David Horowitz was a man who lived with the intensity of a lightning storm, striking left and right across America’s ideological divide. He began as a New Left radical, a fiery apostle of revolution who marched with the Black Panthers, only to reinvent himself as one of conservatism’s most relentless warriors. His transformation from Marxist to MAGA firebrand was not just a personal saga but a prism refracting the cultural and political upheavals of his time. With a pen as sharp as a blade, Horowitz carved a legacy that provoked, inspired, and divided.
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Born on Jan. 10, 1939, in Forest Hills, New York, David Joel Horowitz was raised in a crucible of radicalism. His parents, Philip and Blanche, were schoolteachers and devout members of the Communist Party USA. Young David absorbed the faith early, editing the communist youth magazine New Foundations as a teenager. After earning a bachelor’s degree in English from Columbia University in 1959, he pursued graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where the 1960s’ revolutionary fervor swept him up. By 1962, he was in London, working for Bertrand Russell’s Peace Foundation, and co-authored The Free World Colossus (1965), a searing critique of American imperialism that became a New Left touchstone.
Horowitz’s early career was a whirlwind of radical activism. As an editor at Ramparts magazine, he exposed CIA funding of student groups and published Che Guevara’s diaries, cementing his status as a leftist luminary. He forged ties with Huey Newton and the Black Panthers, raising funds and editing their newspaper. But the dream turned into a nightmare in 1974, when Betty Van Patter, a Ramparts colleague investigating Panther finances, was found murdered on a San Francisco beach. The killing, which Horowitz attributed to the Panthers’ thuggery, shattered his illusions about the Left’s moral purity. By the late 1970s, he was disillusioned, his faith in revolution replaced by a growing skepticism of its costs.
The pivot was nothing short of volcanic. Horowitz didn’t drift right — he charged into conservatism with the zeal of a convert. In 1985, he co-authored Destructive Generation with Peter Collier, a blistering autopsy of the 1960s counterculture. He shocked former allies by voting for President Ronald Reagan in 1984, a betrayal that made him a pariah in leftist circles. In 1988, he founded the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a think tank dedicated to combating what he saw as the Left’s dominance in academia, media, and culture. Its FrontPage Magazine became a platform for provocative voices such as Ann Coulter and Daniel Pipes, while Horowitz’s own books, Radical Son (1997), a memoir of his ideological break, and The Black Book of the American Left (2013), established him as a conservative intellectual force.
Horowitz’s new crusade was to expose the Left’s hypocrisies. He argued against reparations for slavery in Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Blacks is a Bad Idea for Blacks — and Racist, Too (2001), calling them divisive. His 2006 book The Professors named 101 academics he accused of leftist indoctrination, sparking heated debate. A frequent guest on talk shows, his wiry frame and piercing gaze made him a lightning rod. Supporters hailed him as a fearless truth-teller. Critics, including the Southern Poverty Law Center, labeled him a purveyor of anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric, a charge he dismissed as smear tactics.
His influence shaped conservative politics. Horowitz mentored Stephen Miller, a key architect of Trump’s immigration policies, and his Freedom Center hosted lavish retreats where lawmakers and media figures strategized. He embraced Trump as a battering ram against political correctness, though his uncompromising stance sometimes alienated allies. In 2023, his Freedom Center publicly split with Candace Owens over her platforming of anti-Israel voices, a rift that underscored Horowitz’s refusal to bend.
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Horowitz’s personal life was as turbulent as his public one. Married four times, he found lasting stability with his fourth wife, April, who survives him, along with his son, Ben, from his first marriage to Elissa Krauthamer. The death of his daughter, Sarah, in 2014 at age 44 was a profound loss. Despite personal tragedies, death threats, and government investigations, Horowitz remained undaunted, writing and speaking with the urgency of a man who believed the stakes were civilizational.
In his final years, slowed but unbowed by cancer, Horowitz continued to pen essays and appear on the radio, his gravelly voice a rebuke to a world he saw slipping into chaos. Posts on X after his death captured his polarizing legacy: Some mourned a “patriot” who exposed communism’s reach, while others condemned his “extremism.” Both sides agreed he was fearless, a man who lived to fight for his truth. Horowitz leaves behind a legacy as intricate as the man himself — a reminder that ideas can both ignite and fracture.
Daniel Ross Goodman is a Washington Examiner contributing writer and the author, most recently, of Soloveitchik’s Children: Irving Greenberg, David Hartman, Jonathan Sacks, and the Future of Jewish Theology in America.