On Churchill's 'little Eichmanns'

In her column “In Defense of Ward Churchill,” Bridget Newman states that she “should have known better when she read the headline claiming that Ward Churchill had compared Sept. 11 victims to Nazis.” Interestingly, and revealingly, Newman does not give her readers the quote in question. In fact, she does not even bother to give the title of Churchill’s essay, preferring to force the reader to trust her interpretation before she launches into her tirade on American policy.

The offending passage from Churchill’s “Some People Push Back” (which can befound at http://www.kersplebedeb.com/ mystuff/s11/ churchill.html) is as follows: “If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I’d really be interested in hearing about it.”

Eichmann, of course, refers to Adolf Eichmann, a high-ranking Nazi official sometimes called the “Chief Executioner” of the Third Reich. In other words, Churchill analogized the World Trade Center victims to one of the great mass-murderers of the 20th century. Later he defended the statement, although he said that he was not referring to children, firefighters, janitors or people passing by.

Since Newman said that Churchill’s recent troubles are “the price of truth,” I ask her directly—do you believe that bond traders and businessmen are morally equivalent to war criminals? Is this the “truth” of which you speak?

Steven Vickers

Trinity ’06