Horowitz’s Road to Fascism

To those who doubt that an evolving fascist ideology motivates the War Party, here is wing-nut extraordinaire David Horowitz on why the antiwar movement, and more specifically “the left,” has to be “watched”:

“This is the lesson of London: Take the hostile force within your country and within your political coalition seriously. It’s not a game anymore. This is something I learned in my years on the left. All too often, people mean what they say. Make no mistake, those who talk revolution and war against our country are quite capable of acting on their talk — of aiding and abetting those who are already at war and want to kill us. When the day comes that they step over the line and translate their words into action, they will do it with the best of intentions: to make the world a better place. That is the reason they are so dangerous. Like Mohammed Atta who did it for Allah, they will do it for a noble cause.”

Horotwitz’s opponents are “like Mohammed Atta.” For all the self-righteous indignation on the neocon Right every time some marginal Ward Churchill type goes off the deep end, what about Horowitzian hyperbole of this sort? Excuse me, but Atta and his fellow crazoids killed over 3,000 human beings — is this really the moral equivalent of not agreeing with Horowitz’s views on the war?

It’s funny, but I once had a rather polite e-mail exchange with Andrew Sullivan, back when I was defending him on gay websites during the brouhaha over his online sex ad: when I pointed out to Sullivan that he allowed his writings to be used by Horowitz, who hates gays — at a National Review conference I once heard Horowitz’s loooong unintentionally hilarious account of how he once “infiltrated” a gay bath-house , a “talk” fairly dripping with hate and contempt — Sullivan told me that he couldn’t denounce Horowitz because Andrewsullivan.com “needs the hits.”

Yes, we understand Andy: it’s hard being a coward. Well, if that sort of obsessive gay-baiting doesn’t get yer goat, then what about Horowitz’s call to jail the antiwar movement? Again, speaking of the anti-war “left,”, Horowitz has come out of his closet and is now openly advocating police state measures against those who are actively opposing this war:

“Understand this, and you will understand that people who use the language of war need to be isolated and regarded with care. Understand this, and you will understand that those who describe America as Hitler Germany can be dangerous, and need to be watched.”

Isolated — in what sense? Horowitz is, I believe, deliberately ambiguous: he’s speaking in code, but the real meaning of his weasel words is clear to his increasingly frenzied followers, and ought to be clear to everyone else by now: the man longs to lock up his political opponents. There can be no doubt, in any case, that he wants the antiwar movement and the Left in general to be “watched” — by state agencies.

Old Commies never change — although they sometimes shift their allegiances, their authoritarian style rarely follows suit.

What really needs to be watched, however, is a “conservative” movement that is fast morphing into the closest thing to American fascism we have yet seen. Aren’t there any princpled old-fashioned conservatives out there — you know, the type who believe in limited government — willing to put the neo-authoritarians in their place?