Raised to be a committed Marxist by communist intellectual parents, Horowitz was in on the ground floor of Berkeley activism, and through his work as an editor at
Ramparts magazine, he emerged as a key player in the New Left. He went on to become an active supporter of the Black Panthers and something of an intimate of their founder, Huey P. Newton. Yet today he is an outspoken political conservative who has supported many right-wing causes (such as the contras in Nicaragua) and been critical of '60s radicalism in general. It would be easy to conclude that Horowitz went from A to Z this way because he's superficial and unstable. Instead, as this moving, intellectual autobiography shows, his second thoughts about leftism emerged gradually as he experienced various aspects of the "Movement." The catalytic episode came when he discovered that the Panthers had murdered a friend of his, but even then Horowitz was slow to convert, primarily because he was heavily enmeshed in what he now views as the quintessential leftist habit of judging politics by its intentions, not its acts.
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Horowitz is the most famous "red-diaper baby" who recanted. The son of proudly Communist parents, he was raised to become, as he did, a major figure in the 1960s New Left, author of several stoutly Marxist books, and coeditor (with Peter Collier, his subsequent partner in projects including best-sellers on the Rockefeller and Kennedy families) of the leftist magazine
Ramparts. But dealings with Huey Newton's Black Panthers that ended in the murder of a former
Ramparts coworker spurred Horowitz to reevaluate radicalism. He emerged from his stock-taking as first an antiprogessive and ultimately a conservative. Meanwhile, his marriage, taxed for years by his self-righteous activist's personality, had disintegrated. His long, occasionally anguished recounting of this life journey is crammed with piquant appreciations of the weighty leftists who were his comrades and are now his antagonists and, more affectingly, with thoughtful assessments of his parents and the radical subculture in which he grew up. A document of the first importance for understanding the legacy of '60s radicalism.
Ray Olson
--This text refers to an alternate
kindle_edition edition.
From Kirkus Reviews
A sharply detailed, panoramic memoir of a ``red diaper'' baby and leftist activist who converted to political conservatism. Born in 1939, journalist and biographer Horowitz (The Fondas, 1992; with Peter Collier, The Roosevelts, 1994; etc.) here turns in a study of intellectual development in a troubled time. He writes lovingly, but with some exasperation, of having been brought up by two Communist Party minor operatives; of a father physically and emotionally scarred by his own impoverished childhood, blacklisted and forced to leave teaching in the 1950s; of a mother who was trained as a lawyer but worked as a typing instructor, fearful of competing for work during the Great Depression. Horowitz continued their revolutionary tradition through the '60s and '70s, finally rejecting the left during the beleaguered Carter presidency. Along the way he recounts his years as an antiwar-movement leader and journalist (he was an editor at Ramparts magazine) and as an active sympathizer of the Black Panthers, with whom he later broke. Horowitz traces his disaffection to multiple causes, including the lunatic acts of violent groups like the Weather Underground and the lunatic rhetoric of the late-era Huey Newton, who called for the extermination of the ``fascist insects'' who stood in his way. He protests, however, that he did not, as one writer has charged, ``escape into conservatism,'' and that, like Norman Podhoretz, he had to accept the label ``neoconservative'' because his preferred term, ``liberal,'' had been coopted by the left. Horowitz is usually generous in his description of peers in the movement, although he clearly dislikes Tom Hayden and Todd Gitlin, and he is more likely to engage in self-criticism than to deride those who, in his view, have not yet seen the light. Regardless of one's opinion on his present politics, Horowitz's searching reminiscences are a valuable contribution to the literature of dissent. (8 pages b&w photos, not seen) (Author tour) --
Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to an alternate
kindle_edition edition.
Review
Many intellectuals have made the voyage from Left to Right in recent decades. But few have come from as deep inside the hard Left as Horowitz, and none has retained more of the 60's style. Horowitz, in fact, prides himself on his determination to continue speaking "in the voice of the New Left--outraged, aggressive, morally certain."
It is hard to think of anyone who has turned on his own past with more fury than David Horowitz. Radical Son, his memoir, charts a trek from one political commitment to something approaching its opposite, and the events that propelled him on his way.
How, ultimately, is David Horowitz's transformation to be explained? After all, many 1960's radicals dwelled in the same tawdry cesspool, witnessed the same murders or lesser acts of crime and duplicity, yet continued to cling fervently to the cause.
One explanation may be generational. Horowitz was approaching the seasoned age of thirty when he entered California radicalism in the late 1960's, and was thus slightly older than his fellows. His deviation, then, may be seen as that of a man who had come to place some value on middle-class existence.
A second possibility, one that runs somewhat counter to the first, is that the very depth and intensity of Horowitz's radicalism led inevitably to a spasm of self-correction. The writer Paul Berman once remarked with some asperity that "Horowitz is in the American vein. He doesn't correct; he converts."
A third interpretation might also be adduced. As the gripping pages of Radical Son make clear, Horowitz possesses a fearless capacity for self-examination--hardly a noted virtue of the radical Left. In the end, it is this capacity which may have rescued him from an association with murderers. It certainly enabled him to reinvent himself, and to forge a new career as the kind of person his parents had no doubt warned him against. -- Commentary Magazine, June 1997, Christopher Caldwell
[H]is portrait of the 60s and its legacy is sure to make his book controversial.... With Radical Son, Mr. Horowitz has written a courageous book, full of self-revelation with a willingness to expose his own frailties in the most sensitive areas of sex and family. Still he is nothing if not contentious, and some of his contentions will rub readers the wrong way. -- The New York Times Book Review, Richard Gid Powers
--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Horowitz (The Rockefellers) has prominently charted his turn from leftism in Destructive Generation (both books co-written with Peter Collier), but here, he digs deeper to recount his intertwined personal and political odysseys. Because he has witnessed some elemental political battles, and because he tells his often painful story with candor and passion, his lengthy book remains absorbing. His teacher parents were New York City Jewish Communists full of angst and false conviction; young David emerged convinced at least that ideas were important. Married, Horowitz moved to Berkeley for graduate school, the New Left and Ramparts, the hot radical magazine. However, family man Horowitz was made uneasy by figures such as Michael Lerner and Robert Scheer, who rejected community; worse, though Horowitz found Huey Newton's courting of his advice seductive, he fell into "internal free-fall" when he realized that the Panthers were criminal thugs. His Jewish identity?at a time when blacks and the Third World were not allies?helped move Horowitz rightward, as did his disgust with dogmatic leftists. And in 1985, Horowitz and Collier publicly supported Ronald Reagan; the author considers himself a classical liberal. Particularly interesting is his score-settling with authors Todd Gitlin, Tom Hayden and Paul Berman, who, he argues, either sanitize '60s history or misrepresent his own views; now, with the help of foundations, he runs the magazine Heterodoxy and monitors what he views as liberal excess.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an alternate
kindle_edition edition.
From Library Journal
Horowitz has had three successful careers: as a Marxist critic of U.S. foreign policy, a best-selling biographer of the Kennedy and Rockefeller families, and a prominent critic of both Hollywood and academe. His autobiography describes each of these careers in turn, concluding with a vigorous defense of the contemporary Right as the best defense against communism, utopianism, and the "destructive fantasies" of the 1960s New Left. The most interesting material concerns the disintegration of the radical movements of the 1960s and the squalid behavior of some New Left and Black Power leaders. At times the rhetoric gets out of hand?for example, the author's blithe comparison of "the [Black] Panthers and their crimes" and "Stalin's crimes" is certainly hyperbolic?but the book provides a useful corrective to overly idealistic treatments of the politics of the 1960s. Recommended for collections with a special focus on the New Left, the counterculture, and/or contemporary conservatism.?Kent Worcester, Social Science Research Council, New York
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an alternate
kindle_edition edition.
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