Posted on 02/05/2005 8:21:13 PM PST by CHARLITE
Should a serious research university consider hiring a fascist? This question doesn't have an easy answer.
After all, prior to World War II Europe produced several brilliant political theorists and philosophers who could be characterized as fascists, or proto-fascists, including Joseph de Maistre, Carl Schmitt and Martin Heidegger.
Whether, post-Auschwitz, it's possible even in theory to advocate similar views in intellectually plausible ways is an interesting question.
It is not, however, a question that has any relevance to the case of University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill, despite the obvious fascistic streak in Churchill's writings and public performances.
As a political inclination and an aesthetic style, fascism is marked by, among other things, the following characteristics:
• The worship of violence as a purifying social force. This often manifests itself as an aggressive and romanticized militarism, that produces a kind of cult of the warrior, and that advocates violent action as a mechanism for social change, and an appropriate way of crushing dissent.
• A hyper-nationalistic ideology, that casts history into a drama featuring an inevitably violent struggle between Good and Evil, and that obsesses on questions of racial and ethnic identity.
• The dehumanization and scapegoating of opponents, who are characterized by turns as demonically clever conspirators plotting to undermine the possibility of a virtuous society, and soulless automatons mindlessly carrying out the orders of a vast and evil bureaucracy. This dehumanization often leads to demands that the evil in our midst be eradicated "by any means necessary," up to and including the mass extermination of entire nations and peoples.
• The treatment of moral responsibility as a fundamentally collective matter. The supposed virtues and sins of a nation or people are ascribed to all of its individual members, so that, for example, one speaks of "the Jew" (meaning all Jews collectively and each Jewish person individually) being responsible for the decadence of modern culture.
Anyone who reads widely in the collected works of professor Churchill, and especially anyone who listens to his speeches, will, if they are not blinded by certain ideological commitments, recognize the essentially fascist tendency of his work. If a white American were to speak of any foreign people or nation in anything like the way Churchill discusses America and Americans, the fascist character of his work would be obvious to everyone.
This point is only underlined by the behavior of Churchill's supporters, who, while not actually wearing brown shirts, did a quite convincing impersonation of fascist thugs at Thursday's meeting of the University of Colorado Regents.
All this was merely par for the course for Churchill, who believes that a Columbus Day parade is an incitement to genocide, and therefore something that he and his followers have a legal right to disrupt.
But while the question of whether a brilliant scholar with a fascist streak ought to be considered for a place on a university faculty retains at least some academic interest, it has nothing to do with Churchill, whose writings and speeches feature an incoherent farrago of boundless paranoia, wildly implausible theories, obscene celebrations of murder, and atrocious prose.
The question of whether a serious research university ought to hire someone like Churchill is laughable on its face. What's not so funny is the question of exactly how someone like him got hired in the first place, and then tenured and named the head of a department.
That, in the end, is a more important question than what will or ought to happen to Churchill now. Churchill is a pathetic buffoon, but the University of Colorado is far from alone in having allowed itself to toss intellectual integrity and human decency overboard in the pursuit of worthy goals.
Speaking truth to power, giving a voice to those who have been silenced, pursuing controversial and unpopular ideas in an intellectually rigorous way - these are all things that the university in general, and this university in particular, has done and continues to do.
That through whatever combination of negligence, cowardice and complicity we have allowed Ward Churchill to besmirch those ideals by invoking them in the defense of his contemptible rantings is now our burden and our shame.
Paul Campos is a professor of law at the University of Colorado. He can be reached at
paul.campos@colorado.edu.
Paul Campos was apparently unaware that Ward Churchill IS a "white American," having been exposed as a fraud, trying to pass himself off as "1/16th native American" by most tribal organizations. Otherwise, this is a good article on the true fascism underlying this man's rants. The flaw, however, is really a glaring one, because the author is making a case for how a twisted part "native American" (as a minority spokesman) can get away with outrageous comments for which a "white American" would be pilloried. Alas, the fact that he's a white American posing as a native American makes his ravings even worse, in my opinion. It also disgraces and insults native Americans.
Considering his moronic views, the real question for me is why wasn't he hired away by more prominent lefty bastions?
To Paul Campos: Welcome aboard.
The first official recognition of this point appeared in an interview of the Governor of Colorado on Fox News late on Saturday. He noted that there was a question whether Churchill was an Indian. (Since that claim on his resume was a significant part of his hiring for the "ethnic studies" position, that sets up a firing for fraud, which should hold against the inevitable suit by Churchill.)
Bottom line: He will be fired. It will stick. And the reason why first appeared nationally on FR for us Pajamahedeen.
Congressman Billybob
I'm sure that the "People's Republic of Berkley" is putting a fresh coat of paint on his new office now.
Colorado Fraud ping!
God made is so that all men eventually die. This is a gift to humanity in the case of Paul Campos.
"If a white American were to speak of any foreign people or nation in anything like the way Churchill discusses America and Americans, the fascist character of his work would be obvious to everyone."
I think the author is pointing out that the idiotic rants are tolerated because the left hates America and Americans and therefore his writings are acceptable.
"But while the question of whether a brilliant scholar with a fascist streak ought to be considered for a place on a university faculty retains at least some academic interest, it has nothing to do with Churchill, whose writings and speeches feature an incoherent farrago of boundless paranoia, wildly implausible theories, obscene celebrations of murder, and atrocious prose."
LOL!
And let's face it he IS a white american. Even he only claims to be 1/16 Native American. That's making him a hell of a lot whiter than many people in this nation. Heck, he's even whiter than the 1/2 hispanic white supremacist that got kicked out of the white supremacy movement.
Maybe those facists will take this fake phoney fraud in from the cold, since he's so freaking WHITE after all.
The other point that Campos didn't mention (though he's undoubtedly aware of it) is that Churchill doesn't ahve the minimal qualifications to be a college professor. He doesn't have a doctorate, and his masters degree is of the 'touchy-feely' variety. He was appointed because he was a loud, obnoxious activist. and the people who made the decisions in his case thought they wanted that.
Loud,obnoxious activists seem to do well in American society today.
Look at Al Sharpton!
The Reverend made some mistakes back in the bad old days of Tawana Brawley, but he's way too smart to have been caught the way Ward Churchill was. Stupid git, having conned his way to a tenured job, he should have stuck to convincing wealthy white kids of their racial guilt in Ethnic Studies 101, and laid off the global politics.
what took campos so long to discover that one of his peers had problems?
this may be an early indicator that the university wants to disavow itself from comrade indian churchill.
Heidigger, Heidigger was a boozy beggar
Who could think you under the table
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0%2C1299%2CDRMN_15_3519179%2C00.html
interesting.
about 1980 churchill was telling people that he was one half sioux.
He should be fired his claim for Tenure denied because of his Fraudulent claims.
Now we must sing the whole song!
Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
Who was very rarely stable.
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
Who could think you under the table.
David Hume could out-consume
Schopenhauer and Hegel,
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
Who was just as schloshed as Schlegel.
There's nothing Nietzche couldn't teach ya
'Bout the raising of the wrist.
Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed.
John Stuart Mill, of his own free will,
On half a pint of chanpy was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away--
Half a pint of whiskey every day.
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle.
Hobbes was fond of his dram,
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart.
'I drink, therefore I am.'
Yes, Socrates, himself, is particularly missed,
A lovely little thinker,
But a bugger when he's pissed.
Sharpton is also responsible for deaths in several hate filled riots caused by his inflammatory rhetoric.
He's a truly evil racist.
It's the climate of weak administrations and gutless university presidents. It goes all the way to the top. What just happened at Harvard? Skinner makes an honest comment aboout gender differences and then, under pressure, agrees to name yet another hard-left Democrat to the faculty - - - -in the name of "diversity!!!!".
what's interesting about this article is that campos calls churchill a fascist.
not a communist.
the truth of the matter is, churchill's aligned with the communists.
the truth of the matter is, the communist left has taken on some of fascism, since the 1960s when german authors of the 1920s-60s were required reading on campi.
this may be a matter of a communist calling a peer a fascist in order to get rid of him.
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