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The release of a 125 page May 9th report by the University of Colorado defaming and discriminating against Ward Churchill marks the official beginning of an impressive historical event-- the Great Oppressor Cultural Counterrevolution (GOCC). Prior to this, there was nothing from the University of Colorado that backed any of the ages-old charges against tenured Ethnic Studies professor Ward Churchill. The event signals that the political struggle in academia is officially on: though it was not our choosing for this struggle to start, we should not recoil from it either.
Initiated by the governor of Colorado Bill Owens and backed by candidates for president such as Rudy Giuliani, the Great Oppressor Cultural Counterrevolution aims at the firing of academic authorities through political means when all previous academic reviews of Churchill including the one granting him tenure turned up nothing satisfactory to the reactionaries.
In the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) (1966 to 1976) that MIM upholds, the first important salvo was Mao's endorsement of a big character poster that appeared at Beijing University regarding academic authorities there. In both the GPCR and the GOCC, the world outside the ivory tower became engaged.
The difference between the GPCR and the GOCC is the class leading it. When Mao initiated the GPCR, he did so on behalf of the proletariat of China that was facing the possibility of restoration of capitalism, as did happen in the Soviet Union and eventually China. When Bill Owens, David Horowitz and the Republican Party establishment in charge of all branches of government attacked academia, their goal was to discredit a power bastion of the Democratic Party while simultaneously turning the screws on the oppressed, indigenous people in particular. The white oppressor is leading the GOCC.
With all branches of power in Republican Party hands, the GOCC sensed the time was right to discredit tenured professors who are vastly disproportionately Democrats or progressive people, because what few intelligent people there are in the right-wing of white nationalism go to Wall Street and are too greedy to put up with the salaries of academia. In this struggle, most Democrats have also joined in the lynching of Ward Churchill.
MIM declares to the world that this is not a struggle that the proletariat can win inside u.$. borders by itself. In China yes, a struggle like this makes sense. In the united $tates, we are vastly outnumbered by the kind of yahoos disseminating holocaust revisionism. This is a call for help from the whole world.
Fortunately, in its shifting charges against Churchill, the 125 page report has now provided exactly the basis for opening this struggle to the international level. In one charge brought against Ward Churchill, the Central Counterrevolution Group at the University of Colorado said on page 83 of its tract, that using the number of 400,000 killed by smallpox in Western America 1837-1840 is a "fabrication."
At the heart of the debate is another scholar's work (Thornton) showing a lower number of people killed in one area. The GOCCers say it is a "fabrication" to extrapolate 400,000 dead from whites' spreading smallpox among First Nation peoples in one region 1837-1840, especially since Churchill bases himself in Thornton. Perhaps we should leave the truth out of this and look at what the GOCCers are saying. When we look at what the GOCCers themselves say, it is clearly a matter of extrapolation:
"Explaining that smallpox was said to have been 'brought to the northern plains by a steamboat traveling the Missouri River,' Thornton notes that it 'killed 10,000 American Indians there in but a few weeks. The total numbers of American Indians thought to have died are overwhelming' (pp. 94-5). Thornton then suggests figures for certain of those tribes, including the Mandan and Arikara, which add up to around 17,000-19,000 deaths. He mentions other tribes without providing numbers of deaths: Indians in California, 'many Osage,' the Choctaw, Chicksaw, and other southern tribes, the Kiowa, Apache, Gros Ventre, Winnebago, Comanche, Cayuse, and “other New Mexico, Canada, and Alaska Indians' (p. 95)."
In other words, Thornton showed that the smallpox quickly killed 10,000 in one place and then spread to others, but look how far spread out those other places are--including Canada for crying out loud. It does not mean Thornton or Churchill showed 400,000 dead, but for Churchill to say 125,000 to 400,000 dead just based on reading Thornton AND knowing the spread of indigenous population at that time is in fact reasonable--certainly nothing worthy of a lynch mob committee. We suspect that the historian in charge of using "historical" "standards" is an authoritarian literalist not accustomed to the field of demography yet. It is a rather poor reflection on the intelligence and reading breadth of the committee.
To achieve a figure of 400,000 dead, there would only have to be 40 towns in three years affected the way Thornton said one town was affected. He mentioned killings of 17,000- 19,000 in just what he looked at, which is a small portion of what he himself said was affected. Is it really wrong to say looking at Thornton "suggests" much more when Thornton himself said the spread of towns affected was great? Would Thornton have been satisfied if Churchill had said, "basing myself on Thornton, I can't see how less than 125,000 to 400,000 could have died."
Would it really be accurate for Churchill to claim credit for a figure of 400,000 when Thornton has already pointed out that the smallpox spread all over after killing 10,000 people in one place right away? If Churchill had claimed credit for the 400,000 figure, would not these same GOCCers be here saying Churchill "stole" someone else's work? MIM finds this to be a very ambiguous point, not nearly as clear-cut as the GOCCers would like. If Churchill points to Thornton, the GOCCers say he put words in Thornton's mouth. If he did not mention Thornton and given the implication of what the spread of smallpox over such a vast territory at that time could mean, they would have accused him of plagiarism. Crediting Thornton with the ability to extrapolate would seem a proper course.
In any case, MIM is here to say we're willing to trade the firing of Ward Churchill for the firing of all the China scholars who have extrapolated famines in China in Mao's Great Leap on the basis of less evidence. There are published papers extrapolating from deaths in single villages to all of Mao's China. The ratio of one part examination to 20 or 40 parts extrapolation is high compared with what passes in China studies. In comparison what Churchill did with Thornton is small fries. We're willing to make that trade any day, because the GOCCers would have far more to lose. If extrapolation of deaths is "fabrication," you can kiss most of the U.$. China studies people goodbye. In fact, for many of the scholars involved, the error is far worse, because the leading GOCC lights in the China field have made decimal point errors regarding the Great Leap without ever correcting them despite this having been pointed out for years at a time. It's not even a question of extrapolating while nitpicking literalist historians look on.
This is what we mean by internationalizing the struggle. These white nationalist chauvinists and pettifoggers want to bring their crude understanding to population issues. We think it stupid, because population extrapolation is in fact important to do. However, since the GOCCers have started the struggle, we don't mind it. If any readers in the world have read an extrapolation of deaths regarding Stalin or Mao by an academic "authority," please bring it to MIM's attention and condemn the GOCC.
Democracy proves that it is no boon to truth in majority oppressor countries. While academic authorities are often wrong, the range of criticisms of Ward Churchill are also wrong in the united $tates. People funded by government institutions and taking federal grants turn around and attack scholars that criticize the government.
The parallel with the Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution is clear. At that time, rebels were not happy with what had happened in the past 17 years and they started with an attack on academic administrations squelching speech. Here counterrevolutionary rebels are not happy with the history of the united $tates that Ward Churchill is painting. In both China and the united $tates, it was the bourgeois counterrevolutionaries squelching speech during a political opportunity.
In the Cultural Revolution, there was also a right-wing counter-current which sought to back authorities including Deng Xiaoping who ordered students locked into cafeterias during the Cultural Revolution to shut them up. In a period of disorder and political participation, it is very wrong to think that only the proletariat gets its say. Bourgeois authoritarians in China then and white authoritarians now in the united $tates get their say. Freedom and the egalitarian idea behind democracy that all should participate in politics means some oppressors may get their chance.
The Ward Churchill lynching vindicates MIM's position on the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Not everything bad that happens during a political opportunity can be blamed simply on the idea of political participation. It makes much more sense to look at the class and national interests involved instead of just condemning all political participation in education. During the Cultural Revolution, countless persynal vendettas came to the fore in big-character posters. True. Here in the united $tates, Charles Brennan of the Rocky Mountain News wrote about Ward Churchill's high school football team, ex-wives etc.(1) The only difference is that in China under Mao, the big character posters would be written by Ward Churchill's football team and there would be no Charles Brennan selling the stories for profit. We think that says it all right there: where do you think the truth is more likely to emerge, in a proletarian cultural revolution or a bourgeois cultural counterrevolution?
Notes:
1. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1371635/posts