AFRICAN-AMERICAN COLUMNIST Jack E. White’s recent smear of David Horowitz is only a logical continuation of the Left’s traditional treatment of its ideological opponents and especially of those who, like Horowitz, come from the Left’s former ranks. David Horowitz is an ex-radical who ended up abandoning his "progressive" odyssey. In his books Radical Son (1996) and The Politics of Bad Faith (1998), he profoundly exposed the socialist cause from the inside out. For this, the Left has never forgiven him, as the Inquisition never forgave its supposed heretics. In fact, it has simply wished him out of its own reality as if he had never existed. Just as the Soviet regime consistently rewrote its own history and erased inconvenient individuals from its past, so too Western radicals appoint themselves as the arbiters of objectifying life, history, and reality in our hemisphere.
If and when the Left has acknowledged Horowitz's existence, it has not reviewed his ideas on an intellectual plain; it has simply refused to engage him outright on the subject on which he writes. It has offered criticism only within the parameters of personal insult, which is usually accompanied with the suggestion that it would be better for everyone involved if Horowitz was simply just silenced. That is why Jack White’s recent libelous charge is nothing new. It is simply a repetition of a very familiar tradition. The Left has always excoriated those whom it regards as traitors.
Indeed, almost every single critique of Horowitz in the Left-wing press has been anti-intellectual and verbally abusive. One of the best, and perhaps most intriguing, examples of this phenomenon was Eric Alterman’s "review" of Horowitz’s The Politics of Bad Faith in The Nation on November 16, 1998. It provided the perfect foundation for White’s recent attack. Alterman did not discuss a single idea in Horowitz's main thesis, that there is a direct connection between the socialist dream and totalitarianism. Instead, Alterman informed us that literary critic Paul Berman believes that Horowitz is a "demented lunatic." It is interesting to note that socialist regimes have always either censored or killed the ideological defector, or labeled him "insane." That is exactly why Soviet dissidents were force-fed drugs in psychiatric hospitals. Alterman and Berman, of course, do not have the power to institutionalize Horowitz in an asylum but it is clear from their own words that they wish they could.
Alterman conceded that The Politics of Bad Faith has some merit, because it was "shorter" than Radical Son. But, he complained, it was "not short enough." One can only imagine the situation if Alterman were given the power to edit Horowitz’s book to his own liking. Here we would certainly stumble upon the Stalinist method of shortening an anti-Party book: shortening it into non-existence.
Alterman complained that he could personally count a "minimum of four times" that David Horowitz has "managed to conflate his own life and lifelong Oedipal crisis with the history of civilization." Not only is it questionable how this statement relates to (and thus discredits) anything Horowitz argues, it is vague to the point of meaninglessness. In Radical Son, Horowitz discusses his relationship with his father, a Stalinist, who failed in important ways to relate to his son because of his Stalinist worldview. Here we see the basic reality behind almost every socialist experiment, but in a personal dynamic: the sacrifice of humanity for the ideal. A father had sacrificed his love for his own son to an idea. Alterman, obviously, missed the point.
The last part of Alterman’s "critique" is the most revealing of all. He remarks that "When Horowitz finally dies, I suspect we will be confronted with a posthumous volume of memoirs titled The End of History. Finally dies? Finally? Obviously, Horowitz has not died soon enough for some peoples’ liking. Indeed, it certainly cannot be denied that a convenient gulag would have remedied the problem of an objectionable writer a long time ago.
From examining Alterman’s brilliant critique of Horowitz, it becomes clear that Jack White simply continued from where his comrade-in-arms left off. In his column in Time, White made it clear that he hates Horowitz’s argument about the NAACP’s lawsuit, even though he fails to contest the argument on an intellectual, let alone a common sense, level. Consequently, like Alterman before him, he engages in character assassination. This time, however, Horowitz is not a "demented lunatic" with an "oedipal crisis," he is a "live bigot." But just like Alterman, White craves for the silencing of Horowitz. While Alterman fantasized of "When Horowitz finally dies," White concludes that "we’d all be better off if he’d just shut up."
And then there is reality: America is a free society, where you can’t just shut people up, no matter how much your utopian fantasy demands the sacrifice of individual freedom, let alone of individual life. In terms of Horowitz being a "bigot," nothing could be further from the truth. Anyone who knows David Horowitz, or has read his work, knows that he, unlike his critics, puts people of any color, religion, or creed ahead of ideas. And that is what this whole culture war is about.
That Time magazine has committed a grave injustice by publishing Jack White’s slander against David Horowitz is a given. What is being largely overlooked is that the vicious and heartless behavior of individuals like White toward Horowitz is not an aberration. When it comes to the Left, as Eric Alterman and Co. have shown us well, ideological opponents must be dehumanized and silenced. That is why it is crucial for all of us to make sure that, as long as his intellectual discourse remains as profound, fair, and compassionate as it is, David Horowitz never shuts up.