The new McCarthyism: the witch-hunting of Ward Churchill

Churchill, a Native American activist, is professor of American Indian Studies and former Chair of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado in Boulder (he resigned from the latter post as a result of the current controversy). A member of the leadership council of the Colorado American Indian Movement and a past national spokesperson for the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, Churchill is an outspoken opponent of American imperialism. He is also co-author of The Cointelpro Papers: Documents from the FBI’s Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States and Agents of Repression: The FBI’s Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement.

Churchill has been singled out for attack by Colorado Republicans and the right-wing governor of Colorado, Bill Owens, for an article he wrote following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington. The piece, “ ‘Some People Push Back’—On the Justice of Roosting Chickens,” essentially argued that America got what it deserved in the attacks. Churchill wrote that the “most that can honestly be said about those [suicide bombers] involved in September 11 is that they finally responded in kind to some of what this country has dispensed to their people as a matter of course.”

The article came to light when Churchill was invited to speak at Hamilton College in upstate New York. In late January, right-wing elements, with demagogue Bill O’Reilly of Fox News at their head, launched a campaign to prevent the radical critic from speaking at the college, and the administration there obediently caved in. This is the pattern of the new McCarthyism.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2005/feb2005/chur-f11.shtml