On Mon, 28 Feb 2005 11:25:02 -0600 Chuck0 <chuck at mutualaid.org> writes:
> Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
>
> > I do not think that Mr. Horowitz jumping ship is a good metaphor.
> I think
> > he stayed the course using any ship going in that direction. That
> > "direction" is being a career Verbal Hit Man (VHM), making a
> living by
> > smearing and assassinating the character of others. Louis Proyect
> seems to
> > be of the same persuasion - the only difference is that Horowitz
> got hired
> > by the right, whereas Proyect remains largely unemployed.
>
> I've read Horowitz's books and some of his articles. I think I've
> come
> up with a good pyschological explanation of his motivations.
> Somebody
> yesterday came up with an interesting take on his guilt concerning
> Horowitz's association with the black panthers, but I think at the
> basic
> level Horowtiz is an insecure egomaniac who craves attention and
> credit.
> The best way to retaliate against him (other than ridicule) is to
> point out that he is a marginal academic figure with an inflated
> past.
Well,David Horowitz is quite a character, isn't he? I have on my desk right in front of me two of his books that he wrote back in his commie left-wing days: *Marx and Modern Economics* and his *The Fate of Midas and Other Essays*.The first book is a collection of essays from assorted economists, both Marxist and bourgeois, which explored the relationships between Marxian political economy and then contemporary mainstream economics. The second book is a collection of essays by Horowitz, himself, many of them on that same theme. One of the theses of that book was the convergence between Marxian economics and Keyenesian economics, a thesis that had been advanced earlier by people like Paul Sweezy and Joan Robinson. Other essays explored ideas derived from the great Marxist historian, Isaac Deutscher, who had been one of Horowitz's mentors in the early 1960s when he was in London. Another essay was on Bertrand Russell, with whom Horowitz had worked with when he served a short stint as director of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation.
It is said that back when he was a commie leftist, Horowitz didn't have a
penny to his name, and spent years earning a poverty-level income at
most. Then when he became a right-winger, all sorts of money began to
flow in and he has now become quite wealthy. On the other hand, the one
thing that he has failed to acquire is any real respect. After all, in
his pilgrimage from the far left to the far right, he has been preceded
by many better men like Max Eastman, James Burnham, Whittaker Chambers
etc. I get the impression that Horowitz thought he would be able to
become some sort of an intellectual leader of the right, the way
he had been of the left. While, he has managed to acquire a certain
notariety, especially with his website, FrontPage, I don't think that he
has gotten all that much respect. After all when he was on the left, he
was very much a big fish in a small pond, whereas on the right he is just
one voice within a crowded field. And how much self-respect can a man
retain after he has sold out the way the Horowitz did?
>
> I was reading one of his recent books (which I didn't bother
> finishing
> because it was so bad) and I noticed that the first part of the book
>
> devotes large numbers of pages to establishing Horowitz's academic
> reputation and history with the Left.
I think that in his heart of hearts, Horowitz realizes that he did his best work back when he was a leftie. And basically, as a right-winger he has continued to live off whatever reputation he acquired when he was pinko.
>I consider myself to be quite
> well
> read about the history of dissent in the 1960s and I had never read
> anything about Horowitz's involvement in the activism of that
> period. Of
> course, I knew that he had been a leftist during that time, but his
> name
> was never mentioned in any of the histories I read of that time. If
> it
> was mentioned, it was as a footnote.
He spent most of the 1960s in the UK, so his involvement in the American leftist movements of the time was very limited. By the time that he returned to the States to become involved over here, the New Left was already winding down. And when he did become involved, it was with the Black Panthers, when they were in their downwards slide.
>
> Horowitz's obsession with Noam Chomsky and his disruption of college
>
> campuses demonstrate the huge chip on his shoulder concerning his
> academic reputation. Horowitz wants people to take him seriously as
> an
> academic and major intellectual figure. Of course, the crap he posts
> to
> his website each weekday pretty much undermines whatever academic
> reputation he has left. I can't see Horowitz getting hired at any
> university with the public evidence of his intellectual dishonesty
> displayed on his website. Ultimately, I think the best way to diss
> Horowitz is to say that a year of his work cannot compare to Chomsky
> on
> a bad hair day.
I am sure Horowitz realizes that in a hundred years, he will be lucky to get even a footnote in the history books, whereas Chomsky will still remain a very well-known figure.
>
> Horowitz is a fucking joke and I doubt that anybody will remember
> him
> twenty years from now.
>
> Chris Doss writes:
>
> >> Why doesn't somebody sue this guy? It doesn't seem
> like it would be too hard to get him for defamation of
> character.
>
> I can't speak to the legal efficacy of such a strategy, but it
> should be
> understood that cockroaches such as Horowitz thrive on attention.
> The
> more attention they get, negative or positive, swells their ego.
> Egomaniacs such as David Horowitz have an addiction to public
> attention.
> Like any addict, he will do anything to keep generating attention,
> even
> if it includes publishing defamations of people everyday. Horowitz
> reminds me very much of the infamous racist Bill White, whose
> attention-seeking behaviors paralleled Horowitz right down to making
> up
> stories about leftists.
>
> If Horowitz was a more minor person than he is currently, the left
> could
> marginalzie him simply by ignoring him. Shunning attention-seekers
> is a
> difficult although highly effective tactic.
>
> Chuck
>
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