CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Chomsky Canceled, Eisenhower Stays: How the Left’s Cancellation Criteria Hurts Them

Photograph Source: Department of the Interior. National Park Service. National Capital Parks. – Public Domain

What sins can and cannot be forgiven?

Earlier this year, the organization Americans Who Tell the Truth (AWTT) announced, “Taking Down Noam Chomsky’s Portrait,” literally canceling Noam Chomsky from its portrait gallery. This is no surprise. It is a surprise that AWTT deems Dwight Eisenhower’s CIA coup-approval sins to be forgivable, and he remains worthy of an AWTT portrait. Furthermore, AWTT inconsistently applies its “Chomsky cancellation criteria” by continuing to display portraits of Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, and Mark Twain; and AWTT gives the Left’s harshest indicter of Chomsky, Chris Hedges, a pass for his very different sins, and his portrait remains.

AWTT is a nonprofit organization founded in the wake of the Bush/Cheney administration’s lies about the reasons for attacking Iraq. AWTT’s website states that “The organization is dedicated to promoting civic engagement, social justice, democracy, and environmental stewardship” and its “portraits and narratives highlight citizens who courageously address issues of social, environmental, and economic fairness.”

Earlier in 2026 in CounterPunch, I detailed Noam Chomsky’s personal failings with regards to sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein (“Malcolm X, Noam Chomsky, Sexual Predator Associations, and Legacy Twists”), and I will return to what is fact versus conjecture. But even the most damning speculation about Chomsky’s state of mind does not rise to the disgracefully damaging orchestrations and actions by Eisenhower, whose portrait AWTT maintains.

Apparently, Eisenhower gets his portrait because of one truth that he uttered in his January 1961 farewell address, warning against the influence of the military-industrial complex, however, while in office, Eisenhower unleashed CIA coups against democratically elected governments.

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