This article was originally published by FrontPage Magazine, on January 25, 2008.
It is not for nothing that George Orwell had to invent terms like “double-think” and “double-speak” to describe the universe totalitarians created. Those who have watched the left as long as I have, understand the impossible task that progressives confront in conducting their crusades. Rhetorically, they are passionate proponents of “equality” but in practice they are committed enthusiasts of a hierarchy of privilege in which the highest ranks are reserved for themselves as the guardians of righteousness, and then for those they designate “victims” and “oppressed,” who are thus worthy of their redemption. Rhetorically they are secularists and avatars of tolerance, but in fact they are religious fanatics who regard their opponents as sinners and miscreants and agents of civil darkness. Therefore, when they engage an opponent it is rarely to examine and refute his argument but rather to destroy the bearer of the argument and remove him from the plain of battle.
Consequently, misrepresentation of facts, distortion of motives and general acts of character assassination are the preferred modes of progressive discourse, as any conservative who has acquired a public persona can attest. The raw material for this verbal malice is stored on data sites with titles like RightwingWatch, SourceWatch, MediaMatters and MediaTransparency, which provide a reservoir of abuse for use by progressive activists in their engagements. Efforts by the targets of this malevolence to correct fabrications and mis-statements of fact are guaranteed to fail nearly every time, in part because progressives don’t regard their judgments as opinions but as a received moral (and therefore incontrovertible) truth. Eventually an alternative reality is created by this process which no one would even think to check.
Consequently, misrepresentation of facts, distortion of motives and general acts of character assassination are the preferred modes of progressive discourse, as any conservative who has acquired a public persona can attest. The raw material for this verbal malice is stored on data sites with titles like RightwingWatch, SourceWatch, MediaMatters and MediaTransparency, which provide a reservoir of abuse for use by progressive activists in their engagements. Efforts by the targets of this malevolence to correct fabrications and mis-statements of fact are guaranteed to fail nearly every time, in part because progressives don’t regard their judgments as opinions but as a received moral (and therefore incontrovertible) truth. Eventually an alternative reality is created by this process which no one would even think to check.
Of course not all leftists are ideological zealots or totalitarians, and even many progressives are offended by such company. Last week we posted an interview that was conducted by an intelligent and reasonable young progressive at Campus Progress named Jesse Singal. Before agreeing to be interviewed by Singal, I asked him to correct a malicious “profile” of me, which Campus Progress had posted as one of the guides it provides to its student activists under a general heading “Know Your Right-Wing Speakers.” In its grotesque distortions of my statements and positions, the profile is typical of what passes for “David Horowitz” in the progressive world and is an obvious product of the collective misrepresentations that underpin its general perspective.
When Singal offered to correct any errors in the Campus Progress profile, I made myself available for the interview. A month later, the original profile still stands, although Singal assures me it’s just a matter of fact-checking and I have no reason to doubt that he was and is sincere. I will wait to be surprised. In the meantime, the profile which was last updated March 30, 2007 can be read here I have provided an annotated rebuttal of the profile below. At the end are the comments of readers on their site. What is striking is the good sense expressed in these comments, although this does not seem to have shaken Campus Progress’s confidence in their error-ridden profile.
Dear Jesse,
My reply to your dossier:
Know Your Right-Wing Speakers: David Horowitz
Friday March 30, 2007
David Horowitz seems to relish his role as a former campus leftist who now gleefully spews angry criticism of academia and the left. Horowitz spent his college years, in the late 1950s, at Columbia University, where he was involved in American Maoist Communist political organizations. He went on to receive his Master’s degree at another hotbed of liberalism, theUniversity of California, Berkeley.
1. I was never ever a Maoist. (I will be happy to send you my attacks on Maoism that appeared inRamparts in the 1960s and 1970s — or a copy of my book Left Illusions, which contains at least one of them.) At Columbia I was a member of the NAACP. That was the only organization I belonged to in college.
His about-face occurred in 1985 when he launched an assault against his erstwhile leftward compatriots, whom he now calls “violently, fervently committed to their unholy war to tear down American democracy and replace it with their version – an Americanized version – of communism.” In his reformed state, Horowitz still describes himself as “a civil rights activist” on his website. His blood, sweat, and tears go into defending that downtroddendemographic, white males.
2. I didn’t do “an about face.” I stopped being active on the left when the Black Panthers murdered my friend Betty Van Patter in 1974. I have described this event, along with the transformation of my politics at length in Radical Son (which was published ten years ago and which I will also be happy to send you). I wrote articles for the Nation and Mother Jones in 1979 and 1980, because the left was still my community. The first article was about the left’s double standards, and unwilling to take responsibility for its own crimes and mistakes. I cast my first Republican vote for Reagan in 1984 because he was opposing the efforts of the Sandinistas to turn Nicaragua into a socialist gulag like Cuba. I had supported Fidel. I wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice.
3. Your description of my civil rights activism as defending white males is a malicious misrepresentation of what I have done. For example, I am responsible for millions of dollars flowing into an inner city organization called Operation Hope, which has Andrew Young and other leftwing Democrats on its board. I received an award from this organization for my efforts. If you read what I’ve actually written on civil rights issues (e.g., in Hating Whitey and Other Progressive Causes, published in 1999) you’ll see that the main thrust of my efforts is in behalf of inner city blacks. (I will be happy to send you this book as well.)
Horowitz’s “civil rights” activism has manifested itself in a twisted series of seemingly bigoted and clearly controversial attacks. Included in this list are his August 16, 1999, column in Salon entitled, “Guns don’t kill black people, other blacks do” and his 1999 book, Hating Whitey and Other Progressive Causes. In 2001, Horowitz stirred national controversy when he ran nasty advertisements in college newspapers across the country entitled “Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Slavery is a Bad Idea—and Racist Too.” The full-page ads ran in several college papers, causing some to issue retractions and apologies, and others to receive protest from outraged students and accusations of racism. Horowitzcapitalized on the latter by declaring an “assault on free speech” by left-leaning students.
4. If my article about guns and blacks was bigoted, how is it that Salon’s progressive editors published it without objection (I was a regular columnist for Salon in those days). In fact the article is not bigoted but is a criticism of the NAACP for suing gun manufacturers because the number one killer of young black males was gun homicides. My article challenged the NAACP to address the real problems that afflict inner city blacks and cause this violence. Here’s a sample paragraph: “If the NAACP and other black leaders want to end the terrible scourge of gun violence committed by young inner city blacks they should launch a campaign to promote marriage and family formation in the African American community; they should issue a moral plea to the community to stigmatize fathers who abandon their children and parents who have more children than they can afford. Instead of waging war against law enforcement agencies and supporting destructive racial demagogues like Al Sharpton, they should support the Rudy Giulianis and other champions of public safety, whom they now attack. They should campaign for a tripling of police forces in inner city areas to protect the vast majority of inhabitants who are law-abiding and who are the true victims of the predators among them.”
You may disagree with this point of view but only a moral illiterate or someone who hasn’t read my article would describe it as bigoted against blacks. My book Hating Whitey (which is about the left’s hatred of white people) is an argument in behalf of black people not against them. The ad I ran against reparations also originated as a Salon article which was titled “Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Slavery is a Bad Idea — for Black People, and Racist too.” I thought it was a bad idea for black people because it isolated them from all other Americans including Hispanic immigrants who were being asked to assume responsibility for slavery and pay reparations for a system that was ended 100 years before.
Campus Progress doesn’t join those who say Horowitz doesn’t have the right to speak. We just think his speech is ill-mannered, ill-considered, and ill-informed. It should be met with rational, firm, strong arguments and real facts. Horowitz came under fire again for aJanuary 26, 2005, posting on the History News Network website about “Why I Am Not Celebrating” the 90th birthday of the esteemed African-American historian John Hope Franklin. Franklin is the James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of History at Duke Universityand chairman of President Clinton’s Commission on Race. Horowitz launched an attack onFranklin for his response to Horowitz’s anti-reparations ad, denouncing him as “a racial ideologue rather than a historian” and “almost pathological.”
5. Franklin attacked me as someone who was pro-slavery, an easily disproven lie. Which you repeat:
In the piece, Horowitz tried to defend his claim that “free blacks and the free descendants of blacks … benefited from slavery.”
What this fragment of a quote really said was this: Proponents of reparations argue that all of America’s wealth is based on slavery and that’s why everyone alive today, including Hispanic immigrants whose ancestors weren’t living in America during slavery, should pay reparations. My response was that if all Americans today benefit from slavery as the proponents of reparations argue, then blacks alive today also benefitted from slavery, which undermines the argument. To represent this as being pro-slavery or as saying slavery was beneficial to blacks is dishonest or merely ignorant. For a historian to make this claim is inexplicable.
Through it all, Horowitz has found a smarmy, backhanded way of misrepresenting himself as a defender of civil rights – he baselessly brands his ideological opponents as “racist” to deflect criticism of his own racially inflammatory remarks.
6. If I have called opponents racist it is either in response to their attacks calling me racist, or a description specific to their racial beliefs. It is not a label I carelessly or baselessly ascribe to my ideological opponents. This is something the left does, as I have just demonstrated.
A contributor to numerous right-wing publications, Horowitz is the president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, a think tank financed by conservative funders that serves as an incubator for right-wing radicals. The group’s online journal, Front Page Magazine, began running Ann Coulter’s column after her post-9/11radical anti-Muslim comments got her fired from The National Review. Horowitz is a regular on TV and radio shows, where he mindlessly attacks the supposedly liberal media and denounces it for its “falsehoods.”
7. Ann Coulter was never employed by National Review. They merely dropped her column. Her remarks about 9/11 were obviously satire. The left apparently has no sense of humor. If Jonathan Swift were alive today the left would accuse him of suggesting we eat babies.
Horowitz continues his campaign against supposed “liberal bias” on college campuses through his organization Students for Academic Freedom. According to Horowitz, America’s schools are moving towards a “one party academic state” that is governed by a ruthless liberal dictatorship.
8. I have never campaigned against “liberal bias,” never use the word “bias” (since everyone has one) and wrote — in so many words — in The Professors that academics have a right to express their points of view (I can give you the quote if you want it).
He regales campuses with tales of liberal outrages, some of which cannot be documented despite diligent efforts by researchers and may never have occurred at all.
9. This is false. There have been no such diligent efforts, and I have refuted this canard on many occasions which you can find on my website, Frontpagemag.com, if you go to my article archive and look up “Replies to Critics.”
Horowitz also authored the “Academic Bill of Rights,” a misleading manifesto already introduced in eight state legislatures – and in the U.S. House of Representatives – touting the need for “academic diversity” in university faculty.
The Academic Bill of Rights would prohibit professors at both public and private colleges from introducing “controversial matter” into the classroom.
10. This statement is false. I have never called for the prohibition of controversial matter in the classroom. I have said that if a controversial issue is being discussed, it is a professor’s obligation to make students aware that it is controversial and provide them with critical material so that they hear at least two sides to the question. This is what used to be called a liberal position and has been part of the academic freedom tradition articulated by the American Association of University Professors since 1915.
The bill would shift oversight of college course content away from trained professors and administrators and into the hands of state governments and courts.
11. This statement is false. I have never sought such legislation, nor have I ever suggested that government should have oversight of college curricula.
While it has not been formally adopted anywhere yet, it has inspired legislative policiestoward “intellectual diversity” in Ohio and Pennsylvania. The Inter-University Council ofOhio has reached an agreement with Senate sponsors of the Ohio Academic Bill of Rights to implement key principles of “academic freedom” in Ohio public and private universities.
Despite fierce objections from the American Association of University Professors, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, the PennsylvaniaHouse of Representatives passed a resolution that required a Select Committee to “examine, study and inform the legislature about the condition of academic freedom in the state’s universities” on July 5th, 2005.
Horowitz smugly declared that if the liberal school boards had not refused to adopt his non-legislative Academic Bill, government intervention would be unnecessary. Horowitz and his overwhelmingly right-wing supporters insist that the grievance procedures in the OhioAcademic Bill of Rights and the Pennsylvania resolution protect all students from discrimination based on political/ideological affiliation. After nearly a year and countless hours of testimony, the committee concluded that there were few if any academic freedomviolations in Pennsylvania, and that no legislation was necessary. Horowitz has continuously mischaracterized the hearings.
12. The above says very little and what it implies is misleading. I refer you to my account of these matters in my writings on the Pennsylvania Hearings. The Committee conducted no investigation whatsoever of academic freedom abuses. What the committee found was that students had no academic freedom rights in Pennsylvania and no grievance machinery, so it is no wonder that the administrators who testified said that there were no abuses. The Committee’s absurd conclusion was the result of a political coup by the teacher unions and their legislative guns.
The Academic Bill of Rights is both redundant and misleading. Most colleges already have rules ensuring free expression (political and otherwise), and Horowitz and his supporters have been able to offer scant evidence of campus political bullying.
13. Both these statements are false. The Academic Bill of Rights is not about free expression; it is about preventing professors from indoctrinating students instead of educating them. The evidence of faculty bullying of students is substantial.
The Bill of Rights serves as a perfect guise for his true aim: to pressure state-funded colleges and universities to pack their faculties with conservative professors.
14. This is a really big lie, since the first tenets of the Academic Bill of Rights forbid the hiring or firing of teachers on the basis of their political views.
According to Students for Academic Freedom, the group seeks “to get more than 500,000 signatures—10,000 per state—to present to lawmakers, alumni, regents and administrations across the nation” in support of the bill.
15. This is news to me. I know of no such plans. Tell me where you got this quote and I’ll find out who’s responsible.
Leading the “victimize us no more!” call to arms that has become a trademark of conservative pundits, Horowitz laments the blacklisting” of conservative students and professors and calls on his followers to keep a close eye on their professors. He urges them to help him keep a record of the supposed political bullying that he says occurs regularly in college classrooms in his Academic Freedom Abuse Center.
The Academic Freedom Abuse Center, housed on the Students for Academic Freedom website, invites students to report having their “rights abused” in class. But it only looks impressive until you start reading the actual claims. Some highlights: One student complains because her professor suggested men and women might see colors differently. Another is offended she was asked to watch an “immoral Seinfeld episode.” A recent entry in the database was from an Ohio State student who claims he got a bad grade on an essay because his English professor ” hates families and thinks it’s okay to be gay.” (Another complaint comes from an Augustana College senior who is upset her school used “funds from Student activity fees to bring in the one-sided speaker David Horowitz.”)
16. This is a bulletin board for students. The last comment from the Augustana student shows that we’re fair-minded.
Campus Progress hopes that students, faculty, campus administrators, and legislators of all ideological and political stripes will stand up against these efforts by Horowitz to turn state governments into Campus Thought Police.
17. This is a false and malicious claim. Every piece of legislation I had something to do with was a toothless resolution asking universities themselves to honor their own commitments to academic freedom. They are attempts to thwart the Campus Thought Police.
Censorship is wrong, whether from the left or the right. Faculty members ought to be judged on whether their scholarship is strong under the standards of their academic discipline and whether they are good teachers – not on whether the views they express meet specific guidelines established by state legislatures.
18. I agree that censorship is wrong, which is why I have campaigned against it, whether conducted by government or by professors who suppress one side of an argument.
In addition to the widely criticized Hating Whitey and Other Progressive Causes, Horowitz has authored such books as Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About the Sixties, The Politics of Bad Faith, and The Art of Political War, which Bush chief campaign strategist Karl Rove called a “must read.”
In a recent “lesson“ on his new website, Discoverthenetwork.org, Horowitz makes the outlandish claim that most of America’s progressive leaders, Hollywood entertainers and civil rights advocates are closely aligned with radical Islamist terrorists known for killing Americans.
19. Please provide the quote which makes this outlandish claim. I never said any such thing, specifically that most of America’s progressive leaders, Hollywood entertainers and civil rights advocates are closely aligned with radical Islamist terrorists known for killing Americans. DiscoverTheNetworks is an Encyclopedia of the left. It is not an argument that everyone on the left thinks alike or is in alliance with anyone else on the left. A social democrat headed NATO during the Cold War. That did not make him a conservative. He was a leftist who was an anti-Communist.
He’s not kidding around. Though at first glance (not to mention upon further inspection) it seems like a simple-minded ploy to earn chortles among the right at the expense of the left, he warns, “This database reflects links that are not merely caricatures by political enemies but are legitimate indices of a political reality.” In Horowitz’s political reality, Sen. Barack Obama appears on the same row as terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and John Walker Lindh, the American Taliban, appears next to the Center for American Progress’s very own John Podesta.
20. The previous comment should suffice to dispel these misconceptions. However, what is being referred to here is a picture index for the database which no longer exists. The fact that Podesta and Zarqawi are in the same database has no more significance than the fact that they are in the Wikipedia database except that this database is limited to the political left. I’ll bet that no one at Campus Progress would object to a database of the right that included Hitler and Sean Hannity or Phyllis Schlafly so why make a federal case out of this one?
Lately it seems that Horowitz will peddle crazy stories to just about anyone who will buy them. In March, he admitted that one of his favorite examples of the extreme liberal bias among college and university professors, is a story which he had never been able to substantiate,
For months Horowitz and his ilk had been chirping on and on about a University of Northern Colorado professor who, they said, asked his criminology class to explain on a midterm “why President Bush was a war criminal” and then failed a student who explained instead why Saddam Hussein was a war criminal. Anti-conservative bias at its best! Unfortunately, in a March 15th report on InsideHigherEd.com, a spokesperson for the school deflated Horowitz’s claims, saying that its information “was inconsistent with the story Horowitz has told about this incident,” including the question asked, the grade given, and the reasons forthe grade the student received.
21. First, to repeat, I never use the word bias let alone the phrase “extreme liberal bias.” Second this was not about bias on an exam, it was about compelling students to take one side of controversial issues. Third, what I said was correct. The details are contained in “The Case of the Colorado Exam.”
Meanwhile, the day before InsideHigherEd published its report, Horowitz had attacked Media Matters for slander on his website and had stood up for the validity of the story. Horowitz, always interested in the limelight, continued to beat this horse further to death, arguing that Media Matters was “creating a mountain out of the molehill of this particular case (our campaign is based on hundreds of cases).” Sound familiar? Remind anyone of a very posthumously abused horse named Ward Churchill – one crazy in a hundred non-crazies that folks like Horowitz talked about till they were blue in the face? Seems that Horowitz was just getting a taste of his own medicine.
22. Puh-leeze. Churchill has hundreds if not thousands of “crazy” supporters including the Ethnic Studies Association and the entire Ethnic Studies Department at his University.
Speaking of tasting, Horowitz was one of several conservative speakers who got pelted with food by students during speaking events in April 2005. On April 6, while delivering a speech to Butler University students, someone hurled a cream pie that hit Horowitz smack in the face. Campus Progress in no way endorses such attempts to curb free speech. Horowitz has as much of a right to speak his mind as the rest of us, no matter how weak his arguments or hazy his facts. And we don’t like wasting pie, which is (often) delicious. We do think it’s particularly lame that instead of chuckling it off and trying to save face, Horowitz is pressing criminal charges and is on a mission to get the perp suspended.
23. This is also made up. The cream pie was shoved in my face. I didn’t press criminal charges. I don’t think the “perp” was a student, and never pressed for him to be suspended.
On April 29, 2005, while speaking at Columbia University, Horowitz caused quite a stir when he passed out a pamphlet that bore a picture of Noam Chomsky with a turban and beard, under the heading, “The Ayatollah of Anti-American Hate.” At least Horowitz has a sense of irony: He was there to lecture students about the importance of “ideological diversity.” Apparently, this diversity doesn’t apply to lefty American scholars.
24. I don’t get this. I have never called for Chomsky to be fired or to be barred from classrooms. I wrote a pamphlet showing what an ass he is. How is this anti-diversity?
Students are starting to push back against Horowitz’s famous untruths and hate speech (and we don’t mean with pies). Recently, when speaking to students at the University of Hawaii, Horowitz was interrupted by a student each time he told a lie. Instead of shouting him down, however, the students simply corrected Horowitz’s misstatements. Needless to say, the students were then told to “shut up” by Horowitz supporters.
25. The above account of my appearance in Hawaii is pure fantasy. My speech couldn’t be started for twenty-minutes because of the disruptions of campus fascists (who, by the way, welcomed Ward Churchill as a conquering hero only a month or so before).
Also recently, our friends at ThinkProgress had the pleasure of being featured in a FrontPage magazine article by Horowitz titled, “The Multiple Lies of John Podesta and Friends“ for filing his precious Academic Bill of Rights under “Radical Right-wing Agenda.”
Apparently Horowitz doesn’t see how equating a progressive and inspiring young leader like Senator Obama with a murderous terrorist would be considered radical.
Apparently Horowitz doesn’t see how equating a progressive and inspiring young leader like Senator Obama with a murderous terrorist would be considered radical.
26. I’ve already dealt with the index that no longer exists.
These days, Horowitz is continuing his unapologetic, unquestioning defense of the Bush White House while accusing liberals who question the war of being anti-American.
27. This is false. Todd Gitlin opposes the war. I published an article by Gitlin on Frontpage. and called it “A View From the Patriotic Left.” I published another anti-war leftist, Sherman Alexie, and also referred to him as patriotic.
He recently attempted to convince the public that Bush was “exonerated” by the bipartisan membership of the Senate Intelligence Committee for his false statements during the 2003 State of the Union about Saddam Hussein seeking African uranium. Actually, what Horowitz referenced was not part of the Senate report, but rather a sentence from a British governmentinquiry that wasn’t published until a week after the Senate report came out. Meanwhile, he slams liberals who question the war – calling them anti-American in his columns in FrontPage Magazine – but never speaks of his fellow conservatives who likewise areoutraged about the mess in Iraq.
28. The above is garbage regurgitated from Media Matters, a website run by a self-confessed compulsive liar, David Brock. I have harshly criticized anti-American rightwingers like Justin Raimondo and Lew Rockwell, and presidential candidate Ron Paul, on my website.
Horowitz, envisioning right-wing extremism beyond college campuses, has now launched Parents and Students for Academic Freedom, an organization promoting his agenda in primary and secondary schools. They have partnered with ProtestWarrior, one of the far-right’s primary high school organizing groups that specializes in outrageous pro-war propaganda. The site for his new underage crusade prominently features stories from an anonymous 11-year-old who complains of such events as when a teacher asked the class, “What would a Taoist think of Bush?” After researchers have failed to confirm many of the stories from university campuses Horowitz has claimed to collect, are we really supposed to trust his nameless grammar school insider?
29. The above is merely slander. I have replied to the so-called researchers of the left in the “Replies to Critics” section of my site. The left declares evidence of abuses to be false, disregards the refutation of their claims and then you call me a liar in advance of anything I have said. Nice.
Despite Horowitz’s continuing inability to prove any systematic anti-conservative bias, he continues to spew forth accusations.
30. I have written almost 100,000 words analyzing the curricula of more than 200 college courses which indoctrinate students in leftwing ideology (not merely express a leftwing bias). You can find these analyses at http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/. Go to Academia and then Indoctrination Studies. If you think this is not proof of an indoctrination curriculum on college campuses, write a refutation.
In 2006, Horowitz published The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics inAmerica, attempting to create a McCarthyish blacklist of liberal professors.
31. The above statement is false. The book specifically defends the right of leftwing professors to express their leftwing views. It is not a blacklist and it is the opposite of “McCarthyish.”
32.
Once again, Horowitz’s undoing came by way of fact-check. As Media Matters documented, Horowitz’s condemnations are based on in-classroom statements by professors in only six ofthe cases, and, in 52 cases, was entirely dependent on outside-classroom activities. Furthermore, an in-depth report by Free Exchange on Campus, entitled “Facts Count,” further eviscerated Horowitz’s claims, documenting an absence of student corroboration(only 13 cases, none of which have withstood further scrutiny), anipulation and distortion of quotes, and in some cases, outright fabrication. Many of the accused professors have responded to Horowitz, often finding the accusations so unsubstantiated as to be comical.
33. The ludicrous “reports” by MediaMatters and Free Exchange (a wholly-owned subsidiary of the American Federation of Teachers) were refuted point by point by Jacob Laksin in “Discounting the Facts” which is available in my article archive under Replies to Critics. Free Exchange simply ignored the refutation without replying to it.
However blatantly ideological and indefensible, Horowitz appears determined to continue preaching “Academic Freedom” to his dwindling choir. In 2007, an increasingly grumpy Horowitz (see grumpy photo) published Indoctrination U: The Left’s War Against Academic Freedom. Despite Professors having been roundly denounced, Horowitz recycles already-debunked misrepresentations, half-truths, and creative exaggerations to rehash his agenda. Horowitz blames those intolerant leftists and indoctrinated drones for dismissing his campaign, brushing past any substantive critiques of his ideological bias and dishonesty. Horowitz appears to have been drowned out by his own petulance, with his book already in the discount bin.
34. More falsehoods. Indoctrination U will sell about 20,000 copies, quite respectable for such a book, and probably several times what Michael Berube’s What’s So Liberal About the Liberal Arts (which was written to combat my campaign) has sold. The Professors has sold about 50,000 copies. Your summary of the contents of my book is no more accurate than the wishful thinking about its sales.
As even the conservative faithful lose their taste for pundits high on provocation and weak on proof, perhaps Horowitz should reassess just why nobody is listening to him. (And, no, we’re not just saying all this because Horowitz recently referred to Campus Progress as “thegutter left.” But thanks for the mention!)
35. With this “profile” as evidence, I think it’s safe to say you are.
So read up on Horowitz and get ready – he may just be bringing his cries of liberal bias to a campus near you! You can track legislation in state legislatures and find out more at Free Exchange on Campus, a coalition organized by Campus Progress, the American Federation of Teachers, the Center for Campus Free Speech, the ACLU, and others.
Some of our Favorite Horowitz Quotes:
“Leftism itself is an infantile disorder. In the view of this puerile left, the American government is an omnipotent father who is to be blamed for everything – and is so blamed in order to exculpate the children, leftists like Brown and Sheehan, from their responsibility for anything.” (9/1/05)
“Do I think some members of the anti-war movement are in actual formal contact with the radical Islamists and advancing their agendas. Yes I do. Do I think you and Cindy Sheehan are? Only peripherally in that the radical Islamists are integrated into the anti-war coalition generally.” (to David Swanson, creator of MeetWithCindy.org, 8/19/05)
“You see, the left isn’t forgiving or civil. Instead they are violently, fervently committed to their unholy war to tear down American democracy and replace it with their version – anAmericanized version – of communism.” (3/8/2000)
“The so-called “peace movement” today is led by the same hate-America radicals who supported America’s totalitarian enemies during the Cold War. They marched in support of the Vietcong, the Sandinista Marxists and the Communist guerrillas in El Salvador. Before that they marched in behalf of Stalin and Mao. They still support Castro and the nuclear lunatic in North Korea, Kim Jong-Il. They are the friends in deed of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.” (4/7/2003)
“If Rodney King had obeyed the orders clearly given and had laid down in a ‘prone position’ on the night of his famous encounter with Los Angeles police, 58 people would be alive today, $16 billion would be circulating in the economy and four dedicated LAPD officers who were working to the book that night would not have been forced to endure two trials (the first had acquitted them) and had their careers destroyed to appease the liberal conscience. But liberals had to make their point.” (9/9/2003)
“Now it is virtually impossible for a vocal conservative to be hired for a tenure-track position on a faculty anywhere, or to receive tenure if so hired.” (4/18/2003)
“Paradoxically, at the same time, the destructive Left sees in American democracy and the Constitution that created it, a powerful weapon it can use to destroy the system. Consequently – and again somewhat paradoxically – the anti-American Left has directed a significant part of its political energy towards attacks on the American court system and on the Constitution itself.” (“Out of Many, One,” 11/24/2003)
“What I’ve set out to do is to try to restore the educational principles that were in place before the generation of sixties leftists infiltrated the university and corrupted it by transforming it into an ideological platform.” Horowitz, (2005).
Be sure to check out our other Know Your Right-Wing Speakers profiles. And keep checking the blogs for the latest “Horowitz Watch“ from our campus correspondents.
—updated by Niral Shah, Dartmouth College
—updated by Niral Shah, Dartmouth College
Illustration: August J. Pollak
——–
Comments
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You article mischaracterizes Horowitz, his intentions, and his positions. Idealogical (left or right) monopolies, Horowitz rightfully asserts, compromise the academic mission. Horowitz presents unwelcomely, but writes eloquently, on many subjects. — Simon – Apr 25, 09:04 PM- #
Your incredibly dishonest interpretation of Horowitz’s views only serves to validate the things he is saying. – David – May 7, 12:16 AM – #
You say that Horowitz did an about-face in 1985. In fact, his about-face came in 1974. At that time, Horowitz was working with the Black Panthers, which had become a criminal organization. He helped a friend of his, Betty Van Patter, get a job doing bookkeeping for the Panthers.
Van Patter was murdered, and Horowitz has always (rightly) felt partly responsible. Since then, Horowitz has shown a deep antipathy for the left in general and for blacks in particular. His Frontpage magazine regularly publishes the views of unabashed racists like David Yeagley, thus allowing Horowitz to express his racism without having to actually sign his own name to it. — gordo – May 30, 06:48 PM – #
David H. is one of my heros. I work in the media and see first hand the horrible bias in the world of commercial news reporting. David saw the errors of his former ways and with his age came wisdom and he has graduated to a higher level of understanding. Anyone supporting the current media regime will soon see the errors of their ways as well. — K. Kaas – Jun 12, 03:06 PM – #
Wow, it’s good to know propaganda now comes in an easy to read, online format. What will campus progress think of next? — Sam – Jul 28, 12:53 PM – #
I am looking for a quote from Horowitz. I heard he said that “Black people should be appreciative of slavery because they got a chance to be a part of America, otherwise they’d still be savages.” Is this accurate? Thank you. — Jennifer – Sep 17, 10:35 PM – #
Its nice to see the author of this tripe take a beating. The lefties are out of control. — Dean Smith – Sep 20, 08:35 PM – #
If you don’t see the liberal bias on college campuses today, you embrace a level of ignorance that is altogether appalling! There’s no hope for you to touch reality. The collection of responses to your propoganda on this page restores my faith in humanity. — Steve Kno – Oct 8, 01:01 AM – #
The most interesting items in the piece were the quotes from Horowitz. Yes, the commentary is laughable. It is the kind of thing you would expect from one of limited experience. Only two of the quotes stretch the truth. The others are just true. Horowitz is correct in pointing out just how little the truth matters to political extremists. The left has no monopoly on indifference to facts, but its does have a controlling interest. — Slim – Oct 8, 08:40 PM – #
I just finished reading the book Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About the Sixties.This book is about the worst book ever written. They take isolated cases and twist them to imply that black people are evil or something and will shoot you even if you fight for them, and that ALL liberals were radicals and wanted to blow up buildings and kill people. From what I’ve read on the internet today about Horowitz, it totally doesn’t surprise me in any way.
In the Sixties, all they wanted was to give peace a chance, and now this dork comes and makes it look like they wanted to cause civil war. Typical right wing garbage, distorting the facts and drawing conclusions that were never there. I’m guessing that if he had it his way, we’d still be worshipping Senator McCarthy and rounding up supposed Soviet spies. — David – Oct 11, 11:46 AM – #
thanks for this page. this asshole and his mouth pieces are launching their insanely racist and pro-war campaign called “islamo-fascim awareness week” and they’re actually coming to a school near me. so its good to have info to expose these racists for the liars and bigots that they are. — Ken – Oct 17, 05:21 PM – #
Horowitz is brilliant. He truly understands . Educate yourselves. Allow the man to speak and do not interupt. P.S. Senator McCarthy was right. The Venona releases exhonerated him. — Dennis D – Oct 25, 09:31 PM – #
I agree that Horowitz is brilliant. But I would add that he is right too. Islamo-Fascists and their promoters won’t prevail. — Abe Bird – Oct 26, 05:17 AM – #
Up with Horowitz! Down with Islamofascism! Up with the right wing! Down with campus radicals! Wharlarlarlarlar, ummugummugummugummu! Mooo! — benj – Oct 26, 10:11 AM – #
© Campus Progress, Center for American Progress 1333 H Street, NW, 10th Floor, Washington, D.C. 20005
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Article printed from NewsReal Blog: http://www.newsrealblog.com/
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