This morning I stumbled across an article on the History News Network that
attacked Ward Churchill's scholarship. What's curious about it is that it
was written in November, 2004--long before the Hamilton College blowup. The
article appeared originally in Commentary Magazine and was written by
Guenter Lewy. Commentary, which is edited by Norman Podhoretz, is a
magazine that has long been associated with the neoconservative movement in
the USA. Along with the Weekly Standard, it functions as a kind of
think-tank and talent pool for the Bush administration.

Lewy is a rightwing ideologue of long standing. The stated purpose of his
article is to deny that American Indians were the victims of genocide. He
seems to have a real enthusiasm for "debunking" claims that the USA is
guilty of war crimes, past or present. His "America in Vietnam" seeks to
discredit charges of atrocities against the Vietnamese people, so it is
understandable why he would be similarly inclined to whitewash charges
against the U.S. cavalry in the 1800s.

Of some interest is Lewy's debunking of Ward Churchill's account of the
Mandan smallpox outbreak in 1837, which maps closely to Lamar University
professor Thomas Brown's attack on Churchill which would surface *after*
the Hamilton College blowup. These attacks have an interesting evolution.
The first manifestation was Lewy's article and then Thomas Brown's
virtually identical attack appeared on Cliopatria, a blog run by academic
historians. From there, it was circulated on Marc Cooper's blog and on
Crookedtimber.org, two outlets with leftist pretensions. It has been picked
up recently in the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News, two local
newspapers that have been demanding Churchill's scalp. Yesterday the same
material was published in the Los Angeles Times, with attribution to Thomas
Brown.

So, this charge first appeared in Norman Podhoretz's journal, a prime
outlet for reactionary assaults on the academic left, migrated to leftwing
blogs and then landed with a sickening thud in the reactionary bourgeois
press. It is highly interesting--just to repeat--that the charge was first
raised OVER A MONTH before the Hamilton incident.

Now I would be the last one in the world to attribute this to some sort of
organized Cointelpro type operation to drive Ward Churchill out of the
University of Colorado, but I can't blame others if they feel a little
suspicious.


Louis Proyect Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

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