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May 24 2007
The 11 faculty members who issued research misconduct charges against Ward Churchill's attackers on May 10 have pointed out that LaVelle's essay publicized by all the monopoly capitalist outlets contains an open ad hominem attack. Therefore, this is a good time to raise the issue of how to handle ad hominem attacks. While in the currently flawed injustice system it is the job of cops to assemble ad hominem attacks, professors who exhibit cop "reasoning" should be fired. If professors are unable to distinguish "argument from authority" or "ad hominem" attacks from substance arguments, they should be fired for the benefit of their students, unless they already have tenure. We note in particular that Marianne Wesson is a prosecutor with a faculty job. Her career structural position was to work with cops and sway juries with character arguments about individuals, an inherently unscientific endeavor. Perhaps such people have to be at a law school for now, but on the whole, their work on faculty discipline questions contaminates that of the liberal arts departments. The job of the U.$. prosecutor is character assassination.
Ad hominem reasoning is a species of argument from authority. Up through middle school, MIM would contend that there may be little harm in telling youth to memorize multiplication tables, "because we said so." In this case, youth are asked to "trust" authorities that memorizing such tables is "good for them." Post- modernists and liberals have typically argued that "critical thinking" requires going beyond such approaches to education, but in truth, "critical thinking" is a slight understatement of the problem. If youth are not broken from argument by authority, it is very possible they will spend their whole lives as flawed, illogical people.
There is a huge political problem connected to argument from authority. Not every conservative is stuck in argument from authority. Nonetheless, it has been determined from numerous studies that those who do not progress beyond it end up as politically authoritarian, which is disproportionately "conservative." Although John Dean was a Nixon appointee, he says in his latest book that he was unaware of the authoritarian nature of Nixon's supporters until various experiences with Howard Hunt and others plus the crucial addition of study of academic works on authoritarianism. John Dean did not get to the task of study till the end of life. The current MIM reviewer had read several academic studies of authoritarian psychology by the age of 18. If we go from the academic works into real life, we will see the patterns that have been described in academic surveys. We do not have to buy into the Freudian theories of one school of thought on authoritarian persynality to see that overall there is in fact a recurring pattern among people that we can call authoritarian. So we can look to psychological studies not for truth about causation, but for a sense of the social propensities for certain patterns of thought-- the facts.
The easiest argument from authority is god. For such purposes we hardly need a public institution such as the University of Colorado, as any madrassa will do.
The next kind of argument from authority is ad hominem, which is attacking the speaker instead of the argument. MIM can go a long time without encountering ad hominem attacks, but thanks to cops, spies and their authoritarian circles, there is more persynal attack surrounding Ward Churchill than any other issue MIM has seen in the last few years. The reason has to do with the kind of people that struggle unearths, a treasure-trove of authoritarianism.
Ad hominem attack as an aspect of the superstructure is especially suited to individualist society. To rule in the united $tates, one must excel in ad hominem attacks. For socialism where we need to unite the exploited, ad hominem attacks can have no value, because their inherent design is to create distinction among individuals. This is another reason that socialism contributes to scientific advance. If leadership in a socialist society manages to get beyond bourgeois principles or methods of selection, then the whole society benefits from that in its thinking process. In China, the people obtained public education and learned the scientific method of thinking from Mao Zedong.
Ad hominem arguments close to home
Let it not be said that MIM only sees authoritarianism in the right-wing of parasitism. There is also a big problem close to home.
In MIM's very foundation, we rejected a persynality cult and distributed documents explaining why. We are fine with persynality cults in societies that had revolutions overcoming feudalism. In the imperialist countries, there is no progressive role for persynality cults.
Pointing to the existence of ad hominem attacks is not a justification for a persynality cult without a class analysis of why ad hominem attack occurs. The key is that in bourgeois society, ad hominem attack fulfills a demand of class rule--the creation of distinction among individuals. So too then do persynality cults also create a distinction among individuals and thereby assist in the creation of class rule. For Lenin or Mao to say to their people, in essence, "look, I'm even a better BOURGEOIS ruler" than the tsar or Chiang Kai- shek is one thing. In those societies, getting the people to choose a competent, secular bourgeois ruler on merit bases was an advance. In the majority-exploiter countries, the persynality cult is a lost opportunity for anonymous reasoning, for the ability to determine and detach the truth from its origins. There could hardly be clearer tactical and strategic proof than the Internet and anonymous discussions. Those who bring a persynality cult to that are actually lagging behind the advance in the productive forces and lagging behind what the relations of production are seeking to give birth to. As a result, persynality cults are just the flipside of ad hominem attacks: both reinforce the capitalist class structure.
It is not just pointing to the GOCCers or LaVelle or the cops and their cronies with web pages attacking Churchill where we can see the problem. A classic example can also be found in Marxist drag. In an argument on a persynality-cult-led discussion board over many weeks, Redstar had just been blown out of the water on a host of questions, ranging from discrimination profits, to Third World wages to documents on the homophobia of the discussion board he is on. On all points he never had anything to say. Instead of raising a point on how much discrimination profits are and instead of telling us why he questions the documents we produced on distribution of homophobic flyers by the leaders of the discussion board he is on-- instead of engaging any question of substance--when pro-MIM people got up to leave the racist, chauvinist and homophobic board, Redstar asked if MIM has "skeletons in the closet." This is one of the most classic situations for receiving an ad hominem attack. One has been badly embarrassed, so change the subject. And if we think about it hard, of course it is impossible for any party not to have skeletons in the closet, so by such reasoning it would be impossible ever to have an argument of substance. So the whole question is by its nature unscientific and we need to ask which class benefits from not being able to have an argument of substance. Is it not the class that is already in power that benefits when there is no argument of substance, just ad hominems among potential scientific participants. The difference between the authoritarian and the scientist is that the authoritarian cannot tell any difference between MIM's arguments and Redstar's. It appears only that there is a dispute, and so the authoritarian asks himself, "which one should I pick as the authority?" instead of "where is this persyn's argument of substance?"
MIM would not document a past instance of argument from authority, and ask that it be labelled such "because we said so." If looking at the Redstar discussion did not bring out for someone that Redstar was intrinsically wrong, then our point has been missed. Our boosting ourselves as an "authority" on "arguments from authority," no matter how much we do it, is not going to help someone see why what Redstar did was wrong. The Denver Post is showing 70% for firing Ward Churchill in an unscientific poll, but we would whittle that number down in a hurry if we excluded those who want to undermine teaching evolution in our high schools. When we say "intrinsic," it means that the reader from using her own brain can see a method or principle of thinking that can be applied even if MIM or Redstar do not exist. In fact, one can only be scientific when one is able to think detached from the individuals making arguments, a reason why prosecutors and cops are the least likely to make the scientific leap.
We are not surprised that the moderator did not throw out Redstar for that little exchange. The moderator himself was following persynality cult leadership, so to admit what an ad hominem attack is in practice might bring into question why we need a persynality cult.
The most shameful part is that the two identities in the exchange are both anonymous; yet, Redstar was still so crushed that a persynal innuendo was necessary. MIM believes that anonymous pseudonyms on the Internet are in fact a great aid to scientific thinking processes. It helps people to think detached from the individual concretely making an argument. Those who know nothing but how to argue ad hominem can be stymied by Internet.
Another argument close to home concerns the Cultural Revolution. The Cultural Revolutionaries beat back the conservative line that children of bad class background are automatically no good under socialism. Instead, we said that the crimes of the parents do not reflect on the children, so "line is decisive." We can say that while admitting that children of exploiter parents are more likely to take an exploiter line themselves.
MIM has pushed the Cultural Revolution line further than the Communist Party of China, because MIM sanctions non-party marriages to exploiters. That could be because it is impossible to do otherwise in a country full of exploiters and oppressors or it could be that MIM is Liberal or it could be that MIM is correct to push that far and say that choosing a reactionary partner or exploiter partner still does not prevent one from making one's own contributions. One would certainly be within their Maoist rights to argue against MIM that people who pick the reactionary or imperialist partner should not be allowed into the party. MIM never really took a vote on precisely that question; although we did rule out revisionists for relationship partners in the primer.
So there is a species of ad hominem argument to tease out here. Children of exploiters are not bad say the Cultural Revolutionaries unless they themselves take exploiter action. We may suspect that contradictions for such children are more intense than for other people.
As for marriage, if people want to throw people out of the party for choosing the wrong persyn, we should do so for reasons just regarding that marriage choice. In other words, a comrade's activities on other questions are not wrong just because she married an exploiter. So if people are going to keep someone out of the party, they should be clear what they are weighing. At the same time, MIM has to admit that Mao's party disgraced people for even thinking about relations with exploiters that would be very small-time exploiters by U.$. standards. Marriage is a very important choice in life and it was still deemed so in Mao's China, so Mao's party reasoned such choices reflect on the comrade to a very high degree. Though the Maoists brought down arranged marriage, and supported marriage "choice," such choices could nonetheless land one outside the party.
The intellectuals in the majority-exploiter countries are going to have high-level exploiter social connections "out the wazoo" and this is another reason it's hard for our scientific communist organizations to get going. The contradictions are just too intense. Hopefully this answer to a question frustrates our readers.
There are actually two separate issues to ad hominem attacks. The proper response to an ad hominem argument is often to walk away, because the people making it have revealed themselves as trash, a bad influence on society. Arguing with those kind of people at their level can never produce anything: they have to be "struggled" as the Cultural Revolutionaries would say. The next response could be as here, which is taking time out to teach what people should already know.
Entering into an ad hominem process with good intentions
When we return to the Ward Churchill issue, the whole style of argument by LaVelle is that learning is a matter of rote memorization. So if we memorize the "Dawes Act," we will note that there is no phrase "blood quantum" in there. LaVelle's implicit argument is that all we need not only in teaching but research is what can be memorized. So then we set about memorizing great poetry as well and the more such books and poems we can cite from memory, the more educated we are. For this we call LaVelle a "literalist," a species akin to an authoritarian.
People going through Ward Churchill's works and judging whether they are worth memorizing are missing the point. That is another reason why the GOCCers are wrong to judge Churchill by their literalist, authoritarian reading of what history should be. Ethnic studies should not be about extended writing of history worth memorizing. The very word "ethnic" is a theoretical concept. In the words of post- modernists, it can only be "socially constructed." The alternative approach to the question is obviously not worth considering, that we should find some ancient authority on ethnicity to memorize as if there were such an authority from the beginning of time to stamp our knowledge of what ethnicity is. We need another approach to the question.
In the question of entering into the ad hominem process, we have had a few interesting situations to respond to. We have for example that Churchill felt it unnecessary to reply to LaVelle. If the reactionaries quit the field, LaVelle's reputation will be less- damaged than if they continue. We agree with Churchill on why a nit- picking literalist may not be worthy of response when Churchill obviously has so many duties and so many various academic authorities to engage.
The same question arises when the GOCCers admit that the whole reason they have so many allegations to confront is the speech "Some People Push Back." The University of Colorado GOCCers attacking Churchill only argue that they still have to address questions of substance. That decision in itself is questionable. We are not surprised to see Noam Chomsky reason strictly from a process point of view that the current uproar against Ward Churchill has to be pitched in its entirety and it's not worth going into its details.
We should also point to the scandal of scholars now intimidated by the media frenzy. Scholars who should know what an ad hominem attack is are now afraid for their careers and do not say what they know to be true. Circe Sturm is an example of cowardice and we--not Ward Churchill--would now include Thornton.
The entertainment media was able to get Circe Sturm to say in the Rocky Mountain News of May 18 2007 that a question of substance that she navigated was now wrong because of alleged self-plagiarism or ghost-writing of one of her sources. OK, but if you wrote that 2+2=4 or more realistically if you wrote a pre-med textbook with truths about biology and then copied them in self- plagiarism in another work, it would not make the substance of 2+2=4 or biology any different. It would only be a question of who benefitted from the textbook sales. The fact that this persyn intimidated career-wise by the entertainment media cracked under pressure is indicative of how far the ad hominem disease goes. Sadly enough, we do witness scholars crack under a little public pressure. They will not stand for logic 100% of the time themselves, which makes it all the more important to fire the faculty who flat-out cannot tell an ad hominem argument when they see it.
Thornton knows very well that "Allegation C" is overly broad at best. He should have shot it down. Instead, now we quote Thornton against "Allegation C," while he continues to follow the individual path on "Allegation D," where he says that the speech in his own book does not point to the military in the Mandan/Fort Clark issue. The critics seem to be saying traders brought the infected blankets, not the military. Yet when we combine the pieces of what we have, the bit about blankets on a boat and the Four Bears speech as a Mandan leader speaking of "battles" and "faces all rotten," how is it wrong to figure out how that must have come about? How much of a forensic leap did Churchill take? Who said that the objective of Ward Churchill's account is literal bourgeois individualist history that we memorize? Obviously the Marianne Wessons of the world make greater forensic leaps than Ward Churchill has all the time. The difference is that the Marianne Wessons put the wrong people in prison all the time, while Ward Churchill's forensics only offer concrete details for those who do not understand the overall picture. Many forensic leaps are wrong, but they are still undertaken in Marianne Wesson's field where the consequences are more severe, but regardless, Churchill's overall picture is still more accurate than that of others. Again, Thornton has no explanation of his own observations of the pattern of death, that natives suffered higher fatality rates from smallpox. Could the reason be that biological warriors were exposing natives more often than whites, and whites merely suffered the "natural" baseline rate of disease? For this we need an epidemiological approach for the overall truth and a forensic approach for simulating the details. We have no use for literal bourgeois history. Saying that the whites did not say anything about taking up warfare/genocide according to their own documents is not more supported by the overall evidence. Again, if we are going to take the individual approach, then there is not going to be "proof beyond a reasonable" doubt for enough white murderers, for what we all know happened overall.
So there are obvious problems of entering into a train of thought once it has started on ad hominem grounds. For disciplining Churchill, the question of the timing of these criticisms is critical if the University of Colorado is going to avoid discrimination. How many scholars at the University of Colorado would survive the same procedure applied to Churchill? Publicize the work on TV and hundreds of newspapers in an atmosphere of hate and then see how many complaints turn up.
In addition, the atmosphere of intimidation both by the media and literally police and spies twists the truth further. MIM can use itself as an example. Once we start looking at every question as one of authority and who the individual speaker is, all MIM writing starts to look different. So the question becomes whether we start worrying about that and on the whole the answer is "no."
Still when we enter into the Churchill struggle funny things start happening. Someone somewhere starts an allegorical discussion aimed at an individual, one that disclaims responsibility for past events on behalf of FBI, even sort of admitting "FBI did this, but not that." Then MIM writes using the exact same allegorical metaphor. Next along comes someone acting as if he did not see the first part, to complain "why did you go with that metaphor," so it is construed as a persynal attack. The first and third speaker in the series is bourgeois authoritarian, most logically FBI or someone with access to FBI files. So what about it--MIM can end up in allegorical discussion, but the third speaker is going to enter as if MIM invented the metaphor. That is a good reason to stay out of it entirely. On the other hand, allegorical attack on the individual aside, part of power is altering what MIM would ordinarily say. So then the question becomes whether we alter what we say because of fears of how it will be interpreted allegorically. Our policy is MIM is not going to alter what it says because of fears of how others may interpret it allegorically. So unfortunately for our enemies, they are going to have to decide for themselves whether what MIM says applies to them or has some sub- surface meaning of power struggle. If it doesn't apply, it doesn't apply, especially to MIM's friends. MIM is going to reply to allegories thrown its way via the imagination that MIM would usually apply to any stimulus. We see ourselves speaking to a class.
Nonetheless, this is certainly a worthy point for discussion, how to interact with bourgeois authoritarians once they show up. Obviously a component of power struggle enters the discourse. Possibly the answer of Chomsky to stay out of the whole thing is still good, even in situations where we need to be alert that the federal government is undertaking power struggle, not just discussion. To be accountable it has to be said MIM entered into the ad hominem processes started by others. These processes involved both MIM and Ward Churchill, so we believe we made the right decision, but one could second-guess us. We could take the whole GOCC report and dismiss it on process grounds or we could as MIM has done, go point-by-point and do our best to stay true to a line.
Marxism and post-modernism as social ad hominem
There is an argument that Marxism is also ad hominem. If for example, we had no reason to oppose imperialist militarism, our argument about Halliburton stock-owners could be ad hominem. So Lynne Cheney might be a greedy bitch, but that might be a good thing one could say. In this case though, it is pretty clear that there are dialectically intermeshed reasons MIM sees that Lynne Cheney is wrong. It's not good to deny academic freedom when there is still a legal profit motive in society, so that argument is not ad hominem.
Where we start to see a real "social ad hominem" is with post- modernist identity politics. Everything becomes a matter of "point of view." There are just various identities out there and that is what is overriding. So MIM would say that post-modernism and bourgeois authoritarianism are equal and opposite errors, post-modernism being the equal and opposite punishment for the stupidity of bourgeois authoritarianism. The cop-thinkers questioned the credibility of our lumpen and oppressed nationalities to death, and so the post- modernists questioned all credibilities to death. The underlying struggle centers around authority and credibility. Post-modernism is like a gigantic circular firing squad that encompasses everyone. Post- modernism appears necessary to its constructors, because a large swath of society still reasons from authority, which is not reasoning at all. In contrast, MIM tries to teach appreciation of leaving the orbit of authority/credibility thinking. As we said in another essay recently, if one cannot imagine that someone masturbating with a tightening noose around her neck with armpits lathered in mayonnaise could be typing simultaneously at an Internet-connected computer, and if one cannot imagine that this persyn might be speaking radically more truth than anyone else in a subject, then one is stuck in the ad hominem orbit, not really ready for scientific endeavor.
Power struggle
There is the question of pure news analysis and academic reasoning and how ad hominem attack surfaces there. We learn to separate substance from attacks on the persyn and we might walk away from situations of mud-throwers. A separate question once we know how to determine what an ad hominem attack is is how to make them cease, and that is a question of power struggle.
We are very happy to have the Ward Churchill case, because it brings into the open that the final defenders of irrational thinking processes are cops and disinformation agents. So we have the intervention of the FBI and other federal agencies into the question of teaching and research at the University of Colorado, and here we do not refer to two or three people in Colorado, but several people from several agencies spread out across the united $tates, plus various mercenary fascist vigilantes. It was not bad enough for these people that so much of Colorado does not believe in evolution, and so the real basis for real teaching at a public institution was shaky to begin with.
The easy means to power struggle are the law such as the "Hatch Act." Then there is also Ron Paul basically taking a collective responsibility line on the Mideast. One might want to boycott Fox News advertisers for Bill O'Reilly's attacks on Churchill. In one's spare time, one could look for ways to damage the University of Colorado's reputation further for the Ward Churchill matter. Out of these tactics, doing research to damage the University of Colorado's reputation further is probably the most open to anyone wanting to join the struggle and the most effective. We have to gauge when to keep our powder dry and when to fire away. At the moment, there are signs the enemy may recognize it has lost.
Up from there in intensity in struggle are things that happen thanks to the initiative of the oppressor. We won't mention these struggles, but they occur to people from the process of being in the struggle--a dialectic between the oppressor and oppressed.
The objective of the cop-style thinkers is to cause divisions in our ranks at the individual level. All of their work goes in that direction because they have no substance. In the same field of psychology that their work is closest to, we have the idea of how to "extinguish" a certain behavior. Being behaviorists, we know that the way to extinguish behavior is reward and punishment. So retaliations have to show the cop-thinkers that their approach is only going to gain them intensified struggle and a shift of resources toward dealing with them. Psychologists say that the language of reward and punishment is understood by a safely large percentage of people, compared with some forms of reasoning that intellectuals might employ.
The situation of Ward Churchill could be well in hand as of this date in May 2007, but we post this article for teaching and summation purposes anyway. Perhaps the main struggles have been had, and this is just a round-up of loose ends for teaching purposes or perhaps the reactionaries are crazy enough "to take it to another level."