EDINA, Minn. – Conservative author, commentator, and activist David Horowitz came to Edina, Minnesota April 27to address the Freedom Club. Before giving his keynote speech, Alpha News was able to interview him about the state of the nation almost 100 days into a Trump presidency.
Horowitz was blunt to the point of making Minnesota Republicans uncomfortable, which is perhaps exactly what they need. Ranging from suppression of free speech on university campuses, to Rep. Keith Ellison, to Black Lives Matter, to Congressional Republicans, Horowitz set out in simple, stark terms what needs to be done, in his view, to capitalize on Republicans’ historic victory of last November. The interview has been edited for clarity and ease of reading.
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AN: Congratulations on your most recent book “The Big Agenda: President Trump’s Plan To Save America,” which debuted at number six and has been on the New York Times bestseller list now for eleven weeks. This, despite a media blackout on the book. What accounts for its success?
DH: Thank you. Chris Ruddy, the creator of Newsmax and the book’s publisher has done a tremendous job. I wrote the book in less than three weeks but I’ve written about these things so much, for me it’s always the context. I was asked to write it as though Hillary was going to win but I thought Trump could win.
AN: Trump’s win remains astonishing.
DH: I’m a fan of Scott Walker but I understood why he didn’t do well in the primaries. His style was pre-Obama but it was too late for that. The Democrats are in open revolt against the system. The Republicans were quiescent. Six years in the majority and they didn’t defund anything!
AN: Milo Yiannopoulos, you, Charles Murray, Heather MacDonald, and now Ann Coulter have all been prevented from exercising their First Amendment freedom of speech rights on campus. How have we come to this?
DH: We have an incipient fascist movement that’s rooted in our campuses. It’s because the faculties of our major universities—including the University of Minnesota—are what I call neo-Communist. They just have a Communist mentality. They hate the Constitution but they won’t say it in those words. The Constitution is designed to thwart radical schemes. That’s what the checks and balances are all about.
AN: How serious a problem is this?
DH: It’s a huge problem. The Democratic Party has embraced Black Lives Matter, which is another fascist, racist organization. The Deputy Chair of the DNC spent eleven years of his adult life after college as a raving, Louis Farrakhan supporting, anti-semite, anti-white, racist American.
AN: You’re referring to Keith Ellison.
DH: Yes, I am. Republicans are too polite to talk the way I do. My book is about this: it is designed to encourage Republicans to talk much more frankly, bluntly, and directly. I’ve been saying this for twenty years now. We have a leader in President Trump who does do this, though he has to be a bit more moderated as president. In the campaign, he let them have it.
AN: How do Republicans push back?
DH: I have a good section on that in my book. Earlier today I met with some of your state legislators. I encouraged them to use the power of the purse to bring these out of control schools to heel.
AN: I don’t think you have any understanding of Minnesota Republicans.
DH: Pick up the phone and call the U of M president! Put a thumb on the oxygen of their funding.
AN: As I said . . .
DH: Minnesota legislators should create an Academic Freedom caucus to ensure political and intellectual diversity or withhold funding.
I’ve conducted a campaign for seven years to try to get academic freedom on university campuses, to create a Bill of Rights for students where they can hear divergent views. I’ve basically gotten nowhere. Republicans did nothing. The Left has called me every name in the book.
AN: They’ve done that for some time.
DH: I’m what you call libel proof.
AN: You’ve referred to the “progressive” movement as old Marxist wine in a new bottle. What do you think of the term Cultural Marxism?
DH: The entire progressive left, the entire Democratic Party, is operating now on a modified Marxist model, which is that in a democratic society there’s a class war going on and we have to be on one side of that war. Elections are a sham and are controlled by the rich. What the left has done is to amplify that and added the race factor.
People talk about white supremacy. Such people should be institutionalized. I mean this is madness in this day and age in America but they have these hierarchies. It’s all about “oppression.” They actually call it at universities “oppression studies.”
No, Cultural Marxism is too benign a term: these are racists, genderists, classists.
The American system only made sense if there’s a certain equality among its citizenry. The Democratic Party is actually the party of the wealthy. There’s no George Soros on the right, not the Koch brothers, nobody. There’s no billionaires’ club involved in fomenting street rioters, buying legislatures outright, and doing all the things Soros and his friends do.
AN: Where is President Trump at one hundred days in?
DH: I think he’s doing great. His agenda is to make America great again, to make America prosperous again, to make America safe again. He’s spent twelve hours a day since his election trying to achieve that, a lot of it through executive orders.
Trump faces the biggest obstacles a president has faced since Lincoln. He’s got a Democratic Party that has seceded from the Union for a second time.
He’s got a Republican Party that’s marching in different directions all the time. They’re in that mode of compromise, of business as usual. Paul Ryan doesn’t understand that it’s a war.
Given that, he’s doing great. His numbers will dramatically increase when he gets the health care bill through Congress. Same thing with tax cuts.
He’s got a media that isn’t media anymore. Reporters are gangsters. Barring unforeseen things, which you can never do, Republicans should win big in 2018 and 2020
AN: Have you heard of Based Stick Man?
DH: No.
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In addition to Alpha News, John Gilmore is also a contributor to The Hill. He is the founder and executive director of Minnesota Media Monitor. He blogs at MinnesotaConservatives.com and is on Twitter under @Shabbosgoy
John Gilmore
John Gilmore is an author, freelance writer & former opinion columnist for Alpha News. He blogs at minnesotaconservatives.org & is @Shabbosgoy on Twitter