Ward Churchill Twisting in the Wind

29 Mar 2005
Ward Churchill Twisting in the Wind
author: Sid Jones ("Hobbit")
Can the Left Tolerate a Dissenting View on Ward Churchill?
Shouldn't the left leave Churchill to twist in the wind?


Ward Churchill characterized World Trade Center workers as "Technicians of Empire". And, as we have heard ad nauseum, that made them little Nazis. But most employees - dare I call them Proletarians? - did not ever work for in such a militaristic capacity as Ward Churchill himself. He worked for Robert K. Brown's Soldier of Fortune, a magazine dedicated, outright, to the cause of mercenaries.

Moreover, Churchill led the charge to repudiate the Sandinistas, on the sketchy basis that their emergency evacuation of North East Nicargua constituted genocidal intent, which it clearly was not. While the FSLN measure may have been a human rights wrong, it was by no means intended as genocide, but as Chruchill joined with Steadman Fagoth and others on the side of t he CIA, the left opposition whithered. The Sandinistas were ousted, and Reagan is celebrated as the man who keep Fidel contained and the Kremlin out of the Western hemisphere.

Perhaps Professor Churchill's analysis is correct, and the Sandinista project is, as would thus then be any Marxist or socialist project, doomed to repeat the horrors of Stalinist purges. Some anarchists would agree, and reluctantly allowed the CIA contra forces to do their dirty work to outst the revolutionaries. Personally, I am not so sure of that.

It is difficult to imagine that Professor Churchill has not brought his problems on himself. He rejects nonviolence; he rejects Ghandi; he rejects Martin Luther King. He belittles nonviolent activists. And now he wonders why we don't have his back, at least, not all of us.

Ward's karma ran over his dogma. He authored an attack on the core concepts of nonviolent activism: Pacifism as Pathology. The vast majority of activists endorse non-violence. Chruchill does not. Given that distinction, is Ward Churchill a First Domino worthy of support, or is he an ultra-leftist who discredits the nonviolent left?


I believe that Churchill is a special case of intellectual negligence, and in fact recklessness. We should not worry too much about proliferation of the Churchill-take-down-model. Few speak so recklessly as he.

An early rebutal to my argument contended:

It is extremely dangerous to ignore churchill's, or anyone's for that matter, allegations by appealling to an ad hominim logical fallacy ("He's so far out there.. his allegations certainly can't be true.")

This is not however an ad hominen. It is a criticism of his views. Neither is it an attack on the man. Undoubtedly though, this criticism of him will unleash a torrent of vituperation from ultraleftists who can't stand debate. Is it a coincidence that those who are fascinated by the rhteetoric of revolutionary violence do not countenance free debate on the left?

Be sure of this: supporting the Sandinistas does not make me a freeper or a troll. The ad hominen is however the usual way of silencing dissent on the left. I am ready for it. But at the end of the day, the left will have to evaluate its own internal censorship and its own priorities. Are we to allow the right wingers to pick our battles and pour all of our resources into defending our left flank, or are we to let people like Ward take the rap for their errors.

All he ever really had to do would have been to admit he was wrong, and the whole controversy would have collapsed. How many of his avid defenders are willing to fess up that his "little Eichmann's" remark was just downright wrong?
There is no defending those statements. The measure of a man may be his ability to admit to a mistake. I don't see Ward doing that, and I don't see those misguided individuals who have advocated violence and gotten into trouble acknowledging their errors.


The measure of a man may well lie in how well he handles criticism, and the measure of a movement may be in how well it handles dissent and debate. This view - that Churchill simply messed up and should have admitted it - will be unpopular in certain circles that should know better. The tone of the critique of these remarks will be a litmus test: are we really any better than the righties?