I have been pleasantly surprised to watch American Betrayal unfold on Twtter as Brett MacDonald (@TweetBrettMac), now reading the book, transforms conventional underlining and note-taking into a lively Twitter feed.
Early on, however, he detected the atmospherics of "controversy" about the book, picked up a copy of The Rebuttal, and then discovered them (Horowitz) still to be raging.
How?
MacDonald began to recount the chain of "controversial" events -- David Horowitz's removal of a positive review of American Betrayal by Mark Tapson from the Frontpage website (fortunately saved here) .
Enter David Horowitz swiftly.
Five years and four months after launching Frontpage's second and re-educational review of American Betrayal, Ron Radosh's "McCarthy on Steroids," a 7,000-word-load of lies, fabrications and distortions (each one untangled and rebutted in The Rebuttal), Horowitz replied to Brett MacDonald's tweet.
It was like like watching a worn-out robot reboot, with a broken record for its script.
More of the exchange is here.
What Horowitz is really telling us, of course, is that "the author of the review" was not sufficiently robotic to turn on a broken record and denounce my copiously sourced re-appraisal of the FDR administration, World War II, the Cold War and 9/11, which is the broad canvas of American Betrayal. The poor man actually had an open mind! Horowitz had to fix that. "So I asked Radosh to review it ..." It now turns out that the twenty-plus attack pieces to follow (something completely different from merely bad reviews), now including a 2018 swipe in the Washington Post, were just not enough.
As to whether we call D-Day a "Soviet plot," it is documented fact that it was Stalin's overriding strategy to do everything he could to ensure that the US, British and the other Western allies did not expand their 1943 invasion of Europe via Italy (which liberated Rome on the day before D-Day) into a massive assault on the Third Reich via Central/Southern Europe. This was the "soft underbelly" strategy, the approach famously supported by Winston Churchill, but, less famously, also supported by Gen. Ira Eaker, commander of Allied air forces in the Mediterranean theater; Gen. Carl Spaatz, U.S. commander of strategic bombing in Europe; Gen. Mark W. Clark, commander of the U.S. 5th Army in Italy, and, not least, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, soon to become Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. (See Chapter 9.)
Looking at the battle map from the Other Side, Walter Schellenberg, head of the Nazi Secret Service, wrote in his postumously published memoir: "Had Churchill been able to carry through his plan for an invasion of the Balkans at the end of 1943, then, according to my calculations at the time, the war would have been over in the spring of 1944. The Balkans were like an overripe plum, ready to fall at the slightest touch, and this would have torn open the German South-eastern flank."
In large part as a result of Stalin's overall efforts, open and covert -- "Soviet plotting" defined -- this did not happen. The Allies, in essence, withdrew from Europe (Italy) to re-invade Europe (France). This and much more is discussed in my book, including the central role played by top FDR aide and suspected Soviet agent of influence Harry Hopkins in Allied decision-making.
Also discussed in American Betrayal are the implications of this same debate. Had the Churchill-Eaker-Spaatz-Clark-Eisenhower "soft underbelly"/"overripe plum" strategy been executed, as Stalin surely understood, the Western allies would all but certainly have secured Central and Eastern Europe against Red Army conquest. This would have been a catastrophe -- from Stalin's point of view. Worse (again, from Stalin's point of view), by war's end, the Red Army might well have been boxed inside the borders of the Soviet Union -- and we can't have that, can we, Comrade?
According to David Horowitz, we mustn't even think about that, either -- not without having one's work and person trashed and slandered. According to Horowitz, even to recount what the generals and diplomats of the day were saying, what Congressional and FBI investigations revealed, or what glimpses of KGB activities show us, is to "discredit conservatives" today.
To argue that this is absurd and unbelievable, that such research and discussion obviously does not "discredit conservatives" or anyone else, is to miss the point. What is clear to me is that Horowitz and his clique do not wish conservatives or anyone else to undertake such research or have such a discussion. Why they use lies and smears to try to posion such study and debate, to make sure the mechanism of American betrayal remains well-hidden, is a question none of them have adequately explained.
In revisiting this perplexing topic, I find that for having written American Betrayal, I am actually listed in Horowitz's "Discover the Networks" guide to the Left. The subcategory I appear in (along with pro-Islam Grover Norquist and Suhail Khan) is "Conservative Criticisms of Transgressions of Other Conservatives."
"Transgressions"?
What a disgrace this is to the ideals and practice of free inquiry and expression. But it is more than that. It should be alarming to all that such a malevolent, dictatorial presence dominates conservative thought, particularly when it comes to the Communism's tragically successful subversion of America.