Republicans had disappeared as a party and remained silent during some of Mr Trump’s actions, like firing inspectors general in place to monitor corruption.

“It’s worse than the old Communist Party. The leader gives an order; we [fall] on our knees,” Mr Chomsky said.