I'm aware of Chomsky's political proclivities, but this is purely a debate over the definition of "email". The nature of the actual systems invented is not in dispute, merely what to call them.
Even much of his work in linguistics was polemics - the famous review of Verbal Behavior is pure polemics.
edit: and in interviews Chomsky has said that he felt a lot of this work had an essentially political purpose - talking about some nexus between Continental-style rationalism and opposition to totalitarianism, with which he associated the behaviorists