[Marxism] An Injury to One is an Injury to All !!

[Dbachmozart@xxxxxxx]

Raise Your Voice but Keep Your Head Down

By Michael  Albert


I first met Ward Churchill when I was working at South End  Press twenty five
years ago and Ward submitted his first book which was about  Marxism and
Native Americans. It was a collection of essays which revealed why  indigenous
people distrust Marxists' cultural politics and community norms. I  found
Churchill's insights very compelling and became friends with him. I  haven't 
seen
Ward for years, but every so often we publish a piece by him on  ZNet, where I
now work. I offer all this in case anyone might feel our ties bias  my
viewpoint.

I think the current controversy about Ward Churchill is a  manipulative
attack on free speech aimed at the whole left. I remember when  Ward's post 9/11
essay came out. My reaction was to wish he hadn't written it.  Ward took clear
and cogent insights about the causes of international hostility  to U.S.
policies and weighed them down with not so clear and not so cogent non  insights
about the general population of the U.S. This kind of mix is always a  problem,
not least because astute but reactionary readers will try to dismiss  the good
by pointing to the bad. It doesn't matter that that is like trying to  dismiss
Newton's positive contributions about gravity on grounds that he  believed in
alchemy. When attacked with manipulative skill, tangential flaws can  be used
to undercut important truths.

On a larger scale, that's what  people are now trying to do to Ward himself,
as well: dismiss him in toto, as a  person and as an employee of a university,
over a single essay some key parts of  which were, I would agree, worthy of
criticism.

There are two problems  that should not be confused with one another. One
problem is that no person  should be seen as only the tangential worst that he 
or
she does, even if there  is a complete consensus about the failings, unlike
in this case.

Ward  Churchill, for example, over the years, has contributed a great deal to
the  comprehension of cultural concerns and possibilities as well as to
revealing the  dynamics of repression and international relations. Ward is a
prodigious writer  and an effective speaker and organizer who has fought for 
just
causes over and  over.

I don't agree with Ward's views on some health issues, on  population issues,
and on certain particular cultural matters, much less on the  efficacy of
what we might call political trash talk about strategies of  struggle. But none
of that has interfered with my liking Ward the person and  feeling positive
about his many contributions. Ward Churchill should not be  judged solely on a
single essay written the day after a gargantuan calamity,  whatever anyone may
think of that piece. Parts ought to be criticized, yes, but  not the person who
wrote it. It is the difference between ad hominem and  substantive argument.

But second, and in this case more important, there  is the little matter of
free speech. Criticizing what someone says is not the  same as writing them
death threats and trying to terminate their career. The  right-wing thugs who 
are
after Ward Churchill are stalking horses for more  astute and sober folks in
the rear. The troops in the field are Ward's proximate  problem, but the
powers that be--at the University of Colorado, in the Colorado  state 
government,
in major media from Fox to The Wall Street Journal and from  ABC and the New
York Times, through to the halls of Washington DC--are  ultimately far more
important.

Are reactionary elites going to  coercively remove Ward Churchill from U.S.
academia? That needs to be prevented  by all of us, including people annoyed at
having to wage the free speech fight  over words they do not like. Raise your
voice.

Why is it so hard for  people, often on both sides of the left/right divide,
to understand that what  free speech means, if it means anything at all, is
freedom to speak what others  do not like or even cannot stand to hear?

Tolerating what you like is  hardly a major achievement. Hitler tolerated
what he liked. So did Stalin. Idi  Amin did too. So did Genghis Khan, the Shah,
and Henry Kissinger. Free speech  only becomes an issue when someone says what
others don't want to hear. Ward  Churchill did that and so free speech is now
an issue. If the wrong side wins,  the precedent will be dangerous.

This dynamic is not new but it is  growing bolder. A recent report in the New
York Times relayed how teachers in  many states and counties in the U.S. are
avoiding evolution by natural selection  as a topic in their public school
classes. The teachers fear fallout from  fundamentalist parents, scared school
board members, and even politically cowed  principals. Ward's fight and the
fight of these teachers are logically of one  cloth. The difference is that so 
far
Ward has more guts.

Ward used to  tell me, after a visit, "Keep your head down." He had seen war
at home and  abroad and he knew what he was talking about. Now Ward is in
another kind of  war. I doubt any of these right-wing thugs will come after him
bodily. But the  harm they can do institutionally is bad enough. Keep your head
down.

Why  Ward Churchill? I think Ward would probably say it is because what he is
doing  is very effective. Ward may even see the attacks on his essay as
evidence that  the essay had great dissident merit. I think Ward would be wrong 
in
that. Ward  is being attacked not because he is the strongest possible target,
but because  he is one of the weakest possible targets. His essay is featured
not because it  was seriously threatening, but because it is easily
ridiculed. Ward provided  right wingers fodder they could manipulatively use. 
The right
wingers are hoping  that Ward has sufficiently irritated those who would
otherwise defend him so  that he is left without defenders. We can't allow that.
The right is a long way  from going after stronger targets. Everyone on the
left has to be sure no  targets they do go after are vulnerable.

Since 9/11 at public talks I  often compare George Bush and Osama bin Laden.
I note that if you could have  been a fly on the wall of the inner circle
meeting rooms of the U.S. government  leading up to the bombing of Afghanistan, 
I
believe you would have heard no  discussion, not even a minutes worth, taking
into account the well being of the  Afghan people in the face of possible
massive starvation induced by our assault.  Mass media at the time reported (on
back pages only) that bombing Afghanistan  could lead to five million deaths. No
mainstream paper had a headline "U.S.  contemplates killing millions to prove
we are tough," though all knew it was  true.

I also indicate in the public talks that if I were to now have the
opportunity to ask bin Laden how he could possibly have chosen to undertake the
assault on the Twin Towers, despicable as this act was, I think he would  
probably
understand the question and would reply, roughly, that he thought the  gains
(in trying to propel the U.S. into reactions that would provoke  fundamentalism
throughout the Mideast) were worth the price in human loss. Bin  Laden, as
evil as his designs surely were and are, would understand, that is,  that there
was something untoward that occurred on 9/11, piles of corpses, and  that the
negative deaths had to be weighed against what he saw as positive  political
gains. Sane people will reject his moral calculus, of course, but I am  guessing
that at least he had one.

On the other hand, I say in these  talks that if I were to now have the
opportunity to ask Bush and Cheney how they  could possibly have chosen to
undertake the bombing of Afghanistan, I think they  would not even understand 
the
question. They would not see any need to weigh off  benefits against costs 
because
they saw no costs. For them the general estimates  made by all responsible
parties that literally millions of Afghans might suffer  starvation if bombing
were to commence counted for naught. For them, Afghans are  like bugs outside
our front door are for the rest of us. To Bush and Cheney  Afghans are
expendable. Bush and Cheney have no moral calculus. They reduce  humans to the 
status
of fleas.

And then I say in these talks, if there is  a deep hell for sinners surely
Osama bin Laden is headed for at least its  seventh floor down, but George Bush
and Dick Cheney are going to ride an  elevator even further down to a deeper
basement. Everyone at talks like this  given in the U.S. understands these
images and few have any problem with the  harsh tone. When I have given talks 
like
this in Europe, however, I have been  asked why I am alive. I was confused
the first time I heard this question in  France, and then in Belgium and Italy,
and then I realized what they meant. "If  the U.S. is as bad as it seems, why
don't Bush and Co. eradicate people as  radical and militant as you? That's
what our really bad guys did here in Europe,  after all."

Well, the answer is that things in the U.S. are not that  bad. Our
fundamentalists can only pick on targets that are relatively weak and  
effectively
repress them in states that are relatively congenial to right wing  thuggery, 
and
even then they can do so only in relatively limited ways, at least  so far. But
if we let our fundamentalists get away with that much, which is  already more
than bad enough, then it will be just an opening act. If they  succeed at
first, their efforts will expand.

So why do O'Reilly and the  Wall Street Journal pick on Ward? I think it's
because his words can be made to  seem indiscriminate, and indeed arguably were
indiscriminate, and because as a  result they felt he would have a hard time
fighting back. Pick Ward off, then  work on all those teachers still having the
gall to tell students that Darwin  knew what he was talking about, and then
move on from there.

I don't want  to rally around Ward Churchill's specific words. They aren't my
cup of freedom.  I want to rally around Ward Churchill's right to write
whatever words he  chooses. More, I want to fight for our need to have 
institutions
and social  conventions that respect and support dissidence rather than
institutions and  social conventions that try to extinguish dissidence at every
opportunity.  Indeed, when we attain that level of free and supported speech, we
might have  reason to claim a degree of civilization.

P.S. There are plenty of  historical instances of individuals being judged
for more than one dimension of  their lives and writing, even when one dimension
had no redeeming logic at all.  Here is another comment from W. Churchill
(compliments of Mickey Z): "I do not  agree that the dog in a manger has the
final right to the manger even though he  may have lain there for a very long
time. I do not admit that right. I do not  admit for instance, that a great 
wrong
has been done to the Red Indians of  America or the black people of Australia.
I do not admit that a wrong has been  done to these people by the fact that a
stronger race, a higher-grade race, a  more worldly wise race to put it that
way, has come in and taken their  place."

Whoops, that wasn't Ward Churchill, it was Sir Winston Churchill,  the man
U.S. News and World Report called "The Last Hero." Sir Winston also  said: "I am
strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes,"  and
asked British scientists to cook up "a new kind of weather" for the citizens  of
Dresden.

I wouldn't recommend taking Winston Churchill out of the  library, but I
would recommend strongly criticizing his vile words that had far  fewer 
redeeming
features than the worst things Ward Churchill has ever even  fantasized
saying.







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