[EMMAS] ChcikenDoves and "Little Eichmanns"
 
Date: Mon, 21 Mar 2005 03:24:41 -0600 (CST)

 
CHICKENDOVES   AND LITTLE EICHMANNS
    I recently witnessed one of Jello Biaffras  4 hour  rants at Humboldt 
State in Arcata - along with 400 others crammed into the Kate Buchanan Room. 
  It was quite an indictment of Corporate Militarism, the combination that 
Mussolini dubbed fascism.  To show his seriousness, Jello had not only his 
own CDs fpr sa;e at his table but a couple of those of Ward Churchill, 
recently the star of the media teapot for observing that the world trade 
center was peopled by little Eichmanns.
   I havent been a fan of Churchills.  His riffs on Pacifism as 
Pathology completely miss the truth of nonviolent resistance in practice 
but he does identify a rare bird that I have also watched in flight within  
the Peace Movement. I mean the ChickenDove who pays lip service to Peace and 
sends taxes and children to war. The ChickenDove is a first cousin to the 
ChickenHawk and both belong in the family of "little Eichmanns."
  It is understandable that Churchills statement has raised a storm among 
the conservatives and fundamentalists.They object, no doubt, to being called 
"little". Less understandable was Jellos apologetic defense of Churchill, 
distancing himself from the little Eichmanns quote in particular. At this 
point my friend leaned over  to suggest that Jellos gone soft.   It IS 
ironic that Jello would show ambivalence over the Churchillian phrase when 
for more than 4 hours he provided the cartoon captions for a movie called 
The American Corporate-Military  Empire. Maybe he felt that among his  
liberal, student audience some might strongly believe that whether in the 
Twin Towers, or serving in Iraq, there was "nobdy here but us - 
innocentAmericans."
    Churchills statement meanwhile resonated with the spirit of Malcolm X 
who also saw the chickens come home to roost after JFKs assassination.  
Churchills words conjured up the voice as well of Hannah Arendt, echoing 
her Eichmann and the banality of evil.
    After all, what evil is more banal than species genocide on behalf of 
the profit motive?
    It is something of a lottery as to who comes to the attention of jackals 
like Bill OReilly and Bill Owens, the current fundamentalist Governor of 
Colorado. When it happens, you experience a sudden cyclone of negative 
attention. Churchill means to survive and his defense is well argued: the 
Twin Towers contained Pentagon, CIA, and National Security State apparatus 
and that the US would  not have hestitated to designate an Iraqi Twin Towers 
as a legitimate military target.  The rest would be written off as necessary 
collateral damage. In fact, says Churchill,  Baghdad,  Fallujah, and a slew 
of towns are an ongoing Twin Tower bombing.
     Though no pacifist certainly, Churchill tells us he would not be 
bombing the Twin Towers OR Baghdad. For that matter, he would not have voted 
to execute Eichmann. His point is that the US has no moral high ground to 
stand on. In the Middle East, the overwhelming preponderance of power is 
held by the US and our Israeli ally and we use it to demolish houses and 
kill civilians in bunches. Our torture chambers and our cluster bombs show 
us to be a nation led by War Criminals and served by  what else can you 
call them  little Eichmanns.
      Churchill is a professor of ethnic studies - an expert on the genocide 
of the gypsies in WW II.  Himself part Cherokee, he is the perfect successor 
to the mantles of  Black Malcolm and Jewess Hannah. After all, the genocide 
of the native American population is undeniable, modeled, some scholars 
claim, on the English genocidal strategy against the Irish in centuries 
previous to the invasion of North America.
      Like the student who asked Churchill how to avoid coming under his 
indictment as a little Eichmann,  we also must ask ourselves how? 
Churchills answer is that only active opposition to the Empire can gain us 
an exemption from his charge. In particular, he criticized leftists who 
expect a painless way - carried out in our own sweet time - to end the pain 
inflicted on the US victims. Instead we must detach ourselves from service 
in the technical core of Empire, subverting the machinery of globalization. 
In this he was at one with Jello who ended his gig where perhaps he should 
have begun it - by calling on us to withhold our support from the 
corporation, refusing to work for it, buy from it or aid it in any way.
        No money no war.
Paul Encimer

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" Social and economic well-being will become a reality only through the
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minorities, and not through the mass."  Emma Goldman

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