Does anyone know how/why David Horowitz went to the Dark Side?

[NAO]

I was reading a progressive book the other day and Horowitz was cited in a footnote. I followed the citation and found that he used to be a radical leftist. He is now, of course, a reactionary rightist.

How does someone go from being a progressive to being a reactionary? It just doesn't seem likely.

Does anyone know the story behind Horowitz? Did he have some kind of epiphany, or did his views change gradually?

[DBoon]

1. Allegedly he was involved with the Black Panthers

and someone he knew very closely was supposedly murdered by them.

No link or cite - just something I remember.

[Yupster]

2. You have your

girlfriend murdered.

That was the start of his change.

He was a lawyer working for the Black Panthers until they murdered his girlfriend.

[Joe Kerr]

11. Read his book "Hating Whitey," if you're really interested.

The woman who was murdered by a member of the Black Panthers wasn't his girlfriend, just a close friend.

[newyawker99]

17. Hi Joe Kerr!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[mcctatas]

3. It must have been God

showing him the error of his ways:sarcasm:

[rpannier]

4. Look at the lives of men like

Bob Dornan, he was very liberal in the 60's, big in the Civil Rights Movement or John Wayne, who was described by several people in Holly-
wood during the 30's as being a closet communist. People change, not always for the better.

[stanwyck]

20. Reagan was a liberal

until he married Nancy and his movie career stalled. Going over to the dark side can be a career move for people who are in limbo. Newt didn't get tenure...so he went into politics. It's called "failing up". Conservatism is a repository for failures. Like George W. Bush. They become born again. As long as it pays.
It's all about the money. They're hounds for the dollar. Wherever it goes, they go.
Even Limbaugh is a manufactured conservative. He was dreamed up by a radio exec. who needed someone to fill a time slot.

[gumby]

5. "Progressive?"

I doubt that Horror-wits was ever a "progressive." It seems that he is and always has been a "reactionary."

Maybe he didn't change. Rather, the "reactionaries" of the time have changed. Fascism is indeed "reactionary."

[Lydia Leftcoast]

6. Some people are absolutists

If their previous belief can be shown to be wrong in the tiniest fashion, they swing 180 degrees.

You may not know that most of the older neocons were staunch Socialists or even Communists in the 1930s and 1940s.

Some of them flipped after the revelations of Stalin's crimes, and others flipped after the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. In either case, they went from being fanatical Communists to being fanatical Conservatives. I guess they're just born fanatics, and if it's not one thing, it's another.

[Spinzonner]

9. Humanity disappoints them

by failing to live up to their expectations and follow their prescriptions.

[DBoon]

19. Orwell had a comment about this type

who could easily slide between stalinism and fascism

What they basically hated was the idea of human decency. What they were consistently against was "petite bourgeois liberty"

[alittlelark]

7. Waaaaayyyy too much ACID.

That's my best guess.

[BlackVelvetElvis]

8. Some claim he is a neoconservative.

Which would make sense. The neoconservative movement began from the left.
I've heard a number of things but they conflict. Vietnam was a factor in his case, I think, which also brought many from the left into the new neoconservative movement.

[Coastie for Truth]

12. A side issue

was what many progressive potential academicians perceived as blatant racism in academic tenure decisions in the late 1960's and the 1970's.

This was the era when many progressives became "neocons" as their own "Bakke Cases" wended through the court systems.

[delete_bush]

10. he's thinking it's the only way he'll have a shot

at boning Ann Coulter.

[wellst0nev0ter]

13. He Just Traded One Set Of Authoritarianism For Another

Even as a Leninist he was still an asshole. Back in 1969, Ramparts was a New Left magazine whose level of reporting didn't match the advertizing dollars it failed to get from businesses scared of its politics.

Well Whore-o-witz and his partner Peter Collier ousted Robert Scheer and Warren Hinckle from the editorial spots, gutted the magazine staff from 50 to 15, and just stopped short of renaming the magazine "The David Horowitz Monthly".

When people continued to get tired of his screeching communism, he simply sold out and turned to Reagan.

[blogbear]

14. To hide the chocolate cream pie stains?

[AntiCoup2K4]

15. Perhaps his "liberal" radicalism of the past was all an act?

It's been well established that the Nixon administration infiltrated the anti-war leftist movement with a lot of their own operatives. Maybe Whore-owitz was really a right winger all along?

[durutti]

16. $$$$$ n/t

[sendero]

18. Whatever the catalyst...

... I think virtually all of these folks are in it for the money.

They saw how easy it was for a talentless pig moron (Limbaugh) to get rich telling the (stupid and dysfunctional) people what they want to hear, and they jumped on the bandwagon.

Let's face it, spouting wacko bullshit is a lot easier than working for a living.

[spindoctor]

21. Radicals walk a thin line

It is not an uncommon phenomena to see them swing from one side to the other. In the end they only serve their own agenda.

[newfaceinhell]

22. He's always been on the dark side- he just moved to a different part of it

Chomsky (after being smeared by Dave)- "I didn't read him when he was a stalinist, and I don't read him now".