McFreedom

Instapundit, and others, have been rightly criticizing Ward Churchill for saying things like, on September 11, 2001, "As to those in the World Trade Center...They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire... 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." Much of the criticism has focused on the fact that, obviously, busboys, maintenence workers, and yes, even investment bankers should not have been intentionally targeted and killed.

But I think what's so interesting about Professor Churchill is that, in fact, what he says is internally self-consistent (even if he does personally seem to be a bit of a coward for all his rhetoric). Satya, an online-only (I think) magazine with articles about "Vegetarianism, Environmentalism, Animal Advocacy and Social Justice," posted an article interviewing him in April, 2004. They published a picture of him, wearing camoflage, a beret, sunglasses and holding an AK-47 in a very dramatic (but not very professional) manner:

The interviewer notes that "This issue of Satya is trying to push the debate about whether or not violence is an appropriate means to a desired end." While a lot of what is said is (of course), absurd, I was struck by a few things the Good Professor had to say on the topic of resistence. Some of it I even agree with, in an abstract way:

[I'm trying to encourage a] fundamental understanding of the nature of [your] obligation to intervene to bring the kind of atrocities that I’ve described to a halt by whatever means are necessary. The predominating absurdity in American oppositional circles for the past 30 years is the notion that if one intervenes to halt a rape or a murder in progress, if you actually use physical force as necessary to prevent that act, somehow or other you’ve become morally the same as the perpetrator.

Professor Churchill sems, in fact, to have combined the left-lunatic fringe (corporate America is directly killing millions of people all over the world) with a recognition that, if you believe this is happening, you have a moral obligation to actually do something to stop it:

You move on. Rather than a vigil, you hold a rally. When that doesn’t do it either, you march around, do petitions, letters, you hold alternative educational fora, you try to build bridges with people; you do whatever. None of that works...

‘Hey those brown-skinned folks dying in the millions in order to maintain this way of life, they can wait forever for those who purport to be the opposition here to find some personally comfortable and pure manner of affecting the kind of transformation that brings not just lethal but genocidal processes to a halt.’ They have no obligation—moral, ethical, legal or otherwise—to sit on their thumbs while the opposition here dithers about doing anything to change the system...

I’ve never fashioned myself to be a revolutionary [as you can clearly tell from his picture -BAT], but it’s part and parcel of what I’m talking about.

I think what he's saying here is actually interesting, because he seems to be calling the left to task for saying "Our country is directly murdering millions of people all over the world. Hey, I know, let's have a parade to protest it, with puppets!" He highlights the fundamental unseriousness of the US far left, accusing mainstream America of intentional murder yet being unwilling to risk their own comfortable lifestyles to oppose it. If you believe - as many on the far left seem to - that investment bankers in New York are manipulating markets in order to directly kill third world peoples, then you should cheer the destruction of the World Trade Centers. The idiocy lies not in appreciating this outcome; the idiocy lies in believing the underlying axioms in the first place.

Now, all of that said, he seems no more interested in actually participating in a revolution than anyone else. He's quite willing to pose dramatically with an AK, and exhort other people to take risks and give up their comfortable lifestyles in order to effect change, and yet doesn't quite seem to have managed it, himself.

The outrage against Professor Churchill needs to be focused on his core beliefs and not the logical conclusions that he draws from them. People who honestly believe the average American are guilty of "complicity of acquiesence" and are morally equivilant to "most Germans" during the Third Reich because of our "murder" of "millions" of "brown-skinned folks" should desire the violent overthrow of the United States of America. Just as we violently overthrew the Third Reich for its horrors. What we should be angry about is being accused of being murderers, not that he feels we should be punished for the murders he feels we've commited.