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Los Angeles Times
07-05-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
The California crusades of commie-turned-conservative David Horowitz
Good morning. Here's what you need to know to start your day. I'm metro columnist Gustavo Arellano, writing from Orange County, California — not the one in Florida, New York or North Carolina. If there were a Mt. Rushmore of people who exemplified the California art of reinvention, author and commentator David Horowitz would be the face furthest on the right. The son of bona fide communists died last week at 86 as one of the most consequential figures in the modern-day conservative movement. He supported the Iraq war, accused Muslim activists of supporting a second Holocaust against Jews and claimed the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump — and that's just a piece of lint on the ball of whine that was Horowitz's career (I'm a columnist, so I'm allowed to have opinions). The raspy-voiced provocateur reveled in demonizing his opponents. He perfected the politics of grievance and victimization — ironic, since that was the cudgel Horowitz accused opponents of employing — and relied on straw man arguments so much that I'm sure the Scarecrow from 'The Wizard of Oz' is wondering where his royalties are. He perfected his craft in the Golden State. His 1996 autobiography 'Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey' tracked the evolution of a red-diaper baby from working as an editor for the pioneering progressive magazine Ramparts and palling around with the Black Panthers to identifying himself as a 'Lefty for Reagan' to waging well-funded wars through his Center for the Study of Popular Culture (now called the David Horowitz Freedom Center) against anything with the slightest patina of liberalism. Long before the likes of Andrew Breitbart and my fellow former Daily Bruin columnist Ben Shapiro figured out that politics is downstream from culture, Horowitz was busy trying to conquer that realm. He assailed Hollywood while also offering salons for conservatives in the industry. He was a prolific writer of books and articles, and someone who lectured across the country with the zest of a circus barker. He especially tried to change the hearts and minds of young adults — or at least troll them. One of Horowitz's favored fronts was university campuses. He defended fraternities at Cal State Northridge and Occidental College accused of racism and sexism in the name of free speech. That's how I first heard of his work: As a student activist at Chapman University in the early 1990s, I wondered why so many of my friends loathed the guy who used to do the 'Fight Back!' consumer-fraud show my parents so enjoyed when I was a kid (their David Horowitz wasn't mine, alas). I was a senior in 2001 when Horowitz pulled off one of his most notorious collegiate projects. That spring, he approached student newspapers across the country and offered to buy full-page ads attacking reparations for Black Americans. Those who didn't take his money were accused by his supporters of squelching free speech; those who did were attacked by progressives for platforming a person they felt was a racist and inevitably apologized. The move made national headlines and allowed Horowitz to harrumph about wokeness before wokeness was even a term. 'I see the left as being at war with human nature,' he told The Times in a 1997 profile. 'The left thinks you can change people profoundly.' That same piece said opponents dismissed Horowitz as a 'bitter graybeard loon,' with legendary Times columnist and fellow Ramparts alum Robert Scheer sneering that Horowitz was 'fighting battles that most people don't care about anymore.' Well, we live in Horowitz's world now. His motto of 'begin every confrontation by punching progressives in the mouth' is gospel in the Trump White House. And his most famous acolyte has the president's ear: Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. The teenage Miller invited Horowitz to speak at Santa Monica High School in the early aughts, entranced by his bromides against multiculturalism. Horowitz returned the favor by publishing Miller's essay 'How I Changed My Left-Wing High School' in his FrontPage Magazine. Miller then started a chapter of Horowitz's Students for Academic Freedom at Duke as an undergrad. This ping-pong of flattery culminated with Horowitz connecting Miller to jobs on Capitol Hill before he joined Trump's 2016 campaign — and here we are. New polling has some bad news for Newsom The Real ID deadline is finally here The LAPD is investigating killings that went undiscovered Botched California State Bar tests L.A.'s $1-billion budget deficit National Endowment for the Arts cuts Facing an existential threat from President Trump, the NEA canceled grants for L.A. Theatre Works, L.A. Chamber Orchestra and other groups. The grant cancellations marked the latest salvo in Trump's battle to claim the landscape of American arts and culture, including his takeover of the Kennedy Center. What else is going on Get unlimited access to the Los Angeles Times. Subscribe here. After the Eaton fire, they didn't think prom would happen. Now these teens are ready to dance. About 175 students from John Muir High School in Pasadena lost their homes in the January fire. For many, prom night offered a rare sense of normalcy. Other must reads How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to essentialcalifornia@ Pan-Pacific Auditorium, exterior detail (Wurdeman & Becket, 1935) ,formerly at 7600 Beverly Blvd., photographed in 1988. Going out Staying in Lisa says: 'To work walking distance from where I live.' RW says: 'People won't believe a problem until they can see it.' Eve says: 'If everyone likes you, you aren't doing your job.' Email us at essentialcalifornia@ , and your response might appear in the newsletter this week. Show us your favorite place in California! Send us photos you have taken of spots in California that are special — natural or human-made — and tell us why they're important to you. Today's great photo is from Getty Images' Evan Agostini of Janelle Monae at Monday night's Met gala. Have a great day, from the Essential California team Gustavo Arellano, California columnist Karim Doumar, head of newsletters Check our top stories, topics and the latest articles on
Boston Globe
01-05-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
David Horowitz, combative right-wing activist and author, dies at 86
A Queens-bred son of communist teachers, Mr. Horowitz grew from a red diaper baby into a committed Marxist, attending his first march at age 9 and becoming a top editor at Ramparts magazine, a voice of the 1960s and '70s New Left. Advertisement He gradually became disillusioned by the movement and, in a break from politics, partnered with his friend Peter Collier to write books about powerful American families, including well-received portraits of the Kennedys, the Roosevelts, and the Ford auto-making family. Their first collaboration, 'The Rockefellers: An American Dynasty' (1976), was a finalist for the National Book Awards. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Beginning in 1985, when the duo co-wrote a Washington Post Magazine article titled 'Lefties for Reagan,' they also drew attention for their turn toward conservatism. The Los Angeles Times likened them to 'lumberjacks on a two-man saw, enthusiastically cutting through a forest of former beliefs.' Mr. Horowitz and Collier explained they had decided to vote for President Ronald Reagan out of frustration with the left's 'anti-Americanism' and 'casual indulgence of Soviet totalitarianism,' among other issues. Advertisement 'Looking back on the left's revolutionary enthusiasms of the last 25 years, we have painfully learned what should have been obvious all along: that we live in an imperfect world that is bettered only with great difficulty and easily made worse - much worse,' they wrote. 'This is a conservative assessment, but on the basis of half a lifetime's experience, it seems about right.' Although he continued to write biographies with Collier, Mr. Horowitz shifted his focus back to politics, reinventing himself as a conservative commentator and provocateur. He spoke at college campuses, wrote dozens of books (including the 2017 bestseller 'Big Agenda: President Trump's Plan to Save America') and appeared frequently on television, particularly on Fox News, where he denounced President Obama as 'an evil man' who was 'destroying our borders.' Long before the Trump administration began seeking more federal control of universities, he helped lay the groundwork for the White House's efforts, arguing in books such as 'Indoctrination U' (2007) that America's universities had become incubators for left-wing politics and had abandoned the principle of academic freedom. Mr. Horowitz influenced conservative activists and political advisers such as Charlie Kirk, who called him 'a titan in the battle of ideas and a warrior for Western civilization,' and Stephen Miller, the Trump White House deputy chief of staff for policy, who credited him with inspiring 'generations of bold conservative leaders.' Miller first sought out Mr. Horowitz for advice as a teenager in Santa Monica, while trying to persuade high school administrators to direct daily recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance. Mr. Horowitz later helped him get a job in the office of Senator Jeff Sessions, the Alabama Republican who served as attorney general during Donald Trump's first term. Advertisement Outside of right-wing circles, Mr. Horowitz was harshly criticized, including for describing Black Lives Matter as 'a violent racist organization' and equating Palestinians to 'Nazis.' The Southern Poverty Law Center called him 'a driving force of the anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-black movements,' citing his direction of the Freedom Center, which began in 1988 as the Center for the Study of Popular Culture. The center has denounced climate science, illegal immigration, and the spread of Islam, organizing a 2007 event called 'Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week' that was billed as a campaign to call out 'the oppression of women in Islam.' Its gatherings drew future Trump officials and advisers including Sessions and Stephen K. Bannon. Discussing the group in a 2017 interview with the Post, Mr. Horowitz cast the center as a key defender of 'traditional American values' and as a counterweight to rival groups spending money on behalf of the left. 'People would refer to my Freedom Center as a 'think tank,'' he wrote in a 2017 article for Breitbart News, 'and I would correct them, 'No, it's a battle tank,' because that is what I felt was missing most in the conservative cause - troops ready and willing to fight fire with fire.' One of two children, David Joel Horowitz was born in Queens on Jan. 10, 1939. He studied English at Columbia University, receiving a bachelor's degree in 1959, and married Elissa Krauthammer that same year. Mr. Horowitz earned a master's degree in English from the University of California Berkeley in 1961, and the next year he published his first book, 'Student,' a report on the political activism taking place on campus. Advertisement His political advocacy took him to London, where he worked for the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation and befriended the Polish Marxist writer Isaac Deutscher, whose biography he published in 1971, a few years after returning to Berkeley and joining the staff of Ramparts. 'The system cannot be revitalized; it must be overthrown,' the magazine declared in a 1970 editorial. 'As humanely as possible, but by any means necessary.' (Mr. Horowitz later told The New York Times that he was the one who pushed for the 'humanely' part.) At Ramparts, Mr. Horowitz worked closely with Collier, a fellow editor who had also been a graduate student at Berkeley. He also got to know Huey Newton, the founder of the Black Panther Party, which was heavily featured in the publication. Mr. Horowitz helped the Panthers raise money to finance a school for poor children in Oakland. Mr. Horowitz (right) of Ramparts magazine answered questions at a news conference in Berkeley, Calif., in 1972. He appeared along with editor Peter Collier (third from right) and Perry Fellwock (second from right) of San Diego. Fellwock, an antiwar activist, was credited by the magazine as the source for an article on National Security Agency intelligence-gathering. Sal Veder/Associated Press But he grew disillusioned with the organization, and with left-wing politics more broadly, after the death of his friend Betty Van Patter, a white woman whom he had introduced to the Panthers. While working for the group as a bookkeeper, she disappeared in late 1974. Weeks later, her body was found in San Francisco Bay, badly beaten. Although no one was charged with her killing, Mr. Horowitz was convinced the Panthers were responsible. 'Everything I had believed in and worked for, every effort to ally myself with what was virtuous and right, had ultimately led to my involvement with the Panthers, and the invitation to Betty to take the job that killed her,' he wrote in a 1997 memoir, 'Radical Son.' Advertisement By his own acknowledgment, her death sent him into a tailspin. He bought a Datsun sports car; was nearly killed when it was struck by a train, according to The New York Times; and divorced his wife after nearly two decades of marriage. Writing, especially in partnership with Collier, seemed to bring stability. Together they produced books including 'The Kennedys: An American Drama' (1984), a four-generation history that charted the rise of patriarch Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. and the successes and disappointments of his descendants. 'Collier and Horowitz have blended historical research and journalism brilliantly,' Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward wrote in a review. 'The information they have gathered will always be an important part of the record, although their particular vision of the Kennedys as doomed family will likely die with other Kennedy myths. They see the Kennedy history as a story of alliances and dreams - in their view, the wrong alliances and the wrong dreams. Where the individual family members succeeded, the authors see money, manipulation and insincerity. Where the family failed, Collier and Horowitz see payment for the successes.' Mr. Horowitz's marriages to Sam Moorman and Shay Marlowe ended in divorce. In 1998, he married April Mullvain. Complete information on survivors was not immediately available. Mr. Horowitz had a stepson, John, and four children from his first marriage: Jonathan Daniel, Ben, Anne and Sarah Horowitz, who was born with Turner syndrome, a chromosomal condition, and died in 2008 at the age of 44. He wrote about her legacy in a 2009 book, 'A Cracking of the Heart.' Describing his political views, Mr. Horowitz said he was more moderate than his critics made him out to be, writing in a 2002 essay for Salon that he was 'a defender of gays and 'alternative lifestyles,' a moderate on abortion, and a civil rights activist.' Advertisement But he was unabashed about his combative style and, to the dismay of some conservatives, his defense of Trump, whom he falsely claimed had won the 2020 election. 'If you're nuanced and you speak in what I would call an intellectual manner, you get eaten alive,' Mr. Horowitz told the Times in 2017. 'It's a great handicap to be talking like accountants while the opposition are making moral indictments.'
Yahoo
29-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The JFK files: the truth at last?
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. "It's been 60 years, time for the American people to know the TRUTH." So declared Donald Trump on the campaign trail, vowing to order the release of all official records related to the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy. Last week that cache of documents, nearly 64,000 pages of it, was duly released, said A.O. Scott in The New York Times. Some are illegible owing to age, and it will take months for people to scour through them all. Many, though, will be eager to do so. The JFK assassination is the "source and paradigm of modern conspiratorial thinking". Hosts of self-styled sleuths will be poring through them for evidence that Kennedy was killed by the Mafia or the CIA or the "Deep State". They won't find any, of course, said David Harsanyi in the New York Post, but that won't allay their suspicions. Why? Because conspiracy theorists aren't really looking for the truth; "they're looking for more questions". Still, it was high time these files were released. Washington's tendency to overclassify documents only fuels paranoia. They're unlikely to contain any revelations, but they should yield some intriguing titbits. And those are sure to be misinterpreted by conspiracy theorists. One file already much shared on social media, for instance, contained a copy of a 1967 article in Ramparts magazine casting suspicion on the death of Gary Underhill, a CIA man who died by suicide after JFK's death. This means nothing, as it happens: Ramparts was a pro-Soviet magazine that "blamed literally every modern atrocity on the CIA". So far, it seems that decades of secrecy were mainly protecting the CIA's murky practices, said Talya Minsberg et al in The New York Times: illegal surveillance, break-ins and the like. There's not a peep about any "second gunman". The only shocking thing about this data dump, said Jack Ohman in the San Francisco Chronicle, is that Trump hyped it up so much. But it's not the first time he has used JFK's killing for political advantage. In 2016, he falsely claimed the father of Ted Cruz, his Republican presidential rival, was implicated in it. His evidence? A blurry photo of Lee Harvey Oswald handing out pro-Castro leaflets in New Orleans with a dark-haired man who wasn't Rafael Cruz. For all the fanfare over the JFK files, all it really shows is that Trump will "do anything for attention", including "exploiting the murder of a predecessor".
Boston Globe
20-03-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Jeffrey Bruce Klein, a founder and editor of Mother Jones, dies at 77
Mr. Klein was an East Coast transplant to the San Francisco Bay Area, drawn in the midst of 1960s counterculture by the possibility that the era's antiestablishment character could continue to drive the region's lively left-wing journalism. In 1974, he joined Adam Hochschild, Paul Jacobs, and Richard Parker, all editors at the progressive magazine Ramparts, to plan a publication that would expand the left's focus on government malfeasance to include corporate muckraking and the role of money in politics. Advertisement They called it Mother Jones, in honor of the fiery labor leader Mary Harris Jones. Working from a cramped office above a McDonald's in San Francisco, they produced their first issue in 1976. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Mr. Klein was officially the magazine's literary editor, though in practice he commissioned writers of all kinds. "He energetically barraged every writer he could think of with phone calls and letters," Hochschild said in an interview. Among his first finds was a short memoir by Chinese writer Li-Li Ch'en, which ran in the inaugural issue and won a National Magazine Award in 1977. Mr. Klein also contributed features of his own, including one on the complicated relationship between basketball player Bill Walton and Portland, Ore., where he played professionally for the Trail Blazers. Another article showed that Richard V. Allen, Ronald Reagan's first national security adviser, had failed to disclose connections to fugitive financier Robert Vesco — a revelation that contributed to Allen's resignation in 1982. In 1981, Mr. Klein left to become the editor-in-chief of San Francisco magazine. A few years later, he founded West, the Sunday magazine of The San Jose Mercury News, where he cultivated an army of young journalists. 'He had this unlimited enthusiasm about whatever we wanted to work on,' one of those journalists, Susan Faludi, said in an interview. She added that he commissioned her to write stories that became the basis of her first book, 'Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women' (1991). Advertisement By the early 1990s, Mother Jones was sagging, having fallen, in the eyes of many readers, into the rut of predictably left-leaning diatribes. It had once had as many as 238,000 subscriptions; that number had dropped by half. Mr. Klein returned to the magazine in 1992, this time as its editor-in-chief. He brought a tech-savvy sensibility to its investigative coverage, with features on Silicon Valley and the 1990s internet boom. In 1998, he began a $3.5 million market-research campaign and a complete redesign. Subscriptions rebounded by 25 percent over the five years after he arrived. Mother Jones was the first general-interest magazine to have a substantial website. In 1994, Mr. Klein published an online database of corporate political donors, cross-referenced with their recipients. His criticism was bipartisan: Although he took glee in going after Newt Gingrich, the Republican speaker of the House from 1995 to 1999, he was almost as savage in his attacks on Bill Clinton, whom he described as a "stunningly disappointing president." With an eye toward attracting new readers, Mr. Klein also ran articles that pushed against liberal orthodoxies, like one that was critical of affirmative action, and on matters outside the magazine's core interests, like spirituality. Such articles caused a rift between Mr. Klein and several members of the Mother Jones board, who wanted to hew closer to the progressive line. He resigned in 1998. Jeffrey Bruce Klein was born Jan. 15, 1948, in Scranton, Pa. His father, Harold, was a doctor, and his mother, Helen (Blum) Klein, managed the home. Advertisement He studied psychology at Columbia University and graduated in 1969; despite his left-wing politics, he did not participate in the protests that rocked the school while he was there. He did, however, study under famed literary scholar Lionel Trilling, an experience he later cited as critical to his decision to become a writer. After graduating, like countless idealistic young people at the time, he packed up his Volkswagen Beetle and drove to California. He would live there for the rest of his life. He studied education at Stanford University, where he met Judith Weinstein. They married in 1971. She died in 1996. A second marriage, to Judi Cohen, ended in divorce. He married Claudia Brooks in 2020. Along with his sons, both from his first marriage, she survives him, as do four grandchildren; his sister, Carol White; and his brother, Ken. After leaving Mother Jones in 1998, Mr. Klein taught journalism at Stanford and worked as a producer for 'PBS NewsHour' with Jim Lehrer. One of his 'NewsHour' programs, on the Chinese economy, won a Gerald Loeb Award in 2006. In between editing investigative journalism, he wrote a science fiction thriller, 'The Black Hole Affair' (1991). And while his pragmatism irked some of his friends on the left, he saw politics differently. "There is obviously a left and right dimension, but I think the more critical dimension is outsider and insider," he told The New York Times in 1993. "I think that is where the real political battles are." This article originally appeared in
Yahoo
19-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Gary Underhill Memo in JFK Files Causes Stir
A memo about an alleged CIA agent named Gary Underhill is causing a stir online after thousands of pages of documents were newly released in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. His full name was John Garrett Underhill Jr. The memo was widely shared online after the White House released thousands of pages of documents never before seen by the public. It is available on the government's archival website. Underhill has been mentioned before in books relating to the assassination, though, and the accusations in the memo remain unproven. Still, it is being described as one of the "bombshells" in the trove of documents, which were released on May 18, 2025. Gary Underhill's "chilling story is hardly implausible. As a spy apparatus the CIA is honeycombed with self-contained cliques operating without any real central control," the memo alleges. The memo's subject is listed as Ramparts: John Garrett Underhill Jr., Samuel George Cummings, and Interarmco. Ramparts was a magazine in that era that did investigative exposes relating to the CIA. According to the memo, June 1967 documents say that 'the day after the assassination, Gary Underhill left Washington in a hurry. Late in the evening he showed up at the home of friends in New Jersey. He was very agitated. A small clique within the CIA was responsible for the assassination, he confided, and he was afraid for his life and probably would have to leave the country. Less than six months later Underhill was found shot to death in his Washington apartment. The coroner ruled it suicide.' J. Garrett Underhill "had been an intelligence agent during World War II and was a recognized authority on limited warfare and small arms. A researcher and writer on military affairs, he was on a first-name basis with many of the top brass in the Pentagon," the memo says. "He was also on intimate terms with a number of high-ranking CIA officials – he was one of the Agency's 'un-people' who perform special assignments. At one time he had been a friend of Samuel Cummings of Interarmco, the arms broker that numbers among its customers the CIA and, ironically, Klein's Sporting Goods of Chicago, from whence the mail order Carcano allegedly was purchased by Oswald.' Oswald is a reference to Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin and governmental described lone gunman in the death of Kennedy. The memo contains details of Underhill's death. "The friends whom Underhill visited say he was sober but badly shook. They say he attributed the Kennedy murder to a CIA clique which was carrying on a lucrative racket in gun-running, narcotics, and other contraband and manipulating political intrigue to serve its own ends," the memo alleges. "Kennedy supposedly got wind that something was going on and was killed before he could 'blow the whistle on it.' Although the friends had always known Underhill to be perfectly rational and objective they at first didn't take his account seriously. 'I think the main reason was,' explains the husband, 'that we couldn't believe that the CIA could contain a corrupt element every bit as ruthless – and more efficient – as the mafia.'" The verdict of suicide "in Underhill's death is by no means convincing. His body was found by a writing collaborator, Asher Brynes of the New Republic," the memo continues. "He had been shot behind the left ear, and an automatic pistol was under his left side. Odd, says Brynes, because Underhill was right-handed. Brynes thinks the pistol was fitted with a silencer, and occupants of the apartment building could not recall hearing a shot. Underhill obviously had been dead several days." A check of Agency records yielded information about John Garrett Underhill Jr. He was born Aug. 7, 1915, in Brooklyn, New York, attended high school in Brooklyn and graduated from Harvard in 1937 and died on May 8, 1964, the memo says. He worked as a pictorial journalist for Life Magazine from 1938 through 1942. He served in World War II as a second lieutenant, working on technical and photographic headings, evaluation of intelligence and enemy uniforms, insignia, and weapons. A CIA memo found that there was interest by the New York Office in 'using subject as a contact for foreign intelligence.' He was advised that contact should be developed with caution. A UP article written by Underhill for Esquire stated that the U.S. Army was shockingly weak and that Underhill served in military intelligence in World War II and Korea. He had contacts with a man named Herman Axelbank who was trying to sell photographs of Soviet military subjects, the memo alleges. Cummings was described in the memo as an alleged member of the CIA who traveled abroad extensively buying foreign weapons. The arms were being bought for the CIA and 'intended for resistance elements behind the Iron Curtain," it accuses, saying that Cummings was the principal agent of a CIA owned companies. It was noted that Underhill, Cummings, and Interarmco had not appeared to date in any press or classified reports of the Garrison investigation in New Orleans into the Kennedy assassination "with the tenuous exception of the Ramparts article cited at the outset of this memorandum."
