"Basically they to seem to mean apologists for unjust power as opposed to, well, intellectuals like Howard Zinn."
Chomsky may be at times echoing Bakunin's perspective when referring to intellectuals, but in regard to his approval of American anti-intellectualism, the interview I quoted makes it quite clear he is taking about intellectuals as a whole including those who are not defending the state's interests like Sartre and himself. It seems to me that his basic point is that an intellectual's opinion shouldn't carry weight merely because of their status as an intellectual. But as I said before I think American anti-intellectualism runs deeper than this, it's disregard not just for experts but evidence all together, that you're entitled to your opinion no matter what.
"I remember in the 1960s, sometimes I would sign an international statement against the war in Vietnam—signed by me here, Sartre and some other person in Europe, and so on. Well, in Paris there’d be big front-page headlines; here nobody paid any attention at all, which was the only healthy reaction. Okay, so three guys signed a statement; who cares? The statement signed by 120 intellectuals in the time of the Algerian War was a major event in Paris. If a similar thing happened here, it wouldn’t even make the newspapers—correctly."
http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/1991----.htm