[lbo-talk] Mr. Churchill, Mr. Dershowitz, Mr. Summers, Etc.

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Sat Feb 5 10:07:19 PST 2005


Jon Johanning zenner41 at mac.com, Sat Feb 5 08:32:46 PST 2005:
>On Feb 4, 2005, at 6:38 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
>
>>As Yoshie has argued, that makes pretty bad politics -- but not I
>>think as bad politics as the somewhat sticky moralism or
>>almost-Victorian purism of those on this list who are hastening to
>>prove their purity by damning Churchill as "crap" or "as bad as the
>>imperialists" et cet. I hope none of these politically chaste
>>polemicists dare, ever, to use the charge of purism against other
>>leftists.
>
>"Sticky moralism"? "Almost-Victorian purism"? Are these expressions
>supposed to refer to the view that a Colorado professor cheering on
>the indiscriminate slaughterers of thousands as heroic
>freedom-fighters and using the cliched Nazi smear against their
>victims might perhaps have stepped a bit beyond the realm of reason?
>
>And is Churchillian (Ward Churchillian, that is) rhetoric actually
>at all preferable politically to the "sticky moralism" that dares
>to raise an eyebrow at this "little Eichmann" stuff? If by politics
>one means building a large, strong, effective movement of average,
>workaday Americans, a rhetoric which shows such disregard for their
>feelings about this horrific event (yes, it was horrific, not --
>*not* -- a "heroic deed" by any means) would hardly seem a
>practical approach. You will notice that Paula Zahn and everyone
>else on the right who has lit out after Churchill starts out by
>bringing up the Eichmann thing; he would obviously have had a lot
>better chance of getting people to pay attention, at least, to his
>basic idea if he hadn't dragged in this old Nazi reference, which
>was indeed "crap."

It's simply not true that Ward Churchill "would obviously have had a lot better chance of getting people to pay attention, at least, to his basic idea if he hadn't dragged in this old Nazi reference, which was indeed 'crap.'"

The only reason Ward Churchill (whose scholarship has seen better days) is getting attention now, rather than in 2001, is Fox News got on his case. Otherwise, no one -- including LBO-talk subscribers -- would be talking about his crappy rhetoric (or kernels of truth, such as the fact that the sanctions on Iraq had genocidal impacts on Iraqis, sadly buried underneath it) in the infamous essay. That's the state of the corporate media and US politics now.

The thing is that, if 9/11 survivors, 9/11 victims' families, and their supporters wanted to picket a Ward Churchill appearance at Hamilton College, heckle him, pack the venue and stage a walkout, etc. to protest what he said in the essay, that would have been fine. They have the right to free speech, just as Churchill does.

However, the Right that are attacking Churchill -- from Fox News and state lawmakers who are threatening funding cuts to terrorists who issued death threats against not just Churchill but also the Hamilton College president and others and vandals who pained swastikas on Churchill's truck -- are behaving like fascists. Who knows, the vandals and terrorists in question may even be genuine neo-Nazis, doing the dirty work for neoliberals as usual.

The punishment for Churchill should be exactly the same one that Alan Dershowitz (who believes that torture should be legalized because torture has been and is being practiced anyway <http://counterpunch.org/whitney06092004.html> and whose book The Case for Israel plagiarized a fraud From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters, according to Norman G. Finkelstein <http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/24/1730205>), Lawrence Summers (who said that "the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable" and that "underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly underpolluted" <http://www.metrojustice.org/NewsLetters/news01/Apr01/SummersHarvardPrexy.htm> and believe that women are biologically inferior to men when it comes to science <http://www.guardian.co.uk/gender/story/0,11812,1392804,00.html>), etc. have received. -- Yoshie

* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>



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