During the week of October 21, far-right wing operative and former communist agitator David Horowitz deployed his allies to college campuses America to spout crude anti-Muslim invective. He called this event "Islamofascism Awareness Week." Among Horowitz's stable of campus speakers were noted Islam experts Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity.
"Islamofascism Awareness Week" was, from the beginning, little more than a marathon fashion show for the paranoid style. But it was not until Horowitz muscled his way onto the campus of his alma mater, Columbia University, on October 26 that his event attained the commanding heights of reactionary hysteria.
Pacing the stage like a drunken circus clown impersonating some bygone demagogue, and standing beneath a massive image of a woman being shot in the head, Horowitz launched into a long, frenetic rant about his own persecution at the hands of a shadowy liberal conspiracy.
Though Horowitz devoted portions of his tirade to attacks on the Muslim Students Association, which he sought to paint as a front for virtually every Islamist group that strikes fear in the heart of his culturally deprived conservative peanut gallery, he seemed more comfortable lashing out at his perceived oppressors -- liberal professors, leftists, and the Democratic party -- than he did at any so-called "Islamofascists."
When I asked Horowitz about his weird comparison of his own father to 9/11 mastermind Mohammed Atta in his book, "The End of Time," his hysteria peaked. My question provoked him to link Jerry Falwell, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and "Jerry Springer and all his guests" together in a plot to bring social justice to the world "at the point of a gun."
Listening to Horowitz was like being trapped in a subway car with a raving derelict for an hour and a half. But unlike in the subway, where the transit police usually arrive to remove the derelict, the police came to Columbia to protect Horowitz from the non-existent security threat he had invoked in fundraising appeals for days leading up to his speech.
Horowitz's performance had to be seen to be believed. Luckily, despite being forbidden to film by the president of the Columbia College Republicans, my co-producer, Thomas Shomaker, and I managed to smuggle a camera into Horowitz's speech and record it all.
Take a look at our latest video, "The Demons of David Horowitz":