Ward Churchill

[gordonzola]

Ok, Ok. I don't really want to get into the Ward Churchill debate. But it's all over my friendslist and I don't want to comment in 10 different journals just to say the same thing.

I don't support firing him or censoring him. Blah, blah, blah and duh. I do appreciate that he was trying to focus discussion on US foreign policy and answer the question of the times, "Why Do They Hate Us?" The idea that they hate our "freedom" still doesn't quite satisfy.

But writing in his press release:

* It should be emphasized that I applied the "little Eichmanns" characterization only to those described as "technicians." Thus, it was obviously not directed to the children, janitors, food service workers, firemen and random passers-by killed in the 9-1-1 attack.


Seems disingenuous considering the tone and message in his original essay:

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.

while the "power lunchers" obviously wouldn't have included janitors, food workers, etc., being so cavalier with his words in the aftermath of 9/11 was pretty stupid for an "intellectual" and professor. I mean, I guess it would be more forgiveable if he wrote it in his LiveJournal. I'm surprised it took him this long to lose his administrative position. When I read, actually reviewed, a zine with this article in it a couple of months after the fact, I figured his days were numbered then.

In that essay he actually seems to be completely unaware of the existence on non-"little Eichmans" in the WTC at all. Their deaths didn't exist at all to Churchill. This reads like ass-covering to me. And, ya know, he copped the whole "chickens" line from Malcolm X anyway. and we know what happened to him.

I do wonder about the timing of all of this. I guess it's because it's turning into a book now. Any other theories as to why this essay wasn't popularized/attacked before this? Because it certainly was available.

Comments

[rfrancis]

Free speech includes the freedom to ruin your career as a public speaker by speaking bollocks.

-R

[dcart.livejournal.com]

I think Churchill was used to swimming in a world where Arendt's characterization of the "banality of evil" underlies a lot of the discourse as a given. If he'd referenced Arendt without specifically calling the people in those buildings "little Eichmanns", he'd have made the exact same point without giving the right wing pundits such an easy target. I do believe that's exactly the point he was making, that the stockbrokers and power lunchers were participating in evil in a very banal way.

That said, I think one could make the case that it's somewhat disingenuous to characterize the power lunchers that way and not characterize the janitors and such in a similar manner. I guess that depends on where you draw the line (if you do) between being complicit in U.S. corporate capitalism and being a victim of it if you're employed by it.

[spoonfeeding.livejournal.com]

thanks for making the first point- to consider Eichmann without Arendt's analysis is to miss the point of him mentioning Eichmann at all.

I disagree with your second point. I remember having this huge debate with a friend of mine who wanted to blow up the WTC years ago. She was going to do it at night "so no one would be hurt." I pointed out that there would undoubtedly be janitorial and security staff, and she said that by working there in any capcity, they were complicit and culpable. I didn't believe that the single mother of 3 with a 10th grade education and the desperate need for any job she can get has as much culpability as the stockbroker with the access and leisure time to make a considered choice.

Not to sound patronizing- and I don't believe blue collar workers are necessarily desperate and uneducated- but, dude, I've been the kid of that blue collar worker, and if someone had told my mom she shouldn't work for the only place she could get a job because they had bad international trade policies, she'd have looked at them like they were insane.

[dcart.livejournal.com]

Thanks, for the acknowledgment on point one. I have seen a few threads on this topic and few of them mention Arendt even in passing.

On point two, I don't necessarily make that case myself, but I think a reasonable person could make that case and do so within the context of an ideology that I basically agree with. Both of my parents (dad is blue collar, mom is "pink collar")have worked for companies with nasty international crap in their corporate backgrounds. Dad was a steelworker for a while, then was (and is again) a factory worker for a company that was part of a big German conglomerate and now is owned by Johnson & Johnson. And, well, mom's a nurse and who even wants to go into the crap that our for profit healthcare companies and pharmaceutical companies have done in the world.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

and the extreme of taking "full responsibility" for these atrocities can be seen among some political folks. There's a white auxiliary group to a Black pan-African socialist party based in Oakland. One of their members started in on me once with how "we" enslaved Africans etc. While I certainly don't deny the white privilige in this country, I felt the need to remind him, based on his name and when his family came over (I asked), that our families were back in the old country digging for potatoes when slaves were being rounded up in Afrca. We benefit from a racist system, but not every family deserves action verbs.

oh hey, I bought a couch from them, I think!

[troubler.livejournal.com]

Hee.

[mark27.livejournal.com]

anyone who uses language so sloppily and expects people not to be pissed of and offended is obviously a horse's ass who doesn't deserve the time and attention of much of anyone

so you're saying that it doesn't matter if you have a point or if your arguments are valid if you happen to use language sloppily? that's pretty weak.

The right wing punditocracy feeds off of this shit.

that's true. one has to be more careful of one's language if you're intending to use it in those battles. was he? I don't know. anyone who has ever seen ward churchill talk knows that he is certainly no politician. he doesn't try to excise his emotional investments from his academic research, but that doesn't change the fact that his research and subsequent arguments are valid.

if it were up to me, Ward Churchill would have to spend the next six months touring the Nazi death camps in Europe, visiting the Holocaust museums in Washington, DC, Berlin, Los Angeles and Israel

conversely, if you spent the next six months touring native american reservations and visiting the sites of the old US concentration camps (on which the nazi camps were modeled), you might have enough insight to realize that comparisons between the Nazi regime and the european occupation of the americas is more accurate than not. Anything the Nazi's did, the United States visited more severely and with more efficacy upon the Native Americans.

[rfrancis]

Now I'm lost. The office workers in the World Trade Center were the ones who exterminated (and I do totally agree and believe that the word is justified) the aboriginal Americans?

-R

[mark27.livejournal.com]

There are so many flaws in your logic its hardly worth arguing.

But I think the important point is simply that Ward's language was sloppy enough that he allowed people who are so inclined to make ridiculous conclusions (like yours).

He's no diplomat. He's not looking to make any friends. He's still a brilliant man. Flame him all you want.

[animikwaan.livejournal.com]

it is rumored that some high-ranking officials walked into the first session of the nurembourg trials carrying pictures of sitting bull... as well, it is well-documented that hitler's regime looked into the reservation system and a myriad of other policies the united states had towards native people for ideas on the execution of genocide...