Ezra Levant interviews David Horowitz, author of The Shadow Party (2006), who accuses George Soros and Hillary Clinton of manipulating the Democratic Party through identity politics, movements like Black Lives Matter, and alleged global violence. Horowitz, a former leftist turned conservative activist, critiques the left’s "totalitarian" framing of society as oppressors vs. victims, citing Chicago’s 40% high school dropout rate and dismissing systemic racism claims. He praises Donald Trump for defying conservative norms, like moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, and warns against liberal moderation efforts, calling them "seditious." The discussion ties Soros-funded activism to broader cultural shifts, framing Horowitz’s work as a counteroffensive against leftist dominance. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, a conversation with an American leftist who saw the error of his ways and became a leading conservative activist.
It's June 13th, and you're watching The Ezra LeVance Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
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You come here once a year with a sign and you feel morally superior.
The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
I first heard of David Horowitz more than 10 years ago when I read his shocking book called The Shadow Party, How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and 60s Radicals Seize Control of the Democratic Party.
That's a heavy title and it's a heavy topic and it feels edgy.
And back in 2006, it almost sounded like too much, like a conspiracy theory.
Of course it wasn't.
It was meticulously footnoted and it was all out there in public really.
As most of the good news stories are, they're just deliberately not reported upon by the mainstream media.
And it all came to pass, of course.
The Soros takeover of the Democrats, the extreme left, the activist left, pushing out the traditional bases of Democrats.
I mean, forget about anyone with a hard hat, obviously.
Blue-collar workers get out.
It was all identity politics, Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, thuggery even, anti-fud.
And there's a dramatic chapter in the book about how Soros actually uses violence to foment revolutions in other countries in the world and what that means for America.
As with so many such books, even the most researched, they're ignored by the mainstream who either don't put in the effort to do the research themselves or more often support the radical goals of the left.
But Horowitz comes from the left.
He understands it from the inside and he uses that familiarity to be a strategic and effective fighter.
He uses the tactics of the left.
And so he built a war machine for conservatives called the David Horowitz Freedom Center with everything from campus groups to conservative conferences to alternative media outlets.
It's a battle group and it's Trumpy.
As in, it's not a dainty group of elite Republicans in name only.
They're tough guys.
I had the chance to catch up with David via Skype.
I apologize.
The Skype connection wasn't the best, but we proceeded with the interview nonetheless because I thought it was interesting enough.
I hope you agree.
We also talk about his new book, of course, the ninth and final volume of his authoritative Black Book of the American Left.
Here is my full interview with David Horowitz.
Well, when someone has an entire Freedom Center named after them, you know you're talking to an intellectual leader, and that is our guest now, who for decades has fought the fight against the American left.
And he used to come from the left, which is, I think, why he's not only so passionate, but so skillful.
He knows their secrets, how they think, where the bodies are buried.
Maybe not literally the bodies they're buried, but he knows there are bodies.
I'm talking about David Horowitz, who's the boss of the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
And he joins us now via Skype to talk about the Freedom Center, his work, and the ninth volume of his series called The Black Book of the American Left.
David, it's a pleasure to have you on the show.
Well, hey, Van.
We met very briefly last year at the Restoration Weekend that you hosted in Florida, which is a large conference of conservative thinkers and activists.
A lot of our fan favorites were there from Ann Coulter to Mark Stein.
Of course, a lot of American congressmen Devin Nunes was there, if I recall.
Turning point USA, heroes like James O'Keefe of Project Veritas.
It sounds like you've put together a coalition of freedom fighters.
It was very powerful to see, but even your group is a fraction of the size of what the left has, am I right?
Oh, yeah, of course.
The left is just a dominant force in the culture.
It's a big problem.
And most conservatives are policy-oriented.
They're not battle-oriented.
And you're correct in noticing I have these activists, but that's what I've done my whole career.
And to me, it's fascinating.
I usually don't, you know, I'll know some people in an administration.
I raised quite a bit of money for Bush, but I didn't have really any rapport with them.
Whereas Trump has been surrounded by people that have attended the restoration weekend and who are fighters like Trump.
It's a big change, and I'm hoping it can save the country, which I think is a serious change.
Well, let me talk for a minute about the Restoration.
It was very exciting for me to see all these activists.
Some of them were policy-oriented, some were political.
Some talked about the larger culture.
There were films that were debuted.
There was before he fell out of the good graces of the White House, Steve Bannon was there talking about the cultural fight.
I think it's a key point that when someone's a conservative group, people say, oh, that's a conservative group.
But most liberal activists or leftist activists, they're not even called that.
They're just so deeply embedded in Hollywood or TV or music or academia.
We don't even call it left-wing Hollywood.
It's all left-wing.
They don't draw attention to their leftism.
Sometimes they don't even know that's how they're described.
They just are leftists.
We truly are a fraction, a fraction of the size of the activist left.
Well, first of all, the reason that they're not noticed or identified as leftist is because they are the media.
And the second reason is that Republicans are lame when it comes to political warfare.
So for a good 20 years, I was frustrated by Republicans referring to people whose ideas are indistinguishable from that really of the Communist Party, if you update it.
I'm speaking of Democrats as liberals.
People who call themselves liberals are vindictive bigots.
There's nothing liberal about them, except their attitudes towards coddling criminals, sympathizing with America's enemies, spending other people's money, and so forth.
That's what they're liberal about.
But these are reactionaries.
And language is really important.
The left has all the good language.
These people are, as I said, they're reactionaries, not progressives.
And they're totalitarians, not liberals.
Liberals don't want to shut down the other side, which is what has now overtaken all of our campuses.
The campus left is a fascist left.
But there are very few conservatives who are willing to be so impolite as to use terms like this.
That's very interesting.
I think the word liberal is still Treated with great affection in a lot of circles.
I mean, in Canada, the governing party is called the Liberal Party.
But there really is a difference between the left and liberals.
We see that on campus.
The move to censorship, the move against free speech, even at Berkeley, which used to be the home of free speech.
Yeah, there isn't a big difference between liberal, so-called liberals, and leftists.
I mean, leftists are in a greater hurry than so-called liberals.
What does the Democratic Party stand for?
It has a racist ideology, identity politics, which is cultural Marxism.
It believes the world is divided into oppressors and oppressed, and white, straight white males are the oppressors.
This is as left as it gets.
They want to redistribute income.
They're all social justice warriors, which means they want to use the power of the government to pick the pockets of people that they don't like and give the money to people who will support them.
What's liberal about that?
They're left.
There's no difference.
I mean, of course, the anti-file leftists are overtly fascists and want to use violence.
But there have always been predictions of the left, if you will, degree to the left.
And they're all dangerous, every single degree, no matter how moderate it looks.
I mean, people call Abbas Palestinian leader the moderate.
He's a Nazi.
He's a Holocaust denier.
He's a terrorist supporter.
He honors terrorists and pays them for crying out to us.
How could you call him a moderate?
But they do, because it's a left-wing media that we have to deal with and a polite Republican opposition.
Jordan Peterson, the professor from the University of Toronto who's been on such a successful tour lately talking about political correctness, he says that the left needs to reclaim, sorry, liberals need to reclaim their side of the spectrum from the leftist authoritarians.
Are there any such common sense liberals who would be truly moderate and believe in American values, but just have a more, you know, be one standard deviation to your left as opposed to all the way over the spectrum?
Is there any liberals left or is it all just conservatives and leftists now?
You know, I can think of a handful.
Alan Dershowitz requalified.
And I think if the Democratic Party lost big enough electorally in the next two elections, there are some sensible Democrats.
But, you know, I don't have a lot of respect for them because they're going along with this incredible, seditious, treasonous effort to destroy the presidency of Donald Trump, who was legitimately elected to deny him his legitimacy.
And how many members of the Democratic Party did not support the treasonous Iraniel, which lifted the sanctions from a Nazi regime whose leaders openly want to destroy us?
Death to America.
I understand what Jordan Peterson is coming from.
I think he's a tremendous asset to the struggle to save Western culture from its enemies.
But I think he's being overly optimistic.
Or it's just, you know, it's protective to support liberalism because the left dominates the culture and has made a perverse version of liberalism the respected view.
I think Jordan Peterson has given me some hope because what I've seen, I mean, I'm based here in Toronto, so I saw him before he really broke through internationally, and I see that he really flipped the light switch on for a lot of students, casual students, undergrads, but also grad students, other professors.
So I see his message is having a widespread retail impact, let's say.
But also, he's creating mini-mes.
People who say, well, if Jordan Peterson can do that, I can do that.
I'm a professor.
I'm a master student.
I'm a grad student, whatever.
So I had...
Oh, that's me.
I agree.
He's a tremendous force, tremendous force for good.
I agree.
And there are lots of people who are not ideological.
And what they haven't heard before, I mean, the Jordan Peterson phenomenon, it's like the Trump phenomenon.
And, you know, there are others like Candace Hollands and Dave Bruman and so forth.
And then there's a willingness to actually confront the left.
I think Dave Brumman has the term they're regressive progressives or whatever.
Regressive liberalism, he calls it.
Whereas I said it was reactionary.
It's just the same thing.
But until the advent of Trump, there have been very few people on the right who are willing to confront the leftist threat for what it is and call it by its proper names.
The Democratic Party controls every inner city of size in America, every killing field, Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and have controlled it 100%.
I mean, their monopoly control for 50 to 100 years.
So every atrocity that the inner city commits against poor people or black people or Hispanic people, every failed school that year in and year out, you just can predict it because it's always the same.
40% of the kids don't graduate and 40% of those who do are functionally illiterate.
Every oppression, every injustice in the inner city, Democrats, progressives, leftists, liberals, whatever you want to call them, are 100% responsible for.
But you never hear a Republican say that.
Well, now Trump is different.
That's the problem.
Trump seems to be making a career out of his whole presidency out of saying things you're not supposed to say.
He pulled America out of the UN global warming.
Oh, exactly.
Aggressive Conservatism00:05:38
And that's because I don't know Jordan Peterson's background, whether he's a second thought or but Trump is.
Trump was on the left.
Trump was a liberal.
But he's also a patriot.
And his love for America is what drives him.
And, you know, he's fearless, and that's wonderful.
Think of the second presidential debate.
You know, in front of 70 million television viewers, Trump looked Hillary Clinton in the eye and said, you are a liar and a crook, which she is both.
But there's not another conservative or Republican who would ever have said that to her because she's a woman and they're deferential towards women.
So the deference towards women allows her to be vicious, criminal, and get away with it because she's a woman.
Nobody will point it out.
Well, I think Trump has broken that mold.
And that gives me great hope for the future.
Things that were supposed to be impossible.
I mentioned the UN and global warming, moving the embassy to Jerusalem.
A small matter, but something people were terrified of.
Taking on, I mean, it's he really reminds me of the emperor has no clothes child, just saying, well, I'm going to say what everybody knows, but no one has had the courage.
Do you think it's spreading?
Do you think Trump's courage is inspiring others to talk about things you're not allowed to talk about?
I see it most in the younger generation.
And that's the conservatives.
I consider Jordan Peterson pretty young.
But Dave Rubin, Laverley Crowder.
I see a lot of aggressive, really healthy aggressiveness on the part of younger conservatives.
And then there are Republicans like Devin Newton and Jim Jordan who are standing up, take no prisoners kind of guys.
And then look at Sarah Huckabee.
She's just, she's just tremendous, Sarah Huckabee.
You didn't see Republicans like that before.
And Kellyanne Conway.
And, you know, I could go on and on.
Yeah.
Tell me more about the Freedom Center.
I had really, I've seen some of your work online and visiting the Restoration Weekend in Florida, which was a great conference.
I think it was the best conference I've been to in a decade.
It was so lively and confident.
I misspent the first half of my life as a leftist.
So I just carried over the tactical smarts of the left.
The left is really good at politics.
They haven't had a new idea since 1848, but they managed to be competitive because mainly because they're so vicious and people get out of their way.
And I'm not suggesting that conservatives become leftists, but I'd like to see them maybe 10 or 20% more aggressive and in your face and unapologetic.
That would be extremely helpful.
So what we've done, you know, we've always called the left the left at the Freedom Center.
We were kind of Trumpians before Trump.
Well, I like your fighting style.
You know, I think it's a very American style.
You have the First Amendment to support you.
You have the Second Amendment to give you confidence.
It is a Trumpy style.
We're a little bit that way up here in Canada.
We fight, but our culture is not as much freedom-oriented.
And I feel like we're losing some of our freedoms.
We're slipping away.
I think your First Amendment makes all the difference in the world.
It's the number one amendment under assault of the left.
And I mean, the reality, I mean, the left is a totalitarian force.
They want to change everything.
And they're in a real hurry to do it.
So they want to control everything.
And they can't stand up one dissenting voice in the room.
But America is unique.
I mean, it's amazing with an amazing creation.
And, you know, I see that it has a lot of Admirers and followers in the world, but so far there's no state really like America that's built on these principles.
Well, listen, it's great to catch up with you.
I appreciate you Skyping to us from your home.
We'll keep watching the Horwich Freedom Center and your many projects, and hopefully, I'll be able to join you again at Restoration.
First of all, I have a website at blackbookoftheamericanleft.com.
And you can see all the volumes, all the tables of contents, all the introductions, which really describe the books.
And all the reviews, or a lot of them reviews, are all up at blackbookoftheamericanleft.com.
This volume, the final one, is about the two ideas that have ruled Western history for the last 200 years.
And one of them is the American idea of individual freedom, individual liberty, individual accountability.
The Color Line Debate00:04:37
That, in the words of Martin Luther King, we strive to judge people on the content of their character, not the color of their skin or their gender orientation.
The other idea is the communist idea, Marxist idea, it's called identity politics, it's racist, and it insists on judging people first by the color of their skin or their gender or their sexual orientation.
And it has a view of the world that it's divided into oppressors and oppressed, takes away the agency and ability to make choices of the victim groups who are all people of color and women.
It is so silly.
You know, just thinking about it, it's completely ridiculous.
But there is no group people of color.
And we English-speaking peoples don't have a phrase like people of color.
It's an ideological term.
We don't say, here's a box of crayons of color.
It was invented by the radicals to divide the world into the bad people who are white and straight and male, the evil people, and the victim people who are people of color.
But there is no such group, people of color, with a common interest.
You know, if you think there is, tell out to the Rwandans, where the Hutus, who are black, massacred a million Tutsis who are also black.
So the oppressor group was black and the victim group was black.
But people's brains have been glued up by this ideology and they don't think twice to think, you know, like take the pro-choice movement.
If you took away the right to abortion, would that end women's choices?
Women choose, they have to choose to have sex, they have to choose not to take precautions.
I mean, there are a few accidents every now and then.
So there's a lot of choices.
It's not oppression, it's people disagreeing over the life of the unborn.
That's what it is, basically.
But every Starbucks incident recently, where two big guys come into Starbucks and want to use the restroom, and the much smaller female store manager says it's company policy that you have to buy something to use the restroom.
And that's to keep out the homeless.
And these guys say, hell no, we're going to do what we want because basically we're bigger than you.
And she got scared and called the police.
Now, how is that a racial incident?
It isn't.
And this woman is suing Starbucks because, of course, the owner of Starbucks, who wants to run as a Democrat, has got to pay obeisance to this racist ideology of identity politics.
He made it into a racial incident by having, you know, this stupid training, these diversity trainers who make fortunes over teaching nonsense and racism, basically, to teach people about their unconscious bias.
The left doesn't even have racists that it can go to war against.
So it's always talking about institutional racism, which is outlawed and doesn't exist, and systemic racism, which is another mythology.
This book I've done, Ruling Ideas, is largely a critique of Marxism, but it also has a chapter called America's Civil War.
And the reason we're in a civil war is because you can't have two competing ideologies, one which is racist, which is the Democrats and the liberals, so-called, and the left, and one which is individual-centered and says you judge people for who they are, not where they came from or what the color of their skin is.
Ruling Ideas Exposed00:02:40
And I'll tell you, the left is going to lose this because by now in America, virtually every family has a black member, a Hispanic member, an Asian member, a gay member, and so forth.
So this strong man that they're beating up, these racist, alt-right, neo-Nazi, such a pitiful minority that they don't even exert any influence in the culture.
Well, this has been fascinating, and I look forward to reading it.
The ninth edition, the ninth volume of the Black Book of the American Left is called Ruling Ideas.
And we'll put that website link under the video for people can go directly there.
As you say, check out the tables of contents and order the book.
It's great to talk with you.
I'm a big fan, and I'll encourage our viewers to check out the Freedom Center.
You have so many projects.
Thanks for fighting the fight, and hopefully we'll fight part of the same fight up here on the northern flank.
Okay.
Good luck to you.
You've got to get rid of that, Jerk Trudeau.
What a jack.
Will do.
Thanks very much, David.
Nice to meet you.
Well, there we have it.
David Horowitz is the leader of the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
They have a great variety of projects, and they have a conference that I visited last November called the Restoration Weekend.
And you heard about the new book called Ruling Ideas, the latest volume of the big black book of the American Left.
Stay with us.
more ahead on the rebel welcome back Well, that was my interview with David Horowitz.
And I'm sorry the Skype quality wasn't better, but I thought, still, it's good enough.
I mean, what he says is important, and the fights he's fought and the lessons he's learned from being on the inside.
And in some ways, I feel like we here at the Rebel are replicating in a small way what the David Horowitz Freedom Center does.
We have activist events.
We have protests and rallies.
We have conferences.
We've had the Rebel Live in Toronto.
Hopefully we'll do that in other cities.
We do things on campus.
We have a website called Campus Unmasked, if you haven't followed it yet.
So in our own ways, we're trying to fight like he does.
Thankfully, I don't come from the left.
I've always been a conservative, but I think his coming from the left gave him a special insider's knowledge.