Al-Qaeda Sympathizer Praises Pitzer

Claremont Student

A protestor

By Claremont Student Staff

Ward Churchill, a professor from the University of Colorado who has been attacked for statements made in an essay published September 12, 2001 regarding 9/11, spoke at Bridges Auditorium at Pomona College in Claremont. In his lecture titled "No Quarter: Academic Freedom and the Rise of American Fascism", he directed his comments at the media and those politicians who he claimed had set out to destroy his career and credibility. He remarked on the delayed reaction of those that attacked him and related their onslaught as a distraction from issues in their campaigns. Praising Pitzer College for being among the first to offer him support when he was being attacked for his previous comments and holding off what he called "a laboratory case enunciated as a kick-off by the national platform to sterilize the academy." He called this fire-storm of protest reminiscent of the McCarthy era and earlier, but stated "McCarthy only had wet dreams" of the sort of persecution that is occurring today in the name of patriotism.

After two governors as well as senators and other members of Colorado's state government attempted to remove him from his academic position at the University of Colorado he reacted by saying "I had no reason to back off [i.e. retract his statements], pick a better target next time* I'm still standing." A large part of his talk discussed the context of the sentence for which he had been so persecuted. The "little Eichmanns", as he called the victims of the World Trade Center when they were attacked, was a reference to the cogs in the machinery of terror that he says the United States facilitates. He referred to the "ghosts" that were on the planes that struck the towers- the 565,000 Iraqi children that died between 1991 and 1996 due to U.S.-imposed sanctions -- a number that had been acknowledged by Madeline Albright in 1996 when she stated that it had been decided that it had been worth the price. This "deliberate genocide" was just one of many that Churchill held the United States responsible for, and stated "if only victims were concerned about a genocide then it will go to consummation." According to Churchill, those that worked in the trade center were not directly associated with the atrocities suffered by others at the hands of the U.S., but like those train-workers in Germany, who were organized by Eichmann and worked the cargo cars that carried Jews to the concentration camps, they were part of the greater mechanism. If genocides and violations of international law are not protested, said Churchill, then the individual who sits mutely is personally responsible. He ventured that the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center were karma coming around.

"A wake up call is due, you are not exempt from consideration of what you allow to be done in your name. And if you are part of certain organizations, it's not being done in your name- you are doing it."

"How might the US be secure from retaliation?" he asked the audience. Secure from attacks by those that the United States has harmed? As far as Churchill was concerned, 9/11 was a desperate attempt of a people who had been ignored. "If you ignore them, if you demean and degrade their loved ones, this is how they must react." This was the reasoning behind the title of his inflammatory essay "Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens." Attendees of the talk on April 25, at Bridges Auditorium were greeted about 10 protestors. Including one man holding a sign that proclaimed "Psychiatric Ward" who declined giving a name, but said "Normally, I don't believe in protesting the mere fact that somebody is speaking -- a common tactic of the left, as we all know. But "Psychiatric Ward" is not only wrong, but vile and dangerously unhinged. His form of extremism deserves no respect. I picketed because I want students to think about this possibility -- that there are a few people who deserve no respect. Churchill is a real preacher of hate, and the worst kind of extremist, because he justifies the most extreme actions, not only far-out ideas. How else could we describe someone who has said, "More 9-11's are necessary" ? It's one thing to radically critique America. It is something else to justify mass terrorist murder of one's fellow citizens -- or to say, when America is under war-like threats as it has been since Sept. 11, that the United States itself is evil. Every person who heard Churchill tonight, by the simple fact of living in America, is a potential victim of Al Qaeda, whose actions Churchill seems to endorse."

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