Students are starting to push back against Horowitz’s famous untruths and hate speech (and we don’t mean with pies). Recently, when speaking to students at the University of Hawaii, Horowitz was interrupted by a student each time he told a lie. Instead of shouting him down, however, the students simply corrected Horowitz’s misstatements. Needless to say, the students were then told to “shut up” by Horowitz supporters…
…Horowitz, envisioning right-wing extremism beyond college campuses, has now launched Parents and Students for Academic Freedom, an organization promoting his agenda in primary and secondary schools. They have partnered with ProtestWarrior, one of the far-right’s primary high school organizing groups that specializes in outrageous pro-war propaganda. The site for his new underage crusade prominently features stories from an anonymous 11-year-old who complains of such events as when a teacher asked the class, “What would a Taoist think of Bush?” After researchers have failed to confirm many of the stories from university campuses Horowitz has claimed to collect, are we really supposed to trust his nameless grammar school insider?
Despite Horowitz’s continuing inability to prove any systematic anti-conservative bias, he continues to spew forth accusations. In 2006, Horowitz published The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America, attempting to create a McCarthyish blacklist of liberal professors. Once again, Horowitz’s undoing came by way of fact-check. As Media Matters documented, Horowitz’s condemnations are based on in-classroom statements by professors in only six of the cases, and, in 52 cases, was entirely dependent on outside-classroom activities. Furthermore, an in-depth report by Free Exchange on Campus, entitled “Facts Count,” further eviscerated Horowitz’s claims, documenting an absence of student corroboration (only 13 cases, none of which have withstood further scrutiny), manipulation and distortion of quotes, and in some cases, outright fabrication. Many of the accused professors have responded to Horowitz, often finding the accusations so unsubstantiated as to be comical.
However blatantly ideological and indefensible, Horowitz appears determined to continue preaching “Academic Freedom” to his dwindling choir.
Now, you might ask, why do you write an article about a man who has a dwindling choir? Well, simply, he is reaching many students who are disinformed and misinformed on current policies and systems in America and indoctrinating them into his philosophy. And those students armed with his philosophy endanger the future of America.
Last semester, his “Islamo-Fascism Week Tour” came to DePaul University not too far from Columbia College in Chicago. DePaul thankfully organized a week that countered all the hateful and ignorant events Horowitz was organizing to indoctrinate students into his crusade. However, he was still allowed to hold his events.
And now, David Horowitz’s campus invasion continues this semester on college campuses with a call for colleges to sign a “Declaration of Genocide.” As written on TerrorismAwareness.org, this declaration allegedly “documents the Islamo-fascists plans to destroy the state of Israel and the United States and calls on all campus political, cultural, ethnic and religious groups to oppose all forms of religious supremacism, violence and intimidation and to repudiate statements made by the leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah and other jihadi groups which call for the murder of all infidels and the destruction of the Jews.”
The “Declaration of Genocide” is something I will address in a future article.
David Horowitz cleverly and inaccurately plans to pull in participants with advertising that shows “Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with the legend “Stop The Genocide” across the top and a quote from Ahmadinejad in which he encourages the destruction of both America and Israel.” However, if you visit here, you will find out that Ahmadinejad never said he wanted to wipe Israel off the map. What Ahmadinejad and what was misrepresented in the media and by our government and by scholars like Horowitz was this: “I have no doubt that the new movement taking place in our dear Palestine is a spiritual movement which is spanning the entire Islamic world and which will soon remove this stain of disgrace from the Islamic world.”
The translation that everyone believes is an aggressive misinterpretation---and a convenient one too because it allows for David Horowitz to create and spread propaganda.
Not only does Horowitz wish to invade campuses on a totally bogus premise, he asks students to show A Path to 9/11 before his week kicks off in the month of April.
A Path to 9/11, when aired on ABC to mark the fifth anniversary of 9/11, was describe by Washington Post columnist Tom Shales as “factually shaky, politically inflammatory and photographically a mess.” On SourceWatch.org, the site has numerous sources detailing how Path is pure propaganda.
He recommends showing the hateful documentaries Obsession and Islam: What the West Needs to Know in addition to Path if colleges have dates and time available.
Finally, to top this all off, David Horowitz pulls from his experience as a civil rights activist or American Maoist Communist and asks students to hold a “sit-in” in all Muslim Student Associations that refuse to sign the Declaration of Genocide as well as any other student group that is political and rejects Horowitz’s perverse declaration.
David Horowitz’s “Declaration” tour is shrewdly and deceptively designed the same way activists who are against Bush, the war, and for impeachment design weeks of action. He has prescribed a petition (the Declaration of Genocide), a film series (Path to 9/11, etc.), panel discussions, and a “sit-in” if necessary to all show that America will not stand for Islam’s hatred of America. Horowitz's use of the activism playbook is what makes him more dangerous than a Michael Savage, Bill O'Reilly, or Ann Coulter.
The only thing worse than believing that this election will deliver real hope and real change is believing what David Horowitz has to say is true. And the only thing worse than believing David Horowitz is planning events that support David Horowitz’s bigoted and ignorant philosophy.
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