But unlike the serious organizers, UIs can (and must) be swayed over to our side. Giving up on them is dangerous. And shoving them deeper into the arms of the communist organizers is very, very dangerous. Accusing them of being more radical than they are makes them like us less, and makes them trust the communist organizers more. There’s no benefit, and plenty of harm, to lending credence in their minds, to the organizers’ painting of conservatives and libertarians as mean and selfish.
Mnay of them are impressionable college students and recent graduates, who still have plenty of time to modify their political views. Janet Karpinski obviously doesn’t fall into the still-swayable category, but she’s undoubtedly a prominent figure to the young UIs, and making exaggerated accusations about her degree of radicalism, because of her affiliation with some of these groups, is likely to be viewed by young impressionable UIs as an attack on them too. Remember, David Horowitz was a useful idiot once. Many of them can and must be “saved”, and reasoning with them and treating them with civility and basic courtesy are very effective swaying tools.
Who's giving up on them? If they see stuff like this, they may very well wise up.
Many of them are impressionable college students and recent graduates, who still have plenty of time to modify their political views. Janet Karpinski obviously doesn’t fall into the still-swayable category, but she’s undoubtedly a prominent figure to the young UIs
Karpinski is no "useful idiot". There's no way in hell she doesn't know who these people are. The RCP has been around since the Vietnam War era. And if, by some miracle, she didn't know when she first hooked up with them, she certainly would have found out soon enough from others. This information is not exactly top secret.
Remember, David Horowitz was a useful idiot once.
Horowitz obviously knew who the Black Panthers were. He worked for them. "useful idiots" (most liberals) haven't a clue.
"He was born the red-diaper baby of two Communist schoolteachers (the old-fashioned card-carrying kind) in New York. The family were such true believers, in fact, that Horowitz remembers his father remarking gloomily, “you’ve broken the mold” at the news he was about to have a third grandchild.
“In the ‘20s, U.S. Communist Party members considered it reactionary to have any children, since they would be obstacles to the revolutionary mission,” Horowitz explains in his autobiography Radical Son. “More than two indicated a lack of political focus.”
Horowitz had helped found the New Left movement that emerged during the late-‘50s in Berkeley, and after spending a few years traveling around Europe lecturing about Marxism, he returned in 1968 as an editor of the radical magazine Ramparts. He also became an advisor and confidant to Huey Newton and the Black Panthers, an involvement that led to the first station of his journey from left to right.
In 1974, Horowitz recommended a friend, Betty Van Patter, to the Panthers as a bookkeeper. After Van Patter told Horowitz she was upset about what she’d seen in the Panthers’ records, she disappeared. Two weeks later her body was found, head bashed in, floating in San Francisco Bay. (The case was never solved.)
Horowitz had been aware of the Panthers’ thuggish habits — Newton had already killed a police officer and a young prostitute and beaten up fellow Panther Bobby Seale, who went into hiding — but had avoided facing them. Van Patter’s death sent him into a spiral of guilt, depression, and self-examination that destroyed his marriage, most of his friendships, and eventually his entire worldview."