{"id":496707,"date":"2021-05-11T14:51:17","date_gmt":"2021-05-11T18:51:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=496707"},"modified":"2021-05-11T14:51:21","modified_gmt":"2021-05-11T18:51:21","slug":"my-former-friends-have-joined-the-fascists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/my-former-friends-have-joined-the-fascists\/","title":{"rendered":"My Former Friends Have Joined the Fascists"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">14<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fmy-former-friends-have-joined-the-fascists%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=496707&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/GettyImages-688308634.jpg?w=1200&amp;h=800&amp;ixlib=react-9.0.3\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" \/><\/div>\n<p><span>Trump derangement is a crippling mental disorder. It turns otherwise capable minds into Munchausen fabulators, so detached from reality that it\u2019s hard to know what world they think they\u2019re in. It leads to accusations like this: \u201c[Trump was] AWOL during the country\u2019s greatest health crisis in a century.\u201d&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>You can say many things about Donald Trump, and many negative things if you wish, but to call a man AWOL who declared a national health emergency the day after the World Health Organization did the same, banned travel from China, which was the viral source, immediately thereafter, withstood Democrat attacks calling him a racist, a xenophobe and hysteric for this life-saving move; to call a man who supplied record numbers of ventilators, masks and other health paraphernalia that the Obama-Biden White House had depleted and never replaced, who held daily public briefings on the virus with the heads of the CDC, and who performed a political miracle in getting vaccines approved and distributed in record time \u2014 to call this man AWOL during the pandemic is tantamount to calling the earth flat and the sky purple.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Yet ignoring Trump\u2019s alleged absence during the pandemic, while joining his \u201ccult,\u201d is exactly the accusation leveled at me in a <\/span><i><span>New Republic<\/span><\/i><span> cover story by Ron Radosh and Sol Stern, who have called their attack, \u201cOur Friend the Trump Propagandist.\u201d&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>In their article, I am accused of writing three mindless books about Trump as I marched into the MAGA cult. Actually, I wrote <\/span><i><span>two<\/span><\/i><span> books \u2014 both of which were <\/span><i><span>NY Times<\/span><\/i><span> best sellers and neither of which the authors seem to have read. If they had, they would certainly have engaged a specific argument or two in order to make their accusation credible. How exactly is what I have written propaganda and not analysis? Instead, they are appalled by my failure to embrace the Democrat lie that Trump was AWOL during the coronavirus pandemic. At the same time, they are oblivious as to their own hypocrisy in giving the anti-Trump president, Joe Biden, a pass for blowing up the border in his first week in office, and allowing an estimated 100,000 coronavirus carriers to flood the country this year and infect his fellow Americans. Pompous self-righteousness based on non-existent \u201cfacts\u201d is unfortunately what one has come to expect from the left.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The third and newest book of mine referred to is <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Enemy-Within-Totalitarian-Movement-Destroying\/dp\/1684510546\"><i><span>The Enemy Within: How A Totalitarian Movement Is Destroying America<\/span><\/i><\/a><span>, which is not really about Trump. It\u2019s about the Democrat Party and the totalitarian movement that has swallowed it and made it a threat to our country. Trump is a figure in only three of the twelve chapters: as a voice for law and order during the Black Lives Matter insurrections, and as a target of the Democrat hate attempting to blame him for every death resulting from the virus. He also appears in a brief \u201cCoda\u201d to the book that deals with the 2020 election and the January 6 attempt to stiffen the spines of what Trump called \u201cweak Republicans\u201d so they would challenge the result. Democrat fantasists have condemned this protest as an act of treason, of which anyone who questions the election result is also guilty.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p>And that is my crime, according to Radosh and Stern: \u201cWe were once political comrades. But by lying about the election, our old friend has become a danger to American democracy.\u201d&nbsp;In fact, if either of them had read <i>The Enemy Within<\/i>, they would have seen that my book and political agenda are quite the opposite: a systematic defense of America\u2019s constitutional framework against the attacks on its principles and institutions by their political friends.<\/p>\n<p>The accusation that dissent is dangerous and must be suppressed mimics the fascist voice of the Democrat Party in its campaign to criminalize anyone who questions the 2020 election. Calling the break-in to the Capitol \u201can armed insurrection,\u201d when there were no arms and no insurrections, ordering 25,000 troops to the Capitol to deal with a non-existent threat, calling Republicans \u201cenemies of the state\u201d (Pelosi), authorizing witch-hunts of (right wing) \u201cextremists\u201d in the military, the Capitol police and the Department of Homeland Security, seeking the expulsion of Senators Hawley and Cruz and the impeachment of the president for questioning the legitimacy of the electors are of a piece with Radosh and Stern\u2019s malicious charge against me. The aim is to criminalize dissent and make it a high crime in the process.<\/p>\n<p>The reality of course is that Democrats themselves have challenged the legitimacy of every Republican presidential victory this century, including the election of Trump, which they have never accepted. Their \u201cresistance\u201d has caused great damage to the republic, which they prefer not to notice.<\/p>\n<p><span>Buoyed by their accusation that \u2014 along with 75 million other Americans \u2014 I am a Trump sycophant supporting a man whom no one in his right mind, and certainly no one who cared about American democracy could stomach, Radosh and Stern proceed to create a caricature of me as a right-wing bully and ideological bigot.&nbsp; According to them, I used to invite people who disagreed with me to my events but in my Trump-inspired \u201cdrift away from heterodoxy toward party-line orthodoxy,\u201d I stopped the practice. As it happens at the last event I hosted before the pandemic, my keynote banquet speaker was Alan Dershowitz, a lifelong Democrat who voted for Hillary Clinton and against Trump. During the question period, one of my board members attacked him passionately from the audience for his pro-choice position on abortion. I immediately, went to Dershowitz\u2019s side, put my arm around him and scolded my board member reminding her that Alan was a guest. I did this, even though I disagree with him on the abortion issue.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Typical of leftists who have no self-awareness, Radosh and Stern accuse me of being belligerent and aggressive, as though Trump and I invented this political style; as though it is conservatives like us who have declared war on Democrats and not the other way around. This requires a political amnesia that is truly impressive. The left was calling the mild George Bush \u201cHitler\u201d when Trump was still a resort builder, and accusing him of treason. They accused him of lying America into war in Iraq, which is treason, when it was impossible for him to do so since the Democrats \u2014 who authorized the war \u2014 sat on the Intel committees and had the same access to intelligence about weapons of mass destruction as the White House did.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>I am further held guilty of taking the \u201cMike Tyson approach to American politics\u201d with the implication that I and like-minded conservatives are responsible for the nastiness that has infected political discourse. \u201cIn his 2017 book, <\/span><i><span>Big Agenda<\/span><\/i><span>, he proposed that Republicans take lessons in electoral strategy from the ex-heavyweight champ, who had famously observed that \u2018everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.\u2019 In order to win the struggle for America\u2019s future, Horowitz declared, conservatives \u2018must begin every confrontation by punching progressives in the mouth.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Here\u2019s the crucial part of the equation their account leaves out: Like Trump\u2019s political style, mine is reactive. We are counter-punchers. When we go on offense, it is virtually without exception a counter-attack. I have written three books on political strategy, the first published in 1999, long before Trump. There are many facets to a successful political strategy. One of my chapters is called \u201cCompassion is a Virtue,\u201d another: \u201cGo for the Heart.\u201d Radosh and Stern ignore these complications. The point of my Tyson quote was that Democrats have many punches in the mouth for Republicans, and they use them all the time, while Republicans have virtually none with which to respond.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Democrats call Republicans \u201cracists,\u201d \u201csexists,\u201d \u201chomophobes,\u201d \u201cenemies of the state,\u201d \u201cinsurrectionists,\u201d \u201cwhite supremacists,\u201d \u201cterrorists\u201d and \u201cextremists.\u201d What do Republicans call Democrats? \u201c<\/span><i><span>Liberals\u201d(!),<\/span><\/i><span> and more recently, \u201cRadical Liberals.\u201d This is obviously a losing battle for Republicans. So, for more than twenty years, I have advised Republicans to call Democrats what they are: \u201cracists\u201d \u201coppressors of blacks and other inner-city minorities,\u201d and \u2014 more recently \u2014 \u201cfascists.\u201d This is not advice I gave because of Donald Trump. It is the reason I am a supporter of Donald Trump. Because he fights back.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>One would think that two writers who have admired my work in the past would want to read the books I have written specifically about Trump, and assess my responses to the accusations that have been made against him and his achievements. Instead Radosh and Stern ignore \u2014 and probably haven\u2019t read \u2014 any of the arguments I have made in Trump\u2019s defense. Worse, they have constructed a caricature of my present views and activities and \u2014 far worse \u2014 have advised federal authorities to de-platform me and suppress the very ideas they failed to examine.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Before addressing this assault, let me interject something about \u201cold friends.\u201d I met Ron Radosh at a Communist youth club meeting when he was 14 and I was 12. We were friends for 67 years, and went through the political wars, which he and Stern now disparage, together. We remained friends and political allies through our transition from the anti-American left to the conservative right, until our differences over Trump\u2019s election created a wedge between us as Radosh returned to the left. We struggled over the next years to salvage our friendship which we did not want to sacrifice to our political differences. This is a struggle shared by family members and friends across the country who have been put at odds by the political schisms of these difficult times. Some months ago, I thought Ron and I had finally reached a point of agreement and resolve \u2014 to avoid personal attacks, emotional language and attempts to persuade the other to change his views. I now see I was wrong.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>I\u2019m on Ron\u2019s Facebook and Twitter lists so I usually get his posts; but a couple of months ago his feeds went silent. I began to worry that something might have happened to him. Ron is 84 years old, two years ahead of me. I began to worry whether he was ill. So I emailed him: \u201cHaven\u2019t seen a post by you in a while. Are you ok?\u201d He emailed me back the same day, March 18: \u201cNo time for Facebook or Twitter right now. I\u2019m fine.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>In fact, he had no time to post because he was busy slipping a knife between my ribs, attacking my character and even my income, misrepresenting who I am, and calling for a campaign to pressure the I.R.S. into investigating my Freedom Center with the goal of stopping me from expressing my political opinions. It was important to silence me because I am an alleged threat to American democracy.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cOne of the laugh lines in<\/span><i><span> The Enemy Within<\/span><\/i><span> is the outrage Horowitz directs against what he calls the liberal \u2018tax-exempt advocacy culture,\u2019 in which he includes the Southern Poverty Law Center \u2026 Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.\u201d Some laugh line. The Southern Poverty Law Center is a notorious blacklist site that conflates neo-Nazis with conservatives like Dr. Ben Carson. It posts lists of \u201cThe Ten Most Dangerous Hate Mongers\u201d and is so dishonest and corrupt that its scams have been exposed by liberal sites like <\/span><i><span>Tablet Magazine<\/span><\/i><span> and even far left ones like <\/span><i><span>The Nation<\/span><\/i><span>. Its mistreatment of black and female staff members became so scandalous recently that its founder Morris Dees had to leave in disgrace. I am on their hate list and was actually defended in 2018 by Radosh himself, when I was slandered by a group of leftists using SPLC misinformation. The creator of the SPLC lists, Mark Potok, is on record admitting that his goal is to \u201cdestroy\u201d conservatives. I have written over a million easily available words that refute every slander Potok has made against me, yet the leftist media continues to cite them as \u201cfacts.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>This hypocritical assault on my \u201claugh line,\u201d however revealing, is a sideshow. The real agenda of Radosh and Stern is to mobilize the IRS to investigate me and deprive me of the resources to criticize and oppose the tyranny descending on us from Washington. Like a pair of commissar wannabes they issue a call to war: \u201cOur old friend must be defeated on every political front on which he operates, a counter-offensive that should begin by investigating and exposing the Horowitz Center\u2019s fundraising scams and the potential abuse of its tax-exempt status.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Blacklists and appeals to law enforcement to cripple and suppress a political opponent are the characteristics of a totalitarian mentality. So is erasing lifetime personal friendships over political differences.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>In democracies we resolve our disputes by arguments and elections. As it happens, like every effective conservative I am familiar with the harassments of the IRS, which was turned into a political weapon by the Obama administration. To defend ourselves against its attacks, my Freedom Center has assembled a team of top-tier tax lawyers, whom we consult often and listen to carefully. This keeps us honest, and protected. As it happens, we are not scammers, and have not abused our tax-exempt status. As it happens (and should be obvious) Radosh and Stern are not my friends, and I am left wondering if they ever were.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>A version of this opinion piece appeared in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/fpm\/2021\/05\/my-former-friends-have-joined-fascists-david-horowitz\/\">Frontline Mag<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>David Horowitz is founder of the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.horowitzfreedomcenter.org\/\">David Horowitz Freedom Center<\/a>&nbsp;(formerly the Center for the Study of Popular Culture) and author of many books and pamphlets published over the last twenty years. You can purchase his newest book, The Enemy Within: How A Totalitarian Movement Is Destroying America,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Enemy-Within-Totalitarian-Movement-Destroying\/dp\/1684510546\">here.<\/a>&nbsp;His other works include<\/em><em>:&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Hating-Whitey-Other-Progressive-Causes\/dp\/1441767150\">Hating Whitey<\/a>;&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Unholy-Alliance-Radical-Islam-American\/dp\/B0073MJRS4\/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&amp;keywords=david+horowitz+unholy+alliance&amp;qid=1620167751&amp;s=books&amp;sr=1-1\">Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left<\/a>;&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Professors-Most-Dangerous-Academics-America\/dp\/1596985259\/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&amp;keywords=david+horowitz+The+Professors%3A+The+101+Most+Dangerous+Academics+in+America%3B&amp;qid=1620167769&amp;s=audible&amp;sr=1-1\">The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America;<\/a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/End-Time-David-Horowitz\/dp\/1594030804\/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&amp;keywords=david+horowitz+The+End+of+Time&amp;qid=1620167785&amp;s=audible&amp;sr=1-1-catcorr\">The End of Time<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><i>The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author\u2019s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.<\/i><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><i>The Daily Wire is one of America\u2019s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a&nbsp;<\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/subscribe\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>member<\/i><\/span><\/a><i>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Trump derangement is a crippling mental disorder. It turns otherwise capable minds into Munchausen fabulators, so detached from reality that it\u2019s hard to know what world they think they\u2019re in. &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1893637,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-496707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496707\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1893637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}