Agitation is "in politics" too. For example, I'm sure you were grouped together with "honky, racist dogs" a few times, at a time when you were doing more against racism than most white people.
Since 9/11, I have often said that I myself or someone in my family could be killed in a terrorist attack. We are no Eichmanns. But the issue for me has not been that I am innocent ( and I am innocent; I have opposed U.S. imperialism vigorously). In other words, the fact that through some imprecision Churchill's statement ( and rereading it now, his grammar is close to logically confining it to a subset of everybody in the WTC : "well-educated","technocratic elite"; that wouldn't include store clerks, janitors or children) might have included people on this list does not shock me. It is not the critical fact for judging his statement. As I say, I have often since 9/11 included myself as someone who could be killed in a future WTC-type attack. The fact that I would be an LBO-list member and Marxist, "wrongly" targetted, just doesn't move me much against Churchill. Sorry. My reaction is not to be mad at Churchill, but to be mad at U.S. imperialism for putting me and mine under threat and danger.
Also, Churchill says he did not characterize all the 9/11 victims as "Nazis".
"* Finally, I have never characterized all the September 11 victims as "Nazis." What I said was that the "technocrats of empire" working in the World Trade Center were the equivalent of "little Eichmanns."
CB: I believe the section in question is as follows:
>block quote>
There is simply no argument to be made that the Pentagon personnel killed on September 11 fill that bill. The building and those inside comprised military targets, pure and simple. As to those in the World Trade Center . . .
Well, really. Let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire - the "mighty engine of profit" to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved - and they did so both willingly and knowingly. Recourse to "ignorance" - a derivative, after all, of the word "ignore" - counts as less than an excuse among this relatively well-educated elite. To the extent that any of them were unaware of the costs and consequences to others of what they were involved in - and in many cases excelling at - it was because of their absolute refusal to see. More likely, it was because they were too busy braying, incessantly and self-importantly, into their cell phones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance, into the starved and rotting flesh of infants. If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it.
>close block quote>
What arises here is the uncomfortable question of the relationship between the civilian and military wings of imperialism. "Imperialism" is an economic category. "World Trade" is imperialism.
Aren't the rank and file U.S. soldiers in Iraq as innocent as worldtraders ? Yet, aren't they legitimate targets of anti-colonialist fighters ?
CB
^^^^^^^^^
In politics, it not only what you mean, it's what you say, and even what you almost say. By Churchill's classification, if some members of this list happened to work in the WTC, they would fall into the category of "little Eichmanns." In the Spring before 9-11, I did a talk in the WTC in front of a class taught by the very Marxist Tom Dickins. We could have been LEs too.
WC's academic freedom and civil liberties should be defended, and we shouldn't have to issue constant disclaimers about whatever aspect of his ideas we may not like. But we should realize when somebody majorly sticks his foot in it and not waste our time trying to parse it into something more acceptable.
in solidarity, mbs