Ummm... That seems incomplete. There *is* something else going on here.
Let's go to the videotape:
Chomsky does himself no damage at all (and does something praiseworthy) by signing the petition for Faurisson's free-speech rights. Chomsky does himself a tiny bit of damage thereafter by denying that the petition's reference to Faurisson's "findings" was infelicitous--for, in spite of Chomsky's denial, "findings" does have a different denotation than "opinions" or "views" or "beliefs," and misrepresenting the denotations of one's own words is a good way to lose credibility. Chomsky does himself much more damage by writing that Faurisson is an "apolitical liberal," that he was not aware of any evidence that Faurisson was a neo-Nazi, that those accusing Faurisson of neo-Nazi beliefs were mendacious. Subsequent detonations include Chomsky's insistence that the "Chomsky Preface" is a Voltairean defense of free speech writes, and not also a substantive defense of Faurisson (something that relies on people not actually reading the preface), his insistence that Faurisson's disbelief in the gas chambers is not evidence that he is a neo-Nazi, and attacks on people like historian Lucy Dawidowicz as of a "Fascist-Stalinist persuasion" (instead of being an "apolitical liberal").
These are things that Chomsky did to himself: they are not the result of his naivete in his interactions with "creepy people."
There's something going on here. It may well be just Chomsky thinking, "Look. These holocaust deniers are being oppressed by the Establishment. They are the underdogs. They need my help--even if I have to shade the truth to give it." It may be some form of insanity--a failure to understand the rules of how to communicate using English, and of what words mean. It may be something else.
Brad DeLong