Ward Churchill
Feb. 2nd, 2005 07:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gordonzolaOk, 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.
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.
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Re: Ward Churchill
Date: 2005-02-06 12:20 am (UTC)believe me, we feel sorry for you, too.
I love Native American cultures
that you even have the nuts to refer to all of us in the same breath, as if we were all one homogenous group highlights your obnoxious eurocentric attitude.
hell, I live in the middle of one
and that certainly makes you an expert on our politics and cultures as a whole, right? Must you advertise your white supremacist attitudes?
their present responses to their societies' past mistreatment are as tedious as every other historical precedesors'
that's mighty white of you: As soon as the course of human events finds you in a position of grotesque privilege, you impugn those who dare speak out from positions of oppression. I'm sorry as hell that our complaints of your unfairness annoy you. Perhaps if you presented yourself more compassionately to those less privileged you would hear fewer diatribes on the subject.
the people whom we should pity are those native peoples that have to endure *your* tired, privileged and arrogant drivel.
Re: Ward Churchill
Date: 2005-02-06 03:25 am (UTC)Re: Ward Churchill
Date: 2005-02-06 03:40 am (UTC)Re: Ward Churchill
Date: 2005-02-06 07:43 am (UTC)If you're going to call someone a "white supremacist" you should do a bit more research.
Your "blood" gives you no more right to be an asshole than anyone else. Stuff it.