But his views on politics and world affairs are extremely eccentric, and have remained on the fringe for a reason.

Chomsky is a legendary linguist, a rightly deserved reputation, but that doesn't give him automatic credibility outside of linguistics.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gish_Gallop

Just because someone sticks in a heap of footnotes doesn't validate their claims. Climate-change denialists do this as a matter of course, but that doesn't make their work academically rigorous. Facts and data points taken out of context can be enormously misleading.

He might very well produce the most academic political writings ever.

LOL no. I read legal opinions and law review articles for fun. I have an intense dislike of Chomsky because I am the sort of person who reads all the footnotes and consults the cited reference works, and doing so on Chomsky's writings has led me in every instance to conclude that he habitually misrepresents his source material by selective quotation and omission of equally important countervailing facts.

When I first encountered Chomsky's writings I was tremendously excited, thinking that this was a guy who Tells It Like It Is. But the more I read and analyzed, the more disappointed I became. Not being American, I wasn't bothered by his challenges to conventional wisdom or the fact that he held a radical viewpoint. What bothered me was his near-constant manipulation of his readers.