Posted on 02/05/2005 8:21:13 PM PST by CHARLITE
Should a serious research university consider hiring a fascist? This question doesn't have an easy answer.
After all, prior to World War II Europe produced several brilliant political theorists and philosophers who could be characterized as fascists, or proto-fascists, including Joseph de Maistre, Carl Schmitt and Martin Heidegger.
Whether, post-Auschwitz, it's possible even in theory to advocate similar views in intellectually plausible ways is an interesting question.
It is not, however, a question that has any relevance to the case of University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill, despite the obvious fascistic streak in Churchill's writings and public performances.
As a political inclination and an aesthetic style, fascism is marked by, among other things, the following characteristics:
• The worship of violence as a purifying social force. This often manifests itself as an aggressive and romanticized militarism, that produces a kind of cult of the warrior, and that advocates violent action as a mechanism for social change, and an appropriate way of crushing dissent.
• A hyper-nationalistic ideology, that casts history into a drama featuring an inevitably violent struggle between Good and Evil, and that obsesses on questions of racial and ethnic identity.
• The dehumanization and scapegoating of opponents, who are characterized by turns as demonically clever conspirators plotting to undermine the possibility of a virtuous society, and soulless automatons mindlessly carrying out the orders of a vast and evil bureaucracy. This dehumanization often leads to demands that the evil in our midst be eradicated "by any means necessary," up to and including the mass extermination of entire nations and peoples.
• The treatment of moral responsibility as a fundamentally collective matter. The supposed virtues and sins of a nation or people are ascribed to all of its individual members, so that, for example, one speaks of "the Jew" (meaning all Jews collectively and each Jewish person individually) being responsible for the decadence of modern culture.
Anyone who reads widely in the collected works of professor Churchill, and especially anyone who listens to his speeches, will, if they are not blinded by certain ideological commitments, recognize the essentially fascist tendency of his work. If a white American were to speak of any foreign people or nation in anything like the way Churchill discusses America and Americans, the fascist character of his work would be obvious to everyone.
This point is only underlined by the behavior of Churchill's supporters, who, while not actually wearing brown shirts, did a quite convincing impersonation of fascist thugs at Thursday's meeting of the University of Colorado Regents.
All this was merely par for the course for Churchill, who believes that a Columbus Day parade is an incitement to genocide, and therefore something that he and his followers have a legal right to disrupt.
But while the question of whether a brilliant scholar with a fascist streak ought to be considered for a place on a university faculty retains at least some academic interest, it has nothing to do with Churchill, whose writings and speeches feature an incoherent farrago of boundless paranoia, wildly implausible theories, obscene celebrations of murder, and atrocious prose.
The question of whether a serious research university ought to hire someone like Churchill is laughable on its face. What's not so funny is the question of exactly how someone like him got hired in the first place, and then tenured and named the head of a department.
That, in the end, is a more important question than what will or ought to happen to Churchill now. Churchill is a pathetic buffoon, but the University of Colorado is far from alone in having allowed itself to toss intellectual integrity and human decency overboard in the pursuit of worthy goals.
Speaking truth to power, giving a voice to those who have been silenced, pursuing controversial and unpopular ideas in an intellectually rigorous way - these are all things that the university in general, and this university in particular, has done and continues to do.
That through whatever combination of negligence, cowardice and complicity we have allowed Ward Churchill to besmirch those ideals by invoking them in the defense of his contemptible rantings is now our burden and our shame.
Paul Campos is a professor of law at the University of Colorado. He can be reached at
paul.campos@colorado.edu.
yeah, anarchist would be a better designation.
it takes a lot of discipline to be a commie, the regimentation and all, and as you point out, curchill's got the "terrible 2's"!
Currently live in Texas. I've lived here for 18 years. Lived all over the nation. However, as crazy as it may be, I love Boulder. Still follow things closely in the local papers and listening to KOA Radio online.
LOL Well, then you probably aren't familiar with the library incident.
Yes, Boulder is a beautiful place and it's fun to visit, but I can't take it for too long. Like you said...a real time warp.
Thanks again for your insight,
Jan
You know, I think I may be--to a certain extent.
Odd isn't it but I am sort of thinking that myself. I think I am a little commie too,,in our family I sort of view all the resources as belonging to all of us. Like with the kids,,I kind of feel like my momey is theirs and sharing with them is not a problem for me.
Actually I am not bossy at all, I hate to order people around. I am more likely to be judgemental as the kids say. I have no trouble telling people they did something I think is wrong but before the fact, I just don't like telling people what to do, even giving advice. So I think I am sort of a wussie fascist.
The fact that he is a white American is not the point of your quoted
post of Mr. Campos's piece. The point is that this white American is NOT speaking of other countries, but his own.
vaudine
Yeah, I am not bossy either. But, I do have preconceived notions of how, basically, everyone should live. And I don't want to harm the people that don't fall into my narrowly defined parameters, I just don't really want them anywhere near me or my family. Fascist lite, maybe? LOL.
Me too!!! I think we may be a common type of "domestic fascist".
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