Friday, May 11, 2007

David Horowitz’s Negro problem

For someone who wants the world to believe he’s not an anti-black bigot, David Horowitz sure does some dumb shit.

I’m not talking about his decision to publish Lawrence Auster’s wildly distorted wannabe-exposé of the “phenomenon” of black rapists targeting white women. (“The Truth of Interracial Rape in the United States” – grabby title!)

Don’t get me wrong, that was mighty dumb. Especially since Horowitz had agreed with me a year ago (by email) that Mr. Auster held some “racist and offensive” positions and should no longer contribute to Horowitz’s website, FrontPage Magazine.

I’m not even talking about Horowitz’s decision yesterday to keep that interracial rape article on FrontPage – even after Auster publicly acknowledged he had misread the crime statistics. (That bonehead play resulted in this ridiculous and foul assertion: “There are virtually zero rapes of black women by white men in the United States.” On second look, it might be more like 3,000 per year.)

What I’m talking about is this here.

Unbeknown to me, Horowitz all along has been hosting, on another of his right-wing websites (DiscoverTheNetworks.org), an essay by Lawrence Auster which displays the fullness of his animus toward black people.

Titled “The Evolution of One Person’s Views on Racial Differences in Intelligence” – and proudly archived on Auster’s blog – this disquisition on inherent “black inferiority” pulls no punches:

“Following the arguments and actions of black leaders, listening to black callers on talk radio, led me over several years to an increasingly bleak view of black thinking styles. … [I] became increasingly aware of the ‘hustle,’ the way many blacks at all levels… did not use ideas as ideas, but as a hustle, as a way of manipulating people’s feelings.”

(Auster is confused. That’s not the “Hustle”; that’s the “Bus Stop.”)

“… the preponderance of irrationality among the black population is hard to ignore.”

“… I started to have the sense that blacks are more ‘non-objective,’ they understand things in a much more personal, subjective way than whites. They seem to have much less interest in knowledge or beauty for its own sake.”

“… it means that blacks are in fact less endowed with the qualities that make civilization possible, particularly Western civilization.”

On and on it goes like that. Mr. Auster believes that the impulse toward social order and the means to suppress crime “require a degree of moral will, intelligence, and organizing energy that blacks, collectively, do not possess.”

These deficiencies are, according to Auster, “inherent” and “intrinsic” in the black race. “[S]o long as the truth of racial differences is not recognized, whites will always end up being blamed… for a black inferiority that is not whites’ fault.”

Ironically, I quoted from this essay at length in my May 2006 letter to David Horowitz – the letter that led Horowitz to agree that Auster trafficked in “racist” ideas. (I have uploaded the complete text of that letter, by the way; it is here.)

So why does Auster’s slag heap of insults, conjectures and neurotic projection reside under the banner of David Horowitz’s DiscoverTheNetworks – a “database” pledged to “maintaining the highest possible standard for the accuracy of [its] information”?

Well, Lawrence Auster has written around 35 articles for Horowitz over the years; Mr. Horowitz must believe that Auster is a man worth listening to… even on the subject of intrinsic black inferiority.

Here I was, thinking he published that black-on-white rape article by mistake. Apparently Horowitz is quite happy to provide a platform for Larry Auster’s pungent social criticism on the World Wide Web.

I was a fool to think he could be shamed into doing anything.

P.S.: Re-reading my 2006 letter to Horowitz, I wondered what set of life experiences had brought Larry Auster to his grim assessment of the Negro people. Had he been a street cop in Harlem? A school teacher in the South Bronx?

Turns out, he’d watched an ABC News special.

I’ll let him explain it, the way he did in his essay on black intelligence:

“What really convinced me of an inherent, dangerous weakness in black ways of thought… was their widespread belief in Afrocentrism and the notion that whites were committing ‘genocide’ against blacks.

“In September 1989, ABC News did a program on the condition of blacks in America, followed by a special edition of ‘Nightline’ with a panel consisting of several of ABC’s black correspondents and other noted blacks. With the exception of Professor Shelby Steele, these accomplished, successful blacks all endorsed the notion of a white conspiracy to commit ‘genocide’ against blacks.

“The discovery that it was not just ignorant street people, but successful, articulate black professionals who believed these insane and wicked conspiracy theories, made a devastating impression on me. Indeed, with the exception of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, I was more traumatized by this program than by any other public event in recent history. It shook my former belief that blacks and whites could more or less get along in the same society.

“(I wrote an article about this program, saying the same things I’ve said in the present paragraph, which New York Newsday rejected because, as the editor put it, it showed an ‘odd lack of compassion.’)”

Lordy. At least one editor somewhere, at some time, had the good sense not to egg on Lawrence Auster – a nutty extremist who deserves to be on the outermost fringes of our civil discourse.

(For a better look at the above page capture from DiscoverTheNetworks – especially in case Horowitz pulls the essay down and tries to deny it was ever there – just double-click it.)

38 comments:

Anonymous said...

I just read that Auster piece. Wow. Wow. That was one seriously insane rant. Wow.

SJ said...

The important question is, is there anyway one can make Auster realize that he is wrong? UBM, you are doing a great job calling him out on all the foul essays and blogs he has published, but I can't help but think that this will make him crazier.

I believe it's not that difficult to make someone a non-racist. Most of us easily fall into the web of seeing others as stereotypes.

I myself am guilty of this on multiple occasions. My view of (American) black people was extremely limited and stereotypical to a degree before I came here, no thanks to the American media. Everyone in the world has heard of Tupac Shakur and 50 Cent, yet few know of MLK Jr., W.E.B DuBois and others. After coming here and meeting a lot of blacks my view of them suddenly changed. It's a rather simple sociological theory called the Contact Hypothesis; which basically says that the more you interact with "different" kinds of people the more you realize that stereotypes don't really exist.

And btw, do you use a Mac?

Undercover Black Man said...

^ MacBook Pro, bay-bee!

Wise words, SJ. By now, I realize Lawrence Auster is too far gone for help. As Jim Wolcott put it, it's about "quarantining" him.

But Horowitz is semi-mainstream... Shows up on Fox News, etc. If he can be shamed out of lending his legitimacy to Auster's horseshit race theories, that would be a good thing.

SJ said...

Macbook Pro? Nice...is it common among writers to use the Mac?

Btw, thanks a lot for allowing me to read the book The N-word by Jabari Asim...it was a brilliant and highly informative read. And I noticed that you also got a few words in that book (I was too young to watch and comprehend NYPD Blue...I'll definitely look out for the episode you wrote).

Thordaddy said...

Mr. Mills,

So please give us your "theory" concerning the disproportionate amount of black crime, lack of representation in various elite intellectual or business entities, widespread belief in O.J.'s innocence amongst blacks, etc.?

Is your "theory" white "racism?"

Secondly, will you pick out particular ideas/assertions by Mr. Auster and provide empirical refutation?

It seems that your disbelief is not the perception of untruths being relayed, but the shock of reading something you've never encountered. You seem simply shocked at different ideas about current reality because you cling to the liberal notion that we are all the same. Isn't it your affinity for liberalism spiced with a little black victimization theory that makes you see racist white people? LOL!

Undercover Black Man said...

SJ: My preference for Macs goes back to my journalism days... a graphic-artist friend of mine swore by them from the beginning. Don't know about other screenwriters...

Glad you liked Jabari's book. I haven't had time to read my own copy yet... didn't know I was in it!

Undercover Black Man said...

Thordaddy: How might one empirically refute the proposition that blacks are less interested "in knowledge or beauty for its own sake”?

Thordaddy said...

Mr. Mills,

Perhaps you might refute it empirically in the same manner that you imply such a statement as evidence of "racism?"

But then again, it's much harder to refute someone's "sense" as opposed to someone's assertion in an empirical manner.

Here is the direct quote from Mr. Auster in which you have transformed his subjective sense into an outright assertion:

Mr. Auster states,

Through numerous experiences and observations, I started to have the sense that blacks are more "non-objective," they understand things in a much more personal, subjective way than whites. They
seem (my emphasis) to have much less interest in knowledge or beauty for its own sake.

This is the second direct distortion you have proferred. The first being the assertion that Mr. Auster referred to blacks (as opposed to black murderers) as "the savages."

Again, do you have your own theory to the reality we see around us concerning the general condition of blacks in America?

James said...

Is it possible for someone to think these kind of things about black people and yet not hate them? Not be racist? Not be a bigot?

Anonymous said...

I had an old sociology teacher who always said "the plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'."

As much as I hate to criticize talk radio, by far the world's most gleaming cross-section of informed debaters, we're not talking representative sample here. People who use 'black leaders', 'talk radio callers' and an ABC special to make a demographic-wide point only reveal that the conclusion came long before the evidence.

This is the same thinking behind John Rocker's highly informed and sophistocated "See? Asian women totally can't drive!"

Auster doesn't consider race a morally-neutral trait. If you saw a ton of anecdotal evidence in a particular week that, say, blue-eyed people tend to be more talkative than brown-eyed people, as a journalist you would look into the phenomenon, read surveys, interview experts, etc. Maybe it's true, maybe it isn't. But with the genuine belief that eye color doesn't determine someone's worth as a person, you certainly wouldn't do the conclusion-jumping decathlon and decide that blue-eyed people are insecure, overcompensatory, rude, poor listeners, or anything else that could superficially be linked with loquaciousness. But that's exactly what Auster's done.

Conclusions such as Auster's need to come from a base of moral neutrality and some actual, I don't know, *research*. You can't paint a couple million people with the 'lack of moral will' brush just because you heard a handful of them on Opie and Anthony on a Tuesday afternoon.

Anonymous said...

RE: Hustle
Auster works hard to justify the burgeoning get over it attitude many Whites have towards racism and prejudice. As a lifelong contrarian and fiercely independent black man, I too am sometimes guilty of lighting my own short fuse towards those who search for race-based excuses to justify personal lack of effort.

That impulse is short-sighted. A dimly lit bulb such as Auster has no problem certifying this warped social paradigm in today's climate.

But here's the rub; the othe side of the coin. (I need to keep this in mind when I start getting impatient with those who still struggle with racism's impact in their lives.)

We are not "hustlers." Rather, we are believers.

Racism is quantifiably and categorically the most recognized form of injustice in American life. Our history, language, lore and culture supports, documents and in many ways justifies the existence of racial prejudice. Race has had more of a practical effect on the lives of blacks and whites than God, science and all of our Wars combined. The average American must make massive leaps in logic to detach themselves from the truth that racism always has and always will exist.

If faith is the evidence of things unseen, then one might posit that racism is more tangible than God...because it is seen. People debate God's existence. The same cannot be said of racism. There is no real debate about whether racism existed, only varying perceptions of its utility and morality.

So when Auster castigates Blacks as simple-minded or inartful in their approach to the one social reality that is more consistent than any other in American life, he essentially confirms the importance of race in the minds of those to whom he finds himself so superior.


RE: UBM
Journalism is a life-changing career. Reporting, writing and filing on deadline provide exercise for one's personal ethos.

Blogging is to journalism what steroids are to weightlifting. It gives a quantifiable boost to writers (without shrinking their gonads or ovaries). But, the rush of writing without the responsibility and liabilities of the established press turns many bloggers into unnecessarily prolific hacks.

The blogosphere eschews nuance and the everday give-and-take of life. for one-trick diatribes. The hyper-development of one's online voice is what makes many blogs seem tedious, preachy or self-important.

Undercover Black Man avoids this trap and gives wide berth to the typical rants on race and society.

I say this as a voracious consumer of hard news, citizen journalism and casual essays. I won't admit to the amount of reading I do online but I personify one of those lab mice that ignores food for cocaine until they die from malnutrition. Text is the crack. Blogs litter my life like empty brown vials.

I say all of that to say this. UBM, your blog is utterly palatable, poignant and powerful. Your words are well-measured and dispensed with critical precision. Your journalistic instincts are keen. And, you tell a great story.

As a journalist and web developer, I spend most of my time online. Undercover Black Man blog is just the sounding board of sanity I need in between bouts of left v right pablum. Thank you!

I'll sign off on a musical note. I've been to more than hundred shows with everybody from Jurassic 5 to Jerry Garcia. And I can say unequivocally that Damian "Jr Gong" Marley (live) is the most powerful musical experience I have ever experienced. Thank you for your words about Bob Marley. (Survival is a slept on Album!)

OK. Time to stop slathering all over the pages of my new favorite blog.

~Rubik's Cube represent!~

Unknown said...

In my humble opinion Auster is the small fish in this whole episode. He is a racist and a bigot. He has a worldview which finds blacks at the root of every problem facing western civilization (its debatable as to if its actually civilized).

Knowing Auster's bias's I propose tossing him aside as a non-factor. There will likely always be racist and there is little one can do to change their minds. Racism by its own definition is an irrational belief/concept.

The bigger fish in this whole episode is David Horowitz. The so-called champion of academic freedom, the fabled hero from the civil rights movement. This DH is a sham and he is the racist that we must watch out for.

This frontpage magazine that he operates claims to be a mainstream publication with reputable journalist and scholars on its staff. Yet if one takes a moment to browse the magazines online archive one will understand the breadth of anti-black racial animus which has made the magazine popular amongst right wing elements not only in this country but abroad as well. Yet it claims to be mainstream.

David Horowitz is sleaze. He claims to be all these things which he is not. He is a racist, neo-conservative tool who has made himself a name by bashing minorities.

Since Mr. Horowitz now has decided to publish yet another one of Auster's racist essay's it should be taken as a sign that Horowitz concurs with the rhetoric used in it.

Mr. Mills I encourage you to seek as much attention as possible to this outrage. Mr. Horowitz runs a national campaign for academic freedom, he complains about innocent college students being abused by left wing professors. In light of this who will protect innocent college students from fascist, racist like Horowitz.

It is now the time to stop this fool.

Anonymous said...

Rottin in Denmark,

Oddly, I had a linguistics professor many years ago tell me the same thing. But let me and another anecdote: Our sociolinguistics professor where I teach has that on her door now as well.

Anonymous said...

**Insane is the word. I think mental illness may be the elephant in the room here...**

Sure. Why would otherwise intelligent, educated white guys deliberately consign themselves to fringe dwelling and bottom feeding?

In the a country that's set up better than any other for educated white guys to get rich and famous, why why would they withdraw from the marketplace? In order to dwell in dark corners and talk of imaginary demons?

Proof, if proof were needed, that the freedom we enjoy here is a terrible burden for many of us, white and black alike. Ask Farrakhan, ask Duke, ask Auster, ask Cress-Welsing. It's a conspiracy. **They're out to get us!**

Because they only alternative is that we are largely responsible for our own lives, and that is the stuff of nightmares.

Anonymous said...

Of course, only the illiterate would think L.A. to be insane. More properly stated, anyone who would take the pompous (and rather obvious beneficiary of A.A.) UBM seriously could only be those lacking in rudimentary eduction and intelligence.

I suggest one might try reading the entire article, then make judgement. Then again, you will have to have a vocabulary above the 8th grade to actually understand it and then you will also have to acknowledge that only a soviet style communist could insist that all men must like all men. Any honest person realizes that there is no natural right to be liked, either as an individual or as a group. The only people who insist otherwise, are those who know they are not likable.

Anonymous said...

"tyroneslothrop said...
I just read that Auster piece. Wow. Wow. That was one seriously insane rant. Wow."

Only if you're blind to reality--or black.

S.O.L. said...

Anonymous said...
Of course, only the illiterate would think L.A. to be insane. More properly stated, anyone who would take the pompous (and rather obvious beneficiary of A.A.) UBM seriously could only be those lacking in rudimentary eduction and intelligence.

I suggest one might try reading the entire article, then make judgement. Then again, you will have to have a vocabulary above the 8th grade to actually understand it and then you will also have to acknowledge that only a soviet style communist could insist that all men must like all men. Any honest person realizes that there is no natural right to be liked, either as an individual or as a group. The only people who insist otherwise, are those who know they are not likable.

May 12, 2007 3:03 PM


You know most people with a "vocabulary above the 8th grade" know how to spell “judgment” correctly. I mean I thought you should know that, as long as you were making anonymous personal attacks on someone else's “eduction [sic] and intelligence”.

Anonymous said...

**More properly stated, anyone who would take the pompous (and rather obvious beneficiary of A.A.) UBM seriously could only be those lacking in rudimentary eduction and intelligence.**

In addition to the spelling errors pointed out by sj, you've constructed an awkward, ungrammatical sentence. You've used many more words than necessary in order to sound more sophisticated than you actually are. Sad.

You can't write. UMB can. That's as plain as I can put it.

Rage of Reason said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Rage of Reason said...

The history of America started with systematic massacre and has continued in the same way until this day. It is quite typical of American awareness of moral aspects that in no list of genocides the US is even mentioned. After the white race began to carnage other ethnic groups on the soil they invaded and even their own kind in the civil war, nothing has changed in a positive sense in this homicidal conduct. Today 'ethics' require a different approach that mimics civilized behavior. Also the method of mass murder has been adjusted. The modern slow death means of inflicting poverty and illness (HIV) make it more difficult to point at the perpetrators. Individuals like Horowitz and Auster are nothing but the system's favorite crusaders who facilitate continuation of white America's murderous foray. The massive and ineluctable circumstance of suffocating poverty is denied by them to have a proportional consequence for the black population and other groups unfortunate to share a similar sad fate, in addition to which they attempt to make it seem like these groups are responsible themselves for the dire circumstance they are in. The rest of the world outside the US is already quite aware of the so-called ethics of white America since US imperialism is significantly increasing outside its own borders. We look at your CNN, ABC and Fox broadcasts with skepticism and execration. Drones of the elite like Horowitz and Auster few people outside US borders take seriously, although we do understand the seriousness of the consequence of their treacherous conduct.

Undercover Black Man said...

^ Rage! Welcome, and thanks for commenting.

Anonymous said...

Re: awol

"He is a racist and a bigot. He has a worldview which finds blacks at the root of every problem facing western civilization ...."

How did you come up with that conclusion? Have you even read Auster's blog? You offer a simplistic analysis---"He's racist!"---without any specifics. Auster rarely talks about blacks. I would say he points to liberal ideology as the root of the problem, but liberalism has many different aspects to it.

Anonymous said...

In addition to the spelling errors pointed out by sj, you've constructed an awkward, ungrammatical sentence. You've used many more words than necessary in order to sound more sophisticated than you actually are. Sad.

Don't forget the ad hominem attacks and other faulty logic.

Anonymous said...

Wow, ya'll reelly no how to make words good.

Anonymous said...

Dear Anonymous,

You are one of my favorite poets (Western wind, when will thou blow...), and yet here you make such a silly and vile claim (and was that a touch racist as well?). How sad. How sad indeed.

Anonymous said...

On the "feelings" of Lawrence Auster.

My favorite line in the whole piece, is the following:

"Through numerous experiences and observations, I started to have the sense that blacks are more "non-objective," they understand things in a much more personal, subjective way than whites."

Now, of course, Auster's entire piece is based on "non-objective" data, it is rather based on his "subjective" sense of "reality." Note how many times Auster states that something "seems" or that he "felt" something, or that there was a "sense," or that he "believes" this or that. In fact, the entire piece is one insane subjective rant.

Thus, it "seems" to me, and I "feel" this to be true, and I get a "sense" that Lawrence Auster is "black." (This is, obviously, a joke. Just like point about anonymous being my favorite poet.)

Lawrence Auster claims that "blacks" (and where exactly is his working definition of what that might mean--or is he falling back on racist assumptions?) are more "subjective" and less "objecitive" than whites (again where exactly is his working definition of "white" or is this also a fall back on some "felt" naturalness of "distinction), but his entire argument is based on emotions and feelings (most of he "studies" he cites have been debunked, but no matter for Auster they still "feel" correct). Auster is a racist blowhard.

S.O.L. said...

tryoneslothrop - I just could not have said it better.

You know I realized something today. In my own personal experiences and observations, I’ve noticed that blacks I’ve met are bright, creative and appreciate beauty.

I feel I’m on to something.

Undercover Black Man said...

Tyrone, I missed giving you a Zing! for that line about "Anonymous." Hilarious!

Undercover Black Man said...

Awol wrote: "Knowing Auster's bias's I propose tossing him aside as a non-factor. ... The bigger fish in this whole episode is David Horowitz."

I hear you, Awol. Don't sleep on what I posted yesterday.

f.t.d.s. is my new motto regarding Auster.

Rage of Reason said...

There is a quite interesting article in Wikipedia on the evolution of Horowitz’ public involvement with US society. His initial Marxist preference and support for the Black Panther movement seem to have ceased and turned around after his close friend Betty van Patter (who he introduced to the movement) was found murdered in the early seventies. The homicide was never officially solved, but Horowitz blamed the accident to Black Panther Party leader Elaine Brown, who wrote a book called ‘A Taste of Power’, from which allegations of having a criminal past and being convicted of drug trafficking against Van Patter were ordered to be removed after Van Patter’s family successfully objected against them in court. I suspect this event to have had an influence on Horowitz’ opinion concerning black people. In the spectrum of his career and public role seems to be woven the sway of the Roman inner circle of power that controls both ends of the gamut in society. Auster is like you wrote a smaller fish in the pond – annoying but without significance.

Anonymous said...

Look up the word "judgment/judgement" in the dictionary. It's not only the lawyer's spelling that is legitimate, sj.

UBM, you always comment on posts you consider "racist." I take it that by your welcome to Rage of Reason you agree with his anti-white racism?

Undercover Black Man said...

Anon: I don't always comment on commenters who are "racist." In fact, white racists are welcome here... if they behave themselves. (Just as I was welcome in the American Renaissance forum and tried my best to behave myself.)

Radical leftists are welcome here too. I want to hear what everybody thinks.

Anonymous said...

"f.t.d.s."

"eff that dipshit? (dickstain?" What? I must needs know!

Undercover Black Man said...

^ fuck the dumb shit.

Now I don't feel so bad for not knowing "too long; didn't read." ;^D

Rage of Reason said...

Assumption is the mother of all evil. Anonimity its coward spawn.

Anonymous said...

Undercover black man. David Howowitz is a third generation Russian communist.

He was the communist liason with the black panthers back in the 1960's. The panthers decided to murder all their white radical liasons. So Horowitz left the panthers.

He approached the government of Israel. Originally radical and communist, Israel became concerned in the 1970's that all the European and American radicals, communists and liberals had switched sides and sided with teh Palestinains in the eternal Arab-Israeli war.

By 1980, third generation communist Horowitz was an agent of Israel propaganda. He still is. He's at least 75. Soon he will retire and the government of Israel will have lost one of their thousands of agents loose in America.

Nicholas said...

"Rage of Reason said...

"Assumption is the mother of all evil. Anonimity its coward spawn.

"May 19, 2007 3:17 AM"

You condemn anonymous posters here, as well as at your blog, yet your posts are all anonymous. Pot, kettle?

And don't speak of "reason." Blind, pseudo-literate, hypocritical rage, perhaps, but never reason.

Nicholas Stix

Rage of Reason said...

Obviously you haven't read accurately what was written in the blog. I anticipated on the would be wise guys who I knew whould wine about this. But the American people don't read as Allen Dulles of the Warren committee already said decades ago. He was so right. I see no pics up here with comments, but mine. Smart ass.