[lbo-talk] O'Reilly vs Churchill: treason? sedition?

KJ kjinkhoo at gmail.com
Wed Feb 9 23:08:33 PST 2005


At 11:20 pm -0500 9/2/05, Doug Henwood wrote:
>Chuck Grimes asked me offlist why I didn't want any discussion of
>Churchill's footnoting practices. It's a good question, and here's
>what I said:
>
>>I'm afraid it'd be a lot of people talking about what they don't
>>know much about. Also, I gotta say, it makes me nervous that
>>pissing on Churchill's scholarship will contribute something to
>>minimizing the horror of Indian genocide. So what if he got some
>>details wrong, white people did kill 90% of them and still treat
>>them like shit.

On the first -- yes. The reason for posting was to have people who are knowledgeable about this comment on it.

But on the latter -- it's best not to have any shocks down the line. If they are determined to get Churchill, then his scholarship better stand up to muster.

Moreover, it's the details that can and will be used to obfuscate the big picture. That's always been the fate of left scholarship -- it has to be better, more careful, factually impeccable. Look at how Niall Ferguson can be feted in the 21st century for a celebration of empire. If the same quality of work had been produced by someone against the empire, it would have been torn to shreds.

Anyway, if it can be shown that the Brown's are guilty of fraud and falsification, then the freedom of speech stance on Churchill becomes much, much stronger: they've been looking for a way to get at him, and now, they are using this odious bit about "little eichmanns". Then the contribution of the Brown's would be, in my local speak, an "own goal".

kj



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