Just Announced Noam Chomsky to speak at KGNU benefit

Punk’s rabble-rousing contingent has shamelessly recycled activist Noam Chomsky’s best ideas for years. You’ve probably heard them secondhand from the likes of Anti-Flag, Strike Anywhere, and even party-crashers-turned-liberal-avenging-angels NOFX. Time to ditch the inarticulate lyrics and get the goods straight from the source: The 82-year-old Chomsky will rage against the machine in person April 22 at 7 p.m. at the Macky Auditorium on the CU-Boulder campus. The lecture is a double-duty event, a fundraiser for KGNU public radio as well as a 25th anniversary celebration of the nationally syndicated Alternative Radio show.

Chomsky, who’s penned more than 150 books during his career, has become a patron saint of the radical left in the past couple decades, with dozens of punk acts identifying with his anarchic and anti-capitalist bent. He’s even issued 10 spoken-word albums through Jello Biafra’s Alternative Tentacles Records. KGNU organizers describe him as “an unapologetic critic of both American foreign policy and its ambitions for geopolitical hegemony and the neoliberal turn of global capitalism, which he identifies in terms of class warfare.” So, yeah, best to let Chomsky explain that himself. 

Caught inside the capitalist machine as they are, event organizers are going to make you pay if you want in on the action—it is a benefit after all. Tickets are $20 for KGNU members and $25 for you non-public-media supporting bourgeois dogs.