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CounterPunch
October
31, 2002
The Delusions
of David Horowitz
by KURT NIMMO
Behold, David Horowitz, former Marxist gone neoconservative
in his autumn years. In the world Horowitz occupies all of the
clocks have lurched backward to a more paranoid and suspicious
time, let us say somewhere mid-stride of the McCarthy inquisition.
In the world Horowitz inhabits there are communists under beds
and Grand Conspiracies on the tapis. For instance, last weekend's
march in Washington against the proposed madness of war is simply
and conclusively explained away by Horowitz as "a regrouping
of the Communist left, the same left that supported Stalin and
Mao and Ho." Granted, in the 60s -- an era David is apparently
unable to escape -- there was much talk of Mao and Ho, yet very
little of Stalin beyond the blather of discredited old school
Communists which Horowitz inexplicably adds to his toxic brew
of condemnation. Nonetheless, any serious talk of Ho and Mao
was generally limited to strict Marxist ideologues, of which
Mr. Horowitz was one (he remains a strident ideologue, though
no longer Marxist). Most folks in opposition to the Vietnam war
didn't buy into Mao, Ho, Che, or Stalin. Of course, as Horowitz
likely remembers it, anybody opposed to the Vietnam war was marching
around spewing irrelevancies from Mao's Little Red Book -- a
text, it must be remembered, essentially introduced by the Black
Panthers as a way to make a quick buck. No doubt David, back
in the day, helped the BP sell more than a few copies.
The Horowitz glass is distorted, blackened.
When he ganders therein, David observes Ramsey Clark lending
a helping hand to Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein. It does
not matter, of course, that Clark has denounced Saddam Hussein;
what irks David is the fact Clark has called the sanctions against
Iraq immoral and barbaric, not the stuff of a civilized people.
Or maybe Horowitz is angered by Clark's insistence that Bush
Senior is a war criminal for bombing helpless Iraqi innocents
into pre-industrial hellishness over a decade ago. David, in
his devious way, makes no mention of these things, preferring
instead stark generalities. David Horowitz cannot be bothered
with particulars or fair play. There is no time, or luxury, because
the Clarks of the world dream of a "Communist revolution
in America," the "immediate agenda" of which is
to "force America's defeat in the war with terror we are
now in." Clark and the "100,000 Communists" in
Washington last weekend "are not pacifists and they are
not peaceniks," they are "a movement of by and for
America's enemies within." You, who are now reading this,
and who may disagree with Bush's cataclysmic plans for Iraq --
you are seditious fellow travelers on the move with Saddam Hussein
and Osama bin Laden.
David Horowitz has also revealed a fondness
for historical revisionism, or possibly historical omission.
"The Communist left," explains neocon guru David, "also
opposed 'American militarism' in the 1930s to prevent the West
from stopping Hitler." Never mind that well before the US
even pondered going to war with Germany (which, prior to Pearl
Harbor, most Americans did not support) -- back when Henry Ford
was accepting awards from the Nazis and happy as a clam to have
slave laborers toiling in his German factories -- more than a
few American communists and plain folk of principle were sailing
off for Spain to fight the Franco version of fascism. Moreover,
David may wish to tell us about the Nazi émigrés
who assumed prominent positions in the Republican Party after
the war. I wonder, does the name Reinhard Gehlen ring a bell
with David Horowitz? Or possibly Laszlo Pasztor, a convicted
Nazi war collaborator, who served as adviser to Republican Paul
Weyrich? David should exercise more caution when he decides to
become a history teacher.
Here's another historical doozie from
Horowitz: "The success of the anti-Vietnam left resulted
in the deaths of two and a half million people in Indo-China
who were slaughtered by the Marxists after the 'peace movement'
forced America's withdrawal." No doubt Horowitz read the
flawed study authored by Jacqueline Desbarats and Karl Jackson,
which attempted to demonstrate how a major bloodbath went down
in South Vietnam following the Communist victory of 1975. This
myth was pretty much put to rest by Gareth Porter and James Roberts
in "Creating a Bloodbath by Statistical Manipulation."
At any rate, if David is sincerely interested in learning about
murder in Southeast Asia, he may begin with Zbigniew Brzezinski.
"I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot. I encouraged
the Thai to help the [Khmer Rouge]," Brzezinski has proudly
admitted. In November 1980, Ray Cline, former Deputy Director
of the CIA, visited a Khmer Rouge enclave inside Cambodia in
his capacity as senior foreign-policy adviser to President-elect
Ronald Reagan. Good old Reagan, undoubtedly a hero for Horowitz
and like-minded far right demagogues, made sure Pol Pot and his
genocidal and obsequious followers received $85 million from
1980 to 1986. All of this was revealed years later in correspondence
between congressional lawyer Jonathan Winer, then counsel to
Sen. John Kerry of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and
the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation. Horowitz, to his
discredit, is careless with the facts -- but then, as a propagandist,
he is not in the business of truth or accuracy. David is after
the "internal threat," those who would "weaken
America's defenses from within," which is to say anybody
who disagrees with him or US foreign policy, anybody who may
elect to exercise his or her constitutional right to petition
the government.
David Horowitz believes the "size
of [the Washington] demonstrations is a reflection of the growth
of a treacherous anti-American radicalism in this country that
has no Communist Party per se, but is just as dedicated to America's
destruction... [America is] the Great Satan and we deserve to
be attacked. This is the real message of the so-called peace
movement, often covertly and disingenuously expressed... Their
agenda is to weaken America's defenses from within. The question
is: will we let them?" If anybody is disingenuous here,
it is Horowitz. As a former antiwar leftist he knows damn well
the vast majority of the people who oppose Bush's impending war
do not want to destroy America -- or are they dedicated to aiding
and abetting al-Qaeda -- but rather they are sincerely interested
in preventing an unnecessary and potentially disastrous war.
Because David Horowitz wanted to destroy his country when he
was a Marxist some thirty odd years ago does not mean all progressives
desire to do the same now. Chances are very few of them are Marxists
or conniving black flag anarchists bent on throwing bombs, as
Horowitz would likely have it. Chances are, as well, they are
unanimous in their disapproval and loathing of the mass murder
perpetuated on September 11. Horowitz simply reveals his cynical,
paranoid, and -- yes, unfortunately -- misanthropic nature by
churning out such sweeping and absurd comments about the good
intentions of people he knows absolutely nothing about. Like
a many former Marxists gone to neocon seed, he is a master at
shuffling people off into neat red pencil categories of disapprobation.
Finally, Horowitz is with John Ashcroft,
the son of a preacher who agrees wholeheartedly about the "internal
threat" (i.e., those with the temerity to dissent insane
and destructive policies) and a man bestowed with the power to
do something about it. "The hatred of John Ashcroft reflects
the demonstrators' hatred for the American government and for
the ordinary Americans whom our government protects," opines
David. How, exactly, this protection will arrive in the guise
of the Patriot Act -- with its draconian provisions for internet
snooping, roving wiretaps, domestic detours around FISA limitations,
and "sneak-and-peek" warrants -- is not explained.
Obviously, Horowitz agrees with Ashcroft and Bush that good old
fashion government, as envisioned by the founders of this nation,
is no longer relevant, desirable, or applicable. If Thomas Jefferson
were around today, no doubt he would have something to say about
Bush's wholesale trashing of governmental checks and balances,
the creation of a secret and unanswerable executive branch, throwing
habeas corpus out the window, snooping on the reading habits
of library patrons, holding American citizens incommunicado,
and eventual military tribunals for the same conducted in secret
star chambers. But then, I imagine, Horowitz would characterize
Jefferson as an America-hating communist as well, mostly because
he sincerely believed in the "eternal and unremitting force
of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by jury," which Ashcroft
and his apologist Horowitz, in their eminent arrogance and contempt
for those who disagree with them, believe is no longer necessary.
Kurt Nimmo
is a photographer and multimedia developer in Las Cruces, New
Mexico. He can be reached at: nimmo@zianet.com
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