Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Media Matters Exposes the Right's Demonization of the Tides Foundation

Media Matters has posted an article critiquing David Horowitz's website, DiscoverTheNetworks.com, A Guide to David Horowitz's DiscoverTheNetworks.

A few months ago one Bryan Williams engaged some law enforcement officers in a shoot out but was in the end arrested and is now in jail awaiting trial. He said he was trying to attack the ACLU and the Tides Foundation. Immediately there began speculation over what drove this man to hate the Tides Foundation so much he would chose to attack them. Commentators noted that Glenn Beck had recently denounced Tides and suspected a connection.

When I heard about this I immediately said to myself that he had probably read Discover The Networks.com's description of Tides. I shared this thought on my other blog. I discovered this website around early 2007 and read some of what was there. I distinctly recalled reading how they vilified Tides as the second greatest funder of 'the left' (just behind the Ford Foundation), that it's a money launderer used to let the wealthy left fund radical groups which they do not want to associate with publicly, they say. The funders know where the money goes, sends it to Tides, which sends it to the specified radicals, and the recipients may be unaware of the source of the money sent through Tides.
I am very glad that Media Matters has chosen to bring attention to this website.

DiscovertTheNetworks.com reveals much of what is wrong with the current state of the American right. It tries to convince the reader that every leftist must be as harmful to society as a Communist. Everyone that website disagrees with are vilified as Communists or portrayed as being as bad as one. Exploiting the fact that the Communist movement originates from the left it viciously accuses all leftists as being just as bad as Communists, as merely milder forms of Soviet Communism. The spirit of McCarthy is strong with this website.

Some highlights from Media Matters' interview with Bryan Williams:
Byron says that he had researched Tides on his own before seeing Beck attack the foundation on television. In his letter to me, he singled out Beck and DiscoverTheNetworks as key sources of information on Soros and Tides.
To accuse every leftist of being Communist is wrong. It is dangerous to do that because it hides what was really wrong with Soviet style Communism and make people unnecessarily fearful of the left. The problems of Soviet Communism which caused them to behave in the atrocious way they and their imitators did do not apply to the vast majority of the American left.

I know David Horowitz has a very compelling story about how he became disillusioned with the left due to apathy towards the murder of an associate of his, which he strongly suspects was committed by the members of the original Black Panther Party, but regardless of such sensitive matters they do not, I am sorry to say, justify him and his associates to demonize the left as they have done as Communists, as intellectual relatives of Communism, as sympathizers of radical Islamic terrorism, as traitors for opposing Bush's wars.

I have read about twenty books about Soviet style Communism and some of its imitators. As far as I can tell one fundamental problem was that their dream of being able to create Utopia allowed them to justify all measures to destroy democracy. Whatever may be said the American left I am firmly persuaded that the idea that democracy can be subverted to impose their vision(s), that such a step is justified, does not exist within the vast majority of the American left.

I say again I'm glad Media Matters has directed their critical eyes to this propaganda website and are exposing them.

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