Pat Dollard | Young Americans

NRO Q&A with David Horowitz:

It’s Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week — the brainchild of David Horowitz, warrior for truth on American college campuses. Horowitz’s Terrorism Awareness Project website describes the effort as “the biggest conservative campus protest ever… a wake-up call for Americans on 200 university and college campuses.” And so later this week, Horowitz will be returning to Columbia University, his alma mater, “to confront the two Big Lies of the political left: that George Bush created the war on terror and that Global Warming is a greater danger to Americans than the terrorist threat.”

Horowitz — who has former United States Senator Rick Santorum, radio-talk-show hosts Sean Hannity and Michael Medved, and many more participating in this week’s effort (that has, of course, been derided as a pre-Halloween “right-wing political stunt”) – took a few questions from National Review Online editor Kathryn Lopez on Monday about this wartime service.

Kathryn Jean Lopez: Why are you doing this? Is it your sense college kids have no clue?

David Horowitz: On the contrary. It’s because adults have no clue. Bush managed to use the word “Islamo-fascism” one time before CAIR and the Islamo-fascist coalition howled and he retreated. What we are doing is putting the name of the enemy on the national radar. To be sure, a good part of the college curriculum teaches that Bush, rather than the Islamo-fascists, is responsible for the war on terror and America is the Great Satan. So yes, we are providing a counter-curriculum.

But the larger agenda is create a national movement to stand up to the coalition between Islamo-fascists and American liberals at home who are running interference for the terrorists. The coalition attacking Islamo-fascism Awareness Week extends from the Iranians and CAIR through the Revolutionary Communist Party to Campus Progress (an offshoot of the Hillary-Soros-Podesta operation) and College Democrats.

Lopez: How long have you been doing this now?

Horowitz: We started with Islamo-Fascist Awareness Day last April 19 when we organized 96 college campuses to show the film Obsession simultaneously. The only reason you didn’t hear about it was because the shootings on the Virginia Tech campus took place three days earlier and that was the only campus news reported for a couple of weeks.

Lopez: What’s the most distressing question you frequently get from a run-of-the-mill all-American kid?

Horowitz: I actually think the run-of-the-mill all-American kids, even the ones who vote for the Democrats, are (quietly) on our side on this one. I begin my speeches by explaining the poster we have created which shows a Muslim woman having her head blown off by a Taliban soldier for sexual improprieties. I refer to the 130 million Muslim women who have had their genitals sliced off without anesthetic to conform to some barbaric Muslim custom. I recall the 200,000 moderate Muslims slaughtered by Islamo-fascists in Algeria calling themselves “al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.” The room gets pretty silent after that.

Lopez: Have you had any good, instructive debates on campus on this topic?

Horowitz: No. Read Barbara Ehrenreich’s hate screed in the current Nation and you’ll get a picture of the intellectual level of the opposition. It’s all ad hominem libels of Coulter, Santorum, and me. There isn’t a substantive argument. But then when has the Left managed to put together a substantive argument?

Lopez: What do you find resonates the most with kids?

Horowitz: The fact that we are supporting peaceful Muslims against the Islamo-Fascists.

Lopez: Why do you call it “Islamo-facism” vs. radical Islam or something else?

Horowitz: First of all it’s a totalitarian doctrine and this is important. In Iran the state just outlawed hand-holding by couples in public, enforced by the “modesty police.” Second, radical Islam is historically linked with Nazism (it’s founder Hassan al Banna was an admirer of Hitler, the Brotherhood, and the Palestinians worked with Hitler and the entire jihadist movement has embraced genocidal Jew hatred). Third, in political war which is what the Lleft has declared on us, it’s important to have an emotional label you can stick your enemies with. And it upsets them as well, which is an added fillip. One of the attacks on us actually said “How dare they parade as anti-fascists!” My reply? Get used to it.

Full NRO interview here.