Ward Churchill

I read a long paper by Churchill on this, and I have never felt so utterly convinced of the state's commitment to perpetuating a society based on racist exploitation. Even I was shocked by the FBI's literal war against a self-defense movement which engaged in completely legal--yes, completely legal--activity. The BPP's 10 point platform is hardly more radical than the UN Declaration of Human Rights, for example. But since the demands of food, clothing, shelter, and self-determination for show more those on the bottom of the social hierarchy are unacceptable, the FBI strategically spread disinformation, infiltrated, framed, and murdered in order to shut them up. If black (not to mention Native) people in this country advocate anything more radical, reasonable, and specific than CHANGE and HOPE on a large scale, we can see what happens. show less

If civilization, as [author: Stanley Diamond] said, originates in conquest abroad and repression at home, then Churchill's work on the repression of the Black Panthers and American Indian Movement addressed the latter. This book documents the ways the imperialist record of the Unites States exemplifies the other side of that equation as well.

The title essay has become notorious thanks to Bill O'Reilly's campaign against Churchill and radical academia at large. Certainly anticipating some show more disagreement with his condemnation of "U.S. Imperial Arrogance and Criminality," Churchill composed a 40-page chronology of U.S. Military actions and their explicit or implicit motives and another 164-page chronology of US violations of and contempt for international law since 1945. The gist of the main essay is that, given the violence (military and economic) that the US, since its inception, has perpetrated across the globe without interruption in defiance of international opinion, some people will eventually push back; hence, 9/11.

The formal written content weighs in at only 45 pages. The bulk of the book that remains is essentially reference material (chronology and notes). The result is at the same time, more abrasive and to the point than [author: Naomi Klein]'s equally damning [book: The Shock Doctrine]; this is the encyclopedia to Klein's novel. Churchill isn't making any new friends here but presenting historical facts so morally offensive that he shouldn't expect to.

In the short concluding section of the book, which surprised me in its frankness, Churchill presents a rousing case for the revolutionary destabilization or destruction of the US state apparatus in order that it may be brought finally under the rule of international law. In this regard, Naomi Klein does not go so far. show less

When I read "Since Predator Came" by Ward Churchill, I was not surprised by the subject matter of the series of articles by Ward Churchill which appeared in academic journals from the 1980s to the mid 1990s. What I was surprised by was how much I enjoyed the book. Churchill pushes for an "Indigenist" worldview, in which all people have a right to self determination and land stolen illegally by conquerors, no matter where they are. In such a world, no state could arise and the world would be show more "balkanized" into thousands of homelands, ruled by local councils, similar to many anarchist viewpoints. His call for tactics of "US Off the Planet" instead of "US out of Iraq", by making the United States abide by its treaty obligations that it made to American Indians centuries ago seem a little far-fetched, but Churchill admits it could be just one of many tactics. Churchill, for any who doesn't know, is a long time Indian activist, writer, and professor at Colorado State University, and recently made national headlines by comparing the people who died in the 9-11 attacks to "little Eichmans" who were not entirely innocent.

Churchill's argument is pretty convincing. He talks about Natives using legal tactics of forcing the government to abide by its broken treaties to recover land, specifically citing the Iroquois and the Ogalwa Sioux. He also has a fascinating chapter where he makes the argument that the human species came from the Americas, not Africa, and people migrated from the Bering Strait into Asia and across Greenland into Europe hundreds of thousands of years ago. He also cites non-North American struggles who fought both Communists and Capitalists, like the h'Mong of Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War, and the Miskito Indians in Nicaragua (who at first supported the Sandinista revolution but then turned against it when the Sandinistas betrayed their word about giving Indigenous peoples self determination, and also fought the Contra counter-revolutionaries.)

What is lacking from the book is how non-Indigenous peoples can support the struggles of Indigenous, especially in America. However, that isn't really what the book is about, so I don't blame him for leaving that out. He does touch briefly by stating that, in North America at least, Indians do not see race quite the same way, not so much as blood. In other words, whites and blacks, like they did in the case of the Seminoles in the 1830s, could "become Indians" if Indian nations got their land back. I'm not sure how this would really work, and I also am a little suspect of tearing down industry, but otherwise Ward Churchill's collection of essays in "Since Predator Came" is a worthwhile read indeed. show less

After reading about the FBI's COINTELPRO operations against the Black Panther Party, non-violence (or even the idea of self-defense promoted by the BPP) in the face of arguably the most violent government in history is either completely irrational or intentionally ineffective. So Churchill argues.