---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 06 Dec 2001 14:27:18 -0800
From: radtimes <resist@best.com>
Subject: HOROWITZ GOES HAYWIRE
Behind the Headlines
by Justin Raimondo
Antiwar.com
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/pf/p-j120501.html#rest
December 5, 2001
HOROWITZ GOES HAYWIRE
Pro-war 'Think Twice' speaking tour starts on a weird note
David Horowitz, the ex-Communist and former Black Panther groupie turned
stereotypical right-winger, has kicked off his pro-war "Think Twice"
speaking tour of college campuses on a rather bizarre note. The "red diaper
baby" who morphed into a neoconservative went to the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill and gave a strangely disjointed and vehement rant -
directed not only at the antiwar movement but at the Chancellor of the
University, James Moeser, and the school itself: "I can't find words to
express my contempt for the chancellor and this University for supporting
these views." Pretty gracious, eh?
'THINK TWICE' - OR ELSE
Without citing anyone in particular, Horowitz went on to characterize the
views of unnamed antiwar professors and students at UNC as "jumping up and
down" in glee as the World Trade Center burned. As usual, the implication
that the "treasonous" activities of antiwar student groups and professors
ought to be shut down was implicit in his complaint that antiwar teach-ins
took place at a taxpayer-supported institution. Apparently, only "patriotic"
activities - such as his "Think Twice" tour - ought to be permitted. Even
the moniker he has attached to his campus blitz is shot through with ominous
overtones: students had better "think twice" before they openly oppose the
war - and get their name on a list.
A SINISTER FIGURE
Horowitz was always a dubious character, but, post-9/11, he has become
positively sinister - and also somewhat out of it. According to reports, his
tirade against UNC-Chapel Hill included a denunciation of Moeser
"for considering a proposal to establish a UNC-CH campus with an
undergraduate business program in the Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar, which
he said is led by 'an Islamic radical.'
"'There are no human rights [in Qatar] - not only for homosexuals and for
women but for anybody who disagrees with the sheik,' Horowitz said."
A RADICAL ISLAMIC STATE - WITH A US BASE?
Gee, that's funny, but I could've sworn that was an American military base
being hosted by the "Islamic radical" ruler of Qatar - reputedly the largest
American base and arms depot outside the United States. When a lone gunman
opened fire outside the Al-Adid air base, near the capital city of Doha, he
was shot and killed by Qatari soldiers. Qatar has long been in the American
camp, cravenly praising the presence of US and British troops for
"protecting the Arabs from each other," as Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad Bin
Jasem al-Thani put it in an interview with al-Jazeera television. Qatar was
good enough for the World Trade Organization to host a summit there in
November of this year: why isn't it good enough for UNC-Chapel Hill?
AN OASIS OF MODERNITY
Horowitz paints a grim picture indeed of life in Qatar, but the US
government tells a different story altogether in its official human rights
report card. While not exactly a Western-style democracy, Qatar, alone among
the Gulf states, does have elections to a consultative body in which women
are allowed to vote: as Thomas Friedman points out in the New York Times,
Qatar, like other small states on the periphery of the Arab world, is among
the most modern and socially progressive of the Muslim countries. Another
Qatari idiosyncrasy is a media relatively free of censorship and government
control. Extra-judicial killings, torture, disappearances of political
dissidents - these routine features of life in many Middle Eastern countries
(including Israel) are entirely absent from Qatar.
LAND OF THE (RELATIVELY) FREE
The US State Department 1999 Country Report demonstrates that life in Qatar
is not much different from life in these United States, at least in certain
respects: "The law prohibits arbitrary arrest," we are told, "however, the
police have the discretion to arrest persons based on a low level of
suspicion, and arbitrary detention in security cases remains a problem."
Sound familiar? Perhaps John Ashcroft is modeling some of his own methods on
the Qatari example. "Suspects who are detained in security cases generally
are afforded access to counsel; however, they may be detained indefinitely
while under investigation. There were no known recent cases of incommunicado
detention." Unlike John Ashcroft, at least the Qataris release the names of
their detainees.
If there is any really brutal political repression in Qatar, it is directed
primarily against Islamic hard-liners, such as Abdulrahman Al-Nuaimi, a
Ministry of Education official who distributed a letter to the press
critical of the Amir's decision to allow women to vote and run for office in
the Municipal Council elections. This is a "radical Islamic state"?
AN IGNORANT DEMAGOGUE
Horowitz, as usual, is running off at the mouth and demonstrating his
complete ignorance of the facts. But facts don't matter to a demagogue whose
frenetic posturing has turned him into a caricature, a living parody of his
own invented persona.
But there is, in this caricature, a lot that is revealing. In his "The Art
of Political War," a pamphlet devoted to strategic questions, Horowitz urges
conservatives to lay off the complex arguents that make them sound like
debaters at the Oxford Student Union and appeal directly to people's
emotions:
"But the audience of politics is not made up of Oxford dons, and the rules
are entirely different.... You have only thirty seconds to make your point.
Even if you had time to develop an argument, the audience you need to reach
(the undecided and those in the middle who are not paying much attention)
would not get it. Your words would go over some of their heads and the rest
would not even hear them (or quickly forget) amidst the bustle and pressure
of daily life. You will never have time for real arguments or proper
analyses. Images - symbols and sound bites - will always prevail."
GAMES PEOPLE PLAY
In other words, emotionalism will always prevail over reason - and the
latter is not a Horowitz ally, in any case. Doggedly pursuing this
emotionalist strategy, Horowitz seeks to channel and manipulate the inchoate
anger of potential recruits by blatant appeals to racial prejudice,
hopped-up rhetoric that is always in a white heat, really over-the-top abuse
of his political opponents (he has lately been using obscenities in his
editorial replies to letter-writers) - and mindless computer games that
resemble an Orwellian Two-Minute Hate. His last one, "SlapHillary.com," gave
players an opportunity to smack around a favorite hate-object, and now
SlapOsama.com has been set up along the same lines. You can slap Osama with
a pile of camel dung, target him with a missile, subject him to airstrikes,
or go all the way and nuke him. Just about what one might expect of someone
who disdains "real arguments or proper analyses" in favor of "images,
symbols, and sound-bites."
WAR PROFITEER
But as even one sympathetic visitor to the site pointed out in a posted
letter, "Although I love being able to exercise my emotions on the head of
OBL repeatedly, I somehow am not too fond of the idea of the 'unending'
game, that the head pops back every time." But that is precisely what
excites Horowitz and his fellow neoconservatives - the idea (or hope) that
the "war on terrorism" is unending. Perpetual war means endless government
subsidies to their big business patrons, as well as the unlimited
opportunity to demonize, spy on, and purge their enemies from public life,
with a little assist from various law enforcement agencies. It means perks,
privileges, and prestige for the laptop bombardiers, and full coffers for
the merchants of death; enormous profits for certain business interests, and
a continuous flow of tax-exempt contributions for Horowitz's "Center for the
Study of Popular Culture." If ever a law is passed against war profiteering,
Horowitz should be the first one carted off to jail.
As this clown takes his road-show from campus to campus, reveling in his
self-generated notoriety as a shrieker and would-be "treason"-hunter, he is
clearly looking to the authorities to take action against campus-based
antiwar organizations. While calling for "free speech" against the
intellectual conformity of left-wing political correctness, he berates
UNC-Chapel Hill for "allowing" antiwar teach-ins at a state-subsidized
institution. Clearly, in his view, such activities ought to be banned.
HOROWITZ EXPOSES HIMSELF
We must defend to the death this idiot's right to make a fool out of himself
in public, and not only on general principles of free speech, but as a
strategic move: The more he speaks, the more he discredits himself. If the
sinister "Think Twice" tour gets to your campus, what you need to do is let
this jerk expose himself for what he is - with a little help from you and
Antiwar.com. You can assemble your own "David Horowitz Truth Kit" by
downloading the following printer-friendly files and distributing them to
interested parties. Get the lowdown on Horowitz here:
DAVID HOROWITZ TRUTH KIT
Neocons and Neo-Nazis: Horowitz's Unholy Alliance with the Racialist Right
Horowitz's Bizarre Anti-Muslim Campaign: The Pornography of Hate
The Strange World of David Horowitz - Where the Cold War Never Ended
Horowitz: Vietnam War Revisionist
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