WHY DO DAVID HOROWITZ AND RON RADOSH ATTACK DIANA WEST?
Thank you for the myriad letters expressing support for Diana West and outrage at the actions of Frontpage. As you know, I have been partial to Frontpage and I post something from them almost every day. I have been pondering so many of your questions about the possible motivations of two journalists who promote a conservative agenda and expose mindless liberals and leftists, but have been obsessively attacking one author and one book. They have caused the controversy by purging a good review and posting a vicious one. When brought to task, they redoubled their attacks and insults.
Diana West, the author, has stripped the calumnies about Joseph McCarthy, a bogeyman to both leftists and conservatives, to reveal that he, along with other Senate and House investigators of both parties were certainly onto something real in disclosing the penetration of high ranking Soviet Agents and propagandists in all the corridors of power and policy- the government, the media, entertainment and the academies. Some of you have asked if that could explain their animus. I don’t thinks so.
Diana West will rebut every smear and lie and misstatement but in the meantime, here is some perspective on how Marxism infected America long after World War 2 and long after Joseph McCarthy.
The work of spies and agents of influence for the Soviet Union was aided by the “useful idiots” who did the leg work in the public. Some were amateur hour socialists, others like Horowitz and Radosh were, by their own admission, Marxists who carried their useful idiocy into the anti Vietnam War movement. And, they remained Marxists in spite of the revelations of the murderous acts and intentions of Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh and Castro. They remained Marxists even when Robert Conquest, the brilliant historian, poet and essayist published The Great Terror – in 1968 detailing Stalin’s purges and brutality. Harrison Salisbury called it “brilliant…not only an odyssey of madness, tragedy, and sadism, but a work of scholarship and literary craftsmanship.” Gee….Radosh who described himself as ” a young man of vast intellectual curiosity” must have missed it.
Yes, while Jamie Glazov’s ( Jamie Glazov whom I like is an editor at Frontpage) late and noble father, a Russian dissident was being harassed and threatened in Russia, Ron Radosh remained a member of the Communist party and was cavorting with Students for a Democratic Society and assorted thugs and terrorists. And, David Horowitz, who was editor of Ramparts magazine, by his own admission was eager “to divulge the secrets of America’s electronic intelligence agency to the world. We viewed it as an effort to level the military playing field so that America would no longer be the superpower that was able to lord it over everyone else.” His words…not mine. (http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=24332)
Diana West reminds Horowitz and Radosh how they abetted and supported a vile and genocidal ideology, far more pernicious and treasonous than the punk leftists such as Oliver Stone or Code Pink or their ilk, so often attacked in Frontpage.
While Radosh and Horowitz both have denounced Communism and the left, do they accept their inherent responsibility for the present climate which they attack daily in Frontpage?
In fact, at the end of his book Commies: A Journey Through the Old Left, the New Left and the Leftover Left by Ronald Radosh (Jun 15, 2002), the author states:
“”The country is stronger for having encountered and withstood us.” Huh?
No! The country is not stronger for having encountered your arrogance and recklessness, and Diana West demonstrates how the deception and self-deception of Marxists, paved the way for the political correctness, moral relativism, and blindness to the dangers of Islam that now pervade our culture.
That surely must rankle.
