By Brian Carnell

Sunday, December 12, 1999

David Horowitz lets loose on former friend and Black Panther sympathizer Art Goldberg over the death of Betty Van Patter. For those who haven't read Horowitz's recent books, all of which mention Van Patter's death, here's the run down: thinking the Panthers were wonderful, Horowitz helped the BPP set up a children's school in Oakland and brought in his fellow radical Betty Van Patter to keep the books for the school.

When the BPP needed an accountant to keep track of its books, Horowitz suggested Van Patter and she began doing accounting work for the BPP itself. The problem, of course, was that the BPP was involved in numerous nefarious enterprises from extortion to drug running. Van Patter asked too many questions and her body was later found in the San Francisco Bay.

Horowitz consistently describes Van Patter's murder as his clear breaking point with the Left. So along comes Goldberg who writes to Horowitz that Van Patter's murder was Horowitz's fault:

In my mind, you are the person responsible for her death. [Emphasis in original.] Sending her in to audit the Panther's books at that particular time was tantamount to dressing her in a Ku Klux Klan white sheet and sending her up to 125th Street in Harlem or to West Oakland. I distinctly remember warning you to be careful about getting too involved with the Panthers because things were getting pretty crazy at the time you jumped in. I had pulled back, Marty Kenner had pulled back and so had Stew Albert.

Horowitz responds with invective, asking sarcastically:

Marty Kenner, my possible savior. [Emphasis in the original] If only I had thought of that! It was Marty, of course, who left the Panther school project in my hands—and without bothering to say why. The same Marty was so far from thinking the thugs he was among were bad guys that ten years later he attended the great Huey P. Newton's funeral as a fan, and then played the role of behind-the-scenes sponsor of Panther Field Marshal David Hilliard's self-glorifying book just before he became president of the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation, and resident tour guide of historic Panther sites. Stupid me! Why didn't I think of asking Marty for help?

One of the odd things about this exchange is that in his latest book, Hating Whitey, Horowitz relates that he tried to dissuade Van Patter from further involvement with the BPP but Van Patter, in Horowitz's view, wanted to be part of a radical movement.

If Horowitz, Goldberg and others need to assign blame for Van Patter's murder somewhere besides the BPP itself, the obvious person is Van Patter herself who, from the various descriptions of her and her actions, seems like the typical 1960s radical dupe who was so focused on the Revolution she didn't have time to even entertain a second thought about a group that had already committed numerous murders long before she went to work for them.

At the beginning of his piece, Horowitz compares Van Patter's murder to the Katyn massacre. Like the Soviet actions at Katyn, the Left has long denied that the BPP was responsible for numerous murders. But there is an important difference as well. Unlike the Polish soldiers murdered by the Soviets at Katyn, Van Patter willingly joined her eventual murderers with eyes wide open and rebuffed intimations that they were anything but the revolutionaries they billed themselves as.

What ultimately killed Betty Van Patter was her own radical faith.

Source:

Letter to the past by David Horowitz

Discuss (0 Replies) | Printer Friendly