David Horowitz Biography

David Horowitz was born on January 10, 1939, in Queens, New York, USA. His father, Phil Horowitz, was an English teacher and his mother, Blanche, taught stenography.

He comes from a Russian Jewish family. While his father’s family left Russia in 1905 during the pogroms against Jews, his mother’s family had left the country in the mid-1800s.

Horowitz’s parents were members of the ‘American Communist Party’ and he was bought up in a leftist environment. He was only 9 years old when he attended his first May Day Parade.

In 1956, when the horror stories of the Stalin era came out Horowitz’s parents left the ‘American Communist Party’ but held on to the ideals of Marxism. Horowitz also remained a socialist and swore to create a new socialism free from Stalin’s taint.

A bright student, Horowitz went on majoring in English at the Columbia University in 1959. He then went to do his masters from the University of California, Berkeley.

At Berkeley he co-founded a magazine of the New Left, Root and Branch. He also participated in protests like the anti-nuclear rally in 1961 which earned him a reprimand from the administration. Not to be cowed down, next year he helped organize the first anti-Vietnam War rally.

After completing his university education, David Horowitz went to London where he worked at the ‘Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation’. At this point Horowitz’s political leanings were Marxist.

During his time in London he was active in organizing protests against Britain’s support for the Vietnam war. He got together with the ‘Trotskyist International Marxist Group’ and created the ‘Vietnam Solidarity Campaign’ in January 1966.

After five years in London, Horowitz returned to the USA. He took over the reins of the New Left magazine, Ramparts, as its co-editor.

In the 1970s, David Horowitz began his association with the revolutionary socialist party ‘Black Panther Party’. He participated actively in the party’s work like collecting funds to convert a Baptist Church into a learning centre for the children of the members of the ‘Black Panther Party’.

Horowitz bought one of his friends from Ramparts, bookkeeper Betty Van Patter into the party. In December 1974, Betty’s battered body was discovered on the San Francisco Harbor. It was believed that the Black Panthers were to be blamed. This traumatic incident proved to be a turning point in Horowitz ideological journey.

As Horowitz had bought Van Patter into the party, he felt responsible for her death. For months he could not sleep. Intellectually he was growing distant from the New left but did not leave the ideology just then.

In the mid-1970s, David Horowitz tried to position himself as a liberal intellectual and wrote books on Rockefellers, Kennedys and Fords along with Peter Collier, his co-editor at Ramparts. Horowitz’s stance on LGBT rights, US foreign policy, racial equality slowly shifted to the right.

In 1985, Horowitz and Peter Collier published an article in the ‘The Washington Post’ titled ‘Goodbye to All That. The piece announced the departure of Horowitz from the New Left. In it, he announced that he had voted for Ronald Reagan in the US presidential elections.

In the late 1980s, Horowitz established the ‘Center for the Study of Popular Culture’ (CSPC). The organisation aimed to “establish a conservative presence in Hollywood” and fight leftist “indoctrination” on University Campuses.

The September 11 attacks in 2001 made David Horowitz come out all guns blazing against Muslims and Palestinians painting them as terrorists. He also wrote a piece advocating racial and ethnic profiling to as means to tighten security.

In 2006, the CSPC became ‘David Horowitz Freedom Centre’ (DHFC). It has been hosting high profile annual events featuring far-right ideologues. Among his associates is Robert Spencer the founder of ‘Jihad Watch’.

David Horowitz is an opponent of the Black Lives Matter movement. He describes it as a “racist hate group”. He is open about his disdain of former US President Barack Obama calling him a “racist” in his tweets.

Horowitz is a vocal supporter of Donald Trump. He vociferously defended Trump’s controversial child separation policy and has been an advocate of Trump’s proposed wall with Mexico.

Horowitz’s memoir Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey tells the story of his political and ideological journey. The book was called “warmly human and abrasive” in a New York Times review.

In The Art Of Political War (2000), he asserted that the Democratic party was being controlled by hard-core leftists and the Republicans were finding it difficult to match up to them because they were too polite.

In 2006, David Horowitz published The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America. The book was slammed for being inaccurate and distorting and manipulating facts.

In 2017, Horowitz’s book Big Agenda was published and became a bestseller. The book is subtitled President Trump’s Plan to Save America and talks about the battle for the conservative cause.

In 2018 ‘Visa’ and ‘Mastercard’ stopped processing donations to the David Horowitz Freedom Center after the ‘Southern Poverty Law Centre’ labeled DHFC a hate group.

David Horowitz married Elissa Krauthamer in 1959 while he was still a student. They had four children Jonathan Daniel, Ben, Sarah Rose and Anne.

Horowitz’s second wife was Sam Moorman. After their divorce, he married Shay Marlowe in 1990. This marriage too ended in divorce and Horowitz then married April Mullvain.

He considers himself an agnostic and believes we don’t know the answers to the “fundamental questions about our existence”.

Horowitz’s son Ben is the co-founder of the one of the most successful Venture Capital company in the Silicon Valley called ‘Andreessen Horowitz’.