I would really be interested in seeing some of the proponents debating him, giving that he is one of the leading Leftist intellectuals, rather than a “rabid bigot”, and if anything had to bear the slander and silencing (being absurdly accused of historical revisionism himself) for this exact view. Taking Waleed Aly’s example of the controversial talk that was not allowed at the “Festival of Dangerous Ideas”, according to him because of a religious/racial bias (“some people cannot discuss certain things”), it seems to me that the obvious thing to do would have been to allow the person in question to talk, despite social pressure, rather than stop someone else from talking. In this way, it seems to me, we have merely duplicated the problem. Waleed himself admits that the laws themselves allow for any kind of slander to be made except in particular cases, and even in those the “punishments” are not really enough to deter any seryously motivated individual (and the religious fanatics out to attack other religions are deeply motivatedy, if nothing else). He freely acknowledges that society cannot be ridden of bigotry by law. I very much agree with his points about social pressure being the source of a “cost” in the case of free speech, which is why, for example, antisemitism doesn’t dominate the public discourse as much in the US as it does in Europe (in France, for example): society simply chooses to ignore the mad ramblings -since no law is being broken and free expression is simply assumed to be there, it’s not really “newsworthy”-. I also agree that since this social power is not equally distributed, noteworthy opinions can be marginalized (this is the case of Chomksy himself, at least in the media, and it cannot escape anyone’s notice that he is arguing for the opposite proposition). One then wonders what sense would it make to pursue laws that by Waleed’s own admission wouldn’t solve this basic problem, and would obviously have diminishing marginal returns (the “punishments” don’t deter, but “punishments” that would do so would leave society with an even worse problem -unless one considers book burning and the rest to be a positive way to address the problem-). In Chomsky’s own case, one should note that through the internet and simple public interest, he remains one of the leading intellectuals, so it is not even true that groups with lower social power cannot find ways to share their ideas, despite the fact that they might incur in occasional setbacks such as the one mentioned by Waleed (which would have been better addressed by allowing the speaker to give his talk, rather than by silencing someone else).