Sidelined in the US, the left's 'greatest thinker' finds warm welcome in Britain

To many Professor Noam Chomsky is a dissident superstar, whose voice of reason has warned the United States of the dangers of imperial power and supreme over-confidence – from Vietnam to Afghanistan and now Iraq.

But for others, such as George Bush and most of the American political establishment, he is an irritant who has dared to undermine them at a time when national unity and community of purpose are the most favoured answers to political problems.

Professor Chomsky is certainly more honoured abroad than at home. In the United States, his thoughts are largely confined to left-leaning journals and National Public Radio. In Britain, he gets a sell-out show at St Pauls Cathedral and grants an audience to MPs.

The man celebrated as one of the 10 most quoted sources when it comes to the humanities – he is right up there with Shakespeare and the Bible – is making a rare speaking trip to Europe, to stiffen the resolve of the leftist armies in their campaign against conflict with Iraq.

On Monday night, 2,000 people will cram into the rarified atmosphere of Sir Christopher Wren's masterpiece to hear Professor Chomsky speak on world affairs. Tickets sold out rapidly after they went on sale at TicketWeb, an internet agency largely devoted to popular music.

And Professor Chomsky will be given the full star treatment – introductions by one of Britain's foremost intellectual dissidents, playwright Harold Pinter, and prominent civil rights barrister Michael Mansfield, QC. There is no doubt he will be among friends at the event, being held to mark the 10th anniversary of the Kurdish Human Rights Project, a charity which supports Kurds in Iraq.

The following day he will speak to MPs at the House of Commons at a meeting organised by left-wing Labour MP Alan Simpson, a leading opponent of the Government on Iraq. Afterwards he will attend the London School of Economics to address students before moving on to address another event held by left-wing magazine Red Pepper. Each time, the message is likely to be a variation on his theme of robust criticism of US foreign policy – principally President Bush's plans for war with Iraq and his neglect of the peace process in the Middle East.

Now 74, Professor Chomsky's day job since the late 1950s is that of professor of linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But his real reputation comes from his public speaking and writing on international politics, US foreign policy and the role of the Western media.

His role as dissident-in-chief has grown in proportion to US adventurism abroad and, most importantly, as a counter to the atmosphere in his native country in the wake of 11 September and the war in Afghanistan.

Professor Chomsky caused enormous controversy when, shortly after the attacks, he likened them to the US bombing of the Sudan in 1998 in what was claimed to be an attack on an Osama bin Laden chemical weapons facility: "The terrorist attacks [of 11 September] were major atrocities. In scale they may not reach the level of many others, for example, the bombing of the Sudan with no credible pretext, destroying half its pharmaceutical supplies and killing unknown numbers of people."

Outrage also greeted his contention that the United States was "a leading terrorist state" through its support for the right-wing Contra rebels in Nicaragua. He claims America is a "rogue superpower" and that every American president since the Second World War would have been hanged if the Nuremberg laws still applied. Inevitably, his critics cite over-simplification and over-estimation of American influences.

He was born in Philadelphia, the child of Russian and Lithuanian Jewish immigrants and raised from a leftist, working-class intellectual background.

His political activism dates from the anti-Vietnam War protest in the 1960s, when he was arrested and jailed alongside Norman Mailer. Nearly four decades later, Professor Chomsky's passion for dissent continues undiminished and has inspired a whole new generation, with some regarding him as the spiritual father of the anti-globalisation movement.

WORDS OF WISDOM

ON THE 'WAR ON TERROR'

"The US and Britain have simply announced, very clearly and loudly, that they are violent criminal states that are intent on destroying totally the fabric of international law, a fabric that has been built up laboriously over many years."

ON IRAQ

"This action [against Iraq] is in fact a call for a lawless world in which the powerful will rule. The powerful happen to be the United States and Britain, which is by now a pathetic puppy dog that has abandoned any pretence of being an independent state."

ON TONY BLAIR

"Every time Tony Blair opens his mouth, he looks more disgusting and ridiculous, and his performance [in denying that the starvation of children in Iraq was the result of UN sanctions] marked a painful and shameful day in the history of Britain."

OTHERS ON CHOMSKY

Fred Halliday, Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics

"He confronts orthodoxy but he's becoming a big simplifier. What he can't see is Third World and other regimes that are oppressive and not controlled by America."

Robert Barsky, his biographer

"Chomsky ... has been described as one who will be for future generations what Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Mozart or Picasso have been for ours."