When I first heard of Ward Churchill, it was due to the mainstream media's broohaha over his essay which compared 9/11 victims to Nazis. The main line from that essay was (I'm paraphrasing from memory) "sure they (the 9/11 victims) were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break." What he was referring to was the fact that the vast majority of Americans had zero qualms about the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed by a decade-long US-orchestrated sanctions. Nor did most Americans, in general, seem to have any concern for the systematic expulsion, oppression, and slaughter of Palestinians by US-backed Israelis. Few people would say (and I would guess that Churchill would be included) that, therefore, the attacks were somehow justified. However, it was clear that finally the attacks were explained. I was always annoyed by the headlines in the MSM that were along the lines of "Why Do They Hate US?" as if the US is such a pristine purely innocent country. How could "they" not hate us? And not surprisingly, the real explanation (as opposed to the "they hate freedom, democracy, and our 'success'" bullshit) touched a raw nerve and caused a massive uproar in the MSM. The truth hurts.

I was glad that finally attention was being paid to the root cause of the terrorism problem.

And problematically, I was glad that it was coming from a tenured professor at an accredited and semi-prestigious university. Why? Partly because I knew that his position would give his comments/opinions extra "weight" (as opposed to the case where his very same statements would have come from an anonymous blog or something). ie, people would be more willing to consider his opinions as valid because he has the "professor" stamp attached to his name. And indeed, part of the reason there was such an uproar in the MSM was that the statement were coming from someone who is part of the establishment, someone who has to be taken seriously at least to an extent, someone who is likely not a kook.

And that's the problem. That's the root cause of oppression. Get it? Why are some opinions more valid than others in people's minds? What if the comments came not from Professor Churchill, but instead from an anonymous blogger? Would anyone have noticed? And even if several people had, would the comments be considered so controversial or would they have been dismissed as some sort of random rant?

Too many listen to who is saying something, not what is being said.

And that's the problem.

I didn't go to see Churchill's recent talk (the subject of the above article) in part precisely because of the problem I outlined above.

I would hope that everyone would check themselves every time they pay attention to a name attached to a set of words. I would hope people would stop scanning for "Chomsky" or "Churchill" when looking for interesting new commentary or insight about the world's current predicament.

Better yet, people should just stop attaching their names to whatever text they type (yeah, that includes you Jim MacDonald).