“We alone regard a man who takes no interest in public affairs, not as harmless, but as a useless character; and if few of us are originators, we are all sound judges of a policy.” --- Words attributed to Pericles, the most celebrated democratic leader of ancient Athens, in his funeral oration (as quoted in Ball and Dagger 21)
On November 1, 1963, the autocratic and Machiavellian leader of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem, was overthrown and assassinated by South Vietnamese Generals. As documented in the National Security Archive at George Washington University, the coup was carried out with the complicity, advance knowledge, and financial and tactical assistance of the United States government, including then President John F. Kennedy, which his administration denied (Prados 5-18). According to John Prados, this course of action resulted in further destabilizing the South Vietnamese government, which led to the American escalation in the Vietnam War (7). Twenty-one days after the coup, Kennedy was assassinated.
Following a speech on December 4 of that year, Malcolm X, asked about his thoughts regarding Kennedy’s assassination, responded that it was a case of “the chickens [coming home] to roost,” (X Interview) in an apparent appeal to a sense of karma not shared by most westerners. He explained later that, by his statement, he intended to imply that the assassination of the president resulted from the perpetuation of a “climate of hate.” However, a controversy erupted when the media, according to X, had distorted his statement in the press to appear as though he was celebrating Kennedy’s death. Coincidentally (or perhaps not), media distortion would confound the masses again when, decades later, X’s statement would be used by another in an attempt to bring clarity to the American public about the karmic effect on a people of their misuse of power.
On September 11, 2001, ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill, began to put down in words what he considered a “‘first take’ reading . . . stream of consciousness interpretive reaction” to the horrible events of that morning (Churchill 10). In it, he made comments that were overtly insensitive to the uniform pride and exceptionalism that have come to define the national image of a majority of Americans. His intention was an attempt to break through the thick crust of ignorance that insulates Americans from the realities of a violent legacy. Three years later his scathing indictment made national headlines, igniting a “firestorm” of hate which culminated in an all out campaign of attrition by media companies, politicians, and his own peers aimed at destroying his career, and his life. For the remainder of this essay I will look at this event in American history through the lens of one man’s assessment of an inherent danger that he saw in the American system of government nearly two hundred years ago. In doing so, I intend to show correlations between his theory and the assault on Ward Churchill to show that his warning holds merit, and that the effects of a powerful, destructive potential can be seen within the structure of American society.
In the 1830’s a young French aristocrat and political philosopher named Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States. His purpose was to investigate the new social and political atmosphere within the U.S. in order to thoroughly analyze the burgeoning political trend that was sweeping the western world, democracy, and to asses its implications for France, and Europe in general (Ball and Dagger 34). Upon returning to France, he wrote what some consider one of the most comprehensive assessments of American style democracy, Democracy in America. Among all of the praise in his book about the benefits of American democracy, there were many criticisms, perhaps the most famous of which was what he viewed as a very real potential for a unique, and dangerous kind of tyranny, the “tyranny of the majority.”
This potential, as observed by Tocqueville, was unique in that the danger it posed was not that of tyranny in the usual sense, as in the overt expression of authority and dominance by a monarch or dictator. It was that of an even more absolute kind of ruler, which arises as a natural consequence of equality (Ball and Dagger 34) and subdues the individual psychologically (Tocqueville 6). In his essay “Tocqueville’s Tyranny of the Majority Reconsidered,” Donald Maletz stresses the point that in Democracy in America, the chapter on “majority tyranny” is best understood in context with the previous chapter on the advantages of democratic government. Maletz’ basic argument is that “majority rule,” as it is in a democratic republic, will develop a “‘soft tyranny’ over the mind . . . [not as a] defect of democracy but its direct implication” (741). This “soft tyranny” is in contrast to the hard tyranny as imposed by the threat of physical harm, or imprisonment. The word “soft” is not intended as an indication of degree, but rather, an indication of form, as in the difference between hardware and software in reference to computer technology, the hardware being the physical, and the software being the informational. “Soft tyranny”, then, is not a matter of force applied to the body, but of a persuasion applied to the forming of an opinion. As Tocqueville claimed, “Monarchs had, so to speak, materialized oppression; the democratic republics of the present day have rendered it as entirely an affair of the mind as the will which it is intended to coerce” (6). Nonetheless, “soft”, here, does indicate a level of relative comfort for those subjected to this new tyranny in that, not only are they largely unaware of the force that is working on them, but they are obliged to unite in its cause and to become the perpetrators of their own psychological enslavement. It is in this way that the democratic majority represents an advancement, a new prototype for repression.
As Maletz indicates, the advantages of the American society imply that what has been overlooked in its development is the need to develop a new methodology for putting in check a new kind of sovereign. In Tocqueville’s view, a political majority constitutes an individual of a kind that is just as liable to the misuse of power as a single self-serving ruler (Tocqueville 3), yet posses the moral authority and assuredness of an uncontested Monarch. Tocqueville explains:
"If it be admitted that a man possessing absolute power may misuse that power by wronging his adversaries, why should not a majority be liable to the same approach. Men do not change their characters by uniting with one another; nor does their patience in the presence of obstacles increase with their strength. For my own part, I cannot believe it; the power to do everything, which I should refuse to one of my equals, I will never grant to any number of them (4)."
By virtue of the very thing that makes modern democracy so appealing to the masses, equality, it is even more dangerous than the forms of government it replaces, as the sheer power of a modern majority of equals has the implication of a monolithic monarch with a claim to divine right. How should one who possess valuable insight into the nature of social conditions, but represents a challenge to the majority view, contribute to the greater good? Who will listen to them, beside the fringe? What obscure philosophy shall be granted the due respect of society, by virtue of the breadth and depth of its vision, if it does not directly respond to the immediate impulses of the masses? In a structure of institutionalized equality, there is no social hierarchy of authority as in the old country, with monarch, noblemen, aristocrat, church, commoners, etc., in which each can check the powers of the other and the higher interests of the whole can be weighed against the self-serving interests of individuals (Maletz 757). This is not to tout the virtues of the old regimes, as they had their own horrible problems, but to point out the tendency of democracy to fix the ranks of the progressive mind to the trivialities and derision of the common person. This tendency is further explained by Ball and Dagger:
"Democracy promotes mediocrity . . . precisely because it celebrates equality. When everyone is supposed to be equal, there will be tremendous pressure to conform—to act and think as everyone else acts and thinks. No one will want to stand out, to rise above the crowd, for fear of being accused of putting on airs and trying to be better than anyone else. Rather than risk this, Tocqueville warned, people will conform. The result will be a society in which those who have something original or outstanding to contribute will remain silent because of the social pressure toward equality (34)."
From my own interpretation of this phenomenon, what is implicit in modern democracy is that the central viewpoint of a people is orbited by a fringe of perspective ranging from slightly skewed, to highly radical. From a psychological perspective, it would simply be a matter of the course of human nature playing itself out that the fringe would gravitate toward the center as the majority gains power by virtue of the sheer enumeration of its influence. Like a massive object in space, it shapes the opinions of the objects orbiting around it, eventually swallowing most of the matter and taking it as its own. The benefits of membership in a majority are irresistible to most people and it is just human nature to seek the kind of security and predictability that the majority offers.
This mass psychological migration toward the center ultimately results in a sovereign entity of such “prodigious . . . authority . . . [that] no obstacles exist which can impede or retard its progress, so as to make it heed the complaints of those whom it crushes upon its path” (Tocqueville 2).
For the purposes of this essay, it is not my intention to attempt to prove Tocqueville’s theory of the “tyranny of the majority.” Rather, I intend to illuminate one example of the popular, systematic repression of speech as indicative of the very characteristic nature of American society that lead Tocqueville to down this path in the first place.
Rallying to the Call: an assessment of the majority’s reaction to the dissenting voice of Ward Churchill
What is it about the notion of “chickens coming home to roost” that will get your message distorted into an exultation in the death of your fellow citizens? That there were dark, secret agendas behind America’s involvement in the Vietnam conflict is widely known today, but at the time, such insight into the functioning of the government was mostly relegated to the fringe of society. Still, it is interesting to note that though there is much documentation chronicling the various follies of the American agenda in Vietnam, the majority of Americans are uninterested in learning about how we were tricked into such a costly war.
It probably goes without saying that Malcolm X would have been part of this social fringe that was unmoved by the elements of national pride that deluded the majority of citizens into complicity. Also, it is safe to assume that, at that time, the majority of Americans believed the Kennedy administration when it denied involvement in the coup of Ngo Dinh Diem. I cannot help but wonder, though, that if the administration had openly admitted its evolvement in Diem’s overthrow, providing its justifications, would not the majority of Americans have simply adjusted their thinking, almost automatically, to make it justifiable? If so, what does this say about the majority’s ability to see things as they really are when the status quo is threatened? If people believed that X was indicating that Kennedy’s assassination was justified, it would logically follow that there would be a level of satisfaction in his interpretation of the event, as people love justice. But as X indicates in his explanation that I mentioned earlier (and as the statement itself indicates), his statement was not so much justifying the assassination of the president, but identifying it as a condition of the manner in which America conducts itself both nationally, and in the international arena. To focus narrowly on whether or not X was happy about the assassination, and thus, how outraged the public should be about it was to completely avoid the meaning of his statement altogether. If his message had no merit, why then should it be made so controversial for what he wasn’t even saying? Is it just a case of misunderstanding, or is something else at work here? Is there some mechanism that keeps certain kinds of information from being understood? If so, what is the nature the conflict? What kind of barrier stands between the real meaning in a public statement and the awareness of the public?
The issue of justice is a complicated one. Justice itself is an abstraction, as are the concepts of where justice comes from, on whom or what it is directed, and for what reasons. If someone in the United States says that our invasion of Iraq is justified, do they mean only in the killing of the “bad people,” or that there is justice in the death of every man, woman, and child killed by our military? If civilian deaths are justified as “collateral damage” (Goodman 3), as Ward Churchill notes is the term used by the Pentagon, are not those individuals who identify with the murdered civilians justified in claiming some amount of collateral for themselves, or are Americans the only ones who are so virtuous as to be justified in laying waste to whomever, whenever we choose? If civilian deaths are not justified, then who is to decide what person, or entity is to be punished for these crimes committed in the name of the American people? In other words, when someone says the word “justice” in regard to international conflict (or, for that matter, in regard to anything else), how are we to presume what they mean?
Ward Churchill’s essay was titled, “Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens.” There is no denying, in this case, that Churchill was equating the 9/11 attacks with some kind of justice, as it is right there in the title. When the story hit the national news, a consensus formed among the majority, not surprisingly, that Churchill, a highly respected professor of ethnic studies at U C, Boulder, was exulting in the deaths of thousands of people, reminiscent of the charges against Malcolm X. On the national level, the charge against Churchill was led by TV talk show host, Bill O’Reilly, a man who touts himself a culture warrior, and claims that he’s “looking out for you!” “You who?” I wonder.
Is he talking about me? It depends on how you look at it. I certainly don’t sign his paycheck. In fact, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out why his opinion is so relevant to so many people, so I don’t know why he would be looking out for me, personally. That is, unless Rupert Murdock—the media tycoon, chairman and managing director of News Corporation, which owns the FOX News Network, which airs Bill O’Reilly’s “culture war”—is such a great guy that he is paying Bill O’Reilly to make sure that I’m ok, and that I’m not being hurt by “RADICALS” like Ward Churchill. I don’t think that Murdoch is that great of a guy, though. I don’t think that “looking out for [me]” is the reason that he worked so hard, wielding his influence to have anti-trust laws changed, and consolidating media outlets, to become one of the richest, most powerful media tycoons in the world. So, whom is Bill O’Reilly looking out for, exactly?
One of the first things the instructor told us in my intro to mass communications class is that “advertising companies sell people.” Advertisers are paid by companies who want their message to reach the greatest possible number of people because companies are paid according to how many people want their product. If advertising is considered a good investment for a company, then it logically follows that companies consider advertisement to be the best way to create a demand among the greatest possible number of people. Now, if News Corporation is paid by advertisers, and Bill O’Reilly is paid by News Corporation (again, logic is biting me on the neck), doesn’t it follow that the actual purpose of Bill O’Reilly’s “culture war” is to ring in the greatest possible number of viewers, and that, what he is actually at war with is whatever doesn’t fit nicely into the proud, nationalistic identity of those viewers? If so, how does a media network go about achieving the highest possible viewership? Would they do it by hiring a person who made his reputation by telling people discomforting truths that hurt their pride? Not very likely. Conversely, if a media executive happened upon a hardy, well spoken, individual out there in media land who made his reputation by espousing the highest virtues of that segment of the population whom she is trying to sell to her advertisers, I think she’s found a winner.
The point here is that Bill O’Reilly is one of Americas top media personalities, not because of his outstanding journalism and talent for finding out the meanings behind the events that take place in the world, but because he is a reflection of the self-serving masses. He tells them what they want to here, not because he is trying to pull the wool over their eyes, but because he is one of them. He sees things as they do, and his continued success depends on his perpetuating that point of view that allows for the continued comfort of a people who consider themselves the most virtuous people in the world. Far too virtuous, in fact, to have had something like the 9/11 attacks coming to them. No such reasoning justifying 9/11 could possibly enter the mainstream of information. As Tocqueville observed of the ruling majority nearly two hundred years ago, “The smallest reproach irritates its sensibility, and the slightest joke that has any foundation in truth renders it indignant, from the forms of its language, to the solid virtues of its character, everything must be made the subject of encomium” (6). What Bill O’Reilly is “looking out for” is the status quo.
When O’Reilly got a hold of the Churchill story, he set off an all out crusade to put Churchill down as far as he could get him. In his talking points memo, he labeled Churchill a traitor and a radical. Of course, the radical part is true, but what’s interesting about it is that the word itself does not carry a derogatory meaning. Yet, that is exactly how O’Reilly uses it. As a guardian of the sovereign majority, he reserves the right to apply whatever meaning he needs in order to infringe, or marginalize people with whom he disagrees. In his reference to Churchill as a radical, it is understood by his audience that Churchill is to be seen as a “wacko”, a crazy loon who is out of touch with reality and from that moment on, no one needs to consider anything Churchill says as worth listening to. Mission accomplished.
But at what cost? What is the cost to a nation of labeling as a traitor someone who proposes an alternative view of events that hold such significance, and dire consequences as 9/11? The first amendment is supposed to guard against the squelching of unpopular speech. Of course, that only works for keeping you out of jail, but doesn’t it also reflect the spirit of what democracy is all about? O’Reilly took Churchill’s words out of context, telling America that he justified the attack on Sep. 11, and then proceeded to convince the public that we should not allow Churchill to speak at universities. By doing so, he not only sought to silence a dissenting voice, he sought to disrupt the very functioning of a one of the most critical units in a democracy, the university.
After lambasting the radical for his amused audience, he then turns his attack to the University of Colorado, which he also labels as radical: “This story is not about Churchill anymore. It’s about the people who enable him” (O’Reilly 2). Shame on the university that considers itself a center for evaluation and critical thought. At Hamilton College in New York, where Churchill Was supposed to participate in a panel discussion when the story broke, floods of phone calls poured in, complete with threats of violence, from people demanding that the college cancel his appearance (O’Neill). So they did. In a paper on the college’s website addressing the issue, Professor John O’Neill expresses his contempt for the wholesale short-circuiting of the democratic process. Had Churchill been allowed to participate, O’Neill says, he would have had to explain and defend his position before his peers, and his assertions would have been evaluated by the faculty and students. In O’Neill’s view, the students have been deprived of an opportunity to “develop respect for [the] intellectual and cultural diversity [that] promotes free and open inquiry, independent thought, and mutual understanding” (2). Apparently, such virtues are not valued by many Americans.
On a program called Democracy Now, Amy Goodman showed a video of the O’Reilly Factor in which O’Reilly, and the governor of Colorado, Bill Owens, discuss the progress made in dismantling the democratic spirit, and the marginalizing of the “radical” (2-3). After hearing both men suggest that Churchill is calling for “more murder . . . more 9/11s,” Amy gives Churchill an opportunity to clarify the meaning of the statement that has been the most explosive (3). His reference to the targets of 9/11 as a “technocratic corps . . . of imperial ambition that constitute[ed] legitimate military targets” was to show that the perpetrators of the attack were reacting to something, and not just arbitrarily killing Americans for no reason at all, or that they “hate our freedoms,” as were supposed to believe. This is the justice found in the title of Churchill’s essay. It is presumed that when a group attacks in reaction to something, they are executing their own justice, on their own terms. If people were allowed to think that Churchill’s “justice” was in reference to a group’s reaction to something, they might then have to question what the attack was in reaction to. As this kind of free inquiry is unacceptable to many Americans, it was necessary to equate this justice with Churchill’s own inner desires so that he could easily be portrayed as a wacko, and dismissed.
But if one actually reads his essay, and finds the rationale behind the reference to the 9/11 victims as “little Eichmanns,” it is easy to see why that part of the story was mostly left out of the media coverage. When one finds out that the sanctions we imposed on Iraq were largely responsible for the deaths of a half million of their children, one begins to find a need to question what exactly is behind the omission of such important information. When Madeline Albright acknowledged in a 60 Minutes interview that “the price is worth it,” she implicated all of us in this atrocity. Where is the democratic process that is supposed to protect against such a horrible mistake?
When Amy Goodman asked Churchill about his “little Eichmanns” comment, he explained that it was based on the impression of Adolf Eichmann on the German political theorist Hannah Arendt when she attended his trial expecting “to confront the epitome of evil . . . something monstrous” (3). Churchill’s response to Amy is the most important thing to come out of my research on this topic, and given the weight of the controversy surrounding it, I think it’s best that I quote him directly:
". . . what [Arendt] encountered instead, was this nondescript little man, a bureaucrat, a technocrat, a guy who arranged train schedules, who, as it turned out, ultimately didn’t even agree with the policy that he was implementing, but performed the technical functions that made the holocaust possible, at least in the efficient manner that it occurred, in a totally amoral and soulless way, purely on the basis of excelling at the function and getting ahead within the system that he found himself. He was a good family man, in his way. He was loved by his children, participated in civic activities, was in essence the good German. And she [Arendt] said, therein lies the evil. It wasn’t that Eichmann was a Nazi or a high official within Nazidom, although he was in fact a Nazi and a relatively highly placed official, but it was exactly the reverse: that given his actual nomenclature, the actuality of Eichmann was that anyone in this sort of mindless, faceless, bureaucratic capacity could be the Nazi. That he was every man, and that was what was truly horrifying to her in the end. That was a controversial thesis because there’s always this effort to distinguish anyone and everyone irrespective of what they’re doing from this polarity of evil that is signified in Nazidom, and she had breached the wall and brought the lessons of how Nazism actually functioned, the modernity of it, home and visited it upon everyone, calling for, then, personal accountability, responsibility, to the taking of responsibility for the outcome of the performance of one’s functions. That’s exactly what it is that is shirked here, and makes it possible for people to, from a safe remove, perform technical functions that result in (and at some level, they know this, they understand it) in carnage, emiseration, the death of millions ultimately. That’s the Eichmann aspect. But notice I said little Eichmanns, not the big Eichmann. Not the real Eichmann. The real Eichmann ultimately is symbolic, even in his own context. He symbolized the people that worked under him. He symbolized the people who actually were on the trains. They were hauling the Jews. He symbolized the technicians who were making the gas for I.G. Farben. He symbolized all of these people who didn’t directly kill anybody, but performed functions and performed those functions with a certain degree of enthusiasm and certainly with a great degree of efficiency, that had the outcome of the mass murder of the people targeted for elimination or accepted as collateral damage. That’s the term of the art put forth by the Pentagon."
When a society doesn’t possess the enough character and psychological integrity to put its own actions on the table for open discussion within the institutions of higher learning and development, or when the participants in the self evaluation of a nation are chastised for participating in the democratic process, it ceases to be a free and open society. Churchill represents a dying breed of fringe intellectuals who are derided by the public for attempting to put the power of authority back where the constitution says it should be, in the hands of the people, not within some obfuscating entity that derives its constitution by the perpetuated ignorance of those people. The choice is ours. It’s a choice between the Constitution of the United States, and the constitution of the majority. One will require the unceasing participation of the people in the democratic process in order to check the sovereign at every turn. The other will require nothing in the ways of intelligent inquiry, but a simple abdication of responsibility for things carried out in your name. Just sit back, relax, and let the sovereign do you’re thinking for you while you wonder when the next 9/11 will come. At least this way, you’ll have not to worry that the evil fringe people will accuse you of being responsible for anything.
Works Cited
Ball, Terrence, and Dagger, Richard. Political Ideologies and the Democratic Ideal. 6th ed. Pearson Education, Inc. 2006
Churchill, Ward. “Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens.” Political Gateway. Feb. 1, 2006. Bob Hoffman.
Goodman, Amy; Churchill ,Ward. “The Justice of Roosting Chickens: Ward Churchill Speaks.” Democracy Now. 18 Feb. 2005. 3 May 2008.
Maletz, Donald. “Tocqueville’s Tyranny of the Majority Reconsidered.” The Journal of Politics. 64.3 (2002): 741-763
O’Neill, John H. “Bill O’Reilly, Ward Churchill, and Hamilton College.” Hamilton College. 2008. < http://www.hamilton.edu/news/wardchurchill/oneilloped.pdf>
O’Reilly, Bill. “Ward Churchill is a Traitor.” FOX NEWS. 3 Mar. 2005. 5 May 2008.
Prados, John. “JFK and the Diem Coup.” George Washington University National Security Archive. 5 Nov. 2003. 3 Mar. 2008
Smallwood, Scott. “Inside a Free Speech Firestorm.” Chronicle of Higher Education. 51.24 (2005): A10-A12
Tocqueville, Alexis de. “Unlimited Power of the Majority in the United States and its Consequences.” The Alexis de Tocqueville Tour Exploring Democracy in America May 9, 1997 - February 20, 1998.
