By Chris Covert
Rantburg.com
Disclosure: I have two articles that are still archived at Frontpagemag.com, written for David Horowitz's temporal newsrealblog.com, before he pulled the plug a few years back.
At his Front Page Magazine, David Horowitz pulled a glowing review of Diana West's book American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation's Character, replacing it instead with a cutting review by Ronald Radosh.
David Horowitz is a former cultural communist (I used to read his work in Ramparts when I was a wee lad in the 1960s) who turned anticommunist based on his experiences and since, at least in some respects, has been anticommunist.
But with the appearance of Diana West's book and M. Stanton Evans' book eight years before, Blacklisted by History, Horowitz and his crew seem not to want to go too many bridges farther than necessary, if only to burnish their credentials as anticommunists, in defending the actions of Franklin Roosevelt and attacking Joseph McCarthy later in the 1950s.
The behavior of Horowitz and company is bizarre, especially in the view of Horowitz's marketing as a former communist in countering every provable argument in favor of what McCarthy did, using a combination of smears, personal attacks, a dash of mendacity and a dollop of facts.
However clumsily McCarthy pursued communist infiltration of the American government, based on historical documents in American and later in Soviet archives, the facts show that McCarthy was exactly on the right track; that the Soviet Union was using its nexus in the American communist party to put its people into areas they should not have been, and at the time the Roosevelt administration appeared to do whatever they could stop attempts to secure those offices.
Pajamas Media and American Thinker writer Clarice Feldman weighs in on the fight against West though claiming not to have read the book, trumpeting Radosh's arguments while diminishing West's, and in the same act her very own. In the linked article West makes an appearance as does Feldman in the comments section.
I have always liked Horowitz. My own political journey, in a few ways at least, mirrors his. In discussing the current crop of leftists in the government he has been passionate about the subject, trying to get readers to accept that, while maybe they are being lied to, much more is to be said. A great writer.
But Horowitz has a blind spot when it comes to his people. I don't know if it is because of his old habits as a former communist or because linecrossers to the right such as himself are so hard to find. The Alex Knepper saga is one rather sorry example. This latest episode with Ronald Radosh is the most glaring example.
To allow a writer to make such accusations as Radosh did, then criticize West when she comes to her own defense, is indefensible. Piling on, Feldman not only repeats Radosh's claims and attacks West for daring to defend herself and her work, she also adds in a critique of West's pedigree as a Yale educated writer, by a blogger, as a matter relevant to the basic charges in West's work.
Horowitz, weakly in my mind, reminds readers that he offered all the space West would need to defend herself against Radosh, similar to telling Joachim Peiper he can resupply inside Bastonge.
You know how it is sometimes with people you love, admire or respect. Sometimes they will present a side of themselves that is ugly and impossible to accept, let alone defend. I've done it before myself, in fact very recently, and I will do it again, probably because of a combination of ignorance, stupidity and laziness, but never out of mendacity.
I'd like to think that Horowitz in ignoring historical facts West has presented, is not acting out of mendacity. His body of work over the years suggests he is not, but this latest episode leans against my own personal blindspot when it comes to Horowitz,.
This argument is not over, and may well not be over for some time to come. Much more will be written on this, and I look forward to reading it. Like the 3.5 years of Mexican reporting, this is a journey, not a destination.
Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and nationa political news for Rantburg.com and Borderlandbeat.com. He can be reached at grurkka@gmail.com