Modern Era
Noam Chomsky
1928– · Libertarian socialism
Freedom of speech includes the speech you hate.
In their words
“If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.”
A linguist who became the most widely read critic of American power, Chomsky has spent sixty years arguing that the state and the corporation are both illegitimate concentrations of authority, and that most of what passes for debate is a narrowing of the permissible. He is an anarchist of the old-fashioned, boring kind: skeptical of every government, including the ones that claim to be liberating somebody.
Why it matters for freedom
He keeps asking who benefits from a policy, the question that turns authority into an accountable thing.
Who they stood against
American foreign policy, the media that manufactures consent for it, and the states calling themselves socialist