************************************************************************
REEDINGS .
. .
Notes on
Books by Gerard Reed
************************************************************************
Few
thinkers understand the American Left as well as David Horowitz.
Reared in New York as a “baby
diaper” Communist, deeply committed to Marxism, in the ‘60s he edited the
most widely-read counter-cultural periodical, Ramparts Magazine, helping to
inspire and orchestrate the anti-war movement of that era.
Making an about-face in the ‘70’s, he has become a trenchant critic
of today’s Left. He fully
understands the its ideology and knows personally many of its most prominent
spokesmen. Horowitz’s latest
book, Unholy Alliance: Radical
Islam and the American Left (Washington, D.C.:
Regnery Publishing, Inc., c. 2004) provides readers a valuable analysis
of the latest fluorescence of radicalism and its influence on the liberal
mainstream of this nation.
The debris from the World Trade Towers had barely settled before
Leftists began to blame America for both the murderous attacks and the
manifold woes of the world. Rather
than condemn the murderous Moslem terrorists, intellectuals such as Susan
Sontag and Barbara Kingsolver decried the “root causes” responsible for
terror. Activists
staged “peace vigils” and teach-ins” to protest America’s
villainy as her troops attacked the Taliban tyrants in Afghanistan.
Columbia University Professor Eric Foner, an unabashed Marxist who was
elected president of both the American Historical Association and the
Organization of American Historians in the 1990s, declared:
“I’m not sure which is more frightening:
the horror that engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric
emanating daily from the White House’” (p. 15).
President Bush’s “Manichean vision” was “deeply rooted in our
Puritan past and evangelical present,” Foner declared, making it the moral
equivalent of the fanaticism of Osama bin Laden.
When the war against terror shifted to Iraq, the Left mounted a furious
attack on President Bush. Anti-war
demonstrations, organized by International ANSWER (an openly Bolshevik-style
group noted for its support for North Korea), featured speakers who called
America a “rogue” or “terrorist” state and likened George Bush to
Adolf Hitler. “No Blood for
Oil,” the protestors screamed. A
handful of Democratic Congressmen, such as John Conyers and Charles Rangel,
supported these radical protests, and professors in hundreds of universities
paraded to various podia to revive and revise the anti-Vietnam War rants of
the ‘60s. Along with the war,
the protestors reviled capitalism—specifically the “globalization” of
detested companies such as Halliburton—and demanded the implementation of
their utopian visions of “social justice.”
Consequently, militant Leftists in America have sided with Islamists
abroad as part of their endeavor to radically change their own country.
The Marxist critique of America suffused the radical Islamicism of Iran’s
Ayatollah Khomeini and (subsequently) his protégé, Osama bin Laden.
When Iranian students took American embassy hostages in Teheran in
1979, they referred to the U.S. as the “Great Satan.”
Enjoying the support of Iran’s Communist Party, Khomeini adopted a
Leninist approach to transforming Iran, establishing revolutionary tribunals,
purging dissidents, making friends with the U.S.S.R.
The only free, democratic states in the Middle East, Lebanon and Israel
(the “Little Satan”) were targeted for destruction.
Christian Lebanon—a jewel of freedom and prosperity in that region—was
soon destroyed by Syria and the PLO.
When
the U.S. attacked Afghanistan and Iraq, aging anti-Vietnam War protesters,
heeding the call of Ramsey Clark and others, found new life, flying the
Palestinian Liberation Organization flag much as they did with the Vietnam
flag decades ago. Horowitz notes
that youthful protesters, trashing cities such as Seattle, when they host
meetings of the World Trade Organization, are manipulated by hard-core
communists in groups like International ANSWER.
Allied organizations, including the Coalition for Peace and Justice,
blessed by the National Council of Churches, have brought a religious fervor
to the anti-war movement. Horowitz
adeptly traces its nihilistic views to their ideological source:
Karl Marx, who said, “Everything that exists deserves to perish”
(p. 50). Undaunted hate for what
is, unmitigated hope for what is not but is to come, marks
socialism. Thus part of the
socialist agenda includes an Anti-Americanism intent on replacing the American
system with something akin to Cuba. Leftists
at the beginning of the 21st century illustrate an affinity with
their 20th century predecessors, when, Whittaker Chambers said, “men
banded together by the millions in movements like Fascism and Communism,”
determined to undermine their own nations.
Consequently, “treason became a vocation whose modern form was
specifically the treason of ideas” (p. 48).
Many intellectuals on the Left take Noam Chomsky (a Massachusetts
Institute of Technology linguist) as the North Star for the movement.
“No individual has done more to shape the anti-American passions of a
generation,” says Horowitz. Professors
cite him, thousands of university students flock to his lectures, and he
enjoys an enormous international reputation.
Anti-American Europeans take particular delight in citing his analyses. Chomsky claims to be an anarchist and certainly advocates a
nihilistic agenda: destroy the
United States, whose history is laced with little more than atrocities and
genocide, and something better (precisely what, he never says) will replace
it. America is the “Great Satan”
to Chomsky, and his venom inspires both critics and enemies of this country.
Less than two weeks after American forces invaded Afghanistan, for
example, Chomsky told a friendly crowd that that the U.S. was the “greatest
terrorist state” on the planet. He
also predicted that American troops would orchestrate a genocide, annihilating
millions of civilians in that country.
Aligned with Chomsky is Howard Zinn, whose “signature book, A
People’s History of the United States is a raggedly conceived Marxist
caricature that begins with Columbus and ends with George Bush.
It has sold over a million copies, greatly exceeding that of any
comparable history text” (p. 102). Praised
by professors such as Eric Foner, Zinn has been feted by academics and touted
by movie directors and music celebrities.
His historical treatise is required reading in hundreds of classrooms.
The New York Times Book Review
endorsed it “as a step toward a coherent new version of American
history.” Zinn sees American
history as a long record of injustice wherein the powerful have exploited the
weak. Indians, slaves, labor
unionists, socialists, et al.
have endured brutality throughout this nation’s history.
Following the lead of Chomsky and Zinn, “Entire fields—‘Whiteness
Studies,’ ‘Cultural Studies,’ ‘Women’s Studies,’ ‘African
American Studies,’ and ‘American Studies,’ to mention some—are now
principally devoted to this radical assault on American history and society
and to the ‘deconstruction’ of the American idea’” (p. 106).
Veteran “movement” activists, such as Leslie Cagan, who brings 40
years of radicalism to her position as “national coordinator” for the
Coalition united for Peace and Justice, celebrate the virtues of Communism. She lived 10 years in Cuba, years that “made it seem like I
died and went to heaven” (p. 173).
She and others in the current anti-war movement have embraced the cause
of radical Islamists, ever supporting terrorists who are brought to trial, and
rallying to the ACLU’s defense of Professor Sami al-Arian, who used his
position at the University of South Florida to finance and promote terrorist
groups such as Islamic Jihad. One
of the professor’s organizations, the Islamic Committee for Palestine,
raised money to subsidize Palestinian “martyrs” by urging donations of
“‘$500 to kill a Jew’” (p. 190).
When the FBI arrested al-Arian, he instantly attained a “victim”
status and was staunchly defended USF’s faculty union and the American
Association of University Professors!
Hysterical opposition to the
Patriot Act is another Leftist trademark.
Bernardine Dohrn, who three decades ago helped lead the Weather
Underground (responsible for bombings and various terrorist acts), is now a
law professor at Northwestern University and enjoys the esteem of her
colleagues in the American Bar Association.
In a 2003 article published in Monthly Review, a Marxist
periodical, she urged resistance to the both American imperialism abroad and
counter-terrorism at home. She
somberly warned against immanent McCarthy-type measures everywhere threatening
our liberties—specifically evident in John Ashcroft’s moves against
Islamic charities (clear channels, Horowitz says, for moving funds from the
U.S. to Middle East terrorists).
Professor Dohrn’s views have been endorsed by prominent spokesmen in
the Democratic Party. House
Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and former Vice President Al Gore became
stridently anti-Bush and anti-war as the war against Iraq developed.
Senator Ted Kennedy claimed that Bush and a cabal of conspirators
concocted the plan for war in Texas in order to gain political advantages.
“This whole thing,” said Kennedy, “was a fraud” (p. 236).
Former President Jimmy Carter (revealing an affinity for the Left that
would be manifestly evident when he sat in a special box with Michael Moore at
the 2004 Democratic Convention) proclaimed positions that garnered for himself
the Nobel Peace Prize. Carter was
praised by the Nobel Committee for “promoting social and economic justice”
and condemning “the line the current U.S. Administration has take on Iraq”
(p. 216). Carter claimed that the
Iraq war reversed 200 years of American foreign policy, which had “been
predicated on basic religious principles, respect for international law, and
alliances that resulted in wise decisions and mutual restraint” (p. 221). All these principles, he said had been trampled under foot by
George W. Bush.
In truth, Horowitz suggests, the anti-war movement has little to do
with the specific situation in the Middle East.
It’s simply the latest edition of a century-long struggle between the
socialist Left, committed to replacing the American system with a socialist
utopia, and the patriotic (if oft-naïve) citizens who support their country’s
economic and foreign policy traditions.
*
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
To understand Horowitz, reading a recent compilation of articles edited
by Jamie Glazov, Left Illusions: An
Intellectual Odyssey (Dallas: Spence
Publishing Company, 2003) supplements his earlier autobiography, Radical
Son. The collection is taken from books and articles, often
written for on-line publications such as salon.com and FrontPageMagazine.com.
The book features into ten sections, tying together essays on topics
such as race, the new left, Antonio Gramsci (the Italian Communist who has
deeply influenced American Leftists), the post-communist left, and the war on
terror. Introducing Horowitz,
Glazov quotes Camille Paglia’s appraisal of him as an “original and
courageous” thinker” whose “spiritual and political odyssey [will prove]
paradigmatic for our time” (p. xii).
That
odyssey is documented by Glazov in a short essay, describing Horowitz’s role
in shaping the ‘60s generation, followed by his turn to conservatism.
He slowly realized, in the ‘70s, that “social engineers could not
reshape human nature,” one of the core Marxist dogmas, and that the Left’s
rhetoric and aspirations were, sadly enough, sheer illusions.
He lost the faith that binds together the revolutionary left.
Reflecting on it, Horowitz believes Sigmund Freud rightly understood
(in Civilization and Its Discontents)
the problem. Socialists dream of
a beautiful world wherein love and justice reign. Consequently, Horiwitz laments, socialism is “an adult
fairy tale. Socialism was a wish
for the comforting fantasies of childhood to come true. I had an additional thought:
the revolutionary was a creator, just like God.
Socialism was not only a childish wish, but a wish for childhood
itself: security, warmth, the
feeling of being at the center of the world” (p. 100).
In a chapter entitled “The Road to Nowhere,” Horowitz develops the
arguments of a Polish philosopher, Leszek Kolakowski, an eminent former
Marxist, who said: “’The
self-deification of mankind, to which Marxism gave philosophical expression,
has ended in the same way as all such attempts, whether individual or
collective: it has revealed
itself as the farcial aspect of human bondage’” (p. 126).
Kolakowsky clearly saw the deeply religious roots of Marxist ideology,
an endeavor to end man’s estrangement and bring into being a “new man.” Frankfurt School Marxists, such as Herbert Marcuse, derided
the “commodity fetishism” of the capitalist system that resulted in a
truncated “one dimensional” man. But
we now know the pervasive ills that have resulted wherever the Marxist recipe
has been followed. For example,
in 1989, Soviet citizens ate half the meat Russians enjoyed in 1913 under the
Czars. When you’re not eating
anything, “commodity fetishism” looks more like blessed abundance!
Tiny Taiwan and Switzerland each exported more manufactured goods than
the Soviet Union, whose “factories” were models of inefficiency. South African Blacks under apartheid “owned more cars per
capita than did citizens of the socialist state” (p. 133). The socialist hopes were all illusions.
Since
he apostatized, Horowitz has suffered endless, venomous attacks from his
former colleagues. This results,
in part, from Horowitz’s thorough understanding of the cause he once
championed. He recognizes how
constantly the Left indulges in “Telling It Like It Wasn’t.”
In an essay by this title he focuses on a PBS documentary, “1968:
The Year that Shaped a Generation,” which was virtually dictated by
former leaders of the Students for a Democratic Society such as Tom Hayden,
who now defend their ‘60s radicalism as a species of liberal reformism.
But Hayden misrepresents
himself, Horowitz says, for: “By
1968, Hayden was already calling the black Panthers ‘America’s Vietcong’
and planning the riot he was going to stage at the Democratic convention in
Chicago that August” (p. 76). That
riot, as scripted by Hayden and the SDS, shattered the calm of the city.
Consequently Hubert Humphrey lost the presidential election.
That, in turn, “paved the way for a takeover of its apparatus by
forces of the political left—a trauma from which the party has yet to
recover” (p. 77).
By 1974, new-style Democrats—Ron Dellums, Pat Schroeder, David Bonior,
Bella Abzug—asserted themselves. Having
helped shape the anti-war movement, Horowitz knows that the slogan “Bring
the Troops Home” was merely a cover for the real goal: facilitating the victory of North Vietnam.
“Let me make this perfectly clear:
Those of us who inspired and then led the anti-war movement did not
want merely to stop the killing, as so many veterans of the domestic battles
now claim. We wanted the
communists to win” (p. 111). Mounting
evidence indicates that the war was not lost on the battlefields, where
America could have prevailed and saved millions from Communism.
America lost the war because it lost the will to persevere.
Democrats thwarted Nixon’s efforts to establish a negotiated peace in
Southeast Asia. They cut off
funds for South Vietnam and Cambodia and “precipitated the bloodbath that
followed” (p. 78). “The mass
slaughter in Cambodia and South Vietnam from 1976 to 1978 was the real
achievement of the New Left and could not have been accomplished without
Hayden’s sabotage of the Humphrey presidential campaign and the
anti-communist Democrats” (p. 78).
I’ve touched upon only a few of the themes Horowitz addresses in this
book. He has always been fiercely
partisan, but, he says: “I make
no apologies for my present position. My
values have not changed, but my sense of what supports them and makes them
possible has. It was what I
thought was the humanity of the Marxist idea that made me what I was; it is
the inhumanity of what I have seen to be the Marxist reality that has made me
what I am” (back cover).
*
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Horowitz and his long-term colleague Peter Collier have edited The Anti-Chomsky Reader (San Francisco: Encounter Books, c. 2004) in an effort to expose the
duplicity and destructiveness of one of the most influential members of the
radical Left in America. A MIT
professor of linguistics, Chomsky early established his reputation as an
academic. Then, during the
Vietnam War, he took center stage by writing impassioned indictments of
America’s foreign policies. “According
to the Chicago Tribune, Chomsky is ‘the most cited living author’
and ranks just below Plato and Sigmund Freud among the most cited authors of
all time” (p. vii). In some
circles he’s revered as one of the 20th century’s greatest
thinkers, and he certainly has attracted multiplied thousands of devotees.
The “documentaries” of Michael Moore, the recent political
machinations of billionaire George Soros, and web sites such as MoveOn.org.
all reflect Chomsky’s views. Horowitz
and Collier contend, however, that Chomsky’s influence actually results from
providing “an authentic voice to the hatred of America that has been an
enduring fact of our national scene since the mid-1960s” (p. viii).
More perniciously, two linguists who have studied his academic work
(Robert Levine of Ohio State University and Paul Postal of New York
University) accuse him of “a deep disregard of, and contempt for, the truth;
a monumental disdain for standards of inquiry; a relentless strain of
self-promotion; notable descents into incoherence; and a penchant for verbally
abusing those who disagree with him” (p. ix).
In the lead article of the collection, Stephen J. Morris, a Johns
Hopkins University professor, accuses Chomsky of “Whitewashing Dictatorship
in Communist Vietnam and Cambodia.” Slighting
scholarly literature, ignorant of the complex history of the region, Chomsky
wrote about Vietnam on the basis of left-wing journalistic accounts and his
own one-week visit to the country in 1970.
Applauding America’s withdrawal in 1974, he defended Communist rule
in Vietnam in The Political Economy of Human Rights.
The book was, Morris says, “an attempt to reconstruct the
anti-Western ideology of the New Left; it also is the most extensive rewriting
of a period of contemporary history ever produced in a nontotalitarian society”
(pp. 8-9). More than ignoring the
millions slaughtered as the Communists extended their control from Vietnam to
Cambodia, Chomsky actually defended Pol Pot’s vicious regime by attempting
to deny the genocide that transpired under its rule.
Thomas Nichols examines related issues in “Chomsky and the Cold War”
and demonstrates the anti-American bias in his works, wherein he routinely
delights to assert the moral equivalency of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.
During ‘80s, he wrote with “almost pathological hostility”
regarding President Reagan, dismissing him as an ignorant figurehead of a
flawed Administration.
When Czechoslovakia’s courageous Vaclav Havel (an informed and
articulate critic of socialism) spoke to the U.S. Congress in 1990, Chomsky
called it an “embarrassingly silly and morally repugnant Sunday School
sermon’” (p. 60).
Anti-Communist cold warriors were always wrong!
In “Chomsky’s War Against Israel,” Paul Bogdanor documents the
professor’s contempt for documentary evidence, making him an “intellectual
crook” according to Arthur M. Schlesinger (p. 98).
Chomsky defended Yassar Arafat and the PLO and overlooked the genocidal
rhetoric and terrorist attacks of Muslims.
Conversely, he routinely denounces Israel. He ignored “the Saudi reaction to the capture of Adolf
Eichhman, ‘who had the honor of killing five million Jews,’ or the
Jordanian announcement that by perpetrating the Holocaust, Eichmann had
conferred a real blessing on humanity,’ and that the best response to his
trial would be ‘the liquidation of the remaining six million’ to avenge
his memory” (p. 91). Even
more disturbing, in “Chomsky and Holocaust Denial,” Werner Cohn (a
sociology professor at the University of British Columbia who has published a
book-length study on the topic) charts links between Chomsky and a small
coterie of European writers, including Israel Shahak, “the world’s most
conspicuous Jewish anti-Semite” (p. 119) and Robert Faurisson, a neo-Nazi
French writer.
These essays document what Horowitz labels Chomsky’s “Anti-American
Obsession.” His life-long commitment to socialism has led him to support
Marxist movements around the world, ignoring their failures while praising
their objectives. Even when
forced to criticize certain glaring socialist catastrophes and brutalities, he
laments them as forgivable failures to develop the socialist utopia of Chomsky’s
dreams. And that commitment
explains the incessant Anti-Americanism which is perhaps the most
distinguishing dimension of his writings.