Ward Churchill's Other Nazi Problem

Victims of 9-11 Were "Little Eichmanns," But Eichmann Himself Was Just Misunderstood

If there's one good thing about anti-semitism, it's that it makes the cretins, cranks, and crazies that much easier to spot.

Jew-hatin' is like catnip to moonbats. They just can't keep away from it.

Case in point, our academic paragon of the moment, Ward Churchill:

Amid a glare of nationwide publicity,University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill has been asked to resign as chairman of that school’s Ethnic Studies Department because he published an essay in which he likened the 3,000 people massacred at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, to “little Eichmanns.�

For good measure, he added that their killers had made “gallant sacrifices� to achieve noble ends. Prior to this incident, Mr. Churchill’s scholarly reputation was based mainly on a squalid tract called “A Little Matter of Genocide� (1997), in which he argued that the murder of European Jews was not at all a “fixed policy objective of the Nazis� and accused Jews of seeking to monopolize for themselves all that beautiful Holocaust suffering that other groups would very much like, ex post facto, to share.

As a general matter, any time you think it's a good idea to title a piece about the Holocaust "A Little Matter of Genocide," it's probably best to put away the hootch and think things through from the beginning with a clear head.

He argued that Jewish “exclusivism� had nearly erased from history the victims of other genocidal campaigns, and that Jewish scholars stressed the Holocaust in order to “construct a conceptual screen behind which to hide the realities of Israel’s ongoing genocide against the Palestinian population.�

Ehhh... this is pretty common. Pretty much everyone who hates Jews accuses them, at one point or another, of "using" "a little matter of genocide" to advance their racial agenda.

This dickbag can't even be original as regards his anti-semitism. He's just cribbing from the latest edition of the Lyndon LaRouche newspaper.

He not only likened Jewish scholars who have argued for the unique character of the Holocaust to neo-Nazi Holocaust deniers, he said that the Jews are worse than the latter-day Nazis because “those who deny the Holocaust, after all, focus their distortion upon one target. Those [Jewish scholars] who deny all holocausts other than that of the Jews have the same effect upon many.�

Jeff Goldstein and I have sparred on this issue. And he's said to me that I should understand the impulse to use hyperbolic language to make a point, as I do so myself. (I think he admitted similar impulses in himself.)

But come on, Jeff. It's time to throw in the towel here, isn't it?

I asked Jeff if an extreme right-winger would get to keep his job if he made hardcore racist statements. Jeff told me that was different from the statements Churchill made about 9-11, though he didn't explain why.

Well, whether it's "different" or not, it seems that Churchill is also engaging in some rather odious racism.

If a right-wing professor can't get away with this sort of poision, why are left-wingers allowed to engage in it freely? Is it once again a case of special rules for special people?

I like the writer's Ann-Coulter-esque crack:

What the poverty of the English language compels me to call the ideas in these professorial fulminations are pretty uniform: anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism, and tenacious attachment to the motto: “The other country, right or wrong.�

Almost perfect. Change it to "The enemy country, right or wrong," and you've got yourself a bumper sticker for the Volvo-and-Birkenstocks set.

Thanks to "Someone" for the tip.

posted by Ace at 04:19 AM

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