Appalling

As part of NASPIR, I've signed a letter defending free speech in the case of Ward Churchill, a professor at the University of Colorado. Churchill wrote what he called "a stream-of-consciousness interpretive reaction to the September 11 counterattack" in the immediate aftermath of said event. The rediscovery of this sloppy polemic has led to raging denunciation, with death threats, the governor of Colorado calling for Churchill's resignation and so on.

The issue of most interest to corporate media has not been the rising tide against academia in the US, of which this is the latest wave, but instead attention has been focused on sustaining moral hysteria over Churchill's remarks. In particular, Churchill writes that the victims in the World Trade Center were not all innocent because they "formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire" and that killing them was the only way of "visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns". Churchill has in later commentary and interviews clarified (and, in my view, changed) his remarks. But taken at face value, I find Churchill's essay appalling.

So do a lot mainstream commentators. Let's put aside the idea that people would have the right to say appalling things, and assume that there is a category of ideas which one is not allowed to publicly express. (As commonly accepted all over Europe, where laws routinely restrict the freedom of speech with regard to racist, fascist and blasphemous sentiments. In the US, the freedom of speech is better enshrined in law.) So, what is the category of thought which is being publicly exorcised?

A quick comparison to writings which bring no disapproval in the mainstream is enough to dispel the possibility that seeing justice in the killing of innocents and advocacy of terrorism would be taboo. Right-wing publications such as National Review Online routinely feature columns along the lines of criticising the use of cruise missiles as opposed to mass bombing of cities in revenge for terrorist strikes. But one does not have to go to such sources. A look at a chief ideologue of the leading liberal newspaper, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, will also yield the sentiment "We need to go into the heart of their world and beat their brains out, in order to burst this [terrorism] bubble", usually expressed in a more refined form. (See for example the overview by Edward Herman.)

Friedman's and Churchill's writings are not analogous, of course; for example, Churchill has clarified he does not advocate terrorism. Also, the reactions to the work of celebrated journalists tell more about the cultural climate than the hysteria over an obscure essay by a Native American academic activist. In Friedman's case, his advocacy of terrorism and aggression worse than the atrocities of September 2001 has brought such calamities as three Pulitzer Prizes upon him.

The distinguishing feature of Churchill's writing (the angry style aside) is not that he says appalling things, but that he says them about the wrong people. The case is an exemplary refutation of the idea that a "balanced debate" exists with a wide and reasonable mainstream, and some extremes left and right. If you took the positions advocated by National Review Online or the New York Times and reversed the cast, Churchill's essay would seem moderate.

The hysteria over Churchill would be farcical were it not for the problems it causes him, and the climate of fear it is helping to build. This is not the first targeting of academics (Joseph Massad is another prominent example), and I fear that the scope of accepted expression is becoming ever more narrow. This is bound to also affect Europe, particularly US-oriented countries such as Britain and Finland.