Gordon Fitch wrote:
> >Well, Horowitz is certainly doing a great deal to bring the
> >issue before the general public, and present the arguments
> >against it in the worst possible light.
Kelley Walker:
> no, he's not. far too many believe the crap he pumps out. two primary
> examples:
>
> the nonsense about how it's all okay because other africans sold africans
> into slavery, as well as the slavery has always been around nonsense. shit
> man, i bought into 7 or so years ago, without, of course, the conservative
> views. (i pointed out to some asshole on international women's day that if
> he's horrified by women being sold into prostitution by their brothers and
> fathers, then please explain why horowitz is not a total freak to spout off
> about how blacks sold blacks as a justification for what europeans did!)
>
> that reparations and black nationalism is racist as if racism can be
> reduced to the simple act of categorizing people into groups, etc.
>
> i dare say that the majority of people buy into these two things. horowitz
> appears sane. the one that is most disgusting, i think, that blacks owe
> their good fortune to europeans is, unfortunately, a view that is accepted
> by too many people.
>
> horowitz does not look like an idiot at all.
>
> the first two issues, i might add, are also problems in the discourse of
> the radical left. we just don't see it often enough.
I didn't say Horowitz looked like an idiot, or that the Left does not have related discursive problems. (I noticed that no one on the list cared to take up some of the interesting problems I pointed out.) In any case, from my aethereal point of view, most people get things wrong anyway. The point is that H. has taken out full-page ads all over the place, probably funded by you-know-who, created a stir, and gotten onto the front page of the _La_Bujissima_, the _New_York_Times_! And his arguments are fairly stupid, so that all kinds of "moderates", to say nothing of those further Left, will be jumping on his case not because it's bad but because they can look good, but not too good (radical) without breaking a sweat. And other "moderates" can argue with them, with the possible result that the whole issue will be illuminated and legitimated before the general public in a way I would not have believed a few years ago when I was exasperating Net-libertarians with it. Who but David Horowitz (with the help of a few naive student hotheads and some agents-provocateurs, probably) could have accomplished this? Not me, that's for sure.
If you care about reparations, the real problems will occur when its "friends" sell it down the river. But that's for another day.