Ward Churchill Speaks, People Cheer

After every single sentence, in fact. Got annoying. But it was enjoyable to see him speak in person, finally, after having blown two chances to see him in San Francisco last spring. His speech pretty much covered the material that he is known for emphasizing, in the style he's known for using (very gruff and passionate).
The focus of the talk was on state repression (such as the green scare, a topic particularly pertinent in Eugene) and its links to academic repression. No surprise here. He went through some examples of such repression, talked about the denigration of nations and the predominance of states, gave a critique of civilization as an unnatural imposition that is naturally resisted on all levels, and talked about indigenous struggles. He believes we should look to indigenous struggles in our resistance because indigenous peoples know how to most "naturally" resist tyranny. I've come to realize that Churchill's brand of indigenism is almost identical to anarcho-primitivism, which explains the abundance of his books on Green Anarchy's reading list.
Overall, the talk was very rousing and entertaining. I enjoyed myself. Now I'm waiting to see tomorrow how the local newspapers twist the meaning of it and slander Churchill...

I should make another post, probably

Well, I have been very busy, stuff-happening. Natty and I have been slaving away to put out the next issue of the Student Insurgent, which is especially hard after the whole printing-offensive-cartoons-of-naked-jesus-fiasco; we (Natty and I) have had to deal with a lot of shit and we weren't even responsible for it. It was such a big deal that we were contacted for interviews by CNN, FOX, Bill O'Reilly for his radio show, random right-wing talk radio, and a bunch of local media outlets, as well as getting on the local news. All for a few naked drawings of jesus, drawings which I thought were a little irrelevant and juvenile (and I had no idea people would actually be outraged by them!) The whole thing is mundane. I don't even want to talk about it anymore...but the next issue will rock (by comparison). It will feature lots of (actually intelligent) stuff by my friends and I.

Moving on, I am writing a huge research paper on the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 right now for history class, so all I will be reading for the next month are books related to that. I have fourteen of them lined up, I doubt I'll get through them all. I just finished reading A Testament of Revolution, which is an eyewitness account by Bela Liptak, who was a student participant in Budapest. It was a quick, engaging read: I would recommend it. I also read Hungary in the Cold War by Laszlo Borhi, which is a rather dry geopolitical analysis of the time leading up to the revolution. Soon I'll read Hungary '56 by Andy Anderson, which I had to get on loan from the Evergreen library. It is an analysis from a council communist perspective published by Black and Red (so I have wanted to read it for a while now). I'm excited.

Speaking of history class, I just read some of my professor's work in the "critical Marxist journal" Historical Materialism. I found it by accident in the UO library; it was a pleasant surprise. The topic was human nature and materialism. My prof (Fracchia) argues that it is too simplistic to pretend in the existence of a universal human essence or "human nature," and additionally rejects the extreme relativist notion that humanity is completely shaped by historical conditions. (This seems obvious to me, though.) Instead, he believes we should identify constants in human corporeal organization, rid ourselves of "human nature" terminology, and develop a taxonomic historical materialist theory. If one can understand the jargon, this all seems obvious as well- there are certain innate biological characteristics in all humans that change very slowly with time. He also appropriately quotes Marx multiple times saying that humans can change history, but not under conditions of their choosing. I don't really know what was so original about the piece, it all seemed obvious to me (though maybe some of it went over my head. The writing definitely bore the mark of academia). But it was cool getting to read some of his stuff, finally (I want to read his book about Marxism, Karl Korsch, materialism, etc, but it unfortunately is in German).

Um, that's all. Happy cinco de mayo; Karl Marx would be 188 today.