David Horowitz does not belong on campus
Editor’s Note: David Horowitz has disputed some of the assertions made in this column, which he believes are defamatory. In the interest of presenting all viewpoints, an agreement was reached with Mr. Horowitz where he was allowed to respond with equal space in a letter to the editor which printed in the March 28 edition of the Daily Trojan.
The College Republicans will be hosting David Horowitz on Wednesday for an event called “Stop the Jew Hatred: How Anti-Semitism is Perpetuated on College Campuses.” Dubbed the godfather of the modern anti-Muslim movement by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Horowitz is a conservative writer whose fundamentalist views degrade black Americans, immigrants and Arabs. Because incendiary rhetoric breeds intolerance against certain groups, it is irresponsible for a student organization to bring in a speaker who foments religious and ethnic hostilities.
Horowitz has a history of making unfounded and racist remarks. He has refuted the prevalence of institutionalized racism in the United States. He claims that “some blacks can’t seem to locate the ladder of opportunity within reach of others,” and in doing so, dismisses the systems that actively oppress black Americans. He has described the Black Lives Matter movement as “a racist hate group founded by a core of radicals.”
On Fox News’ Neil Cavuto Show, he said: “Muslim Student Associations were created by Hamas and funded by Saudi Arabia.” He also described Muslim students as “Wahhabi Islamicists [sic]” who “basically support our enemies.” His assertion is dangerously reductive and portrays all Muslims as extremists. His intent is to incite Islamophobia and to criminalize Muslim students. This type of us-versus-them mentality further divides people and reduces the complexities of Muslim identity.
In response to Israeli apartheid Week, Horowitz spoke to Brooklyn College using defamatory language to vilify and dehumanize Palestinians.
“No people have shown themselves as so morally sick as the Palestinians,” Horowitz said. “No other people has sunk so low as the Palestinians.” This is a man who openly and unabashedly slanders an entire population — on what merit can someone who is racist toward one group condemn the prejudice and hatred of another?
Horowitz’s hate-mongering against Muslims, African-Americans and Palestinians is unacceptable. People like Horowitz work to create spaces for the mass production of ignorance to promote their own political agendas.
While anti-Semitism is certainly an issue that deserves attention, bringing in a speaker like Horowitz creates an environment for inflammatory rhetoric rather than academic discourse. In fact, selecting a man whose bigotry and ignorance is well-known does a disservice to students who want to engage in a discussion about anti-Semitism. It is important to note that anti-Semitism — prejudice or hatred of Jews — is not the same as anti-Zionism, which opposes Israeli ethno-nationalism and the occupation of the Palestinian territories. I say this specifically because the description of the event is full of seditious language meant to divide the student body into two parties: (1) those who believe in, as the Facebook event asserts, “‘apartheid walls’ which disseminate mendacious Hamas propaganda” and bolster “lies about the Jewish state spread by Palestinian terrorists and their campus allies” and (2) everyone else. This type of rhetoric does little to facilitate an academic discussion but instead perpetuates an extreme interpretation of anti-Zionism. Conflating anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism is not only ignorant but also inaccurate.
There is very little respect for those who disagree with the Zionist cause. I find this ironic, coming from a campus organization that constantly recycles the same two arguments when faced with a difference of opinion — that the opposition to inflammatory rhetoric is an attack on freedom of speech and that students who enjoy left-wing privilege do not make room for intellectual diversity on campus. This said, why is an opinion different from traditional conservatism met with degradation? It seems as though the argument for intellectual diversity is only valid when it backs the conservative cause.
What the College Republicans need to understand is that criticizing Horowitz is not an attack on freedom of speech but rather on hate speech. According to the American Bar Association, hate speech is “speech that offends, threatens or insults groups, based on race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, disability or other trait.”
Anti-Semitism has no place on our campus. Hatred against Jews is shameful and dangerous. Rhetoric or hate crimes steeped in anti-Jewish sentiment are never to be tolerated. All Jewish students should feel safe and protected at USC. In this regard, I contend that the same treatment is due to people of other faiths. Anti-Semitism is an important topic that needs to be addressed, but doing so does not give students a free pass to slander Muslims and belittle Palestinian students and their allies. All students are entitled to their opinions on the Arab-Israeli conflict, and those same students deserve to be treated with respect regardless of their political and ethnic affiliations.
Lida Dianti is a junior majoring in international relations. Her column, “That’s So Racist!,” runs Wednesdays.
EDITORIAL: Destroy all churches
Obama silent while Saudi grand mufti targets Christianity
By THE WASHINGTON TIMES – The Washington Times – Friday, March 16, 2012
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
If the pope called for the destruction of all the mosques in Europe, the uproar would be cataclysmic. Pundits would lambaste the church, the White House would rush out a statement of deep concern, and rioters in the Middle East would kill each other in their grief. But when the most influential leader in the Muslim world issues a fatwa to destroy Christian churches, the silence is deafening.
On March 12, Sheik Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, the grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, declared that it is “necessary to destroy all the churches of the region.” The ruling came in response to a query from a Kuwaiti delegation over proposed legislation to prevent construction of churches in the emirate. The mufti based his decision on a story that on his deathbed, Muhammad declared, “There are not to be two religions in the [Arabian] Peninsula.” This passage has long been used to justify intolerance in the kingdom. Churches have always been banned in Saudi Arabia, and until recently Jews were not even allowed in the country. Those wishing to worship in the manner of their choosing must do so hidden away in private, and even then the morality police have been known to show up unexpectedly and halt proceedings
This is not a small-time radical imam trying to stir up his followers with fiery hate speech. This was a considered, deliberate and specific ruling from one of the most important leaders in the Muslim world. It does not just create a religious obligation for those over whom the mufti has direct authority; it is also a signal to others in the Muslim world that destroying churches is not only permitted but mandatory.
The Obama administration ignores these types of provocations at its peril. The White House has placed international outreach to Muslims at the center of its foreign policy in an effort to promote the image of the United States as an Islam-friendly nation. This cannot come at the expense of standing up for the human rights and religious liberties of minority groups in the Middle East. The region is a crucial crossroads. Islamist radicals are leading the rising political tide against the authoritarian, secularist old order. They are testing the waters in their relationship with the outside world, looking for signals of how far they can go in imposing their radical vision of a Shariah-based theocracy. Ignoring provocative statements like the mufti’s sends a signal to these groups that they can engage in the same sort of bigotry and anti-Christian violence with no consequences.
Mr. Obama’s outreach campaign to the Muslim world has failed to generate the good will that he expected. In part, this was because he felt it was better to pander to prejudice than to command respect. When members of the Islamic establishment call for the religious equivalent of ethnic cleansing, the leader of the free world must respond or risk legitimizing the oppression that follows. The United States should not bow to the extremist dictates of the grand mufti, no matter how desperate the White House is for him to like us.
The following are some recent examples of Hamas defining this ideology of genocide, as it applies to Jews:
1 – Quran condemns Jews to extermination
“The Meccan [Quran] chapter entitled ‘Jews’ or ‘Children of Israel’ is remarkable… It’s about today’s Jews, those of our century, and speaks only of extermination and digging graves… This chapter sentences the Jews to extermination before a single Jew existed on earth… Palestine’s blessing is linked to destruction of the center of global corruption [Jews of Israel], the snake’s head. When the snake’s head of [global] corruption is cut off, here in Palestine, and when the octopus’s [Jew’s] tentacles are cut off around the world, the real blessing will come with the destruction of the Jews, here in Palestine, and it is one of the splendid real blessings in Palestine.” [Palestinian cleric , Al-Aqsa TV (Hamas), July 13, 2008]
2 – Jews to face yet another Holocaust
Headline: “Suffering by Fire is Jews’ destiny in this world and next”
“… you will taste the punishment of Scorching Fire.” [Quran 3:181]
“This [Quran] verse threatens the Jews with the punishment of Fire… the reason for the punishment of Fire is it is fitting retribution for what they have done… but the urgent question is, is it possible that they will have the punishment of Fire in this world, before the great punishment [of Fire in Hell] … many of the [Islamic] religious leaders believe that the [Jews’] punishment of Fire is in this world, before the next world… therefore we are sure that the Holocaust is still to come upon the Jews.” [Sheikh Yunus Al-Astal, Hamas MP, in his regular column in Al-Rissala, (Hamas weekly) March 13, 2008]
It is important to note that the Hamas MP switched words in the last sentence, from the word he used throughout, “harik,” which means “fire,” to “mahraka” a word from the same root, that is used by Arabic speakers to mean “holocaust.”
3 – Muhammad’s promise: Jews will be killed
“Regarding the Jews, our business with them is only through bombs and guns… the prophet [Muhammad] promised that we will fight you, with Allah’s help, until the tree and stone say: “Oh Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”
[Nizar Rayan, Hamas religious and military leader, Al-Aqsa TV (Hamas), Jan. 1, 2009. Note: Rayan was killed on Jan. 2, 2009]
4 – Extermination of Jews – good for humanity
In an article promoting the continued use of suicide terror in the official Hamas newspaper:
“We find more than one condemnation and denunciation of the resistance operations and bombings [suicide attacks], carried out by Hamas and the Palestinian resistance branches… [Eventually] everyone will know that we did this only because our Lord commanded so: ‘I did it not of my own accord’ [Quran] and so that people will know that the extermination of Jews is good for the inhabitants of the worlds.”
[Al-Rissala, (Hamas weekly) April 23, 2007]
5 – Kill a Jew go to Heaven
A poster that Hamas posted on its old web site taught that killing a Jew is enough to grant the rewards of Heaven.
Text on Hamas poster: “I will knock on Heaven’s doors with the skulls of Jews.”
Axe is crashing through the word: “Jews.”
[URL on poster, Hamas terror wing: “Ezz Din Al Kassam”]
6 – Resurrection dependent on Muslims killing Jews (1)
Hamas goes even further in its religious packaging of genocide. Hamas teaches that the redemption of all of humanity, the anticipated Islamic “Hour” of Resurrection, will happen only when Muslims are killing Jews and the remaining Jews will be exposed by the trees and stones.
Hamas writes in Article 7 of the Hamas Charter:
“Hamas has been looking forward to implement Allah’s promise whatever time it might take. The prophet [Muhammad] said: ‘The time (of Resurrection) will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews; until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: 0 Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him!'”
[Sahih Muslim, Book 041, Number 6985]
7 – Resurrection dependent on Muslims killing Jews (2)
The Hamas belief that Jews must be killed for redemption to occur is a repeating theme of religious leaders on Palestinian Authority (Fatah) and Hamas TV. The following is one example:
“‘The Hour [Resurrection] will not take place until the Muslims fight the Jews and the Muslims kill them, and the rock and the tree will say: ‘Oh, Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, kill him!’ We must remind our Arab and Muslim nation, its leaders and people, its scholars and students, remind them that Palestine and the Al Aqsa mosque will not be liberated through summits nor by international resolutions, but it will be liberated through the rifle.”
[Hamas Spokesman, Dr. Ismail Radwan, PA TV, March 30, 2007]
Conclusion:
Given this Hamas ideology of genocide, the essential problem with Hamas is not the missiles and rockets it showers on Israel, but the core belief that killing Jews is a prerequisite to redemption. Hamas’s ongoing attempts to kill Jews, which have led to the current Gaza War, are a symptom of the far deeper problem — the ideology teaching that Allah demands the extermination of Jews.
Israel and the West must create a strategy not only to destroy the terror infrastructures of Hamas, but to ultimately ensure that Jews and the world are safe from this ideology and its consequences.
Ms. Dianti, I hope you took the time to read Mr. Horowitz’s rebuttal to your essay, you might find it enlightening.
I wonder if Mz. Dianti plans to respond to Mr Horowitz and his response to this fact free column.
My guess is the cry of racism (How can one be racist against practitioners of a religion) will continue to bleat out, and the mischaracterizations will not be corrected.
Please prove me wrong Mz. Dianti.
So where exactly are all of these hate filled attacks on Muslims at the USC campus? I gues I missed the news on those lynchings. And since when does a differing point of view qualify as hate speech? In the author’s case it seems any opinions that criticize Islam or Muslims qualifies as hate speech. What a shallow defense for banning free speech! Ms. Dianti needs to read carefully the US Constituion with special attention to the First Amendment. As a reminder to Lida, you are not living in the KSA or Iran or any number of other, draconian, speech restricting, freedom restricting Muslim dominated countries, but you are residing in the US. If you cannot abide others’ rights to express themselves non-violently, then why subject yourself to this constant, daily torture?
This is a VERY silly post. USC is a private organization. It doesn’t HAVE to allow anyone to give a talk on campus. And the test for how terrible a speaker are isn’t whether there are lynching afterwards. Geez.
I still missed the news about verbal or physical attacks on Muslims at the USC campus. The author apparently sees raging Islamophobes behind every tree and bush. She also seems to think that anyone listening to Horowitz will turn into a Brownshirted thug looking to rough up the nearest hijab wearing Muslimah. Some of us call that victim mongering. Others might even label such thinking as paranoid. If USC doesn’t want any particular speaker on campus, as a private entity, it has the right. However, if it starts to show bias in who they invite, then the public has a right to call out this institution claiming to herald free discourse in thought and speech.
I am not surprised that you missed the news: from your tone, it doesn’t appear that you are terribly bothered about it anyway. There have been a string of racist incidents on or near USC’s campus in the last couple of years. Muslim students have also testified to feeling afraid on or near campus to openly speak Arabic, for example. Words certainly have consequences and USC has a duty of care to all of the students (many still teenagers) who are in their care. It’s certainly not “paranoid” when we have direct testimony from students to that end. If someone wanted to come on campus and call all women “sluts”, “whores” and “deserving of rape”, I would think that there might be real-world consequences too. It’s one of the reasons why I find Tucker Max so repugnant, for example.
Thank you for acknowledging USC’s right to determine who comes on its campus. It’s a private institution, with its own values, and should not be forced to be just like everywhere else because of political correctness about political correctness.
I also hope that USC DOES show bias as to whom it invites. I want a bias towards people with insight, learning, thoughtfulness, civility, and elan. I want GOOD speakers. And I don’t want BAD one. If that means a Marxist, a Muslim, an atheist, a conservative, or a Dadaist, I don’t particularly care. Free enquiry is a good thing, after all.
What we don’t want is knucklehead undergrads inviting deliberately idiotic speakers who are deliberately offensive to minority groups on campus so that the wingnut online hordes can martyr the kid for his ten minutes of fame. Shows a distinct lack of character and he forgoes the opportunity to invite actually interesting conservative speakers to campus.
LMAO! Muslim students being afraid does not constitute a proven case of harassment or assault. Check a law book you moron.
There should be a comma before “you moron”. How is that glass house you’re in? And, no, Muslim students being afraid does not constitute that, but that isn’t the standard which USC seeks to live up to. It’s a random standard you have plucked out from nowhere. Real people have been affected by racial, sexist, and other forms of abuse on campus. You trying to be an internet tough guy doesn’t make that go away.
Aww. Please call the campus police, if I hurt your tender feelings there snowflake. The law is not a random standard, even at USC (they do have a law school there – I suggest you Visi it). You can’t live forever in your protected ivory tower, where feelings seemingly trump knowledge and ability these days.
You missed another comma before “snowflake”. Did you graduate High School? And, yes, the law is a random standard to use in this context as USC can take whichever one it wants: for example, it is not illegal to cheat on a test, it is, however, often enough to get you kicked out of USC. And, yes, we do have a law school: one which, I dare say, you’d never have got the grades for. As such, I don’t think you should be talking about “knowledge and ability” as you’ve demonstrated little of either here as you’ve been spanked on basic logic. Enjoy your ideological cotton wool box rather than thinking through issues from first principle and using actual data.
The law is not random at USC. The legal codes of federal, state and local jurisdictions apply to that school, as they would at any university. USC is not a diplomatic mission, but a university in Los Angeles, CA. USC may have additional codes of conduct on top of these laws, but they do not cancel or supersede other jurisdictional laws in any way. Only in your bizarro fantasy world are laws of the land deemed ‘random.’ Anyway snowflake, isn’t it time for you to attend your Safe Space 101 class, where you can view images of puppies at play and hug your favorite plush toy? How do they grade those courses anyway?
What a bizarre comment. The law is a random STANDARD for you to apply to what we were talking about. No wonder you didn’t go to college, your reading comprehension is all over the place. And you seem to have a strange understanding of what university is like and what kinds of things they teach. Again, you still need to learn basic grammar: employers judge you for it and if you want to be a productive member of society, it would be better if you aimed to get one. I award your comments here a D-. Not ready for college.
I’m betting that I’ve spent more time at university, than you’ve had wearing your undies. You got a bit word salady at the end there, fella, so don’t be so quick to lecture about proper writing skills. In any event, you petulant infant, the real world won’t be a safe space, when you’re time at university is completed. And you can take that last one to the bank.
I am sure you wander around university campuses but that no more makes you smart than an attendee at Wrestlemania is an athlete. I’ve spent plenty of time “in the real world” where I knew that not knowing the difference between “you’re” and “your” was important for continued employment. And my PhD says that your presumption is as comic as it is wrongheaded. You’ve really made yourself look foolish on this page. Not to worry, no real-world connotations other than feeling like a bit of a fool. But why not draw a life lesson from all this? I suggest the following: (1) learn to think for yourself and not use cognitive heuristics of seeing who the nuttiest person in a debate is, and agreeing with them; (2) learn the great Christian virtues of humility and love for the stranger. There’s too much hate in this world: be part of the solution, not the problem.
Haha! PhD. Yeah, I have one of those in the sciences. And another doctorate with a clinical focus, which means I actually produce things and help others directly, rather than fool people into thinking that they are falsely traumatized by such as idiocy as seeing, ‘TRUMP 2016’, chalked on a sidewalk.
Don’t get me wrong, though, because universities need the other, soft headed majors for the jocks and other under qualified students posing as aspiring academicians, so they can get passing grades. And we see that abundantly in most schools with top flight athletic programs which pass along these kids, many of whom are functionally illiterate. There was a time, however, when the liberal arts stood for more than the ridiculous social justice tripe they’ve devolved to these days. There used to be rigor and value to these disciplines. And now? They’ve been diluted to near uselessness. What to do with a Gender Studies degree anyway? Why, stay at university to brainwash the kids into thinking that gender is a purely fictional construct without any use in human society!
And I never need to worry about humility as a virtue. You surely have little, otherwise you wouldn’t be responding to my posts. The humble man pays no heed to the fool, yet you’ve proved incapable of that. And spare me the Christian lectures too. I have no time for a religion that has decided to focus on pathological altruism and suffering for its own sake, rather than edifying people and lifting them out of their own self-imposed mental prisons. Plus, you’ve acted like a complete boor towards me – where is the love, brother?
What a very odd post. It does make sense that you are in the sciences, though. Firstly, I guessed from your poor grammar and lack of knowledge of what the social sciences and liberal arts teach (e.g. gender is not the same thing as sex). Secondly, it explains the rather torpid, black-and-white way you seem to see the world. Lots of totalitarians come from a scientific background because they think that the tools of natural science should be applicable to the social world or used to explain things beyond the realm of what the scientific method was designed to explain (the Dawkinsesque, ill-considered barb at religion further buttresses this line of thinking). It’s no surprise that that many Islamic terrorists studied engineering, for example. And many of the inverted-Marxist far-right have a similarly Manichean view of the world. Shows how the liberal arts are needed now more than ever, lest the self-assured philistines inherit the earth. As for my humility, no straight thing may have been made from the crooked timber of mankind, but I shouldn’t give up on your ability to think for yourself or learn some empathy just yet. You might be damaged but, I hope, not beyond eventual repair.
Horowitz should have been stopped from speaking so that he could not spread his harmful ideas. His words are too dangerous for the students’ fragile minds. Enlightened people like us need to decide what students will hear to make sure that they hold the right beliefs. When people have the Freedom to choose, they choose wrong.
What a weird comment. There’s all kinds of hateful bilge on the internet. But people are perfectly within their rights not to want it in their community.
I read this and found that I agreed with pretty much everything Horowitz said and can’t even see why he’s controversial. He’s just speaking the plain truth.
This is obviously silly. Horowitz should make his way over to the medical campus for proving a biological miracle in managing to be the first person who can speak from an orifice that isn’t his mouth.
What did he say that’s not true?
Well, for a start, he runs a webpage which tries to chill professors in terms of choosing material from which they choose to teach. The irony that Horowitz is being held up as a paragon of free speech on campus is just sick.
Liberal fascists don’t seem to have a problem inviting Muslims who advocate jihad and Sharia.
Can you suggest who fits this description at USC?
Apparently, the writer attacking Horowitz.
I can tell you that the writer does not fit that description. Shame on you. Shouting insults is not debate.
Monsters like roccolore have no shame.
Muslim fascists like you have no shame.
Does your nurse know you are on here?
Thank you for writing this. Your view is much appreciated and you are not alone. Horowitz is sick, he sounds like Trump. Good riddance!
Fascist Democrats like you are the sickos. You are anti-Jewish and pro-jihadist.
Nope, you’re wrong. Good luck!
Liberals are not outraged over what ISIS and Hamas do, but by what Horowitz and Trump say.
I am outraged by stupidity like this
Liberal fascists like you are the stupid ones.
If you don’t realize that “liberal fascists” is an oxymoron, then I think you might be stupidity par excellence.
Not really. The liberals attacking Horowitz will frequently invite anti-Jewish speakers.
Like who, in USC’s case?
Horowitz is an evil monster, he does not belong on campuses.
Muslim fascists like you have no morals.
Author H.G. Wells who was a progressive coined the phrase liberal fascism when he gave a speech to The Young Liberals of Oxford in the 1930’s. Progressives were quite enamored of the abilities of fascists to ignore the constitution of Italy in order to obtain social justice for workers.
How odd: firstly, the Liberal Party were not appeasers and aggressively opposed both Mussolini and Hitler so both H.G.Wells and the Young Liberals would have had no time for skirting around the Italian constitution. Indeed, it was the Liberal Party- and now the Liberal Democrats- who want a written constitution because they think too much power is held by the executive. So who were these progressives? Certainly not liberals. But even if H.G.Wells found one or two confused young people, the term doesn’t improve with age. Just as the term “short giant” and “stupid genius” have not caught on, I suppose. And when you contemplate actually existing fascist regimes of the 20th century- Germany, Italy, Chile, South Africa, the Junta in Argentina etc- it tended to be the authoritarian Right who were their biggest apologists/supporters.
Anyway, the point of not wanting hateful ignoramuses on campus is hardly fascist, it’s just common sense. Just as USC can’t let in undergrads who don’t meet their academic standards, there should be similar quality control for guest speakers.
Immoral Ziofascist like you are ignorant.
Muslim fascists like you are ignorant. You kill over cartoons.
Enlightened people like us need to decide what students will hear to
make sure that they hold the right beliefs. When people have the Freedom
to choose, they choose wrong.
LOL. Your response is probably either over their heads or just won’t persuade the Regressives.
“It is terribly easy to romanticize. Human beings do it all the time. But romanticizing can get out of hand. Think of all those millions of German women who swooned as Hitler drove past; the groupies of Stalin, the steadfast admirers of Osama bin Laden, or the women who offer to marry murderers on death row. Charisma, as Max Weber told us, is not so much an innate characteristic of a leader or guru as something brought to him by others. [1]
Hitler was not a good-looking man, not tall, not prepossessing, not particularly intelligent, not a great orator — more a strident tub-thumper — yet millions of Germans loved him and died for him. In the end, Germany itself all but died for him.
Today, the romanticizing of sociopaths has not ended. However much we know about the clay-footed idols of the past, or the enormities committed by those demagogues and rabble-rousers and charlatans, many of us just transfer our allegiance to the next monster-in-waiting.
Those in Europe and the United States who romanticized Communism and the Soviet Union in Europe have gone through such transitions more than once since the days of the 19th-century anarchists and Marxists. Often they have woken up, only to fall asleep again. They have idolized Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Che Guevera, and Ho Chi Minh. Some, such as the former German Foreign Minister, Joschka Fischer, have moved in a less delusional direction. Disavowing violent activism, he wound up as a Green party parliamentarian who supported NATO and intervention in Bosnia. Others still just stumble on from hero to hero, cause to cause, embracing whatever seems most anti-democratic, “anti-establishment” or most comfortable among their friends.[2]
In recent years, however, these graying adolescents of the European and America “Left” have moved in a direction that could not have been predicted even in their own darkest nightmares. They have allied themselves with the most fascistic, reactionary and anti-liberal forces on the planet. Today they march arm in arm, not as fellow-travellers with the Vietcong or the Fidelistas, but step by step alongside anti-Semitic Islamists: pro-jihad extremists who threaten death and destruction on all of Western society, including the very people now defending them. The gay solidarity groups back the speech of radical Muslim clerics who, in the Middle East, would kill any stray homosexual crossing their path. There go the sisterhoods, arm in friendly arm with men who despise women and would put all of them back into niqabs, burqas and house-seclusion at the first opportunity. There go the fresh-faced young women-converts to Islam, on a desperate hunt for husbands to dominate and possibly beat them while dreaming of children to train as future martyrs. And there march Neturei Karta and other Jewish extremists and leftists, hand in hand with their future killers.
The Communists in Germany often gave their lives to prevent the Nazis from destroying their country. Many died in concentration camps. Brave idealists from many countries fought in the Spanish Civil War to prevent the fascist forces of Franco from taking over. But their heirs today march through the streets of European cities chanting “We are all Hamas now!” and worse, the genocidal, “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas.”
The anti-fascist Marxist sympathizers have never quite died out, but other, sinister, things have happened, beginning with the extraordinary eruption of outrage that convulsed parts of Europe and the United States in 1968 and 1969. These same Romantics, appalled by the steady decline of the Soviet Union and the successes of the liberal democracies, turned on the societies that had fed and clothed them. The anti-Vietnam war protestors, for all their purported moral concern, simply joined forces with the enemy. It was no longer a case of “war is bad” — not unreasonable to say in the abstract — but, “we want the Vietcong to win and to defeat America.”
In the same period, support for third-world countries (especially Communist regimes) burgeoned. Western intellectuals, students, madcap suckers for victimhood, hippies, “anti-establishment” rioters and many more suddenly found themselves enamoured of the cult of death peddled by Che Guevara, Chairman Mao and the PLO. It did not matter that these were all mass murderers or terrorists, so long as they fought the brave fight against “Western imperialism,” now declared the greatest evil in the world.[3]
The 1968 rebellions slowly died away, but their hardline sympathizers remained. Many, such as the Weather Underground in the U.S., the Red Brigades in Italy, the Direct Action group in France, and the Red Army Faction/Baader-Meinhof Gang in Germany turned to violence, yet were beloved of many who saw them as fearless fighters against Western governments and institutions. Their cold-blooded assassinations and bombings sent a frisson of admiration among those wished that permanent rebellion might actually be a meaningful goal in life…”
Mamet, in 2008, wrote an article for the “Village Voice” called “Why I Am No Longer a Brain-Dead Liberal.” He described his conversion from the typical Noth-like Hollywood mindset:
“As a child of the ’60s, I accepted as an article of faith that government is corrupt, that business is exploitative and that people are generally good at heart. These cherished precepts had, over the years, become ingrained as increasingly impracticable prejudices. Why do I say impracticable? Because although I still held these beliefs, I no longer applied them in my life. … I began reading not only the economics of Thomas Sowell (our greatest contemporary philosopher) but Milton Friedman, Paul Johnson and Shelby Steele, and a host of conservative writers, and found that I agreed with them: A free-market understanding of the world meshes mor
“What the College Republicans need to understand is that criticizing Horowitz is not an attack on freedom of speech but rather on hate speech”
Yet more “hate speech isn’t free speech” blather. Free speech and so-called “hate speech” are the same thing. The First Amendment protects what the “genius” who wrote above “editorial” is calling “hate speech” Even more ridiculous is the notion that any criticism of the black lives matter movement is racist.
No one is saying that the moron should be prosecuted, just that he should not be given the time of day
Nonsense. Individuals are trying to bar him from campus on the grounds that he “doesn’t have a right to hate speech”.
He doesn’t have a right to come on a private campus and spew hatred, no. After 9pm he’d need a valid USC I.D. too. It isn’t very hard to understand: would you feel like you were required to invite a guest to your house who plainly intended to pee on your furniture?
USC is a publicly funded university. Also, the man is not spreading hatred. They’re trying to ban him because he tells the truth and they can’t beat him in a debate.
(1) There is no debate; (2) the fact that he thinks what he says is “the truth” is dangerous in itself; he has opinions- bad and unlettered ones; (3) Yes, it receives some public funding. So what? If you are saying that any private organization which takes some public funding should not be allowed to follow its own rules, then you are a dangerous, anti-free speech fascist. Next you’ll be forcing private churches to marry people they don’t agree with.
Why most Ellenhorn invited these tedious blowhards to campus? Can’t he invite someone smart and interesting instead?
You would invite Imam Haji Osama Muhammad from the terror mosque, where he would advocate killing Jews.
I have never heard of the guy, so I think this is a product of your fevered imagination
And since you’ve never heard of him, the only possible explanation is that he doesn’t exist.
It rather DOES suggest that I would not “invite” him to campus, though.
Ziofascists never cease in fabricating myths to suit their evil goals.
You Muslims are the fascist liars who bomb subways and airports.
Controlling, let alone prosecuting, free speech makes you a fascist. If the speaker’s content isn’t to your liking, then don’t attend. Grow up!
As Horowtiz is wont to say, “Scratch a liberal enough and you’ll find a totalitarian” like Lida.
Goes to show how the man isn’t smart enough to have been invited
Silly post. One can happily object to speakers. It’s called free speech!
Liberals want to shut down critics period.
Are you actually this stupid or are you being ironic?
He is gatactically stupid.
Muslim fascists like you are stupid. You kill over cartoons.
Thank you for your thoughtful, well-written piece. An anti-Muslim speaker should have no place on a university campus — just as an anti-Jew, anti-Mexican, or any other bigoted speaker should not be welcome. There is a difference between being tolerant of differing political views and racism. There should be no place for racism at USC.
How does one defeat an enemy that one knows nothing about? If you want to combat racism, you bring racist speakers to campus, listen to the foundations of their beliefs, then you challenge them.
Fascist Democrat, what race is Islam?
roccolore, may you be well. May you be happy. May you be free from suffering.
You didn’t answer his question: what Race is Islam?
Considering the questioner called her a “fascist”, I don’t find it surprising. Why do all these far-right hatemongers shout insults at people and then expect people to politely reply to their nonsense?
It’s left-wingers who are the hatemongers. They hate Jews, hate Christians, hate freedom, hate dissent.
That’s silly. Jews tend to be left-wing, I am a Christian, I very much enjoy freedom, and I read ‘Dissent”. I think it’s time you jettisoned your worldview and were humbled by our complicated the world is and how little we understand it. Then you wouldn’t simply presume that the far reaches of the paranoid blogosphere has all the answers.
silly Marxist talk .. catchwords and no evidence .. what bubble is she in ?
LOL, protect me from scary ideas!
There are plenty of scary, stupid ideas. I think students want rather better ideas.
You’re just like those snowflakes at Emory, whining over chalk writing.
Not really. Has the nurse missed your meds round?
I guess you never read about the Emory cowards upset over chalk writings of “Trump 2016.”
Which is nothing like this. Do you often draw trends from one small datapoint?
Well, given that he was invited to campus, it would seem students do want to hear his ideas. Just not the students you agree with. But opinions you don’t like dont’t count, do they?
I am not sure that they “don’t count” but I have a right to call them out for being incredibly stupid. Unless you’re against free speech now?
That’s a lie. You are fully aware of the fact that the people who support Horowitz are not trying to silence his opponents from speaking and that it is the people who are anti-Horowitz who are trying to ban him and any other ideas they don’t like.
THAT is a lie. Every day people speak on campus who disagree with each other and most people on campus. No one is trying to silence debate or different viewpoints. They just don’t want morons to be invited onto campus who peddle a line in hate speech. After all, I don’t just let anyone wander into my house. I tend to ask only people who I feel like will be respectful and useful. The same rules for Horowitz goes for everyone else: if he can learn not to be a boorish rabble-rouser and have something interesting to say, he’d be welcome on campus with open arms, just like other conservative speakers who I have had the privilege of going to see.
The Left preaches being open minded to people that are further to the Left and being intolerant to people who believe in such things as limited government. Perhaps I’m wrong about USC. Can you name a conservative in the last couple years been able to speak without body guards and not having leftists trying to stop the speech?
Yes, pretty much all of them! It’s USC, for heaven’s sake, not Berkeley. The campus is very tolerant to different ideas. Larry Ellison, the CEO of Oracle, is the commencement speaker. Hardly the Ayatollah Khomeini.