[lbo-talk] more Churchill

Yoshie Furuhashi critical.montages at gmail.com
Thu May 18 05:12:06 PDT 2006


On 5/18/06, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> >If researchers of Norman Finkelstein's forensic ability looked into
> >books and articles by right-wing academics, they would surely find
> >more problems than what's found in Ward Churchill's writings and even
> >more than what Finkelstein found in Alan Dershowitz's _The Case for
> >Israel_.
>
> No doubt. All these things are true. But the story of white treatment
> of the Indians is horrible enough - why did Churchill have to invent,
> exaggerate, and plagiarize? It's a sad thing.
>
> Doug

I asserted that a number of Arabs and Muslims suffer from what can be called "Holocaust envy" (at <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20060508/038013.html>).

So do many American Indians and others who suffered -- or still suffer -- from oppressions that are downplayed or dismissed altogether by many. You see, the Holocaust has become _the_ standard of evil, and many are tempted to analogize their oppression to the Holocaust -- hence the prevalence of the term "genocide" among leftists, too, not just among genocide-mongers of the Right.

That's why I think Michael Steinberg's argument in <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/steinberg080506.html> is so cogent.

Another reason is that a combination of moralism and capitalism tends to have us believe that intentional wrongs are more of a problem than unintentional wrongs. A case can be made that, morally speaking, intentional wrongs are worse than unintentional wrongs. But, in terms of consequences, unintentional wrongs are often much worse than intentional wrongs. Some can be induced to understand this point intellectually, but many find it unsatisfying, trapped as they are in conventional morality.

I suspect that these two reasons led Ward Churchill to develop his apparent belief in, for instance, a case of an intentional spreading of smallpox where he couldn't find written records for it. (I don't think he deliberately tried to lie -- he probably talked himself into believing it, as many -- including scholars -- do about what they want to believe.)

-- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>



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