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

[Thomas Brown]

> It's not "okay to invent a genocide that never happened," but so many 
> did, that there does seem to be something nitpicky about factchecking 
> individual claims. 
>...
> Like I said earlier, the major threat right now is 
> not Churchill's inflammatory language or questionable scholarship or 
> abrasive personality, it's the attempt by the right to silence 
> critical speech. There's a major attack on academic freedom underway, 
> and it's very urgent that it be defeated. 

I think the two phenomena are related. Were the left more "nitpicky
about factchecking  individual claims", it would be less vulnerable to
such attacks. Reading Churchill reveals that he is not of
the mainstream left. He is an irredentist ethnic nationalist, closer
to Milosevic than anyone else I can name off the top of
my head.

The left should have taken the lead in criticizing Churchill
and his ilk. Instead, the left gave him kneejerk support,
and is now paying the price in taking the blame for him. 

I published in the midst of the right-wing firestorm only
because my findings would not have been taken
seriously before. I'm getting support I don't want
from the right, and I'm getting uninformed ad hominem
criticism from the left. Sometimes the world is upside down.

The left should never have fallen for the post-revolutionary
chic that led to people like Churchill and Dohrn obtaining
tenured positions. Now the left is getting beat up for
owning these folks whose values would be abhorrent
to most.