Highlights
& Quotes
Rachelle Horowitz, the wife of longtime AFL-CIO principal Thomas Donahue, was a leader of the hawkish wing of the Socialist Party USA that splintered off from the party in 1972 to become Social Democrats-USA. SD-USA members followed a similar trajectory of the early neoconservatives, gradually abandoning their leftist ideas to embrace the hawkish wing of the Democratic Party (led by Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson), and then going on to form an integral part of the rightwing structure that matured during the Reagan presidency.
Although Horowitz and many other SD-USA supporters initially backed Bill Clinton, more recently the group has been an outspoken supporter of George W. Bush’s Middle East policies. Still, despite the tendency of many observers to associate SD-USA with neoconservatism, there seem to be significant differences between the two ideological camps.
During a SD-USA-sponsored conference that was held soon after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, many of the attendees -- including Horowitz -- took exception to the views espoused by Joshua Muravchik, a former Socialist Party member who is now with the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute. In an article about the conference, Joshua Micah Marshall wrote: “Muravchik took the opportunity of his presentation to ‘welcome Paul [Berman] on board.’ It was a tongue-in-cheek welcome, but for all its cheekiness it was also a rather self-congratulatory way of applauding Berman for finally ditching the old ways and coming over to ‘our side,’ just as other rightward-journeying ex-socialists like Bob Leiken, Ronald Radosh, Muravchik himself and many others had done before. These were congratulations that Berman made plain he was not altogether willing to accept. Muravchik, unruffled, spent the better part of the rest of his presentation elaborating just what ‘our side’ was. After tossing out and then tossing aside a few possibilities, he decided that ‘our side’ was the group that was against evil. ‘The us is that group,’ he said, ‘who recognize evil for what it is and are willing to fight against it.’ The other side, presumably the one that Berman had formerly belonged to, and that some in the audience probably still belonged to, consisted of those who ‘refuse to recognize evil and who rush forward to justify it.’ It was here, as the day came to an end, that the long, parallel, bending arc from labor activists to neoconservative foreign-policy intellectuals finally snapped clean, giving way to the day's first real outbreak of animated debate and disagreement. Rachelle Horowitz, another Social Democrats, USA, luminary and an event organizer, called Muravchik's comments ‘profoundly disturbing’ -- both his use of ‘us and them’ rhetoric and the term ‘evil.’ The existence of evil in the world was something Horowitz was happy to concede, she said from the floor. But it was a word incapable of clear political definition and thus a producer of muddle rather than clarity, zeal rather than political action. Then Herf jumped in with similar criticisms. And then Berman. And Ibrahim. And before long, more or less everyone else in the room. There was still something, it seemed, that separated them from the neocons who hovered over the proceedings both as opponents and inspirations. Muravchik wanted to pull them somewhere most of the attendees -- and organizers-- were unwilling to go.” (6)
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Institutional
Affiliations
American
Federation of Teachers: Political
Director (2)
Committee
on the Present Danger: Member (3)
League
for Industrial Democracy: Board Member (4)
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