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Horowitz expels me from FrontPage
(Note: When I was first drafting this blog entry, I did not quote verbatim David Horowitz’s e-mails to me, but paraphrased and summarized them. However, when I received his final e-mail, in which he totally refused to give any explanation for his behavior and rudely severed our relationship, at that point I felt I had the right to tell how he had conducted himself toward me, and the only way I could do that was to quote his e-mails in full.)
Here’s how it started. This morning I wrote a friendly note to Israeli writer David Hornik, with a cc to David Horowitz, agreeing with Hornik’s article today at FrontPage Magazine about the report on the Israeli government’s actions in the war last summer. A few minutes later David Horowitz sent me a reply to that e-mail. Horowitz said:
Are you unaware that you have been attacked—and I through you—on Huffington Post?
He gave no further details, but I figured it was probably David Mills, the Undercover Black Man, who I knew from Google listings had been attacking me lately, though I had not actually read any of it. I found the entry at Huntington Post, which was entitled “David Horowitz Welcomes a Race-Baiter.” Here’s the first part of it:
One year ago, right-wing activist David Horowitz seemed convinced that Lawrence Auster, an occasional contributor to his FrontPage Magazine website, trafficked in “racist” ideas. And he seemed to cast Auster out.
I had sent Horowitz and Jamie Glazov, FrontPage’s managing editor, an 11-page letter detailing Auster’s views on race, as expressed on Auster’s own blog.
(For example, his description of black people collectively as “the savages.”)
Concerning my letter, Horowitz emailed Glazov and me on May 14, 2006: “I think it’s a persuasive argument for not running Auster unless he publicly repudiates these positions which are racist and offensive.”
Sure enough, Auster’s essays didn’t appear in FrontPage Magazine after that.
Until today.
Yes, Lawrence Auster is back, alerting David Horowitz’s readers to an epidemic of black-on-white rape.
That David Horowitz had had such an exchange with David Mills last year was news to me. Until my piece at FP this week on interracial rape, I had sent Horowitz several article submissions and article ideas over the last year, mostly dealing with the Islam issue (and none of them, to my memory, dealing with race), and they had all been rejected; I simply figured the pieces were not right for FP. Now it turned out that something else was going on. But I had had no way of knowing that. Horowitz, for whom I’ve been writing for over five years, and with whom over the years I have exchanged several hundreds of e-mails on intellectual topics in addition to e-mails relating to my work at FrontPage, had never told me about any of this.
On reading Mills’s post, I wrote to Horowitz and asked him if he had sent such an e-mail to Mills. He responded with a one-word e-mail:
Yes.
I wrote back:
Doesn’t this require more explanation from you? You never told me this. You never told me you weren’t going to publish me unless I repudiated certain positions. You never forwarded to me the material from Mills that led you to decide you wouldn’t publish me any more. You told David Mills, a complete stranger, that you weren’t going to publish me any more, but you didn’t tell me.
Further, since you decided, without telling me, that you wouldn’t publish me any more, why are you still publishing me now?
Horowitz replied:
Lawrence you’re a big pain in the ass. One article from you takes more time and energy than 50 articles from 50 writers and gets me attacked and now is getting me the third degree from you. We have had many arguments over your racial attitudes as you know. I don’t think you’re the kind of racist this prick Mills describes you as (and if I can find it I will send you the email I sent him defending your current piece). But I do think you have made statements that are racist. I have a million enemies out there and I don’t need attacks waiting to happen by publishing your stuff. I published this piece because I forgot my exchange with Mills last year and my overall impression of your work is that it is interesting if obtuse. I forgot I guess also how difficult you are to work with. I’d like to see you defend yourself against the charges Mills is making rather than attacking me.
I replied:
You told this stranger a year ago that I was a racist and that you wouldn’t publish me any more, and you never told me about this, and now, because I’ve found about this and have asked you to explain, you call me a “big pain in the ass”?
Is this really the way you want to address me? Is this the way you want to address this issue?
You write:
I’d like to see you defend yourself against the charges Mills is making rather than attacking me.
I’ve never ever heard about these charges until today, because you never told me about them. And now because I’m asking you to explain, you say that I’m attacking you?
Please think carefully before you reply and don’t reply off the handle.
Four hours later, Horowitz replied:
I want you to go away Lawrence. You have caused me more trouble than I care to think about and the fact that you’re piling on me while I’m getting letters from my children asking me why I published a racist, and while I’m waiting to see this spread across the Internet, is more than I can handle right now.
I wrote back to him:
I’ve just learned today, a year after the fact, that you had expelled me from FrontPage. You had not told me that you had expelled me; and you have not given me your reasons for expelling me, since you have not identified any statement of mine that you think is racist and offensive so that I could defend myself; and you have not told me why you never told me that you had expelled me. And when I ask for explanations for all this, you tell me that I am “a big pain in the ass,” that I’m giving you the “third degree,” that I’m “attacking” you, and that I’m “piling” on you, and then you tell me to “go away” as if I were some bum accosting you on the street.
Your behavior is shameful.
You, the great crusader against campus PC, have just behaved in the most outrageously PC manner I’ve ever seen in my life.
There is much more to say about this, but for now I’ll just add this. Horowitz is upset—with me—that David Mills is attacking him. But if Horowitz had been honest and forthright with me last May and told me that he didn’t want to publish me anymore, then he certainly would not have forgotten about his intention not to publish me; in any case, I would not have continued sending articles to him, so there would have been no occasion for him to have published me. It was Horowitz himself who put the weapon in David Mills’s hands by, first, telling him that he considered my positions racist and that he would not publish me any more; and then, by forgetting what he had said to Mills and going ahead and publishing me. That gave Mills the opening to attack Horowitz as a hypocrite who publishes people he considers racist.
Finally, the most amazing aspect of this is that in Horowitz’s reply to David Mills last May, and in his several e-mails to me today, he did not (despite my repeated requests) identify a single statement of mine that he considers racist, so that I could explain it and defend myself. Talk about PC.
* * *
As I think about it further, here’s what Horowitz should have done. When Mills sent him his compilation of my quotes in which Horowitz found “racist and offensive” statements, he should have written to me about it, saying, “I find these statements racist and offensive. If you do not explain these statements to my satisfaction, or else publicly repudiate them, I can’t publish you any more.” That would have been the honest and honorable thing to do. A person in Horowitz’s position owes such honest dealing to anyone. He especially owed it to me, given my history as a FP contributor, his close collaborative work with me on several of my larger articles (particularly articles dealing with racially touchy topics), and the endless one-on-one e-mail conversations we had had over the years. Instead Horowitz instantly wrote back to this obvious enemy, David Mills, and told him that I was racist and that he would have nothing more to do with me.
- end of initial entry -
Mark A. writes:
“I have a million enemies out there and I don’t need attacks waiting to happen by publishing your stuff.”—Horowitz
This from the lone-wolf conservative crying out against the liberal establishment on campus? Amazing. I can hardly take him seriously anymore.
Just wanted to send you a note of support. What is refreshing about VFR is you acknowledge what so few “conservatives” want to acknowledge: we are a tribe. The shock, the horror! All day I walk throughout a black city with blacks and Latinos screaming in my face about “their people.” So the Undercover Black Man, who most certainly wears a badge of honor on his chest with respect to “his people,” is calling you a racist for standing up for “your people.” Amazing. This whole exchange (you—Horowitz—Undercover Black Man) further proves how much our individual rights are dependent upon the success and solidarity of our group rights. A truly un-P.C. topic if there ever was one.
Keep up the fight.
LA replies:
Thanks, but, once again, because Horowitz did not do me the courtesy of telling me what positions of mine he found racist and offensive, we do not know that the statements he didn’t like were statements about defending “my people,” or, indeed, anything of that nature. Based on what Mills said in his article at the Huffington Post, it seems more likely that my offending statements were statements about blacks that, for some indeterminate reason, were considered by Horowitz as going “too far.”
Also, I don’t think I’ve ever used the phrase, “my people.” I have spoken of defending white Western civilization, European-America, and so on, and indeed Horowitz as a result of our many long e-mail discussions over several years and articles I’ve submitted to him is familiar with my concerns about immigration and race, though he doesn’t share them and has not allowed me to publish articles making those explicit points at FP. He has, however, let me approximate those ideas, by having me tailor my ideas into such a form as to be acceptable to him.
This happened with several of my larger articles at FP (here is the page at FP linking all my articles). For example, he would not let me say that nonwhite immigration is threatening white America, quote unquote, but he would allow me to say that the left wants to destroy America, and that it is seeking to do so by destroying white America, because by demonizing and weakening the white majority it is weakening America. Similarly, he would only ok my article, “How Multiculturalism Took over America,” if I added a caveat that individuals of different backgrounds could assimilate into America. He did not insist, as a standard neocon or liberal would, that I must say that all people can assimilate equally easily into America. He simply wanted me to establish that American cultural identity was not absolutely closed to non-Europeans; as long as I acknowledged that some individuals could assimilate across racial lines, which I also believe is the case, then the piece passed muster with him. Similarly, he rejected the first draft of my September 2005 article “Guilty Whites,” in which I said that the ultimate reason that blacks were so far behind whites was intrinsic differences in intelligence, and therefore the idea that whites are responsible for black backwardness is false; but he allowed me to replace that idea with the idea that whatever is keeping blacks back, it is only blacks who can raise themselves, and no one else can do it for them, and therefore the idea that white society is responsible for black backwardness is false. This got reasonably close to my original point without actually saying it.
Mark P. writes:
So that’s what happened to you!!!
I remember e-mailing you and asking why you no longer write for FrontPage. You gave me the same answer, that Horowitz thought you did not fit his website’s theme. It’s too bad that he actually did expel you.
You should, however, keep in mind that the main purpose of Horowitz’s website is to expose liberal hypocrisy, not necessarily to fight liberalism. Look at his campus anti-PC crusade. Is he actually fighting liberalism, or is he simply asking liberalism to apply what its rhetoric? If anything, Horowitz keeps liberalism alive in his own way, rather than actually making a real dent in it.
I wouldn’t worry about it so much…unless you’ve been stabbed in the back by a good friend.
LA replies:
For me the issue is not what FP’s purpose is, the issue is the body of ideas that I’ve been able to publish and wanted to publish more of at FrontPage, an influential venue which, unlike any other mainstream conservative site, has been open to ideas from outside the standard conservative/neoconservative mold, and from which I’ve now been cut off in the most insulting, traitorous, and dishonest way by someone with whom I’ve had collegial, though sometimes stormy, relations for five years.
Mark P. replies:
That’s a good point…and it is very sad.
Emily B. writes:
He treated you terribly and you didn’t deserve it, your only sin being that you published things most people don’t want to hear.
(I read the comments section at Free Republic: painful. I do believe many caveats should be thrown in when dealing with race, they are children of God, but the reactions were mostly leftist/blank slate-ish.)
You said the other day, not to go where one isn’t welcomed. I think you have the right idea: you write and if others republish you, great. If not, their loss. Keep up the good work. You speak the truth that kind should stick to kind and have eloquently explained liberalism and how to deal with it.
You’ve helped me be wiser. Reading you has made me a better mother, wife, and citizen. Thank you for all your hard work
LA replies:
Thank you very much for this kind note.
In fact I had had a feeling that FP’s editors were less friendly to me over the last year or so, but it was nothing I could put my finger on.
I repeat that it’s unbelievable that Horowitz—despite his supposed expertise in political warfare—wrote to Mills that my positions were racist and offensive. This was putting into the hands of an obvious enemy a weapon that could be used not only against me but against Horowitz himself.
Mark N. writes:
I’m a great admirer of your writing, but when a white male writes about aggressive black male sexuality in conjunction with white women, it conjures up the worst pornographic images common in pre-civil rights era racist literature. Moreover, when Davis Horowitz calls you a pain in the ass, that’s a nice way of saying you’re becoming too much of a liability, and he has neither the energy nor the time to defend you.
I find this whole episode very reminiscent of the rift between Bill Buckley and Joe Sobran back in the seventies, when Joe just said too many things that people construed as being anti-Semitic. Eventually, Bill had to cut Joe loose, just to save his own credibility. As I’m sure you’re aware, being labeled an anti-Semite or racist can be the kiss of death to any journalist, even if the journalist has previously made significant contributions addressing the important issues of the day. So why did you do it? What possible purpose did it serve?
Don’t fall into that trap. Don’t sacrifice your reputation, not to mention your career, at the alter of sensationalistic stuff like black male rape statistics. It’s a losing proposition, so just let it drop. If you’re lucky, it will go away in time.
LA replies:
You have not read this material very carefully. Horowitz expelled me from FP one year ago, a year before he published the interracial rape article. Obviously he did not expel me over the interracial rape article because he himself chose to publish it, and indeed he defended the article to David Mills. The role that the rape article played in this affair was that Horowitz’s publishing of that article this past week led David Mills to publicize his year old exchange with Horowitz in which Horowitz said that certain unspecified statements of mine were racist and offensive and that he therefore would not run my articles any more. When Horowitz, after a year of not publishing anything by me, did run an article of mine (and on the subject of black-on-white rape, no less), that gave Mills the opportunity to denounce Horowitz publicly for publishing the work of someone whom Horowitz had already said was too racist for FrontPage.
On another point, your notion that it is somehow extreme and weird of me to quote figures from a survey by the Department of Justice is too ludicrous for words.
A frequent misconception cropping up in responses to the rape article is that this is “my” study and “my” figures. There are the DOJ’s figures. I’m simply quoting them. If the figures are wrong, it’s not I who am wrong, it’s the DOJ which is wrong.
You write:
> So why did you do it? What possible purpose did it serve?
Excuse me, but that accusatory question could be asked about almost every single thing I’ve ever written. In this case, I would say, in the light of the Duke case, that (1) the non-existence of white-on-black rape, (2) the very high incidence of black-on-white rape, and (3) the complete ignoring of both by the news media, are highly significant facts that ought to be brought before the public.
I would add that when someone starts off by calling himself a “great admirer” of my writing, and then proceeds to address me as though I did something weird and creepy when I wrote about a perfectly legitimate subject, that annoys me.
I’m also offended that you would compare my quotation of Department of Justice statistics with Joseph Sobran’s bent-out-of-shape hatred of Israel.
Andy D. writes:
David Horowitz derives much of his legitimacy from his professed involvement in the early “civil rights movement”. But he himself must know that most of that movement is a myth, and maybe that’s why he’s touchy about the subject.
One of the tenets of that movement was that Blacks were falsely accused of raping White women, and that Whites routinely desired and abused Black women. Your article shook his foundation a little.
LA replies:
You are missing the basic facts here. Horowitz published my article on interracial rape. That article is not the reason he expelled me. He expelled me a year ago (without telling me had done so) over statements of mine that David Mills had sent him.
LA writes:
For all the attention my very brief (700 word) article on interracial rape has generated, to my knowledge no one who is versed in crime statistics has stepped forward either to say that my presentation of the DOJ figures is right, or that it’s wrong. I myself have no expert knowledge in this area. Here’s how I came to write the article. A reader directed me to a post by Andrew Sullivan (of all people) that mentioned the DOJ figures about interracial rape, though Sullivan only mentioned, without underscoring its significance, the virtual non-existence of white-on-black rape and did not say anything about the incidence of black-on-white rape. The Sullivan post linked to a post by Christopher Chantrill at The American Thinker (as I explained in the original VFR version of the rape article posted a week before the FP version of it was published). The Chantrill post—which like the Sullivan post focused on the low white-on-black figure, not on the high black-on-white figure—led me to the DOJ document. All I did was download the pdf document that Chantrill linked to and go to the table he instructed his readers to go to. I then translated the figures in that table into English sentences. That’s all I did, folks. I did not set out to “make a splash.” I simply read and sought to comprehend what was before my eyes and then I attempted to write about it in a way that would be clear and understandable. That’s what writers are supposed to do. Further, the differential between black-on-white rape and white-on-black rape was so stunning that I bolded the sentences where I summarized that point in order to bring out its significance. For presenting these remarkable findings by the United States Department of Justice, I’ve been accused of having some unwholesome obsession with race and rape.
Bobby writes:
Mr. Auster, you shouldn’t be so concerned over your falling out with Horowitz and his Frontpagemag.com website. Anyone who has ever seen Horowitz on television knows he’s unpleasant, arrogant and self-righteous . Also, it proves your point that modern ‘conservatism’ is merely right-liberalism, not the traditional conservatism that you highlight daily on VFR.
The modern conservative movement is a beginning to look more and more like a corpse anyway. Check out Frontpagemag, there’s a gigantic ad with ridiculous ‘conservative’ T-shirts with insipid slogans like “peace through superior firepower”, “pave the whales”, and “Hippies smell”. Is this what the conservative movement has come to? Hawking stupid T-shirts emblazoned with the most immature slogans imaginable to man. Edmund Burke would roll over in his grave.
Read this article by W. James Antle III. It catalogs how the current conservative movement now centers around spreading democracy and supporting Bush no matter what, because we are in a time of supposed national peril. Look at how Republicans are going bonkers over Giuliani, McCain, and Romney.
Modern conservatism is a fraud and a laughable joke. Its worthless in preserving our nation and our culture. Don’t let insincere power-hungry hucksters like Horowitz bring you down. You cited factual figures from the FBI, which Horowitz could respond to with facts of his own or a different interpretation if he wanted too. In other words he could have discussed it without resorting to banishing you from the website. Maybe Horowitz should take his beef up with the FBI for publishing something as intrinsically ‘racist’ as rape statistics.
Keep up the excellent commentary and remember that you’re not at fault; the failure of modern conservatism is. You should feel relieved that Horowitz banned you from the site. You don’t want anything to do with these morons who have become the leaders of the conservative movement. Hucksters, frauds, sycophants, charlatans, and cowards would be too kind of words to use.
LA replies:
As you know, I’ve written all about things like the T-shirt ads and I’m offended by them and view them as a disgrace to the so-called conservative movement.
But please, I know you mean well, but when a person is in the midst of a battle, for someone to come along and tell him “don’t be concerned about it,” that is NOT a helpful comment. I’m in the middle of doing something I have to do, which is to defend myself and explain to people what has been happening. Your comment adds up to saying that I shouldn’t even be doing that. It suggests that I’m doing something I shouldn’t be doing. So it doesn’t help me, it undermines me. Further, this is not about my “being down.” I’m not down. I’m confronting a situation that has arisen that I have to confront.
I have had a relationship with Horowitz for several years. I have published significant work at FrontPage, because of Horowitz’s willingness, unique in the entire mainstream conservative movement, to be open to ideas that are beyond the conservative/neocon orthodoxy. FP’s wide readership has enabled my ideas to have an influence they could not otherwise have had. That is now ended. Your abstract point that Horowitz is really a liberal and therefore the falling out is of no importance completely misses the actual significance of my contributions at FrontPage. It also misses the significance of Horowitz’s bad behavior. What you’re doing is writing off his bad behavior, because he is, as you say, a liberal. Hey, then why discuss people and their behavior at all? Most people are liberals, and since liberals are, according to you, simply bad people, it doesn’t matter what they do.
That’s not my approach. What people do matters.
It’s the same when you deride Horowitz as an “insincere power-hungry huckster.” Since that’s all he is, according to you, nothing he does matters. This cynical approach is wrong. It’s wrong in the particular case, because Horowitz is not an “insincere power-hungry huckster,” but a very intelligent, interesting, and complex person, whose openness to ideas from outside the orthodoxy has been important, something you don’t seem to appreciate. Your cynical approach is also wrong as a general proposition. It adds up to saying that, since people are no good anyway, we shouldn’t care what they do, and no one should be judged for his behavior. Which means that there is no such thing as morality.
Jeff in England writes:
I support you 100 percent in this ridiculous scenario.
Horowitz, as Glazov before him, is revealed to be a coward, deceptive and at times infantile. Your hypothetical Horowitz reply to you is exactly what he should have written. But many of these “conservative” editors and shock jocks are role playing as tolerant tough guys when they really are intolerant wimps. The problem is that although we expect this behaviour from liberals we get shocked when this sort of scenario happens with so called conservatives. Many of these conservatives are ex- liberals/leftists and deep down, often very deep down, have a lot of mixed feelings about what they are doing.
In addition, deep down, they have the Communist/leftist style purges/repression patterns still inside of them and often resort to those patterns when they feel threatened. Ditto the pattern of betraying one’s comrades to save one’s ass. Horowitz threw you to the wolves a year ago in that tradition. Worse, his subconscious, mixed feelings about this allowed his mind to “forget” this. When “threatened” he conveniently remembered and resumed his infantile and almost laughable betrayal of you. BETRAYAL WITH AN INTERVAL! You couldn’t make it up!
LA replies:
Insightful comments by Jeff. I would just point out that while Jeff, like Bobby, attributes Horowitz’s bad behavior to his leftism, Jeff doesn’t thereby conclude that Horowitz’s bad behavior doesn’t matter and shouldn’t be confronted, analyzed, and judged.
Stewart W. writes:
I have to say, the decision to expel you from FrontPage is truly an unfortunate one (although in the tempestuous world of conservative blog politics, very little is surprising). There is in the blogosphere what I term the “continuum of respectability,” leading roughly from Fox News outward to the right (i.e. Michelle Malkin, Townhall, VDARE, FrontPage, JihadWatch, VFR, American Renaissance, and on even into Majority Rights and others) on a variety of key topics, and which are of great help in navigating the contemporary intellectual foundations of conservative thought. When I examine my own journey along this continuum, associations such as you have had with FrontPage have been the key to developing my own thoughts and beliefs, and in providing a superb test of my (previously much atrophied) critical thinking skills. In my case, although I have spiritually been a defender of Western civilization my entire life, prior to the Internet I considered myself a moderate liberal, being unable to find any mooring for my nascent ideas. In fact, I came into this continuum from what most would consider the far right. As a half-German, and tired of the continual portrayal of myself as an eternal villain, I was drawn into the world of Holocaust denial as my first taste of the un-PC blogosphere. It was the linked websites along this continuum of respectability that led me to examine and reject the extreme anti-Semitic ideas behind most of that movement, but from there I found VDARE, AR, and VFR, HotAir, and others. Although I don’t agree with everything I read on each of these sites, they are among the few that I visit on a daily basis.
Despite the rough-and-tumble personal sparring that sometimes goes on between these players, I sincerely hope that each of them realizes how important these links and relationships are in the development of a cogent army of conservative (and truly non-liberal) warriors. We will need each of these intellectual warriors if we are to have any chance of salvaging and rebuilding what is left of Western Civilization.
Thank you for the very significant role you have played in my own awakening, and please keep up the good fight.
LA replies:
Stewart makes an important point. People have moved in both a “mainstream right to the more serious right” direction, and in a “wacko far right to the more rational right” direction as a result of the continuum of which he speaks. I remember one VFR reader in particular told me of how he discovered VFR from my articles at FrontPage.He then went on to have a career in the traditionalist conservative movement.
Laura W. writes:
I was mulling over your piece on interracial rape the other day and it occurred to me how deeply unacceptable your argument is and that it would lead to repercussions. Too much of a raw nerve there. So many whites live in fear of black violence, so many women are haunted by terror of black men, that any open discussion of the topic can only be deeply unacceptable. There’s so much fear of the issue, fear that the violence could actually worsen and fear that some kind of self-defense is in order. People who consider themselves shameful and guilty cannot defend themselves. White men would rather let women who live in the inner cities experience a continual undercurrent of terror than even openly admit there is a problem.
I am not at all surprised that an editor would get cold feet and suddenly distance himself from such a piece. But, I am surprised David Horowitz did. How could the author of Hating Whitey suddenly be sensitive to calls from his children saying he is a racist?
LA replies:
Horowitz did not distance himself from this piece. His expulsion of me took place a year ago, without my knowledge. It was this piece that spurred David Mills to publicize Horowitz’s private statement to Mills of a year ago expelling me.
On the substance, I have been somewhat struck by the intensity of reaction this piece has set off. What I expected was that people who are more knowledgeable of interracial crime figures would come forward placing in context the two data I presented in my article.
As for the underlying facts of black on white rape and the fear white women have of black men and what made this possible and how it could be ended, it is something that has been unleashed by modern liberalism and can only be ended by the ending of modern liberalism. As I wrote back in January in response to the first reports of the Knoxville atrocity, in which Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom were kidnapped, raped, tortured, and murdered by a group of blacks:
Could this have happened in pre-1960s America? No, and especially not in the South, because white society was frankly on guard against this very sort of thing, and held the black population under a rule and a discipline. That rule went too far, especially in the Jim Crow laws that required racial discrimination. But how tragic and ironic that because of white racial discrimination against blacks, and because of racial atrocities by whites such as the murder of Emmett Till, whites in a fit of liberal guilt went to the other extreme, erasing the consciousness of racial realities altogether, and thus rendering themselves, and especially their young women, naive and innocent and helpless before black savagery. For decades, black murderers and rapists have been committing violent crimes against whites that in numbers and in pure savagery are orders of magnitude beyond anything that whites ever did or remotely imagined doing to blacks in the 1950s. Yet, far from taking measures to stop this racial phenomenon of black predation of whites, white society doesn’t even recognize its existence.
James N. writes:
Sorry you have to endure such a betrayal, especially by one who claims to oppose groupthink and newspeak.
The power of thinking about race is much greater than we usually allow for. Imagine the social consequences of starting a dialog about whether or not we took a wrong turn after 1945. All the people who have spoken, written, or even thought much about this in the last fifty years are collectively thought of as bad guys in our national consciousness—and most of them ARE bad guys. The people who assigned more than trivial significance to groups based on race (at least as a signifier of negative, as opposed to positive, characteristics) were our serious racists, and not all of them were intellectuals. Some of them were violent men of action.
It’s unclear to me how we can get back to a place where these issues can be considered in light of the facts which have been revealed (school data), or which lie barely concealed (Knoxville, Wichita), by our social experiment of the last fifty years.
Cindi S. writes:
Lawrence -
You ARE a big pain in the ass to anyone from whom you rightfully insist on an explanation or a defense of their actions.
I am familiar with the syndrome. My own mother once told me people get annoyed with me because I want to know “why” about things they’d rather not explore, explain, discuss or defend. My sister called me a pit-bull; when I get my teeth into something, I just will not let go until I’m satisfied. In almost every instance, it was because I believed I had been wronged in a significant way and I wanted that rectified before proceeding any further.
David Horowitz, in effect, gossiped and trashed-talked about you to a detractor, stabbing you in the back and simply … neglected to tell you; not only what he’d said but even that he’d said it.
Being confronted with this type of offense, and one’s reaction to it, is telling. He failed the test of good character. Further, I find it typical that instead of dealing properly with you and the situation, he turned it back onto you by claiming to be attacked, then you’re “piling on,” then the last, he’s busy: you’re a very time-consuming and distracting individual to deal with.
Not being able to read the actual mail sent from Horowitz to your detractor, from the exchange with him that you posted it appears he weasel-worded as well: racial attitudes, racist positions/statements as the offense.
I suppose, at the point where Horowitz admitted he’d had this exchange with Mills, if you’d not pressed repeatedly for an explanation and moved onto “So, are you going to publish my stuff in the future or not?”, he’d have been relieved to proceed.
I have witnessed this sort of event so many times, it’s too predictable. People won’t own up to their shitty behavior and that’s the best descriptor I can come up with.
I have learned a lot from you, Lawrence, about my own thoughts and attitudes. Maybe upon further reflection, Horowitz will learn something about himself.
LA replies:
Cindi, people like us should form the Pain in the Ass Club.
Do you know what is the single sentence I’ve heard more than any other in my life? “No one has ever complained about that before.”
Cindi replies:
Done! PitA Club; current membership: two.
Yes they have, others have complained; they just don’t want you to know that.
The Other Pain in the Ass
LA replies:
And within the PitA Club, the champs move up to an elite group called the BPitA Club.
David B. writes:
I was going to email you yesterday predicting that your article on interracial rape was going to bring you trouble. Then, I saw that Horowitz had reacted to criticism from one David Mills by telling the Undercover Black Man that he was expelling you from Frontpagemag. I did not know (nor did you) that he had done so a year earlier.
All you did was use Department of Justice statistics. I have read that they sometimes classify Hispanics as “white” when they commit crimes, while calling them Hispanics when they are crime victims. If someone wants to criticize these figures, they must show proof that they are wrong. This article has gone around the internet.
We started corresponding around six years ago. I read a comment of yours in the comments section at frontpagemag, of all places. I have enjoyed exchanging emails and have learned a lot. Thanks for listening to me.
Stephen T. writes:
Horowitz’s claim that he only published your most recent piece because he “forgot” about the exchange with Mills which had led him to previously ban you, and further that he also “forgot” how difficult you are to work with, strike me as more than a little phony. He’s a very forgetful fellow, isn’t he? More so than any editor I’ve ever been acquainted with—most of whom have total recall for bad experiences with writers dating back a minimum of 10 years. B vitamins and omega 3 are good for memory loss.
James W. writes:
Error is the discipline through which we advance, yet ego is repelled by error.
The consequences of error form our character; its absence forms intellectual dysfunction.
There is no finish line to this, and success is never final. Were you to alter your approach to enable others in their self-conceits, you would be creating your own.
Truth is a winding search full of surprises and embarrassments, but failure is a one-way street that has its own allures, such as simplicity. Yet a straight path never led anywhere but to its objective. More of an imposition still, seeking what is true is not always seeking what is desirable.
You have discovered things as important through your disassociation with Horowitz as you once found by your association. I am warned, and illuminated. That is our passion. Well done.
Sage McLaughlin writes:
Just want to drop you a quick note voicing my support. I’ve always found Horowitz to be an extremely unlikable and self-righteous man, but that’s really not the point in all this. Others may like and respect him, including you, so there’s no sense dwelling on his failings as a personality.
The point that this illuminates for me is that Horowitz is now and always has been very, very liberal. He’s a red diaper baby who wears his extreme leftist past like a badge of honor. He’s also pro-sexual-revolution, from homosexual liberation to partial birth abortion. I wonder if there’s a similar story behind Robert Locke’s disappearance from FP? I don’t care to speculate. The fact is that Horowitz has treated you abominably, and I’m sorry it has come to that.
LA replies:
Locke’s departure from FP was different. Personal, business, and ideological differences led to a blow-up by Locke that ended the relationship; it wasn’t a matter of Horowitz expelling Locke over ideological differences. I involved myself in that event at the time and tried hard to heal the breach, as I felt Locke’s participation at FP was uniquely valuable to conservatism; but, sadly, the personal difference that had occurred between Locke and Horowitz was too large to be healed, then or later.
Charlton G. writes:
I think it is obvious that Horowitz is somehow vulnerable to leftist attacks. And that in itself is rather curious. That a man who made his reputation in conservative circles with books like “Hating Whitey” should suddenly fold so easily in the face of a single objection made by an obscure black person raises serious questions about Horowitz’s reliability. However, we know that he “folded” a year earlier, by his own account. Curiouser and curiouser. Might it be that Horowitz is reading the political tea leaves and is realigning his website to accommodate what he sees as a regime change that could threaten him? Certainly, the pressure on phony Republican “conservatives” began to heat up about a year ago. But this is actually an opportunity for traditionalists. By clearing the air of some of this phony “conservative” smoke, we are able to see more clearly. As one person above commented, it looks as though the same old “conservatives” at the Republican party headquarters have learned nothing and do not wish to. Horowitz seems to have thrown his lot into their boat… and they can both sink together now.
One other thing about those rape statistics: blacks were raping white women long before liberals gained control of our institutions. However, the numbers were smaller and justice was usually swift and savage. Of the roughly 4,200 lynchings that took place in just the South between 1865 and 1952, about 3,200 were of blacks. They were not lynched for loitering. They were lynched for committing heinous crimes, including rape. The radical left has taken a handful of lynchings which were questionable or outright wrong, and made it seem as though ALL lynch mobs were simply bloodthirsty Nazis. Today, the left will still not acknowledge the criminal activities of blacks in regard to interracial rape because it does not fit their political agenda. And this is as good a description of Stalinism as I am aware of. Horowitz has spent a lot of type space expounding the brutalities and lies of Stalinists. He should recognize the symptoms where they are causing the most pain and suffering.
John Hagan writes:
I just finished reading about the Horowitz situation, and I’m appalled by his behavior. His lack of professionalism, and basic courtesy does not speak well of him. Aside from whatever personal difficulties you two have engaged in over the years Horowitz has a duty as gentleman to be forthright, and upfront concerning such matters as these. His consorting with this Mills person shows a lack of judgment and character. A shameful display by Mr. Horowitz on so many levels, personal and professional.
Jeff in England writes:
Are you going to reply directly to Mills at the Huffington Post? I would hope that you do as to a certain extent (and I have been out all day so maybe things have changed) the actual accusations by Mills seem to have gotten submerged in the Horowitz scenario. If I missed that reply (to Mills), apologies. I feel it is important to make.
By the way, I take it that Horowitz will not now be hosting your planned “Suspects” debate with Spencer etc over the issue of Muslim immigration restriction! Spencer and all these “Suspects” can (temporarily I hope) happily keep on avoiding providing any sort of solution to the Islamic invasion. Glazov and Horowitz and FrontPage are now not only “Auster free,” they are “Islamic invasion solution free” as well, as not one of their supposedly insightful anti-Islamist (there’s that term again) “Suspect” writer/analysts (Robert Spencer, Daniel Pipes etc.) will even mention Muslim immigration restriction. You were the only one to do so and there is not much hope for any change in that scenario from any of the FrontPage “Suspects.”
LA replies:
I have no inclination to have any communication with David Mills. His character is repeatedly manifest in his own statements; if people don’t see that themselves, nothing I add will help them see it. I will at some point provide a time line of his contacts with me, in order to clear up certain dishonest statements he has made. I might also respond at VFR to some of his charges against me. Happily, that may not be necessary, since when I looked at Huffington Post last night there were two commenters who did a good job of correcting Mills on his mindless statement that I was saying that all blacks are savages, when of course I was referring to savage murderers.
Civilization is a ceaseless struggle to rise above savagery (which is the lowest level of humanity) and barbarism (which is the next level up from savagery). A civilization that prohibits the words “savagery” and “savages” is a civilization that no longer knows what civilization is, and is therefore on the way to savagery itself.
Conservative Swede writes:
This is a very sad day indeed, but we are not at all surprised are we? This story shows us clearer than ever the steamrolling power of the racism accusation. People cannot even stand to endure it by association. This giant beam of hell fire and projected collective hate is so powerful that people get burned to the degree that they’ll run away, even if they were just standing on the side of someone being hit by this beam. Such as Horowitz was standing on the side of you, by association, by publishing you. But he couldn’t stand the heat, so he ran away.
We live in a society where any nobody, such as Undercover Black Man, could stand up and direct this giant beam of hell fire at the dissenter of the prevailing suicidal order. Someone like you, who’s got the fire of truth within you, won’t back off. But people around you, people who first looked like strong defenders of our civilization, will turn into submissive dogs and surrender.
Remember how it was Undercover Black Man who managed to make Robert Spencer turn against you and call you a racist. It was he who managed to make the relation between you and Spencer go from controversy into animosity. You and Spencer, two people that definitely should be on the same side of the barricade, even if you would forever continue in controversies. The way I see it, both you and Spencer fell into the trap setup by Undercover Black Man. Robert Spencer by being wrong in the first place, and by choosing the wrong side when struck by the PC power game. But you by spending an excessive amount of energy in attacking Spencer. It’s not that I do not understand your reaction (among other things you are hit by this fierce flame). But bear in mind that every time you attack Spencer, Undercover Black Man is toasting in champagne. He wants to split and divide the opposition to multiculturalism and political correctness, to make it weak and insignificant. And he managed to weaken it severely further now by getting Horowitz to run away as a submissive dog with his tail between his legs.
It’s not so much the position taken by Horowitz or Spencer that is the problem, but the fact that they are so easily bullied by any nobody PC commissar into joining the Pod people in pointing finger at you, sputtering “racist!” after you.
The same with Horowitz, he fell prey for the the same kind of bullying that he accuses the campus people for failing to resist. I agree completely with you that the main problem is the way Horowitz dealt with this. He didn’t act as a man, but as a coward submitting to bullying. He sends his answer to someone who is clearly the enemy, while giving the cold shoulder and the silence treatment to his colleague. I would have still considered him an honourable man if he instead had confronted you a year ago (even though I would have respectfully disagreed with him).
By acting upon fear, indenting to escape the kiss of death by the association-to-a-racist accusation, Horowitz has managed to kill himself as a defender of the West, and he will from now on appear as a castrated dog, submitting under the PC inquisition of just about any nobody. Somewhere in my heart, I still hope that Horowitz would turn around, and regain his courage. But how difficult isn’t it to reverse such a mistake? It’s easy to lose one’s honour, but much harder to regain it.
If Horowitz has any decency at all, he will wake up tomorrow with an unprincipled exceptional hangover. But unfortunately, even so, we know, based on the nature of his ideology, that it would most probably lead him to blame his drunken sailor actions on the leftists.
You have my sympathy and support,
LA replies:
Conservative Swede says good things here. However, while the last thing I want to do now is get into the Spencer issue, for the record I must point out that there was animosity (on Spencer’s part) before UBM appeared in the Jihad Watch thread. That thread began with Spencer referring to me as a “dyspectic misanthrope,” a phrase typical of the charming tactics of certain figures on the mainstream right who, in response to my intellectual criticisms of them, have sought to cast me as a psychologically disordered weirdo who should be marginalized and ignored.
Carl Simpson writes:
I thought you might enjoy seeing the Vox Day comment on the Horowitz affair. (Don’t bother with the comment thread—it appears to have been hijacked by W. Lindsay Wheeler’s obsession with Jews.)
I’m a little shocked that DH’s behavior has been so very unprofessional.
How sad to see the fellow who has made a second career fighting PC roll over so easily in the face of a tinhorn Stalinist like David Mills. It’s so glaring that it makes me wonder if there’s more to the story that DH hasn’t mentioned. Truth is sometimes a pain in the ass. Keep up the great work—may you long continue to be a pain in the ass.
LA replies:
Carl, that’s one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me. :-)
Scott C. writes:
I find the account of the disintegration of your relationship with David Horowitz sad and troubling.
As a frequent reader of both FPM and VFR, I do not wish to get into the middle of this. However, I do agree with you that Horowitz has not conducted himself as a man, in the best manner, during this imbroglio. And he does owe you an explanation, if not an apology. But whether or not that is forthcoming, remains to be seen.
I have read the vast majority of your articles and have not found one instance in which I would consider your views remotely racist. What I have found is your indefatigable tendency to write the truth and defend Western civilization, or what is left of it, without regard to how politically correct or incorrect your statements may or may not be. And I admire you greatly for that.
But I also admire Horowitz, if only for his book Left Illusions and his campaign against Leftist intolerance in American academia, which in itself has got to be a struggle. It is pathetic that he seems to have succumbed to the worst elements of the ideologues against whom he fights. However, I wouldn’t hold you or your writing responsible for that, but rather him and his apparent lack of fortitude.
It looks to me like you’re both fighting the same battle but on different fronts. You will give no quarter. But he, apparently outflanked and under pressure, will. And on that factor, the decisive victory is yours.
Daryl writes:
I used to have somewhat of a respect for Horowitz as an exposer of double standards. But this has proven to me for sure that Horowitz has a very negative side to him too.
Just because certain people post your article doesn’t make it bad. That is ad hominem. “The devil” can post your article, and it could still be a good article. Its ridiculous that Horowitz has responded the way he has to this, and its safe for me to say now that Horowitz is part of the system, he is not a rebel against it.
Here are more comments that have come in on Sunday, April 6:
Ben writes:
I can’t add anything as your commenters have said much that I would say myself. Just wanted you to know I support you and your great (truthful) articles and will be continuing to follow you for years whether it’s FrontPage, your own blog, or wherever.
As for Horowitz, I respect him for publishing your controversial truthful article, I just wish he had the fortitude to stand behind you.
Conservative Swede writes:
The descriptions of you by the right-wingers as a weirdo, dyspectic misanthrope, humorless, etc., are indeed bad. But it’s not the “dyspectic misanthrope” label that makes Horowitz stop publishing you, it’s the “racist” label. The way I see it, the personal attacks on you are just part of the same picture I’m describing, in a preparatory phase. These right-wingers know instinctively that someone like the Undercover Black Man might appear, so they make sure to distance themselves from you beforehand, since they know that they have no defense against any self-appointed UBM nobody entering the scene, just snapping his fingers.
Carl Simpson wrote, “May you long continue to be a pain in the ass.” I definitely second that! And to me someone described as a “dyspectic misanthrope” sounds like a great guy, and trustworthy friend, in this crazy world we live in today.
I have to admit that the Spencer-Auster issue had been quite a turn-off for me, the way it went on. But our own trustworthy dyspectic pain in the ass always wins in the long run. You’ve got the fire of truth inside, Larry. A fire that sometimes at least appears to resemble zealousness. But this Horowitz issue sheds a whole new light upon everything to me. And reminds me like never before how immensely important you are, and that you couldn’t have been or acted very differently. The power of just a single man. (I won’t make the historical comparisons to other such single men, because you’re to modest to want to hear about it.)
I should also reprimand myself for using excessive words, such as “submissive dog,” in my description of Horowitz. It is difficult when being upset to stay within the frames of elegance in one’s criticism. Daryl put it all succinctly: “Horowitz is part of the system, he is not a rebel against it.” That’s all we need to know about Horowitz from now on: he’s part of the system.
You are the winner in the long run in all this, Larry. The man who stands firmly, when the others fall.
Jeff in England writes:
Hope you are “enjoying” your first Sunday as an expelled Front Page contributor. Your readers have made some great heartfelt and intelligent comments on the affair.
It makes me realise even more that if you were to run for president [LA notes: Jeff has been urging that I run for president in order to advance the immigration issue], the “racism” tag would overshadow the messages of anti-immigration, saving Western civilisation etc. If Horowitz who has some empathy with you and your views could wilt under minimal pressure, imagine the reaction of other possible supporters of you in a presidential campaign. I still hope you go for it but the stumbling block of being called a “racist” etc would no doubt rear its head daily.
If only you were black you wouldn’t have this problem! Are you sure you have checked your ancestry thoroughly? Even 1/16 black would do!!
Conservative Swede writes:
Here is David Mills’s bio:
David Mills is an Emmy-Award-winning TV writer and a former journalist.
Since 1994, he has written for such esteemed drama series as NYPD Blue, ER, Picket Fences, Homicide: Life on the Street and The Wire. During his newspaper days, he was a staff reporter for The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Times.
It’s hard to get an idea of how UBM really looks from the pictures at Huffington and at his own website. Even the picture he included in a recent post, in my eyes, looked like it could have been manipulated. But it appears as this fellow reached such unrealistic proportions by eating too many freedom fries. Here is a good picture I found of him (to the left): http://www.brookenstein.com/millstan.jpg. He’s not even properly black. No wonder he’s full of complex and hate. The personality type lacking a real identity, and with the need of proving something to himself and to others.
And here I found him at IMDB too. More pictures. This is the best picture. Doesn’t look more black to me than Burt Reynolds in that picture. But what do I know about American racially mixed types? I’m just a simple Swede.
James N. writes:
I’ve read much of what Horowitz has written, since his account of growing up in the NYC left echoes a lot of my own childhood experiences.
I’m struck by how often he refers to his participation (much of which must have been vicarious) in the civil rights movement. He makes it seem as if his experiences in the movement drew him to the left, when in fact, he wore his red diaper long before there WAS a civil rights movement.
In any event, it’s my opinion that he keeps coming back to “the movement” as his apologia pro vita sua to show that although he has moved to the right, betrayed his comrades and his family, given up the true faith, that his heart is still pure because he has not ever had a thought in his head (even deep down and late at night) that would question the premises of that movement.
Discussions like the one you started with your article do inexorably lead to a place where questions start to appear about the underlying premises of the “civil rights movement.” At the very least, they lead to the concept that said movement had good and bad consequences, even if its underlying premises were valid.
This, Horowitz cannot tolerate. The movement represents, for him, a moment of truth, a validator of his goodness before it all went wrong.
Of course, it all went wrong long before that. When little David was going to Communist summer camps, Paul Robeson concerts, and the death vigil for the Rosenbergs in Union Square Park, nobody had ever heard of Emmett Till. David’s involvement in the civil rights movement (to the extent that it existed at all) FOLLOWED from his leftism, it did not precede it.
But for him, the “movement” has talismanic significance. It represents an example (the only one he has left) of how we can “make the world anew,” using only human will, human thought, and purity of soul. You challenge its premises at your peril, you big pain in the ass.
Tiberge writes:
I wanted to e-mail you a brief note on the Horowitz matter. But what can I say after all the fine comments from your readers?
I didn’t realize you knew the identity of Undercover Black Man. That Horowitz would be influenced by such a “troll” indicates perhaps that he is losing his ability to deal with racial matters—or even that he’s afraid. He has probably reached his limit of intellectual expansion and can go no further. Like the other conservative writers you’ve tangled with, he doesn’t like you because you push him beyond his limit.
The neo-cons are certainly closing ranks against you. I wonder what the next election will do to dispel the political correctness of the Republicans and to make the atmosphere once again conducive to free speech. I wonder if the neo-cons will continue to gain or if their days are over. I fear the former is the case even though Tancredo sounds good.
Ben W. writes:
The truth is always a “pain in the ass” to people who wish to ignore it.
RB writes:
I’d also like to extend my support to you. Now I have a great deal of respect for Mr. Horowitz. However, by appeasing the prevailing left-wing McCarthyism, Horowitz, Spencer and all simply end up feeding the beast.
In one sense their reasons are understandable. They feel that if they pay a small amount of tribute, the beast won’t turn on them. The same has been true for others such as Lou Dobbs, the feisty Bob Grant, and even the wild man of traditional conservatism, Michael Savage. They all find some niche cause to champion or some reason to issue a disclaimer asserting that they are not racist, Islamophobic, anti-Hispanic etc. That is the price they must pay to continue to be allowed to get their message out. But as the ultra liberal Imus found out, however much you feed the crocodile eventually he will come for you.
The only thing that should be beyond the realm of reasonable discourse is the celebration or advocacy of crime: murder, enslavement, genocide. For the scientific discussion of possible genetic, as well as cultural differences in intellectual, psychological, or physical differences which are more subtle than skin color or the shape of eyes, to be banned is absurd. Pretending such differences don’t exist will lead to even worse consequences in the long run.
In any event, keep up the fight, there are very many that support you.
Chris F. writes:
Undercover Black Man is jubilant over your expulsion from FP.
I wonder what Horowitz is going to say when he finds how this affair is being blogged?
At this time Horowitz appears about equal parts careless and craven. One, he forgets why he stopped publishing your work, if that explanation is even true. And two, he caves at the first criticism that touches on him and from Huffington Post no less.
LA replies:
My thanks to all for the expressions of support and the many interesting insights.
I was discussing with a friend yesterday whether or nor Horowitz will write an article about this. It seems to me there are arguments on both sides.
Pro his writing an article about this:
- As he indicated in his e-mails to me, he is being attacked for publishing a racist, including by his own children. So he will feel the need to explain that.
- He looks like a fool for having said he would not publish me any more, and then, by his own admission, “forgetting” that decision and going ahead and publishing me. He will feel a need to explain that.
- He needs to separate himself from me utterly. This will require his presenting the quotes of my work that Mills sent him, and explaining why these positions put me beyond the pale, even though those positions had not been published at FP but only at my own blog.
- He also looks dishonorable for having expelled me from his magazine for “racist” and “offensive” positions, which, like some king of Stalinist political correctness, he has never specified. Therefore he will feel the need to specify them.
Con his writing an article about this:
- He just wants the whole thing to go away; writing about it would keep it alive.
- If he does publish an article, it will have to deal extensively with what is permissible and not permissible to say about race-related subjects, a subject that, given his own extensive writings on race, he may not want to get into deeply.
- Horowitz basically has contempt for me, as is evident in his e-mails that are quoted here, and in many of his private dealings with me over the years. It’s a mixed picture. On one hand, he seemed to respect me and take me seriously enough to publish my work which is outside the usual boundaries of the FrontPage ideology; to do substantial editing and re-writing on some of my longer pieces at FP (something he virtually never does with his contributors); and to have had very extensive e-mail discussions with me on various controversial topics over the years. On the other hand, all of our dealings have been bounded by his constant one-upmanship and put-downs of me, which I learned to accept as something that comes with the territory if one wants to deal with David Horowitz. However, that underlying disrespect has come to the fore in his recent e-mails. And it seems to me that he would not want to devote an entire article to analyzing and taking seriously the writings of someone he holds in such little regard.
- If he does critique my positions on race, that will open up sensitive and vulnerable areas on which he would rather avoid challenges from me.
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Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 04, 2007 08:05 PM | Send
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