David Horowitz’s Neo-McCarthyite Blacklist

Anyone who doubts that Bushite right-wingers are presiding over a new 1950s-style witch hunt in their constant equation of dissent to treason need only turn to ideological turncoat David Horowitz’s highly-touted right-wing online blacklist “Discover the Network”. According to Horowitz, his site “is a ‘Guide to the Political Left.’ It identifies the individuals and organizations that make up the left and also the institutions that fund and sustain it; it maps the paths through which the left exerts its influence on the larger body politic; it defines the left’s (often hidden) programmatic agendas and it provides an understanding of its history and ideas.”
Hm. Sounds innocuous enough.
But Horowitz makes a big leap: he mixes in Islamic terrorists with the supposed liberals. Next to the listing for Al Sharpton, then, is one for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of Al Qaeda in Iraq. Ayatollah Kholmeini (someone should tell Horowitz he’s dead) of Iran is next to Barack Obama, the up and coming Democratic Senator. There’s Johnny Walker Lindh, American Talib, next to Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation. It’s a reprehensible, vile smear, and it would be laughable if (a) it didn’t read like those anti-abortion hitlist websites and (b) it wasn’t so patently untrue. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the Al Qaeda operative, hardly shares a political agenda with UN chief Kofi Annan, whose images appear side by side. In fact, radical Islamism shares a lot more in common with radical Republicanism–both hate women, believe in a fundamentalist interpretation of their respective scriptures and want to take over the world. But never let the facts get in the way of a political smear, Mr. Horowitz.
There is, in this case, a personal angle. I am, apparently, the only cartoonist on a list that includes such luminaries as John Kerry and Kewisi Mfume. I’m easy to find: I’m “right” there at #673 (the list is in alphabetical, rather than ideological, order) between Massoud Rajavi and Sheikh Alaa Ramadan, who I assume are supposed to be my new best friends.
Anyone familiar with my work has got to laugh at my second supposed sin: “Reserves condemnation only for Republicans.” I mean, what’s wrong with that? Not that it’s true: ask Bill Clinton how warm and fuzzy he feels about the way I batted his ass around for eight years. I’m an equal opportunity politician basher; it’s just that these days, there aren’t many powerful left politicians left. And the rest of the listing is full of similar garbage.
Even more interesting than the implicit linking of patriotic Americans with Islamist terrorists is the fact that no mainstream Republican can be counted upon to condemn Horowitz. Where is John McCain to repudiate this shit? One must assume, therefore, that the mainstream GOP agrees with Horowitz’s smear tactics. God knows the right-wing bloggers do.