"David Horowitz: The Ultimate Meshugeh Political Troublemaker!"

By Jean-Pierre Ady Fenyo, Philosopher.

If you are a college or university student in America there is a good chance you have come across the following campaign titled, "Terrorism Awareness Campaign" and a petition titled "Islamo-Fascism Petition". These are the efforts of The Horowitz Freedom Center, but do not be misled by David Horowitz's organization's name; it is as much about freedom as Neo-Cons are about peace and tolerance!

David Horowitz is one of the most successful Neo-Cons around, and is probably responsible for spreading and hardening dangerous misconceptions about Muslims, Islam, Arabs and anyone who dares to speak out in defense of the religious rights and freedoms of Muslims. He has a way of cleverly twisting truths and creating semi-truthful lies which serve his overall agenda of disenfranchising and to that extent virtually eradicating progressive liberals and any academics who hold left-of-center and left-wing views. With that right-wing objective in mind he created a student-based organization named Students for Academic Freedom, which serves to intimidate and harass progressive liberal and left-wing academics! All these things from a man who was once an outspoken Marxist and founding member of the New Left movement in the 1960s America.

He is often invited to talk at right-wing forums and has appeared on Fox News as someone they consider to be qualified to talk about terrorism and Islam. The fact of the matter is this; he takes a few exceptions and makes them sound like they are not exceptions but commonly occuring incidents that show the dark side of Islam, he takes things out of context and distorts things so cleverly that unless you are sufficiently well informed and educated you are likely to be convinced that he must be right. We will examine specific examples later.

When it comes to progressive liberal and left-wing academics he often points out that it is actually, as he claims, the fault of the liberals and lefties that there is so much poverty, and failed social welfare programs. He compares liberals and left-wing university professionals to Nazis and Fascists! And in one of his more popular books, titled "The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America", he mixes genuine progressives with reactionary revisionists and apologists who are known for being pseudo-liberals and other riff-raff. He takes advantage of the fact that indeed many left-wing academics in America during the Cold War idealized the Soviet Union and other so-called Communist nations.

In terms of his stance on Israel, he is nothing short of an extreme hawk and someone who champions the unrealistic "the Palestinians already have their own country in Jordan" and "all Muslims are a out to destroy Israel and commit genocide against the Jews" attitude of the pseudo-Jewish right-wing ultranationalist sizeable minority in Israel (such as the Likud and Kahanists). He is convinced that the whole peace process is futile and is also to blame for most of the terrorist attacks on innocent men, women and children.

He is convinced that the United States can and must win the War in Iraq, otherwise the Iranians will gain further strategic advantage in the region and peace will be even more elusive. Never mind the fact that Iran actually benefitted from the destruction of Saddam's regime, and both the failure to do the right things in the early days of the invasion and the very presence of U.S. troops in Iraq has also helped terrorist groups find more new recruits, willing to take up arms against America and the rest of The West.

(to be continued)