American author, historian, teacher and political revolutionary who turned from communism to conservatism in the 1960’s. He wrote “The Destructive Generation” with Peter Collier and “Radical Son,” which was published in 1997.
David’s father, Phil, was a talented writer, a New York City high school teacher and an intelligent man paralyzed by self-doubt and self-loathing with a feeling of spiritual alienation. His mother, Blanche, was a strong, determined woman. Both belonged to the Communist party and both had made a pilgrimage to Russia before their marriage. Horowitz grew up in a middle class area of Queens, NY called Sunnyside with one sibling.
Feeling none of the alienation of his father, he was a good son who learned his lessons well. Horowitz idolized his all-American heroes, Joe DiMaggio, Paul Robeson, a black singer, Sugar Ray Robinson and Marlon Brando, listened to “The Lone Ranger” on radio and watched Ed Sullivan on television.
He worked for Socialist ideas and helped point the way for others. Gaining insight from folk singers Pete Seeger and Martha Schlamme as well as authors Albert Maltz and Howard Fast, he began to rebel against his family’s political leanings. He refused to submit to the Communist party and calling the Left to account for its ideas, but he did follow his dad as a passionate believer in worldwide Marxist revolution with the United States a chief target.
Horowitz spent the early 1960’s as a student, teacher and founder of the New Politics at the University of California Berkeley. He was the co-publisher of “Ramparts Magazine.” His first book, “Student,” helped give rise to the Free Speech Movement there, and his second book, “The Free World Colossus” accused America of criminal behavior during the Cold War. With Bertrand Russell’s permission, he sold Russell’s memoirs for a large advance to finance his War Crimes Tribunal patterned after the trials at Nuremberg to condemn the United States for their conduct in the Vietnam conflict with Jean-Paul Sartre, James Baldwin and Stokely Carmichael serving as the judges.
After becoming involved with the Black Panthers and Huey Newton his life took a dark turn. His marriage of two decades fell apart when he had an emotional free-fall due to the death of a friend, Betty Van Patter, whom he had introduced to the Black Panthers. Found murdered for reasons still unknown, someone in the Panther leadership had apparently thought it necessary to kill her. He repudiated Marxism and took a spiritual leap from progressivism to conservatism. His writings of the 1990’s can now be found in “Heterodoxy Magazine.”
Link to Wikipedia biography