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Introduction by David Horowitz:
America is under siege. Our founding principles are under attack as they have never been before. Not even the Confederates trashed the Constitution or attempted to set up a Ministry of Truth to censor every idea they disagreed with. But today’s internal enemies regard no American institution or tradition as sacrosanct, whether it is an independent judiciary or a government of laws, not men. When they start pulling down monuments to the Founding Fathers, obviously nothing is off-limits to their attacks.
Today we have a lawless government in Washington and a pathological liar in the White House who claims that America is “systemically racist” in every aspect of its public life -- in other words, “evil.” This presidential claim is a malignant fiction: the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlaws systemic racism in so many words. If any American institution -- any one of the 18,000 police departments, for example -- is systemically racist, why aren’t Biden and his Justice Department suing them for violating the law? The answer is simple: there is no systemic racism. The president’s lie is solely designed to demonize his political opponents.
Anyone who stands up in defense of America and its fundamental principles today is the target of shameless smears by the Democrat Party and its supporters. Like the president’s lie, these smears are designed to demonize and silence America’s defenders. From its inception, the mission of the David Horowitz Freedom Center has been the defense of American freedoms which are under attack from a party of hate, which calls itself “progressive” (another lie). Consequently, the Freedom Center has been the target of hateful smears ever since it was created in 1988.
Because a misguided Supreme Court majority eviscerated the libel laws in New York Times v. Sullivan, public figures – i.e., anyone who offers public opposition to the party of hate – is pretty much defenseless against these malicious attacks. The attacks are designed not to refute our views, but to deprive us of financial support and public access.
This year, for example, the Center was told by the Breakers Hotel and Resort where we have held our Restoration Weekend gathering for 28 years that we were being canceled because suddenly we were “controversial.” In fact, at these events, we hosted among other national figures, three U.S. Attorneys General, scores of U.S. representatives and senators, governors, international figures like Natan Sharansky, and even Democrats like Alan Dershowitz.
So who made us “controversial” – a sinister excuse for banning us, in any case? The directors of the Southern Poverty Law Center identified us as “hate mongers,” without a shred of evidence. The SPLC’s leaders were so corrupt they were expelled from the organization a couple of years ago for racism and sexual harassment. The person in charge of their hate list, which has included Ben Carson, has publicly admitted that his goal is to destroy conservative groups.
All this is a preface to explain why we are publishing the following letter written by our lawyer as a response to a recent attempt to destroy us by deploying disgusting lies about our alleged attitudes towards Muslims. These lies were not fabricated to win a political argument but to bully a large investment firm to restrict its clients' ability to contribute their money to us in an attempt to destroy us. The lies were contained in a “report” published by a group calling itself “Unmasking Fidelity Coalition.” The immediate target was Fidelity Investments and a program called “Fidelity Charitable," which is a “donor-advised” fund that allows contributions to pass through to the Center. The hate America left has a whole panoply of such funds, like the Tides Foundation which underwrote the mayhem, arson, and violence launched against 220 American cities by Black Lives Matter in the summer of 2020. All this money posing as charity funds.
The I.R.S., which should be keeping tax-exempt foundations like Tides and Black Lives Matter spending their monies charitably and not on criminal activities, has itself become a rogue operation punishing conservative organizations for their politics. This turn took place during the Obama administration – and with its blessing -- when the I.R.S. denied over 100 conservative organizations tax-exempt status – because it could. Shutting down political debate as a method of “winning” arguments is the modus operandi of fascist governments, not democracies.
By threatening Fidelity – calling it a hate group because it funded the Freedom Center -- the Unmasking Fidelity Coalition intended to intimidate Fidelity into denying its clients the right to contribute to us. A perfectly fascist solution for when you don’t have the facts on your side.
The killer claim of the Unmasking Fidelity leftists was that I and the Freedom Center are contributing to the systematic oppression of Muslims because we are an “anti-Muslim” organization. The “cease and desist” letter below, which was written by our lawyer, explains why this is a maliciously fabricated lie.
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HOFFMAN LEGAL CORPORATION
Phone (949) 600-8889 I Fax (949) 297-3767
27405 Puerta Real, Suite 250. Mission Viejo. CA 92691
hoffmanlegal.net
May 24, 2022
Via E-mail: UnmaskinqFidelity2021@qmail.com; /ee@massclu.org; clivinqston@calorqanize.org; carolyn@aarw.org: ExecutiveDirector@resourcegeneration.org: fatema@muslimjusticeleague.org and First Class Mail
Unmasking Fidelity Coalition
Lee Matsueda, Executive Director· Community Labor United
8 Beacon Street, 5th Floor Boston, MA 01208
Christina Livingston, Board President & Executive Director ACRE Institute
3655 S Grand Ave, Ste 250 Los Angeles, CA 90007
Tarso Luis Ramos, Executive Director Political Research Associates
1310 Broadway, Suite 201, Somerville, MA 02144-1837
Yahya Alazrak, Director Resource Generation
1216 Broadway, 2nd Floor New York, NY 10001
Carolyn Chou, Executive Director Asian American Resource Workshop
42 Charles Street, Suite A Dorchester, MA 02122
Fatema Ahmad, Executive Director Muslim Justice League
711 Atlantic Ave., Boston, MA 02111
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Re: Your defamatory report regarding the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
Dear Mr. Matsueda, Ms. Livingston, Mr. Ramos, Mr. Alazrak, Ms. Chou, and Ms. Ahmad:
This firm represents Mr. David Horowitz and the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation ("DHFC"). It has come to our attention that the Unmasking Fidelity Coalition ("Coalition"), of which your organization is an admitted member, recently published a report entitled "Unmasking Fidelity: The People Disclose," in March 2022. This report contains numerous malicious and defamatory statements about my clients, without any factual support whatsoever, including the following:
"Institutions like DHFC contribute to the systemic oppression of Muslim communities by influencing media, public opinion, and the government to create policies that limit-rather than advance-human rights."
" ...violence caused by the organizations profiled in this report [such as DHFC]."
"The ten organizations highlighted in this report [including DHFC] represents a cross section of tax-exempt nonprofits furthering various forms of systemic oppression in the US..."
"The David Horowitz Freedom Center...is the primary outlet for its founder [David Horowitz] to demonize Muslims, Islam, immigrants, and other perceived enemies..."
"Horowitz has played a significant role in popularizing anti-Muslim narratives and conspiracies."
There is not a shred of truth to any of these defamatory lies. As will be shown below, Mr. Horowitz and DHFC have never advocated or caused violence, oppression, or destruction of civil rights of anyone. Nor have they "demonized" any group of people, except for violent terrorists and criminals. My clients are always careful to criticize the behavior, not immutable characteristics.
The defamatory statements that my clients are "anti-Muslim", which your Coalition has repeatedly claimed in its report, is completely false. My clients are not "anti-Muslim" and they challenge the Coalition, or any member thereof, the produce a single statement that shows they are "anti-Muslim" in a bigoted sense, or in which Mr. Horowitz or DHFC has denigrated a group of people based on their identity or immutable characteristics. Mr. Horowitz and DHFC have written and published millions of words. There is not a single sentence in these writings that could qualify as racist or anti-Muslim.
You have each adopted and republished libelous claims in the Coalition's report that Mr. Horowitz and DHFC are "anti-Muslim" causing "violence" and "oppression". If you had properly investigated the Coalition's claims, you would have discovered that the statements are demonstrably false. In the last 18 years, Mr. Horowitz has written and spoken more than half a million words, including in the 2004 book Unholy Alliance, about Islam and the Islamic jihad. These are readily available in print and on the Internet. Yet no one, including the Southern Poverty Law Center, could turn up a single sentence that a reasonable person would describe as "anti-Muslim." In fact, in speeches and writings available to anyone on the Internet, Mr. Horowitz has made it clear that he is not anti-Muslim at all.
In 2009, for example, Mr. Horowitz gave a speech at USC, which is recorded on YouTube and is online at Frontpagemag.com, and is available in his book, lslamo-Fascism and the War Against the Jews (2014). In the speech, he says: "Here are my views concerning Muslims: There are good Muslims and bad Muslims, just as there are good Christians and bad ones, good Jews and bad Jews. Most Muslims are like everybody else; they want peace and are law abiding. Probably their religion is very personal to them and doesn't involve efforts to convert and subordinate or kill others. There is a difference between religious institutions and the religion of individuals. Many Catholics do not follow church doctrine on birth control and abortion, for example. The Ku Klux Klan is a Protestant Christian organization, but virtually all Protestants and their churches condemn the Ku Klux Klan." (Emphasis added.) (1)
In 2012, Mr. Horowitz spoke at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. There was a demonstration during his talk by Muslim students, who walked out in protest soon after he began. David's comment was this: "It is too bad that all our Muslim friends have left the room and did not stay to hear this; but notwithstanding the evil intentions of Muslim leaders in the Middle East, there are good Muslims and there are bad Muslims, and most are probably good Muslims - decent, law-abiding, desirous of peace." (Emphasis added.) (2)
On virtually every campus Mr. Horowitz has spoken at in the last ten years, he has repeated these words. Mr. Horowitz has also organized protests on more than 100 college campuses against the oppression of Muslim women. He has published booklets against the oppression of Muslim women. He has sponsored panels with Muslim speakers against the oppression of Muslim women. There are numerous videos of his campus speeches on the Internet where he can be seen saying that his efforts are not directed against all Muslims, but are conducted on behalf of most Muslims against the hijacking of their religion by totalitarian radicals who are conducting a campaign of hatred against Jews, gays, and other minority groups.
Nonetheless, his speeches have been preceded by flyers and handouts filled with slanderous lies against him, including the slander that he is "the godfather of the anti-Muslim movement in America." These kinds of lies are featured in college newspaper accounts of Mr. Horowitz's visits, reaching tens of thousands of members of the academic community. This is an experience shared generally by conservatives like Heather McDonald, Milo Yiannopoulos, and many, many others. (3)
Very few people have done as much as Mr. Horowitz to expose the ongoing oppression of Muslim women, Jews, gays, and other minorities in Middle Eastern countries, which should have been self-evident to you from news stories demonstrating large-scale murder and repression of Muslims by ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Mr. Horowitz's research and exposure of the abuse of minority groups at the hands of extremist elements in Muslim countries should be a legitimate part of any dialogue on a university campus concerned with Middle East conflicts. The Coalition's utter disregard of Mr. Horowitz's long history of work on behalf of persecuted minorities and Muslims reveals your adoption of malice towards him for political reasons.
Although Mr. Horowitz and DHFC have written and published extensively, there is not a single sentence that could qualify them as "anti-Muslim" or racist. Yet your Coalition's report arbitrarily and unreasonably describes them as "anti-Muslim" without any factual basis and without any investigation whatsoever. This also shows malice on your part.
Accordingly, Mr. Horowitz and DHFC demand that the Coalition immediately apologize and retract its defamatory accusations in the above-referenced report and that the Coalition cease and desist from further publication of such defamatory claims, either online or in print. We assume you have an interest in the truth, and respect for the nation's libel laws.
Although we would prefer to resolve this matter on an amicable basis, Mr. Horowitz and DHFC reserve the right to exercise all their civil remedies in a lawsuit for damages if they suffer any loss of revenue as a result of your report or from your continuing violation of their rights. Continuing publication or republication of these pernicious falsehoods will further demonstrate your malicious intent and will support the imposition of punitive damages against each of your organizations supporting the Coalition.
PAH:sg
cc: Mr. David Horowitz
David Horowitz Freedom Center
Notes:
1. David Horowitz, The Black Book of the American Left, Vol. IV: lslamo-Fascism and the War Against the Jews, 2014, Part 1, Chp. 16 "Jew Hatred at USC"," p. 143.
2. David Horowitz, The Black Book, op. cit., Part Ill, Ch. 10, "A Malignant Cause," p. 312.
3. For a sample, see https://www.frontpaqemaq.com/fpm/271895/dartmouth-nightmare-david-horowitz
