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October 24, 2007, 6:30 a.m.
Wake Up!
An American campus rally.
An NRO Q&A
It’s Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week — the brainchild of David Horowitz, warrior for truth on American college campuses. Horowitz’s Terrorism Awareness Project website describes the effort as “the biggest conservative campus protest ever… a wake-up call for Americans on 200 university and college campuses.” And so later this week, Horowitz will be returning to Columbia University, his alma mater, “to confront the two Big Lies of the political left: that George Bush created the war on terror and that Global Warming is a greater danger to Americans than the terrorist threat.”
Horowitz — who has former United States Senator Rick Santorum, radio-talk-show hosts Sean Hannity and Michael Medved, and many more participating in this week’s effort (that has, of course, been derided as a pre-Halloween “right-wing political stunt”) – took a few questions from National Review Online editor Kathryn Lopez on Monday about this wartime service.
Kathryn Jean Lopez: Why are you doing this? Is it your sense college kids have no clue?
David Horowitz: On the contrary. It’s because adults have no clue. Bush managed to use the word “Islamo-fascism” one time before CAIR and the Islamo-fascist coalition howled and he retreated. What we are doing is putting the name of the enemy on the national radar. To be sure, a good part of the college curriculum teaches that Bush, rather than the Islamo-fascists, is responsible for the war on terror and America is the Great Satan. So yes, we are providing a counter-curriculum.
But the larger agenda is create a national movement to stand up to the coalition between Islamo-fascists and American liberals at home who are running interference for the terrorists. The coalition attacking Islamo-fascism Awareness Week extends from the Iranians and CAIR through the Revolutionary Communist Party to Campus Progress (an offshoot of the Hillary-Soros-Podesta operation) and College Democrats.
Lopez: How long have you been doing this now?
Horowitz: We started with Islamo-Fascist Awareness Day last April 19 when we organized 96 college campuses to show the film Obsession simultaneously. The only reason you didn’t hear about it was because the shootings on the Virginia Tech campus took place three days earlier and that was the only campus news reported for a couple of weeks.
Lopez: What’s the most distressing question you frequently get from a run-of-the-mill all-American kid?
Horowitz: I actually think the run-of-the-mill all-American kids, even the ones who vote for the Democrats, are (quietly) on our side on this one. I begin my speeches by explaining the poster we have created which shows a Muslim woman having her head blown off by a Taliban soldier for sexual improprieties. I refer to the 130 million Muslim women who have had their genitals sliced off without anesthetic to conform to some barbaric Muslim custom. I recall the 200,000 moderate Muslims slaughtered by Islamo-fascists in Algeria calling themselves “al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.” The room gets pretty silent after that.
Lopez: Have you had any good, instructive debates on campus on this topic?
Horowitz: No. Read Barbara Ehrenreich’s hate screed in the current Nation and you’ll get a picture of the intellectual level of the opposition. It’s all ad hominem libels of Coulter, Santorum, and me. There isn’t a substantive argument. But then when has the Left managed to put together a substantive argument?
Lopez: What do you find resonates the most with kids?
Horowitz: The fact that we are supporting peaceful Muslims against the Islamo-Fascists.
Lopez: Why do you call it “Islamo-facism” vs. radical Islam or something else?
Horowitz: First of all it’s a totalitarian doctrine and this is important. In Iran the state just outlawed hand-holding by couples in public, enforced by the “modesty police.” Second, radical Islam is historically linked with Nazism (it’s founder Hassan al Banna was an admirer of Hitler, the Brotherhood, and the Palestinians worked with Hitler and the entire jihadist movement has embraced genocidal Jew hatred). Third, in political war which is what the Lleft has declared on us, it’s important to have an emotional label you can stick your enemies with. And it upsets them as well, which is an added fillip. One of the attacks on us actually said “How dare they parade as anti-fascists!” My reply? Get used to it.
Lopez: How do you define it?
Horowitz: Christopher Hitchens has an excellent article in Slate explaining the term and why it is appropriate.
Lopez: Do any politicians speak to the threat that is Islamo-facism to a degree that suits you?
Horowitz: Rick Santorum, which is why he is one of our speakers. Although I’ve been told that all the Republican presidential candidates have used it during recent debates (which I don’t watch). If that’s so, it’s very encouraging. Republicans, conservatives, patriots need to go on the offensive.
Lopez: How similar is Islamo-facism to Soviet Communism?
Horowitz: Well, of course, Islamo-fascists like Arafat and Saddam were proteges of the Communists and Communist ideology. So-called anti-imperialism is thoroughly integrated into Islamo-fascist doctrine, now through the efforts of the American Left whose ideological attacks on America and capitalism are indistinguishable from Stalinism (I’ve written about this at some length in my book Unholy Alliance). As many other have noted, Osama bin Laden’s fatwas are increasingly cribbed from the work of the American Communist Michael Moore (and if you don’t think he’s a Communist, see SiCKO).
http://www.nationalreview.com/redirect/amazon.p?j=0895260263
Lopez: What are your goals going to Columbia University later in the week? Is there hope there?
Horowitz: My goals in organizing Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week have already been achieved. At Columbia and at all the other 109 campuses, and in the country beyond, people are discussing “Islamo-fascism,” a term previously suppressed. And they are also discussing the oppression of women in Islam and the deafening silence on this issue of Women’s Studies Departments everywhere. So we’ve put Islamo-fascism on the national radar, exposed the hypocrisy of the Left, and laid bare the unholy working alliance between American leftists and our enemies in the war on terror. Going to Columbia is almost unnecessary at this point, except to extend the reach of our message. However, to answer your question directly: Last week the Columbia Spectator ran a fairly decent editorial on my speech, but marred it by claiming that we were attacking all Muslims... The first ten or so letters from students that accompanied the editorial slammed the Spectator for shilling for the Islamo-fascists. Yes — there’s hope, but only if people are willing to stand up and fight.
Lopez: What are you telling college students to do? About Islamo-fascism? To educate?
Horowitz: To begin with, I want to say that without the courageous students — mainly but not exclusively College Republicans — have been willing to stand up and organize these events and be attacked as racists and bigots and Islamophobes by their classmates, professors, and university administrators, there would be no Islamo-fascism Awareness Week. To me this is the most positive and most exciting aspect of the whole week. We have a new generation of conservative leaders who will actually fight the Left and defend the country despite the Left’s best efforts to intimidate them.
And basically that’s what I tell the students to do. I tell them how important they are in the battle for the future of this country and for the cause of freedom in the world at large. We are going to make this a permanent campaign. We have encouraged other organizations — Young America’s Foundation, the Leadership Institute, ISI, to join us and they have. We hope to see more. We hope to build alliances with Jewish and Christian organizations to carry on these battles. Our students are staging sit-ins at Women’s Studies departments at ten schools demanding that they provide classes on the oppression of women in Islam. We are taking on the anti-American[ism] … and we will continue to do so. And if enough of us do so, we will make a difference that counts. |
