The Legacy of David Horowitz

To help us continue David’s legacy, CLICK HERE. 

Back on April 29, David Horowitz passed away at the age of 86. Still with us, on the other hand, is the wisdom and strategic guidance he left behind. In his 1996 Radical Son, David charted his Communist upbringing, the rise of the New Left, and his dealings with the Black Panther Party in Oakland.

David raised money for the Oakland Community Learning Center, the school that became the Black Panthers’ base of operations. In 1974, David recruited his friend Betty Van Patter to keep the books. When Betty was found dead in San Francisco Bay, that marked David’s exodus from the left, but not the end of his political activism.

In 1981, San Francisco Chronicle writer Randy Shilts tipped off David to a potential epidemic known as AIDS, rapidly spreading through the bathhouses in San Francisco. As David explained in Radical Son, “For political reasons, there would be no systematic testing or reporting, or contact tracing of infected parties – standard health measures in stemming contagions in the past.”

David Horowitz was one of the first to call out the government’s politicization of disease and departure from established medical practice. So remember David as an early opponent of white coat supremacy, later imposed in force by Dr. Anthony Fauci during the Covid pandemic.

With Peter Collier, David wrote The Kennedys: An American Drama and the authors support for Ronald Reagan got them blacklisted from the New York Times. On October 17, 1987, the 20th anniversary of the New Left’s march on Washington, David and Peter hosted the Second Thoughts Conference, a gathering of writers and scholars who also left the left. For Joshua Muravchik, formerly of the Young People’s Socialist League, their differences were rather small compared to areas of agreement. Therefore, Muravchik concluded, “be fraternal, promote democracy, off the commies, power to the people.”

There was talk of taking on the movies, which led David to form The Center for the Study of Popular Culture (CSPC) based in Los Angeles. Through its publication COMINT the center targeted the use of public funds to promote leftist causes, a scam showcased by former LBJ press secretary Bill Moyers. The Center published Heterodoxy, targeting the political correctness now known as “woke” ideology, and leftist causes in general.

In the new century, the left added Islamic jihadists and anti-Semites to their list of oppressed victims. David fought them on college campuses across the nation, a battle now continued by the David Horowitz Freedom Center. Heterodoxy became Frontpage Magazine, on the front lines against the hate-America left in all its guises. As David showed, you have to fight where the battle is taking place, but there’s more to it.

Some hesitate to join the fray based on what liberals might say about them. As David noted, inside every liberal is a totalitarian screaming to get out, and at this point most of them are out. Witness the calls to violence, support for violent criminals, and sympathy for terrorists. The left’s attacks on David, only made him stronger and more determined to fight on. In the wake of his departure, people should know, the event that drove him from the left remains unresolved.

January 17 marked 50 years since Betty Van Patter was found dead in San Francisco Bay. She had been fired by Elaine Brown, who took over the Black Panther Party when Huey Newton fled to Cuba. At the time of Betty’s murder, Elaine Brown was running for Oakland City Council. The Panther boss was a favorite of Gov. Jerry Brown and Panther consiglieri J. Anthony Kline, who became  Gov. Brown’s legal affairs secretary.

In 1982, Brown appointed Kline to the state Appeal Court, where he served until retirement in 2021. To this day, Kline and Jerry Brown never revealed what they knew about the Van Patter murder, and when they knew it. In Radical Son, David explained, Huey Newton said the killer was Elaine Brown, who has since gained new followers.

“Elaine Brown is a social justice advocate, story teller, trailblazer, accomplished musician and a strong advocate for communities of color especially when it comes to breaking barriers to employment,” contends, Mialisa Bonta of the California Assembly, wife of state attorney general Rob Bonta. In 2024 dame Bonta donated $1.25 million to the Black Panther Museum in Oakland but this year the Bay Area left failed to mark the 50th anniversary of Van Patter’s murder. Of course, for the left murder has never been a problem.

Witness the assassination of Charlie Kirk on September 10. David Horowitz didn’t live to see it, but based on experience we can say he was on to it from the start. In 2025 moving forward, remember the radical son who showed us how to fight.