February 10, 2005

There’s an unusual course of instruction taught in the Department of Defense that instructs high-risk-of-capture personnel (Force Recon Marines, Navy SEALs, Green Berets, other special-operations types, air crews, etc.) the skills they need to resist enemy interrogation, exploitation and indoctrination. It’s called Survival-Evasion-Resistance-Escape (SERE) School and although it is largely unpleasant for the student, it teaches him skills that can save his life. Some deploying graduates of SERE also undergo the Advanced SERE Course. Three of my 20 years in the Marine Corps were spent as a SERE and Advanced SERE instructor.

One of the myriad things taught in SERE and reinforced in ASERE is how to recognize and defend against indoctrination by a captor. Incredibly, a substantial percentage of well-aware students fall prey to indoctrination techniques in SERE, even though they were taught about them before being tested. The means can be that subtle, that clever, that insidious. So it is no surprise to see Ward Churchill’s students and other sycophants—the cult of Keezjunnahbeh (the “professor’s” self-proclaimed Indian name, which itself is an indoctrination tool)—presenting all the usual signs and symptoms of those who have been indoctrinated by a seasoned propagandist.

How can we be upset with Churchill’s cult members if they have never been trained in the recognition and defense of indoctrination? We can’t, especially when the school they attend encourages its students to advocate the overthrow of the U.S. government and total destruction of America. This institutional bias, underpinned by the university’s policy of sanctioning left-wing hatred and violence, is a double whammy for the kids who don’t know any better.

Even Churchill’s pedantic pettifogger, David Lane, an educated man (if only academically) by anyone’s assessment, has fallen prey to his benefactor’s ruse. Of course, it helps if one is politically, socially and possibly genetically predisposed to being influenced by such an otherwise transparent stratagem. He was on my show moments after Churchill’s “indoc” session ended. He began by launching into a tirade of how evil I am and how he apparently believes Clear Channel is no more than a cabal of right-wing nut jobs who have well-pressed Schutzstaffel duds hanging in our respective closets . Apparently, David is unaware that Clear Channel has some radical left-wing stations featuring such extremist kooks as has-been comic Al Franken and “Hanoi Janeane” Garofalo (apologies to “Hanoi John,” “Hanoi Jane” and “Hanoi Hanna”).

Churchill’s taxpayer-subsidized speech last night at the University of Colorado at Boulder was a study in propaganda delivery and indoctrination reinforcement. As I listened to his presentation live on my show, I was swept back to the many SERE and ASERE courses I helped teach. It was as if I was listening to one of my fellow instructors run an indoctrination session on our students. A smattering of truth mixed with outright lies, half-truths, the altering of history, fiery rhetoric, claims of compassion, demands for justice, claims of victimhood, strict audience- interaction control and repeated insistence that he and the terrorists he supports are right and the evil government is wrong, were applied to his cult, who having no idea what was happening to them, sat there braying like programmed automatons to the beat of a tom-tom. The hapless kids, infatuated and totally devoted to worshiping their god, sat there slack jawed and glassy eyed. They never saw it coming.

I would have graded Churchill with a strong B+ for reinforcing his hold on his young cult, but most adults who have been around were not swayed, nor was it Churchill’s goal to sway them. Last night was pure solidification of his control of his worshippers. Well, that and he achieved his secondary mission of selling books and increasing his speaking fee, naturally at taxpayer and student expense. For someone who claims to hate capitalism (Churchill is a long-time student of Karl Marx), he sure makes a lot of money and is a bona fide expert in adding zeroes to his multi-source income stream. Clever.

I must go now. I hear Churchill’s cult out front demanding I appear before them.

Baaaah , baaaah.

Bob Newman