Against All Flags

Obama: Fear of a Black Messiah

2008-06-21T14:43:00.000-07:00

Another GOP meme I find intriguing is that of "Obama as black Messiah". It was, after all, J. Edgar Hoover's fear of a "black Messiah" that drove the FBI's covert campaign against Martin Luther King.

The implication now as then seems to be that only those in the grip of religious mania or delusion could follow the leadership of a African American.

Obama and Experience

2008-06-21T14:35:00.000-07:00

It’s amusing, when presented with the GOP meme of Obama’s lack of “experience”, to reflect that Abraham Lincoln had even less experience in elective office prior to becoming President. Of course, I suspect that many present day “Republicans” wouldn’t have voted for Lincoln either

GLenn Greenwald: Fight fire with Fire

2007-09-29T17:46:00.000-07:00

Glen Greenwald is absolutely right on this. Of course the devil is, as always, in the details.

Protesting Democrats: The Radical Option

2007-09-23T14:42:00.000-07:00

There has been a continuing tension on the Democratic side of the political divide over the efficacy of mass protest. Many have expressed the view that such activities are a waste of time and resources, even counter productive. Recent events in Jena, LA have led some to reconsider this position. Some now, rather grudgingly, admit that national mobilizations may make sense in certain cases but only as a media tool rather than as part of an overall political strategy. I believe this revised view shares with its predecessor a fundamentally flawed political perception at odds with democratic values.

Frankly, I think the attitude that one takes toward mass protest is a significant dividing line between progressive political activists and those who imagine themselves to be such but who are actually a variety of political technocrat.

You can see this in the thrust of their complaints. Mass protest are indicted because they can't be shown to have an immediate impact on policy. They are scorned because their results cannot be tabulated and quantified. They are events that take place outside of the formal political structures and serve no institutional purpose. Indeed, mass protests are by nature anti-institutional.

Of course such criticism can only be definitive if one takes the position that institutional means are complete and sufficient in themselves to effect necessary political change. An effective progressive political activism cannot be limited to such a narrow field of activity. At least not if such "progressivism" embraces a democratic character.

Democratic politics, like democracy itself, cannot be reduced to electoral activity alone. Elections do not define democracy nor do institutions define a democratic society. Rather, elections and political institutions are defined by the democratic character of the society that produces them. Those who imagine that one can have a Democratic society without the inconvenience of an aroused and mobilized citizenry, willing to operate outside of existing structures, don't grasp the essential principles of democracy: the empowering of the otherwise powerless and the negation of accumulated privilege and power in the hands of a favored few.

Mass protest is at least as much about its effect on those who participate as it is about the impact on institutions or elected officials. Perhaps moreso. When such protests are broad and inclusive, they have an energizing and emancipatory effect on those participating, if for no other reason than that they break through the sense of isolation and irrelevance inculcated by the dominant institutional narratives.

Such a sense of empowerment, where present, is infectious. It is carried by participants back into their communities and transmitted to their friends and neighbors. In short, mass protest is a necessary building block toward the creation of a mass movement.

It's worth recalling that there has never been a fundamental reordering of political or social relations in US history that was not accompanied by such a movement. Nor did such movements evaporate with the election of candidates nominally committed to their goals. They remained active and watchful to insure that such commitment amounted to more than electoral rhetoric.

It's also worthwhile to recognize that longstanding institutions, whatever their presumed democratic impulse, are always biased towards maintaining the status quo. Institutions always favor established modes, forms and relationships of power. This being the case, they cannot, by themselves, be effective tools for challenging the ruling narrative or consensus.

This brings us to the grittier side of mass protest. The implicit threat of mass defection by the citizenry from the cramped norms of established politics. The repudiation of the legitimacy such norms and the resort to a politics at war with established institutions of power both political and social.

No doubt stating the possibility of such a radicalization so baldly will upset and discomfit a significant number of people. However, the radical possibility is intrinsic to any meaningful notion of democracy. Even today, there is nothing more radical than the notion that individuals, lacking wealth, privilege or influence, nevertheless have a right to a say in the political, social and economic decisions that govern their lives. Particularly so when we consider that in the United States today, there are those occupying the public pulpits who argue openly and without apology that the wealthy should have the dominant voice in our affairs while the non-wealthy should have little or none.

There is a reason that the right to public protest was written into our Constitution and it wasn't because the framers thought that such protest should substitute for elections or would serve an institutional purpose. To the contrary. The right to protest was so enshrined specifically because it stood separate from and was antagonistic to institutional power.

The framers weren't starry eyed idealists when it came to political institutions anymore than they were on social and economic questions. They understood that even the best designed of such institutions were prone to ossification and decay. They were equally aware of the dangers posed by the accumulation of concentrated power and privilege within such structures. The only effective counterbalance they saw to these dynamics was an active citizenry capable of mobilizing itself independent from the established political order. Neither were they ignorant of the threat to the established order implicit in such activism. While they may not have been eager to embrace such an overturn, they certainly didn't shrink from it.

<>When the few succeed in dominating the many by reducing democratic processes to sterile exercises in Kabuki or empty ceremony, it is time to raise the prospect of re-writing the social contract. This cannot be done without a mass movement engaged in mass action. To reject this is to condemn oneself to the role of sycophant or bit player on the political stage.

Right Wing Amerika Haters and Patriotism

2007-07-21T11:02:00.000-07:00

When Dinesh D'Souza came out with his attack on contemporary "Liberal" US culture awhile back, the Conservative triage got to work to distance themselves from his backhanded apologia for "anti-americanism." Nevertheless, those familiar with the turbid undercurrents of American reaction were well aware that he was simply giving vent to a submerged hostility for modern American life unremarkable on the Right. Now, as if to re-emphasize the point comes Kathleen Parker to pick up the torch dropped from D'Souza's faltering hands.

Again,. this antipathy for the United States as it actually exists is neither a new or particularly remarkable phenomenon on the Right. Despite their penchant for pseudo-patriotic boiler plate, it's clear that many on the Right actively despise much of US culture, both political and social.

This poses an interesting question. Exactly what is this "America" of which the Right Wing speaks so loquaciously? Should the Left be engaged in a bidding war over who can wave the flag most often or shout "patriotic" cliches the loudest?

Before you praise or condemn something, you first need an accurate perception of what it is. Given this, the real criteria isn't the frequency of "praise" but its content.

It's easy to say "I love the flag!" repeatedly but occaisionally, it's necessary to note that the flag has been flying 24/7 for more than a year and looks like a tattered, washed out rag. Perhaps it ought to be replaced?

Likewise, its easy for some to aggressively assert their love for "America", without really articulating what this "America" that they love so much actually is. Not rarely, it turns out that the image of "America" they love is one that excludes large swathes of their fellow Americans whom they detest.

On the other hand, there are those whose love for America is bound up with the realization that America is nothing if it isn't the myriad and diverse peoples who occupy its territory. This conception of America doesn't lend itself to the hypnotic mantra of USA, USA, USA, or to a monochromatic narrative of American history as a preordained, linear, triumphal progress. This because a nation so diverse in substance must, of necessity, possess a history no less diverse. Such diversity entails conflict and contradiction.

Those in the former category do not love "America" as it actually exists. They love a mythic conception of America that suits their prejudices. Such a love requires no investigation into the actual realities of American life and history. Rather, it actively militates against such inquiry, since it would challenge the the cherished image worshipped by its adherents. A worship which is, in the final analysis, self worship.

Those inhabiting the latter category are certainly not saints. They don't possess any fewer vices, flaws or human failings. However, what they do possess is a fundamentally different outlook and frame of reference. Their America is, by definition, external to themselves and composed as much by those differing from them as those like them. Its dynamic drives them away from simpleminded sloganeering towards investigation of and consultation with, the actualities of American life and history.

As everyone ought to know, that life and history is as filled with failed promise and tragedy as it is with promises redeemed and triumph. For those whose affection for America is an affection for its people, this presents no more of an obstacle than loving one's family despite their flaws.

For those whose love for America amounts to nothing more than a love for their self image, such candor is unbearable and therefore treasonous.

Marty hath murdered sleep.

2007-06-18T11:42:00.000-07:00

Eric Alterman has a fine dissection of Marty Peretz's role in the destruction of The New Republic and the reasons for it posted up at The American Prospect. Prepare for the inevitable cries of "self-hating Jew" and "anti-Semitism", yadda-yadda-yadda.

Andrew Sullivan's "Gay Agenda"

2007-06-17T10:02:00.000-07:00

I happened across a post over at Ezra Klein's site that linked to this post by Sully who continues to flog the theory that the movement for Gay rights is essentially conservative. matt had some thoughts on it and so do I.

I think Ezra's discription of Sullivan's conservatism as a sort of platonic ideal is apropos. It's always seemed to me that Sullivan was a political hybrid produced when quasi Randian notions of libertarianism filtered across the Atlantic to pollinate with the traditional tory politics of the UK. Thatcherism was a side product, with all its blather about creating an opportunity society while it got about the serious business of breaking the trade unions.

Sullivan is what you get when a typical conservative, middle class Brit discovers that his sexuality simply can't be fitted into the dominate frame of social respectability. In times past he would have remained cautiously closeted, his personal pecadillos treated as a private eccentricity so long as he paid tribute to popular prejudice through hypocrisy and avoided being arrested in public toilets.

It's Sullivan's fortune that he came of political age at a time when the modern Gay Rights movement had exploded on the scene. A rebellion that was fundamentally anti-conservative from its inception. It was this movement that provided the material and political conditions that allowed Sullivan the option to live an openly Gay life. The irony of a conservative liberated in his sexuality by the very forces that he despises is thick and one that Sullivan seems incapable of digesting.

This may be the central contradiction in Sullivan's thought. He wants to reconcile the irreconciliable. He believes in an idealized traditionalism in social, institutional and political life even as he desires the repudiation of such sentiments in a crucial area effecting his personal life. He attempts to paper this over with his transparent and anachronistic evocation of an "integrationist" agenda.

This is yet another thick irony. As others have suggested, this standard for "conservatism" would embrace everything from the civil rights movement to women's suffrage to abolitionism. There are many ways to describe such movements but "conservative" is not among them. To use conservatism in this way is to empty it of all practical meaning, as anyone with a basic grasp of US political history would know.

Here, I think, one can locate the fundamental incapacity of Sullivan as pundit and theorist in the environment of US politics. He really doesn't understand much about the US politically, historically or culturally. Despite his attempts at "americanizing" himself, he remains what he began as: a worshipful, British accolyte of an imagined and idolized US. Not so different from those of the post WWII generation in the UK who, intoxicated by the flash and noise US pop culture in the form of rock and roll, repackage it in an idiosycratically British sensibility and shipped it back to us via the "British Invasion". In that instance, the US audience embraced the offering, not for its American roots but as an authentic expression of contemporary British pop culture.

In Sullivan's case, his target audience didn't really buy his brand. The US Right has neither the need of, or interest in, any perspective the beyond the self referential. That Sullivan failed to recognize this from the beginning illustrates how much he confuses his wishes with reality.

After all, the social and political current that he sought to identify with reacted to rock and roll by urging it be banned and making bonfires of Beatles records.

Fragging the Troops

2007-05-23T09:12:00.000-07:00

Continuing to review the role of the American Legion as worker bees for the right wing, Rick Perlstein has an informative post detailing who actually was "spitting on" Vietnam Vets back in the day. Recent attacks on Iraq veterans who have begun criticizing the Iraq slaughter are just the latest installment in an established, despicable tradition.

Perlstein also raises a very cogent point. For all the hagiography about the greatest generation, little recognition is given to the fact that WWII was a generational trauma. The boys who went off to defeat fascism on the battlefield, in the air and on the seas, came back as indelibly scarred men. For good or ill, they've lived the balance of their lives viewing the world through the lens of that experience. For many, every military conflict since then has simply been an extension of their own war. I remember one such vet being quoted in the aftermath of 9/11 saying that he'd seen it all before but this time he knew what the outcome would be: "We win."

North Korean invasion of South Korea=Pearl Harbor, Korean War=WWII
Tonkin gulf incident = Pearl Harbor, Vietnam = WWII
9/11=Pearl Harbor, War on Terror/Iraq=WWII

It's really no surprise that the US has allowed itself to be misled into one bloody morass after another.

Humorous Wingnuttery

2007-05-21T21:33:00.000-07:00

One of the boys over at Redstate is aggravated because wingnut bloggers get no respect from GOP heavies like Georgia's own Rep. John Linder. The solution? "Bring me the scalp of Ken Calvert!" roars Eric the Redstater.

(h/t Jane Hamsher @Firedoglake)

Adventures in American Fascism

2007-05-16T20:01:00.000-07:00

Ever scratched your head in befuddlement over the right wing posturing of the American Legion? Tiny Revolution provides a gateway to the answers.

Another Shoe Drops on Abramoff/Rove Connection

2007-05-16T19:43:00.000-07:00

It seems Waxman may have his hooks in a strategically placed canary. Josh Marshall waves the red flag.

Rape, Consent and Patriarchy

2007-05-16T19:21:00.000-07:00

There's an extremely engrossing discussion going on over I Blame the Patriarchy on the subject of rape and the problematic nature of consent. Highly recommended. Fair warning: twisty's blog is very much women's space with little tolerance for dudes who show up to play the jackass. So if you're a guy who bruises easy, mind your manners. Actually, just mind your manners period.

Joe Klein joins the Hypocrite chorus on Don Imus

2007-04-13T19:02:00.000-07:00

To be fair, Joe may believe that Imus, Wolfowitz and Gonzales are all guilty and just thinks that any attempt to hold them accountable is the equivilant of a lynch mob.

In any event, the "scape goat" analogy, in whatever form, only has validity if we stop with Imus. I, for one, hope that Imus is only the beginning. If, as Joe seems to argue, Imus is merely giving public voice to private behavior, the solution is not to give him a pass. That would only validate such private expressions of bigotry and encourage the proliferation of its enablers in the media and punditocrocy.

Rather, we should strive to insure that very next professional gasbag who engages in similar pandering to the worst impulses in our society gets exactly the same as Imus did. It's called setting a standard for public behavior.

Interesting that Joe finds holding political and media insiders to account dangerously toxic. The kind of poison spouted by Imus which Joe implies is commonplace in the National locker room? Not so much.

Not sure what Rev. Al Sharpton's checkered past has to do with anything. But if Joe wants to run him out of the public discourse, he's welcome to try.

Joe Klein, Bloody Careerist

2007-01-10T10:47:00.000-08:00

Time Magazine's faux Liberal Joe Klein has taken a dive into the blogosphere with predictable results. Unprepared for the blast of public criticism any sensible person knew was likely to ensue, Joe fell back on the tried and true Rightwing meme of impugning his critics patriotism:

And so a challenge to those who slagged me in their comments. Can you honestly say the following:
Even though I disagree with this escalation, I am hoping that General Petraeus succeeds in calming down Baghdad.

Does the thought even cross your mind? As for me, it's easy--I've been rooting for U.S. success ever since the invasion because, after the overpowering arrogance and stupidity that led to this disaster, we owe some peace and stability to the Iraqis and the region. For the record, I'm outraged Bush is ignoring the election results and the reality on the ground in Iraq. I think he is sending more young American lives into an impossible situation. I am fairly certain that Bush will wallow amongst our worst presidents for getting us into this mess. But I hope events prove me wrong. I don't even care if Bush gets credit for the "victory" and smirks all the way back to Texas. --joe klein

I posted the following comment on Klein's blog. Any bets as to whether the "blog author" will approve it for publication?

Joe, it's 2007 not 1970. Everytime you trot out this tired line about "ill-liberal" leftists who label all U.S. military action as "criminal" you simply illustrate how hopelessly out of touch you are with events and public opinion outside the circles you move in.

You're upset with the vehemence and hostility your ignorant insults engender? Here's a newsflash for you. Abbie Hoffman is dead. Jerry Rubin is dead. There are no hordes of long haired radicals in the streets calling for victory for the Viet Cong.

Another news flash for you. Opponents of this misgotten essay in nationalist egotism and pointless slaughter have never sat around rejoicing in rising casualty counts and hoping for US military defeat. The fact is that they foresaw the bloody morass that the political class and its journalistic blood ticks were leading this country into. When they tried to speak out a warning they were smeared, vilified and marginalized.

Now that events have shown that they were far more prescient and realistic than those who promoted and enabled this disaster, you have the audacity to renew your apologetics for the mindless exercise of military force. More dispicable still, you imagine yourself the moral superior of the war's critics because, despite your asserted awareness that the "surge" has somewhere between a snowball and straw hat's chance in hell of succeeding, you prefer to salute smartly while being careful to play CYA with your muted reservations. Contra your slurs against your critics, this isn't patriotism on your part but sheer careerism.

Personally, I don't think your career is worth a single Iraqi or American life. That you would attempt to dress up this exercise in career management with a pious assertion that it was all motivated out of a concern for the Iraqi people and what the US owes them is morally repulsive.

Do us all and yourself a favor Joe, stop pretending that your primary concern is anything other than what's best for Joe Klein.

If you find this criticism overly acerbic and unfair, I suggest you think about it the next time you choose to imply that those who disagree with you are traitors.

Racism, Libertarianism and Ann Althouse

2007-01-04T15:54:00.000-08:00

In the last week or so their has been a good bit of twittering in blogosphere over a dust up between Ann Althouse and Jonah Goldberg along with a slew of others over Althouse's recent postings describing her experiences at a conference held by the Liberty Fund. The short of it is that Prof. Althouse was shocked to discover that Conservatives and Right Libertarians are actually sincere in their allegiance to a theory of Federalism that has historically been used to defend racial discrimination and the de jure elevation of white supremacy to the status of public policy. Having voiced her dismay Althouse became a target for an avalanche of abuse.

I've been catching up on this debate and though its late in the day, after wading through all cheap shottery and personal nastiness, I do think there is substantive point that Professor Althouse has brought forward.

What's at the heart of this whole business is a fundamental truism about ideological approaches to real world conditions. That being, that a blinkered subservience to an abstract theory will often lead to practical consequences that negate the values supposedly championed by the theory in question.

The 20th century's premier example of this is, of course, the tortured history of the failed Soviet experiment. The lesson might be summarized as: In order to secure the liberation of the people it became necessary to tyranize them. This forshadowed a later example of the same sort ideological blindness that took place in South east Asia: "In order to save the village it became necessary to destroy it".

I must admit that I was surprised that Prof. Althouse was surprised to discover that the Right wing contains such true believers. I suppose it's possible, living in a place like Madison, to be lulled into the notion that such folks exist only on the Left. I'm afraid that Althouse has neglected her inquiries into Rightwing theology, since she appears to have thought prior to this epiphany that the Conservative movement was a welcoming environment for pragmatists.

A lot of intelligent people have been similarly misled. Our current politics result, in a large degree, from a fixation on the perceived excesses of the Left that has accepted, uncritically, the Right's pr that they are the "practical", "commonsense" and "responsible" alternative. In the wreck of the Bush administration and the GOP's extinct Majority, all that boiler plate about the "adults being back in charge" rings more than a little hollow.

Still, it's a bit disheartening to realize that Prof. Althouse is seemingly unaware that in questioning the Libertarian/Conservative formulation of Federalism she is striking at a taproot of Rightwing ideology as it has devolved over the last 40 years. Had she understood this she wouldn't have been so surprised by the response her criticism engendered.

The notion of Federalism that she encountered at the Conference is the ideological glue that has held the otherwise disparate elements of the contemporary "Conservative" movement together. It is the modus vivendi that has allowed paleo-Conservatives, neo-Conservatives, Right Libertarians, Dixiecrats and Social Conservatives to cohabitate.

Each of these currents endorses "Federalism", albeit for differing and sometimes conflicting motives. Right Libertarians support it ostensibly because it limits the ability of the national government to infringe on the individual. Paleo-Conservatives see it as defense of traditional relations of local power and authority. Neo-Conservatives embrace it as a weapon against a national Liberalism detached from their dreams of global hegemonism. Social Conservatives wield it against the encroachments of modernity in all it's cultural and political forms. The Dixiecrats were the true trailblazers, having argued for generations that Federalism and Conservativism were synonymous with their brand of apartheid politics.

The challenge that Prof. Althouse posed, regardless of the merits or demerits of her style, turned over a rock that Right Libertarians prefer remain unmoved. To whit, the Federalism they espouse actually represents a historic accomodation to racist sentiment, the antithesis of any doctrine of individualism, for mean political advantage. Likewise, it enables a corresponding accomodation with Social Conservatives whose entire political raison detre is the use of Government's coercive powers to maintain conformity with traditional social, cultural and sexual mores.

One might ask how Right Libertarians reconcile the principle of individual liberty with such crass political opportunism. The short answer is that they don't. They much prefer to pretend that the contradiction doesn't exist.

Therein lies the motive for the rain of derision that they have showered on Professor Althouse for having the temerity to suggest that their elegant abstractions be measured against real world consequences. It is a pile on that some commentators on the left, to their discredit, have chosen to join.

Racism, Anti-Semitism and William Jefferson

2006-06-08T14:16:00.000-07:00

The current brouhaha in activist Democratic circles over the Congressional Black Caucus' (CBC) refusal to back the removal of Rep. William Jefferson from the House Ways and Means committee exposes the Achilles heel of the Democratic electoral coalition. The growing divide between White Democrats and Black Democrats. The Gulf isn't absolute. There are Democrats of all colors on both sides but in democratic politics what counts is which positions are most representive of constituent opinion. Who is willing to argue that the CBC's insistence on rigid formality is out of sync with their constituents?

This is real 800 lbs gorilla in the room. African-Americans generally view the Jefferson case from a starkly different perspective than those outside of their community. Superficially, this mirrors the difference's in perspective that one finds in any political interest groups, from farmers to women, to Gays and Lesbians.

This easy equation is misleading. It ignores the fundamental difference that distinguishes the African-American community from every other constituent interest. Blacks have been the perenial whipping boy and sacrificial offering of U.S. politics since the inception of the republic.

When it comes to the African-American community, the history of the U.S. is a series of murderous oppressions and betrayals in which no political faction has clean hands. Expecting Black elected officials to behave as though this were not so is rather like expecting Jewish people to rely on the enlightened good will of Europeans in dealing with anti-Semitism or that Armenians should swear eternal friendship with the Turks.

There will be snow in Hades before the CBC or any representative African-American organization will agree to deprive any Black elected official of any office by informal agreement. This is a survival instinct based on a solid appreciation of the fact that African-Americans were driven from politics by force and fraud in the past, while their erstwhile allies averted their eyes.

Now I'm sure that some folks reading the above will shrug their shoulders while muttering "That's all ancient history. They should get over it." I've a question for such people. If the increasingly desperate Liebermanites began to deploy acusations of anti-Semitism against Lamont supporters, are you going to say that Jewish folks should "get over it?"

No, of course not. No one will question concern over anti-Semitism as a well founded defensive reflex. To the contrary. All efforts will be bent to debunking the charge and convincing Jewish voters that they can trust Lamont. A perfectly reasonable response, considering history and the importance of Jewish Voters to the Democratic Party's prospects.

Contrast this to the incomprehension and, yes, anger that greets the CBC's defensive reaction. In one discussion on Daily Kos, someone argued that the CBC's attitude is identical to the mindset that acquited O.J. Simpson. Whatever Jefferson's sins, I doubt they rise to being accused of butchering his ex-wife and a hapless witness. Excuse me but this is waving the bloody shirt with a vengence.

What's the purpose of raising such a false comparison? To insinuate that the CBC would defend murderers as long as they were black? To suggest that Jefferson is the moral equivilant of a slasher? Or perhaps the poster is under the false impression that the jury in the Simpson case was uniformly African-American as is the Congressional Black Caucus. Of course, since that wasn't the fact, the entire jury can't be accused of acting from racial bias or animus. Some, at least, simply didn't buy the prosecution's case.

I've spent time on this bit because I'm afraid it's all too representative of attitudes found in Democratic Circles outside the Black community. Whereas every other constituency is at least lent a respectful, sympathetic ear, African-America's Representatives are constantly hectored to pipe down and get with the program, when they're not being ignored altogether. Currently, the Black community is being treated in the same fashion that the GOP has, in times past, treated it's Religious Right base: as a constituency with no place else to go. There's a moral pertinent to this sort of political cynicism embedded in the GOP's present floundering. Don't imagine that African-Americans will put up with such contemptuous treatment indefinitely.

People need to consult electoral reality. The African-American electorate is a key component of the Democratic Party's electoral coalition. Without it, there is precious little chance of a national Democratic resurgence on anything more than an agenda of Republican Lite. The African-American Community is not going to play the part of the disgraceful relative who's shunted off to the attic whenever polite company comes to visit. You may find this both inexpedient and inconvenient but it is a political fact of life. You ignore it at your peril.

Original Contempt

2005-11-13T11:57:00.000-08:00

A small tempest has broken out in the wake of Jesse Jackson's use of the phrase "the Constitution in Exile movement." to describe so-called conservative legal theorists who cleave to the doctrine of original intent in Constitutional Law. It seems that such folks object to the CIE label.

A lay person's view of the CIE brouhaha may be useful here, since the debate, I think, illuminates the intersection between legal fiction and political reality. Originalists object to the term not because it is undiscriptive nor even because it has been "imposed" on them. Rather, they object because it exposes the essentially political character of their arguments. Understandibly, they would prefer their positions to be judged by the criteria of legal scholasticism rather than real world consequences. Indentifying this school of thought as politically driven strips it of its pretensions of academic objectivity and exposes it as simply another front in the ongoing political wars.

Outside the hothouse of legal theory, the notion of original intent collapses in the face historical fact. It could hardly be otherwise since it is based on manifestly absurd, though superficially "conservative", premises. The first and most nonsensical being that the Constitution as a document contains the distilled and homogenous intent of the framers in unambiguous language. The fabled "plain meaning" dear to the heart of strict constructionists. By this standard the judiciary's task is limited to defending the constitutional status quo against extra-legislative, subversive innovations. Sounds quite Conservative.

The trouble with this argument is that no one could seriously claim that Constitutional interpretation has remained static for the past 200 years. Constitutional standards of the present are fundamentally different than they were at the time of the framing. This means that any "originalist" argument
is ipso facto a restorationist position. Hence the soubriquet of "the constitution in exile". The legal ideologues lumped together under this heading all hark back to some previous point in our jurisprudence when their version of constitutionality supposedly held sway. They differ only as to where the break with the past occured. Some focus on Rowe v. Wade. Some point to the use of the commerce clause to forward Civil Rights. The academically inclined reach back toward the 30's and the New Deal.

However, there is no logical reason to stop at any of the above points. The greatest re-writes of constitutional interpretation occurred during the 19th century. The first being the Dred Scott Decision, possibly the greatest single attempt at judicial usurpation in our history. The decision attempted to elevate slavery to a first principal of constitutional law and thereby obligate not only the Federal Government but the Governments of the Free States to enforce its primacy. So much for States Rights.

The second, which liquidated the first, was the Civil War. Constitutional law as it emerged from that conflict was a very different animal to what it had been before. This because the war established not just the primacy but the supremacy of Federal authority over that of the various States.

The logic of the originalists position leads them not 40, 50 or 70 but over a hundred years back in time. If applied consistently, it would require liquidation of all "faulty" precendents issuing from the changed constitutional circumstances post 1865. This is not a "conservative" position whether legal or political. It is a radical, reactionary rationale for dismantling every vestige of modern U.S. governance. Particularly since it calls into question the legitimacy of every Federal Administration since James Buchanan's. Indeed, if the originalist are correct, every Administration since Lincoln's has governed extra-constitutionally.

No doubt the originalists would object to this analysis. Just as they object to being described as a movement of any kind. They prefer to be seen as disinterested professionals seeking a return to the pure springs of Constitutional Law. Nothing political you see.

This disingenuous pose, whether sincerely or cynically held, cannot be sustained. There is no criteria by which the doctrine of original intent can be limited to a particular point of law other than expedience. The use of original intent to attack particular laws without admitting its larger, radical implications is a political rather than legal choice. Those who engage in such gamesmanship have no grounds to complain when they are called on it.

Richard Cohen: High Priest of Punk Punditry

2005-10-13T21:57:00.000-07:00

Richard Cohen's crying towel of column, calling for Special Counsel Fitzgerald to close up shop and flee from Shadizar on the Potomac, has caused an angry buzz in the blogosphere. Steve Gilliard has an excellent take down.

The column's nauseating substance, by turns bathetic and pathetic, have been thoroughly parsed by both Atrios and Kos as well as others. I can only add this observation:

The truly sordid character of Cohen's argument is revealed by its literal bottom line. Such investigations should stop because they make his job harder. No one is talking to Cohen and it's all Fitgerald's fault. If Fitzgerald would just stop investigating petty criminality in the White House, then perhaps people would start returning Richard's calls. The DC press corps could get back to doing its job and the world would once again rotate on its proper axis.

Considering the performance of that press corp not only over the last four years but for eight years prior; that job seems to be acting as a drain pipe through which the power elite release a golden shower of propaganda points onto the unsuspecting heads of the American public. Cohen's part has been to breathe mild criticisms into that same pipe, providing a muted counterpoint to the tinkling cascade. That's his job.

It really is about the freedom of the press. The freedom of exorbitantly over paid scribblers to act as publicists for the pirates populating the centers of government under the pretense of journalism. The heady fumes that fill the air in Washington can go to the heads of such folk. They develope delusions of grandeur. One such delusion is confusing the ease with which they draw their paychecks with the national interest.

Endgame for Karl Rove?

2005-10-06T16:01:00.000-07:00

It begins to look like it may be. Check out Larry O'Donnell's latest at Huffington Post.

Bill O'Reilly and the Media Whorehouse

2005-10-06T14:48:00.000-07:00

David Kline over at BlogRevolt.com has posted an account of being blind sided by Bill O'Reilly in a classic bait and switch. This prompted a spate of acerbic criticism. In the pile on, some fundamentals about the corporate media were overlooked:

Missing from this criticism is a recognition that O'Reilly is hardly unique. He is only a particularly blatant practitioner in a media where such tactics are SOP.

Any commercial broadcast program has an agenda. It may be ratings based, it may involve political favor trading, it may even, though rarely, reflect a commitment to the subject matter beyond mere exploitation. What is certain is that the programmer's agenda will come first and your's a distant second or third if that. As they control the microphone, it is an inherently unequal relationship.

O'Reilly is only remarkable in the nakedness with which he uses his advantage. His bully boy persona is part and parcel of his own marketing strategy. As is his pretense at not having such a strategy. Just a gutsy, straight shooting, no spin kinda guy is our Bill.

The only way to make any headway in this stagnant soup of hype and opportunism is to understand up front that you're participating in an electronic dog and pony show. You either figure out a way to make your own meme harmonize with whatever the existing agenda is, or you challenge it outright. The latter is difficult, calling for exhaustive preparation and planning. In the case of prerecorded programs, it is a practical impossibility. The most intelligent and trenchant commentator can be made to appear a buffoon through editing that de-contextualizes their statements.

Read Kline's whole thing.

Durbin and the State of the Debate

2005-06-23T16:42:00.000-07:00

Let see, one side calls the others traitors, terrorist symps or enablers, some going so far as to call for their internment, others previously going further, suggesting selective executions to terrorize the opposition.

The second party responds by accusing the first of being an enemy of freedom, seeking to suppress just criticism of its corrupt practices. The second party mutters impotently about impeachable offenses and compares the Government's treatment of some prisoners to that meted out by the Hitlerites and Stalinists.

The first party is outraged by the comparison and demands an apology. The second party capitulates. Emboldened, the first party amps up its rhetoric against the second.

There are a couple of lessons in this but the one that strikes me most forcifully is the light it sheds on the debate about the treatment of prisoners in Gitmo and other places. Both known and unknown.

In that debate, a number of voices have been heard saying that chaining people up in their own piss and shit for hours on end is an acceptable practice when dealing with terrorist or their allies. This is true even if a few innocents, regretably, get swept up with the guilty. Anyone who publicly criticises this by describing it as torture, or by comparing it to the actions of brutal and despotic regimes of the past, is guilty of endangering U.S. Troops and aiding the enemy.

The compelling question becomes: what constitutes a terrorist or the ally of a terrorist?

Some of these voices have made it quite plain as to what they think being on the "otherside" means. Their definition is not limited to Afghans, Iraqis, or by the borders of the United States. They believe their rhetoric of dissent as treason. They believe that there are traitors among us. Enemies among us. We know what treatment they reserve for enemies.

I read where someone said that Democrats fear Republicans more than they fear terrorists. I can't speak for either Democrats or Republicans, but I have been assaulted by people who share the sort of thinking described above. The only terrorist attacks that ever came close to threatening me physically were carried out by Eric Rudolph. If I were a Democrat, I would take cries of treason and aiding the enemy very seriously, considering their source. I wouldn't worry about offending such people's sensibilities.

Archives of Extremism

2005-05-01T08:23:00.000-07:00

I was recently invited to contribute an essay to the "Emory Report", the Faculty publication of Emory University. The occasion being a donation to the special Collections Dept. of the Woodruff Library. The donation consists of the archives of a community group called Neighbors Network. The essay and a news article are posted below.

From the Emory Report May 2nd, 2005:

May 2, 2005
Donated archive documents volunteer hate-group research

BY katherine baust

Founded in late 1987, the Neighbors Network was an entirely volunteer organization, a collective of concerned citizens, that defined its mission as “countering hate-crime and hate-group activity through research, education, victims assistance and community action.”

“We were a ‘kitchen table’ organization; we discussed the need for this work over our kitchen tables,” said Walter Reeves, former co-chair of education and outreach for Neighbors Network. “At that time, there were only about three other organizations doing this type of work, and their focus was national. We felt that there needed to be a local focus to meet the threat on the ground, and that is the role we served.”

During its years of activity, from 1988–95, the Neighbors Network collected a vast array of materials mapping the growth and development of hate groups in Georgia and the Southeast, their national efforts, their national and international connections, as well as the network’s own efforts to oppose them. The entire collection is now a permanent part of Special Collections at Woodruff Library and soon will be accessible for research use. Once processing is completed, which involves describing the full collection and preparing a catalog record, the collection will be open to all.

The donation of the Neighbors Network materials was coordinated through Berl Boykin, a local activist who recently worked with Special Collections Director Steve Enniss on another donation. Reeves, a friend of Boykin’s, said he was looking for a good location for the Neighbors Network archive. Shortly after, Enniss met with Reeves to survey the material and decided that Special Collections would take it.

“There is a tendency for some people to think that these hate groups are a throwback to another time, that they are antiquated,” Enniss said. “In fact, some have just morphed into other organizations, and the value of this archive is that it documents that transformation and the ongoing activities of these groups.”

Enniss enlisted the help of Randy Gue, a graduate student in the Institute of Liberal Arts focusing on the 20th century urban South, to help process the materials. According to Gue, the collection consists of organizational records of Neighbors Network, hate-group publications, raw information (like meeting minutes) and “intelligence” gathered by attending meeting and taking photographs at public events.

“It is a phenomenal archive of hate-group material, and it’s really invaluable because most people think hate groups ended in the ’60s and ’70s with the civil rights movement and the [Ku Klux] Klan,” said Gue. “As a student and historian, this collection is completely invaluable [to me]. It names names and draws connections; it identifies who’s who, what they are doing and—very importantly—how they are recruiting.”

The first step against hate

Walter Reeves, a writer and researcher based in Atlanta, was co-chair of education and outreach for Neighbors Network from 1989–95.

It was after dark when I left my first Klan rally. As I drove away, the flames of three gigantic crosses flickering behind me and shouts of White Power!, Hail Victory! and White Revolution! echoing in my mind, I realized the traditional bigotry of the Ku Klux Klan was morphing into something having less to do with the history of the post-reconstruction South and more to do with the history of post-World War I Germany.

It was a sunny day in 1986 when I arrived at the rally site. The National Klonvocation, as it was known in Klan parlance, was an annual Labor Day weekend event, held on a piece of property in the shadow of Stone Mountain since the 1920s. With a family background that was Southern, white and rural, I’d thought myself fully prepared for what I would encounter. I soon knew better.

At the rally entrance I was screened at a military-style checkpoint. Camouflage-clad Klan guards questioned me while glaring at the GBI (Georgia Bureau of Investigation) agents posted outside the rally property. It was the first sign that this was not my granddaddy’s Klan. The Jim Crow-era Klan pictured itself as a noble defender of the white, Christian status quo, often abetted in its criminal and terrorist activities by local police and politicians. Here, the hostility toward law enforcement was palpable. Here was the atmosphere of an armed camp, at war with the outside world.

It was an impression that only intensified as the day ground on. While plenty of traditional robed and hooded Klansmen were present, an equal number were garbed in military fashion, and it was these who were in charge of security. The distinction between the two groups was more than just sartorial; it was generational, as well.

The traditionalists were middle-aged or older, a crowd that fit the accepted stereotype of Klansmen. The militaries were the younger generation, twenty- and thirtysomethings with a combative, self-consciously “revolutionary” attitude. When the event’s speakers launched into exterminationist rants about blacks, Jews, communists and homosexuals, these young Turks responded with shouts of Eight! Eight! (This was a code phrase referring to H, the eighth letter of the alphabet, and meant “Heil Hitler”). They considered themselves the wave of the future; more than a few of the traditionalists suspected they might be right. By the end of the night, I wondered the same thing.

In January of the following year, many of these same people were in Cumming, Ga., where a Klan-led mob of hundreds attacked a Martin Luther King Jr. Day commemorative march that included the late Rev. Hosea Williams.

The Stone Mountain rally marked the beginning of a nine-year odyssey for me through the back alleys and byways populated by American hate groups and hatemongers. Along the way, I crossed paths with such notorious characters as convicted church bomber J.B. Stoner, Holocaust denier David Irving and White Aryan Resistance leader Tom Metzger.

Over time I learned that the popular conception of white supremacists and right-wing extremists as aging relics of a bygone era was itself a dangerously erroneous notion. Instead, I discovered a political movement in ferment, with the ability to reinvent itself as prevailing conditions required—a movement flexible enough to pursue a variety of strategies, and cloak itself variously in traditional, radical, mature, youthful, conservative, revolutionary, Christian and pagan guises. It was an ideology equally comfortable in the hood, the jackboot or the suit and tie, not averse to flying under false colors and quite accomplished at ignoring its own inconsistencies.

The first step on my journey was when I volunteered in 1986 for the Atlanta-based Center for Democratic Renewal, signing up to infiltrate Klan rallies and demonstrations. Later I continued as an activist, researcher and writer with a dedicated group of volunteers comprising a local community organization known as Neighbors Network.

Founded in late 1987, Neighbors Network defined its mission as “countering hate-crime and hate-group activity through research, education, victims assistance and community action.” This was a broad mission for a handful of people gathered around a kitchen table to take on, but each of us was convinced of the need for it. My own experiences as an infiltrator left me with no doubts.

During my years of activity I witnessed first hand the sense of alienation and disenfranchisement that fuels extremist movements. Some might find it surprising, but many of the individuals drawn to these movements were not initially motivated by ingrained racial or ethnic hatreds. Rather, they felt a pervasive impotence in the face of a threatening world. They turned to such movements for a network of support and a sense of empowerment lacking in their day-to-day lives. Nowhere was this more evident than with teenagers drawn into the neo-Nazi, skinhead subculture. On more than one occasion, the Neighbors Network was called upon to aid young people seeking to leave the Nazi/skin scene. Sometimes we were contacted by frantic parents, sometimes by the young people themselves. Recovering young people from this movement became a major aspect of our victims-assistance work, along with documenting instances of harassment and, when necessary, housesitting so that victimized families might sleep in their own homes without fear. The Nazi skinhead phenomenon was more proof, if any were needed, of the absolute ruthlessness with which the movement targeted the susceptible for recruitment.

There are many examples of how the movement tailored its marketing strategies to specific groups. Space will not allow for a full discussion of them here, so a partial list will have to do: There are the intellectual pretensions of the Holocaust denial industry as typified by the likes of David Irving; or the creation of pseudo-conservative outfits such as the Council of Conservative Citizens and their success in enlisting the support of mainstream politicians; or the attempts at cloaking extremism in appeals to “Southern heritage” and the religious bigotry implicit in the calls for a “Christian” nation. Neighbors Network conscientiously documented these developments and sought to expose them to greater public scrutiny.

Sadly, while the extremists have not succeeded in legitimizing their unvarnished agenda in public debate, neither have they gone away. They continue to pursue their long-term goals at every opportunity. However these days they must reckon with a far greater degree of public awareness, as well as a much higher level of grassroots opposition. I’d like to think that the efforts made by the Neighbors Network helped lay the foundation for this.

It is a source of great satisfaction to me and all those who participated in this work to know that the Neighbors Network archive, spanning the years 1988–95, has been accepted by Special Collections of Woodruff Library (see story, Donations). A special thanks is due to Berl Boykin of “Touching Up Our Roots,” a gay-history project, for suggesting the donation.

In time, this archive will provide researchers with a valuable resource for documenting and analyzing not only the white supremacist movement but other extremist groups, as well. In addition, the archive will provide data for examining effective methods of countering the activities of such groups.

The volunteers whose efforts produced the archive were animated by the belief that knowledge was the indispensable first step in this defense. The establishment of the Neighbors Network collection ensures the work of these volunteers will provide an ongoing legacy consistent with that belief.

Andrea Dworkin: RIP

2005-04-18T23:46:00.000-07:00

I'm certainly no expert on Andrea Dworkin having only read "Right Wing Women" but you didn't have to read her to be aware of her popular impact. Having grown up in the radicalizing atmosphere of the late sixties, early seventies I was aware of the groundswell of grassroots feminism wherein ideas, theories and manifestos germinated and proliferated in profusion. Perhaps this is why I didn't find much that was attributed to Dworkin to be particularly original. It seemed to me that I had been exposed to most of her ideas in embryo as they gestated among the uncited rank and file.

Finally, I took time to read her. I don't think it can be denied that she was a skillful and passionate writer. Still, "Right Wing Women" struck me as profoundly wrong headed and since its argument was bound up with all the strands of her arguments about patriarchy and heterosexuality I concluded that she was off track there as well.

After all this time I still recall (albeit a bit hazily) the two passages that informed my judgement. In the first she was outlining the inherent oppressive and brutal character of male/female sex. In an aside she chose to emphasize "...particularly deep thrusting.." I remember thinking 'How seriously can we take someone who thinks they can micromanage the individual sexual behavior of billions of human beings? How seriously can we take the opinions someone who evidently believes, with absolute certainty, that she can define the essence of such intimate acts for all people in all circumstances?' I kept reading though.

Which brings me to my second recollection. Dworkin described her confrontation with what she regarded as blatant anti-Semitism amongst right-wingers at a conference in Texas. The anti-Semitism consisted of conference attendees not being shy about asking her if she was Jewish.

Being a native southerner with many friends who hale from the north east, I'm aware that questioning people about their religion is not a common practice there. However, the case in the southern states is precisely opposite. It would be unusual if, upon making an acquaintence, people didn't inquire about church attendance, etc. Evidently Dworkin had no notion of this.

The two instances are significant, I think, in that they illustrate that the source of her greatest strength was also the source of her greatest frailty. As her passion grew directly out of her personal experience so did her misjudgements. She didn't see that, while we inhabit systems of social, sexual and political constructions,we do not experience them in identical fashion. Individual experience is not interchangeble, no where less so than in the intimate depths of the human psyche.

I don't agree with those who say this failing defines her as insane . Damaged surely. Disturbed? Almost certainly. All of which is finally beside the point. Andrea Dworkin's truth was her own, for each of us to accept or reject according to our own experience.

What's worthy of thought and discussion is not why so many reject her theories but why her words, her experience, have resonated with so many.

For Whom the Bell Tolls: Ward Churchill and the War On Dissent

2005-04-18T22:56:00.000-07:00

I posted the following piece in the early days of the Ward Churchill controversy. I t seems appropriate to post it here:

I have a degree of understanding for what Churchill is going through. For several years I was the public face of a local community group engaged in combating the Ku Klux Klan and other hate-groups in the deep south. As such, I was in position to become intimately aquainted with the tactics the fascist right employs to suppress opposition.

As many people now know, University of Colorado Professor Ward Churchill has been targeted by Fox News media hit man, Bill O’Reilly for an essay written in the wake of 9/11 entitled “Some People Push Back: On theJustice of Roosting Chickens”. O’Reilly, who has been having PR problems of his own lately, resurrected this three year old publication to launch a campaign against Churchill’s impending appearance at Hamilton College, a small school of less than 2000 students located in central New York State. After savaging Churchill on his program , O’Reilly urged his audience to pressure Hamilton to withdraw its invitation to Churchill, being careful to cynically advise that they “ Be respectful.”

The predictable result was that Hamilton was besieged by a flood of abusive criticism, including threats of violence against Churchill. By the Monday following O’Reilly’s Friday broadcast, Hamilton had enough, canceling Churchill’s appearance citing its inability to insure his safety. With his usual crass self promotion, O’Reilly seized on this “victory” as proof of his own importance and influence. Meanwhile, Churchill found it expedient to resign his position as the Chair of U.C. Ethnic Studies Dept. He is now the subject of a board of Regents probe into whether he should be fired from his Professorship for his opinions.

I have a degree of understanding for what Churchill is going through. For several years I was the public face of a local community group engaged in combating the Ku Klux Klan and other hate-groups in the deep south. As such, I was in position to become intimately aquainted with the tactics the fascist right employs to suppress opposition. Death threats, delivered by mail and telephone. Attempts to get me fired from my job. Publishing my photograph and personal information in the white-supremacist press in a transparent effort to target me for the attentions of any of the numerous freelance lunatics who populate the far right. This is the preferred methodology of US Fascism now days, since it’s not practicable to simply round up a mob and liquidate opponents, yet.

It wasn’t a pleasant experience. So I have plenty sympathy for anyone who finds themselves on the receiving end of such tactics. There is a word for this method of intimidating free expression through the threat of violence whether overt or implied. It’s called terrorism.

Such assaults not withstanding, the group was able to do great deal of effective work and played an important role in blunting the efforts of the white-supremacists, neo-Nazis and authoritarian Theocrats in our region. One thing we never found it necessary to do was to call for the suppression of their speech. This was a distinction that helped us a great deal in our appeals to public sentiment.

This is a key point. The right to speak one’s mind, rightly or wrongly, is not contingent on the content of that speech. Ward Churchill and his opinions are not the issue. Freedom of Speech and expression is. One need not agree with anything that Churchill has said in order to defend his right to say it.

It’s a good thing for Churchill that this is so, since the essay in question doesn’t succeed either as analysis or as effective propaganda for his perspective. That is, if we understand propaganda as meaning convincing to those who do not already share the same opinion.

The section of Churchill’s essay that has generated the most spleen reads as follows:

“As to those in the World Trade Center . . .

Well, really. Let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they 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. Recourse to "ignorance" – a derivative, after all, of the word "ignore" – counts as less than an excuse among this relatively well-educated elite. To the extent that any of them were unaware of the costs and consequences to others of what they were involved in – and in many cases excelling at – it was because of their absolute refusal to see. More likely, it was because they were too busy braying, incessantly and self-importantly, into their cell phones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance, into the starved and rotting flesh of infants. 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.”

This followed a section titled “Politics of the Perpetrator Population” in which Churchill indicted all but an “infinitesimally small segment of the body politic” as complicit in the U.S. government’s brutal policies against Iraq and the holocaust inflicted on the Iraqi population as a result. This was after drawing an explicit parallel between the fate of the “Good Germans” of Nazi Germany and the “Good Americans” of the present. He followed up the “little Eichmanns” comparison by describing the 9/11 hijackers as “secular activists” and suggesting that they could be described as pursuing a “humanitarian strategy.”

Given the looseness of language used by Professor Churchill and the context, it’s easy to see how one would get the impression that he was saying that everyone at the twin towers got what they deserved. Indeed, if one believes in the notion of collective responsibility, that whole populations are equally responsible for the actions taken by their military and political elites and are therefore equally deserving of punishment, one could make that argument. It has a certain bloody-minded integrity.

However, Professor Churchill now says he was making no such argument. In a statement released by Churchill he makes the following points:

“Finally, I have never characterized all the September 11 victims as "Nazis." What I said was that the "technocrats of empire" working in the World Trade Center were the equivalent of "little Eichmanns." Adolph Eichmann was not charged with direct killing but with ensuring the smooth running of the infrastructure that enabled the Nazi genocide. Similarly, German industrialists were legitimately targeted by the Allies.”

“It should be emphasized that I applied the "little Eichmanns" characterization only to those described as "technicians." Thus, it was obviously not directed to the children, janitors, food service workers, firemen and random passers-by killed in the 9-1-1 attack. According to Pentagon logic, were simply part of the collateral damage. Ugly? Yes. Hurtful? Yes. And that's my point. It's no less ugly, painful or dehumanizing a description when applied to Iraqis, Palestinians, or anyone else. If we ourselves do not want to be treated in this fashion, we must refuse to allow others to be similarly devalued and dehumanized in our name.”

The trouble with this clarification is that nowhere in his original essay does Churchill make this distinction explicit. The entire structure of his argument militates against the reader reaching that conclusion independent from the Professor’s late breaking revision. Moreover, the “infrastructure” of the Nazi extermination extended well beyond a technocratic elite represented by Eichmann and included many middle and working class “good Germans” that Churchill previously referenced.

Churchill seems to have some awareness of the equivocal nature of his position. In the same statement he describes the essay as being “stream of consciousness”, a term much abused in defense of sloppy writing. As a paid intellectual Churchill makes his living from writing and publishing. It might help his argument if he were
able to name one or two of the nameless “technicians” that he thinks got their just deserts, assuming that he knows any of their names. I find it hard to give him a pass on this. Fortunately, I don’t have to in order to defend his right to say and write what he pleases. His professional and personal reputation is his own concern.

I think it’s important to admit up front that Professor Churchill is a controversial figure even within radical circles. First, because it is a fact. Second, because it is clear that the attempt to demonize Churchill is part of a larger strategy of demonizing all dissent by pretending that his views are representative of the “left” as a whole.

I won’t rehearse the various criticisms of Churchill that have come from the “left” except to suggest that his critics on the right are likely aware of them already. I think it highly likely that they picked him, in part, for that very reason. All the easier to isolate and pick him off.

The reactionary media, led by Fox News and its camp followers in the press, on Cable, talk radio and the Blogosphere do not act at random. The current electronic lynching of Churchill is simply the opening salvo in the latest campaign to suppress dissent . An attempt, in the wake of Bush’s narrow electoral win , to reinstate the post 9/11 atmosphere of hysteria and intimidation. The same mob psychology that allowed the current regime in Washington to steamroll its way into Iraq over the broken bodies of thousands of US soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis. Bill O’Reilly is doing his part to forward the agenda. Having feasted on Ward Churchill, he has already moved on to a new victim; M. Shalid Alam, Professor of Economics at Northwestern University. Who’s next?

It should be understood that Churchill was not chosen at random. He was chosen specifically in hopes of provoking an uncritical defense that would allow the rightists to confuse the issue. In point of fact, Churchill’s writings, opinions and personal history are irrelevant to this fight. The enemies of free speech on the right would like nothing better than to see their opponents rally around Churchill, the tenured provocateur, rather than the principles of free expression. That was their goal in targeting Churchill in the first place. If the battle is fought on the basis of the content of Churchill’s essay, the cause of free dissent and freedom of speech will lose.

Unfortunately, it appears that some folks are more than willing to blunder into the trap that has been prepared for them. I recently saw a defense of Churchill that bore the headline “Genocide Continues Against Indigenous Dissenters.” As disgusting as the attacks on Churchill are, they hardly equate with atrocities such as the Sand Creek or Wounded Knee massacres, much less the centuries long, bloody extermination of indigenous peoplesthroughout the Americas. The comparison itself cheapens that history and insults its victims.

Besides, it appears that Churchill’s bona fides as an indigenous person are not as well established as some people seem to think. He’s long claimed membership in the Keetoowah Cherokee Band. Turns out his membership is associative, rather than full. A category which is purely honorary and has been extended to friends of the Band such as former President Bill Clinton, according to former Keetoowah leader John Ross who was quoted in the Rocky Mountain Times. According to Ross, the practice of giving such Associate memberships was discontinued in 1994 out of concern that it was being abused. Full membership in the Band requires proof of being 1/4
Cherokee. Churchill has reportedly claimed at various times to be either 3/16 and 1/16 Cherokee.

We ought to remember that “lynch law” isn’t wrong because it leads to the assassination of the of the innocent. It is wrong even if the victim were as guilty as sin. The real issue that should be addressed is not Ward Churchill‘s “ideas” but the role played by Bill O’Reilly who is in no position to be accusing anyone else of inciting terrorism. O’Reilly’s actions make him indistinguishable from the racist demagogues who, having whipped a mob into a murderous frenzy, made sure they were at a safe distance from the lynching tree when their victims were strung up.

Here is where a comparison to Adolph Eichmann would be truly appropriate.

"A New Birth of Freedom"

2005-04-18T16:30:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my Blog. The cubbord is a bit bare at the moment but I hope to remedy that soon . Come back and visit.