This article is part of the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s commemoration of the one-year anniversary of the passing of our founder, namesake and visionary. If you have memories of David to share, please leave them in the comments or drop Daniel Greenfield a line.
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More than 50 years ago, David Horowitz stepped away from the left and last April the Radical Son, raised by Communists, left us at age 86. A year later the Muslim-left axis is ramping up hatred as never before. Take, for example, the doings at UC Berkeley, where David first met Peter Collier. Last Monday, the Berkeley Law School celebrated “Palestinian Political Prisoners Day” by allowing Isriss Jaabis to address students via video from a classroom.
“Israa Jaabis was convicted in Israel for a 2015 attempted car bombing near Jerusalem,” Megan Barth of the California Globe explains. “Israeli authorities say she detonated a gas canister rigged in her vehicle at a checkpoint, severely injuring herself and an Israeli police officer. She was sentenced to 11 years in prison and freed in November 2023 as part of a prisoner exchange following the Hamas massacre that killed 1,200 Israelis and took over 250 hostages.”
The event was co-organized by Berkeley Law Students for Justice in Palestine and UC Berkeley Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which David took the lead in opposing. In 2016 at UCLA, David distributed posters reading “Students for Justice in Palestine” and “#Jew Haters,” but did not stop there. David called on UCLA to remove campus privileges and funding of SJP because they are a hate group and as such violated UCLA’s “Statement of Principles Against Intolerance.”
On April 19, 2016, UCLA vice chancellor for equity, diversity and inclusion Jerry Kang responded with a letter to the entire UCLA community. “Back in November 2015,” Kang wrote, “someone put up hostile posters accusing two student organizations – the Muslim Student Association (MSA) and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) – of being murderers and terrorists.” These were posted anonymously but “an outside provocateur named David Horowitz eventually took credit.” On UC campuses, the “outside provocateur” challenged pro-Hamas radicals face to face. David drew that courage from his experience with the Black Panthers in the Bay Area.
David raised money for the Oakland Community Learning Center, the school that became the 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.
When Huey Newton was in Cuba, Elaine Brown took over leadership of the Black Panther Party.
As David explained in Radical Son, Huey Newton told David that Elaine Brown murdered Betty. In 2024, Frederika Newton, Huey’s widow, celebrated a $1.25 million donation from California Assemblywoman Mia Bonta, wife of California Attorney General Rob Bonta. In March of 2023, Bonta honored Elaine Brown during Women’s History Month.
Bonta hailed the former Panther boss as “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,” and so forth. That came nearly 50 years after David called out the panthers as a murderous gang, a stark contrast to California politicians such as Jerry Brown. As California governor, mayor of Oakland, and state attorney general, Brown never showed the courage to prosecute the cases. Frontpage now takes the lead in keeping the story alive as Panther groupie Mia Bonta tries to criminalize investigative journalism.
Bonta’s Assembly Bill 2624, notes Katy Grimes of the California Globe, would “impose huge civil sanctions on independent investigative reporters for ‘harassing’ what Bonta calls ‘immigrant services’ workers who, in fact, are providing taxpayer-funded goods and services to illegal aliens.” Leftist radicals are not fans of the First Amendment, and David was active on another front that people may have forgotten.
At this writing, the city of Minneapolis is preparing to legalize adult bathhouses and sex venues. Back in 1981, San Francisco Chronicle writer Randy Shilts tipped off David to a potential epidemic known as AIDS, which was rapidly spreading through the bathhouses in San Francisco.” Shilts would write And the Band Played On: People, Politics and the AIDS Epidemic, and David would revisit the episode in Radical Son.
“For political reasons,” David wrote, “there would be no systematic testing or reporting, or contact tracing of infected parties – standard health measures in stemming contagions in the past.” By calling out government politicization of disease, David challenged the white coat supremacy that would surge under Dr. Anthony Fauci, who claimed to represent science. Frontpage took the lead in challenging this Lysenko figure, pardoned by Joe Biden without revelation of the crimes he committed.
Frontpage has not forgotten white coat supremacy, the Black Panthers, or the Muslim-Left axis now spewing hate at UC Berkeley, where David met Peter Collier, who passed away on April 29, 2019. In 2026 moving forward, the triumph of David Horowitz is all about memory against forgetting.
Previous article in the series:
It’s Clearer Than Ever: David Horowitz Was Right All Along. -By Robert Spencer.
Why David Horowitz is More Relevant Than Ever. -By Daniel Greenfield.
How David Horowitz Helped Me Choose My College. -By Gregory Lyakhov.
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