Alternatively Speaking

Hearing Ward Churchill on DN!, I can only affirm that I wholeheartedly agree with his characterization of some of those working in the WTC as “little Eichmanns.” The way I see it, many of these traders and analysts would very likely be the same people running the slave trade 300 years ago. Also, by the Pentagon’s own criteria, as Ward explains, of what constitutes a legitimate military target, the WTC and certainly the Pentagon are targets that can be struck at will. As far as his choice of words, the reaction to how he chose to put into words his analyses of 9/11 is interesting in itself. I find it very perplexing that someone like Tom Frank (In a piece that was published in The New Republic) can say things like:

What I needed was a Republican like Arnold [Schwarzenegger] who would walk up to [Goff] and punch him in the face.

these weren’t harmless lefties. I didn’t want Nancy Pelosi talking sense to them; I wanted John Ashcroft to come busting through the wall with a submachine gun to round everyone up for an immediate trip to Gitmo, with Charles Graner on hand for interrogation.

Maybe sometimes you just want to be on the side of whoever is more likely to take a bunker buster to Arundhati Roy.[1]

And is cheered on. He is actually putting out hits on people. This is something Churchill has not done. Yes Churchill used provocative language but the Right says things that are much worse and I do not hear anyone, other than progressives and the victims of the venom, who are promptly muted by the mainstream press by the way, crying bloody hell over it. At bottom what this really is about is that many in America can dish it out but cannot take their own medicine. It speaks volumes about the double standards prevailing in this country when people such as Bill (phone Sex) O’Reilly, Michael (just a plain) Savage and Rush (that big fat idiot) Lindbaugh can make whole careers out of verbally bludgeoning Left and progressive folks. These guys can be as ugly as they want to be and not worry about winning people over while the Left must be nice and walk on eggshells. Well, I don’t think so. You must fight fire with fire because if you don’t, the steamroller is simply going to bowl you over all the more easily and quickly. This is going to be the case whether you are “nice” or not. The Left has to realize that we must be tough and uncompromising when it comes to our principles and how we choose to express them. If our opponents don’t like what we say in whatever way we choose to say it, although it’s the truth, then tough. If the shoe fits . . . wear it!

A guy like Tom Frank likes to talk a lot of trash but he cannot personally back it up. Instead he calls for proxies to do what he is too much of a punk to be able to do himself. Taking this mindset of talking tough because someone else will actually have to do the dirty work and extending it over the whole country we find, as Black Commentator notes (in an article calling for the draft) that

Anti-war appeals based on morality have only marginal impact on those who believe they are the living embodiment of human civilization – or even God’s plan on Earth. White America is largely unmoved by the deaths of foreigners, especially people of color. Indeed, a huge slice of Euro-Americans actively revel in punishing dark people in lands they cannot find on a map – a vicarious thrill experienced from a great distance.[2]

What BC’s comments note here is the reason why Ward Churchill said what he said and in the manner he did it. This is not about being nice and simply trying to win people over. Many people cannot be won over no matter how sane and erudite the reasoning is. As BC’s comments explain, moral appeals are meaningless when they fall on deaf ears. Ears, by the way, who suddenly regain their ability to hear when the call for murder and destruction, or at least the acceptance of it when it occurs, are directed against official enemies or the demonized other. American Blacks have understood all to well throughout their history in America how whites that were not part of the ruling elite would nevertheless carry out, often with glee, the racist prerogatives of that ruling class with whom they often only shared a similar skin color. For Blacks, as well as Native Americans, this often translated into slavery and death. Moreover, as Churchill pointed out during his DN! Interview, Eichmann was not only a person onto himself but symbolized all the many Germans, who like him were average, everyday people “simply doing their jobs,” who kept the Nazi war and death machine going. They were many “little Eichmanns” in Germany then just like there are many “little Eichmanns” in this country today. Any way one puts it, it all adds up to death and suffering for millions of people around the world.