澳彩开奖

The man who took the stage in front of hundreds of state legislators at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)鈥檚 annual meeting this August was none other than David Horowitz, an influential leader and moneyman in the anti-Muslim movement.

His presence at the event immediately sparked outrage. Dozens of progressive organizations in the following weeks launched a campaign to 聽corporations to stop supporting ALEC. In a published September 6, Horowitz blamed the backlash on his group, the David Horowitz Freedom Center, being聽included聽on the 澳彩开奖鈥檚 hate map.

Horowitz has 聽to the Trump administration and is a pivotal figure connecting anti-Muslim extremists and politicians. The ALEC invitation provided him with yet another powerful platform.

Horowitz鈥檚 virulent, conspiratorial rhetoric

Horowitz adopted his usual conspiratorial tone in front of the influential group of policymakers. He turned to his favorite topics:

At the K-12 level, school curricula have been turned over to racist organizations like Black Lives Matter and terrorist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood. 鈥� Ludicrous doctrines dear to the left like 鈥榞ender fluidity鈥� and 鈥榳hite skin privilege鈥� are being taught to first graders.

Horowitz has in the past compared聽the multiracial, nonviolent Black Lives Matter movement to the Ku Klux Klan and regularly raises the specter of 鈥渋slamofascism.鈥� The 鈥渞eal race war,鈥� he has , is against white people.

To solve this 鈥減olitical subversion of our schools by an anti-American left,鈥� Horowitz proposed 鈥渁 code of ethics鈥� that he wrote for K-12 teachers:

鈥淎ll we need is a state legislature to pass it. It鈥檚 just based on the Hatch Act and it would bar teachers from taking partisan positions in the classroom.鈥�

The Hatch Act is a 1939 law banning political speech for government executive employees.

ALEC and Horowitz鈥檚 shared priority: free speech bills

Horowitz has made a name for himself through extreme-right institution building. His David Horowitz Freedom Center聽(DHFC) and its affiliated online magazine, FrontPage Mag, have become a repository of anti-Muslim and extreme-right ideologies. DHFC, which 澳彩开奖 lists as an anti-Muslim hate group, sees its mission as confronting 鈥渢he efforts of the radical left and its Islamist allies to destroy American values.鈥� It has partnered with the likes of white nationalist enabler Milo Yiannopoulos to take on American campuses, as both took up聽the banner of defending free speech from what they called college campuses鈥� censorship.

ALEC, in turn, is a conservative and libertarian network that brings together state legislators and powerful corporations to draft sample legislation across the country. 聽the conservative billionaire brothers, Charles and David Koch. ALEC has helped author聽pro-business and regressive model legislation enabling , , school privatization and voter suppression.

Horowitz and ALEC have a common cause. ALEC has long pushed for restrictions on protests in schools and universities by drafting so-called 鈥渇ree speech鈥� bills in various states, anti-LGBT Christian legal powerhouse Alliance Defending Freedom聽as an influence. The effort, now popular on the far right, is based on a 聽鈥渃ampus free speech crisis,鈥� and seeks to quell non-violent opposition to on-campus speakers, conservative speakers in particular.

础尝贰颁鈥檚 鈥渇ree-speech鈥� legislation does go as far as other conservative groups鈥� bills. Sample free speech legislation drafted by the Koch-funded , for example, pushes for student protesters鈥� . However, the of 础尝贰颁鈥檚 Center to Protect Free Speech, Wisconsin State Senator Leah Vukmir, 聽a bill (SB 351) that sanctions those who 鈥渋nfringe on the rights of others to engage in or listen to expressive activity,鈥� making clear the bill鈥檚 attempts to silence dissent. The bill .

A mouthpiece for 础尝贰颁鈥檚 call for a constitutional convention

At the conference, Horowitz emerged as a cheerleader for one of 础尝贰颁鈥檚 most ambitious projects.

ALEC is one of the key drivers behind efforts to get two-thirds of the states to call for 聽under Article V of the Constitution, to permanently amend the document with changes favorable to its causes. Under its guidance, 28 of the necessary 34 states have already passed articles calling for a 听补尘别苍诲尘别苍迟.

At the event, Horowitz came out as a vocal supporter for a constitutional convention, which he called the only way to put an end to 鈥渢he greatest institutional threat to constitutional order鈥� 鈥� the power of the Supreme Court. He claimed the court had overstepped its powers by banning official prayers in public school (Engel v. Vitale), legalizing abortion (Roe v. Wade) and passing marriage equality ( Obergefell v. Hodges). He told the assembled state legislators:

The convention of the states is your chance, and probably your only chance, to do something about this to reform the court as necessary, to prevent the federal government from extruding its powers into areas which it was never designed to do, to prevent it from destroying individual freedoms through socialist programs like Obamacare. The convention of the states is your opportunity to leverage your powers.

This too聽would be beneficial to ALEC, which has also sought to curtail judicial power to advance its , especially after parts of its model 聽have been struck down by the Supreme Court.

A constitutional convention, Horowitz further mused, is 鈥渕ade for the Trump era. It provides an opportunity to follow the examples of our president鈥檚 boldness.鈥�

Horowitz鈥檚 growing political influence meets 础尝贰颁鈥檚 affinity for bigots

Horowitz has seen his influence grow during the Trump presidency, as more and more of his allies joined the administration. He has longstanding links聽to Stephen Miller, the architect behind many of the White House鈥檚 anti-immigrant policies. The DHFC also organizes lavish conferences like the annual 鈥淩estoration Weekend.鈥� These events bridge together anti-Muslim extremists like Pamela Geller聽with powerful political figures. Past attendees have included Jeff Sessions, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), former White House advisers Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka, and Florida gubernatorial candidate .

ALEC is a highly secretive group, so it鈥檚 hard to say if this was the first time Horowitz took the stage at one of its events. Still, when he started his speech, he called the CEO of ALEC, Lisa Nelson, an 鈥渙ld friend.鈥�

Regardless, it is not the first time ALEC served an anti-Muslim and nativist agenda. As Hatewatch聽reported, at an ALEC conference in 2016, anti-Muslim Idaho state representative Eric Redman met with Christopher Holton, a staffer with the anti-Muslim hate group Center for Security Policy. Both have proposed so-called anti-Sharia bills, legally redundant efforts that foment a sensational fear of Islam and American Muslims subverting American law.

ALEC, generally, has had a long history of collaborating with anti-immigrant and racist legislators, on top of 聽out voter suppression bills and challenges to direct democracy. One of the most regressive pieces of anti-immigrant legislation the nation has known, Arizona鈥檚 SB 1070 can be attributed to the group. Passed in 2010, SB 1070 聽law enforcement officers to check people鈥檚 immigration status if they suspected they were undocumented, and stop and arrest them without a warrant. The law, which incentivized racial profiling, sparked waves of protest and legal challenges. It also prevented undocumented people from seeking jobs.

The bill was 聽by virulent 聽then-state senator Russell Pearce, and written with input from , now Kansas鈥檚 secretary of state. Kobach is an anti-immigrant activist who worked as a lawyer for the legal arm of the anti-immigrant hate group Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and has long 聽for voter suppression.

Pearce also submitted the bill to 础尝贰颁鈥檚 Public Safety Task Force, on which he sat alongside the private prison corporation Corrections Corporation of America. The bill was redrafted there, and would ensure that the crackdown on undocumented people would funnel money directly into the private prison industry that detained them, with which politicians behind SB 1070 had a number of existing . The task force eventually accepted the law as 鈥渕odel legislation鈥� to be replicated throughout the country. SB 1070 has since been gutted and its enforcement 聽due to legal challenges, with parts of it 聽by the Supreme Court.

One of 础尝贰颁鈥檚 founders, Paul Weyrich, long 聽the relationship between the prison industry, the nativist movement and legislators, and even 聽to famous Nazi collaborators. Apart from Pearce, ALEC members have included Daryl Metcalfe, the founder of State Legislators for Legal Immigration, which sought to abolish birthright citizenship and depicted immigrants as 鈥渋nvaders.鈥� It also collaborated with FAIR.

ALEC hasn鈥檛 shied away from associating with state legislators with ties to hate groups, and it鈥檚 telling that they welcomed a hate-group leader directly to their stage. The recording of Horowitz鈥檚 remarks clearly shows that he was greeted by an enthusiastic and receptive crowd. Horowitz even he received a standing ovation. By inviting an anti-Muslim bigot so openly, ALEC sends the message it remains comfortable associating with hateful figures.

Wisconsin Rep. Chris Taylor, a Democrat and critic of ALEC who was in the room during Horowitz鈥檚 speech, :

鈥淸The] Horowitz鈥檚 of the world, who ALEC at least publicly has kept at a distance during my tenure, are now becoming part of the ALEC universe. Are ALEC supporters, including their corporate funders, willing to embrace this hate-mongering to continue to advance their corporate agenda?鈥�