Politics
Beloved Conservative Commentator Passes Away
The world of conservative opinion makers is mourning one of its own this week upon news of the passing of David Horowitz, the author and activist who helped shape the minds and agendas of Washington, D.C., from atop the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He was 86.
Horowitz died following a lengthy battle with cancer, the center he founded wrote in a statement posted to social media.
“On behalf of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, we are very saddened to announce the passing of the Center’s founder, David Horowitz,” the center said.
His son Benjamin Horowitz, a co-founder of the venture capital firm Andreessen-Horowitz, shared an obituary for his father online and celebrated his career in media and entertainment that spanned six decades, several books, and included multiple endorsements of Donald Trump for president.
The younger Horowitz shared a story about meeting President Trump last year and reminding him of the advocacy his father put behind his 2016 campaign.
“President Trump’s face immediately lit up and he insisted that Benjamin get David on the phone immediately,” the obituary reads. “Hospitalized and weak, David was still delighted to speak with the President.”
Born Jan. 10th, 1939, the Bronx native first honed his political beliefs as a participant in the antiwar movements of the 1960s before converting to conservatism later in life. He has written extensively about being mentored by his parents, who emigrated from imperial Russia and later became active in the organized labor movement of the Great Depression.
Horowitz’s ideological sojourn was famously chronicled in his 1996 bestseller “Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey.” He earned a bachelor of arts from Columbia University and a master’s from the University of California, Berkeley.
A copy of the obituary, obtained by the NY Post, states that Horowitz is survived by his wife, April Mullvain, sons Benjamin and Jonathan, and daughter Anne. He lost his other daughter, Sarah, unexpectedly in 2008 at the age of 44.
“In the end, David helped countless people and expended every fiber of his being pushing society towards freedom,” the obituary reads. “He may not have saved the world, but he most certainly made it a better place — especially for us. He was our super hero and we will love him forever.”
During a 1987 conference in Washington, D.C. that Horowitz later described as his “coming out” as a conservative, he told a Washington Post reporter that some of the ideals he professed during the height of aversion for the Vietnam war later seemed ludicrous to him.
He recalled attending a wedding in Berkeley, California, where the cake read “Smash Monogamy,” a belief he called “dada” — not funny.
“The ’80s left, the Hate America left, is less honest. The ’60s left was more honest: Tear the mother down! You have the ’80s left posturing as liberalism … ‘McCarthyism’ has become a cudgel to prevent any discussion,” he said at the time.
“When I was a Marxist, I was puritanical,” he said. “Then I got loose.”‘
By the turn of the century, Horowitz had come to round out his beliefs, opposing reparations for slavery and later participating in a documentary alleging the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement was backed by liberal high-net-worth individuals like George Soros.
His 2006 book “The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America” outlined the stark reality still in place on America’s university campuses today: conservative students shrouded behind hostile progressive movements that in recent years have begun even to purge their own ranks.
He joined with fellow conservative thinker Peter Collier in 1998 to form the David Horowitz Freedom Center, which underwrote overseas trips for Republican lawmakers eager to learn about the importance of U.S. diplomacy. Throughout his life, he remained a staunch advocate of U.S. involvement in the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars.
