LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Guilty until proven innocent


Editor’s Note: This letter to the editor is printed in response to the column “David Horowitz does not belong on campus,” which ran in the March 23, 2016 edition of the Daily Trojan. This letter has been printed as submitted and the information presented has not been independently verified.

On the day I was scheduled to speak at USC this week, a column appeared in the Daily Trojan, titled “David Horowitz Does Not Belong On Campus.” The author, an Iranian student named Lida Dianti, justified her desire to ban me from speaking by claiming that I was a racist and anti-Muslim, and that I “vilified Palestinians.”

In fact, I have been a lifelong defender of minorities and particularly African Americans, having been in my first civil rights march 68 years ago, during the Truman administration, almost half a century before Lida Dianti was born. Dianti justifies her claim that I am an anti-black racist with these words: “He has refuted the prevalence of institutionalized racism,” and “[dismissed] the systems that actively oppress black Americans.” Well, if I’ve “refuted” the claim that there is institutional racism then what is the complaint? Apparently, the complaint is that the truth is racist. This actually captures my view of the protests against conservative speakers on this and other campuses: The protesters can’t handle the truth.

I do believe that institutionalized racism is a myth. Despite protests at the University of Missouri and Yale about “racism,” for example, these institutions spend millions of dollars to recruit minority students and rig admissions requirements to benefit those that can’t meet their standards. Those are facts, not opinions, which leftists can’t refute and therefore want to suppress.

The claim that I am anti-Muslim was lifted by Dianti from a left-wing smear site where I am described as “the godfather of the anti-Muslim movement.” Despite the fact that I have written more than a million published words and there are hours of video recordings of my campus speeches and TV appearances on YouTube, neither the left-wing smear site nor Lida Dianti were able to find even one sentence that could honestly be described as “anti-Muslim.” I am not against Muslims. I am against Islamic terror and the Islamic jihad. My detractors convert this into an attack on all Muslims by ignoring that crucial distinction.

I have never described Muslim students as “Wahhabi Islamicists who basically support our enemies,” as Dianti falsely claims. I have said that specific organizations, like Students for Justice in Palestine, were created by the Muslim Brotherhood and support the Hamas terrorists who are our enemies. Students for Justice in Palestine and the Muslim Students Association, which is also a creature of the Muslim Brotherhood, have conducted national campaigns to demonize Israel and its Jews, and support the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement whose goal is to strangle the Jewish state — which is the real reason why I am regularly attacked by the left on campuses like this.

Finally, in a speech at Brooklyn College, I did say that the Palestinians are “morally sick” — one of the few statements in Dianti’s column that is true — but she left out the context. I had first pointed out that Hamas and the Palestinian leadership explicitly call for the extermination of the Jews. I described this as “Nazi.” I pointed out that 100 percent of Palestinians who vote, vote for terrorist parties with these Nazi agendas. I said leftists will nonetheless defend the support of Nazi agendas as the regrettable effect of being oppressed. Then I said this: “But even if they were oppressed, that is no excuse for embracing Nazism. People have been oppressed for thousands of years, yet there has never before been a people that has strapped bombs to its own children, told them to blow themselves up along with other children who are Jews, and if they do so they will go to heaven.  Moreover, if they are lucky enough to be male, they will be rewarded with 72 virgins. That is sick.” You may disagree with my conclusion but it is hardly an attack on Palestinians as such. It is an attack on their behavior.

Lida Dianti concludes her plea that I should be silenced by saying that hers “is not an attack on freedom of speech but rather on hate speech.” This is a very dangerous misunderstanding of freedom of speech, which either protects all speech or is meaningless. One woman’s hate speech is another man’s truth. Learn to live with that, Lida, and since you are a college student, learn to deal with arguments you don’t like by finding ways to refute them, rather than by conducting protests to suppress them.

David Horowitz

Author

19 replies
  1. BostonTW
    BostonTW says:

    I hope all USC undergraduates realize that even hate speech is protected under the 1st Amendment; just ask any USC Law School professor.

    • jon
      jon says:

      I don’t think anyone denies that he has a constitutional right, no? The question is whether someone of his sort should be invited to speak on campus.

      • JVW
        JVW says:

        What is your argument against inviting him on to campus? That he isn’t intellectual enough for your tastes? Like him or not, David Horowitz has written a couple dozen books, is a media celebrity, and is someone whose opinions are taken seriously by a significant segment of the American population. Why is he any less desirable a speaker than a wealthy dilettante like Arianna Huffington, who is scheduled to speak April 13?

        • jon
          jon says:

          Huffington created a media empire. Can you think of anyone better to speak to Annenberg students, for example? Horowitz isn’t an academic, doesn’t have particularly interesting or thoughtful views, speaks in an uncivil and hostile language designed to annoy, provoke, and divide, and is a pretty marginal figure. Why not have a Salaam, a Yuri Levin, a Ponnuru, a Walter Russell Mead?

          • JVW
            JVW says:

            Huffington cashed in on her divorce to a very wealthy guy to “build” her “empire.” If the advice she gives in her lecture is how to marry rich with no prenup then exploit dimwit celebrities’ need for validation as serious thinkers by convincing them to blog for free, then I guess she will be working in her area of expertise. She’s a Donald Trump who married into wealth rather than being born into it.

          • jon
            jon says:

            Yes, married to a late Republican Senator from PA. Nonetheless, HuffPo is huuuuuge. She may have had the money to invest, but it would be very hard-hearted to say that it didn’t take some savvy to get from A -> B.

          • JVW
            JVW says:

            Nah, you’re thinking of John Kerry here, who is married to the widow of the late wealthy PA Senator. Ms. Huffington was married to Michael Huffington, a wealthy businessman who ran unsuccessfully for a Senate seat from CA and who is still with us as far as I know. But I can see why you might confuse the two; there are a lot of similarities between Kerry and Arianna Huffington.

          • JVW
            JVW says:

            And with respect to your characterization of Horowitz, how is he any different (apart from having an academia-approved ideology) from a journalist like David Corn who has spoken at SC in the past?

          • jon
            jon says:

            I can’t say that I am overly knowledgeable about David Corn so wouldn’t want to try and B.S. you. Has Mr Corn said nearly such hateful things? About whom?

          • JVW
            JVW says:

            See, here again you are trying to disqualify Horowitz for the content of his speech. Who determines what is “hateful”? Is it you and your allies? This is exactly why people shouldn’t be given veto power over who gets to speak on campus; it always devolves into ugly censorship based upon flimsy accusations of “hate speech.” Thanks for the back-and-forth, but I think I’ve said all I want to say on this topic.

          • jon
            jon says:

            Sure. And some policing has to be done or else David Irving would be on campus every other week because of some bozo

  2. jon
    jon says:

    Why did the Daily Trojan give space to this nonsense? Horowitz runs a website whose aim is to silence Professors who disagree with his worldview. Even notwithstanding his highly ignorant views on international affairs and race relations, this idiot should never have been invited onto a campus like USC where we value civilized debate and discussion.

    • Arafat
      Arafat says:

      Pretty funny. And here I thought most Trojans – seeing as though something like 80% of them are liberals – wanted to silence Horowitz.

      • jon
        jon says:

        I don’t think any of us are under the illusion that we could silence him if we tried. I think we’d very much prefer not to have him on campus, though. Also, 80% is too high. It’s probably 25% liberal, 20% conservative, and the rest apathetic. It’s only conservative fever dreams when it comes to politics on campuses.

  3. Thekatman
    Thekatman says:

    Excellent rebuttal to a very silly and dangerous attempt to spread hateful propaganda about good people. Horowitz’s is spot on in his assessment of the Palestinian movement in this country and their goal of spreading hate in the world. Dianti should be ashamed of herself for aligning herself with these hateful organizations. Want to do some good in the world instead of promoting hate and harm to others? Try working in the local community to help others help themselves.

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