David Horowitz started out the way a lot of right-wingers did: on the left. He grew up a "red diaper baby," marching alongside his Communist parents in the '50s. He was among the founders of the New Left in the '60s and was editor of the radical magazine Ramparts. Then, after the murder of a friend by a member of the Black Panthers, he realized how radicalized and totalitarian his liberal colleagues had become. His past experiences and transformation are recounted in the autobiographical Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey (1996) and Left Illusions: An Intellectual Odyssey (2003), as well as Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About the Sixties (1989), co-written with biographer Peter Collier.
Once deep in the trenches of liberal activism, Horowitz has now for over three decades spoken out against the virulent anti-Americanism, and often anti-Semitism, of the left. This includes not only grass-roots organizations but also powerful high-ranking Democrats and their financial supporters. Among numerous books he has written on this are The Politics of Bad Faith: The Radical Assault on America's Future (1998), Hating Whitey and Other Progressive Causes (1999), The Art of Political War and Other Radical Pursuits (2000), and most recently The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party (2007), co-written with Richard Poe. In 1988 he founded the Center for the Study of Popular Culture (renamed the David Horowitz Freedom Center in 2006) and runs the website FrontPageMag.com.
Horowitz is also currently a strong voice against the threat of radical Islam. His book Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left (2004) is an eye-opening account of how these two groups directly or indirectly cooperate to undermine American and Israeli interests. Just a few weeks ago Horowitz launched Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, mobilizing dozens of speakers to deliver speeches on radical Islam on college campuses throughout the country. Exhibiting their characteristic open-mindedness and tolerance for diverse points of view, certain student groups smeared the speakers as Islamophobes and attempted to disrupt their speeches. Horowitz, who himself came to speak at Emory University, was shouted off the stage by a mob of students and was ultimately unable to deliver his speech. (Mind-blowing, considering just weeks prior, the Jew-hating and Holocaust-denying leader of Iran managed to speak at Columbia University uninterrupted.)
Confronting the one-sided activism and infiltration of classrooms by radicals-turned-teachers at all levels of education is yet another of Horowitz's missions. In 2003 he founded the Students for Academic Freedom (SAF) and devised an Academic Bill of Rights to protect students from teachers who use their classrooms to launch political rants rather than teach the subject were hired to teach. Horowitz writes on this crucial issue in Indoctrination U: The Left's Assault on Academic Freedom (2007). His 2006 book The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics is a disturbing exposé of teachers at the country's most prominent universities and their ties to radical,even terrorist, activity.
Needless to say, David Horowitz has acquired several enemies during his years confronting radical leftism and radical Islam. He is routinely denounced as hateful, divisive, racist, intolerant, Islamophobic, and fascist. Neither surprised nor deterred by these personal attacks, Horowitz continues campaigning to protect America, as well as Israel, from the threats posed by these powerful and well-funded groups. For that, he is truly a Rite Jew.
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