Horowitz is the ‘fascist,’ not those who protested his Emory speech
October 26, 2007 at 11:26 am by John F. Sugg in NewsDavid Horowitz is a racist and wannabe fascist (I use that word because he’s so fond of it) of the first magnitude. The last time I saw him at Emory, in 2004, student Jeff Jackson tried to ask a polite if pointed question during a Q&A period about the Iraq war. After all, Horowitz had earlier gurgled: “It’s a wonderful war. What’s not to like about this war?” Jackson’s question was more than appropriate, and he had waited in a long line to address Horowitz.
However, goons from the campus Republicans didn’t want Jackson to speak. One of the thugs muscled him from the microphone and threatened Jackson with a beating. Horowitz beamed benevolently at this exercise in neo-facism by a reincarnation of Hitler Youth.
Horowitz had spoken previously at Emory, and his race-baiting so enraged blacks on campus that when he returned as a GOP guest in 2004, the student government declined to fund his visit, as was its right and obligation. Horowitz dissembled that he was being “banned.” Not so, he was welcome to speak, and did, but not on someone else’s dime.
The strategy is obvious — and can be found with demagogues throughout history: Claim you’re a victim of “facists” and people may not notice that you’re the real goose-stepper.
With that context, file the screeching from Atlanta’s reich-wingers over an incident Wednesday at Emory under “First Degree Bullshit.” Horowitz, along with other racists such as Daniel Pipes, are sponsoring something called “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week.” It’s an attempt to purge campuses of any whiff of skepticism, much less criticism, about Israeli and neo-conservative policies. Pipes and Horowitz have long been engaged in efforts to blacklist and silence professors who don’t adhere to the neo-cons’ radical and imperialist ideology. As I have written, the intimidation sometimes takes bizarre forms – as when a Horowitz fellow traveler, Ken Stein, branded as “anti-Semitic” an Arabic textbook because a map about the emergence of Arab states showed, but did not label, Israel (the map didn’t label other non-Arab countries, either).
The Republicans again hosted Horowitz as part of the “awareness” week. Spectators on Wednesday stood and turned their backs, booed and jeered. Horowitz eventually left the stage.
What Horowitz’s critics did was wrong. The nation’s ultra-rightists are by far the most egregious offenders when it comes to silencing free speech — by impugning people’s patriotism, smearing them, and as had happened at Emory in 2004, threatening violence. When the left emulates those tactics — although there was no physical threat to Horowitz — it diminishes its arguments. Let the guy speak. His own words are damning.
October 26th, 2007 at 12:48 pm
You, sir, have no shame. Nazis murdered 6 million plus Jews in an attempt to completely exterminate a race from the face of the Earth.
Please, please, please point me to a place where David Horowitz or any member of the Emory Campus Republicans suggests anything similar.
You ought to be ashamed of yourself calling your fellow citizens “Reich Wingers,” and “Hitler Youth.”
I may not support a lot of what Horowitz says but i would never compare him or his supporters to Hitler and the Nazis.
Coincidentally, I disagree with a whole lot of what you and your colleague sMr. Wheatley and Mr Edelstein frequently right and the tactics and language you employ toward your opponents, but I would never call you Stalinists or compare you to the KGB.
Left though you may be, I certainly don’t believe you would be interested in accomplishing your goals by mass starvation as Stalin did in the Ukraine.
This sort of name calling toward your fellow citizens is pointless and mean-spirited.
October 26th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
I don’t believe anyone is more hated by a Liberal than a Conservative who used to be a Liberal
October 26th, 2007 at 1:19 pm
“When the left emulates those tactics — although there was no physical threat to Horowitz — it diminishes its arguments. Let the guy speak. His own words are damning.”
… but be certain you don’t miss the chance to write a non-sensical article comparing him to the worst butchers and villians in history…. it helps marginalize then and prevents any need to engage their arguments on any level.
October 26th, 2007 at 1:44 pm
Jeez, Shameless and Dale, I thought I made the point that I was using the Nazi allusions because that is what Horowitz and his sock puppets are screeching. It was a little pay back.
Referring to the protesters, Horowitz said: “This is exactly what the fascists did in Germany in the 1930s.” Well, not exactly. They beat, torched, rioted, murdered, etc. And let’s not forget, as I wrote, the backdrop was a campaign to stifle debate and drive viewpoints off campus that don’t mesh those of the neo-cons. That’s what the Nazis did to German universities.
Horowitz was never a liberal. His parents were Communists — totalitarian Stalinists. He may have shed the Stalinist part of his upbringing, but nuts don’t fall far from the tree. He’s still a totalitarian.
October 26th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
Biographer of Marxist historian Isaac Deutscher.
Editor of Ramparts magazine.
Confidant of Huey P. Newton.
Political aide to Bertrand Russell.
You sure you wanna stick with the “Horowitz was never a liberal” comment?
October 26th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
I use hateful language? Me? But I’m an angel. Like, literally. I have wings.
October 26th, 2007 at 6:10 pm
I didn\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\’t say he wasn\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\’t a leftist. He would have denied the \\\\\\\\
October 26th, 2007 at 6:16 pm
Oops. messed up something.
I didn’t say he wasn’t a leftist. He would have denied he was one in the 60s. Liberals were derided on the left (Phil Ochs: “Love me I’m a liberal”). There are totalitarian strains on the left as well as the right. Like many neo-cons who have their roots in the left (several are ex Trotskyists), the flip was easy. These are statists, many are totalitarians.
No one makes such a wide swing unless either seriously deranged or for the money. Others have analyzed Horowitz’s relationship with his Stalinist parents. I think he does it for the cash.
October 28th, 2007 at 7:36 pm
In the above comment, I meant to say: He would have denied he was liberal in the 60s. I was there. About the last thing the activists wanted to be called was “liberal” — after all, the epitome of liberalism was Hubert Humphrey, who long supported the war.
October 29th, 2007 at 12:32 pm
Sugg – I did miss your point and, as someone who loves using others words and tactics against them, I should have seen it clearly.
“I was using the Nazi allusions because that is what Horowitz and his sock puppets are screeching. It was a little pay back.” That is exactly what Horowitz is doing. The Right have been villified as Nazi’s by the Left, so he is serving it back to them, intentionally or not I am not certain.
Horowitz was Liberal in the sense of today’s definiton, or Progressive, or whatever the poll tested marketing term is this week and he definately was on the left side of the spectrum, regardless of the term. Keeping track of shifting labels over the last 40 years is impossible. By todays standards JFK would be a Conservative Republican.
Conservatives are not trying to drive the Left off campus (except well deserving frauds like Ward Churchhill), so much as get themselves onto the campus. There are some on the Right who attempt suppression and would love to take control of the campii the way the Left has done. As you said there are elements of totalitarianism on both sides, exhibited by the use campus speech codes to suppress opinons on the Right..
I am going to go find out what Horowitz said to enrage the audiences you identified. I may have to change my opinion of him.
October 29th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
Dale, you missed what’s been happening on campus. This isn’t just a few nuts the right wants to drive off campus. It’s a wholesale attack on academic freedom targeting scores of mainstream professors, including some of the most respected thinkers on foreign affairs and the Arab world. They just happen not to toe the line when it comes to Israel and the neo-cons. Look for the critiques of Horowitz’s book. He and Pipe have made so many racist comments, they rank up there with the David Dukes of society. In Atlanta one attack has been against the Middle East Studies Department (which contains Jews, Muslims and Christians). Because some of its members advocate peace or some degree of pro-Arab viewpoint, others (like Ken Stein) have gone after the Title VI funding. Title VI has become the battle ground — it funds area studies around the nation. Stein operates a very well funded pro-Israeli think tank at Emory, and can’t abide the thought that the other side would get a similar voice. In any event, that’s not what the Middle East department does; it presents all sides, and some of its members have been physically threatened for their peace advocacy (you don’t hear Horowitz talking about that, do you?). What Horowitz, Pipes, Stein and others want is a POLITICAL REVIEW of the content of the what’s taught, to ensure that it’s pro-neo-con imperialism, pro-Israel; only those meeting the test get funding..
On the liberal name, you’re wrong. In the 60’s — and I repeat that after serving int he armed forces (something Horowitz “what’s there not to like about this war” avoided, along with virtually all of the Bush administration and the neo0cons), I’d become radicalized and helped lead the antiwar movement in Florida and later on a national level. “Liberal” was a term of derision. Look up the lyrics to the Ochs song I mentioned. Horowitz wasn’t associated with “liberal” groups — primarily the Democratic party. He was a radical who believe the liberal/conservative Dem/GOP system was fatally flawed and broken. Ramparts, the magazine he worked on, wasn’t liberal — it was radical. I guess one defining element was a willingness to work wihin the two party system; liberals would, radicals wouldn’t . The antiwar movement went to Chicago in 1968 not to protest the conservative Republican convention, but the liberal Democrats.
October 29th, 2007 at 2:34 pm
John – Thanks for the info on Horowitz. I have been paying attention to what goes on with our nations universities. Like we have both said, radiclas on both sides and apparently Stein and Horowitz are two of them.
I referred to the malleability of labels over time. I do not disagree with the perjorative status of the term “liberal”, then or now. Isn’t that why lefties in the US insist on Progressive?
Wrong on the word “Liberal”? If we are using 40 year old definitons, you are correct. I should have used “Leftist” rather than “Liberal” and “Rightist” rather than “Conservative”. I wasn’t wround then and was speaking from a modern perspective that left leaning politicians are Liberal and right leaning Conservative.
Like I said “Keeping track of shifting labels over the last 40 years is impossible. By todays standards JFK would be a Conservative Republican.”