Chopped and Cropped by David Horowitz

Man, am I ever pissed off at my poltical adversary and sometimes friend David Horowtiz.  Here he’s gone and posted a poltitical database of the American Left called Discover The Network (seems like the words The Base were already taken).

And the individual dossier on me has used the worst possible portrait that could be found! A Smear! An Outrage! Distortion!

Hell, David, have you no decency? You could have at least asked me for my DMV photo. Or you could have asked me and I would have given you – for free – a copy of  this photo of me in Vegas from my book jacket cover. Not only is it infinitely more flattering to me, but it also casts a more convincing image as some sort of nefarious anarchist.          

The info in my DiscoverTheNetworkFile as now publicly posted in the data base is essentially correct – if quite partial and lacking of any real context. Any casusal reader os this blog will instantly note its central flaw. All the facts in it seem to be culled from public sources. And looking over the files of some of other 600 or so invidviduals listed (from Mohammed Atta to Babs Streisand!) it seems that, indeed, all the info and all the dirt is but a compilation of publicly available material. No foul there.

I’m not scandalized nor upset by the data base. I just don’t much see the point of it. It’s also rather incomplete, sorry to say. Dozens, really scores, of prominent lefties are not included and will probably feel really slighted by their omission. On the other hand, Christopher Hitchens (who is both a friend of mine and of David) is listed as a "a recovering ex-Trotskyite." Go figure.

I suppose some right-wingers will get a woody reading through the data base and finding out that so-and-so was a member of the Communist Party or of SDS. On the other had, even I got a sort of thrill learning what a closet-lefty Tom Brokaw really is. His file reads in part:

Although politically somewhat to the left of America’s center, Brokaw usually has been less overtly ideological, leftward and partisan than either of his rival anchors Jennings or Rather. Brokaw also has tended to find something positive to say regarding the stories he covers, presents himself modestly, and speaks with an endearing speech impediment that often makes his words sound chewed. He therefore has elicited less of the visceral distrust and dislike felt by some Republicans and conservatives for Jennings and Rather.

No example could be found of Brokaw at any time in his career ever specifically criticizing the “tyranny of the left” or engaging in such heated rhetoric in describing liberal media…

I’m sure old Tom is gonna get his own little surprise when he sees that he’s listed not only in the same data base as moi, but also as Osama Bin Laden. Sorry, Tom

Is this some sort of New McCarthyism? Not really. Anyone who would take the linking of all this info as evidence of some coherent leftist network already believed in the conspiracy before clicking onto the page.

Liberals and lefties also like to compile flow charts and maps showing the links on the right. Some of them make sense. Some don’t. Check out this chart from some far left whackos which also lists me—but this time as an operative of the CIA!.

In the age of the Internet, the proliferation of this sort of charting seems rather inevitable and each compilation will rise or fall on the strength or weakness of its information ( not to mention the perceptions of the readers). But, damn, I wish they would use more flattering photos.

Comments

[Ahmed]

I'm not sure if im scared or amused by Horowitz's depravity, but the site was something to see. Wow. Perhaps even deluded posters here who would have as belive that Hillary is a reflective leftist and a long time anti zionist have found their new political bible in discoverthejetwork.org. Here'e someone who thinks that beyong Horowitz's frenzied paranoia there's something more sinister going on

DiscoverTheNetwork: David Horowitz's Smear Portal
By Kurt Nimmo

Is there a difference between Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Dennis Kucinich? Or Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Susan Sarandon? How about Mohammed Atta and Noam Chomsky?

Not according to DiscoverTheNetwork (DTN), a “Guide to the Political Left,” a sprawling database set up by the former Maoist and reborn Strausscon, David Horowitz. DTN, according to its About page, “identifies the individuals and organizations that make up the left and also the institutions that fund and sustain it; it maps the paths through which the left exerts its influence on the larger body politic; it defines the left’s (often hidden) programmatic agendas and it provides an understanding of its history and ideas.”

Sort of like the Illuminati or Third Degree Masons, only Marxist.

I had no idea this database existed until earlier today. I was tipped off by my secret contacts in North Korea and al-Qaeda. Provided with a login and password, I ventured forth, reading all sort of miscellanea on enemies of the United States, for instance the “radical anti-American journalist” Alexander Cockburn and the “anti-white, anti-Semitic writer” Amiri Baraka.

Since I am not included in this database, I am not sure if I should be relieved or disappointed. However, if email in response to an article I wrote and recently posted about Ann Coulter is any indication—dozens stacked upon dozens—I am considered one of the Hate America legion. But then, as the About page indicates, Horowitz’s smear portal is an on-going project. David will need a sturdy server and a workaholic webmaster to catalog all the lefties out there who pose a threat to the United States—in other words, lefties who oppose the warmongering madness of the Bushites and write, speak, or teach about it.

Some of the people Horowitz includes in the database would hardly be considered dangerous commies or al-Qaeda simpatico fellow travelers. For instance, Horowitz includes Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Justice of the United States Supreme Court. A careful reading of Ginsburg’s profile reveals why she was included: not only did she work for the evil ACLU and champion feminist causes, “Ginsburg also dissented from the Court’s decision that effectively gave President Bush the victory in the 2000 election,” in other words she opposed the idea that presidents should be appointed by right-wing Supreme Court Justices instead of voted into the White House by the people, obviously a dangerous idea as Bush made sure to steal the 2004 election as well, minus participation of the Supreme Court, and once again write off the American people as mere spectators. God bless Diebold and the thuggish intimidation tactics at the polling places.

I’m not sure if Jim McDermott, Democratic member of Congress, would take a shining to being lumped in with Zacarias Moussaoui—but there they are, included on the same page. It appears Jim’s sin, in addition to hanging out with the “radical” Progressive Caucus, led by the Osama lover Rep. Nancy Pelosi, is having gone to Baghdad “along with fellow Progressive Caucus member Rep. David Bonior (D-Michigan) and Rep. Mike Thompson (D-California). These lawmakers embraced Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein and created propaganda in his behalf,” in other words they preferred diplomacy over killing 100,000 innocent Iraqis. I’m not sure McDermott actually “embraced” Saddam, but a couple decades before this treasonous act Donald Rumsfeld did the next best thing—he shook hands with the dictator, in the official capacity as Reagan’s special envoy. Good old Don was sent to establish “direct contact between an envoy of President Reagan and President Saddam Hussein,” while emphasizing “his close relationship” with the president. Rumsfeld also told Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz, now locked up and facing trial for war crimes, “the U.S. and Iraq shared many common interests,” especially the “common interest” of killing as many Iranians as possible (see the previous link). And yet Donald Rumsfeld is not mentioned anywhere on Horowitz’s site as a traitor, his picture is not featured next to Fidel Castro or Ramzi Yousef.

Actually, the more you look at this site, the more absurd it becomes—even John Kerry, who voted for Bush’s invasion, is considered a leftist kook. If Kerry is a leftist, well then Angela Davis is out there somewhere on the other side of Pluto. In fact, Horowitz’s lumping together of such disparate people as Ted Kennedy and Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman sends an unmistakable message, the same message sent five days a week by the proto-fascist radio demagogue Michael “Savage” Weiner: if you are left of center-right, you are a “cancer cell” (in Weiner’s words) and thus a dangerous threat to the body politic and should be excised pronto. You are with Osama and Abu and the rest of the murderous rabble, never mind that the former was never apprehended and charged with a crime (and thus we have no idea if he did it or not) and the latter is mostly a fictitious and semi-literate hobgoblin with a peg leg who is probably dead. Point is that the Ayatollah Khomeini, also featured here, is about as leftist as Pat Robertson, one of Horowitz’s natural allies. As well, there is no word in Horowitz’s write-up of Khomeini about the fact he encouraged Muslim fundamentalists to attack and kill Iranian leftists.

I’m beginning to think Mr. Horowitz needs to enroll in the local community college and take a political science refresher course.

But then that’s how the crackpot far right thinks, as exemplified by Bush’s Manichean declaration that you’re either with him and the Strausscons or you’re with Osama and his cave-dwelling medieval Muslim terrorists. No middle ground here, folks. Everything on the other side of the Strausscon Republicans, the Likudites, and the whacky Christian Zionists is unmitigated evil and needs to be excised. Posting names and images of the evil-doers, based on the pioneering work on Daniel Pipes’ Campus Watch, is but another step in the process. Ward Churchill and Shahid Alam are only the beginning.

“The purpose of the DiscoverTheNetwork site is not to stifle free speech but to clarify it,” Horowitz or one of his scriveners write. “We recognize that people are not always candid in what they say in public life, particularly in the arena of political discourse. Truth in political advertising would be a more accurate description of our intentions in assembling this data.” In other words, in the paranoid world of Horowitz and Crew, everybody this side of John Kerry harbors a secret agenda: the complete destruction of America and, of course, Israel. Because leftists are hateful and secretive by nature—probably inserting terrorist code in their writings like we are told Lynne Stewart did in her correspondence with Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman—there needs to be a clearing house, of sorts, where David Horowitz, a former communist himself, can spell out our nefarious agenda in black and white.

As Horowitz would have us believe, this nefarious anti-American agenda is funded by “tens of millions of dollars” forked over by the likes of the Ford Foundation, a Marxist operation if there ever was one. Horowitz makes sure to tell us that Henry Ford II, son of Edsel and grandson of Henry Ford, the automotive industrialist who at one time hobnobbed with Nazis, washed his hands of the foundation in 1977 for its unabashed support of “anti-capitalist, anti-business enterprises of the political left,” even though the foundation receives its money from investments in international securities, not exactly the sort of behavior one would expect from an “anti-capitalist, anti-business” foundation. As an example of this sort of Marxist subversion, Horowitz writes that with “the help of Ford’s philanthropy, [Fenton Communications] has taken its message across the United States and around the world; it is a message that blames American policies for having spawned Islamist terrorism and hostilities in Iraq.” Never mind that the CIA admits it created the Islamic Terror Network in Afghanistan, claiming proudly, as did Zbigniew Brzezinski, that it is the spook agency’s most successful operation to date, and without Bush’s invasion of Iraq—predicated on lies and deception—around 100,000 Iraqis would be alive right now. If the United States had not invaded Iraq, there would be no “hostilities in Iraq.”

Truly, Horowitz’s latest endeavor is a sight to behold—an exercise in massive right-wing paranoia and vindictiveness, making the so-called Left, from Ted Kennedy to the bedtime bogeyman Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (if Abu’s a leftist, then I’m Donald Trump), into something it is not: a massive, secret, treasonous, hateful, and violent (as in Ayman al-Zawahiri) conspiracy to destroy David Horowitz’s version of America.

I’d encourage you to go see this remarkable site for yourself—but then you’d have to register and David would end up with your email address and send you spam about how it is your patriotic duty to donate money to him and his organization so they can kick the lefties out of the universities ... or out of America entirely.

For David Horowitz, it is not only about getting rid of the leftists but also about making the endeavor into a profitable business.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Kurt Nimmo is a photographer and multimedia developer in Las Cruces, New Mexico. He is the author of Another Day in the Empire: Life in Neoconservative America, a collection of essays published by Dandelion Books. Visit his weblog at KurtNimmo.com.

[jim hitchcock]

Now it can be told! The Marc Cooper/George Soros drug links to the CIA!

But really, DEEP DISH TV? Is that the service with the Satellite receiver/microwave for movies pizzas?

[too many steves]

Human beings are wholly incapable of establishing and maintaining conspiracies of any serious size or scope, i.e.; more than two or three people. We can't even keep secrets for cripes sakes. But, goodness, we like to find them!

Perhaps if Horowitz is really a friend his decision to use the unflattering picture of you is just a friendly jab or prank. Having seen that photo, and the one from the Vegas book, and comparing them to the image on this site I am left to wonder: are you bearded or not?

[Jim R]

How to win friends and influence people, David. You used to actually impress my conservative nature.

Way to go, you dumb shit.

[GMRoper]

Now, and only now can the truth be told. We VRWC members have been keeping an eye on Marc for some time. I, in my spy mode, came here initially from MJT's blog and maintained the role of pugnacious but loveable conservative only to gain Marc's friendship so that I could later betray him to the Bushies. Rove gave me all my instructions via mind control. My second purpose was to monitor moonbats, and oh boy! are there a plethora of moonbats here. From the difficult steve to the implacable Ahmed and Reg, we have you covered.

Look, up in the sky, is that a bird, a plane? Yes it's the VRWC Predator in camera mode. Smile you guys........ (click)

[Benjamin]

Marc

You worried about your picture?

All the pictures on there look pretty dodgy, as if they have deliberately chosen unflattering pictures.

You should check out Ted Kennnedy's!!

[Brian Siano]

Marc Cooper wrote:

"Liberals and lefties also like to compile flow charts and maps showing the links on the right. Some of them make sense. Some don’t. Check out this chart from some far left whackos which also lists me—but this time as an operative of the CIA!."

I just wish these people would read Edward Tufte.

I mean, I have no problem with demented, paranoid charts showing the avenues of power. But when they're _poorly designed_, with _shitty fonts_ and _grainy pictures_ and _no flow to the frigging thing_, well godDAMN, I hate that.

[reg]

The sloppiness...the pointlessness...the slapdash juxtapositions, devoid of any context (Mr. Atta, meet Ms. Streisand!)...the googled hash of factoids...the amateurish grandiosity ("DiscoverTheNetwork!")...oh, yeah - and the funding for this useless nonsense from all of those far-right foundations that have become the mothers milk of Mr. Horowitz's reincarnation. He still has the soul of an ideological apparatchik editor of propaganda sheets who knows that what he publishes doesn't have to be true if it serves the higher purpose of tearing down assigned enemies. He'll admit as much when called on his crazier polemics. Frankly, this "data base" would be more fun to read if it wasn't obviously put together by a gaggle of interns and he'd unleashed the team of fumbling wannabes who provide the spew for his website that isn't simply syndicated or reprinted.

My favorite article in Frontpage was when one of the nonentities he regularly publishes actually claimed that Nagasaki was targeted by the Truman administration because it was was a population center for Japanese Christianity. I'm not making this up. He's also one of the purveyors of Ann Coulter's clownish WASP gangsta punditry and the screeds of Ms. Michelle Malkin - who is attempting to burnish FDR's reputation on the right by pointing out that at least he rounded up citizens of dubious ancestry, a precedent she would like to see visited on Arab-Americans post-9/11.

Horowitz has turned his ex-Red Diaper Left self-hatred into a profitable hustle, raising many millions from the far Right sugar daddies. I honestly don't think he's changed very much from the days when he was publishing mediocre "radical" journalism. Ramparts had long lost any credibility under his tenure and his ultimately disastrous friendship with Black Panther thugs is the key to understanding the man's peculiar mix of terrible judgment, manichean mindset, apparently innate lack of principles and grinding persistence as a psuedo-political entrepeneur of third-rate scabrous screeds. I'm so glad he's found the people who deserve him.

Mediocre and single-minded as Christopher Hitchens can be when he dabbles in political punditry (and CH was never a towering intellect so much as a withering, narrow-guaged polemicist when he isn't writing about twitty literati - as demonstrated by his much-publicized careen from the Nader-Chomsky-Cockburn outer limits to the Wolfowitz-Perle-Chalabi inner circle inside of a mere year or so), David Horowitz would have to stretch himself even to reach the Brit's knees. Nevertheless, this odd couple is now offering to host a joint holiday tour of England - a fundraising venture for Whorowitz Enterprises - and I have to admit, if you could withstand the predictable blather of the dozen or so right-wing rubes they'll fleece for this venture - it would be far more entertaining than a Nation cruise. If only for that moment when Hitchens realizes who he's stuck himself with and starts to hit the booze even harder than usual.

[MD]

Uh, is this a joke? I clicked on over and started laughing. Really. Made my lunch break and everything.

Dude, where's Kevin Bacon (ok, ok, I stole that joke from Iowahawk....)?

http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2005/02/the_truth_is_ou.html

[MD]

Oh dear, I didn't even click onto the lefty one when I first posted - is that a joke too? You can't even tell the real thing from satire anymore! This is like watching a C-SPAN call-in show - the kooks are always out.

[Michael J. Totten]

Benjamin: "You should check out Ted Kennnedy's!!"

Wow, thanks for my morning laugh. Amazing that they used that photo. Marc, you really should feel much better after checking out Kennedy's photo.

[too many steves]

Just saw Kennedy's photo, that is just cruel, cruel, cruel - and I despise the guy.

[reg]

I was struck by their interesting form of alphabetization...using first names. Database or dadabase ?

[Marc Davidson]

Nimmo's implication is that the database is a work in progress. Once completed (or carried to its absurd end) it will include every politician, journalist, religious figure, writer, artist, educator, .... It only appears silly to a few now, because it is incomplete -- the juxtapositions cited above are cases in point. Once the circle is completed with the obvious connections between the anti-semitic religious right, e.g. Osama Bin Laden / Pat Robertson, will the absurdity of the exercise be fully apparent.

[reg]

Just in case anyone doesn't get the full effect of what a hysterical buffoon Horowitz is, check out his FrontPage website's bizarre headline describing an antiwar march (great news for Communists, incidentally):

"100,000 Communists March On Washington To Give Aid and Comfort to Saddam Hussein
By David Horowitz
FrontPageMagazine.com | October 28, 2002"

but this bit from one of his regular FrontPage columnists was even more priceless...

"Nagasaki Mon Amour
by Lowell Ponte/FrontPageMagazine.com

... why did Marxocratic policymakers inside Roosevelt’s and Truman’s New Deal alter military targeting decisions, commanding instead that Nagasaki – relatively insignificant as a military target – be moved into the bombardier’s crosshairs and that its Christian people be cremated alive into clicking-hot radioactive ashes by atomic bomb annihilation?

And why today do Marxocrats use every tactic and technicality to politically exterminate each Christian word and symbol in America’s public square? Is their aim to remove all religions, morals, and values that people might prefer to their dogmatic religion, Marxism?

...The August 9th anniversary of Truman’s deliberate bombing of the Christian city of Japan is a moment for prayer and contemplation."

[reg]

FYI, more...

http://www.michaelberube.com/

[rosedog]

Hilarious. I had no idea that you, Roger Ebert and Walter Cronkite posed such a threat to the republic. (Okay, Ebert I suspected. But you and Walter?)

Meanwhile back in DC...It seems that Laura Bush was so blown away by The Gates in Central Park that she’s asked Christo and Jeanne-Claude to come to Crawford, TX, to wrap the Bush's 1600 acre ranch in eight miles of camouflage fabric. (!!!)

Cut funds for NEA, wrap Crawford in camo. There's a certain fearful symmetry there. (You think it’s something in the water?)

Your photo's not bad at all (you and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. both got the fish-eye treatment), but agreed, that nice black leather jacket and the serious shades clearly should have been the wicked lefty image they were going for. The fools!

[jim hitchcock]

Oh, man. Sounds like Laura's got the munchies again.

[reg]

rd - You get the Coofax Comment of the Day Award for that Laura Bush bit... (I thought your were joking and had to google the damned thing before I bought it.)

[VietPundit]

Marc,

I don't think that Vegas photo makes you look like a leftist at all. It makes you look like Wayne Newton!

[rosedog]

Reg, I shall treasure the award always.

This from a local article on the Christo incident, quoting a "source close to the president":

"He's obviously not thrilled about the idea that French artists are going to be swarming all over his favorite retreat, but his attitude is that if it makes Laura happy, he'll support it," says the associate, noting that while Mrs. Bush wanted to leave the choice of color for the ranch's new 'garb' up to Christo and Jeanne-Claude, it was the president who selected the military-themed fabric.”

See, this is why I’d hate to be a political satirist these days. It's a damned tough job, what with folks like Horowitz, Gannon and the President so far out ahead of the pack.

[Kevin]

That site is hilarious. Completely nutty. I mean, they have an entry for Keith Olbermann:

http://www.discoverthenetwork.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1690

[Paul Shanley]

Hey, did anyone notice the rhetorical cheapshot that Cooper pulls off here, equating Horowitz with some obscure unknown "left-wing" website that links him to the CIA? Ya'd almost think that that "left wing" website had even one onehundreth the name recognition or visits on the left that Horowitz has on the right. In other words, there is no comparison, but Cooper to keep up his "the left is as bad as the right" schtick has to find some way to maintain the phony premises...

Lame man, really really lame. Poor Marc, Horowitz has done the same kind of slimy things that he does toward people like Naomi Klein...
Hey speaking of which, when is Marc going to attack Klein's new documentary on Argentinian workers taking over factories that are left for broke by their former corrupt owners?

http://www.nfb.ca/thetake/

[paul shanley]

And speaking of which, how long will Marc take before deleting my posts for fear people read them and don't buy into his paranoid delusions about teenie weenie "left wing" websites being comparable to big rightwing paranoid websites read by god knows how many paranoid thousands? that think like Marc's good "friend" Horowitz?

[Marc Cooper]

Paul, why dont you shed ur phony email address and and join the conversation instead of sniping? I haven't seen Naomi Klein's film yet. But I certainly reserve the right to dislike it.

I dont equate the tiny left wing site with Horowitz-- I equate the same sort of paranoid thinking. Perhaps you would enjoy being listed on a small site as a CIA agent? I can arrange it.