David Horowitz has sadly passed. He helped us discover what went wrong in America. Horowitz cracked the DNA code of the Left when most tony conservative print publications were chained to wonky policy, never fully understanding who opposed their ideas.
If Horowitz wasn’t the first to crack the Left’s DNA code, he did it the best. After all, he was well-positioned.
A self-admitted “red diaper baby,” Horowitz was raised by communist parents in Queens. Zealous fans of Joseph Stalin, David’s parents immersed the future conservative revolutionary in the deepest darkest recesses of communist ideology.
He understood the nexus between American left-wing politics and their role as progeny of Marx, Lenin, and the Gulags in a way nobody on the right could.
That’s what made his gradual transformation from Marxist to a leading conservative so dangerous for the American left – he understood them, he saw through the charade.
He knew what the Left was capable of.
David shattered their central premise: The institutional Left – and their partners in the Democratic Party – didn’t really exist to help people like they claimed. They did not exist to do good, he said.
In reality, David Horowitz would repeat, the Left hurt people. The policies of the Left resulted in carnage – carnage on the streets, in the American family, and in the culture. They left victims in their wake.
He insisted we stop using the term “liberals.”
“The only things they are liberal about,” he retorted, “are sex and drugs. Everything else they are totalitarian.”
I first encountered the work of David Horowitz when I started getting unsolicited pamphlets in the mail in college called “Heterodoxy.” It was his attempt to blunt political correctness on college campuses before I had ever heard the term political correctness.
Horowitz was in the fight against campus speech authoritarians decades before anyone else because he cracked the DNA of the Left. He understood their designs and where this was all going.
Horowitz also understood the toxic role of race in progressive politics. He was chummy with Black Panthers in the sixties and saw how racial strife was part of the design to undermine the American experiment. When I left the Department of Justice sixteen years ago because of the dismissal of the New Black Panther voter intimidation case, David called me.
He understood what was happening. He had seen this show before.
David Horowitz was a master writer. His writing was brilliant, sharp, efficient, dramatic, and transformative.
He reconstructed the Left’s deconstruction of America. He ripped their ideas down to the studs. He gained insight into the deepest personal aspects of leftist psychology, historical trends, and the Left’s cultural norms. His writing was sharp and persuasive.
Young writers in this new media would do well to read his works.
Every year, Horowitz brought together an amazing group of thinkers to Restoration Weekend, an event sponsored by the Horowitz Freedom Center. I saw senators, congressmen, and thought leaders assembled there for a weekend of debate and dialogue. His life, work, and prose commanded the greatest respect, and he will be sadly missed.
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