It's hard to compete with ideas that generate power. I'm not sure Chomsky has ever fully realize this. His problem has always been he's too academic and doesn't understand human nature or reality very well. Smart guy though.

But going back to the idea of ideas that generate power - that's what is useful. Ideas and concepts that can be used to justify the use of power in some form. Ideas that can be used to "change the world", or more bluntly "exercise power over others". It doesn't mean that every notion that is useful to power is wrong but rather that we should be suspicious of it.

And unfortunately, with the way universities are incentivized today a lot of bad ideas are taken as given because they produce power and are therefore more useful than the ideas that don't. Hence all the "crises", and "injustices", etc.