Ward Churchill and the Respectable Left

Macdonald Stainsby

Feb 7, 2005

Resist.ca

   I remember deeply how in the immediate aftermath of 9-11 2001, there was a

tremendous number of the most vicious, racist and reactionary witch hunts

carried out--seeking to destroy anyone who would dare take a line different

than "freedom was attacked" in the smoldering ruins of the World Trade

Centre and Pentagon. There were those of us who, unlike Christopher Hitchens

and Doug Henwood (to name but two), were able to resist the need to line-up

with the new-and-improved 'revenge' imperialism that was about to begin a

mass slaughter of the Afghan people to install new rapists in the place of

the old, and to protect heroin traffickers and oil pipelines from our former

anti-Soviet allies who harbored yet more former CIA agents.  Of those of us

who did not immediately decide that we had no ability to stand and resist

witch hunts unseen since the days of "I have here in my hand a list of 205,

a list of names made known to the secretary of state", many still wanted to

take a small part in the witch hunting going on. After all, jolly fun is

indeed jolly fun.

   Yes, many of our best were able to look at the McCarthyizing of Sunera

Thobani and see it for what it was. The womens studies professor from Canada

who had the nerve to allow the phrase "[T]he path of U.S. foreign policy is

soaked in blood!" to escape her lips without asking what John Ashcroft

thought (before his fortunately early, unforeseen retirement) was defended

by many of us. From across the settler state of Canada, and even well into

the belly of the militaristic oil monster itself, the United States, people

saw the hunting of Thobani for uttering such a benign and observable fact as

a threat against their own right to utter benign and observable facts.

People stood with her. She was invited to speak at conference after

conference, given a prominent place in many antiwar demonstrations, and

often seen as a heroine for her defiance of the gag on ideas--for indeed, it

seemed she was, for the time being, just that.

   Yet, as I said, many of us still felt a solid need to take part in the

tar-and-feathering of our more erstwhile colleagues. We could stand against

the basic direction of the hot wind of reaction emanating from the ashes of

19 alleged hi-jackers and resist the call for some form of war, though

Hitchens openly clamored for the re-establishment of imperialism on a

civilizing mission, and Henwood called for a way to arrest and try the Al

Qaedans indicated responsible by the FBI (without, of course, similar calls

for the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States, for but one example). In

those heady days of massive reaction many of us were able to do our

impression of the one foot at a time rope skipping kid: on the one hand we

were "solid" and we resisted the call to burn the world with "our" fury. At

the same time, we assigned Americans a special level of fury to express.

Certainly, many of us said loudly, it is horrible what happened, and we

should be fast to condemn it and allow for a period of deep grief. Who

wouldn't think so? Does anyone really think that it is alright to attempt to

immolate 50 000 people, for any purpose?

   Perhaps when all the peer pressures, the social conventions, the innuendo

of darkness, bleakness, despair-- innuendo that you hated people, enjoyed

death, celebrated the fall of the Twin Towers-- all of it tends to make you

quietly want to, well, set the record straight. The easy way to not endorse

the war but still feel like you acted to protect yourself from the whirlwind

was quickly observable: any hint, snuff or suggestion that the US government

or establishment of any kind (or worse, Israeli) had some form of

foreknowledge needed to be roundly attacked as "ridiculous", "reflexive

anti-Americanism". Even from some academics who knew better you might have

been called "anti-Semitic". Though still not considered respectable, social

conventions on the left about 9-11 theories that go beyond the one produced

by the FBI no longer get you attacked beyond ridicule, which serves the end

investigation well enough. Still, while these mini witch hunts were around,

they did their damage and played their historic social role with

goose-stepping bluntness.

   But others took a slightly different tack. Of course, in North America, or

rather here on Turtle Island if you'll allow me, there were many

revolutionaries who referred to events on this continent and pointed out

that this has happened so many times over. One such individual was Ward

Churchill, department head of Ethnic Studies at Colorado University. His

article came from the same hands that produced such books as "A little

matter of genocide". In these books, this proud Indian revolutionary

detailed the near unparalleled destruction and annihilation of Indians

across the continent--including the continued work of today's nuclear and

toxic waste fill sites, the destruction of lands that remain among the most

sacred to spiritual practices for indigenous populations. He has recently

finished another work exposing how in all corners from the deep south to the

far north of Turtle Island the residential school system took tens of

thousands of lives and carried out the strategy of cultural annihilation:

"Kill the Indian, Save the Man".

   This is, to use the phrase Paul Robeson self-described himself during the

witch hunt of him decades before us, the rock upon which Ward Churchill

stands. To have lived and dedicated your life to the decolonization of the

Indians of Turtle Island is to truly know what a society can reduce human

life to, when profit leads the way. Thus, Churchill wrote in the now-famous

email "Some People Push Back/ On the Justice of Roosting Chickens" essay

following the September eleventh events:

"Property before people, it seems - or at least the equation of property to

people - is a value by no means restricted to America's boardrooms. And the

sanctimony with which such putrid sentiments are enunciated turns out to be

nauseatingly similar, whether mouthed by the CEO of Standard Oil or any of

the swarm of comfort zone "pacifists" queuing up to condemn the black block

after it ever so slightly disturbed the functioning of business-as-usual in

Seattle."

    Since those words were written, by his own account, in a stream of

consciousness, the world has see one hundred thousand dead Iraqis, many more

Palestinians and their lands, attempted coups in Venezuela, Ukraine, the

list of which sadly conforms to his assessment. Yet here it is the beginning

of 2005-- how did our brother of struggle get so easily attacked?

    Yes, many of us now clamoring to defend Ward Churchill pushed that door

open for his exit. No, his job was never made in doubt, for that the

powers-that-be are needed. The climate, however, surrounding this essay was

undoubtedly discovered by a casual Google search. You see, despite so much

that is as plain as can be about Churchill observing that Eichmann

proclaimed innocence for doing his job, and so do the traders of Wall

Street, despite the deaths that inevitably occur. If Eichmann is famous for

not being granted absolution, nor can those who run the New York Stock

Exchange, today's "friends of Ward" created the climate and most likely even

wrote the playbook.

In the interests of not escalating the damage, the names of those quoted

below will be withheld. Here is some of the bilge directed at Ward Churchill

by his "colleagues" and "comrades" long before Rush Limbaugh, New York

patriotic bungle heads and the Rocky Mountain News raised a peep:

"Ward Churchill wrote some really dumb stuff in the aftermath of September

11 -- stuff that really and truly was apologetics, bordering on outright

enthusiasm, for al-Qa'ida. [...]

Which -- apart from the fact that it really is morally disgusting -- betrays

a personality much more interested in rhetorically acting-out than in

actually acting to change things in the US. It's really just nihilistic

ultraleft posturing, worthy perhaps of the Weather Underground, but not much

else. That said, I find Churchill's collection of documents on COINTELPRO to

be useful, but can I otherwise take him seriously in politics? I don't think

so." (January, 2004)

Of course when trying to brow-beat a fellow academic, the threat to not take

someone seriously is tantamount to casting you out of the village.

Fortunately, Churchill has always seen academic achievement as a means to

his true end of social justice and societal transformation. But what of

those who were "activist", choosing before the witch hunt of today, by a

couple of years in fact, to make such comments as

"Up until today, I would say this movement has been growing. I'm not sure

about today. We do not want to see a growing movement for peace derailed by

the views attributed to a speaker." (a demonstration organizer, opposing his

speaking at a rally against the bombing of Afghanistan).

or how about:

"It is one thing when the press maligns Chomsky or Zinn, dedicated leftists

who not only don't make inaccurate assessments of the significance of 9/11

(can you imagine Chomsky or Zinn saying something so bizarre as calling the

survivors "eichmanns"?...) [...] I have [...] defended Chomsky against the

distortion of his comments on 9/11 [....]  That was, however, because

Chomsky's remarks were defendable."

    Of course, again, we are left with the impression that Ward Churchill the

revolutionary is not "dedicated" nor even understandable. To take such an

attitude is a hallmark of the left itself, but rarely has the case made

itself in the improper order. Normally, if one wanted to lynch a fellow

activist, revolutionary and individual who sacrificed everything in life for

the unrewarding cause of social ossification, vilification and constant

harassment, we would need to at least wait until the setters of social

convention in the media and the ruling class itself were to start the ball

rolling. That is normally the time when "good" leftists avoid witch hunts by

ourselves dunking our own in the water to see if they float. And the best

among us will float and rise above all of it. but in this sad, demoralizing

case, even worse than with Paul Robeson: it is clear that we not only will

accommodate partial witch hunts in order to beckon others away from us, in

this case it appears we ourselves invited, constructed and launched it.

    It is to the shame of the corporate war loving press that they didn't pick

up on their cue for so long. But now, once we wrote the script and handed

them another Indian to scalp, small wonder one could see it coming over

three years ago. Ward Churchill resigned from his post as Chairman of the

Ethnic Studies Department at the University of Colorado, coincidentally the

scene of the greatest massacres of the retreating Indian population during

the "Last Indian Wars" of the 1860's, at the end of January 2005. He had

written what amounted to a rambling though eloquent email to a small

publication. At the time, little was said about it. But that didn't prevent

some of our "friends" in the movement from expressing the very definition of

the self-fulfilling prophecy, in December of 2001:

"I ask a different question for the left. We know that the media will try to

associate the anti-war movement with support for the attacks.  Why, knowing

that, would left activists want to bring a person to speak at a rally

knowing that his public on line remarks can be expected to be used to malign

the movement?"

    Today, because the hunt is being carried out by major media, including CNN,

the UK Guardian and others-- we will now all exhibit a solidarity with the

man who has already been maligned. As usual on Turtle Island, the Blacks,

Indians and the various non-white men and women such as Robeson, Churchill

and Thobani are the ones who bear the brunt of the assault. But we have done

so much more on this particular hunt, it bears note to allow the voices of

those who defended Churchill right from the beginning. Again, in 2001:

"Churchill's strong language makes for easy criticism, but once Churchill is

picked off, then the pressure put on people like my colleague, **

**, for making a couple statements that were taken out of context,

becomes acceptable.  The attack on freedom of speech always begins at the

margin."

    In these days of patriot acts, demoralized antiwar movements and ratcheting

war rhetoric against Iran, nothing is more marginal than the truth of where

this whole bloody war began, whether seen from the point of September 11,

2001, or from the invasion of Colombus over five hundred years ago. The

scalping of this Indian professor is nothing new for the American state,

with or without a "war on terror" as a means to accomplish it. However, as

much as we have said so, we have not learned a thing collectively about how

to react in the face of such racist scapegoating. Instead, we have started

to show the way, and take the lead. That should clearly be a cause for all

to ponder.  In fact, we can go right back to the maligned professor's

infamous essay for the not-so-famous line:

"Sheeplike, the great majority of Americans can also be counted upon to

bleat their approval, at least in the short run, believing as they always do

that the nasty implications of what they're doing will pertain only to others."