Killing the Messenger:
Ward Churchill’s Sins Against the Empire
By Steven Best
February 10th 2005
Press Action
“The gross distortions of what I actually said can only be viewed as an
attempt to distract the public from the real issues at hand and to further
stifle freedom of speech and academic debate in this country.” -Ward
Churchill
Academic free speech and the First Amendment once again are under intense
fire in the midst of a political and mass media witch hunt on Ward Churchill,
Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. The controversy
erupted over objection to Churchill’s participation on a panel at Hamilton
College in upstate New York once a controversial essay he published on the
Internet the day after 9-11, entitled “Some People Push Back: On the Justice
of Roosting Chickens,” was unearthed and transformed into fodder for a lurid
media spectacle.
Churchill was tarred and feathered as demands for termination of his tenured
position grew to a roar. The attack shifted from the words of his essay to
the body of his writings and even to scrutiny of his professed Indian heritage.
It immediately became clear that the Right was hunting far larger game than
just a radical critic of US imperialism named Ward Churchill. They were exploiting
the controversy in an effort to advance their ongoing Culture Wars whereby
they seek to demolish free speech rights, liberal and left values, and the
academic tenure system which in their view protects an army of crazed radicals
corrupting the minds of youth.
Churchill’s essay argued that 9-11 was inevitable blowback in response to
US global terrorism and imperialist policies against Islamic nations. Harking
back to Malcolm X’s quip that the assassination of President Kennedy was
an example of “chickens coming home to roost,” such that leaders of a violent
system themselves are victims of violence, Churchill applied the same analogy
to the US system as a whole. According to Churchill, 9-11 was the long-delayed
but inexorable moment when the US paid a small fraction of the political
costs it has incurred in its ruthless assault on nations and peoples around
the globe. Churchill emphasized that unless it drastically changes its imperialist
policies, the US will be struck again, likely in a bigger and more destructive
way.
Churchill underscored the contradictions and hypocrisies in the thinking
of the US government and citizenry, whereby the nation mourns the victims
of the September 11 attacks, but sheds no tears for the half million children
killed in the US economic blockade of Iraq during the 1990s, the 100,000
innocent citizens killed in the US bombing and invasion of Iraq, or the countless
others who died as a result of US invasions of Grenada, Panama, Nicaragua,
Chile, East Timor, and elsewhere. The nation condemns 9-11 as a heinous act,
but it is no less despicable than the terrorist violence the US directs against
peoples throughout the globe.
One can read similar critiques of US imperialism in Left critics such as
Noam Chomsky, but Chomsky is ignored not demonized. So why the national furor
over Ward Churchill? Whereas Chomsky condemned 9-11 and viewed it as a terrorist
attack, Churchill argued that the World Trade Center, like the Pentagon,
was a military not a civilian target, and thus flying planes into the twin
towers was not an act of terrorism. In imprecise language at best, Churchill
declared that the 2,977 people killed in the “sterile sanctuary of the twin
towers” were not innocent victims, but rather “little Eichmanns.” Without
nuance or qualification, Churchill argued that those killed in the World
Trade Center were as culpable for US violence as top Nazi bureaucrat Adolf
Eichmann was for Hitler’s “final solution.” In his now infamous words, Churchill
said, “those in the World Trade Center ... 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.”
Electronic Lynching and Right-Wing Jihad
Churchill’s essay was flawed in numerous senses and was sharply criticized
by critics from both the Right and the Left. Churchill rightly condemned
the barbaric history of US imperialism, but he offered no critique of fundamentalist
Islamic movements rooted in fanaticism, intolerance, and violence. He failed
to articulate the fundamental differences between two forms of opposition
to US policy: a secular, pro-modern Left critique that is progressive, emancipatory,
and radically democratic, and an atavistic, fundamentalist, anti-modern critique
that is reactionary, theocratic, puritanical, and repressive. Numerous liberals
and Leftists have defended Churchill’s First Amendment rights, while offering
more thoughtful and nuanced analyses of 9-11 attentive to these distinctions.
The critique from the Right went far beyond addressing the substance of Churchill’s
essay, however, to launch vicious ad hominem attacks on his character and
ethnic background, to distort his intention and meaning, and to demand that
he be fired from a tenured position designed to protect academics from ideological
persecution. Conservative politicians and media pundits demonized Churchill
as a “madman” and “cheerleader for terrorists” who spews vile “hate speech”
tantamount to treason. Gleefully pouncing on their favorite target—the alleged
hegemony of the “academic Left” (an absurd myth as any vulnerable and marginalized
progressive professor can attest to)—right-wing pundits like Bill O’Reilly,
Rush Limbaugh, and Joe Scarborough exhorted their benighted media flocks
to flood Hamilton College, the University of Colorado, and Colorado politicians
with vociferous letters of complaint demanding that Churchill be fired.
Right-wing pundits whipped up such an Orwellian hate fest that Churchill
received 140 death threats within a four-day period after the story broke
on national media. Politicians eagerly took the bit to promote their Culture
War against liberal and left values. Along with a bevy of republican and
democrat state lawmakers, Colorado Governor Bill Owens excoriated Churchill
and demanded termination of his tenure. The Colorado House of Representatives
released a Joint Resolution in support of the 9-11 victims’ families and
vilified Churchill for striking “an evil and inflammatory blow against America’s
healing process.”
Within the Colorado university community, reaction was mixed. Outraged Board
of Regent members such as Tom Lucern demanded that Churchill be fired. The
Board held a special meeting on February 3rd to determine his fate, and decided
to postpone the decision for a month while they scrutinize every word he
has written. The interim chancellor at Colorado University and Boulder Faculty
Assembly declared Churchill’s ideas to be “repugnant,” “offensive,” and “odious,”
but nonetheless supported his right to express them, while his colleagues
in the Ethnic Studies department provided “full and unconditional support”
for his free speech rights. While College Republicans denounced Churchill
and organized a petition drive for his dismissal, student supporters denounced
the furor as a McCarthyesque witch hunt engineered to silence a progressive
member of their community. Showing logical fidelity to their philosophy of
freedom, some College Republicans chastised their right-wing peers and formed
the organization Republicans for Churchill in support of his First Amendment
rights. As the mob’s furor grew, the American Union of University Professors
and the American Civil Liberties Union came out strongly in favor of controversial
speech and Churchill’s First Amendment rights.
Free Speech—Except for You
Churchill’s critics from the Right apparently never read his essay, or if
they bothered have seriously misinterpreted it. A cursory reading of “Some
People Push Back” reveals that Churchill was not applauding the 9-11 attacks.
Rather, as he clarified in a written statement after the media frenzy broke,
he was “simply pointing out that if U.S. foreign policy results in massive
death and destruction abroad, we cannot feign innocence when some of that
destruction is returned.” Churchill insists that he “never said that people
`should’ engage in armed attacks on the United States, but that such attacks
are a natural and unavoidable consequence of unlawful U.S. policy.” Churchill
insists that his real point was that “if we want an end to violence, especially
that perpetrated against civilians, we must take the responsibility for halting
the slaughter perpetrated by the United States around the world.”
Whereas Bush is perpetuating his violent policies in Iraq and doing everything
he can to increase rather than lessen terrorism around the world and against
the US, Churchill was arguing that if the US government and citizenry truly
want peace, then they must end the violence against the victims of US ambition
and aggression. Nowhere in his essay does Churchill advocate violence against
anyone, and nothing in his analysis falls outside of the range of constitutionally
protected speech. The fatwas demanding his termination are baseless.
To give an example of a tendentious and decontextualized misreading of Churchill,
consider his statement from an April 2004 interview in Satya magazine where
he stated that “More 9-11s are needed.” Glibly interpreting this statement
in a vacuum, the fulminating pundit could easily uphold Churchill as pro-terrorism
and anti-American. Read in its proper context, however, it is clear that
Churchill is only saying that it may take more 9-11s before the American
people wake up to the real causes of such attacks and realize if they want
peace they have to promote justice. As of yet, there has been no serious
debate of the various causes of 9-11 and the American people apparently learned
little but how to revert to a blind jingoism.
The methodology of Churchill’s persecutors is to seize on the inflammatory
sound bite about little Eichmanns, pump it up into alleged “hate speech”
against America, and scrub it from its context where he analyzes some of
the root causes of terrorist attacks against the US. The doublespeak strategy
of Churchill’s right-wing critics is to affirm his right to free speech,
but then argue that it doesn’t apply to him because (1) taxpayers fund his
position and (2) he is incompetent, morally irresponsible, and lacks integrity.
The first argument is wholly nonsensical. Taxpayers might have the right
to ensure that those people whose occupations they pay for do their job,
but they do not have the right to enforce the content of their speech and
thought. A professor is doing his or her job when the professor publishes
and teaches students in a professional and responsible way. The terms “professional
and responsible” do not mean that the professor holds no views of his or
her own, even controversial and radical ones, but rather that the professor
respects the students’ own views and fosters critical thinking and learning
processes within the classroom. As Ward Churchill is a prolific writer who
is immensely popular with his students, there seems to be no credible case
to assail him for being unprofessional or irresponsible. Such a charge would
have to be substantiated on the evidence of his meeting professional teaching
standards, and not on his political views and writings.
Moreover, who are these “taxpayers” conservatives insist that professors
like Churchill are so beholden to? There is no monolithic bloc of people
against or for someone like Churchill. Some taxpayers are conservatives who
would detest his views and support his dismissal, but others are liberals
and radicals who defend his views and his right to state them. I am a professor
and taxpayer in Texas and unavoidably fund viewpoints and research projects
with which I strongly disagree. But I am under no illusion that I have a
right to tell other professors and state employees what to say or to silence
them when I disagree.
The second argument is agreeable in principle, but applying it to Churchill
smacks of academic fascism. Among the most vocal of Churchill’s opponents
is Colorado Governor Bill Owens. Reveling in the media spotlight, Owens has
lost no opportunity to defame Churchill on every level. Appearing more frequently
on national TV than Viagra commercials, Owens argues that Churchill should
be fired from his tenured position because he is “incompetent” as a scholar
and teacher and “lacks integrity” as a human being. Although tenure grants
a professor permanent job status, a professor can nonetheless be fired for
things such as criminal activity, sexual harassment, plagiarism, or incompetence.
Except within the boundaries of following professional academic rules and
social laws, the concept of “integrity” is not directly applicable to assessing
whether or not a professor should keep a position.
No doubt, universities employ professors who are liars, alcoholics, drug
addicts, poor parents, and so on, but their faults as persons and “lack of
integrity” have no direct relevance to their academic job performance. Owens
and other persecutors see Churchill’s radicalism not as a valid political
position but rather as a fatal character flaw (as they no doubt would like
to see a uniform America devoid of dissent) that warrants termination from
his tenured position. But this politicization of moral categories is as arbitrary
as it is repressive.
Similarly, the concept of “incompetence” certainly is vague and open to conflicting
interpretations. If a professor plagiarized his or her work or lacked rudimentary
knowledge and skills in his or her field, he or she could rightly be declared
as incompetent and justly fired. Unfortunately, many tenured professors are
horrible teachers and never publish or keep up with the research in their
field. Such professors might justifiably be branded as incompetent, although,
for better or worse, they are protected by the tenure system. But those who
brand a productive scholar and inspiring teacher like Ward Churchill as incompetent
because he made controversial or “offensive” Constitutionally protected remarks
reveal nothing but their own political motivations and incompetence as citizens
who should be cognizant of First Amendment rights. As Governor of Colorado,
Bill Owens took an oath to protect the Constitution. By persecuting Ward
Churchill for an essay he wrote under the protection of the Constitution,
Owen reveals his own incompetence and lack of integrity as a governor and
shows himself to be the one who should be fired from his job.
Churchill’s critics self-destruct in their own contradictions. It is a blatant
inconsistency for someone to say that they support the First Amendment, but
then want to punish someone for exercising First Amendment rights for ideas
that they do not like. Whereas Churchill has said nothing that amounts to
hate speech, his vituperators routinely spew hate speech against him in the
national media. Being a critical and independent thinker rather than a Pavlovian
jingoist, Churchill exemplifies what it is to be an American, whereas those
trying to silence him and trample on his constitutional rights shame themselves
as the real anti-Americans traitors.
The First Amendment equally protects morally “responsible” and “irresponsible”
speech, and the Bill Owens and Pat Buchanans of the world are not God-like
enough to set the standards of speech for all. The hysterical attack on Churchill
eerily evokes the tyranny of the McCarthy era where acts were blacklisted
and professors were fired for having even liberal views or showing dissent
against state repression. It demonstrates the repressive and hegemonic logic
of “US democracy” whereby elites and mass media establish and police the
parameters of acceptable discourse. Churchill has become America’s own Salman
Rushdie terrorized by the fatwa of the Right.
Clarifying Churchill
It is not a matter of defending Churchill’s views or not, but rather of separating
a few objectionable or poorly worded statements (in his hastily written essay)
from a political context that gives a legitimate critique of US imperialism.
Churchill wrongly viewed the World Trade Center as a military target and
absurdly judged everyone killed in the twin towers as “little Eichmanns.”
Unlike the October 2002 attack on the USS Cole and perhaps even the 9-11
strike against the Pentagon, flying fully loaded passenger planes into the
World Trade Center was a textbook example of terrorism which involves causing
physical injury or death (“violence”) to innocent people (“non-combatants”)
to further an ideological cause.
Those killed in the twin towers included members of the US military and intelligence
agencies directly involved in US imperialism, in addition to men, women,
and children who had nothing to do with the military and at best were remotely
connected to the US war machine. Churchill indiscriminately labeled every
victim a “little Eichmann” to advance the following fallacious argument:
(1) social systems of violence and aggression like Nazi Germany cannot run
efficiently without the support of bureaucrats and functionaries like Adolph
Eichmann; (2) everyone in the WTC worked for the US military or financial
regime in some manner, therefore (3) they are all equally as culpable as
Eichmann.
The problem with the argument clearly lies in the totalizing term “equally,”
the universalization of guilt and blame for US policies, and the untheorized
and overly broad interpretation of “non-combatants.” In a strict sense, any
citizen of the US, any taxpayer, contributes to the nation’s imperialist
and genocidal policies. No one is perfectly pure, innocent, or outside the
system—including well-paid, anti-imperialist Colorado Ethnic Studies professors
who pay taxes and work for the State. But they do not equally serve the war
machine, either in their occupational capacities or in their knowledge about
US policies and how their work may potentially serve those ends. Unlike the
majority or perhaps all of the victims who perished in the twin towers, Eichmann
played a direct, not indirect, role in the Nazi bureaucracy and he had immediate,
not dim, knowledge of his role. To see everyone from Bush and Rumsfeld to
twin tower janitors, tourists, and passersby as equally culpable combatants
is to abandon all powers of moral and logical discrimination. Left unqualified,
Churchill’s words can be read as an endorsement of terrorism and mass murder;
thus, they had obvious inflammatory potential that the Right exploited to
full advantage to launch a new round of Culture Wars.
Whereas Churchill’s ultimate meaning was not always clear in the brevity
and rhetoric of his original essay, in a subsequent statement he has attempted
to clarify his view and prevent further misunderstanding of many points that
were easily misunderstood. Churchill insists he used the “little Eichmanns”
epithet to apply only to the “technicians” who, like Eichmann, did not directly
kill people but kept the infrastructure of the killing machine working smoothly.
“Thus,” he says, “it was obviously not directed to the children, janitors,
food service workers, firemen and random passers-by killed in the 9-11 attack.”
Whether clarifying or back-peddling, the more limited application remains
inaccurate to the extent that the US is not killing its own citizens as German
Nazis were, its genocidal policies unfold abroad rather than in at home or
bordering countries, and unlike Eichmann US technocrats may be genuinely
oblivious to the violent nature of the system for which they work
Right-Wing Nation
“The “Ward Churchill controversy” should not have become a blip on the conservative
blogs, let alone a national media story as prominent as the Michael Jackson
trial for two weeks. As a part of their ongoing culture wars, the right has
vociferously attacked Churchill in order to advance large agendas that include
their hostility to radical ideas, the “academic Left,” liberal values, and
free speech. The Churchill controversy will soon be resolved one way or the
other, but the Right will undoubtedly continue to exploit the issue to go
after its real targets: “liberal” or “left” academia and the tenure system
that protects free (read: radical) speech.
It is no exaggeration to say that within the second act of the reign of Bush,
US society has entered a neo-McCarthyist period based on militant hostility
to progressive values. Under the guise of a “war of terror,” Bush has initiated
a war on democracy. The Patriot Act; the hysterical reaction to Janet Jackson’s
“wardrobe malfunction”; FCC attacks on “obscenity” in the media; assaults
on gay rights; state surveillance of and repression against animal rights,
environmental, and anti-war activists; drives to overturn Roe v. Wade; and
now the campaign to fire Churchill are some indications of a frightening
turn toward tyranny, puritanical restriction, and repression.
The Right has a heart attack over Churchill’s essay, but there was no outrage
or talk of firing when the media aired the shocking remarks of three star
marine general James Mattis, who commanded Marine expeditions in Afghanistan
and Iraq. Before a panel audience in San Diego, Mattis said of Iraqi citizens:
“Actually it’s quite fun to fight them, you know. It’s a hell of a hoot.
It’s fun to shoot some people.” Similarly, Alberto Gonzalez, the close friend
of Bush and attorney who drafted the policies justifying torture of Iraqi
prisoners at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, not only was not fired for his callous
violations of international law and humanitarian policies, he was promoted
to the highest legal office in the land, Attorney General. And where is the
rabid reaction to snarling pro-violence right-wing commentator Ann Coulter
whenever she spouts inanities such as, “My only regret with Timothy McVeigh
is he did not go to the New York Times Building”?
Churchill’s essay made numerous important points and this country ignores
him at its own peril. For his logical transgressions Churchill can be publicly
criticized, but they do not warrant being drawn and quartered and losing
a tenured position for exercising First Amendment rights. Churchill’s fate
will be decided soon enough, but the demise of the Constitution will take
a bit longer and will depend on how citizens respond to cases such as this.
Dr. Steven Best is the chair of philosophy
at the University of Texas at El Paso. His latest book, co-edited with Anthony
J. Nocella, is Terrorists or Freedom Fighters: Reflections
on the Liberation of Animals