The Totalitarians Within

David Horowitz

On May 11, 2011, I spoke to a student audience at UCLA for about an hour. My speech was video-taped and recorded on audio. Frontpage Magazine posted the video and an edited transcript of the speech. We are now posting an unedited transcript (accessible here) for reasons I will make clear in a moment.

On May 24, the Undergraduate Students Association at UCLA, by a 10-0 vote passed a resolution proposed by the Muslim Students Association declaring that “UCLA is a UC Campus Against Islamophobia.” I don’t mean to suggest that my appearance was the sole trigger of this resolution but it didn’t surprise me to find that among the numerous “Whereas” clauses in which the reasons for the resolution are stated, I am the only individual mentioned, or that it just came two weeks after the “controversy” surrounding my appearance which was really not so much a controversy as a series of one-sided assaults on myself and the College Republicans who invited me. “Islamophobes! Racists!” Call it an opportunity that I presented for the MSA and its supporters to extract concessions from the broader student population and to attempt to reach into their pockets in the process. Since student governments are proving grounds for future politicians, it is also a moment for the rest of us to reflect on what is in store for the country if these university elites can repeat their gains in the world beyond the campus. Here is how the Muslim Students Association formulated the concept “Islamophobia:”

Islamophobia is defined as ideologies, beliefs, and actions that perpetuate inaccurate and xenophobic views toward the culture and practice of Islam and the personification of its followers, such as being seen as monolithic, seen as a separate and ‘other’ culture that does not share common values, seen as inferior to the West, seen as violent, aggressive, and supportive of terrorism, seen as sexist and oppressive of women, seen as a political ideology used for political advantage, anti Muslim hostility, and exclusionary or discriminatory practices against Muslims from mainstream society;

Please note, “Islamophobia” is manifest in statements about Islam that are “innaccurate” (and by whose standard you might ask); by statements that reflect the view that Islam “does not share common values” (as for example, a belief in the separation of church and state?); by attitudes that regard Islam as “inferorior to the West” “as sexist and oppressive of women” (in other words no more noticing that in sharia-governed countries women are consigned to a second class status that renders them the virtual chattel of males); nor can one entertain the opinion that Islam is a political ideology (as it indubitably is in Iran, Saudia Arabia, Lebanon and Gaza, just to name a few zones where the lines between politics and religion are invisible). In other words no noticing that the “Party of God” (Hezbollah) or the Muslim Brotherhood which is now the most powerful political party in Egypt are actually political. Nor can you link the Islamic beliefs, codified by a warrior named Mohammed who urged his followers to slay infidels and cut off their heads with terrorists who invoke those beliefs when slaying infidels by cutting off their heads.

My recent speech at UCLA is adduced as evidence of the Islamophobia directed against Muslims in this clause:

Whereas, On Wednesday May 11th controversial speaker David Horowitz made false allegations on campus against the Muslim Students Association and the Afrikan Student Union, and further instilled hate against Muslims by stating that “Islam is a sick, sick culture” (5)(6);

Two footnotes are attached to this clause as if there were some actual connection to facts of my appearance at UCLA on May 11. One of the footnotes links to a column by a UCLA Muslim, Asra Ziauddin, which seizes on the “Wall of Lies” that I had written and that College Republicans had erected to counter the slanders of Palestinian Awareness Week at UCLA. Palestine Awareness Week claimed among many similar blatant falsehoods designed to demonize Jews and the Jewish homeland, that Israel is an “apartheid state.” Our response: Israel is not only not an apartheid state, it is the only real democracy in the Middle East. To this Ziauddin countered — “Myth: Israel it is the only democracy in the Middle East. Fact: This democracy only works for Jewish citizens.”

Actual Fact: Israel’s democracy works for 1.4 million Arabs who are Israeli citizens as well. To prove his fallacious point Ziauddin writes: “Six million Palestinian refugees have not been granted the right of return.” I don’t for a moment believe that Ziauddin’s invented figure “six million” is a coincidence, but there is no such right of return except in the minds of Palestinian revanchists.

The second footnote refers to the allegation that I said that “Islam is a sick, sick culture.” The footnote is a link to the audio version of the hour speech I gave at UCLA and which none but the most hardy will actually listen to. That is the good fortune of the Muslim Students Association for the transcript of the audio refutes the claim and it provides a measure of the audacity of the lies which the Muslim Students Association has concocted and believes it can get away with. Moreover, these are the kinds of lies with which it makes its case – swallowed whole by the UCLA student government — for suppressing the right to criticize their politics, their views and actions, or the politics, views and actions of any of the Muslims engaged in a holy war against the rest of us.

I am going to reproduce here the actual transcript of the only passage in my speech which refers to “a sick, sick culture.” As it happens – and it is not really coincidental — that I am referring in this passage to a film that was made by Palestinian Muslims at Brooklyn College who then doctored the film, cutting out the premise of statements like “this is sick, sick culture” in order to make me look as hateful as possible. This doctored version was then posted on the Internet with the title “Horowitz Spreading Hate At Brooklyn College.”

In other words, the passage of my UCLA speech which contains this reference is an attempt – a futile one where these religious ideologues are concerned –– to correct the false impression made by the doctored version:

What I said [at Brooklyn College] was this — people have been oppressed for thousands of years, horribly oppressed. Enslaved. Massacred. And yet, in thousands of years of recorded history, there has never before, never, been a people that has strapped bombs onto its own children, told them to go ahead and blow up other children. And if you do, you’re going to go to heaven. And if you’re lucky enough to be male, you’re going to get 72 virgins. That is sick. That’s a sick death cult is what –

(Applause)

Well, every one of you who applauded qualifies to be on the Internet, as I am — Horowitz spreading hatred at Brooklyn College. Because all they show me saying is, “That’s sick, a sick culture,” which it is.

[Click here to see the actual transcript]

In other words, what I was saying was that suicide bombing was sick and that the culture that supports it is sick. I was talking about the Palestinian culture of death, obviously framed by the Hamas version of Islam. So what my UCLA Muslim critics are actually saying is that Hamas’s death cult version of Islam is Islam. I didn’t say this – the Muslim Students Association, which is a Hamas-supporting offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood did. But if the UCLA student government was an actual government, you can bet an Islamophobia law would put me in jail — or worse — I for saying what I did.

Keep in mind that these are students at one of the top dozen schools in America, and there doesn’t seem to be an adult around to teach them what a democracy is and what a totalitarian concept like “Islamophobia” portends.

Ah, yes, I promised in the title of this piece to talk about extortion. Well, one of the consquences of signing to a crusade against Islamophobia like this is that you have to fork over money to fund the crusade – and better yet – the anti-Israel, anti-American clubs and associations at UCLA who will be carrying on the crusade, and let’s have courses and re-education centers at UCLA to indoctrinate UCLA students in our ideology, our cause and our agenda:

Let it be resolved, that the Undergraduate Students Association Council does not tolerate or accept the behaviors of students, staff, faculty, or administration that infringe upon the safety of another person and/or develop a hostile and unsafe environment.

Let it be resolved, that the Undergraduate Students Association Council supports the efforts of the present work-group between students and respective faculty, in creating a series of general education Introduction to Islam courses, to help foster a better understanding of the religion of Islam and American-Muslim identity.

Let it be further resolved, that the Undergraduate Students Association Council urges the University of California, Los Angeles to financially support and promote all the Ethnic and Religious Studies Interdepartmental Programs, Departments, and Centers at UCLA.

[Editor's note: The graphic for this article is a cartoon illustrated by Bosch Fawstin. Visit his site at fawstin.blogspot.com.]