[lbo-talk] Churchill and Thomas Brown

[James Heartfield]

Sorry to chip in late, but it did seem to me that Thomas Brown's essay on 
Ward Churchill's smallpox claims was good coin. It does not help the left to 
have to defend overstated claims. There is enough evidence that the US 
military attacked native Americans without having to make up stuff.

I take the view that the critique of the USA from the standpoint of the now 
destroyed culture of the native Americans is moral posturing. There is no 
way to undo the colonisation of the Americas with any justice, any more than 
you could return Britain to the Celtic kings.

And criticising Churchill while he is under attack? Well, the essay was 
written before the Roosting Chickens controversy.

In any event, we ought to be able to defend Churchill's right to speak 
without defending what he says. I did not lose a lot of sleep over the loss 
of bond-traders in 9/11 either, but then they weren't all bond-traders. Just 
because Churchill gets into trouble casting the anti-democratic perpetrators 
of 9/11 as some kind of righteous cause, does not mean that we have to go 
along with what he says,