I’d read the classics—Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin—but they were hard to find, not to mention dead. Chomsky was not only alive, he was a widely-read, well-respected intellectual, who wrote his first pro-anarchist essay at the age of ten, hung out at anarchist newsstands and bookshops on 4th Avenue in Manhattan as a teenager (not far from my punk stomping grounds), and still maintained his anti-authoritarian beliefs as an adult. Despite the contradiction my peers might have seen in appealing to the authority of such a public figure, I felt validated, and much less alone.
Chomsky: anarchist, widely-read and well-respected intellectual
