Thank you. I also remember the "60's" quite well. I was even somewhat
politically literate at the time. I have only heard of this putz since the
Times, et al have been helping him hawk his book (I must have missed the
earlier gems, but I missed "Batman" the movie, too, as well as the last
episode of Gilligan's Island). One would call this opportunism on his part
if it seemed like he had an alternative, but since the carnival left town,
what's he to do for a living?

- Don DeBar

----------
> From: Tresy Kilbourne <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Horowitz
> Date: Friday, May 02, 1997 6:30 PM
>
> Christine Petersen wrote:
>
> >Their half argument seems to go that because he
> >compares the East Timor genocide to the killing fields, calling the
former
> >proportionally worse, that he is mitigating the atrocities in Cambodia.
I
> >never read a NC book where he discussed SE asia... Is there any place
> >where he actually does do anything akin to this? I wouldn't think so.
> That's a pretty fair precis of their "half argument." Back in the late
> 70s Chomsky and Edward Herrman wrote "The Political Economy of Human
> Rights: The Reconstruction of Imperial Ideology," which first made the
> Timor/Cambodia comparison, and analyzed the various conflicting accounts
> of the scale of the Khmer Rouge genocide. (I can loan you a copy if
> interested.) Their conclusion--which relied on State Dept reports as a
> baseline against which to judge the credibility of other accounts (a
> point lost in the brouhaha that followed)--was that the scale of the
> genocide was probably inflated to serve propaganda interests, but that
> the actual scale was "gruesome indeed"; at the same time, US complicity
> in the *earlier* genocide--the bombing of Cambodia--was conveniently
> elided in subsequent reporting. For that crime against the state they
> were castigated as apologists for the Khmer Rouge.
>
> As NC has ironically noted on more than one occasion, how can he and
> Herrman be apologists for the Khmer Rouge when they use their crimes as a
> yardstick against which to measure those in Timor? Being a state
> apologist means never having to say you're consistent. Ditto US policy
> towards Vietnam over its later invasion of Cambodia. Vietnam saves
> Cambodia from genocide, and the Khmer Rouge, with U.S. backing, gets to
> keep its seat in the UN? It would be funny if real lives weren't at
> stake.
>
> As for the Left's "duty" to atone for the Khmer Rouge--what duty? You are
> correct that the KR was virtually nonexistent until the US terror bombing
> of Cambodia shattered a peaceful, centuries-old society, after which they
> were the only viable political force left. Chomsky posted something the
> other day that dealt again with that forgotten chapter of history; I will
> see if I can find it and repost it. Meanwhile, if anyone can recall any
> significant New Left support for the KR, please correct me. There is a
> book on Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, "Cambodia 1974-1979", by Michael
> Vickery, that delves into the minutiae of that awful period in greater
> detail than any other I know of. NC recommends it, and after having read
> it, I can see why.
>
> One last note about Horowitz. I may have been young at the time, but I
> remember the Sixties pretty well. I knew who Mailer, Chomsky, Spock,
> Ellsberg, etc. were. Horowitz wasn't even on my or anyone else's radar
> screen, and if you read his book you can see why: the man hasn't an
> original idea,  guiding principle or  single graceful turn of phrase in
> his head. He's simply a hack, one who first hopped on the Stalinist train
> in the 60s, then when that ran out of steam, hopped on another going the
> opposite direction, but serving the same authoritarian masters. Yet he's
> being marketed to later generations as some grizzled Veteran of the
> Movement, a 60s luminary Who Saw the Error Of His Ways. It's all too
> much. He's really just a trained seal, barking and clapping his flippers
> for people who probably despise him, in return for a public stage on
> which to act out his neurotic rage against his Comintern parents. Think
> I'm joking? Read his book.
>
> For me the choicest irony is that his current publication, a newsletter
> with a circulation of at most 10,000 hilariously misnamed "Heterodoxy,"
> is subsidized almost entirely with right-wing foundation grant money. At
> least the leftist "Ramparts" was a market-driven publication. From what I
> can tell, his days as a communist were the last ones he ever spent
> earning an honest buck in the free market he now slavishly praises,
> safely atop his foundation-subsidized soapbox.
>
> Best,
>
> Tresy