David Horowitz

David Horowitz Credit: Flickr/Gage Skidmore Wikimedia

David Horowitz is the controversial founder and chief executive of the David Horowitz Freedom Center (DHFC), an umbrella organisation that operates a number of far-right websites and blogs and that publishes the online FrontPage Magazine, edited by Horowitz.

Horowitz is known for his shrill right-wing and anti-Islamic rhetoric and his organisation has given grants to various causes such as the anti-Islam Dutch politician's Geert Wilders PVV party.

Background

Horowitz is a former hardline Marxist, who converted and is now staunchly anti-left. In an interview with Al Jazeera in 2008, he claimed that 'The American left wanted us to lose the Cold War with the Soviets and it wants us to lose the war on terror.' He started the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, a group meant 'to establish a conservative presence in Hollywood,' which was rebranded as the David Horowitz Freedom Center later on.

Publications

In 2006, Horowitz wrote The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America, a book likening to the McCarthyist era. In the book he even defended the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy, saying, 'It is now known … that McCarthy underes­timated the extent of Soviet infiltration in American government and that virtually all individuals called before congressional committees were involved in a conspiratorial network controlled by the Kremlin.'

One of the professors spoken of in the book was widely respected Reconstruction scholar Eric Foner: 'Professor Foner participated in an anti-war "teach in" at Columbia University, where he invoked Communist Party icon Paul Robeson as a model of patriotism.' In his attack on Foner, Horowitz also noted that another professor at the teach-in had maligned the U.S. military and said he'd like 'to see a million Mogadishus.'

Reactions

The book was vehemently criticised by Free Exchange on Campus, a coalition of 10 influential groups including the American Association of University Professors, in a major study called Facts Count. The study concluded that 'Horowitz’s research is sloppy in the extreme' and rife with 'inaccuracies, distortions and manipulations of fact.'

As for his claims concerning McCarthy, Facts Count, denied the fact that all or most of those who were called were involved in such a network. It is also untrue that McCarthy’s wild accusations were an underestimate.

It was revealed that Foner's praise of Robeson - who also has been honored on a U.S. stamp - was just to quote him saying 'The patriot is the person who is never satisfied with his country'. Horowitz also failed to mention that Foner had criticized his fellow professor's comment about the military on the very same day as the teach-in, calling it 'reprehensible.'

Allegations

Around Islam and Muslims

• In an October 2015 interview with the Columbia Spectator he said that 'somewhere between 150 million and 750 million Muslims support a holy war against Christians, Jews, and other Muslims who don’t hap­pen to believe in the Quran according to Bin Laden.' His claims can be likened to Brigitte Gabriel's claim that '180 million to 300 million' Muslims are 'radical Islamists who are willing to strap bombs on their bodies and walk into this room and blow us all up to smithereens.' Peter Bergen, a terrorism expert with the New America think tank, published a survey that concluded there was a global total of 85,000 to 106,000 Muslims belonging to jihadist groups — so about 0.006625% of Muslims.

• The DHFC placed an ad in an April 2008 issue of a campus news­paper, The Daily Nexus, claiming that the Muslim Student Association was 'founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the godfather of Al Qaeda and Hamas, to bring jihad into the heart of American higher education.' Horowitz himself spoke at the University of Santa Barbara on this issue, saying that tThere is a movement for a second Holocaust of the Jews that is being supported on this campus by the Muslim Student Association!' Yet it was revealed by faculty members that the MSA had worked with Jewish campus groups.

• The Santa Barbara Independent reported that he had described the traditional Arab keffiyeh headdress for men as a symbol of terrorism.

Around university professors

• He told Fox News on September 3, 2010, that university professors are 'recruiting for radical parties, terrorist-supporting parties, no question.'

Around the Left and terrorism

• On March 24, 2005, Horowitz claimed 'there are only a couple of degrees of separation between anybody on the left and the terrorists — and that includes people in the Democratic Party, even those who are anti-terrorist.' This conspiracy theory around the 'Islamo-Communist takeover' was coined by Glenn Beck and discredited.

Affiliations

• Jewish Policy Center - Board of Fellows
• David Horowitz Freedom Center

External resources

• Rightweb David Horowitz